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Cleft palate surgery has traditionally presented numerous problems for cleft surgeons including ergonomics, limited visual fields restricting the opportunity for demonstration and teaching. Additionally, the move toward online teaching means the ability to record or livestream video is paramount. The following report of eight cleft palate repairs highlights the novel use of the Vitom 3D® microvideoscope as an innovative technique for cleft palate repair with our early experience demonstrating significant ergonomic and teaching benefits.

How public participation shapes effective and equitable service outcomes has been extensively discussed but rarely tested in the public administration literature. This article examines how parent participation in schools affects overall student performance and whether socially marginalized students benefit more or less when schools involve greater participation. Using a 63-country cross-national educational dataset, we show that parent involvement in school activities is not significantly related to overall student performance, but such efforts reduce the performance gap between immigrant and native-born students. This finding suggests that direct participation can reduce social disparities in program outcomes.

Public managers and employees should be on the same page for successful performance. Managers’ self-evaluations of their own management, however, often do not match employees’ evaluations. Despite the consistent findings of a discrepancy between managers’ and employees’ perceptions of management, little research has examined how this perceptual incongruence affects employee job satisfaction. The present study addresses this question using parallel surveys from both managers and employees in the context of public education. The findings suggest managers overestimate their management effectiveness in general. As the perceptual gap between managers and employees increases, employees are less likely to be satisfied with their organization and their profession. We also find that this relationship is nonlinear, and the negative effects of incongruence could be accelerated when employees have considerable consensus about management. This study highlights the role of perceptual congruence in creating a better work environment and promoting job satisfaction for public employees.

The interaction between leaders and employees plays a key role in determining organizational outcomes and performance. Although the human resources management literature posits positive effects of leadership behaviors on employee job satisfaction, the causal path between the two is unclear due to potential endogeneity issues inherent in this relationship. To address the issue, we first provide theoretical explanations about why and how transformational and transactional leadership behaviors would enhance employee job satisfaction. Second, we test the relationship between leadership behaviors and employee job satisfaction using panel data from a year-long randomized field experiment that engaged leaders and employees from hundreds of public and private organizations in Denmark. Primary findings suggest that although leadership training does not have direct effects on changes in employee job satisfaction, leadership-training-induced changes in leadership behaviors (transformational leadership and verbal rewards) are positively related to changes in job satisfaction.

Background: Pump-treated patients with type 1 diabetes have widely differing basal insulin infusion profiles. We analyzed consequences of such heterogeneity for glycemic control under fasting conditions. Methods: Data from 339 adult patients with type 1 diabetes on insulin pump therapy undergoing a 24-hour fast (basal rate test) were retrospectively analyzed. Hourly programmed basal insulin infusion rates and plasma glucose concentrations as well as their proportions within, below, or above arbitrarily defined target ranges were assessed for specific periods of the day (eg, 1-7 hours, “dawn” period, 16-19 hours, “dusk” period, reference period 20-1 hours/10-14 hours), by tertiles of a predefined “dawn” index (mean basal insulin infusion rate during the “dawn” divided by the reference periods). Results: The “dawn” index varied interindividually from 0.7 to 4.4. Basal insulin infusion profiles exhibited substantial differences ( P = .011), especially overnight. Despite higher insulin infusion rates at 4 and 6.45 hours, patients with the most pronounced “dawn” phenomenon exhibited higher plasma glucose concentrations at those time points ( P < .012). Patients with a marked “dawn” phenomenon exhibited a lower probability for low (7.2 mmol/L) during the dawn period (all P values Conclusions: We observe substantial interindividual heterogeneity in the “dawn” phenomenon. However, widely different empirically derived basal insulin infusion profiles appear appropriate for individual patients, as indicated by similar plasma glucose concentrations, mainly in the target range, during a 24-hour fasting period.

