Half a Century of “Muddling”: Are We There Yet?

Half a century after the publication of Lindblom's seminal article “The Science of Muddling Through”, we revisit the heritage of incrementalism in this special issue, analyzing its legacy in public policy and public administration. The articles discuss the extent to which recent theoretical developments have transformed the original idea, reinforced it, or possibly rendered it obsolete. In this introductory article, we provide a short overview over the core elements of incrementalism and assess how the concept is used in scholarly publications and research today. We thereby focus on incrementalism as an analytical concept rather then a prescriptive theory. We argue that even after a half a century of “muddling”, we are not yet through with incrementalism. Some of the ideas that underpin the concept of incrementalism continue to drive research, often in combination with more recent theoretical approaches to the policy process. After half a century, incrementalism is still part of the policy scholar's tool kit

Rationalism and Public Policy: Mode of Analysis or Symbolic Politics?

This article takes up the distinction between incremental analysis and incremental politics as elaborated by Lindblom in his 1979 article. We argue that while rationalism as a mode of analysis has lost much of its prominence, rationalism as symbolic politics is still very much alive and might even be more present today than it was back when Lindblom wrote his famous 1959 article. The recent shift to new modes of governance whereby elected officials are increasingly delegating decision-making powers to independent bureaucracies – what Majone calls the “regulatory state” or what the British describe as “agencification” or quangoisation” – has created an important legitimacy deficit for those non-majoritarian institutions that exercise political authority without enjoying any direct link to the electoral process. In such a context – and in addition to growing public distrust towards partisan politics - rationalist politics is likely to become more rampant as independent bureaucracies lack the legitimacy to publicly recognize the fundamentally incrementalist – and thus values-laden – nature of their decision-making processes. To develop these ideas, the article looks at the case of “supreme audit institutions”. We argue that rationalist politics is a mean for SAIs to legitimize their shift from classical financial auditing to performance auditing. In comparison to other independent bureaucracies, they are particularly prone to rationalist politics not just because of their institutional independence, but also because of the tradition of financial auditing and the rise of new public management

Quantifying and monetizing potential climate change policy impacts on terrestrial ecosystem carbon storage and wildfires in the United States

This paper develops and applies methods to quantify and monetize projected impacts on terrestrial ecosystem carbon storage and areas burned by wildfires in the contiguous United States under scenarios with and without global greenhouse gas mitigation. The MC1 dynamic global vegetation model is used to develop physical impact projections using three climate models that project a range of future conditions. We also investigate the sensitivity of future climates to different initial conditions of the climate model. Our analysis reveals that mitigation, where global radiative forcing is stabilized at 3.7 W/m2 in 2100, would consistently reduce areas burned from 2001 to 2100 by tens of millions of hectares. Monetized, these impacts are equivalent to potentially avoiding billions of dollars (discounted) in wildfire response costs. Impacts to terrestrial ecosystem carbon storage are less uniform, but changes are on the order of billions of tons over this time period. The equivalent social value of these changes in carbon storage ranges from hundreds of billions to trillions of dollars (discounted). The magnitude of these results highlights their importance when evaluating climate policy options. However, our results also show national outcomes are driven by a few regions and results are not uniform across regions, time periods, or models. Differences in the results based on the modeling approach and across initializing conditions also raise important questions about how variability in projected climates is accounted for, especially when considering impacts where extreme or threshold conditions are important.United States. Environmental Protection Agency. Climate Change Division (Contract EP-BPA-12-H-0024

Population screening for colorectal cancer means getting FIT:the past, present, and future of colorectal cancer screening using the fecal immunochemical test for hemoglobin (FIT)

Fecal immunochemical tests for hemoglobin (FIT) are changing the manner in which colorectal cancer (CRC) is screened. Although these tests are being performed worldwide, why is this test different from its predecessors? What evidence supports its adoption? How can this evidence best be used? This review addresses these questions and provides an understanding of FIT theory and practices to expedite international efforts to implement the use of FIT in CRC screening

Changes in the gene expression profiles of the brains of male European eels (Anguilla anguilla) during sexual maturation

