Coleridge Initiative

In anesthetized, open-chest dogs we examined the effect of pulmonary edema on the firing frequency of afferent vagal fibers arising from the lung. We recorded impulses from slips of the cervical vagus nerves and infused isotonic Krebs-Henseleit solution (20% of body weight) intravenously to increase net filtration pressure in the lung microvasculature. Measurement of extravascular lung water (6.0 +/- 0.4 g/g dry lung), and morphological examination of lung tissue (revealing various degrees of perivascular and peribronchial cuffing) confirmed that edema was present. At the end of the infusion when the lungs were congested (lung microvascular pressure, 37 cm water) and edematous, the impulse frequency of pulmonary and bronchial C-fibers and rapidly adapting receptors had increased 5-6 times. The only significant change in slowly adapting receptor activity was an increase during deflation. When lung water was still elevated but lung microvascular pressure had been restored to control by withdrawal of blood, impulse activity of rapidly and slowly adapting receptors reverted to or below control. Pulmonary C-fiber activity, although less than during congestion, remained significantly above control, several C-fibers being stimulated by interstitial edema in the absence of alveolar edema. Bronchial C-fibers were stimulated in severely edematous lung showing pronounced peribronchial cuffing and alveolar edema, but were not stimulated in milder grades of edema. Our results support the hypothesis (Paintal, 1969) that pulmonary C-fibers (J-receptors) are stimulated by an increase in interstitial pressure secondary to edema.

The Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) provided small businesses with roughly $800 billion dollars in uncollateralized, low-interest loans during the pandemic, almost all of which will be forgiven. With 94 percent of small businesses ultimately receiving one or more loans, the PPP nearly saturated its market in just two months. We estimate that the program cumulatively preserved between 2 and 3 million job-years of employment over 14 months at a cost of $169K to $258K per job-year retained. These numbers imply that only 23 to 34 percent of PPP dollars went directly to workers who would otherwise have lost jobs; the balance flowed to business owners and shareholders, including creditors and suppliers of PPP-receiving firms. Program incidence was ultimately highly regressive, with about three-quarters of PPP funds accruing to the top quintile of households. PPP’s breakneck scale-up, its high cost per job saved, and its regressive incidence have a common origin: PPP was essentially untargeted because the United States lacked the administrative infrastructure to do otherwise. Harnessing modern administrative systems, other high-income countries were able to better target pandemic business aid to firms in financial distress. Building similar capacity in the U.S. would enable improved targeting when the next pandemic or other large-scale economic emergency inevitably arises.

Stimulus-response curves of aortic baroreceptors constructed by alternately increasing and decreasing pressure from a normal baseline or set-point differ from curves constructed by varying pressure in one direction only from an abnormally high or low pressure. In anesthetized dogs we recorded impulses from aortic baroreceptors with myelinated fibers, using a pressurized reservoir to control mean aortic blood pressure (MABP). After setting MABP to a baseline of 100 mm Hg (normal MABP in unanesthetized dogs), we constructed baroreceptor response curves by alternately decreasing MABP from 100 to 30 mm Hg, and increasing it from 100 to 180 mm Hg, in each case returning MABP to the baseline to obtain hysteresis loops. All baroreceptors were active at 100 mm Hg, their discharge averaging 15-16 impulses/sec. At all pressures above threshold, baroreceptors fired more when pressure was increasing than when pressure was decreasing. This hysteresis caused the steepest part of the response curve constructed in this manner to span the baseline value, demonstrating that, contrary to previous views, aortic baroreceptors signal decreases in pressure below the normal level, as well as increases above it. We also constructed response curves after holding MABP at a "hypertensive" baseline of 125 mm Hg for 20 minutes. "Hypertensive" curves demonstrated reversible resetting, shifting significantly to the right of "normotensive" curves so that baroreceptor threshold increased on average by 7 mm Hg (P less than 0.01). Both hysteresis and short-term resetting probably result from the viscoelastic behavior of wall elements with which baroreceptors are coupled.

