The market to the rescue? The promise - and price - of the new social security investment proposals

Three new plans for reforming Social Security financing recommend investing a portion of future payroll deductions in the financial markets. The plans aim to shore up Social Security's trust fund, improve individual returns, and enhance national saving. This analysis concludes, however, that the effectiveness of the plans would depend largely on individual saving and investment decisions, government fiscal policy, and developments in the financial markets. In addition, the proposed reforms could expose the program to unprecedented market risk.Saving and investment ; Social security ; Investments

Functional Principal Component Analysis for Non-stationary Dynamic Time Series

Motivated by a highly dynamic hydrological high-frequency time series, we propose time-varying Functional Principal Component Analysis (FPCA) as a novel approach for the analysis of non-stationary Functional Time Series (FTS) in the frequency domain. Traditional FPCA does not take into account (i) the temporal dependence between the functional observations and (ii) the changes in the covariance/variability structure over time, which could result in inadequate dimension reduction. The novel time-varying FPCA proposed adapts to the changes in the auto-covariance structure and varies smoothly over frequency and time to allow investigation of whether and how the variability structure in an FTS changes over time. Based on the (smooth) time-varying dynamic FPCs, a bootstrap inference procedure is proposed to detect significant changes in the covariance structure over time. Although this time-varying dynamic FPCA can be applied to any dynamic FTS, it has been applied here to study the daily processes of partial pressure of CO2 in a small river catchment in Scotland

Changing Course: Improving Outcomes for African-American Males Involved With Child Welfare Systems

This paper draws attention to African-American boys and young men who are involved with the nation's child welfare systems and identifies policies and practices that can help to improve their experiences and outcomes

The genus Sipha Passerini (Hemiptera: Aphididae) in North America

Five species of the aphid genus Sipha Passerini (Hemiptera: Aphididae) are reported in North America and are reviewed herein. Of these species, three are adventive species and include: Sipha elegans del Guercio, Sipha glyceriae (Kaltenbach), and Sipha maydis Passerini. Sipha maydis was discovered in California in 2007 and now has been found in Georgia. The genus also includes two native species: Sipha agropyronensis (Gillette) and Sipha flava (Forbes). Sipha maydis can be distinguished easily from all the other species in the genus that occur in North America because it is black. All the species except S. agropyronensis have been implicated in damage to crop plants. A key to the apterae and alatae of Sipha found in North America is included

FACTORS AFFECTING COMPREHENSIBILITY OF THE GLOBALLY HARMONIZED SYSTEM OF CHEMICALS IN THE UNITED STATES

In this study, the researcher explored to what extent factors affect workers’ comprehension of chemical hazards in the workplace when utilizing the new Global Harmonization System (GHS) of chemical labels and Safety Data Sheets (SDSs), required by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s (OSHA) Hazard Communication Standard (HCS). The sample consisted of 422 participants that worked with chemicals as part of their previous or current work-related duties in the United States (U.S) and received chemical safety training. These participants were part of a convenience sample and were recruited utilizing Survey Monkey to collect responses. The participants were asked qualifying questions to verify they have worked with chemicals in the U.S. as a routine part of their previous or current job duties and chemical safety training. Sampling from this particular group made the data generalizable to many other workplaces in the U.S. Using a quantitative study design, the researcher adapted an existing instrument developed and implemented by the United Nations Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR) in 2010. The research question was to what extent does age, sex, education level, work experience, safety training history, or chemical exposure level influence employees’• comprehension about GHS chemical labels and SDSs?• ability to recognize and use labels and SDSs?• perception of danger?• ability to locate essential chemical safety information correctly?• comprehension of pictograms and other hazard classification elements? and• chemical hazard ranking and interpretation?The researcher first conducted a pilot study before collecting the full-scale sample data and analyzed the data using linear multiple regression to answer the multi-faceted research question. Descriptive analyses were also conducted on the demographics of the participants, such as age, sex, education level, work experience, safety training level, and chemical exposure level. The findings identified areas where capacity building interventions are necessary to improve GHS understanding therefore improving employee health and safety and reducing negative health effects of working with chemicals

Gene Expression Response in Early Developmental Stages of Rainbow Trout Exposed to Ecologically Relevant Concentrations of Malathion

Understanding the early life stage toxic effects of environmental organophosphate exposure on organism health is crucial to identifying biomarkers that can be used for preventative care. Malathion, a potent organophosphate, is one of the most widely used organophosphates in agriculture and pest eradication. Due to its widespread use, pesticide runoff into area bodies of water poses a great threat to aquatic life and human inhabitants. Acute exposure to high concentrations of malathion causes neurological abnormalities and can result in respiratory failure, muscle spasms, and mental confusion in humans. In the present study, the effects of malathion are observed following acute, low-level exposure; however, most diagnostic tests require sustained exposure to concentrations high enough to induce acetylcholinesterase inhibition. There is a direct relationship between AChE inhibition and acute exposure to malathion, that results in systematic disturbances in neural function and elicits overt toxicity. While disrupted AChE activity serves as a biomarker, it is not sensitive to low levels of malathion exposure. Therefore, it is necessary to identify novel biomarkers that are more sensitive to malathion exposure so that steps can be taken to ensure the safety of humans and aquatic life before the neurological complications can develop. Here were we report the discovery of two new potential biomarkers that are expressed following acute, low-concentration malathion exposure. We used two early life stages of rainbow trout (sac fry and swim-up fry) exposed to varying malathion levels (3-100 parts per billion, ppb) over 48 hours. At these levels, swim-up fry had heightened mortality rates compared to sac fry, indicating that they may exhibit change in gene expression. To identify transcriptional biomarkers, a 16K salmonid cDNA microarray was used; 349 genes were found to be differentially expressed at concentrations as low as 10 ppb. Additionally, we further analyzed malathion responsive genes using qPCR, network and ontologic analysis. The results from qPCR revealed that the gene encoding for a small heat shock protein, HSP30, was robustly upregulated. A second gene put forth as a candidate biomarker in this study is cytochrome P4501A3 (CYP1A3); this study also shows paralog CYP1A1 was not found to be malathion inducible in either life stage. Network and ontologic analysis suggested changes in expression of genes involved in metal ion binding, catalytic activity, transport, oxidation-reduction, metabolism and stress response. The novel findings of this study contribute to the construction of a repertoire of predictive biomarkers, induced by malathion exposure, that may also be used as tools to survey fish population health

Political Science Spring 2014

https://scholarcommons.sc.edu/poli_newsletter_2014_spring/1000/thumbnail.jp