The Political Economy: Political Attitudes and Economic Behavior

It has long been recognized that voters bring their political behaviors in line with economic assessments. Recent work, however, suggests that citizens also engage in economic behaviors that align with their confidence—or lack thereof—in the political system. This alignment can happen consciously or, as we suggest, unconsciously, in the same way that positivity carries over to other behaviors on a micro-level. Using monthly time series data from 1978 to 2008, we contribute further evidence of this relationship by demonstrating that political confidence affects consumer behavior at the aggregate level over time. Our analyses employ measures more closely tied to the theoretical concepts of interest while simultaneously accounting for the complex relationships between subjective and objective economic indicators, economic behavior, political attitudes, and the media. Our results suggest that approval of the president not only increases the electorate’s willingness to spend money, but also affects the volatility of this spending. These findings suggest that the economy is influenced by politics beyond elections, and gives the “Chief Economist” another avenue by which they can affect the behavior of the electorate

Political opportunism, position taking, and court-curbing legislation.

Although there is extensive scholarship on court-curbing efforts directed at the U.S. Supreme Court, much less is known about bills targeting the lower federal courts. This article argues that members of Congress also engage in position taking with respect to the U.S. Courts of Appeals, by proposing legislation to divide up the Ninth Circuit. Over seven decades, no other circuit has attracted as much court-curbing legislation as the Ninth Circuit, and yet no bill has succeeded. What accounts for this persistent focus on one court? We argue that bill sponsors are motivated primarily by electoral considerations and capitalize on the perception of the Ninth Circuit as an extremely liberal court. Using an original dataset of all bills to split the Ninth Circuit, we find that sponsorship of splitting bills is linked to legislator party, ideology, and state public mood relative to California, and that only conservative, Republican members of Congress are responsive to performance-related indicators, such as caseload increases and Supreme Court oversight. The results suggest that our current understanding of court curbing as it applies to the Supreme Court can be extended to new judicial contexts

Dissolved organic radiocarbon in the central Pacific Ocean

© The Author(s), 2019. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in Druffel, E. R. M., Griffin, S., Wang, N., Garcia, N. G., McNichol, A. P., Key, R. M., & Walker, B. D. Dissolved organic radiocarbon in the central Pacific Ocean. Geophysical Research Letters, 46(10), (2019):5396-5403, doi:10.1029/2019GL083149.We report marine dissolved organic carbon (DOC) concentrations, and DOC ∆14C and δ13C values in seawater collected from the central Pacific. Surface ∆14C values are low in equatorial and polar regions where upwelling occurs and high in subtropical regions dominated by downwelling. A core feature of these data is that 14C aging of DOC (682 ± 86 14C years) and dissolved inorganic carbon (643 ± 40 14C years) in Antarctic Bottom Water between 54.0°S and 53.5°N are similar. These estimates of aging are minimum values due to mixing with deep waters. We also observe minimum ∆14C values (−550‰ to −570‰) between the depths of 2,000 and 3,500 m in the North Pacific, though the source of the low values cannot be determined at this time.We thank Jennifer Walker, Xiaomei Xu, and Dachun Zhang for their help with the stable carbon isotope measurements; John Southon and staff of the Keck Carbon Cycle AMS Laboratory for their assistance and advice; the support of chief scientists Samantha Siedlecki, Molly Baringer, Alison Macdonald, and Sabine Mecking; the guidance of Jim Swift and Dennis Hansell for shared ship time; and Sarah Bercovici for collecting water on the GoA cruise. We appreciate the comments of Christian Lewis and Niels Hauksson on this manuscript. This work was supported by NSF (OCE‐141458941 to E. R. M. D. and OCE‐0824864, OCE‐1558654, and Cooperative Agreement OCE1239667 to R. M. K. and A. P. M.), the Fred Kavli Foundation, the Keck Carbon Cycle AMS Laboratory, and the NSF/NOAA‐funded GO‐SHIP Program. This research was undertaken, in part, thanks to funding from the Canada Research Chairs program (to B. D. W.) and an American Chemical Society Petroleum Research Fund New Directions grant (55430‐ND2 to E. R. M. D. and B. D. W.). Data from the P16N cruises are available in Table S2 in the Supporting Information and at the Repeat Hydrography Data Center at the CCHDO website (http://cdiac.esd.ornl.gov/oceans/index.html) using the expo codes 3RO20150329, 3RO20150410, and 3RO20150525. There are no real or perceived financial conflicts of interests for any author.2019-11-0

Rare coding variants and X-linked loci associated with age at menarche.

