If You Build It, Will They Come?: Fiscal Federalism, Local Provision of Public Tourist Amenities, and the Vision Iowa Fund

The philosophy of fiscal federalism presumes that local communities will under- or over-provide public amenities in the presence of externalities.� We test this hypothesis using data from Vision Iowa, a state program which provided partial funding to communities to build tourist attractions.� We find a 1% increase in investment increased county taxable retail sales 0.9%.� The State’s return, from program-induced sales tax revenue, averaged 9.2% annually.� Local communities’ returns averaged 0.9% and we find a significant increase in surrounding areas’ sales.� This suggests that without state subsidies, communities would undersupply public amenities aimed at attracting visitors.fiscal federalism; local public goods; subsidy; externality; spillover; amenity; retail sales

If You Build It, Will They Come?: Fiscal Federalism, Local Provision of Public Tourist Amenities, and the Vision Iowa Fund

Iowa provided partial state funding to communities to build tourist attractions, a potential solution to local under-provision of public goods. A 10 percent increase in state funds increased county taxable retail sales by 0.1 percent. The State’s return from resulting sales tax revenue averaged 11.8 percent. Local communities paid more and received less tax, and so their return was much smaller at 1.2 percent. Neighboring community sales also increased. The positive spillovers to neighbors and the state suggest that local communities will undersupply public amenities without state subsidies

If you build it, will they come?: fiscal federalism, local provision of public tourist amenities, and the Vision Iowa fund

The philosophy of fiscal federalism presumes that local communities will under- or over-provide public amenities in the presence of externalities. We test this hypothesis using data from Vision Iowa, a state program which provided partial funding to communities to build tourist attractions. We find a 1% increase in investment increased county taxable retail sales 0.9%. The State\u27s return, from program-induced sales tax revenue, averaged 9.2% annually. Local communities\u27 returns averaged 0.9% and we find a significant increase in surrounding areas\u27 sales. This suggests that without state subsidies, communities would undersupply public amenities aimed at attracting visitors

Interview expectancies: awareness of potential biases influences behaviour in interviewees

Expectancy effects are known to influence behaviour so that what is expected appears to be true. In this study, expectancy was induced using (fabricated) information about honesty and specific group membership. Targets were tested in a non-accusatory interview environment using neutral and information-gathering questions. It was hypothesized that those exposed to the negative information (the expectancy) would demonstrate behaviour consistent with an increased cognitive load, and evidence was found to support this prediction. Due to the investigative nature of the information-gathering questions, it was also expected that the targets exposed to the expectancy would exhibit more of these behaviours in the investigative portion of the interview. Some behaviour was found to support this prediction (i.e. shorter responses and increased speech disturbances); however, indicators of performance altering load were not observed during this phase of the interview. These findings support the hypothesis that expectancy effects can noticeably alter interviewee behaviour

Analyzing networks of phenotypes in complex diseases: methodology and applications in COPD

Background: The investigation of complex disease heterogeneity has been challenging. Here, we introduce a network-based approach, using partial correlations, that analyzes the relationships among multiple disease-related phenotypes. Results: We applied this method to two large, well-characterized studies of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). We also examined the associations between these COPD phenotypic networks and other factors, including case-control status, disease severity, and genetic variants. Using these phenotypic networks, we have detected novel relationships between phenotypes that would not have been observed using traditional epidemiological approaches. Conclusion: Phenotypic network analysis of complex diseases could provide novel insights into disease susceptibility, disease severity, and genetic mechanisms

attract: A Method for Identifying Core Pathways That Define Cellular Phenotypes

attract is a knowledge-driven analytical approach for identifying and annotating the gene-sets that best discriminate between cell phenotypes. attract finds distinguishing patterns within pathways, decomposes pathways into meta-genes representative of these patterns, and then generates synexpression groups of highly correlated genes from the entire transcriptome dataset. attract can be applied to a wide range of biological systems and is freely available as a Bioconductor package and has been incorporated into the MeV software system

Uncovering memory-related gene expression in contextual fear conditioning using ribosome profiling

Contextual fear conditioning (CFC) in rodents is the most widely used behavioural paradigm in neuroscience research to elucidate the neurobiological mechanisms underlying learning and memory. It is based on the pairing of an aversive unconditioned stimulus (US; e.g. mild footshock) with a neutral conditioned stimulus (CS; e.g. context of the test chamber) in order to acquire associative long-term memory (LTM), which persists for days and even months. Using genome-wide analysis, several studies have generated lists of genes modulated in response to CFC in an attempt to identify the "memory genes", which orchestrate memory formation. Yet, most studies use naïve animals as a baseline for assessing gene-expression changes, while only few studies have examined the effect of the US alone, without pairing to context, using genome-wide analysis of gene-expression. Herein, using the ribosome profiling methodology, we show that in male mice an immediate shock, which does not lead to LTM formation, elicits pervasive translational and transcriptional changes in the expression of Immediate Early Genes (IEGs) in dorsal hippocampus (such as Fos and Arc), a fact which has been disregarded by the majority of CFC studies. By removing the effect of the immediate shock, we identify and validate a new set of genes, which are translationally and transcriptionally responsive to the association of context-to-footshock in CFC, and thus constitute salient "memory genes"

Computational cancer biology: education is a natural key to many locks

BACKGROUND: Oncology is a field that profits tremendously from the genomic data generated by high-throughput technologies, including next-generation sequencing. However, in order to exploit, integrate, visualize and interpret such high-dimensional data efficiently, non-trivial computational and statistical analysis methods are required that need to be developed in a problem-directed manner. DISCUSSION: For this reason, computational cancer biology aims to fill this gap. Unfortunately, computational cancer biology is not yet fully recognized as a coequal field in oncology, leading to a delay in its maturation and, as an immediate consequence, an under-exploration of high-throughput data for translational research. SUMMARY: Here we argue that this imbalance, favoring ’wet lab-based activities’, will be naturally rectified over time, if the next generation of scientists receives an academic education that provides a fair and competent introduction to computational biology and its manifold capabilities. Furthermore, we discuss a number of local educational provisions that can be implemented on university level to help in facilitating the process of harmonization