Corrections Corporation of America Irresponsibility and Investor Behavior

Prison reformists, lawmakers, human rights activists, lobbyists, investors, government agencies, and other civil and government actors play a large role in the state of the private prison industry’s rate of growth, especially in the past 15-20 years. A 2001 Bureau of Justice Statistics study concluded that big cost savings promised by the private prison industry in the United States “have not materialized.” Corrections Corporation of America’s stock price took its largest plunge in 2000 and never bounced back to its late 90s high. However, despite successful divestment campaigns and legislation against prison privatization after reports of irresponsibility, CCA stock has issued dividends to their investors since 2012, and several analysts currently list CXW (CCA stock) as a recommended buy and hold. Although the United States federal prison population dropped in 2014 for the first time since 1980 (along with private populations), CCA’s stock price remains relatively the same today as the day Attorney General Eric Holder made the announcement. Since the fall of share prices, CCA has converted to a REIT in order to avoid corporate taxes and focused heavily on litigating and lobbying to influence voting decisions on sentencing, regulations, and law enforcement. This lobbying assists in filling prison beds and winning government contracts, with lobbying expenditures over $3.3 million in 2005. With respect to economic, social, and political indicators and by juxtaposing the theories of Adam Smith, Milton Friedman, and Karl Polanyi this study will focus on whether CXW investors can influence the re-embedding of the economy (the subordination of the markets to social relations), with a quantitative focus on the fluctuation of CXW stock prices and their relationship to reports of CCA irresponsibility in the media

Spatio-Temporal Statistical Modeling of Livestock Waste in Streams

Surface water runoff from large livestock operations finds its way into streams, rivers, and ultimately the larger watershed area. In this paper, the model measures the nitrate concentrations in the upper North Bosque (Texas) watershed, which is a region of concentrated dairy operations. Using 15 months of daily data collected at 17 stream monitoring sites allows the authors to obtain optimal predictions of unknown nitrate concentration at all stream locations at any given time, along with a measure of their variability

Reassessment and typification of Opuntia canterae (Opuntioideae, Cactaceae), an endemic prickly pear cactus of Uruguay

Background and aims – Opuntia is the most widespread genus of Cactaceae, naturally occurring throughout arid and semi-arid areas of the Americas. Many of the species have taxonomic problems resulting from incomplete original descriptions, lack of type designations, a paucity of taxonomic revisions and, in general, difficult species delimitation resulting from hybridization, morphological plasticity, and poor specimen preparation. However, efforts are being undertaken to fill the gaps in our distributional, morphological and phylogenetic knowledge of the group. Here, we reassess the name Opuntia canterae, providing an updated description, typification, photographs, distribution map, conservation assessment and additional notes. Material and methods – Extensive fieldwork was conducted, along with comprehensive herbarium and literature review. Morphological characters were assessed based on the commonly used characters used for prickly pears. Species delimitation is proposed based on our morphological studies, taxonomic and literature revision, as well as preliminary phylogenetic studies. The IUCN guidelines were followed to provide a conservation assessment of the species.Key results – Opuntia canterae is reassessed as a distinct species separated from its previous synonym (O. elata) by the elliptic to long-oblanceolate stem segments, acute to conical flower bud apex and long-obconic fruits. An epitype is here designated to further clarify the morphological features of the species, which, heretofore, were only represented by a photo. The species is considered endemic to Uruguay and is provisionally assessed as Endangered (EN) using IUCN criteria, but more fieldwork will be necessary to provide a further precise conservation status

Insights into Chloroplast genome evolution across Opuntioideae (Cactaceae) reveals robust yet sometimes conflicting phylogenetic topologies

Chloroplast genomes (plastomes) are frequently treated as highly conserved among land plants. However, many lineages of vascular plants have experienced extensive structural rearrangements, including inversions and modifications to the size and content of genes. Cacti are one of these lineages, containing the smallest plastome known for an obligately photosynthetic angiosperm, including the loss of one copy of the inverted repeat (∼25 kb) and the ndh gene suite, but only a few cacti from the subfamily Cactoideae have been sufficiently characterized. Here, we investigated the variation of plastome sequences across the second-major lineage of the Cactaceae, the subfamily Opuntioideae, to address (1) how variable is the content and arrangement of chloroplast genome sequences across the subfamily, and (2) how phylogenetically informative are the plastome sequences for resolving major relationships among the clades of Opuntioideae. Our de novo assembly of the Opuntia quimilo plastome recovered an organelle of 150,347 bp in length with both copies of the inverted repeat and the presence of all the ndh gene suite. An expansion of the large single copy unit and a reduction of the small single copy unit was observed, including translocations and inversion of genes, as well as the putative pseudogenization of some loci. Comparative analyses among all clades within Opuntioideae suggested that plastome structure and content vary across taxa of this subfamily, with putative independent losses of the ndh gene suite and pseudogenization of genes across disparate lineages, further demonstrating the dynamic nature of plastomes in Cactaceae. Our plastome dataset was robust in resolving three tribes with high support within Opuntioideae: Cylindropuntieae, Tephrocacteae and Opuntieae. However, conflicting topologies were recovered among major clades when exploring different assemblies of markers. A plastome-wide survey for highly informative phylogenetic markers revealed previously unused regions for future use in Sanger-based studies, presenting a valuable dataset with primers designed for continued evolutionary studies across Cactaceae. These results bring new insights into the evolution of plastomes in cacti, suggesting that further analyses should be carried out to address how ecological drivers, physiological constraints and morphological traits of cacti may be related with the common rearrangements in plastomes that have been reported across the family

