The Long-Run Impacts of Same-Race Teachers

Black primary-school students matched to a same-race teacher perform better on standardized tests and face more favorable teacher perceptions, yet little is known about the long-run, sustained impacts of student-teacher demographic match. We show that assigning a black male to a black teacher in the third, fourth, or fifth grades significantly reduces the probability that he drops out of high school, particularly among the most economically disadvantaged black males. Exposure to at least one black teacher in grades 3-5 also increases the likelihood that persistently low-income students of both sexes aspire to attend a four-year college. These findings are robust across administrative data from two states and multiple identification strategies, including an instrumental variables strategy that exploits within-school, intertemporal variation in the proportion of black teachers, family fixed-effects models that compare siblings who attended the same school, and the random assignment of students and teachers to classrooms created by the Project STAR class-size reduction experiment

Report of the Working Group on Possible Follow-up Action for the CGIAR on UNCED Agenda 21

Paper prepared by Stein Bie of NORAGRIC at the request of the CGIAR Chairman, with the assistance of Cassandra Bergstrom, on a possible CGIAR response to the Agenda 21 action plan developed at the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED).The paper enumerates the CGIAR's strengths and comparative advantages as a potential executing agency for Agenda 21 objectives, and the parallels between those objectives and the mandate of the CGIAR, particularly in the areas of poverty reduction, agricultural production, and the environment.The authors suggest the CGIAR promote three global programs explicitly related to Agenda 21 objectives: a Global Soils and Water Program, a Global Genetic Resources Program, and a Global Human Resources Capacity Building Program.Agenda document, CGIAR Mid Term Meeting, May 1993

COMPETITIVE GRANTS AND THE FUNDING OF AGRICULTURAL RESEARCH IN THE U.S.

To increase the efficiency of the public agricultural R&D system, expanded use of competitive grants to fund state institutions has been advocated. This paper characterizes different funding instruments and empirically assesses the effects of changes in mechanism use. Factors associated with greater levels of competitive grants are modeled.Research and Development/Tech Change/Emerging Technologies,

High-throughput, Efficient, and Unbiased Capture of Small RNAs from Low-input Samples for Sequencing.

MicroRNAs hold great promise as biomarkers of disease. However, there are few efficient and robust methods for measuring microRNAs from low input samples. Here, we develop a high-throughput sequencing protocol that efficiently captures small RNAs while minimizing inherent biases associated with library production. The protocol is based on early barcoding such that all downstream manipulations can be performed on a pool of many samples thereby reducing reagent usage and workload. We show that the optimization of adapter concentrations along with the addition of nucleotide modifications and random nucleotides increases the efficiency of small RNA capture. We further show, using unique molecular identifiers, that stochastic capture of low input RNA rather than PCR amplification influences the biased quantitation of intermediately and lowly expressed microRNAs. Our improved method allows the processing of tens to hundreds of samples simultaneously while retaining high efficiency quantitation of microRNAs in low input samples from tissues or bodily fluids

The Business of Personal Jurisdiction

This contribution to a symposium on business and the Roberts Court examines the recent significant reshaping of the contours of personal jurisdiction. Although the changes limit the scope of jurisdiction in ways that may favor defendants overall, the Court does not appear directly motivated by a desire to favor business—and, in fact, the Court erected significant obstacles to business interests in some contexts. Instead, the results in the cases may be better explained by the Court’s commitment to a formalist approach with respect for territorial boundaries and by a skepticism of transnational litigation not clearly related to a U.S. forum. The Court’s recent changes to the discovery rules suggest that its rulemaking approach, in contrast, may align more directly with business interests. Chief Justice Roberts’ report summarizing the new rules parallels the language used by business advocates who focus on the expense of lawsuits and the toll that litigation takes on business. In the report, he writes that the discovery changes are important “to help ensure that federal court litigation does not degenerate into wasteful clashes over matters that have little to do with achieving a just result.” The Court’s more business-protective approach to discovery does not undercut the Court’s formalist commitment, but rather likely reflects a continued regard for the separation of powers even in the Court itself, where the rulemaking function can more directly encompass policy interests than the Court’s adjudication function. While the revised discovery rules may lessen litigation costs overall, however, they do not take account of the need for jurisdictional discovery and do not help resolve the jurisdictional analysis. This oversight is unfortunate, as the Court’s new equilibrium in personal jurisdiction means that factual development will become increasingly important. It is no longer enough to say that a defendant has continuous, systematic, and substantial contacts within the forum; instead, parties will have to develop a factual foundation that explores the nature, scope, extent, and duration of those contacts and explains how those contacts relate to the substance of the claim asserted. Without further refinement of the rules of jurisdictional discovery, courts and parties alike will struggle to reconcile the jurisdictional question with the available tools of discovery

