Pandemic Disease: A Past and Future Challenge to Governance in the United States

Throughout history, pandemics have posed significant challenges to governments. Examination of the ways that governments have responded to pandemics can contribute to the U.S. government's ability to react in the future. We utilize past cases of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) and multiple forms of influenza to identify specific challenges governments have faced. Based on that knowledge, we discuss the major issues that the United States will have to address in the event of a future pandemic.     

Does appealability foster more citizen-friendly decisions at the street level?

Unbiased conduct is an essential part of the social contract between the state and its citizens. Yet, when tasked with settling disputes between citizens and other state officials, are public administrators truly impartial in their resolutions? Such a question is vital for street-level bureaucrats whom the public perceives as the face of governance. This study investigates the relations between the pro-citizen tendencies in street-level bureaucrats' resolutions, their internal appealability, and the discretionary space under which they are made. Using quantitative analysis of real-world lower-court rulings in Israeli tax disputes between 1980 and 2021, the research findings indicate that unregulated expansion of street-level bureaucrats' discretionary space relates to favoring the state's arguments in their resolutions and may impair procedural fairness. The findings also imply that regulation promoting citizens' right to appeal such resolutions within their agency, can increase street-level bureaucrats' pro-citizen tendencies and potentially counteract such outcomes.     

Dual fingerprint reagents with enhanced sensitivity: 5-methoxy- and 5-methylthioninhydrin

"Dual fingerprint reagents" are chemical formulations which produce with latent fingerprints in a single step, impressions that are both colored and fluorescent. Pre-mixed solutions of the two commercially available ninhydrin analogues, 5-methoxyninhydrin (MN) and 5-methylthioninhydrin (MTN) with zinc or cadmium salts, are true dual reagents. They are much more sensitive than the parent dual reagent, ninhydrin/ZnCl(2). The main advantage of the new formulations is that they can be used at room temperature, with no need to cool the sample to liquid nitrogen temperature. At 0.05% concentration, which is 10-fold lower than the common ninhydrin working solution, MTN/ZnCl(2) is as sensitive as DFO in the fluorescence mode and considerably more sensitive in the color mode. MTN is also slightly cheaper than DFO.     

Role of budget impact in drug reimbursement decisions

There are three known criteria that underlie drug reimbursement decisions: therapeutic value, cost-effectiveness, and burden of disease. However, evidence from recent reimbursement decisions in several jurisdictions points to residual, unexplained variables, among which is budget impact. Budget impact refers to the total costs that drug reimbursement and use entail with respect to one part of the health care system, pharmaceutical care, or to the entire health care system, taking into account the possible reallocation of resources across budgets or sectors of the health care system. The economic and equity rationale for carrying out budget impact analyses is opportunity cost, or benefits forgone, measured in terms of utility or equitable distribution, by using resources in one way rather than another. In other words, by choosing to draw down the budget in one way, decision makers forgo other opportunities to use the same resources. Under a set of unrealistic assumptions, cost-effectiveness analysis accounts for opportunity cost while conveying to the decision maker the price of maximizing health gains, subject to a budget or resource constraint. However, the underlying assumptions are implausible, particularly in the context of pharmaceutical care. Moreover, budget impact analysis is more useful to the decision maker than cost-effectiveness analysis if the objective is not to maximize health gains subject to a budget or resource constraint, but to reduce variance in health gains. With respect to equitable distribution, budget impact analyses lay bare the individuals or groups who lose out - those who bear the opportunity cost of spending resources in accordance with one decision rule rather than another.     

Recent human sexual dimorphism study using cephalometric plots on lateral teleradiography and discriminant function analysis

Abstract:  The examination of skull sexual dimorphism has been the subject of numerous morphologic and craniometric studies, but the disadvantage of these studies is that they are dependent on the experience of the operator and involve subjectivity. In 1996, a team from Taiwan refined the methods enabling the sex of an individual to be determined using cephalometric plots made from lateral teleradiography. To validate their work using a European population, 114 dry skulls (59 men and 55 women) were examined. Cephalometric plots were made on lateral teleradiography with an orthodontic software and 18 cephalometric variables were analyzed. Sex was determined with 95.6% accuracy using the 18 variables discriminant function. A subset of eight variables was selected and could predict sex with the same accuracy. In conclusion, it can be said that skull-sexing methods using lateral teleradiography seem always suitable but the most indicative variables could differ relative to the ethnic population concerned.     

The dynamics of party voting in congress, 1955–78: A cohort model

This paper discusses the individual dynamics of Congressional party voting in terms of a cohort model. Like previous studies, which have used a different terminology (Asher and Weisberg, 1978), stability and replacement are major factors. Smaller, yet significant conversions were also found in regard to the impact of the seniority system and the committee system in allowing independence from the parties. Lastly, major period effects were also revealed. While period effects are more a chance occurrence than conversion associated with accumulating seniority, they may prove significant in understanding the dynamics of congressional voting as stability processes pick up and structure the period effects. In other words, the effects of period disturbances may persist long after the period has ended, as stabilizing processes capture the period changes and make these period changes a part of the congress's future.