Civilian national service programs can powerfully increase youth voter turnout.

Low rates of youth voting are a feature of contemporary democracies the world over, with the United States having some of the lowest youth turnout rates in the world. However, far too little is known about how to address the dismal rates of youth voter participation found in many advanced democracies. In this paper, we examine the causal effect of a potentially scalable solution that has attracted renewed interest today: voluntary national service programs targeted at the youth civilian population. Leveraging the large pool of young people who apply each year to participate in the Teach For America (TFA) program-a prominent voluntary national service organization in the United States that integrates college graduates into teaching roles in low-income communities for 2 y-we examine the effect of service participation on voter turnout. To do so, we match TFA administrative records to large-scale nationwide voter files and employ a fuzzy regression discontinuity design around the recommended admittance cutoff for the TFA program. We find that serving as a teacher in the Teach For America national service program has a large effect on civic participation-substantially increasing voter turnout rates among applicants admitted to the program. This effect is noticeably larger than that of previous efforts to increase youth turnout. Our results suggest that civilian national service programs targeted at young people have great promise in helping to narrow the stubborn and enduring political engagement gap between younger and older citizens.

Reporting all results efficiently: A RARE proposal to open up the file drawer.

While the social sciences have made impressive progress in adopting transparent research practices that facilitate verification, replication, and reuse of materials, the problem of publication bias persists. Bias on the part of peer reviewers and journal editors, as well as the use of outdated research practices by authors, continues to skew literature toward statistically significant effects, many of which may be false positives. To mitigate this bias, we propose a framework to enable authors to report all results efficiently (RARE), with an initial focus on experimental and other prospective empirical social science research that utilizes public study registries. This framework depicts an integrated system that leverages the capacities of existing infrastructure in the form of public registries, institutional review boards, journals, and granting agencies, as well as investigators themselves, to efficiently incentivize full reporting and thereby, improve confidence in social science findings. In addition to increasing access to the results of scientific endeavors, a well-coordinated research ecosystem can prevent scholars from wasting time investigating the same questions in ways that have not worked in the past and reduce wasted funds on the part of granting agencies.

Polyhydramnios or Excessive Fetal Growth Are Markers for Abnormal Perinatal Outcome in Euglycemic Pregnancies.

OBJECTIVE: This study aims to investigate the perinatal outcome of fetuses with polyhydramnios and/or accelerated growth among women with a normal oral glucose challenge test (oGCT). METHODS: Singleton, nonanomalous pregnancies with an oGCT(< 130 mg/dL) at 24 to 28 weeks, who subsequently demonstrate polyhydramnios (amniotic fluid index > 24 cm or maximum vertical pocket > 8 cm) and/or accelerated growth (abdominal circumference > 95th percentile) on two-third trimester examinations were studied. Maternal demographics, delivery, and neonatal information were recorded. Cases were compared with a reference group (normal oGCT with neither abnormal third-trimester growth nor polyhydramnios). RESULTS: A total of 282 pregnancies were in the study group, and 663 were in the reference group. Deliveries in the study group were at a higher risk for birth weight (BW)% > 90%, standard deviation, and postpartum hemorrhage when compared with the reference group (adjusted odds ratio: 2.3-5.6). Pregnancies complicated by both polyhydramnios and accelerated fetal growth were significantly more likely to result in a BW% > 90% (odds ratio [OR]: 18.5; 95% confidence interval [CI]: 8.9-38.6) and PPH (OR: 4.2; 95% CI: 2.4-7.6). CONCLUSION: Pregnancies with normal oGCT that develop polyhydramnios and accelerated growth are at higher risk for maternal and neonatal complications. Isolated polyhydramnios without accelerated growth increases the risk for delivery complications but not neonatal morbidity.

Irrelevant events affect voters' evaluations of government performance.

Does information irrelevant to government performance affect voting behavior? If so, how does this help us understand the mechanisms underlying voters' retrospective assessments of candidates' performance in office? To precisely test for the effects of irrelevant information, we explore the electoral impact of local college football games just before an election, irrelevant events that government has nothing to do with and for which no government response would be expected. We find that a win in the 10 d before Election Day causes the incumbent to receive an additional 1.61 percentage points of the vote in Senate, gubernatorial, and presidential elections, with the effect being larger for teams with stronger fan support. In addition to conducting placebo tests based on postelection games, we demonstrate these effects by using the betting market's estimate of a team's probability of winning the game before it occurs to isolate the surprise component of game outcomes. We corroborate these aggregate-level results with a survey that we conducted during the 2009 NCAA men's college basketball tournament, where we find that surprising wins and losses affect presidential approval. An experiment embedded within the survey also indicates that personal well-being may influence voting decisions on a subconscious level. We find that making people more aware of the reasons for their current state of mind reduces the effect that irrelevant events have on their opinions. These findings underscore the subtle power of irrelevant events in shaping important real-world decisions and suggest ways in which decision making can be improved.

Correction: Perceptions of health risks of cigarette smoking: A new measure reveals widespread misunderstanding.

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0182063.].

Perceptions of health risks of cigarette smoking: A new measure reveals widespread misunderstanding.

Most Americans recognize that smoking causes serious diseases, yet many Americans continue to smoke. One possible explanation for this paradox is that perhaps Americans do not accurately perceive the extent to which smoking increases the probability of adverse health outcomes. This paper examines the accuracy of Americans' perceptions of the absolute risk, attributable risk, and relative risk of lung cancer, and assesses which of these beliefs drive Americans' smoking behavior. Using data from three national surveys, statistical analyses were performed by comparing means, medians, and distributions, and by employing Generalized Additive Models. Perceptions of relative risk were associated as expected with smoking onset and smoking cessation, whereas perceptions of absolute risk and attributable risk were not. Additionally, the relation of relative risk with smoking status was stronger among people who held their risk perceptions with more certainty. Most current smokers, former smokers, and never-smokers considerably underestimated the relative risk of smoking. If, as this paper suggests, people naturally think about the health consequences of smoking in terms of relative risk, smoking rates might be reduced if public understanding of the relative risks of smoking were more accurate and people held those beliefs with more confidence.

Phosphothreonine 218 is required for the function of SR45.1 in regulating flower petal development in Arabidopsis.

RNA splicing is crucial to the production of mature mRNAs (mRNA). In Arabidopsis thaliana, the protein Arginine/Serine-rich 45 (SR45) acts as an RNA splicing activator and initiates the spliceosome assembly. SR45 is alternatively spliced into 2 isoforms. Isoform 1 (SR45.1) plays an important role in the flower petal development whereas isoform 2 (SR45.2) is important for root growth. In this study, we used immunoprecipitation to isolate an SR45.1-GFP fusion protein from transgenic plants complementing a null mutant, sr45-1. Mass spectrometry suggested a single phosphorylation event in a peptide from the alternatively spliced region unique to SR45.1. Substituting alanine for threonine 218, a candidate site for phosphorylation, did not complement the sr45-1 mutant with narrow flower petals whereas substituting aspartic acid or glutamic acid for threonine 218 did complement the sr45-1 mutant. Mass spectrometry also revealed that other proteins involved in the spliceosome co-precipitated with SR45.1, and RT-qPCR revealed that phosphorylation of threonine 218 promotes the function of SR45.1 in promoting the constitutive splicing of SR30 mRNA. This is the first demonstration of a specific phosphorylation site that differentially regulates the function of a plant splicing activator in physiologically and morphologically distinct plant tissues.