Institutions and government growth: a comparison of the 1890s and the 1930s

Statistics on the size and growth of the U.S. federal government, in addition to public statements by President Franklin Roosevelt, seem to indicate that the Great Depression was the primary event that caused the dramatic growth in government spending and intervention in the private sector that continues to the present day. Through a comparison of the economic conditions of the 1890s and the 1930s, the authors argue that post-1930 government growth in the United States is not the direct result of the Great Depression, but rather is a result of institutional, legal, and societal changes that began in the late 1800s. Thus, the Great Depression did likely trigger increases in government spending and regulatory involvement, but historical factors produced the conditions that tended to lend permanence to the growth of government that occurred during the Great Depression.Federal government ; Depressions

New Modeling of the Lensing Galaxy and Cluster of Q0957+561: Implications for the Global Value of the Hubble Constant

The gravitational lens 0957+561 is modeled utilizing recent observations of the galaxy and the cluster as well as previous VLBI radio data which have been re-analyzed recently. The galaxy is modeled by a power-law elliptical mass density with a small core while the cluster is modeled by a non-singular power-law sphere as indicated by recent observations. Using all of the current available data, the best-fit model has a reduced chi-squared of approximately 6 where the chi-squared value is dominated by a small portion of the observational constraints used; this value of the reduced chi-squared is similar to that of the recent FGSE best-fit model by Barkana et al. However, the derived value of the Hubble constant is significantly different from the value derived from the FGSE model. We find that the value of the Hubble constant is given by H_0 = 69 +18/-12 (1-K) and 74 +18/-17 (1-K) km/s/Mpc with and without a constraint on the cluster's mass, respectively, where K is the convergence of the cluster at the position of the galaxy and the range for each value is defined by Delta chi-squared = reduced chi-squared. Presently, the best achievable fit for this system is not as good as for PG 1115+080, which also has recently been used to constrain the Hubble constant, and the degeneracy is large. Possibilities for improving the fit and reducing the degeneracy are discussed.Comment: 22 pages in aaspp style including 6 tables and 5 figures, ApJ in press (Nov. 1st issue

Social and Economic Impact of Solar Electricity at Schuchuli Village

Schuchuli, a small remote village on the Papago Indian Reservation in southwest Arizona, is 27 kilometers (17 miles) from the nearest available utility power. Its lack of conventional power is due to the prohibitive cost of supplying a small electrical load with a long-distance distribution line. Furthermore, alternate energy sources are expensive and place a burden on the resources of the villagers. On December 16, 1978, as part of a federally funded project, a solar cell power system was put into operation at Schuchuli. The system powers the village water pump, lighting for homes and other village buildings, family refrigerators and a communal washing machine and sewing machine

On the Salience of Novel Stimuli: Adaptation and Image Noise

Webster has proposed “that adaptation increases the salience of novel stimuli by partially discounting the ambient background.” This is an excellent, concise, description of the purpose and function of chromatic adaptation in image reproduction applications. However, Webster was not limiting this proposal to just chromatic adaptation, but rather using it as a general description for all forms of perceptual adaptation. Demonstrations of adaption to other properties of image displays such as motion, blur, and spatial frequency led the authors to ponder the question of whether observers might adapt to the noise structure in images to enhance the novel stimuli — the systematic image content. This paper describes psychophysical measurements of noise adaptation in color image perception and explores mathematical prediction of the effect. The results illustrate the hypothesized pattern-dependent adaptation and its prediction through adaptation of a 2-D contrast sensitivity function in an image-appearance-model-based difference metric

Investigating the roles of phonological and semantic memory in sentence recall

The mechanisms underlying short-term sentence recall have been the subject of recent investigations. While both semantic and phonological information have been found to play a role in sentence recall, this has been established using different paradigms in previous research. As a result, it is not clear whether the contributions of semantic and phonological information are equivalent subject only to specific experimental conditions. The present study used a common paradigm with equally plausible lures to systematically compare the roles of semantic and phonological information in short-term sentence recall. The lure intrusion paradigm was used with three different lures that were all equally plausible in the context of the sentence: semantic, onset, and rhyme. Further, no contextual cues were provided in the sentence to bias the participant. The findings indicate that there were significantly more semantic and onset intrusions compared to rhyme intrusions. This is interpreted in light of models incorporating lexical information during sentence production

Development of an integrated cognitive behavioral therapy for anxiety and opioid use disorder: Study protocol and methods