Public administration research has produced a large literature on the determinants, consequences, and complexities of goal clarity and ambiguity. This article contributes to this line of work by examining how perceived goal ambiguity and goal multiplicity condition the effect of top administrators’ management on performance. In the context of U.S. nursing homes, we find that the positive effect of management on service quality tends to decrease when administrators report facing high levels of goal ambiguity and pursue numerous priorities that they consider important. This study improves our understanding of the complex mechanisms through which managerial strategies influence organizational outcomes.

Background: Twenty-four hour fasting periods are being used to scrutinize basal insulin infusion rates for pump-treated patients with type 1 diabetes. Methods: Data from 339 consecutive in-patients with adult type 1 diabetes on insulin pump therapy undergoing a 24-hour fast as a basal rate test were retrospectively analyzed. Hourly programmed basal insulin infusion rates and plasma glucose concentrations within, below, or above arbitrarily defined target ranges were assessed for periods of the day of special interest (eg, 01:00-07:00 am, “dawn” period, 04:00-07:00 pm, and “dusk” period). Statistics: χ2-tests, paired t-tests were used. Results: Basal rates (mean: 0.90 ± 0.02 IU/h) showed circadian variations with peaks corresponding to “dawn” (1.07 ± 0.02 IU/h from 01:00 to 07:00 am) and, less prominently, “dusk” (0.95 ± 0.02 IU/h from 03:00 to 07:00 pm). Individual mean plasma glucose concentrations averaged 6.6 ± 0.1 mmol/L, with 53.1% in the predefined “strict” (4.4-7.2 mmol/L) target range. Interestingly, during the “dawn” period, plasma glucose was significantly higher (by 0.5 ± 0.1 mmol/L [95% confidence interval: 0.3-0.8 mmol/L; P < .0001]) and the odds ratio for hypoglycemia was significantly lower compared to the reference period. Interpretation: Twenty-four hour fasting periods as basal rate tests frequently unravel periods with inappropriate basal insulin infusion rates potentially responsible for fasting hyper- or hypoglycemia. Notably, the higher basal insulin infusion rate found during the “dawn” period seems to be justified and may need to be accentuated.

Bureaucratic reforms worldwide seek to improve the quality of governance. In this article, we argue that the major governance failures are political, not bureaucratic, and the first step to better governance is to recognize the underlying political causes. Using illustrations from throughout the world, we contend that political institutions fail to provide clear policy goals, rarely allocate adequate resources to deal with the scope of the problems, and do not allow the bureaucracy sufficient autonomy in implementation. Rational bureaucratic responses to these problems, in turn, create additional governance problems that could have been avoided if political institutions perform their primary functions.

Fundamental to democratic societies, citizen participation is an important tool for promoting active, informed, and empowered citizenry as well as responsive and accountable administration. Past literature on citizen participation has focused on its determinants, forms, and prevalence. This study examines the relationship between a specific form of citizen participation—client participation—and organizational performance. We use hybrid data on U.S. nursing homes that combine a survey of nursing home administrators’ managerial practices with federal performance appraisal data. Our empirical findings suggest that more intense levels of client participation, such as the use of clients’ feedback in decision-making, are positively associated with performance: They increase the overall five-star ratings and lower health deficiencies. In contrast, less intense client participation efforts, such as merely communicating with client/family groups, are not significantly related to performance. This study highlights the role of participation intensity, suggesting that public administrators should not only go beyond informing and listening to their stakeholders, but also take steps to use the obtained feedback in organizational decision-making.

The increased outsourcing of national security endeavors to private military companies (PMCs) raises questions concerning public evaluations of their performance and the extent to which government officials are held accountable. We use a survey experiment to test public blame attribution associated with a failed military operation that was conducted by either regular or private military personnel. Our findings suggest that there are multiple mediating pathways in the process of attributing blame in foreign policy. Furthermore, our findings suggest that contracting out military functions to a PMC can damage perceptions of performance, perhaps increasing blame attribution by the public. These impacts on the attribution of blame suggest that PMCs are viewed as inferior service providers by the mass public and politicians will be held accountable, directly or indirectly. Implications from our study add to the discussion on the outsourcing of military capacities which are rapidly expanding in the Western world.

