Seasonality and the female happiness paradox

Most studies tracking wellbeing do not collect data across all the months in a year. This leads to error in estimating gender differences in wellbeing for three reasons. First, there are seasonal patterns in wellbeing (particularly life satisfaction and happiness) which are gendered, so failure to account for those confounds estimates of gender differences over time. Second, studies fielded in discrete parts of the year cannot extrapolate to gender differences in other parts of the year. Making inferences about trends over time is particularly problematic when a survey changes its field survey dates across years. Third, without monthly data, surveys miss big shifts in wellbeing that occur for short periods. This is a problem because women’s wellbeing is more variable over short periods of time than men’s wellbeing. It also bounces back faster. We show that simply splitting the data by months in a happiness equation generates a positive male coefficient in one subset of months from September to January and a negative coefficient in months February to August. Such a split has no impact on the male coefficients in an anxiety equation. Months matter

The View from the Armchair: Responding to Kornblith’s Alternative to Armchair Philosophy

In the last two decades, the greatest threat to armchair philosophy has been the natural kinds approach. On this view, philosophic theorizing should not be obsessed with the ideas of justice, goodness, and truth but should look outward to the world of objects to find these things. And if these things happen to be natural kinds, like kinds of rock or fish for instance, then clearly we should reject the armchair for the lab. The philosopher should leave the office and join the scientist out in the field. Philosophy should become a species of science. We attempt to defend traditional/armchair philosophy by examining Hilary Kornblith’s naturalistic methodological approach to epistemology. Among other things, we argue that Kornblith’s approach leads to some surprising, undesirable results (at least undesirable to the naturalist), one of which is that Kornblith cannot discount epistemic internalism as a viable contender in the search for the nature of knowledge. His methodology actually requires that we take epistemic internalism seriously

Is Pupil Attainment Higher in Well-managed Schools?

Linking the Workplace Employment Relations Surveys 2004 and 2011 to administrative data on pupil attainment in England we examine whether secondary and primary schools who deploy more intensive human resource management (HRM) practices have higher pupil attainment. We find intensive use of HRM practices is positively and significantly correlated with higher labour productivity and quality of provision, and with better financial performance, most notably in primary schools, but it is not associated with higher pupil attainment as indicated by assessment scores at Key Stage 2, Key Stage 4 and value-added measures based on assessments at these points

Discrimination in a Rank Order Contest: Evidence from the NFL Draft

This paper examines discrimination in the NFL draft. The NFL is a favorable empirical setting to examine the role of skin color because franchise selectors are required to make rank-order judgements of players based on noisy signals of future productivity. Since wages are tightly related to the rank-order of the draft for the first four years of a player’s career, even if discrimination plays only a marginal role in selection, there could be a large discriminatory impact. We observe racial differences in drafting. However, much of the variation is explained by Black and White players selecting into different playing positions. Conditional upon a large set of control variables, including athletic performance at a marque selection event (the NFL combine), we do not find robust evidence of racial discrimination in NFL drafting between 2000 and 2018. However, we do find some evidence that Black players are disadvantaged relative to White players in later rounds of the draf

Chiral molybdenum and tungsten imido alkylidene complexes as catalysts for asymmetric ring-closing metathesis (ARCM)

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Chemistry, 1999.Includes bibliographical references (leaves 172-179).Chapter 1. The synthesis and resolution of sterically encumbered biphenols is presented. -- Chapter 2. The synthesis of molybdenum(VI) imido alkylidene complexes containing racemic and optically pure biphenoxides (Biphen and Biad) is reported. -- Chapter 3. The 1H NMR spectroscopic data for molybdenum(VI) imido alkylidene biphenoxide complexes prepared in Chapter 2 are presented. -- Chapter 4. The application of catalysts prepared in Chapter 2 in asymmetric ring-closing metathesis (ARCM) is described. -- Chapter 5. Synthesis, characterization and reactivity of (±)(Me2)W(Neo) and (±)(iPr 2)W(Neo) . PMe2Ph is discussed.by John Bryson Alexander.Ph.D

SCN1A channelopathies: Navigating from genotype to neural circuit dysfunction

The SCN1A gene is strongly associated with epilepsy and plays a central role for supporting cortical excitation-inhibition balance through the expression of NaV1.1 within inhibitory interneurons. The phenotype of SCN1A disorders has been conceptualized as driven primarily by impaired interneuron function that predisposes to disinhibition and cortical hyperexcitability. However, recent studies have identified SCN1A gain-of-function variants associated with epilepsy, and the presence of cellular and synaptic changes in mouse models that point toward homeostatic adaptations and complex network remodeling. These findings highlight the need to understand microcircuit-scale dysfunction in SCN1A disorders to contextualize genetic and cellular disease mechanisms. Targeting the restoration of microcircuit properties may be a fruitful strategy for the development of novel therapies

Modeling of Fragmentation of Asteroids

The objective of this study is to understand fragmentation and fracture of a given asteroid and mechanisms of break-up. The focus of the present work is to develop modeling techniques for stony asteroids in 10m-100m range to answer two questions: 1) What is the role of material makeup of an asteroid in the stress distribution? 2)How is stress distribution altered in the presence of pre-existing defects