Bradykinin applied directly to the epicardium evokes a reflex increase in blood pressure by stimulating sympathetic afferent nerve endings in the heart, but injected into the coronary artery it evokes vagally mediated reflex decreases in heart rate and blood pressure.The afferents initiating these latter depressor effects have not been identified.We have attempted to determine which vagal sensory nerve endings in the heart are stimulated by bradykinin.In anesthetized dogs, we recorded impulses from afferent vagal fibers with endings in the heart and aorta and injected bradykinin (0.3-1.0 /ig/kg) into the left atrium.Neither A-nor C-fiber mechanoreceptors nor aortic body chemoreceptors were stimulated directly by bradykinin, any changes in firing of a trial or ventricular mechanoreceptors, or of aortic baroreceptors or chemoreceptors, being secondary to the cardiovascular effects of bradykinin.However, 16 of 20 irregularly discharging vagal C-fibers with chemosensitive endings in the left ventricle, left atrium, and aorta were stimulated by bradykinin; firing increased from 0.2 ± 0.1 to 7.8 ± 1.4 (mean ± SE) impulses/sec and usually remained above control for about 30 seconds.These chemosensitive endings were not stimulated by ventilating the lungs with 5% O 2 in N 2 , but they were stimulated by injecting capsaicin or phenyl diguanide into the left atrium.Four chemosensitive endings in the ventricular epicardium were also stimulated by dripping bradykinin (1 pg/ml) onto the heart.We suggest that these chemosensitive vagal C-fibers are responsible for the reflex decreases in heart rate and blood pressure elicited by bradykinin.

Black and poor students are suspended from U.S. schools at higher rates than White and nonpoor students. While the existence of these disparities has been clear, the causes of the disparities have not. We use a novel data set to examine how and where discipline disparities arise. By comparing the punishments given to Black and White (or poor and nonpoor) students who fight one another, we address a selection challenge that has kept prior studies from identifying discrimination in student discipline. We find that Black and poor students are, in fact, punished more harshly than the students with whom they fight.

Arterial baroreceptors are known to influence airway smooth muscle tone. Thus, increasing carotid sinus pressure from 20 to 200 mm Hg causes reflex tracheal dilation. However, the effects of changing sinus pressure around a normal arterial pressure set-point of 100 mm Hg have not been examined. In anesthetized, artificially ventilated dogs, we distended the vascularly isolated carotid sinuses with a pulsatile pressure and recorded isometric tension in an upper tracheal segment. The aortic nerves were cut. Increasing mean carotid sinus pressure in steps between 100 and 200 mm Hg decreased tracheal tension, heart rate, and arterial blood pressure; decreasing sinus pressure between 100 and 25 mm Hg had the opposite effect. Changing carotid sinus pressure still evoked tracheal responses when systemic arterial pressure was held constant. Increasing and decreasing carotid sinus pulse pressure around a constant mean pressure evoked similar changes in tracheal tension. All reflex effects were abolished by cutting or cooling (0 degree C) the carotid sinus nerves; tracheal responses were abolished by the carotid baroreflex were of comparable magnitude to those triggered by stimulating pulmonary stretch receptors, laryngeal receptors, and pulmonary C-fibers. Our results indicate that carotid sinus baroreceptors exert a tonic influence on the upper airways by a vagal cholinergic pathway, increasing and decreasing tracheal smooth muscle tension as blood pressure varies around the normal set-point.