Background: Basal rate profiles in patients with type 1 diabetes on insulin pump therapy are subject to enormous inter-individual heterogeneity. Tools to predict basal rates based on clinical characteristics may facilitate insulin pump therapy. Methods: Data from 339 consecutive in-patients with adult type 1 diabetes on insulin pump therapy were collected. Basal rate tests were performed over 24 hours. A mathematical algorithm to predict individual basal rate profiles was generated by relating the individual insulin demand to selected clinical characteristics in an exploratory cohort of 170 patients. The predicted insulin pump profiles were validated in a confirmatory cohort of 169 patients. Findings: Basal rates (0.27 ± 0.01 IU.d−1.kg−1) showed circadian variations with peaks corresponding to the “dawn” and “dusk” phenomena. Age, gender, duration of pump treatment, body-mass-index, HbA1c, and triacylglycerol concentrations largely predicted the individual basal insulin demand per day (IU/d; exploratory vs prospective cohorts: r2 = 0.518, P Interpretation: Clinical characteristics predict 52% of the variation in individual basal rate profiles, including their diurnal fluctuations. The multivariate regression model can be used to initiate or optimize insulin pump treatment in patients with type 1 diabetes.

This paper focuses on evaluating, in a structured manner, the potential benefits, along with the implementation and performance issues, of utilizing dedicated short range communication-based communication in conjunction with adaptive cruise control (ACC) systems. This work was done in the United States under a cooperative agreement between the Crash Avoidance Metrics Partners LLC and the Federal Highway Administration. Designing cooperative adaptive cruise control (CACC) as an extension of ACC, and by using a combination of a comprehensive simulation framework and test vehicles, benefits of vehicular communication on string stability were established, and the performance of the novel CACC-enabling software modules were validated. Another key contribution of this work is the consideration of vehicles with different dynamic responses as a part of a single string. Four light-duty vehicles (hatchback, mid- and full-size sedans, large SUV), each from a different automotive original equipment manufacturer, were retrofitted with common ACC and vehicular communication systems. They were tested under many different conditions to obtain performance data (such as radar sensor readings, etc.) when operating in a vehicle string. These data were then integrated into the simulation environment to develop and validate the CACC modules. The paper concludes with a recommendation of some data elements for over-the-air messages to enable CACC functionality.

Attention has been given to the notion that organizational leaders’ expressed confidence and optimism\ud regarding their organizations’ performance can affect that performance by increasing the motivation and/or selfefficacy\ud of subordinates. This idea, a part of various leadership theories, we call “isopraxis leadership.” This paper\ud examines the logic of the claim, reviews and critiques extant evidence, develops a measure of leader confidence\ud (the starting point for isopraxis leadership), undertakes initial validation of the measure, and then tests for the link\ud between leader confidence and performance among several hundred public organizations. Leader confidence is\ud found to be largely unrelated to performance; some evidence indicates that it can help only for those organizations\ud that are already doing well or have more resources than average – that is, where it is least needed.

This article explores two questions related to whether passive representation leads to active representation using Brazilian municipal data: Does electing women to public office increase the proportion of women in public administration? Does the representation of women in elected office and public administration lead to better representation of women’s interests? Results suggest that women elected leaders increase the probability that women will be appointed to head public agencies, and through these agency heads they indirectly affect representation in other administrative positions. In addition, women elected officials and public administrators are also associated with the adoption of more women-friendly policies.

