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\"Inspectors general are important players in the federal government, and their work often draws considerable public attention when one of them uncovers serious misdeeds or mismanagement that make the headlines. This book by two experts in public policy provides a comprehensive, up-to-date examination of how inspectors general have operated in the four decades since Congress established the offices to investigate waste, fraud, and mismanagement at federal agencies and to promote efficiency and effectiveness in government programs. Unique among federal officials, inspectors general are independent of the agencies they monitor, and they report to the executive and legislative branches of government. One key factor in their independence is that they are expected to be non-partisan and carry out their work without regard to partisan interests. The authors of U.S. Inspectors General: Truth Tellers in Turbulent Times emphasize the \"strategic environment\" in which inspectors general work and interact with a variety of stakeholders, inside and outside the government. Their new book is based on in-depth case studies, a survey of inspectors general, and a review of public documents related to the work of inspectors general. It will be of interest to scholars and students of public policy and public management, journalists, and ordinary citizens interested in how the government works, or doesn't work, on their behalf\"-- Provided by publisher.

As a primary determinant of spatial structure in angiosperm populations, fruit dispersal may impact large‐scale ecological and evolutionary processes. Essential to understanding these mechanisms is an accurate reconstruction of dispersal mode over the entire history of an angiosperm lineage. A total‐evidence phylogeny is presented for most fossil fruit and all extant genera in Fagales over its c. 95 million yr history. This phylogeny – the largest of its kind to include plant fossils – was used to reconstruct an evolutionary history directly informed by fossil morphologies and to assess relationships among dispersal mode, biogeographic range size, and diversification rate. Reconstructions indicate four transitions to wind dispersal and seven to biotic dispersal, with the phylogenetic integration of fossils crucial to understanding these patterns. Complexity further increased when more specialized behaviors were considered, with fluttering, gliding, autorotating, and scatter‐hoarding evolving multiple times across the order. Preliminary biogeographic analyses suggest larger range sizes in biotically dispersed lineages, especially when pollination mode was held constant. Biotically dispersed lineages had significantly higher diversification rates than abiotically dispersed lineages, although transitions in dispersal mode alone cannot explain all detected diversification rate shifts across Fagales.

Given the well-founded critiques of academia as Western-centric, there are increasing efforts to conduct research that is more cross-cultural and global. These dynamics apply to all aspects of life, including human flourishing, as exemplified by the new Global Flourishing Study (GFS), a longitudinal panel study investigating the predictors and components of flourishing across over 200,000 participants from 22 geographically and culturally diverse countries (Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Hong Kong [S.A.R of China, with mainland China also included from 2024 onwards], Egypt, Germany, India, Indonesia, Israel, Japan, Kenya, Mexico, Nigeria, Philippines, Poland, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Tanzania, Turkey, UK, and USA). The research is not only comprehensive in its global reach but also its conceptual coverage of flourishing, involving 109 distinct questions (comprising a one-off intake survey of 43 items and an annual survey of 71 items, with five items shared by both). This paper elucidates the questionnaire development process, giving a transparent and open accounting of its multi-phase construction. By describing this process in detail, this article not only articulates the nature of the GFS but also serves as a useful resource in the survey development literature more broadly (e.g., for scholars undertaking similar endeavors).

Although prior research documents the importance of belief in God (e.g., for health and well-being), most of the research has focused on Western samples. Much less is known about how belief in one God, multiple gods, or spiritual forces (“Belief in God”) differs across cultures and demographic groups within those cultures. Using a diverse and international dataset of over 200,000 individuals from 22 countries, we examined the proportions of Belief in God across key demographics, focusing on country, age, gender, marital status, employment status, religious service attendance, education, and immigration status. Being mindful of interpretative challenges due to varying cultural contexts and the nature of the response items used, we offer insight into country-specific variations in Belief in God and lay a foundation for future investigations into sociocultural influences that might shape—or be shaped by—belief (or non-belief) in God, gods, and spiritual forces.

Religious Centrality has been widely studied in Europe and North America and is generally associated with better psychological and social outcomes. Religious centrality is often assessed as a measure of intrinsic religiosity (IR)—religion as one’s guiding approach to life – and has been widely validated in societies around the world. However, most studies of religious centrality/IR are cross-sectional and use samples from ‘Western’ societies or samples from single non-European societies. Moreover, most samples are not nationally representative. Systematic comparisons are difficult because the samples, measures, and procedures vary between studies. This article examines religious centrality across 22 nationally representative samples from religiously diverse countries from the 1 st wave of the Global Flourishing Study (GFS) using a single-item IR measure and identical demographic measures and methods in each country. The study will serve as the foundation for longitudinal studies designed to assess the causal impact of religious centrality on human flourishing. In the current study, we find societies range widely, with religious centrality lowest in Europe and East Asia, moderate in the Americas and Israel, and highest in Africa and the rest of Asia. We discuss the complexities of assessing religious centrality across religious traditions, how the demographic factors associated with religious centrality vary between countries, and provide implications for secularization theory as well as theories of human flourishing.

