The Texas economy: beyond the boom and bust

Economic conditions - Texas

Variations in Texas school quality

Texas ; Education ; Federal Reserve District, 11th

America's health care problem: an economic perspective

Soaring health care expenditures and the large number of uninsured Americans-now estimated at 35 million-have received much public attention in recent years. The widespread concerns have led to demands for substantial reform of the U.S. health care system. ; Beverly Fox, Lori Taylor, and Mine Yucel identify several distortions in the current health care system that may be contributing to overconsumption of health care by some and underconsumption of health care by others, and thus may be leading to excessively high expenditures and the problems of the uninsured. These distortions include tax subsidies for employer-provided health insurance, regulations and industry practices that restrict the supply of health care professionals, and the noncompetitive nature of the health insurance industry. Effective health care reform must address these distortions rather than nondistortionary elements of the system, such as producer and consumer uncertainty and the changing demographic composition of the U.S. population.Medical care

Benthic assemblages are more predictable than fish assemblages at an island scale

© The Author(s), 2022. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in Sandin, S. A., Alcantar, E., Clark, R., de Leon, R., Dilrosun, F., Edwards, C. B., Estep, A. J., Eynaud, Y., French, B. J., Fox, M. D., Grenda, D., Hamilton, S. L., Kramp, H., Marhaver, K. L., Miller, S. D., Roach, T. N. F., Seferina, G., Silveira, C. B., Smith, J. E., Zgliczynski, B. J., & Vermeij, M. J. A. Benthic assemblages are more predictable than fish assemblages at an island scale. Coral Reefs, 41, (2022.): 1031–1043, https://doi.org/10.1007/s00338-022-02272-5.Decades of research have revealed relationships between the abundance of coral reef taxa and local conditions, especially at small scales. However, a rigorous test of covariation requires a robust dataset collected across wide environmental or experimental gradients. Here, we surveyed spatial variability in the densities of major coral reef functional groups at 122 sites along a 70 km expanse of the leeward, forereef habitat of Curaçao in the southern Caribbean. These data were used to test the degree to which spatial variability in community composition could be predicted based on assumed functional relationships and site-specific anthropogenic, physical, and ecological conditions. In general, models revealed less power to describe the spatial variability of fish biomass than cover of reef builders (R2 of best-fit models: 0.25 [fish] and 0.64 [reef builders]). The variability in total benthic cover of reef builders was best described by physical (wave exposure and reef relief) and ecological (turf algal height and coral recruit density) predictors. No metric of anthropogenic pressure was related to spatial variation in reef builder cover. In contrast, total fish biomass showed a consistent (albeit weak) association with anthropogenic predictors (fishing and diving pressure). As is typical of most environmental gradients, the spatial patterns of both fish biomass density and reef builder cover were spatially autocorrelated. Residuals from the best-fit model for fish biomass retained a signature of spatial autocorrelation while the best-fit model for reef builder cover removed spatial autocorrelation, thus reinforcing our finding that environmental predictors were better able to describe the spatial variability of reef builders than that of fish biomass. As we seek to understand spatial variability of coral reef communities at the scale of most management units (i.e., at kilometer- to island-scales), distinct and scale-dependent perspectives will be needed when considering different functional groups.This research and the larger efforts of Blue Halo Curacao were supported by funding from the Waitt Institute and with permissions from the Government of Curacao, Ministry of Health, Environment, and Nature. Field logistics were further supported by the Waitt Institute vessel crew, CARMABI Foundation, The Dive Shop Curacao, and Dive Charter Curacao

Effects of antiplatelet therapy on stroke risk by brain imaging features of intracerebral haemorrhage and cerebral small vessel diseases: subgroup analyses of the RESTART randomised, open-label trial

Background Findings from the RESTART trial suggest that starting antiplatelet therapy might reduce the risk of recurrent symptomatic intracerebral haemorrhage compared with avoiding antiplatelet therapy. Brain imaging features of intracerebral haemorrhage and cerebral small vessel diseases (such as cerebral microbleeds) are associated with greater risks of recurrent intracerebral haemorrhage. We did subgroup analyses of the RESTART trial to explore whether these brain imaging features modify the effects of antiplatelet therapy

Novel genetic loci underlying human intracranial volume identified through genome-wide association

Intracranial volume reflects the maximally attained brain size during development, and remains stable with loss of tissue in late life. It is highly heritable, but the underlying genes remain largely undetermined. In a genome-wide association study of 32,438 adults, we discovered five novel loci for intracranial volume and confirmed two known signals. Four of the loci are also associated with adult human stature, but these remained associated with intracranial volume after adjusting for height. We found a high genetic correlation with child head circumference (ρgenetic=0.748), which indicated a similar genetic background and allowed for the identification of four additional loci through meta-analysis (Ncombined = 37,345). Variants for intracranial volume were also related to childhood and adult cognitive function, Parkinson’s disease, and enriched near genes involved in growth pathways including PI3K–AKT signaling. These findings identify biological underpinnings of intracranial volume and provide genetic support for theories on brain reserve and brain overgrowth

The James Webb Space Telescope Mission

Twenty-six years ago a small committee report, building on earlier studies, expounded a compelling and poetic vision for the future of astronomy, calling for an infrared-optimized space telescope with an aperture of at least $4m$. With the support of their governments in the US, Europe, and Canada, 20,000 people realized that vision as the $6.5m$ James Webb Space Telescope. A generation of astronomers will celebrate their accomplishments for the life of the mission, potentially as long as 20 years, and beyond. This report and the scientific discoveries that follow are extended thank-you notes to the 20,000 team members. The telescope is working perfectly, with much better image quality than expected. In this and accompanying papers, we give a brief history, describe the observatory, outline its objectives and current observing program, and discuss the inventions and people who made it possible. We cite detailed reports on the design and the measured performance on orbit.Comment: Accepted by PASP for the special issue on The James Webb Space Telescope Overview, 29 pages, 4 figure

The Science Performance of JWST as Characterized in Commissioning

This paper characterizes the actual science performance of the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), as determined from the six month commissioning period. We summarize the performance of the spacecraft, telescope, science instruments, and ground system, with an emphasis on differences from pre-launch expectations. Commissioning has made clear that JWST is fully capable of achieving the discoveries for which it was built. Moreover, almost across the board, the science performance of JWST is better than expected; in most cases, JWST will go deeper faster than expected. The telescope and instrument suite have demonstrated the sensitivity, stability, image quality, and spectral range that are necessary to transform our understanding of the cosmos through observations spanning from near-earth asteroids to the most distant galaxies.Comment: 5th version as accepted to PASP; 31 pages, 18 figures; https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1538-3873/acb29

Finishing the euchromatic sequence of the human genome

The sequence of the human genome encodes the genetic instructions for human physiology, as well as rich information about human evolution. In 2001, the International Human Genome Sequencing Consortium reported a draft sequence of the euchromatic portion of the human genome. Since then, the international collaboration has worked to convert this draft into a genome sequence with high accuracy and nearly complete coverage. Here, we report the result of this finishing process. The current genome sequence (Build 35) contains 2.85 billion nucleotides interrupted by only 341 gaps. It covers ∼99% of the euchromatic genome and is accurate to an error rate of ∼1 event per 100,000 bases. Many of the remaining euchromatic gaps are associated with segmental duplications and will require focused work with new methods. The near-complete sequence, the first for a vertebrate, greatly improves the precision of biological analyses of the human genome including studies of gene number, birth and death. Notably, the human enome seems to encode only 20,000-25,000 protein-coding genes. The genome sequence reported here should serve as a firm foundation for biomedical research in the decades ahead