The Texas A&M Transportation Institute's Urban Mobility Report (UMR) is acknowledged to be the most authoritative source of information about traffic congestion and its possible solutions. As policy makers from the local to national levels devise strategies to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, the level of interest in the environmental impact of urban congestion has increased. To this end, the researchers developed and applied a methodology to determine carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions caused by congestion for inclusion in the UMR. The methodology also estimated fuel consumption on the basis of the CO2 emissions estimates. The researchers developed a five-step methodology with data from three primary data sources: (a) FHWA's Highway Performance Monitoring System, (b) INRIX traffic speed data, and (c) the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Motor Vehicle Emissions Simulator model. Results were intuitive and reasonable when emission rates (pounds of CO2 per mile) were compared with the emissions inventories in selected cities. The researchers incorporated the new methodology for all urban areas into the 2012 UMR and plan to include the same measures in future releases of the report. The researchers reported that, in 2011, 56 billion pounds of additional CO2 were produced in all 498 urban areas during congestion only; this amount equated to 2.9 billion gallons of wasted fuel. The amount of CO2 produced under free-flow conditions (i.e., absent congestion) was 1.8 trillion pounds in 2011 in all 498 urban areas.

Summary High prevalence of chlamydia in the USA persists despite efforts to annually screen women under the age of 26. Tailoring sexually transmitted infection (STI) services to client preferences may strengthen existing programmes. We report women's preferences for STI services from a family planning clinic in New York City serving low-income women. Seventy-eight percent (995/1275) of eligible women participated, with a mean age of 26 (SD±7). Ninety-one percent self-identified as Latina. Nineteen percent reported a past STI. Women preferred self-collection (65%) for testing to a speculum exam (20%); 15% had no preference. Women with a previous STI were more likely to prefer a pelvic exam to women with no previous STI (50% versus 32%, P < 0.01). Nearly all women (94%) preferred informing a sex partner about a positive STI test themselves, but 88% were willing to bring expedited partner therapy to a partner. Women were more likely to prefer third party partner notification if their last partner was casual rather than a main partner (14% versus 3%, respectively, P < 0.01). Forty-four percent of participants worried about physical violence after partner notification. Self-collecting specimens for screening was widely acceptable. Partner notification strategies should be based on understanding partnership status, including fears of violence.

According to recent organizational theories, external networking by managers is likely to reflect the external and internal characteristics of organizations. In particular, contingency theories assume that uncertain environments and innovative strategies lead to more external networking, while both contingency and structural hole theories suggest that networking is more likely in organizations with decentralized, informal, and specialized structures. Developing such explicit theoretical expectations is an important research objective, and an initial effort along these lines is provided by this article. We also test these expectations by analyzing environmental and organizational determinants of variations in external networking by managers of English local governments in 2007. The empirical results show that “loose” organizational structures and diverse stakeholder demands are positively associated with networking, but that defensive and reactive strategies, along with unpredictable stakeholder demands, are negatively associated.

Public organizations operate as open systems in settings that can be a source of difficulties for managers and for program performance. The unexpected arrival of two major hurricanes in 2005 caused widespread havoc, and some of the consequences constituted major shocks to public agencies—in particular, to public educational systems. This article assesses whether such shocks caused drops in performance, and whether organization and management contributed to a mitigation of these deleterious effects. Evidence indicates that shocks do disrupt performance but also that staff capacity and stability in street-level personnel of the organizations can reduce or eliminate these negative consequences.

A turbulent external environment is widely believed to have damaging effects on public service performance. Much less consensus has been reached on whether the best response to turbulence is to retain or alter existing organizational structures. We provide the first comprehensive empirical analysis of these issues by testing the links between turbulence, structural stability, and performance in a large sample of public organizations. Our results show that turbulence has a negative effect on performance, and that this is compounded by internal organizational change. Thus public managers can mitigate the harmful effects of volatility in the external environment by maintaining structural stability.

In the last 3 years, France has seen a series of violent protests by ethnic minorities in regard to jobs, legal discrimination, and access to positions in the public bureaucracy. Because France as a nation rejects the concepts of race and ethnicity, it has also failed to consider any possible benefits that might accrue from a representative bureaucracy. This article examines whether French ethnic protests are linked to bureaucratic access issues and how a policy seeking a more representative bureaucracy might benefit the French Republic.