More than 100 loci have been identified for age at menarche by genome-wide association studies; however, collectively these explain only ∼3% of the trait variance. Here we test two overlooked sources of variation in 192,974 European ancestry women: low-frequency protein-coding variants and X-chromosome variants. Five missense/nonsense variants (in ALMS1/LAMB2/TNRC6A/TACR3/PRKAG1) are associated with age at menarche (minor allele frequencies 0.08-4.6%; effect sizes 0.08-1.25 years per allele; P<5 × 10(-8)). In addition, we identify common X-chromosome loci at IGSF1 (rs762080, P=9.4 × 10(-13)) and FAAH2 (rs5914101, P=4.9 × 10(-10)). Highlighted genes implicate cellular energy homeostasis, post-transcriptional gene silencing and fatty-acid amide signalling. A frequently reported mutation in TACR3 for idiopathic hypogonatrophic hypogonadism (p.W275X) is associated with 1.25-year-later menarche (P=2.8 × 10(-11)), illustrating the utility of population studies to estimate the penetrance of reportedly pathogenic mutations. Collectively, these novel variants explain ∼0.5% variance, indicating that these overlooked sources of variation do not substantially explain the 'missing heritability' of this complex trait.UK sponsors (see article for overseas ones): This work made use of data and samples generated by the 1958 Birth Cohort (NCDS). Access to these resources was enabled via the 58READIE Project funded by Wellcome Trust and Medical Research Council (grant numbers WT095219MA and G1001799). A full list of the financial, institutional and personal contributions to the development of the 1958 Birth Cohort Biomedical resource is available at http://www2.le.ac.uk/projects/birthcohort. Genotyping was undertaken as part of the Wellcome Trust Case-Control Consortium (WTCCC) under Wellcome Trust award 076113, and a full list of the investigators who contributed to the generation of the data is available at www.wtccc.org.uk ... The Fenland Study is funded by the Wellcome Trust and the Medical Research Council, as well as by the Support for Science Funding programme and CamStrad. ... SIBS - CRUK ref: C1287/A8459 SEARCH - CRUK ref: A490/A10124 EMBRACE is supported by Cancer Research UK Grants C1287/A10118, C1287/A16563 and C1287/A17523. Genotyping was supported by Cancer Research - UK grant C12292/A11174D and C8197/A16565. Gareth Evans and Fiona Lalloo are supported by an NIHR grant to the Biomedical Research Centre, Manchester. The Investigators at The Institute of Cancer Research and The Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust are supported by an NIHR grant to the Biomedical Research Centre at The Institute of Cancer Research and The Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust. Ros Eeles and Elizabeth Bancroft are supported by Cancer Research UK Grant C5047/A8385. ... Generation Scotland - Scottish Executive Health Department, Chief Scientist Office, grant number CZD/16/6. Exome array genotyping for GS:SFHS was funded by the Medical Research Council UK. 23andMe - This work was supported in part by NIH Award 2R44HG006981-02 from the National Human Genome Research Institute.This is the final version of the article. It first appeared from NPG via http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/ncomms875

Genome-Wide Meta-Analyses of Breast, Ovarian, and Prostate Cancer Association Studies Identify Multiple New Susceptibility Loci Shared by at Least Two Cancer Types.

