Technical Management in an Age of Openness: The Political,Public, and Environmental Forest Ranger

Modern bureaucracy faces trade‐offs between public and congressional input and agency expertise. The U.S. Forest Service offers an opportunity to quantitatively analyze whether an agency that is required to be more open to the public and congressional input will be forced to ignore its technical expertise in managing resources. This study uses data on 83,000 hazardous fuels reduction activities conducted by the Forest Service from 2001 to 2011. Although the results show that managers are responsive to public and congressional considerations, this has not prevented them from utilizing their technical knowledge to restore lands most deviated from natural conditions. This suggests that managers can balance responsiveness to public and political principals with technically sound management.     

Structural and legal implications of e-health

Web and attendant e-Commerce phenomena are irretrievably at odds with the traditional structure and hence legal regulation of health delivery. E-Health delivers healthcare information, diagnosis, treatment, care, and prescribing of drugs in a nonlinear, nonhierarchical manner that encourages patients to "enter" the system at an infinite number of points, thus defying current regulatory constructs. Similarly, e-Commerce fundamentals such as disintermediation and disaggregation result in medical information being delivered through unfamiliar channels, creating immensely difficult questions for health lawyers.     

Citizen-Centered Collaborative Public Management

Civic engagement and collaborative public management are concepts that are defined broadly, making theoretical explication challenging and practical application of empirical research difficult. In this article, the authors adopt definitions of civic engagement and collaborative public management that are centered on the citizen and the potential for active citizenship. Following a historical review of civic engagement in the United States, a conceptual model of five approaches to civic engagement is offered. Citizen-centered collaborative public management is enhanced through these approaches. The authors suggest the need for further empirical research on collaborative public management that is grounded in citizenship action.     

Extraction and analysis of human nuclear and mitochondrial DNA from electron beam irradiated envelopes

The United States Postal Service is considering methods such as electron beam irradiation to neutralize biological agents sent through the mail. While this is proven to reduce/eliminate pathogenic organisms, it may also degrade human genomic DNA and therefore hinder the ability to garner forensically informative genetic profiles. To determine the effects of electron beam irradiation on DNA typing, 16 white, standard letter-sized envelopes were licked. Half of the envelopes served as nonirradiated controls while the other half underwent irradiation at dosages sufficient to kill anthrax spores (29.3 and 51.6 kGy). Total cellular DNA was extracted from all envelopes; nuclear short tandem repeat loci, as well as the hypervariable region I from mitochondrial DNA, were amplified by means of the polymerase chain reaction. Short tandem repeat profiles and mitochondrial DNA sequence haplotypes were acquired on an ABI Prism 310 Genetic Analyzer platform. Analysis of data from irradiated samples revealed evidence of DNA degradation; however, the ability to construct full genetic profiles from both nuclear and mitochondrial DNA remained largely unaffected. The use of the polymerase chain reaction, coupled with florescent fragment analysis and mitochondrial DNA sequencing, should be considered to profile biological material from evidence enduring irradiation to inactivate infectious agents.     

The politics and economics of revenue growth: A cross-national analysis

Abstract Despite considerable interest in comparative fiscal policy in general, and the high salience of tax policy and tax reform in the industrialized democracies, there are relatively few cross–national studies of the economic and political correlates of revenues over time. We undertake a cross–national time series study of revenue growth in fourteen OECD countries between 1958 and 1990.We test a number of political and economic hypotheses about revenue change, including political business cycle, 'fiscal illusion', elasticity, and ideological theories. For the 1958—1990 period, we find that all countries, regardless of revenue structure, experience higher real revenue growth as a result of inflation, but that revenue growth is more responsive to unemployment in countries that rely more on direct taxes compared to countries with less direct–tax reliance. We find that this effect is most pronounced in the post–1972 period. We also find that revenue tends to increase in the years following elections, consistent with the idea that governments try to minimize the political fallout from tax increases by separating them as much as possible from election campaign periods; this effect, too, is most pronounced in the post–1972 period. We find no support for 'fiscal illusion' and ideological theories of revenue growth.