A long tradition in public administration describes administrative decision making as incremental. Despite the dominance of incremental models of decision making, few quantitative studies of administrative behavior take the implications of incrementalism seriously. This article introduces two concepts (path dependence and path contingency) to facilitate quantitative models investigating incrementalism in public agencies. The article illustrates the utility of these concepts in model building by analyzing school district promotion policies. The results show that path contingency and path dependence reveal interesting dynamics of promotion standards that traditional analyses would overlook.

The study of networks is a growth area in public management. This article argues that small studies of networks need to be supplemented with large n studies that permit one to include more theoretically relevant control variables and to deal with issues of causality. Using survey data from several hundred agency heads, this article presents a reliable measure of management network activities that has demonstrated substantial empirical import. If the right network nodes are selected, contact information on only a limited number of nodes is needed. Who initiates contacts within the network is also shown to be important.

In order to gain a better understanding of the reinforcement mechanism of fillers, the surface activity of a selection of industrial carbon blacks produced by different procedures with varying average particle sizes (spec. N2 surface area) and aggregate structure (DBP number) were investigated using the volumetric gas adsorption method. The adsorption isotherms for polymer-like gases were used to determine the particles’ geometrical surface roughness and the distribution functions of energetically different bonding sites for polymers on the surfaces on atomic length scales. The influence of the surface activity on the reinforcement of elastomers is demonstrated using examples of vulcanisates.

This article uses an ideal stereotypical approach to examine the process of the organizational failures. Private sector stereotypes of government organizations are used to generate hypotheses about when public organizations fail. The hypotheses are tested using 1,000 school districts in Texas. In direct contrast to the hypotheses, the extent of bureaucracy is not related to failures. The only consistent results are that failures are linked to multiple goals and more difficult tasks.

This article examines whether governance structures facilitate or impede political forces by testing two competing hypotheses concerning the ability of bureaucratic structures to insulate higher education policies from politics. Centralized structures both create autonomy and facilitate access by environmental forces. This study examines the structures of higher education boards to gain a better understanding of how they interact with politics to affect higher education policy. To the extent that variation in governance structures is correlated with bureaucratic autonomy, it should limit the ability of elected officials to influence education policies. The transaction costs of individuals seeking to influence overall agency policy are lowered, however, in more centralized organizations. Political actors can focus their attention on a single geographic site rather than multiple sites that are adapting to different sets of institutional arrangements and different local environments. These hypotheses are tested in a 47-state, 8-year analysis.

Background: Diphenhydramine (DPHM) overdose is a frequent cause of acute poisoning. Although its clinical features are well known, information about the dose dependent toxicity of DPHM is still scarce. The objective of this study was to investigate the dose-dependent toxicity of DPHM in patients with acute DPHM poisoning. Methods: We have analyzed retrospectively all well-documented cases with DPHM monointoxications reported by physicians to the Swiss Toxicological Information Centre (STIC) between January 1984 and April 1996. In addition, a prospective study focusing on ingested DPHM doses and severity of symptoms was performed between May 1996 and December 1998. Results: The retrospective and prospective studies included 232 and 50 patients with DPHM monointoxications, respectively. In both studies, mild symptoms (somnolence, anticholinergic signs, tachycardia, nausea/vomiting) occurred in 55-64%, moderate symptoms (isolated and spontaneously resolving agitation, confusion, hallucinations and ECG disturbances) in 22-27% and severe symptoms (delirium/psychosis, seizures, coma) in 14-18% of patients. Moderate symptoms occurred above ingested doses of 0.3 g DPHM. For severe symptoms the critical dose limit was 1.0 g DPHM. Although the frequency of delirium/psychosis remained constant or even decreased, coma and seizures were significantly (p1.5-g compared with the 1.0-to 1.5-g-dose group. Conclusions: These data demonstrate a clear dose-dependent acute toxicity of DPHM. They indicate that only patients with DPHM ingestions above 1.0 g are at risk for the development of severe symptoms and, therefore, should be hospitalized. Thus, the results contribute to the data basis required for a cost effective management of patients with DPHM overdose.

