The Opportunity Costs of the Alaska Permanent Fund Dividend

The Alaska Permanent Fund was established by the State of Alaska in 1976 to save a portion of windfall revenues resulting from the discovery of the large Prudhoe Bay oil field. The Permanent Fund Dividend program, established in 1982, pays out about half the earnings of the Fund to each resident. The dividend was intended to both create a constituency for sound management of the Fund, and directly distribute the State’s resource wealth to its citizens. The dividend has achieved great popularity, and has succeeded in allocating resource rents to boost jobs and personal income, and reduce poverty, while the Fund itself has grown. It has also protected the Fund from frivolous practices. But other sovereign wealth funds without dividends have also prospered. There have been trade-offs associated with the dividend, some of which have become more obvious with the Alaska economy grappling with the impact of chronic low oil prices. These include foregone earnings, political complexity, income inequality, and the question of public vs. private spending

Stateless Flow-Zone Switching Using Software-Defined Addressing

The trend toward cloudification of communication networks and services, with user data and applications stored and processed in data centers, pushes the limits of current Data Center Networks (DCNs), requiring improved scalability, resiliency, and performance. Here we consider a DCN forwarding approach based on software-defined addressing (SDA), which embeds semantics in the Medium Access Control (MAC) address and thereby enables new forwarding processes. This work presents Flow-Zone Switching (FZS), a loop-free location-based source-routing solution that eliminates the need for forwarding tables by embedding routing instructions and flow identifiers directly in the flow-zone software-defined address. FZS speeds the forwarding process, increasing the throughput and reducing the latency of QoS-sensitive flows while reducing the capital and operational costs of switching. This paper presents details of FZS and a performance evaluation within a complete DCN.This work was supported in part by the H2020 Europe/Taiwan Joint Action 5G-DIVE under Grant 859881, in part by the Spanish State Research Agency through the TRUE5G Project under Grant PID2019-108713RB-C52/AEI/10.13039/501100011033, and in part by the Comunidad de Madrid through the Project TAPIR-CM under Grant S2018/TCS-4496

Clone stories: ‘shallow are the souls that have forgotten how to shudder’

This article explores literary interrogations of the bioethical implications of cloning. It does so by outlining the basic science of cloning before going on to question the dominance of the Freudian notion of the ‘uncanny’ in the critical theoretical responses to cloning by figures such as Jean Baudrillard and Slavoj Žižek. The second half of the article turns to two recent novels exploring the theme of cloning: Eva Hoffman's The Secret, and Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go. It is argued that the former rehearses familiar themes of revulsion connected to the figure of the clone, yet resolves the struggle for identity in a ‘human’ conclusion; whereas the latter maintains the uncanny in-human difference of the clone even as it highlights the dangers of the biopolitical instrumentalization of life itself. The article therefore argues that fictional treatments of cloning can provide an important alternative to simplified debates on the subject in the mass media

Ultrasound attenuation coefficient in the fetal liver as a function of gestational age

An apparent increase in the ultrasound attenuation coefficient per unit frequency, [alpha]f, of fetal liver as a function of gestational age has been observed. Measurements were made in utero with a 25 megasample/sec RF digitizer and a real time ultrasound system with a 5 MHz scan head. A precise measurement of [alpha]f was employed in which the intercept was tied to 0 at a frequency of 0. In 178 examinations of normal pregnancies, the linear regression of the [alpha]f increased 26% between 26 and 40 weeks gestation. This statistically significant increase (p < 0.0001) is consistent with several observations, those of Parker . of increased attenuation in liver when glycogen is added, the increasing glycogen storage in the liver before birth, and our own pre- and postnatal measurements reported elsewhere. A noninvasive assay for glycogen content would have important applications in medicine and biomedical science. However, an increase in measurement accuracy and precise correlation with glycogen content will be required to make meaningful predictions in individual cases, as opposed to the present statistical trends.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/28879/1/0000715.pd

Liaison psychiatry practitioners' views on accessing aftercare and psychological therapies for patients who present to hospital following self-harm: multi-site interview study

Background Timely provision of aftercare following self-harm may reduce risks of repetition and premature death, but existing services are frequently reported as being inadequate. Aims To explore barriers and facilitators to accessing aftercare and psychological therapies for patients presenting to hospital following self-harm, from the perspective of liaison psychiatry practitioners. Method Between March 2019 and December 2020, we interviewed 51 staff members across 32 liaison psychiatry services in England. We used thematic analyses to interpret the interview data. Results Barriers to accessing services may heighten risk of further self-harm for patients and burnout for staff. Barriers included: perceived risk, exclusionary thresholds, long waiting times, siloed working and bureaucracy. Strategies to increase access to aftercare included: (a) improving assessments and care plans via input from skilled staff working in multidisciplinary teams (e.g. including social workers and clinical psychologists); (b) supporting staff to focus on assessments as therapeutic intervention; (c) probing boundaries and involving senior staff to negotiate risk and advocate for patients; and (d) building relationships and integration across services. Conclusions Our findings highlight practitioners' views on barriers to accessing aftercare and strategies to circumvent some of these impediments. Provision of aftercare and psychological therapies as part of the liaison psychiatry service were deemed as an essential mechanism for optimising patient safety and experience and staff well-being. To close treatment gaps and reduce inequalities, it is important to work closely with staff and patients, learn from experiences of good practice and implement change more widely across services