Financing Direct Democracy: Revisiting the Research on Campaign Spending and Citizen Initiatives

The conventional view in the direct democracy literature is that spending against a measure is more effective than spending in favor of a measure, but the empirical results underlying this conclusion have been questioned by recent research. We argue that the conventional finding is driven by the endogenous nature of campaign spending: initiative proponents spend more when their ballot measure is likely to fail. We address this endogeneity by using an instrumental variables approach to analyze a comprehensive dataset of ballot propositions in California from 1976 to 2004. We find that both support and opposition spending on citizen initiatives have strong, statistically significant, and countervailing effects. We confirm this finding by looking at time series data from early polling on a subset of these measures. Both analyses show that spending in favor of citizen initiatives substantially increases their chances of passage, just as opposition spending decreases this likelihood

Distinct mRNA and protein interactomes highlight functional differentiation of major eIF4F-like complexes from Trypanosoma brucei

Gene expression in pathogenic protozoans of the family Trypanosomatidae has several novel features, including multiple eIF4F-like complexes involved in protein synthesis. The eukaryotic eIF4F complex, formed mainly by eIF4E and eIF4G subunits, is responsible for the canonical selection of mRNAs required for the initiation of mRNA translation. The best-known complexes implicated in translation in trypanosomatids are based on two related pairs of eIF4E and eIF4G subunits (EIF4E3/EIF4G4 and EIF4E4/EIF4G3), whose functional distinctions remain to be fully described. Here, to define interactomes associated with both complexes in Trypanosoma brucei procyclic forms, we performed parallel immunoprecipitation experiments followed by identification of proteins co-precipitated with the four tagged eIF4E and eIF4G subunits. A number of different protein partners, including RNA binding proteins and helicases, specifically co-precipitate with each complex. Highlights with the EIF4E4/EIF4G3 pair include RBP23, PABP1, EIF4AI and the CRK1 kinase. Co-precipitated partners with the EIF4E3/EIF4G4 pair are more diverse and include DRBD2, PABP2 and different zinc-finger proteins and RNA helicases. EIF4E3/EIF4G4 are essential for viability and to better define their role, we further investigated their phenotypes after knockdown. Depletion of either EIF4E3/EIF4G4 mRNAs lead to aberrant morphology with a more direct impact on events associated with cytokinesis. We also sought to identify those mRNAs differentially associated with each complex through CLIP-seq with the two eIF4E subunits. Predominant among EIF4E4-bound transcripts are those encoding ribosomal proteins, absent from those found with EIF4E3, which are generally more diverse. RNAi mediated depletion of EIF4E4, which does not affect proliferation, does not lead to changes in mRNAs or proteins associated with EIF4E3, confirming a lack of redundancy and distinct roles for the two complexes

On the influence of a Coulomb-like potential induced by the Lorentz symmetry breaking effects on the Harmonic Oscillator

In this work, we obtain bound states for a nonrelativistic spin-half neutral particle under the influence of a Coulomb-like potential induced by the Lorentz symmetry breaking effects. We present a new possible scenario of studying the Lorentz symmetry breaking effects on a nonrelativistic quantum system defined by a fixed space-like vector field parallel to the radial direction interacting with a uniform magnetic field along the z-axis. Furthermore, we also discuss the influence of a Coulomb-like potential induced by Lorentz symmetry violation effects on the two-dimensional harmonic oscillator.Comment: 14 pages, no figure, this work has been accepted for publication in The European Physical Journal Plu

Search for the standard model Higgs boson in the H to ZZ to 2l 2nu channel in pp collisions at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV

A search for the standard model Higgs boson in the H to ZZ to 2l 2nu decay channel, where l = e or mu, in pp collisions at a center-of-mass energy of 7 TeV is presented. The data were collected at the LHC, with the CMS detector, and correspond to an integrated luminosity of 4.6 inverse femtobarns. No significant excess is observed above the background expectation, and upper limits are set on the Higgs boson production cross section. The presence of the standard model Higgs boson with a mass in the 270-440 GeV range is excluded at 95% confidence level.Comment: Submitted to JHE

Constraints on the χ_(c1) versus χ_(c2) polarizations in proton-proton collisions at √s = 8 TeV

The polarizations of promptly produced χ_(c1) and χ_(c2) mesons are studied using data collected by the CMS experiment at the LHC, in proton-proton collisions at √s=8  TeV. The χ_c states are reconstructed via their radiative decays χ_c → J/ψγ, with the photons being measured through conversions to e⁺e⁻, which allows the two states to be well resolved. The polarizations are measured in the helicity frame, through the analysis of the χ_(c2) to χ_(c1) yield ratio as a function of the polar or azimuthal angle of the positive muon emitted in the J/ψ → μ⁺μ⁻ decay, in three bins of J/ψ transverse momentum. While no differences are seen between the two states in terms of azimuthal decay angle distributions, they are observed to have significantly different polar anisotropies. The measurement favors a scenario where at least one of the two states is strongly polarized along the helicity quantization axis, in agreement with nonrelativistic quantum chromodynamics predictions. This is the first measurement of significantly polarized quarkonia produced at high transverse momentum