Who gave soft money? The effect of interest group resources on political contributions

We consider the effect of various organizational resources on political contributions. Using a unique data set of soft money contributors from 1997 to 1998, our resource-based model examines how capital, membership, and experience influence the decision to give money to political parties. By observing decision making in a relatively unconstrained regulatory environment typified by the soft money regime, we demonstrate the conventional wisdom that financial resources determine the size of political contributions. Financial wealth, however, does not predict whether an organization will make a contribution in the first place. Instead, we show that a lack of alternative resources makes it more likely that organizations will spend money on politics. These findings have important implications for determining who benefits under various campaign finance rules

Term limits, Campaign contributions, and the distribution of power in state legislatures

Using campaign contributions to legislators as an indicator of member influence, we explore the impact of term limits on the distribution of power within state legislatures. Specifically, we perform a cross-state comparison of the relative influence of party caucus leaders, committee chairs, and rank-and-file legislators before and after term limits. The results indicate that term limits diffuse power in state legislatures, both by decreasing average contributions to incumbents and by reducing the power of party caucus leaders relative to other members. The change in contribution levels across legislators in different chambers implies a shift in power to the upper chamber in states with term limits. Thus, the impact of term limits may be attenuated in a bicameral system

DOSE TO CURIE DETERMINATION FOR CONTAINERS WITH MEASURABLE CS-137

The Next Generation Retrieval (NGR) project will retrieve suspect transuranic (TRU) waste containers from Trenches 17 and 27 in the 218-E-12B (12B) burial ground. The trenches were in operation from May 1970 through October 1972. A portion of the retrieved containers that will require shipment to and acceptance at a treatment, storage, and disposal (TSD) facility and the containers will be either remote-handled (RH) and/or contact-handled (CH). The method discussed in this document will be used for the RH and some of the CH containers to determine the radionuclide inventory. Waste disposition (shipment and TSD acceptance) requires that the radioactive content be characterized for each container. Source-term estimates using high resolution, shielded, gamma-ray scan assay techniques cannot be performed on a number of RH and other containers with high dose rates from {sup 137}Cs-{sup 137m}Ba. This document provides the method to quantify the radioactive inventory of fission product gamma emitters within the containers based on the surface dose rate measurements taken in the field with hand-held survey instruments

Visual Rationalizations in Deep Reinforcement Learning for Atari Games

Due to the capability of deep learning to perform well in high dimensional problems, deep reinforcement learning agents perform well in challenging tasks such as Atari 2600 games. However, clearly explaining why a certain action is taken by the agent can be as important as the decision itself. Deep reinforcement learning models, as other deep learning models, tend to be opaque in their decision-making process. In this work, we propose to make deep reinforcement learning more transparent by visualizing the evidence on which the agent bases its decision. In this work, we emphasize the importance of producing a justification for an observed action, which could be applied to a black-box decision agent.Comment: presented as oral talk at BNAIC 201

Recent changes to floodplain character and functionality in England

Regime analysis suggests that temperate alluvial watercourses overtop their banks on average once every 1.5 years transferring water and sediment across the valley floor to form floodplains helping maintain a strong hydrological connection between in-channel and overbank form and process. Flooding also causes erosion, sediment transfer and deposition creating a variety of floodplain morphologic units and functional connectivity with the main river. The result is a morphologically and ecologically varied wetland dominated ecotone where diversity is sustained by the action and flooding and shallow groundwater processes. Floodplains are, however, sensitive to disruption and many have been significantly degraded since the Bronze Age as a result of activities that alter flooding and groundwater processes and manage vegetation communities. The current (2015) floodplain condition and trends of change since 1990, for England are presented here using land use data for 1990, 2000, 2007 and 2015. Floodplain system degradation has been found to be both widespread and severe across the whole of the country. The 1990 data set showed that intensive agriculture occupied around 38% of floodplain zones expanding to 53% by 2000 before slowing slightly to covering 62% in 2007. Between 2007 and 2015 the coverage remained relatively static (64%) with some suggestion that arable areas were being transformed to pasture. Wetland areas in the form of fen, marsh, swamp and bog have been devastated with the data sets indicating that these fundamental floodplain units have been all but lost. Upland and lowland areas are both severely impacted with a near ubiquitous loss of natural floodplain functioning. Despite this some 31% of rivers in England are classified as good or better under the European Water Framework Directive classification system calling into question the UK WFD status classification process

Discussions around Primary Health Care and the Private Sector during the Global Symposia on Health Systems Research 2018