UNLABELLED: Breast, ovarian, and prostate cancers are hormone-related and may have a shared genetic basis, but this has not been investigated systematically by genome-wide association (GWA) studies. Meta-analyses combining the largest GWA meta-analysis data sets for these cancers totaling 112,349 cases and 116,421 controls of European ancestry, all together and in pairs, identified at P < 10(-8) seven new cross-cancer loci: three associated with susceptibility to all three cancers (rs17041869/2q13/BCL2L11; rs7937840/11q12/INCENP; rs1469713/19p13/GATAD2A), two breast and ovarian cancer risk loci (rs200182588/9q31/SMC2; rs8037137/15q26/RCCD1), and two breast and prostate cancer risk loci (rs5013329/1p34/NSUN4; rs9375701/6q23/L3MBTL3). Index variants in five additional regions previously associated with only one cancer also showed clear association with a second cancer type. Cell-type-specific expression quantitative trait locus and enhancer-gene interaction annotations suggested target genes with potential cross-cancer roles at the new loci. Pathway analysis revealed significant enrichment of death receptor signaling genes near loci with P < 10(-5) in the three-cancer meta-analysis. SIGNIFICANCE: We demonstrate that combining large-scale GWA meta-analysis findings across cancer types can identify completely new risk loci common to breast, ovarian, and prostate cancers. We show that the identification of such cross-cancer risk loci has the potential to shed new light on the shared biology underlying these hormone-related cancers. Cancer Discov; 6(9); 1052-67. ©2016 AACR.This article is highlighted in the In This Issue feature, p. 932.The Breast Cancer Association Consortium (BCAC), the Prostate Cancer Association Group to Investigate Cancer Associated Alterations in the Genome (PRACTICAL), and the Ovarian Cancer Association Consortium (OCAC) that contributed breast, prostate, and ovarian cancer data analyzed in this study were in part funded by Cancer Research UK [C1287/A10118 and C1287/A12014 for BCAC; C5047/A7357, C1287/A10118, C5047/A3354, C5047/A10692, and C16913/A6135 for PRACTICAL; and C490/A6187, C490/A10119, C490/A10124, C536/A13086, and C536/A6689 for OCAC]. Funding for the Collaborative Oncological Gene-environment Study (COGS) infrastructure came from: the European Community's Seventh Framework Programme under grant agreement number 223175 (HEALTH-F2-2009-223175), Cancer Research UK (C1287/A10118, C1287/A 10710, C12292/A11174, C1281/A12014, C5047/A8384, C5047/A15007, C5047/A10692, and C8197/A16565), the US National Institutes of Health (CA128978) and the Post-Cancer GWAS Genetic Associations and Mechanisms in Oncology (GAME-ON) initiative (1U19 CA148537, 1U19 CA148065, and 1U19 CA148112), the US Department of Defence (W81XWH-10-1-0341), the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) for the CIHR Team in Familial Risks of Breast Cancer, Komen Foundation for the Cure, the Breast Cancer Research Foundation, and the Ovarian Cancer Research Fund [with donations by the family and friends of Kathryn Sladek Smith (PPD/RPCI.07)]. Additional financial support for contributing studies is documented under Supplementary Financial Support.This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from the American Association for Cancer Research via http://dx.doi.org/10.1158/2159-8290.CD-15-122

Multiorgan MRI findings after hospitalisation with COVID-19 in the UK (C-MORE): a prospective, multicentre, observational cohort study

