Class and party : voting behavior in the late antebellum south

Typescript (photocopy).This study of southern presidential voting patterns from 1828 to 1860 and secession balloting in early 1861 provides the political historian with a new window to political behavior in the region. It accounts for varying levels of voter turnout from election to election, the subsequent movement of previous inactive voters and new voters into the active electorate, and uncovers important popular vote shifts in southern presidential balloting in spite of apparent core voter stability. The "party of nonvoters" and new voters contributed the bulk of support to the anti-Democratic forces in the South in 1836 and 1840, making the second party system a viable entity in the region. In addition, Democrat or opposition recruitment of peripheral and new voters often enabled the parties to obtain popular vote victories in southern presidential balloting prior to 1852. Previous political affiliations also played significant roles in determining voter support from election to election. Once voters developed allegiances to Andrew Jackson or his political opponents, their partisan affiliations rarely changed. Prior to the secession elections, partisan alignments were relatively more important than any ethnic, religious, or economic factor in determining core voter selections in presidential elections. Ultimately voter choices in the South were framed by their former political allegiances. But, in the secession balloting, when these allegiances sharply conflicted with the particular economic circumstances of slavery, some voting citizens pried themselves away from their political frameworks and cast ballots that reflected their perceived economic interests

Social Network Based Substance Abuse Prevention via Network Modification (A Preliminary Study)

Substance use and abuse is a significant public health problem in the United States. Group-based intervention programs offer a promising means of preventing and reducing substance abuse. While effective, unfortunately, inappropriate intervention groups can result in an increase in deviant behaviors among participants, a process known as deviancy training. This paper investigates the problem of optimizing the social influence related to the deviant behavior via careful construction of the intervention groups. We propose a Mixed Integer Optimization formulation that decides on the intervention groups, captures the impact of the groups on the structure of the social network, and models the impact of these changes on behavior propagation. In addition, we propose a scalable hybrid meta-heuristic algorithm that combines Mixed Integer Programming and Large Neighborhood Search to find near-optimal network partitions. Our algorithm is packaged in the form of GUIDE, an AI-based decision aid that recommends intervention groups. Being the first quantitative decision aid of this kind, GUIDE is able to assist practitioners, in particular social workers, in three key areas: (a) GUIDE proposes near-optimal solutions that are shown, via extensive simulations, to significantly improve over the traditional qualitative practices for forming intervention groups; (b) GUIDE is able to identify circumstances when an intervention will lead to deviancy training, thus saving time, money, and effort; (c) GUIDE can evaluate current strategies of group formation and discard strategies that will lead to deviancy training. In developing GUIDE, we are primarily interested in substance use interventions among homeless youth as a high risk and vulnerable population. GUIDE is developed in collaboration with Urban Peak, a homeless-youth serving organization in Denver, CO, and is under preparation for deployment

PREDATOR PRESENCE AND SIZE VARIATION ALTERS COMMUNITY STRUCTURE THROUGH MULTIPLE TROPHIC CASCADES

Predation plays a crucial role in shaping community structure and can initiate trophic cascades that can alter abundances across adjacent trophic levels. Recent research has suggested that variation among individual predators may have stronger effects on ecological dynamics than previously appreciated. Intraspecific variation within predators could lead to differential levels of top-down control with implications for trophic cascade strength. In this experiment, we manipulated the body size variation of predatory mole salamanders (Ambystoma talpoideum) within experimental mesocosms and monitored a suite of abiotic and biotic response variables. We predicted that predator populations with increased body size variation would have limited top-down control due to weaker interactions with a greater number of prey species. Conversely, we predicted that populations with similarly sized predators would have strong control over fewer prey species. Salamander presence affected nearly every biotic parameter measured, suppressing some populations (e.g. invertebrate predators) and facilitating others (e.g. invertebrate collectors), triggering multiple trophic cascades. A few invertebrate taxa responded to variation in predator body size and in nearly all of these instances, taxa responded more strongly to treatments with increased body size variation than in treatments with similarly-sized predators. Predator size variation may promote individual dietary specialization by differently sized predators, resulting in strong control of focal prey. These results demonstrate that predators have pervasive effects on all trophic levels of a community regardless of size structure, and that when size structure has an effect on abundances of particular taxa, increased body size variation can lead to stronger top-down control

The Maturity of Debt Issues and Predictable Variation in Bond Returns

The maturity of new debt issues predicts excess bond returns. When the share of long-term debt issues in total debt issues is high, future excess bond returns are low. This predictive power comes in two parts. First, inflation, the real short-term rate, and the term spread predict excess bond returns. Second, these same variables explain the long-term share, and together account for much of its own ability to predict excess bond returns. The results are consistent with survey evidence that firms use debt market conditions in an effort to determine the lowest-cost maturity at which to borrow

Do firms borrow at the lowest-cost maturity? The long-term share in debt issues and predictable variation in bond returns

We document that firms tend to borrow at the lowest-cost maturity. In aggregate time series data, the share of long-term debt issues in total debt issues is negatively related to subsequent excess bond returns, meaning that firms substitute toward long-term debt when the cost of long-term debt is low relative to the cost of short-term debt. The longterm share is also contemporaneously negatively related to the components of the longterm interest rate that predict higher excess bond returns, including inflation, the real short-term rate, and the term spread. The results suggest that firms use predictable variation in excess bond returns in an effort to reduce the cost of capital

The Book of Judges: A Spiritual History?

The paper addresses two fundamental questions raised by this remarkable and enigmatic text, a book which one commentator has recently described as “rough and raw and confronting.” The first question is are we at risk of misunderstanding the work if we approach it principally as a “book of judges” and/or as a historical chronicle of the Settlement era; and second, the related question: what was the author’s purpose in writing it

Väärin käsitetty Englannin korkeakoulu-uudistus

Matti Viren esitti (Tieteessä tapahtuu 6/2011), että Suomen tulisi harkita uudelleen maksutonta koulutustaan. Virenin mielestä Britannian koalitiohallituksen Englannissa toimeenpanemat yliopistoreformit ovat monin tavoin houkuttelevia. Siksi hän ehdotti, että Suomessa harkittaisiin samankaltaista mallia erityisesti nykyisessä tiukassa taloustilanteessa. Vaikka artikkeli välittikin oikean tiedon Englannin korkeakoulutuksen rahoituksesta ja filosofiasta sekä muutosehdotuksista, artikkeli johtaa kuitenkin yksityiskohtien osalta harhaan. Pyrin oikaisemaan väärinkäsityksiä, jotka koskevat hallituskoalition reformeja sekä niiden mahdollisia vaikutuksia Englannin korkeakoulusektoriin ja koko englantilaiseen yhteiskuntaan