Opioid use disorder is a highly disabling psychiatric disorder, and is associated with both significant functional disruption and risk for negative health outcomes such as infectious disease and fatal overdose. Even among those who receive evidence-based pharmacotherapy for opioid use disorder, many drop out of treatment or relapse, highlighting the importance of novel treatment strategies for this population. Over 60% of those with opioid use disorder also meet diagnostic criteria for an anxiety disorder; however, efficacious treatments for this common co-occurrence have not be established. This manuscript describes the rationale and methods for a behavioral treatment development study designed to develop and test an integrated cognitive-behavioral therapy for those with co-occurring opioid use disorder and anxiety disorders. The aims of the study are (1) to develop and pilot test a new manualized cognitive behavioral therapy for co-occurring opioid use disorder and anxiety disorders, (2) to test the efficacy of this treatment relative to an active comparison treatment that targets opioid use disorder alone, and (3) to investigate the role of stress reactivity in both prognosis and recovery from opioid use disorder and anxiety disorders. Our overarching aim is to investigate whether this new treatment improves both anxiety and opioid use disorder outcomes relative to standard treatment. Identifying optimal treatment strategies for this population are needed to improve outcomes among those with this highly disabling and life-threatening disorder.This study was funded by NIDA grant DA035297. The funding source had no involvement in the study design, analysis and interpretation of data, writing of the report, or the decision to submit the article for publication. (DA035297 - NIDA)Accepted manuscrip

Previously Unidentified Changes in Renal Cell Carcinoma Gene Expression Identified by Parametric Analysis of Microarray Data

BACKGROUND. Renal cell carcinoma is a common malignancy that often presents as a metastatic-disease for which there are no effective treatments. To gain insights into the mechanism of renal cell carcinogenesis, a number of genome-wide expression profiling studies have been performed. Surprisingly, there is very poor agreement among these studies as to which genes are differentially regulated. To better understand this lack of agreement we profiled renal cell tumor gene expression using genome-wide microarrays (45,000 probe sets) and compare our analysis to previous microarray studies. METHODS. We hybridized total RNA isolated from renal cell tumors and adjacent normal tissue to Affymetrix U133A and U133B arrays. We removed samples with technical defects and removed probesets that failed to exhibit sequence-specific hybridization in any of the samples. We detected differential gene expression in the resulting dataset with parametric methods and identified keywords that are overrepresented in the differentially expressed genes with the Fisher-exact test. RESULTS. We identify 1,234 genes that are more than three-fold changed in renal tumors by t-test, 800 of which have not been previously reported to be altered in renal cell tumors. Of the only 37 genes that have been identified as being differentially expressed in three or more of five previous microarray studies of renal tumor gene expression, our analysis finds 33 of these genes (89%). A key to the sensitivity and power of our analysis is filtering out defective samples and genes that are not reliably detected. CONCLUSIONS. The widespread use of sample-wise voting schemes for detecting differential expression that do not control for false positives likely account for the poor overlap among previous studies. Among the many genes we identified using parametric methods that were not previously reported as being differentially expressed in renal cell tumors are several oncogenes and tumor suppressor genes that likely play important roles in renal cell carcinogenesis. This highlights the need for rigorous statistical approaches in microarray studies.National Institutes of Healt

Enabling conditions for integrated crop and livestock systems in the United States, Brazil, and New Zealand: A comparative analysis of incentives and barriers across three regions.

In this study we examine the institutional environment for sustainable agriculture in the United States, Brazil, and New Zealand. In particular we ask whether or not the overall policy context is enabling or inhibitory of integrated crop and livestock systems (ICLS) and which policy changes are likely to have the most enabling influence on the adoption of ICLS

Deep Imaging of AXJ2019+112: The Luminosity of a ``Dark Cluster''

We detect a distant cluster of galaxies centered on the QSO lens and luminous X-ray source AXJ2019+112, a.k.a. ``The Dark Cluster'' (Hattori et al 1997). Using deep V,I Keck images and wide-field K_s imaging from the NTT, a tight red sequence of galaxies is identified within a radius of 0.2 h^{-1} Mpc of the known z=1.01 elliptical lensing galaxy. The sequence, which includes the central elliptical galaxy, has a slope in good agreement with the model predictions of Kodama et al (1998) for z~1. We estimate the integrated rest-frame luminosity of the cluster to be L_V > 3.2 x 10^{11}h^{-2}L_{\sun} (after accounting for significant extinction at the low latitude of this field), more than an order of magnitude higher than previous estimates. The central region of the cluster is deconvolved using the technique of Magain, Courbin & Sohy (1998), revealing a thick central arc coincident with an extended radio source. All the observed lensing features are readily explained by differential magnification of a radio loud AGN by a shallow elliptical potential. The QSO must lie just outside the diamond caustic, producing two images, and the arc is a highly magnified image formed from a region close to the center of the host galaxy, projecting inside the caustic. The mass--to--light ratio within an aperture of 0.4 h ^{-1} Mpc is M_x/L_V= 224^{+112}_{-78}h(M/L_V)_{\sun}, using the X-ray temperature. The strong lens model yields a compatible value, M/L_V= 372^{+94}_{-94}h(M/L_V)_{\sun}, whereas an independent weak lensing analysis sets an upper limit of M/L_V <520 h(M/L_V)_{\sun}, typical of massive clusters.Comment: AAS Latex format, 24 pages, 9 figures. Fig 1a,b available at http://astro.berkeley.edu/~benitezn/cluster.html . Submitted to ApJ on August 15t