Background: The vertebrate brain plays a critical role in the regulation of sexual maturation and reproduction by integrating environmental information with developmental and endocrine status. The European eel Anguilla anguilla is an important species in which to better understand the neuroendocrine factors that control reproduction because it is an endangered species, has a complex life cycle that includes two extreme long distance migrations with both freshwater and seawater stages and because it occupies a key position within the teleost phylogeny. At present, mature eels have never been caught in the wild and little is known about most aspects of reproduction in A. anguilla. The goal of this study was to identify genes that may be involved in sexual maturation in experimentally matured eels. For this, we used microarrays to compare the gene expression profiles of sexually mature to immature males. Results: Using a false discovery rate of 0.05, a total of 1,497 differentially expressed genes were identified. Of this set, 991 were expressed at higher levels in brains (forebrain and midbrain) of mature males while 506 were expressed at lower levels relative to brains of immature males. The set of up-regulated genes includes genes involved in neuroendocrine processes, cell-cell signaling, neurogenesis and development. Interestingly, while genes involved in immune system function were down-regulated in the brains of mature males, changes in the expression levels of several receptors and channels were observed suggesting that some rewiring is occurring in the brain at sexual maturity. Conclusions: This study shows that the brains of eels undergo major changes at the molecular level at sexual maturity that may include re-organization at the cellular level. Here, we have defined a set of genes that help to understand the molecular mechanisms controlling reproduction in eels. Some of these genes have previously described functions while many others have roles that have yet to be characterized in a reproductive context. Since most of the genes examined here have orthologs in other vertebrates, the results of this study will contribute to the body of knowledge concerning reproduction in vertebrates as well as to an improved understanding of eel biology.Peer Reviewe

Optimization of the design of OMNIS, the observatory of multiflavor neutrinos from supernovae

A Monte Carlo code has been developed to simulate the operation of the planned detectors in OMNIS, a supernova neutrino observatory. OMNIS will detect neutrinos originating from a core collapse supernova by the detection of spalled neutrons from Pb- or Fe-nuclei. This might be accomplished using Gd-loaded liquid scintillator. Results for the optimum configuration for such modules with respect to both neutron detection efficiency and cost efficiency are presented. Careful consideration has been given to the expected levels of radioactive backgrounds and their effects. The results show that the amount of data to be processed by a software trigger can be reduced to the <10kHz region and a neutron, once produced in the detector, can be detected and identified with an efficiency of >30%.Comment: Elsevier preprint; 29 pages, 23 figure

Sodium Iodide Symporter Location, Expression and Regulation in Red Dru, Sciaenops Ocellatus

Iodine, a non-metallic trace element, is one of the heaviest elements essential for normal biological function. Vertebrate animals must obtain iodine from the environment to manufacture thyroid hormones and sufficient iodine supply is thus critical for normal endocrine function. In mammals, iodine uptake from the environment is achieved by the sodium iodide symporter (NIS), but little is known outside a few mammalian orders about how animals obtain iodine. Because the basic biochemical pathways for thyroid hormone synthesis and receptor activation appear conserved in vertebrates, the mechanisms through which non-mammalian species accumulate iodine for thyroid hormone manufacture have also been assumed to be similar. However, few studies have identified the NIS gene or characterized the regulation of its activity in fish. The perciform teleost fish, red drum (Sciaenops ocellatus) is easily obtained from hatcheries and has been used extensively for nutritional and thyroid hormone research, therefore providing an informative species in which to study the mechanisms of iodide uptake and utilization in a nonmammalian species. I developed a fast, non-lethal methodology using Positron Emission Tomography and Computed Tomography PET/CT imaging of 124I injected fish to produce three dimensional images identifying areas of active radioiodide uptake in the subpharyngeal region of red drum, thus allowing me to establish a methodology for consistently obtaining thyroid tissue. I then confirmed that an NIS homolog is expressed in red drum thyroid, stomach and intestine, but found little evidence for its expression in gills. Utilizing quantitative RT-PCR, I demonstrated that thyroid stimulating hormone stimulated nis expression in red drum subpharyngeal thyroid tissue but not any other nis expressing tissue, similar to mammalian thyroid NIS. nis expression in red drum subpharyngeal, stomach, intestine, and gill tissues was relatively unchanged during feeding, salinity transfer, and environmental iodide exposure, suggesting that these fish have physiological mechanisms of dietary iodine uptake, thyroid hormone synthesis, and iodide recycling similar to those described in mammals. Minimal nis expression in gills across a variety of osmotic environments and nutritional conditions suggests that this transporter does not serve as a mechanism for direct environmental iodide uptake via gills

Neutrino masses from new generations

We reconsider the possibility that Majorana masses for the three known neutrinos are generated radiatively by the presence of a fourth generation and one right-handed neutrino with Yukawa couplings and a Majorana mass term. We find that the observed light neutrino mass hierarchy is not compatible with low energy universality bounds in this minimal scenario, but all present data can be accommodated with five generations and two right-handed neutrinos. Within this framework, we explore the parameter space regions which are currently allowed and could lead to observable effects in neutrinoless double beta decay, $\mu - e$ conversion in nuclei and $\mu \rightarrow e \gamma$ experiments. We also discuss the detection prospects at LHC.Comment: 28 pages, 4 figures. Version to be published. Some typos corrected. Improved figures 3 and