Lightning channel locations, LNOx production, and advection in anomalous and normal polarity thunderstorms

2018 Spring.Includes bibliographical references.Tropospheric ozone is a powerful greenhouse gas and OH precursor, thus understanding its sources is important. Its production is also widely studied in atmospheric science today as global climate modelers attempt to estimate future warming within the troposphere. Nitrogen oxides (NO + NO2 = NOx), serve as a precursor to ozone production. In areas where higher concentrations of OH are present, NOx will undergo reactions to produce nitric acid, thereby shortening its lifetime and limiting the production of ozone. Due to lower concentrations of OH in the upper troposphere, NOx tends to experience a longer lifetime (on the order of days) and greater ozone production at these heights. Lightning produces an appreciable amount of NOx (a.k.a. LNOx) but the final distribution of resulting LNOx, and thus its ozone production, remains poorly understood. Therefore, it is important that this source of NOx be further investigated to improve current LNOx parameterizations. Numerical modeling methods attempt to study this issue by parameterizing the nature of lightning within thunderstorms. Often, the vertical distribution of flash channels (and LNOx) is produced according to a parameterized flash rate within a defined vertical profile and reflectivity volume threshold. The structure and intensity of thunderstorms are highly variable though, causing the location of lightning within a thunderstorm to differ from one thunderstorm to the next. Furthermore, one remaining goal of the Deep Convective Clouds and Chemistry (DC3) field campaign (May – June 2012) was to compare the lightning flash locations and contributions to upper tropospheric LNOx between storms of normal and anomalous charge polarity. To address this remaining goal, five cases with over 5600 total flashes are analyzed in detail using data from DC3, three in northern Colorado and two in northern Alabama. Lightning sources are combined into 3-dimensional (3-D) flash channels and flash channel parcels, with each parcel containing the LNOx produced by its parent flash channel. Parcels are then advected forward in time during the lifetime of each storm using 3-D wind fields produced from dual-Doppler analyses. Results reveal a greater number of flashes and flash channels within anomalous polarity thunderstorms compared to normal polarity thunderstorms at a mean initiation height around 5 km. Flashes in these storms also appear to transect areas of higher vertical velocities resulting in roughly half of flash channel parcels being advected to the upper troposphere (z > 8 km). Contrary to some assumptions, an appreciable fraction of these parcels and NOx contributions remain in the boundary layer of these storms. In the two normal polarity thunderstorm cases, flash channels tend to initiate around 8 km with roughly half of the flash channel parcels remaining near or above 8 km. While both storm types appear to transport roughly 50% of their flash channel parcels to the upper troposphere, significantly larger flash counts and total flash length in the anomalous polarity storms lead to much higher mixing ratios of LNOx in the upper troposphere. These results may help chemistry modelers in parameterizing LNOx formation in both normal and anomalous thunderstorm polarity structures, which will also improve global climate model parameterizations of tropospheric ozone production

Gender Disparity in Professional City Management: Making the Case for Enhancing Leadership Curriculum

Professionally trained administrators are critical to the operation and management of governmental agencies. That is particularly true with respect to local government, where city managers are situated at the top of the organizational hierarchy. However, these senior management positions remain largely the domain of males; female represent just 12% of the positions. This disparity, for reasons still unclear, comes to the fore at a time when the field of public administration faces a new set of global challenges, and many in the field have expressed concern about a looming leadership gap. As the world of public administration changes, so must the teaching of the subject, driven by specific areas of inquiry, including why more women do not attain senior executive positions. Using national postsecondary enrollment data, this article demonstrates that the underrepresentation of females among city managers cannot be explained by a shortage of women with professional training. The central conclusion of this research is that professional training programs can better prepare women for the new world of public administration by making gender more visible within the leadership curriculum

Political Partisanship and Female High School Students Who Carry Handguns

The United States is a gun culture nation, and gun violence is a serious problem. Because there are more than 280 million guns in America with over 65 million handguns in circulation, the Republicans believe that there are too many guns in America to prevent criminals from illegally obtaining them. In addition, only law-abiding residents will honor gun-control laws. As a result, law-abiding residents will become defenseless, which will promote crime. Democrats, on the other hand, believe that the gun-related crime problem will never be solved until actions are taken to eliminate the availability of handguns. After all, it is hard to commit a gun-related crime if a person does not have the means to commit a gun-related crime. According to the Democrats, if the number of handguns in society is not reduced, then the gun-related crime problem will not be solved. According to the differential association theory, individuals become law violators when they are in contact with people, groups, and events that produce an excess of definitions that are favorable toward criminality. Criminal behaviors are influenced by the legal code and are learned via interactions with other people. Furthermore, a person’s behavior will be influenced by the frequency, importance, duration, and intensity of the social learning experiences. By allowing or restricting the carrying of concealed handguns for law-abiding residents, Democrats and Republicans attempt to create the ambience they envision, which they believe will reduce social harm. If high school students carry concealed handguns, which is against the law, then this would indicate that they are learning to do so in that politically created social environment. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to determine if there is a difference between Democrat and Republican states in the percentage of female high school students who carry handguns in their respective jurisdictions. This study examined electronic second-hand data collected in 2013, 2015, and 2017 by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Although Republican states seem to have higher mean rates of female high school students who carried handguns than Democrat states, the results of the logistic regression for repeated measures indicate that there is no statistically significant relationship between female high school students who carry handguns and political party. This study is important because it demonstrates that neither political party is better than the other when it comes to creating a social learning environment that discourages female high school students from carrying handguns