Economic and social development stemming from the electrification of the housing stock On The Navajo Nation: Working paper series--02-34

The main body of this report explains the economic and social development aspects stemming from an electrification program on the Navajo Nation. It is estimated that 18,000 housing units are in need of electrification. Given the high costs of connecting distributed houses to the electricity grid, it is recommended that the individual housing units be supplied electricity with individually contained solar and storage systems. In some cases the houses will require retrofitting with wiring. The economic benefits will include increased employment opportunities for tribal members, increased retention of spending on the reservation, secondary employment and sales of various appliances. The social benefits include improved educational success as the home environments improve the study abilities of children, increased oral tradition education as less time is spent on household chores and language preservation. The estimated cost of any program providing electricity and the associated appliances to these homes falls between $115 and$350 million. The appendices of this report include: an estimate for the potential demand by explaining how the value of 18,000 housing units was determined, a brief discussion of the business potentials and employment opportunities, and a fully detailed business plan template for a prospective entrepreneur

Usefulness of Elevated Troponin to Predict Death in Patients with COVID-19 and Myocardial Injury.

Elevations in troponin levels have been shown to predict mortality in patients with coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). The role of inflammation in myocardial injury remains unclear. We sought to determine the association of elevated troponin with mortality in a large, ethnically diverse population of patients hospitalized with COVID-19, and to determine the association of elevated inflammatory markers with increased troponin levels. We reviewed all patients admitted at our health system with COVID-19 from March 1 to April 27, 2020, who had a troponin assessment within 48 hours of admission. We used logistic regression to calculate odds ratios (ORs) for mortality during hospitalization, controlling for demographics, comorbidities, and markers of inflammation. Of 11159 patients hospitalized with COVID-19, 6247 had a troponin assessment within 48 hours. Of these, 4426 (71%) patients had normal, 919 (15%) had mildly elevated, and 902 (14%) had severely elevated troponin. Acute phase and inflammatory markers were significantly elevated in patients with mildly and severely elevated troponin compared to normal troponin. Patients with elevated troponin had significantly increased odds of death for mildly elevated compared to normal troponin (adjusted OR, 2.06; 95% CI, 1.68-2.53; P \u3c .001) and for severely elevated compared to normal troponin (OR, 4.51; 95% CI, 3.66-5.54; P \u3c .001) independently of elevation in inflammatory markers. In conclusion, patients hospitalized with COVID-19 and elevated troponin had markedly increased mortality compared to patients with normal troponin levels. This risk was independent of cardiovascular comorbidities and elevated markers of inflammation

Identification of the Begomoviruses Squash Leaf Curl Virus and Watermelon Chlorotic Stunt Virus in Various Plant Samples in North America

Geminiviruses are a group of plant-infecting viruses with single-stranded DNA genomes. Within this family, viruses in the genus Begomovirus are known to have a worldwide distribution causing a range of severe diseases in a multitude of dicotyledonous plant species. Begomoviruses are transmitted by the whitefly Bemisia tabaci, and their ssDNA genomes can be either monopartite or bipartite. As part of a viral survey, various plants including those in the families Alliaceae, Amaranthaceae, Apiaceae, Asteraceae, Brassicaceae, Cactaceae, Cucurbitaceae, Lamiaceae, Lauraceae, Malvaceae, Oleaceae and Solanaceae were sampled and screened for begomoviruses using both a high-throughput sequencing and a begomovirus-specific primer pair approach. Based on the sequences derived using these approaches, the full-length genome of various begomoviruses were amplified from plants using abutting primers. Squash leaf curl virus (SLCV) and watermelon chlorotic stunt virus (WCSV) were identified in Cactaceae (n = 25), Solanaceae (n = 7), Cucurbitaceae (n = 2) and Lamiaceae (n = 1) samples. WCSV is an Old World bipartite begomovirus that has only recently been discovered infecting watermelons in the Americas. Our discovery of WCSV in the USA is the first indication that it has reached this country and indicates that this virus might be widespread throughout North America. Phylogenetic analysis suggests WCSV was introduced to the New World twice. The detection of begomoviruses in cactus plants suggests possible spillover events from agricultural areas into native vegetation. Since WCSV and SLCV have previously been found in mixed infections, pseudo-recombination infection experiments were conducted. We demonstrate that WCSV DNA-B is successfully trans-replicated by SLCV DNA-A despite very low degree of similarity between the replication-associated iterative sequences present in their common region, an essential feature for binding of the replication associated protein. This study highlights the importance of viral surveys for the detection of spillover events into native vegetation, but also suggests the need for more surveillance of WCSV in the USA, as this virus is a serious threat to watermelon cultivation in the Middle East