A New State Registration Act: Legislating a Longer Arm for Personal Jurisdiction

In a sextet of recent decisions, the Roberts Court upended the longstanding framework for general and specific contacts-based personal jurisdiction. The Court\u27s new approach has engendered uncertainty and erected insurmountable obstacles for some plaintiffs in locating an effective forum to vindicate their rights. We propose a novel solution to the injustices and unpredictability unleashed by these decisions: a new model corporate registration act that would require, as a condition of doing business in a state, the corporation\u27s consent to personal jurisdiction in defined circumstances that implicate state sovereign regulatory, protective, and prescriptive interests.Registration-based consent to jurisdiction has a long pedigree, dating back to the years before the Fourteenth Amendment\u27s ratification. For much of its history, however, registration-based jurisdictional consent languished in obscurity, as general doing business jurisdiction overshadowed the doctrine. With the Supreme Court\u27s recent at-home trilogy sounding the death knell of general continuous and systematic contacts jurisdiction, the constitutional propriety of interpreting a state corporate registration scheme to require the corporation\u27s all-purpose jurisdictional consent for claims arising anywhere in the world is in doubt. Instead of litigating the meaning and ongoing validity of these longstanding registration statutes, we recommend that the states adopt a modernized jurisdictional-consent statute that ensures an appropriate state jurisdictional reach and operates within the Supreme Court\u27s pronounced adjudicative framework.We draft and evaluate a proposal for such a statute, which we believe the Uniform Law Commission is especially well situated to consider, refine, and promulgate for the states\u27 benefit. Such a statute would avoid the wasteful expense of litigating the interpretation of registration statutes initially adopted during the heyday of the horse and buggy. More importantly, the proposed act would allow the states to assert their sovereign authority to ensure access to justice for their residents after the dismantling of general jurisdiction. By precisely tailoring the statute to states\u27 sovereign interests, the proposed act avoids constitutional pitfalls while still providing an effective jurisdictional reach for the states after the Roberts Court\u27s jurisdictional revolution

Physical therapy management, surgical treatment, and patient-reported outcomes measures in a prospective observational cohort of patients with neurogenic thoracic outlet syndrome

OBJECTIVE: To assess the results of physical therapy management and surgical treatment in a prospective observational cohort of patients with neurogenic thoracic outlet syndrome (NTOS) using patient-reported outcomes measures. METHODS: Of 183 new patient referrals from July 1 to December 31, 2015, 150 (82%) met the established clinical diagnostic criteria for NTOS. All patients underwent an initial 6-week physical therapy trial. Those with symptom improvement continued physical therapy, and the remainder underwent surgery (supraclavicular decompression with or without pectoralis minor tenotomy). Pretreatment factors and 7 patient-reported outcomes measures were compared between the physical therapy and surgery groups using t-tests and χ RESULTS: Of the 150 patients, 20 (13%) declined further treatment or follow-up, 40 (27%) obtained satisfactory improvement with physical therapy alone, and 90 (60%) underwent surgery. Slight differences were found between the physical therapy and surgery groups in the mean ± standard error degree of local tenderness to palpation (1.7 ± 0.1 vs 2.0 ± 0.1; P = .032), the number of positive clinical diagnostic criteria (9.0 ± 0.3 vs 10.1 ± 0.1; P = .001), Cervical-Brachial Symptom Questionnaire scores (68.0 ± 4.1 vs 78.0 ± 2.7; P = .045), and Short-Form 12-item physical quality-of-life scores (35.6 ± 1.5 vs 32.0 ± 0.8; P = .019) but not other pretreatment factors. During follow-up (median, 21.1 months for physical therapy and 12.0 months for surgery), the mean change in QuickDASH scores for physical therapy was -15.6 ± 3.0 (-29.5% ± 5.7%) compared with -29.8 ± 2.4 (-47.9% ± 3.6%) for surgery (P = .001). The patient-rated outcomes for surgery were excellent for 27%, good for 36%, fair for 26%, and poor for 11%, with a strong correlation between the percentage of decline in the QuickDASH score and patient-rated outcomes (P \u3c .0001). CONCLUSIONS: The present study has demonstrated contemporary outcomes for physical therapy and surgery in a well-studied cohort of patients with NTOS, reinforcing that surgery can be effective when physical therapy is insufficient, even with substantial pretreatment disability. Substantial symptom improvement can be expected for ∼90% of patients after surgery for NTOS, with treatment outcomes accurately reflected by changes in QuickDASH scores. Within this cohort, it was difficult to identify specific predictive factors for individuals most likely to benefit from physical therapy alone vs surgery