Do mayors run for higher office? New evidence on progressive ambition

The mayor’s office potentially offers a launchpad for statewide and national political ambitions. We know relatively little, however, about how frequently mayors actually run for higher office, and which mayors choose to do so. This article combines longitudinal data on the career paths of the mayors of 200 big cities with new survey and interview data to investigate these questions. While we find that individual and city traits—especially gender—have some predictive power, the overwhelming story is that relatively few mayors—just under one-fifth—ever seek higher office. We suggest that ideological, institutional, and electoral factors all help to explain why so few mayors exhibit progressive ambition

Including refugees in disease elimination: challenges observed from a sleeping sickness programme in Uganda.

BACKGROUND: Ensuring equity between forcibly-displaced and host area populations is a key challenge for global elimination programmes. We studied Uganda's response to the recent refugee influx from South Sudan to identify key governance and operational lessons for national sleeping sickness programmes working with displaced populations today. A refugee policy which favours integration of primary healthcare services for refugee and host populations and the availability of rapid diagnostic tests (RDTs) to detect sleeping sickness at this health system level makes Uganda well-placed to include refugees in sleeping sickness surveillance. METHODS: Using ethnographic observations of coordination meetings, review of programme data, interviews with sleeping sickness and refugee authorities and group discussions with health staff and refugees (2013-2016), we nevertheless identified some key challenges to equitably integrating refugees into government sleeping sickness surveillance. RESULTS: Despite fears that refugees were at risk of disease and posed a threat to elimination, six months into the response, programme coordinators progressed to a sentinel surveillance strategy in districts hosting the highest concentrations of refugees. This meant that RDTs, the programme's primary surveillance tool, were removed from most refugee-serving facilities, exacerbating existing inequitable access to surveillance and leading refugees to claim that their access to sleeping sickness tests had been better in South Sudan. This was not intentionally done to exclude refugees from care, rather, four key governance challenges made it difficult for the programme to recognise and correct inequities affecting refugees: (a) perceived donor pressure to reduce the sleeping sickness programme's scope without clear international elimination guidance on surveillance quality; (b) a problematic history of programme relations with refugee-hosting districts which strained supervision of surveillance quality; (c) difficulties that government health workers faced to produce good quality surveillance in a crisis; and (d) reluctant engagement between the sleeping sickness programme and humanitarian structures. CONCLUSIONS: Despite progressive policy intentions, several entrenched governance norms and practices worked against integration of refugees into the national sleeping sickness surveillance system. Elimination programmes which marginalise forced migrants risk unwittingly contributing to disease spread and reinforce social inequities, so new norms urgently need to be established at local, national and international levels

Improving nanopore read accuracy with the R2C2 method enables the sequencing of highly multiplexed full-length single-cell cDNA.

High-throughput short-read sequencing has revolutionized how transcriptomes are quantified and annotated. However, while Illumina short-read sequencers can be used to analyze entire transcriptomes down to the level of individual splicing events with great accuracy, they fall short of analyzing how these individual events are combined into complete RNA transcript isoforms. Because of this shortfall, long-distance information is required to complement short-read sequencing to analyze transcriptomes on the level of full-length RNA transcript isoforms. While long-read sequencing technology can provide this long-distance information, there are issues with both Pacific Biosciences (PacBio) and Oxford Nanopore Technologies (ONT) long-read sequencing technologies that prevent their widespread adoption. Briefly, PacBio sequencers produce low numbers of reads with high accuracy, while ONT sequencers produce higher numbers of reads with lower accuracy. Here, we introduce and validate a long-read ONT-based sequencing method. At the same cost, our Rolling Circle Amplification to Concatemeric Consensus (R2C2) method generates more accurate reads of full-length RNA transcript isoforms than any other available long-read sequencing method. These reads can then be used to generate isoform-level transcriptomes for both genome annotation and differential expression analysis in bulk or single-cell samples