Playing the external market : efficiency wage as a means for strategic compensation in the public sector

Includes bibliographical references (pages [131]-139).This research focused on the development of a model that predicts improved organizational outcomes associated with higher wage rates or, more narrowly, efficiency wages. The model is premised on efficiency wage theory, namely, that higher wages will translate into improved service quality, lower turnover or quit rates, fewer employee accountability control mechanisms, and, ultimately, lower wage costs. Through an empirical analysis involving municipalities located throughout the Chicago suburban metropolitan area (SMA), the major theoretical underpinnings associated with efficiency wage theory were tested. Two separate written survey instruments were distributed to municipalities in the Chicago SMA: a salary and fringe benefits survey and a reputational service quality questionnaire. Generally speaking, the surveys provided a broad array of quantifiable data pertaining to a municipality’s pay strategy, current wage levels, and perceived level of performance. In addition, a case study analysis demonstrating how an actual efficiency wage system functions in a publicsector organization was conducted. The findings of this research indicate that efficiency wage rates are a significant predictor of increased reputational service quality. Municipal size (population) and affluence (per capita income) were also found to be associated with service quality. In addition, higher wages were found to be a significant predictor of wage costs per employee; however, this relationship was not in the expected direction. No definitive evidence was found in support of the hypotheses regarding accountability control mechanisms. One implication of this research is that highly regarded municipalities may be able to leverage their reputation as a tool for increasing economic development or attracting more affluent residents to the community. Municipalities may also be able to use their reputation as a vehicle for attracting and retaining employees to the organization. This research concludes with a discussion of the future of public-sector compensation and the potential for a model based on efficiency wage rates to be utilized in pursuit of improved organizational outcomes. A research agenda for following up on what has already been completed is also provided.Ph.D. (Doctor of Philosophy

Demand Versus Supply: Assessing the Capacity of MPA Programs to Satisfy the Growing Need for Professional Management in Local Government

This article addresses concerns expressed by members of the International City/ County Management Association (ICMA) regarding whether the supply of qualified local government managers will keep pace with the future demand for this occupation. The authors developed several important observations, which are based on decades of experience with a Master of Public Administration (MPA) program focused on local government management, plus strategic planning experience in over 100 local governments. First, it is likely that the impending retirement of the Baby Boom generation of city managers will cause some supply shortages of professional managers in specific geographical regions of the country. Second, increases in the number of professionally managed cities creates the probability that some municipalities, due to their lack of associational attractiveness, may experience difficulty in generating sufficient pools of quality applicants. We suggest that MPA programs continue to nurture communication and relationships with local governments that will lead to specific mutual benefits. For instance, MPA programs benefit from the availability of practitioner speakers and student internships and, in turn, local governments benefit from the creation of a pipeline that provides a continual stream of quality applications

Anchors aweigh: the sources, variety, and challenges of mission drift

The growing number of studies which reference the concept of mission drift imply that such drift is an undesirable strategic outcome related to inconsistent organizational action, yet beyond such references little is known about how mission drift occurs, how it impacts organizations, and how organizations should respond. Existing management theory more broadly offers initial albeit equivocal insight for understanding mission drift. On the one hand, prior studies have argued that inconsistent or divergent action can lead to weakened stakeholder commitment and reputational damage. On the other hand, scholars have suggested that because environments are complex and dynamic, such action is necessary for ensuring organizational adaptation and thus survival. In this study, we offer a theory of mission drift that unpacks its origin, clarifies its variety, and specifies how organizations might respond to external perceptions of mission drift. The resulting conceptual model addresses the aforementioned theoretical tension and offers novel insight into the relationship between organizational actions and identity

Schizophrenia-associated somatic copy-number variants from 12,834 cases reveal recurrent NRXN1 and ABCB11 disruptions

While germline copy-number variants (CNVs) contribute to schizophrenia (SCZ) risk, the contribution of somatic CNVs (sCNVs)—present in some but not all cells—remains unknown. We identified sCNVs using blood-derived genotype arrays from 12,834 SCZ cases and 11,648 controls, filtering sCNVs at loci recurrently mutated in clonal blood disorders. Likely early-developmental sCNVs were more common in cases (0.91%) than controls (0.51%, p = 2.68e−4), with recurrent somatic deletions of exons 1–5 of the NRXN1 gene in five SCZ cases. Hi-C maps revealed ectopic, allele-specific loops forming between a potential cryptic promoter and non-coding cis-regulatory elements upon 5′ deletions in NRXN1. We also observed recurrent intragenic deletions of ABCB11, encoding a transporter implicated in anti-psychotic response, in five treatment-resistant SCZ cases and showed that ABCB11 is specifically enriched in neurons forming mesocortical and mesolimbic dopaminergic projections. Our results indicate potential roles of sCNVs in SCZ risk

Exploring Service and Experiential Learning as a Valuable Tool for Public Affairs Education

Paper presented at the Network of Schools of Public Policy, Affairs, and Administration (NASPAA) Annual Conferenc

Gender Disparity in Professional City Management: Enhancing Gender Visibility through Education

Paper presented at the American Political Science Association Teaching and Learning Conferenc