We performed experiments on anesthetized, open-chest dogs to determine whether the pulmonary chemoreflex (bradycardia and systemic hypotension) evoked by stimulating pulmonary C-fibers also involves reflex changes in coronary vascular resistance. We perfused the circumflex coronary artery at constant pressure (usually 100 mm Hg) and recorded mean circumflex blood flow. Stimulation of pulmonary C-fibers by right atrial injection of capsaicin (10 micrograms/kg) decreased arterial blood pressure and heart rate and increased circumflex blood flow by 32-109% (P less than 0.001). Circumflex blood flow also increased, by 26-100% (P less than 0.001), when heart rate was kept constant by pacing. Coronary vasodilation was not secondary to the reflex decrease in arterial blood pressure. Injecting capsaicin (10 micrograms/kg) into the left atrium did not increase circumflex blood flow. Reflex coronary vasodilation could still be evoked when myelinated nerve fibers were blocked selectively by cooling the cervical vagus nerves to 7-8 degrees C but was abolished by cooling to 0 degrees C, by cutting the pulmonary vagal branches, or by giving atropine. Reducing coronary perfusion pressure shifted the stimulus (dose of capsaicin)-response (increase in coronary blood flow) curve to the right, but, even at low perfusion pressures, significant reflex vasodilation still occurred. Regional (transmural) distribution of myocardial blood flow was measured by the microsphere technique at various perfusion pressures. The endocardial:epicardial blood flow ratio decreased significantly as perfusion pressure was reduced, but was not altered by right atrial injection of capsaicin at any perfusion pressure. Our results indicate that stimulation of pulmonary C-fibers triggers reflex cholinergic vasodilation in all layers of the myocardium.

We show that publicly reported U.S. high school graduation rates have increased by 10-18 percentage points over the past two decades. Using national difference-in-differences analyses of state- and district-level variation in graduation rates, we also find that graduation accountability from No Child Left Behind (NCLB) was likely a principal cause. Additional analysis of high school graduation exams, GEDs, credit recovery, and high school exit codes suggest that strategic behavior is not a primary explanation. This provides some of the first evidence to date that federal accountability has substantially increased the nation's stock of human capital

Theories of market-based school reform suggest that teacher labor markets may be inefficient because schools lack autonomy to incentivize performance in hiring, retention, and compensation. We test this empirically by comparing teacher exits in the deregulated market of New Orleans with neighboring traditional school districts. We find that the relationship between teacher performance and retention is stronger in the deregulated market. We also find positive associations between salary and performance, but only when teachers transfer from one charter school to another. While teacher retention is more closely tied to performance in New Orleans, this did not yield a net gain in teacher quality, because new teachers in New Orleans were of lower average quality than their peers in neighboring districts.

This article describes how data science techniques—machine learning and natural language processing—can be used to open the black box of government data. It then describes how an incentive structure can be established—using human–computer interaction techniques —to create a new and sustainable data ecosystem. The particular focus is on the United States and on scientific researchers, who are major users of government data. However, the approach can be deployed to other use cases, such as data mentions in newspapers and government reports, and many other countries

This article presents a new framework for realizing the value of linked data understood as a strategic asset and increasingly necessary form of infrastructure for policy-making and research in many domains. We outline a framework, the 'data mosaic' approach, which combines socio-organizational and technical aspects. After demonstrating the value of linked data, we highlight key concepts and dangers for community-developed data infrastructures. We concretize the framework in the context of work on science and innovation generally. Next we consider how a new partnership to link federal survey data, university data, and a range of public and proprietary data represents a concrete step toward building and sustaining a valuable data mosaic. We discuss technical issues surrounding linked data but emphasize that linking data involves addressing the varied concerns of wide-ranging data holders, including privacy, confidentiality, and security, as well as ensuring that all parties receive value from participating. The core of successful data mosaic projects, we contend, is as much institutional and organizational as it is technical. As such, sustained efforts to fully engage and develop diverse, innovative communities are essential.

We study the effect of US Workforce Investment Act (WIA) training in two states using matched employer-employee data.This allows us to estimate the impact of training on firm characteristics and to assess the value of firm characteristics measured prior to training as conditioning variables.We find moderate positive impacts of training on employment and earnings for adults, but not for dislocated workers.We find limited evidence of positive effects on firm characteristics for adults in one state, but clear evidence of effects on industry of employment for most groups.Firm characteristics add little value as conditioning variables.

This is a preprint and working draft. We aim to study the features of GitHub developers that have corresponding Wikidata entries. In this report, we focus on GitHub developers that are associated with academic institutions. First, we explore the countries of these developers to understand major countries that contribute to open source software (OSS). Second, we explore whether there are gender differences with respect to OSS contributions. We analyze number of repositories owned and contributes to, number of commits and code additions. Finally we generate a collaboration network, and study the degree centrality of the users.