Electronic Structures of Group 9 Metallocorroles with Axial Ammines

The electronic structures of metallocorroles (tpfc)M(NH_3)_2 and (tfc)M(NH_3)_2 (tpfc is the trianion of 5,10,15-(tris)pentafluorophenylcorrole, tfc is the trianion of 5,10,15-trifluorocorrole, and M = Co, Rh, Ir) have been computed using first principles quantum mechanics [B3LYP flavor of Density Functional Theory (DFT) with Poisson−Boltzmann continuum solvation]. The geometry was optimized for both the neutral systems (formal M^(III) oxidation state) and the one-electron oxidized systems (formally M^(IV)). As expected, the M^(III) systems have a closed shell d^6 configuration; for all three metals, the one-electron oxidation was calculated to occur from a ligand-based orbital (highest occupied molecular orbital (HOMO) of B_1 symmetry). The ground state of the formal M^(IV) system has M^(III)-Cπ character, indicating that the metal remains d^6, with the hole in the corrole π system. As a result the calculated M^(IV/III) reduction potentials are quite similar (0.64, 0.67, and 0.56 V vs SCE for M = Ir, Rh and Co, respectively), whereas the differences would have been large for purely metal-based oxidations. Vertically excited states with substantial metal character are well separated from the ground state in one-electron-oxidized cobalt (0.27 eV) and rhodium (0.24 eV) corroles, but become closer in energy in the iridium (0.15 eV) analogues. The exact splittings depend on the chosen functional and basis set combination and vary by ~0.1 eV

Few big-city mayors see running for higher office as appealing

Former mayors are not unknown in Congress and in governors' mansions - but does running a big city act as a springboard for higher office? To answer this question, Katherine Levine Einstein, David M. Glick, Maxwell Palmer and Robert J. Pressel collected data from nearly 200 large US cities and interviewed 94 mayors. They find that mayors are not likely to seek higher office, and tend to have little interest in doing so – especially if they are women or black

A Complete Scheme of Ionization Cooling for a Muon Collider

A complete scheme for production and cooling a muon beam for three specified muon colliders is presented. Parameters for these muon colliders are given. The scheme starts with the front end of a proposed neutrino factory that yields bunch trains of both muon signs. Emittance exchange cooling in slow helical lattices reduces the longitudinal emittance until it becomes possible to merge the trains into single bunches, one of each sign. Further cooling in all dimensions is applied to the single bunches in further slow helical lattices. Final transverse cooling to the required parameters is achieved in 50 T solenoids using high Tc superconductor at 4 K. Preliminary simulations of each element are presented.Comment: 3 pages, 6 figure

Rock Evaluation for Engineered Facilities

The need for comprehensive information on the characteristics and behavior of earth materials has been recognized for many years, perhaps for as long as significant construction has taken place in and on the surface of the earth. In recent years, however, the magnitude and complexity of engineered construction has greatly increased, resulting in a corresponding increase in the need for information on the engineering properties of soil and rock materials, Direct testing of soil and rock can be utilized to furnish necessary information. However, both field and laboratory testing can be extremely expensive, particularly where testing must include applications of stress to large masses of earth material, For this reason, significant technical and economic advantages can be realized through the development of indirect or short-cut methods for obtaining indications of the properties and characteristics of geologic materials. Some years ago the value of topographic maps, aerial photographs, pedologic descriptions, and geological surveys in characterizing soil materials was realized. To make this information useful for engineering studies, a serious effort was initiated to obtain data on the engineering properties of various soil groups and associations established on the basis of geological and pedological surveys. The correlation of performance data with information on areal distribution and location furnished by geologic and pedologic works has proven extremely valuable in the planning and construction of facilities in and on soil. In recent years, the size and importance of structures and facilities designed by engineers and architects has greatly increased. This has produced an increased interest in the rock materials underlying surficial soil layers. A clear need has arisen for a program to provide an engineering evaluation of rock materials for the purposes of location, design, construction, and maintenance of engineered facilities. However, a serious gap exists in the association of engineering characteristics with rock units identified on the basis of geological classifications, Therefore, there is a need for the development of a comprehensive evaluation program which permits utilization of existing data and which aids in the procurement of necessary information on engineering characteristics of rock