Early management scholars such as Henri Fayol, Lydal Urwick, and Luther Gulick argued that principles such as specialization of labor and hierarchical leadership structures would result in optimal organizational performance. This perspective was attacked by Herbert Simon, who argued that the principles of administrative management were vague and contradictory. Simon’s devastating critique was widely accepted, and scholars soon turned their attention away from studying the principles of management. Ironically, little systematic research existed on many of the principles of management at the time Simon leveled his critique. In this study, the goal is to refocus attention on a particular principle of management, span of control, most closely associated with Luther Gulick. After discussing the importance of span of control to their understanding of organizational behavior, the authors present a theory that links span of control to organizational performance. They test their theory by examining how span of control relationships among personnel in public schools influence student performance, using data on 678 Texas school districts over a 4-year period. The findings reveal that span of control relationships among organizational personnel significantly shape student performance.

All public organizations face conflicting goals that in theory require trade-offs. Using data from school systems, this article argues that good organizations may be able to attain more than one goal simultaneously. The research uses a substantively weighted analytical technique1 to determine how organizations concerned with equity also meet demands for effectiveness. The best organizations do this through a more efficient translation of inputs into outputs.

The authors' objective was to assess the impact of gender-neutral automobile-insurance laws in four states, and to ask whether these laws have increased prices, increased market concentration, discouraged driving, or encouraged greater risk taking? A pooled time-series analysis for 21 years in four states was used to test the relationship between adopting a gender-neutral insurance law and risk-adjusted prices, industry concentration, numbers of licensed drivers, and traffic fatalities. The authors find that gender-neutral automobile-insurance laws have no impact on the risk-adjusted price of insurance, the market share held by direct writers, the number of licensed drivers, or the rate of traffic fatalities. Gender-neutral laws were associated with a larger market share being controlled by the three largest firms. The authors conclude that because gender-neutral insurance laws have no impacts which are detrimental to consumers, they could be adopted by all states with few negative consequences.

Regulatory policy generally offers three policy instruments-command and control regulation, incentives, and information-yet efforts to test the comparative effectiveness of these instruments have been lacking. Using a simple theory derived from the economics of supply and demand, this study presents a hypothesis that information policies will interact with incentives and lessen their impact. If incentives policies are not uniform across the nation, they can also create compliance problems. These hy potheses are tested with pooled data set on cigarette regulation. While both information policies and incentives are effective at reducing cigarette consumption, they interact so that the total impact is less than the sum of the individual effects. State tax rates also interact with each other creating the incentive to avoid compliance by bootlegging cigarettes.

Research on political behavior has generally ignored nonelectoralforms ofparticipation and has given scant attention to ethnic minorities. Part of the reason for these gaps in the literature has to do with the paucity of data. Taking advantage of the availability of data from the Latino National Political Survey, this work looks at whether nonelectoral participation by Mexican Americans, Puerto Ricans, and Cubans can be explained on the basis of culture, socioeconomic status, mobilization, or some combination of the three. Although mobilization appears to offer the strongest explanation, variables representing all three approaches have some utility. Furthermore, it appears that the factors affecting Cuban nonelectoral participation are notably different than for other Latinos.

This study is a quantitative time-series analysis of politics and agricultural policy in the United States from 1950 to 1990. Agricultural policy is an area that generally does not fit the assumptions of the principal-agent model but rather relies on cooperative relationships between politicians and bureaucrats. Congress is the most active political institution, and bureaucracy has substantial expertise. The result is a mix of political controls and bureaucratic discretion that shapes major agricultural programs. The impact of these agricultural programs, especially those relevant to agricultural research, is assessed on several indicators of the farm sector's economic health.

This research examines the politics of funding abortions for low-income women in the American states. State policies on abortion funding reflected the relative strength of citizen groups on both sides of the issue and an array of partisan forces. After policy adoption, the number of abortions funded was determined by public policy and the relative demand for abortion services.

