JOINT PUBLIC VENTURES COST ALLOCATION: ALTERNATIVE AND CONSEQUENCES

An in depth discussion of the nature, structure and financing of intergovernmental arrangements in the production of public services. Includes economic justification, methods of allocating costs and examples of joint ventures.Public Economics,

SUMMARY OF CONDITIONAL LAND TRANSFER AGREEMENTS

Brief history of P.A. 425 of 1984, discussion of contract provisions, tabular summaries of agreements filed since 1985 and analysis of emerging issues.Land Economics/Use,

BUYING AND SELLING FIRE PROTECTION

Detailed examination of how and why townships and municipalities buy and sell fire services. Includes outline of various pricing methods.Risk and Uncertainty,

ROLE OF COUNTY COMMISSIONERS: POLICY MAKING V. ADMINISTRATION AND SERVING ON STATUTORY BOARDS AND COMMISSIONS

Defines the responsibilities of county commissioners and discusses roles as policy makers versus administrators.Public Economics,

LIVINGSTON COUNTY EMERGENCY SERVICES ANALYSIS

Rapid population growth challenges the ability of local government to keep pace with increasing and changing demand for public services. These challenges may be physical or organizational in nature. Physical challenges arise from the need to upgrade public infrastructure such as water and sewer service, roads, schools, and emergency services. Although installation of new infrastructure is always expensive, growth-related increases in the tax base provide new revenue for installation of new services. However, when slowing growth rates, againg infrastructure, and addition of expensive new services pressure local government to increase revenue from existing resources decision-makers may then seek to reduce per-capita costs by reorganizing the method or structure of providing community services.Public Economics,

Office of Regulatory Affairs Strategies for Building an Integrated National Laboratory Network for Food and Feed

An interconnected network of accredited federal, state, local, tribal, and territorial laboratories is critical to ensuring the safety of the U.S. food supply and the development of the Integrated Food Safety System (IFSS). In 2004, as part of a national policy to defend the U.S. food supply against terrorist attacks, major disasters, and other emergencies, the Food Emergency Response Network (FERN) was created to integrate the nation’s multilevel (i.e., federal, state, local, tribal, territorial) food-testing laboratories to detect, identify, respond to, and recover from a bioterrorism act affecting the safety of the food supply, or a public health emergency/outbreak involving the food supply. Since 2004, federal agencies have invested an estimated $200 million in FERN. The majority of this investment has been in the FERN cooperative agreements with FDA and USDA-FSIS investing$95.8 million and $69 million, respectively. FDA has promoted the accreditation of state laboratories through cooperative agreement funding, investing more than$50 million to fund these grants. On November 11, 2014, the Office of Regulatory Affairs (ORA) requested that the FDA Science Board establish a subcommittee to evaluate current investments in: (1) the FERN cooperative agreement funding program (CAP), and (2) funding for state laboratories to achieve International Organization for Standardization (ISO) accreditation. The goal was to ascertain how ORA can advance and establish an effective integrated laboratory network among ORA, FDA Center, and state public health and food- and feed-testing laboratories. In response to this request, the Science Board created the ORA FERN Cooperative Agreement Evaluation Subcommittee on July 1, 2015. This report summarizes the results of the Subcommittee’s review

Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation and Aphasia Treatment: A Pilot Study of Anodal, Cathodal and Sham Stimulation

Transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) may potentially enhance language therapy outcomes in aphasia. We report behavioral results for twelve participants with chronic aphasia matched for severity and randomized to receive anodal, cathodal or sham stimulation to the left hemisphere, concurrent with intensive speech-language therapy. Importantly, tDCS (1mA for 13 minutes) given 5 days a week over a prolonged period of time (6 weeks) was found to be safe. There was an advantage of both anodal and cathodal stimulation over sham stimulation. Cathodal stimulation to the left hemisphere may be a viable option and should not be overlooked in future research

Lidar Observations of Stratospheric Gravity Waves From 2011 to 2015 at McMurdo (77.84°S, 166.69°E), Antarctica: 2. Potential Energy Densities, Lognormal Distributions, and Seasonal Variations

Five years of Fe Boltzmann lidar's Rayleigh temperature data from 2011 to 2015 at McMurdo are used to characterize gravity wave potential energy mass density (Epm), potential energy volume density (Epv), vertical wave number spectra, and static stability N² in the stratosphere 30–50 km. Epm (Epv) profiles increase (decrease) with altitude, and the scale heights of Epv indicate stronger wave dissipation in winter than in summer. Altitude mean (Formula presented.) and (Formula presented.) obey lognormal distributions and possess narrowly clustered small values in summer but widely spread large values in winter. (Formula presented.) and (Formula presented.) vary significantly from observation to observation but exhibit repeated seasonal patterns with summer minima and winter maxima. The winter maxima in 2012 and 2015 are higher than in other years, indicating interannual variations. Altitude mean (Formula presented.) varies by ~30–40% from the midwinter maxima to minima around October and exhibits a nearly bimodal distribution. Monthly mean vertical wave number power spectral density for vertical wavelengths of 5–20 km increases from summer to winter. Using Modern Era Retrospective Analysis for Research and Applications version 2 data, we find that large values of (Formula presented.) during wintertime occur when McMurdo is well inside the polar vortex. Monthly mean (Formula presented.) are anticorrelated with wind rotation angles but positively correlated with wind speeds at 3 and 30 km. Corresponding correlation coefficients are −0.62, +0.87, and +0.80, respectively. Results indicate that the summer-winter asymmetry of (Formula presented.) is mainly caused by critical level filtering that dissipates most gravity waves in summer. (Formula presented.) variations in winter are mainly due to variations of gravity wave generation in the troposphere and stratosphere and Doppler shifting by the mean stratospheric winds

The First Phylogenetic Analysis of Palpigradi (Arachnida)—The Most Enigmatic Arthropod Order

Palpigradi are a poorly understood group of delicate arachnids, often found in caves or other subterranean habitats. Concomitantly, they have been neglected from a phylogenetic point of view. Here we present the first molecular phylogeny of palpigrades based on specimens collected in different subterranean habitats, both endogean (soil) and hypogean (caves), from Australia, Africa, Europe, South America and North America. Analyses of two nuclear ribosomal genes and COI under an array of methods and homology schemes found monophyly of Palpigradi, Eukoeneniidae, and a division of Eukoeneniidae into four main clades, three of which include samples from multiple continents. This supports either ancient vicariance or long-range dispersal, two alternatives we cannot distinguish with the data at hand. In addition, we show that our results are robust to homology scheme and analytical method, encouraging further use of the markers employed in this study to continue drawing a broader picture of palpigrade relationships.Organismic and Evolutionary Biolog