Has the Clean Air Interstate Rule Fulfilled Its Mission? An Assessment of Federal Rule‐Making in Preventing Regional Spillover Pollution

The Environmental Protection Agency developed the Clean Air Interstate Rule (CAIR) to minimize sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide emissions from power plants and prevent pollution spillover into downwind states. While observers of CAIR claim success in the reduction of air pollution, our innovative multivariate statistical analysis based on spatial and facility‐level panel data finds mixed results concerning the rule's effectiveness. On the one hand, we find that CAIR facilities are associated with increases in the reduction rate of pollution compared to non‐CAIR facilities. However, the evidence suggests that sulfur dioxide levels decreased in CAIR‐mandated facilities before the actual implementation of the program. Additionally, on the one hand, CAIR facilities in the interior of states are associated with slower pollution reduction rates than those on the border. However, this difference in reduction rate does not change dramatically before or after the adoption or implementation of this rule. This suggests that the CAIR program was ineffective in targeting specific facilities most likely to contribute to interstate pollution. We conclude that while CAIR spurred the electrical utility industry to reduce air pollution, some of these reductions occurred before the actual implementation of the program. More substantially, gains in interstate spillover pollution did not occur by targeting specific facilities most likely to spillover but rather through the overall reduction of air pollution in the eastern states.     

Orientalist Sociology and the Creation of Colonial Sexualities

In what Arjun Appadurai has dubbed the ‘colonial imaginary’ issues of femininity, and who possessed it, were of prime importance. An orientalizing sociology sought to distinguish, and indeed to fix, differences between metropolitan and indigenous women as a rhetoric of hierarchy which secured proper and western femininity to white women. One critical route which colonial commentators and authorities took to produce that knowledge was to measure women's proximity to the practice of prostitution, a means which permitted discussion and judgement of racialized sexualities as well as of proper models of feminine behaviour. This article will explore the ways in which the new sociology of the Victorian period, wielded in a colonial context, served to separate women through race-based ideas of sexual behaviour and sexual order. It will deal with British India in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.     

Talk is not cheap: Policy agendas,information processing,and the unusually proportional nature of European Central Bank communications policy responses

This article unveils the policy agenda of the European Central Bank (ECB) Governing Council as found in the speeches that Governing Council Members gave between 1999 and 2018. Using a dynamic topic‐modeling approached based on non‐negative matrix factorization, we demonstrate how the issues discussed by ECB Governing Council members have evolved over time, and how the general punctuation hypothesis (Jones, B. D. & Baumgartner, F. R. (2005). The politics of attention: How government prioritizes problems. University of Chicago Press) sheds light on what drives this process. We find that unlike policy outputs from many other policymaking systems, ECB communications evolve in a proportional manner. We attribute this finding to the information‐processing capacities of the bank. Our findings speak to the literatures on central bank communications, the evolution of policy agendas, and the application of topic models to speech texts.     

A Preliminary Forensic Entomological Study of Beetles (Coleoptera) in Interior Alaska,USA*

Forensic entomology uses knowledge of arthropod ecology to help solve crimes. There has been no published forensic entomological research in Alaska. We used one piglet carcass split in half to create two carcass plots in Fairbanks (~64.8°N, subarctic) that were sampled over a period of 59 days in 2019. Four pitfall traps were placed around each carcass, and four similarly arranged pitfall traps were placed 40 m distant as controls. Traps were emptied approximately weekly covering the first four stages of decomposition. We focused on adults of the larger-bodied (>9 mm) families and subfamilies of Coleoptera: Staphylinidae (subfamily Staphylininae), Carabidae, and Silphidae. A total of 621 specimens were collected and processed: 29 staphylinines, 210 carabids, and 382 silphids. A one-way ANOVA showed no significant difference between the mean numbers of staphylinines or carabids caught in carcass versus control traps. Silphids showed significantly greater mean number of beetles caught in carcass traps relative to control traps. Four species of Silphidae were documented, but contrary to similar studies, the vast majority of specimens belonged to two species of Nicrophorus (N. vespilloides Herbst and N. investigator Zetterstedt). Each of the three target taxa showed a peak in the number of specimens collected during the bloat stage of decomposition despite the carabid peak being driven by a phytophagous species.     

Bystander reaction to women fighting: developing a theory of intervention

This article explores accounts of bystanders to female-on-female public violence. Group interviews with participants in the night-time economy are carried out. Whereas men tend to respond to the discussion topic of female-on-female violence with laughter, this laughter reveals ambivalence and discomfort as much as amusement. Men seem to negotiate the tension between the expectation that they should intervene in emergencies and a catalogue of costs that attend intervention. Female bystanders appear to have a different set of concerns. They talk about feelings of shame at the interpersonal and the group level. Women cite the public spectacle, and the opportunity for men to demean or sexualize women, as reasons for intervention. The article concludes with some recommendations about the importance of exploring female violence in its own terms, beginning with a series of identified moral and social dilemmas incurred within possible third-party intervention.     

Expanding dependent coverage for young adults: lessons from state initiatives

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) requires that adults up to age twenty-six be permitted to enroll as dependents on their parents' health plans. This article examines the experiences of states that enacted dependent expansion laws. Drawing on public information from thirty-one enacting states and case studies of four diverse reform states, it derives lessons that are pertinent to the implementation of this ACA provision. Dependent coverage laws vary across the states, but most impose residency, marital status, and other restrictions. The federal Employee Retirement Income Security Act further limits the reach of state laws. Eligibility for expanded coverage under the ACA is much broader. Rules in some states requiring or allowing separate premiums for adult dependents may also discourage enrollment compared with rules in other states (and the ACA), where these costs must be factored into family premiums. Business opposition in some states led to more restrictive regulations, especially for how premiums are charged, which in turn raised greater implementation challenges. Case study states did not report substantial young adult dependent coverage take-up, but early enrollment experience under ACA appears to be more positive. Long-term questions remain about the implications of this policy for risk pooling and the distribution of premium costs.     

Validation of LAB color mode as a nondestructive method to differentiate black ballpoint pen inks

Nondestructive digital processing methods such as lab color mode (available in Adobe Photoshop) are emerging as alternative methods for forensic document examiners to use when attempting to differentiate writing instrument inks. Although these techniques appear to be viable, little data currently exists regarding the known or potential error rates associated with these techniques. Without adequate data, the validity and reliability of these techniques, including lab color, can not be established. In an attempt to begin to address these issues, 44 black ballpoint ink pens were obtained and used to create 990 pen-pair samples for analysis using established lab color mode techniques. No erroneous findings of "different" were reported following the examination of the known pen-pair combinations in which the same pen was used to create the samples (n = 44). Of the remaining 946 samples, 737 pen-pair samples were differentiated using the lab color mode method, while 209 samples were unable to be differentiated and were recorded as either being "similar" (n = 153) or "unsure" (n = 56). Comparison of the lab color mode results with the results obtained through additional testing using traditional infrared reflectance and infrared luminescence test methods showed that lab color differentiated 102 pen-pair samples (11%; 102/946) that were not differentiated using a VSC-4C.