Transition and Renewal: The Emergence of a Diverse Upstate Economy

During the 1900s, the U.S. transitioned from an economy based largely on manufacturing to one in which almost all jobs are in services. This transition has rearranged the economic fortunes of regions throughout the nation: Locations in the Sunbelt and on both coasts prospered in the 1970s as traditional manufacturing centers in the Midwest declined. But such “rust belt” states as Ohio, Indiana, and Michigan rebounded in the late 1980s and early 1990s as the hemorrhage of manufacturing jobs abated and service-sector and finance jobs surged. While their recovery has not returned these states to the preeminence they enjoyed in the 1960s, it has disproved many forecasts of inevitable decline for the nation’s industrial heartland

A National Dialogue on Health Information Technology and Privacy

Increasingly, government leaders recognize that solving the complex problems facing America today will require more than simply keeping citizens informed. Meeting challenges like rising health care costs, climate change and energy independence requires increased level of collaboration. Traditionally, government agencies have operated in silos -- separated not only from citizens, but from each other, as well. Nevertheless, some have begun to reach across and outside of government to access the collective brainpower of organizations, stakeholders and individuals.The National Dialogue on Health Information Technology and Privacy was one such initiative. It was conceived by leaders in government who sought to demonstrate that it is not only possible, but beneficial and economical, to engage openly and broadly on an issue that is both national in scope and deeply relevant to the everyday lives of citizens. The results of this first-of-its-kind online event are captured in this report, together with important lessons learned along the way.This report served as a call to action. On his first full day in office, President Obama put government on notice that this new, more collaborative model can no longer be confined to the efforts of early adopters. He called upon every executive department and agency to "harness new technology" and make government "transparent, participatory, and collaborative." Government is quickly transitioning to a new generation of managers and leaders, for whom online collaboration is not a new frontier but a fact of everyday life. We owe it to them -- and the citizens we serve -- to recognize and embrace the myriad tools available to fulfill the promise of good government in the 21st Century.Key FindingsThe Panel recommended that the Administration give stakeholders the opportunity to further participate in the discussion of heath IT and privacy through broader outreach and by helping the public to understand the value of a person-centered view of healthcare information technology

The Physiology and Some Nutritional Aspects of a Rumen Bacterium

One of the interesting symbiotic relationships in nature is that existing between the ruminants and their microbial population. This arrangement has solved for them the problem of existing on an herbivorous diet. Most mammals can derive little benefit from the potentially available energy in plant materials, which is locked in the complex, insoluble polysaccharide, cellulose. Cellulase is not a mammalian enzyme, but it is part of the chemical machinery of a number of bacteria, some species of which reside in the rumen. Many different organisms are present and their biochemical activities have not as yet been completely delineated. All of the organisms have not as yet been identified, nor their relative numbers assessed under different conditions. It is known, however, that the cellulose and other carbohydrates taken in are fermented with the eventual formation of simple fatty acids and gases. These fatty acids are absorbed through the rumen wall, circulate to the various tissues, and are there oxidized. The tissues of ruminants are enzymatically better equipped for the oxidation of fatty acids than are those of non-ruminants. Another function of the rumen organisms is to provide nitrogenous compounds and vitamins for their host. Their fate is eventually to be destroyed by proteases as they pass out of the rumen as digestion proceeds. For such a reason, ruminants can thrive on rations consisting of hay and simple nitrogenous compounds such as urea or ammonia. Investigations of the biochemical activity of the rumen have been carried out with the use of mixed, washed cell suspensions, which is a valid approach to the study of the overall physiology of this organ. An extensive study of the individual organism has not yet been made. This study has as its purpose the investigation of a rumen bacterium, with the hope of learning its physiological characteristics, some of its nutritional requirements, and placing it, if possible, in its taxonomic niche

Modelling non-dust fluids in cosmology

Currently, most of the numerical simulations of structure formation use Newtonian gravity. When modelling pressureless dark matter, or `dust', this approach gives the correct results for scales much smaller than the cosmological horizon, but for scenarios in which the fluid has pressure this is no longer the case. In this article, we present the correspondence of perturbations in Newtonian and cosmological perturbation theory, showing exact mathematical equivalence for pressureless matter, and giving the relativistic corrections for matter with pressure. As an example, we study the case of scalar field dark matter which features non-zero pressure perturbations. We discuss some problems which may arise when evolving the perturbations in this model with Newtonian numerical simulations and with CMB Boltzmann codes.Comment: 5 pages; v2: typos corrected and refs added, submitted version; v3: version to appear in JCA