Introduction: The multiorgan impact of moderate to severe coronavirus infections in the post-acute phase is still poorly understood. We aimed to evaluate the excess burden of multiorgan abnormalities after hospitalisation with COVID-19, evaluate their determinants, and explore associations with patient-related outcome measures. Methods: In a prospective, UK-wide, multicentre MRI follow-up study (C-MORE), adults (aged ≥18 years) discharged from hospital following COVID-19 who were included in Tier 2 of the Post-hospitalisation COVID-19 study (PHOSP-COVID) and contemporary controls with no evidence of previous COVID-19 (SARS-CoV-2 nucleocapsid antibody negative) underwent multiorgan MRI (lungs, heart, brain, liver, and kidneys) with quantitative and qualitative assessment of images and clinical adjudication when relevant. Individuals with end-stage renal failure or contraindications to MRI were excluded. Participants also underwent detailed recording of symptoms, and physiological and biochemical tests. The primary outcome was the excess burden of multiorgan abnormalities (two or more organs) relative to controls, with further adjustments for potential confounders. The C-MORE study is ongoing and is registered with ClinicalTrials.gov, NCT04510025. Findings: Of 2710 participants in Tier 2 of PHOSP-COVID, 531 were recruited across 13 UK-wide C-MORE sites. After exclusions, 259 C-MORE patients (mean age 57 years [SD 12]; 158 [61%] male and 101 [39%] female) who were discharged from hospital with PCR-confirmed or clinically diagnosed COVID-19 between March 1, 2020, and Nov 1, 2021, and 52 non-COVID-19 controls from the community (mean age 49 years [SD 14]; 30 [58%] male and 22 [42%] female) were included in the analysis. Patients were assessed at a median of 5·0 months (IQR 4·2–6·3) after hospital discharge. Compared with non-COVID-19 controls, patients were older, living with more obesity, and had more comorbidities. Multiorgan abnormalities on MRI were more frequent in patients than in controls (157 [61%] of 259 vs 14 [27%] of 52; p&lt;0·0001) and independently associated with COVID-19 status (odds ratio [OR] 2·9 [95% CI 1·5–5·8]; padjusted=0·0023) after adjusting for relevant confounders. Compared with controls, patients were more likely to have MRI evidence of lung abnormalities (p=0·0001; parenchymal abnormalities), brain abnormalities (p&lt;0·0001; more white matter hyperintensities and regional brain volume reduction), and kidney abnormalities (p=0·014; lower medullary T1 and loss of corticomedullary differentiation), whereas cardiac and liver MRI abnormalities were similar between patients and controls. Patients with multiorgan abnormalities were older (difference in mean age 7 years [95% CI 4–10]; mean age of 59·8 years [SD 11·7] with multiorgan abnormalities vs mean age of 52·8 years [11·9] without multiorgan abnormalities; p&lt;0·0001), more likely to have three or more comorbidities (OR 2·47 [1·32–4·82]; padjusted=0·0059), and more likely to have a more severe acute infection (acute CRP &gt;5mg/L, OR 3·55 [1·23–11·88]; padjusted=0·025) than those without multiorgan abnormalities. Presence of lung MRI abnormalities was associated with a two-fold higher risk of chest tightness, and multiorgan MRI abnormalities were associated with severe and very severe persistent physical and mental health impairment (PHOSP-COVID symptom clusters) after hospitalisation. Interpretation: After hospitalisation for COVID-19, people are at risk of multiorgan abnormalities in the medium term. Our findings emphasise the need for proactive multidisciplinary care pathways, with the potential for imaging to guide surveillance frequency and therapeutic stratification

The Political Economy: Political Attitudes and Economic Behavior

It has long been recognized that voters bring their political behaviors in line with economic assessments. Recent work, however, suggests that citizens also engage in economic behaviors that align with their confidence—or lack thereof—in the political system. This alignment can happen consciously or, as we suggest, unconsciously, in the same way that positivity carries over to other behaviors on a micro-level. Using monthly time series data from 1978 to 2008, we contribute further evidence of this relationship by demonstrating that political confidence affects consumer behavior at the aggregate level over time. Our analyses employ measures more closely tied to the theoretical concepts of interest while simultaneously accounting for the complex relationships between subjective and objective economic indicators, economic behavior, political attitudes, and the media. Our results suggest that approval of the president not only increases the electorate’s willingness to spend money, but also affects the volatility of this spending. These findings suggest that the economy is influenced by politics beyond elections, and gives the “Chief Economist” another avenue by which they can affect the behavior of the electorate

Research Replication: Practical Considerations

With the discipline’s push toward data access and research transparency (DA-RT), journal replication archives are becoming increasingly common. As researchers work to ensure that replication materials are provided, they also should pay attention to the content—rather than simply the provision—of journal archives. Based on our experience in analyzing and handling journal replication materials, we present a series of recommendations that can make them easier to understand and use. The provision of clear, functional, and well-documented replication materials is key for achieving the goals of transparent and replicable research. Furthermore, good replication materials enhance the development of extensions and related research by making state-of-the-art methodologies and analyses more accessible