Repairing the safety net: Is the EITC the right patch?

Using data from the Michigan Panel Study of Income Dynamics, this article estimates the impact of the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) on economic risk. Risk is measured through the variance of full income (income holding labor supply constant). The results show that the EITC significantly reduces economic risk, but its effects are weaker dollar for dollar than traditional means-tested programs like Food Stamps. The difference is not statistically significant, however. Moreover, for many middle-class people, the risk-reduction benefits of the EITC exceed the tax burden it imposes. This is less true of means-tested transfers. These results are significant for the politics of antipoverty policy. They show that a real-world antipoverty program can generate enough middle-class economic security to build for itself a solid base of political support.     

Detracking America's schools: Equity at zero cost?

Schools across the country are ending the practice of grouping students based on ability, in part, because of research indicating that tracking hurts low-ability students without helping students of other ability levels. Using a nationally representative survey conducted by the National Center for Education Statistics, (NCES) we reexamine the impact of tracking on high school student achievement through the estimation of a standard education production function. This approach allows us to control for the possibility that track is correlated with factors such as class size and teacher education. In addition, we address the possibility that there are unobserved student or school characteristics that affect both achievement and track placement. Our results indicate that abolishing tracking in America's schools would have a large positive impact on achievement for students currently in the lower tracks, but that this increase in achievement would come at the expense of students in upper-track classes.     

Motivations for Social Media Use: Associations with Social Media Engagement and Body Satisfaction and Well-Being among Adolescents

Journal of Youth and Adolescence - Adolescents are spending considerable time on social media, yet it is unclear whether motivations for social media use drive different forms of social media...     

A New Scramble for African Oil? Historical, Political, and Business Perspectives

It has been suggested that Africa is experiencing a ‘NewScramble’ thanks primarily to its oil and gas wealth,with the United States and the People’s Republic of Chinaactively competing for access to Africa’s resources. Thisarticle aims to scrutinize the claim that Africa is facing aNew Scramble, analysing the nature of the economic and politicalchanges at work, the importance of Africa’s oil, and thepolitical and economic forces behind the new oil rush. The articlestarts with an overview of the phenomenon labelled by some asthe ‘New Scramble’. The main body of the articleevaluates the existence of a New Scramble from three subjectperspectives: history, international relations, and businessstudies. Finally, by analysing the likely impact on the economiesof oil-producing states, it considers whether we should dismayor rejoice over the ‘New Scramble for Africa’. Itconcludes that the existence of a New Scramble or a US–Chineserace for Africa should be treated with some caution and thatthe use of terms such as ‘scramble’ and ‘race’is perhaps misleading, while the economic impact of oil investmentsis likely to be bleak.     

Mobilizing from the Margins: Domestic Citizen Politics and Yasukuni Shrine

Prime Minister Koizumi’s six consecutive annual visits to Yasukuni shrine played a key role in initiating a new phase of domestic citizen political mobilization not seen since the early 1970s. This paper is based on field research during the Koizumi years (2001–2006) centering on domestic groups that conduct activities in “protection” of or “opposition” to Yasukuni shrine. As a study of street-based politics, this paper seeks to uncover the processes, strategies, and outcomes of citizen responses to elite political action at Yasukuni Shrine as well as explore meaning of their actions within the context of Japan’s democratic polity.

高等教育创新的新机遇

人口结构的变化、科学技术的变革以及经济全球化,都对高等教育产生了很大影响,提供了很多新的机遇。这些机遇不仅可以提高我们的效率,同时也可以带来新的创造知识和传播知识的方式方法。     

Parent–Adolescent Conflict across Adolescence: Trajectories of Informant Discrepancies and Associations with Personality Types

Journal of Youth and Adolescence - Parent–adolescent conflict can be intense, yet parents and adolescents do not always agree on the intensity of conflict. Conflict intensity tends to change...     

Evaluating Bioinformatic Pipeline Performance for Forensic Microbiome Analysis*,†,‡

Microbial communities have potential evidential utility for forensic applications. However, bioinformatic analysis of high-throughput sequencing data varies widely among laboratories. These differences can potentially affect microbial community composition and downstream analyses. To illustrate the importance of standardizing methodology, we compared analyses of postmortem microbiome samples using several bioinformatic pipelines, varying minimum library size or minimum number of sequences per sample, and sample size. Using the same input sequence data, we found that three open-source bioinformatic pipelines, MG-RAST, mothur, and QIIME2, had significant differences in relative abundance, alpha-diversity, and beta-diversity, despite the same input data. Increasing minimum library size and sample size increased the number of low-abundant and infrequent taxa detected. Our results show that bioinformatic pipeline and parameter choice affect results in important ways. Given the growing potential application of forensic microbiology to the criminal justice system, continued research on standardizing computational methodology will be important for downstream applications.     

Further Pseudo-Operational Trials with the Lumicyano Double- and Co-Fuming Process for the Detection of Latent Fingermarks

This study presents a number of pseudo-operational trials on plastic bags investigating the double- and co-fuming process of a one-step fluorescent cyanoacrylate (Lumicyano^TM) in comparisons with the two-step process with basic yellow 40 (BY40) staining for the detection of latent fingermarks. The results demonstrate that both Lumicyano solution and dye contribute to the increased detection of latent fingermarks during the double-fuming process (trial 1). Co-fuming the Lumicyano solution and dye separately (at a concentration of 8%) but simultaneously was less effective than 8% Lumicyano (trial 2). Co-fuming Lumicyano 8% and an additional 8% Lumicyano dye by weight was more effective than Lumicyano 8% (trial 3), possibly due to increased fluorescent material deposition during co-fuming allowing for better visualization. The use of BY40 after Lumicyano resulted in a considerable increase in detected fingermarks.