The aim of this report is to provide an overview of core discussions around Primary Health Care (PHC) and the Private Sector, which took place during the 5th Global Symposium on Health Systems Research 2018: Advancing health systems for all in the SDG era. Universal Health Coverage (UHC) and how health systems are working to deliver this global goal by 2030 was a major theme of the conference. Conference sub-themes revolved around broad topics of: Multi-sectoral Action; Engaging the Private Sector; Leaving No-one Behind and Community Health Systems. Discussions were captured through two core methods: ‘in session data capture’ and semi-structured interviews. 26 conference rapporteurs captured data in 93 sessions; and 21 interviews were conducted with policy makers, implementers and practitioners from the public and private sector. The findings are mainly focused on research from low and middle-income countries (LMIC) with some examples from upper middle and high-income countries. This focus was chosen as the opportunities to promote and report health research from resource-poor settings is limited (Siriwardhana, 2015). The conference provided an opportunity for shared learning due to the many scholarships that supported attendance of health actors and researchers from LMICs. Ethical clearance was obtained from the Liverpool John Moores University (LJMU) Ethics Committee. The following broad themes were identified through data capture and interviews. Findings that are more detailed can be located in the main body of the report and include case study examples

Bayesian regression analysis of data with random effects covariates from nonlinear longitudinal measurements

© 2015 Elsevier Inc. Joint models for a wide class of response variables and longitudinal measurements consist on a mixed-effects model to fit longitudinal trajectories whose random effects enter as covariates in a generalized linear model for the primary response. They provide a useful way to assess association between these two kinds of data, which in clinical studies are often collected jointly on a series of individuals and may help understanding, for instance, the mechanisms of recovery of a certain disease or the efficacy of a given therapy. When a nonlinear mixed-effects model is used to fit the longitudinal trajectories, the existing estimation strategies based on likelihood approximations have been shown to exhibit some computational efficiency problems (De la Cruz et al., 2011). In this article we consider a Bayesian estimation procedure for the joint model with a nonlinear mixed-effects model for the longitudinal data and a generalized linear model for the primary response. The proposed prior structure allows for the implementation of an MCMC sampler. Moreover, we consider that the errors in the longitudinal model may be correlated. We apply our method to the analysis of hormone levels measured at the early stages of pregnancy that can be used to predict normal versus abnormal pregnancy outcomes. We also conduct a simulation study to assess the importance of modelling correlated errors and quantify the consequences of model misspecification

Rituximab monitoring and redosing in pediatric neuromyelitis optica spectrum disorder.

Abstract OBJECTIVE: To study rituximab in pediatric neuromyelitis optica (NMO)/NMO spectrum disorders (NMOSD) and the relationship between rituximab, B cell repopulation, and relapses in order to improve rituximab monitoring and redosing. METHODS: Multicenter retrospective study of 16 children with NMO/NMOSD receiving 652 rituximab courses. According to CD19 counts, events during rituximab were categorized as "repopulation," "depletion," or "depletion failure" relapses (repopulation threshold CD19 6510 7 10(6) cells/L). RESULTS: The 16 patients (14 girls; mean age 9.6 years, range 1.8-15.3) had a mean of 6.1 events (range 1-11) during a mean follow-up of 6.1 years (range 1.6-13.6) and received a total of 76 rituximab courses (mean 4.7, range 2-9) in 42.6-year cohort treatment. Before rituximab, 62.5% had received azathioprine, mycophenolate mofetil, or cyclophosphamide. Mean time from rituximab to last documented B cell depletion and first repopulation was 4.5 and 6.8 months, respectively, with large interpatient variability. Earliest repopulations occurred with the lowest doses. Significant reduction between pre- and post-rituximab annualized relapse rate (ARR) was observed (p = 0.003). During rituximab, 6 patients were relapse-free, although 21 relapses occurred in 10 patients, including 13 "repopulation," 3 "depletion," and 4 "depletion failure" relapses. Of the 13 "repopulation" relapses, 4 had CD19 10-50 7 10(6) cells/L, 10 had inadequate monitoring ( 641 CD19 in the 4 months before relapses), and 5 had delayed redosing after repopulation detection. CONCLUSION: Rituximab is effective in relapse prevention, but B cell repopulation creates a risk of relapse. Redosing before B cell repopulation could reduce the relapse risk further. CLASSIFICATION OF EVIDENCE: This study provides Class IV evidence that rituximab significantly reduces ARR in pediatric NMO/NMOSD. This study also demonstrates a relationship between B cell repopulation and relapses