Cladribine and Fludarabine Nucleoside Change the Levels of CD Antigens on B-Lymphoproliferative Disorders

The purine analogs, fludarabine nucleoside (FdA), and cladribine (CdA) (1 μM, 24 hours), significantly changed the levels of some surface antigens on the human B-cell lines MEC2 and Raji. Changes in the surface proteins were identified using a Cluster of Differentiation (CD) antibody microarray that captures live cells and confirmed by flow cytometry. For Raji cells, CdA up-regulated CD10, CD54, CD80, and CD86, with repression of CD22, while FdA up-regulated CD20, CD54, CD80, CD86 and CD95. For MEC2 cells, CdA up-regulated CD11a, CD20, CD43, CD45, CD52, CD54, CD62L, CD80, CD86, and CD95, but FdA had no effect. Up-regulation of particular CD antigens induced on a B-cell lymphoproliferative disorder by a purine analog could provide targets for therapeutic antibodies with synergistic cell killing

Consistent perturbations in an imperfect fluid

We present a new prescription for analysing cosmological perturbations in a more-general class of scalar-field dark-energy models where the energy-momentum tensor has an imperfect-fluid form. This class includes Brans-Dicke models, f(R) gravity, theories with kinetic gravity braiding and generalised galileons. We employ the intuitive language of fluids, allowing us to explicitly maintain a dependence on physical and potentially measurable properties. We demonstrate that hydrodynamics is not always a valid description for describing cosmological perturbations in general scalar-field theories and present a consistent alternative that nonetheless utilises the fluid language. We apply this approach explicitly to a worked example: k-essence non-minimally coupled to gravity. This is the simplest case which captures the essential new features of these imperfect-fluid models. We demonstrate the generic existence of a new scale separating regimes where the fluid is perfect and imperfect. We obtain the equations for the evolution of dark-energy density perturbations in both these regimes. The model also features two other known scales: the Compton scale related to the breaking of shift symmetry and the Jeans scale which we show is determined by the speed of propagation of small scalar-field perturbations, i.e. causality, as opposed to the frequently used definition of the ratio of the pressure and energy-density perturbations.Comment: 40 pages plus appendices. v2 reflects version accepted for publication in JCAP (new summary of notation, extra commentary on choice of gauge and frame, extra references to literature

HydroShare – A Case Study of the Application of Modern Software Engineering to a Large Distributed Federally-Funded Scientific Software Development Project

HydroShare is an online collaborative system under development to support the open sharing of hydrologic data, analytical tools, and computer models. With HydroShare, scientists can easily discover, access, and analyze hydrologic data and thereby enhance the production and reproducibility of hydrologic scientific results. HydroShare also takes advantage of emerging social media functionality to enable users to enhance information about and collaboration around hydrologic data and models. HydroShare is being developed by an interdisciplinary collaborative team of domain scientists, university software developers, and professional software engineers from ten institutions located across the United States. While the combination of non–co-located, diverse stakeholders presents communication and management challenges, the interdisciplinary nature of the team is integral to the project’s goal of improving scientific software development and capabilities in academia. This chapter describes the challenges faced and lessons learned with the development of HydroShare, as well as the approach to software development that the HydroShare team adopted on the basis of the lessons learned. The chapter closes with recommendations for the application of modern software engineering techniques to large, collaborative, scientific software development projects, similar to the National Science Foundation (NSF)–funded HydroShare, in order to promote the successful application of the approach described herein by other teams for other projects

Video Use and the Student Learning Experience in Politics and International Relations

This article explores video use and the student learning experience in Politics and International Relations (IR). The study brings together and builds on two extant literatures – on deep learning and visual literacy – in order to explore how students make use of three types of video: lecture summaries, current affairs clips and fictional television. Questionnaire and focus group data generate a nuanced picture, with distinct implications for the learning experience. The article shows how different types of video can be linked to the development of different skills for different students