Border Wars: Tax Revenues, Annexation, and Urban Growth in Phoenix

Phoenix and neighboring municipalities, like many in the South and West, pursued a growth strategy based on annexation in the decades after World War II. This paper explores the link between annexation and competition for tax revenues. After discussing arguments for annexation, it traces the history of annexation in the Phoenix metropolitan area. A long-running series of "border wars" entailed litigation, pre-emptive annexations, and considerable intergovernmental conflict. The paper argues that tax revenues have been a key motivation for annexation, particularly since the 1970s. It then considers several related policy issues and argues that while opportunities for annexation are becoming more limited, competition for tax revenues (particularly sales tax revenues) continues to be fierce and to create dilemmas for municipalities in the region. JEL Categories: H71, H77, N92, R51annexation, municipal revenues, sales tax, Phoenix, urban growth, intergovernmental relations

Physics-based analysis of Affymetrix microarray data

We analyze publicly available data on Affymetrix microarrays spike-in experiments on the human HGU133 chipset in which sequences are added in solution at known concentrations. The spike-in set contains sequences of bacterial, human and artificial origin. Our analysis is based on a recently introduced molecular-based model [E. Carlon and T. Heim, Physica A 362, 433 (2006)] which takes into account both probe-target hybridization and target-target partial hybridization in solution. The hybridization free energies are obtained from the nearest-neighbor model with experimentally determined parameters. The molecular-based model suggests a rescaling that should result in a "collapse" of the data at different concentrations into a single universal curve. We indeed find such a collapse, with the same parameters as obtained before for the older HGU95 chip set. The quality of the collapse varies according to the probe set considered. Artificial sequences, chosen by Affymetrix to be as different as possible from any other human genome sequence, generally show a much better collapse and thus a better agreement with the model than all other sequences. This suggests that the observed deviations from the predicted collapse are related to the choice of probes or have a biological origin, rather than being a problem with the proposed model.Comment: 11 pages, 10 figure

Myeloid-derived suppressor cells contribute to the subversion of innate immunity during Staphylococcus aureus biofilm infection

Myeloid-derived suppressor cells (MDSCs) are a heterogeneous population of immature monocytes and granulocytes that are potent inhibitors of T cell activation. A role for MDSCs in bacterial infections has only recently emerged, and our laboratory was the first to demonstrate a functional role for MDSCs during Staphylococcus aureus (S. aureus) biofilm infection. Biofilm infections often lead to significant morbidity due to their recalcitrance to antibiotics and ability to subvert immune-mediated clearance by skewing the immune response toward an anti-inflammatory, pro-fibrotic phenotype. Therefore, we examined whether MDSCs could play a role in this process. CD11b+Gr-1+ MDSCs represented the main cellular infiltrate during S. aureus orthopedic biofilm infection, and biofilm-associated MDSCs inhibited T cells proliferation and cytokine production, which correlated with a paucity of T cell infiltrates at the infection site. Importantly, tissues obtained from patients undergoing revision surgery for prosthetic joint infections (PJIs) revealed similar patterns of immune cell influx, with increased MDSC-like infiltrates and significantly fewer T cells compared to aseptic revisions. Depletion of MDSCs and improved bacterial clearance by enhancing the intrinsic proinflammatory attributes of infiltrating monocytes and macrophages. However, the mechanisms responsible for MDSC homing to sites of biofilm infection and factors mediating immunosuppression remain unknown. In cancer, proinflammatory signals initially induce MDSC recruitment and activation, while the immunosuppressive functions of MDSCs are mediated through factors like IL-10, Arg-1 and iNOS. IL-12p40 and IL-10 are both significantly elevated during S. aureus biofilm infection. These studies demonstrate that IL-12 plays a key role in the recruitment of MDSCs into biofilm infection via a chemoattractant that remains to be identified, while IL-10 is produced by infiltrating MDSCs at the site of biofilm infection, whereupon it plays a critical role in polarizing monocyte/macrophages toward an anti-inflammatory phenotype. Loss of either IL-12 or IL-10 during the early MDSC recruitment or effector phases, respectively, promotes biofilm clearance, implicating key roles for each cytokine at distinct stages of infection. Collectively, these studies demonstrate that MDSCs are key contributors to the chronicity of S. aureus biofilm infection, as their immunosuppressive function prevents monocyte/macrophage proinflammatory activity, which facilitates biofilm persistence

Exploring the Last Frontiers for Mineral Resources: A Comparison of International Law Regarding the Deep Seabed, Outer Space, and Antarctica

The nations of the world have begun to tap three resource areas--the deep seabed, outer space, and Antarctica. These areas are unique insofar as no nation can claim them exclusively as its own. As a result, these three areas raise unique international questions. Not only are they largely undisturbed, but these areas are also the testing ground for recently developed international treaties that attempt to usher in a new era of international cooperation. This Note examines both the exploration and exploitation of mineral resources in the deep seabed, outer space, and Antarctica. The physical nature of each area, the resources available to humankind, the technological and economic feasibility of future explorations, and the environmental concerns surrounding mineral resource development will be examined. Within each section, the author discusses the treaty systems governing each environment, focusing particularly on the most recent attempts to formulate policy. The historical development, structure, and current status of these latest attempts are examined. By comparing the development, successes, and failures of the treaty systems, this Note attempts to highlight past experiences to suggest a system that will better serve the world community in the next century

Capitalism

CAPITALISM is an economic system dedicated to production for profit and to the accumulation of value by private business firms. In the fully developed form of industrial capitalism, firms advance money to hire wage laborers and to buy means of production such as machinery and raw materials. If the firm can sell its products for a greater sum of value than that originally advanced, the firm grows and can advance more money for a new round of accumulation. Historically, the emergence of industrial capitalism depends upon the creation of three requirements for accumulation: initial sums of money (or credit), wage labor and means of production available for purchase, and markets in which products can be sold

Climate change and the selective signature of the Late Ordovician mass extinction

Selectivity patterns provide insights into the causes of ancient extinction events. The Late Ordovician mass extinction was related to Gondwanan glaciation; however, it is still unclear whether elevated extinction rates were attributable to record failure, habitat loss, or climatic cooling. We examined Middle Ordovician-Early Silurian North American fossil occurrences within a spatiotemporally explicit stratigraphic framework that allowed us to quantify rock record effects on a per-taxon basis and assay the interplay of macrostratigraphic and macroecological variables in determining extinction risk. Genera that had large proportions of their observed geographic ranges affected by stratigraphic truncation or environmental shifts at the end of the Katian stage were particularly hard hit. The duration of the subsequent sampling gaps had little effect on extinction risk, suggesting that this extinction pulse cannot be entirely attributed to rock record failure; rather, it was caused, in part, by habitat loss. Extinction risk at this time was also strongly influenced by the maximum paleolatitude at which a genus had previously been sampled, a macroecological trait linked to thermal tolerance. A model trained on the relationship between 16 explanatory variables and extinction patterns during the early Katian interval substantially underestimates the extinction of exclusively tropical taxa during the late Katian interval. These results indicate that glacioeustatic sea-level fall and tropical ocean cooling played important roles in the first pulse of the Late Ordovician mass extinction in Laurentia