Religion is an integral part of everyday life for billions of people, yet little is known about the developmental antecedents of religious belief outside of Western cultures. Using data from over 200,000 individuals across 22 countries, we evaluate several childhood predictors of belief in God, gods, and spiritual forces (Belief in God) in adulthood. We hypothesized that these childhood experiences, personal attributes, and familial or social circumstances would have meaningful and varied associations with Belief in God as adults, with the strength of these associations differing by country, reflecting diverse cultural influences. Most candidate predictors (e.g., parental marital status, childhood socioeconomic status, abuse, being an outsider, and immigration) were associated with Belief in God in some countries but with substantial variation. However, when pooled across countries, only childhood religious service attendance, birth cohort, and gender were significant predictors. Yet there was important variation even for these predictors, and no predictor had a consistent association across all countries. Though this cross-sectional design is limited in allowing causal inference, results provide insights into early-life experiences that might contribute to adults’ Belief in God. The heterogeneity of results highlights the importance of considering any childhood predictor within its social and cultural context.

Effects of Insulin on the Metabolic Control of Hepatic Gluconeogenesis In Vivo Dale S. Edgerton , Christopher J. Ramnanan , Carrie A. Grueter , Kathryn M.S. Johnson , Margaret Lautz , Doss W. Neal , Phillip E. Williams and Alan D. Cherrington From the Vanderbilt University Medical Center, Nashville, Tennessee. Corresponding author: Dale S. Edgerton, dale.edgerton{at}vanderbilt.edu . Abstract OBJECTIVE Insulin represses the expression of gluconeogenic genes at the mRNA level, but the hormone appears to have only weak inhibitory effects in vivo. The aims of this study were 1 ) to determine the maximal physiologic effect of insulin, 2 ) to determine the relative importance of its effects on gluconeogenic regulatory sites, and 3 ) to correlate those changes with alterations at the cellular level. RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS Conscious 60-h fasted canines were studied at three insulin levels (near basal, 4×, or 16×) during a 5-h euglycemic clamp. Pancreatic hormones were controlled using somatostatin with portal insulin and glucagon infusions. Glucose metabolism was assessed using the arteriovenous difference technique, and molecular signals were assessed. RESULTS Insulin reduced gluconeogenic flux to glucose-6-phosphate (G6P) but only at the near-maximal physiological level (16× basal). The effect was modest compared with its inhibitory effect on net hepatic glycogenolysis, occurred within 30 min, and was associated with a marked decrease in hepatic fat oxidation, increased liver fructose 2,6-bisphosphate level, and reductions in lactate, glycerol, and amino acid extraction. No further diminution in gluconeogenic flux to G6P occurred over the remaining 4.5 h of the study, despite a marked decrease in PEPCK content, suggesting poor control strength for this enzyme in gluconeogenic regulation in canines. CONCLUSIONS Gluconeogenic flux can be rapidly inhibited by high insulin levels in canines. Initially decreased hepatic lactate extraction is important, and later reduced gluconeogenic precursor availability plays a role. Changes in PEPCK appear to have little or no acute effect on gluconeogenic flux. Footnotes The costs of publication of this article were defrayed in part by the payment of page charges. This article must therefore be hereby marked “advertisement” in accordance with 18 U.S.C. Section 1734 solely to indicate this fact. Received March 17, 2009. Accepted August 8, 2009. © 2009 American Diabetes Association

Aerodynamic interaction among turbines grouped together in wind farms causes a decrease in the total energy extracted from the wind when compared to an equal number of widely dispersed turbines operating under the same wind input conditions as the wind farm. Extremum seeking control (ESC) is one strategy that holds promise for reducing this impact under certain wind input conditions. In this paper, we evaluate the effectiveness of ESC under different turbulence conditions, describing methods for addressing the complexities caused by the turbulent wind input and time-varying delay of the wind between turbines, where these two elements are the most important contributions compared to other wind farm control research. The results show that energy capture can be increased in low turbulence intensity conditions, but perhaps not in high turbulence conditions.

Cancer therapy selects for cancer cells resistant to treatment, a process that is fundamentally evolutionary. To what extent, however, is the evolutionary perspective employed in research on therapeutic resistance and relapse? We analyzed 6,228 papers on therapeutic resistance and/or relapse in cancers and found that the use of evolution terms in abstracts has remained at about 1% since the 1980s. However, detailed coding of 22 recent papers revealed a higher proportion of papers using evolutionary methods or evolutionary theory, although this number is still less than 10%. Despite the fact that relapse and therapeutic resistance is essentially an evolutionary process, it appears that this framework has not permeated research. This represents an unrealized opportunity for advances in research on therapeutic resistance.