Studies of representative bureaucracies are staples of public administration research; however, because of a variety of methodological problems, too few have been able to address the basic "so what?" question. Do bureaucracies with different levels of representativeness produce different policy outputs and have different policy impacts? Our research addresses these inquiries using data from the 67 public school districts in Florida. The analysis shows that when we focus on (a) bureaucrats who exercise discretion, (b) a demographic factor with a lasting impact-race, and (c) policy measures that are clearly salient to the chosen demographic factor, we can detect the relationships between bureaucratic representation and public policy outputs and outcomes. We particularly highlight the representativeness of "street-level" bureaucrats (in this case, teachers). Thus, the issue of representation in public bureaucracies possesses more than just symbolic importance.

Raman microspectroscopy can be used effectively to study very small samples or to study small areas within a transparent sample. With the application of the technique of confocal microscopy to a Raman microscope, the depth resolution of the instrument can be enhanced considerably. Confocal microscopy uses a pinhole, placed in the back image plane of the microscope objective, to block light from outside the focal plane. In this way the signal from the small volume element one wants to study can be better separated from the signals arising from the surrounding material. In this paper we show that the performance of the confocal Raman microscope can be described satisfactorily by geometrical optics. Furthermore, we have performed measurements to determine the depth resolution of our system for different combinations of objectives and pinholes. Finally, we report on the applications of this technique to different polymer systems, such as multilayer foils, fibers, and fiber composites.

Copeland and Meier's (1987) analysis of infant mortality rates in the United States found that the Medicaid program significantly reduced the infant mortality rate among both white and nonwhite infants but the Special Supplemental Food Program for Women Infants, and Children (WIC) only significantly reduced the infant mortality rate among white infants. This analysis updates Copeland and Meier's time-series analysis of infant mortality and expands the cross-sectional analysis of the distribution of WIC funds. The results of the analysis indicate that WIC funds have become less effective in combating infant mortality. The cross-sectional evidence suggests that one explanation for this is that the distribution of WIC funds is driven primarily by bureaucratic inertia rather than need-related criteria.

This article examines state efforts to regulate alcohol consumption and the effectiveness of that regulation on policy outcomes. The politics of alcohol is examined as a function of the political demands of the alcohol production industry, the alcohol consumption industry, reformist/ religious groups, and other state political forces. Efforts to regulate alcohol consumption are predicted well by this model. Efforts to explain drunk driving law changes are not. Restrictions on alcohol sales have a direct impact on alcohol consumption and an indirect impact on heavy drinking. Efforts to limit drunk dnving, with one exception, have no impact on the relative level of drunk driving. The lack of policy impact is attributed to the politics of policy adoption.

Sample heating due to high incident laser power in Raman experiments on (industrial) polymers and catalysts can easily lead to unwanted changes in morphology or desorption of surface species. Therefore temperature of the sample at the laser spot was studied by determining Stokes and anti-Stokes Raman intensities. Temperature can normally be determined within an accuracy of about 5 K, although for samples having nothing but Raman bands above 1000 cm−1, the anti-Stokes lines are very weak and accuracy of temperature determination decreased drastically. For most of the samples studied in the macro-Raman setup, powers up to 250 m\V could be used without measurable heating. In the micro-Raman setup heating started earlier due to higher focusing.