Open Source Software (OSS) is computer software that has its source code publicly available with a license in which the copyright holder provides the rights to study, change, and distribute the software to anyone and for any purpose. Despite its extensive use, reliable measures of the scope and impact of OSS are scarce. In this paper, we focus on packages developed for Python programming language as it is one of the most widely-used languages mainly due to its flexibility and simple syntax that makes its framework easy to learn and share. We aim to develop a framework to measure the impact of Python packages listed on Package Index (PyPI.org). We use data from GitHub repositories (where these packages are developed) to obtain information about their development activity e.g., lines of code. Our goal is to identify influential actors, e.g., packages, developers, countries by using the impact measures. We use network-based and OSS-based measures such as number of downloads. Network-based statistics include centrality measures such as degree, and eigenvector centrality. Moreover, we calcu-late the cost of OSS as intangible capital using the COCOMO II model [1] to determine the cost of development and study the relationship between development cost and impact of Python projects. The findings show that the number of downloads for a package are correlated with the centrality statistics, supporting the hypothesis that the most influential are the most downloaded as well. We show which packages are saving on development cost by leveraging dependencies. This framework and measures can be applied more broadly to the OSS ecosystem and contribute to the National Science Foundation (NSF) policy indicators for measurement of innovation.

Abstract Julia Lane calls for a new, more democratic, public data infrastructure

Theories of market-based school reform suggest that teacher labor markets may be inefficient, and perhaps inequitable, because union contracts, tenure protections, and government regulation limit school autonomy over hiring, evaluation, compensation, and working conditions. In a less restrictive setting, schools could incentivize performance by selectively retaining and rewarding better-performing teachers. We test this empirically by comparing teacher exits in the deregulated market of New Orleans with exits in neighboring traditional public school districts. Our results suggest that the relationship between teacher performance and retention is stronger in the New Orleans market setting than in similar traditional school districts. We also find positive associations between annual salary increases and performance, but only when teachers transfer from one charter school to another. While teacher retention is more closely tied to performance in New Orleans, this did not yield a net gain in teacher quality, relative to neighbors. New Orleans had much higher teacher turnover, and we find the large numbers of teachers who had to be hired annually in the city had lower value-added than the entrants in comparison districts.

We examine whether North Carolina’s Opportunity Scholarship Program generated achievement effects for public school students. Using statewide administrative data and a student fixed-effects design, we relate program expansion to changes in test scores while accounting for pre-program private school competition. Our primary competition measure captures available private school seats within a 30-minute radius; additional measures reflect proximity, density, diversity, and religious options. We find no consistent evidence that voucher expansion affected public school achievement. Small positive estimates from the “slots” measure are not robust to alternative specifications or multiple-testing adjustments. Analyses by student subgroups similarly yield null effects.

Employment Security, explain how a regional collaborative of states in the Midwest have joined forces to share education, training, and workforce data across states lines.Overcoming numerous legal and privacy hurdles, the states have established an on-going governance structure using a secure platform to greatly increase the value of their data to policy makers.In the process, they have built state capacity to continue to support evidence-based policymaking.The multi-state products that have been developed, along with the on-going training in data linkages have served the states particularly well as they have had to respond quickly to the need for accurate and timely data during the COVID pandemic.

Abstract Brent Dykes; Wiley; 336pp; January 2020; £30.99, $39.95; ISBN 9781119615712

This kit reproduces Tables 3, 4, 5, and 6 of Kedrick, Levitskaya, and Funk, "Investigating individual writing style as a contributor to gender gaps in science and technology," published in Quantitative Science Studies. It contains two data files, one for 512,940 single-authored Web of Science papers and one for 32,106 single-inventor US patents, and a Stata do-file that estimates the four tables from them. The manifest in the kit describes every variable and gives the run instructions. The analysis requires Stata/SE or Stata/MP, version 16 or later, and the reghdfe package.