How to Un-Supplement a Tsunami of Fiscal Proportions: An Examination of the Supplemental Appropriations Process

Article I § 9 clause 7 of the United States Constitution makes it clear that “No Money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in Consequence of Appropriations made by Law.” This single sentence provides Congress with the sole legislative authority to allocate money out of the federal treasury. Throughout the years, Congress has fleshed out this power through legislation governing how the appropriations and budgeting process should occur. Although Congress has been granted the constitutional authority to make appropriations, the President and the executive agencies that receive the funds appropriated by Congress have made themselves influential partners in this process, often through purely political means. Despite the processes that Congress has put in place, the United States is facing a fiscal tsunami should things continue at their current trajectory. One of these budgetary processes put in place by Congress, the supplemental appropriations process, has resulted in increased outlays that avoid the transparency provided through the normal budget process. This paper suggests that Congress should reform the supplemental appropriations process, and proposes a piece of legislation called the Transparency and Accountability in Supplemental Appropriations Act (TASA). TASA would provide increased transparency and political accountability to the supplemental appropriations process. It would do so by creating an Emergency Trust Fund to be included in the regular budget and by requiring that the President’s Budget and the Congressional Budget Resolution include Contingency Allowances representing the level of any supplemental appropriations used to pay for military conflicts during the prior fiscal year. These reforms would allow Congress to lower the impact of the upcoming fiscal tsunami by reducing overall budget costs

Software for web-based tic suppression training [version 2; referees: 3 approved]

Exposure and response prevention (ERP) is a first-line behavior therapy for obsessive-compulsive disorder and Tourette syndrome (TS). However, ERP for tic disorders requires intentional tic suppression, which for some patients is difficult even for brief periods. Additionally, practical access to behavior therapy is difficult for many patients, especially those in rural areas. The authors present a simple, working web platform (TicTrainer) that implements a strategy called reward-enhanced exposure and response prevention (RE–ERP). This strategy sacrifices most expert therapist components of ERP, focusing only on increasing the duration of time for which the user can suppress tics through automated differential reinforcement of tic-free periods (DRO). RE–ERP requires an external tic monitor, such as a parent, during training sessions. The user sees increasing digital rewards for longer and longer periods of successful tic suppression, similar to a video game score. TicTrainer is designed with security in mind, storing no personally identifiable health information, and has features to facilitate research, including optional masked comparison of tics during DRO vs. noncontingent reward conditions. A working instance of TicTrainer is available from https://tictrainer.com

Study of scalar mesons in chiral Lagrangian frameworks

We review two approaches to studying pseudoscalar meson-meson scattering amplitudes to beyond 1 GeV using non-linear and linear chiral Lagrangians. These approaches use two different unitarisation techniques - a generalised Breit Wigner prescription and K-matrix unitarization respectively. We also report some preliminary findings on K-matrix unitarisation of the I=J=0 pion-pion scattering amplitude in the non-linear chiral Lagrangian approach and make some remarks about the light scalar mesons.Comment: Contribution to XII Conference on Hadron Spectroscopy, Frascati 2007. 8 pages, 2 figure

"Havoc from the Heavens" : the contribution of British air power to the destruction of Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman Turkish Forces in 1918 through the eyes of British war artist Lieutenant Sydney Carline RAF

In a one hour lecture I sought to explore how and why the Royal Air Force made such a contribution to the complete rout of retreating Ottoman forces in Palestine in September 1918 and of Austro-Hungarian Armies in north-eastern Italy in October of the same year. Illustrations for the lecture came in the form of works from the collection of the IWM, London by Lt. Sydney Carline, a trained fighter pilot who had fought in France and in northern Italy and then spent the last 3 months of the British Campaign in Italy as official war artist. Then, between January and April 1919 Carline was again an official artist, this time sketching the battlefields of 1918 Palestine, Lebanon and Syria - where the evidence for the destruction inflicted by the RAF on the retreating Ottoman armies was still starkly evident on the ground

"On the edge of two worlds" : conquerors or victims? Eric Kennington (1888-1960), national identity and the depiction of the 16th Battalion, Canadian-Scottish (Highlanders of Canada), 1919-1920

My 25 minute paper explored a huge oil painting commissioned from official British war artist Eric Kennington by Lord Beaverbrook of the Canadian War Memorials Scheme. The work, now in the collection of the Canadian War Museum, Ottawa, depicts a platoon from the 16th battalion Canadian-Scottish (Highlanders of Canada) marching across a wreckage-strewn battlefield in France in late 1918. What was particular interest to me and to my Canadian Audience was the conspicuous presence within the composition of two soldiers of Black African/West Indian descent and one Native (First Nation) Canadian. I explored how such individuals had found their way into the battalion when it was official policy of the Canadian Expeditionary Force not to accept non-white volunteers into the ranks of its units

Embracing Britannia : the concept of Britishness in the public sculpture and career of Dora Gordine (1895?-1991)

My 25 minute paper explored Dora Gordine's relationship with England/Britain/the British Empire between c. 1925 and 1964 (when her last piece of public sculpture was completed and unveiled). I argued that her sense of London/England/Britain had been shaped by her traumatic experiences of war and revolution c. 1915-22. She had been born the subject of Tsar Nicholas II but by the time she reached her early twenties the world she had once know had entirely been swept away. No she found herself living in and trying to establish herself as an artist in the tiny new state of Estonia. From there she moved to Paris and for a while attempted to put down roots there. However, she had her first solo exhibition, in 1928, in London. This was a great success and planted the seed of wishing to settle in the British capital. After a spell in the Far East, she was able to move in 1935 to Kingston Vale SW15 and her third husband paid for the building of her own miniature Art Deco stately home - Dorich House. The fact she looked and sounded so exotic/Russian/foreign was something she turned to her advantage. Indeed, the hints of being an outsider helped her become an insider in the highest echelons of the British cultural circles between the mid 1930's to the mid 60's

Making the American Body

If you thought the fitness craze was about being healthy, think again. Although Charles Atlas, Jack LaLanne, Jim Fixx, Jane Fonda, Richard Simmons, and Jillian Michaels might well point the way to a better body, they have done so only if their brands brought in profits. In the first book to tell the full story of the American obsession with fitness and how we got to where we are today, Jonathan Black gives us a backstage look at an industry and the people that have left an indelible mark on the American body and the consciousness it houses. Spanning the nation’s fitness obsession from Atlas to Arnold, from Spinning to Zumba, and featuring an outrageous cast of characters bent on whipping us into shape while simultaneously shaping the way we view our bodies, Black tells the story of an outsized but little-examined aspect of our culture. With insights drawn from more than fifty interviews and attention to key developments in bodybuilding, aerobics, equipment, health clubs, running, sports medicine, group exercise, Pilates, and yoga, Making the American Body reveals how a focus on fitness has shaped not only our physiques but also, and more profoundly, American ideas of what “fitness” is

TicTimer Web: Software for measuring tic suppression remotely

Woods and Himle developed a standardized tic suppression paradigm (TSP) for the experimental setting, to quantify the effects of intentional tic suppression in Tourette syndrome. We previously provided a computer program to facilitate recording tic occurrence and to automate reward delivery during the several experimental conditions of the TSP. The present article describes a web-based program that performs the same functions. Implementing this program on the web allows research sessions to be performed remotely, in tandem with a video calling program. Relevant data for each session, such as the timing of tics and dispensed rewards, are stored in plain text files for later analysis. Expected applications include research on Tourette syndrome and related disorders