Introduction Inducible 6-phosphofructo-2-kinase (iPFK-2; PFKFB3) has been found to be overexpressed by the neoplastic cells of human solid tumors, required for human leukemia growth in athymic mice and to be a transcriptional target of hypoxia inducible factor 1, a protein required for the survival and growth of tumors. Based on these observations, the substrate (fructose-6-phosphate) binding site of iPFK-2 is an attractive target for the identification of pharmacophore-based compounds as antineoplastic agents. Methods/Results The x-ray structures of human liver and rat testes PFKFB isozymes served as input homologue sequences and structural templates for the determination of structurally conserved regions and the fructose-6-phosphate (F6P) binding site of iPFK-2. The Advanced Chemical Directory (v.2002-2) then was computationally screened for high fit molecules of the F6P binding site of iPFK-2 and 45 compounds were identified. We exposed Jurkat human T cell leukemia cells to 6 of the compounds (termed MT1-6) at concentrations of 100 nM-1 mM, and then enumerated live and dead cells by propidium iodide exclusion staining after 48-72 hours of exposure. Whereas 5 compounds exhibited cytotoxic effects at a concentration of 1 mM, compound MT3 was cytotoxic at a concentration of 10 μM and cytostatic at a concentration of 1 μM in vitro. Growth inhibitory properties of MT3 were also observed against A459 human lung adenocarcinoma cells, mouse Lewis lung carcinoma cells, and mouse B16 melanoma cells. Exposure of MT3 to Jurkat cells suppressed (i) the product of iPFK-2, F2,6BP; (ii) lactate secretion; and (iii) incorporation of glucose-derived carbons into pyrimidine but not purine riboses via the pentose shunt. Toxicity studies in C57BL/6 mice indicated that daily intraperitoneal administration of 0.5 mg of compound MT3 was well tolerated. We subcutaneously injected 8 × 105 Lewis lung carcinoma cells (in 100 μL PBS) into C57Bl/6 mice and, after tumors were established, administered 0.5 mg MT3 or vehicle i.p. every 24 hours. After 14 days we observed a reduction in tumor growth in mice that were administered daily MT3 (1042.8 ± 192.5 mm3) compared to vehicle alone (2034.78 ± 395.18 mm3; p value Conclusions We conclude that pharmacophore targeting of the substrate binding site of iPFK-2 may prove to be a useful strategy in the development of novel antineoplastic agents. The selective reduction of 13C-glucose incorporation into pyrimidine riboses suggests that MT3 may decrease the availability of aspartate, a product of the citric acid cycle (via oxaloacetate) and a precursor of the pyrimidine ring.

This article first identifies types of second generation discrimination practices (e.g., ability grouping, tracking, racially biased disciplinary actions) and discusses how these practices may impede desegregation success and produce educational inequities. Second, based on data from 82 large urban school districts, the incidence of second generation school discrimination is measured and the variation among districts is explained. Of the variables included in the regression model to explain second generation discrimination (district socioeconomic status, black resources, federal pressure, black school board representation, and black teachers), two variables were found to be significantly related to lower levels of discrimination-high black median income and a high proportion of black teachers in the school district.

George Belknap and Angus Campbell, "Political Party Identification and Attitudes Toward Foreign Policy," Public Opinion Quarterly, 15 (1952), 601-23; Warren E. Miller, "Party Preference and Attitudes on Political Issues: 1948-1951," American Political Science Review, 46 (1952), 45-60; Angus Campbell et al., The American Voter (New York: Wiley, 1960); Philip E. Converse, "The Nature of Belief Systems in Mass Politics," in David Apter, Ideology and Discontent (New York: The Free Press, 1964), pp. 206-61; Angus Campbell and Donald Stokes, "Partisan Attitudes and the Presidential Vote," in Eugene Burdick and Arthur J. Brodbeck, American Voting Behavior (New York: Free Press, 1959), pp. 353-71; Philip E. Converse et al., "Continuity and Change in American Politics," American Political Science Review, 63 (1969), 10831105; Philip E. Converse, "The Concept of a Normal Vote," in Angus Campbell et al., Elections and the Political Order (New York: Wiley, 1966), pp. 9-39; Philip E. Converse, "Information Flow and the Stability of Partisan Attitudes," Public Opinion Quarterly, 26 (1962), 578-99; Philip E. Converse et al., "Stability and Change in 1960: A Reinstating Election," American Political Science Review, 55 (1961), 78-95; Richard W. Boyd, "Popular Control of Public Policy: A Normal Vote Analysis of the 1968 Election," American Political Science Review, 66 (1972), 429-48; Aage Clausen et al., "Electoral Myth and Reality: The 1964 Election," American Political Science Review, 59 (1965), 321-32. 2 Campbell et al., The American Voter, pp. 148-49; Converse, "The Nature of Belief Systems ... ," p. 240.