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Numerous and diverse reports indicate the efficacy of shamanic plant adjuncts (e.g., iboga, ayahuasca, psilocybin) for the care and treatment of addiction, post-traumatic stress disorder, cancer, cluster headaches, and depression. This article reports on a first-person healing of lifelong asthma and atopic dermatitis in the shamanic context of the contemporary Peruvian Amazon and the sometimes digital ontology of online communities. The article suggests that emerging language, concepts, and data drawn from the sciences of plant signaling and behavior regarding “plant intelligence” provide a useful heuristic framework for comprehending and actualizing the healing potentials of visionary plant “entheogens” (Wasson 1971) as represented both through first-person experience and online reports. Together with the paradigms and practices of plant signaling, biosemiotics provides a robust and coherent map for contextualizing the often reported experience of plant communication with ayahuasca and other entheogenic plants. The archetype of the “plant teachers” (called Doctores in the upper Amazon) is explored as a means for organizing and interacting with this data within an epistemology of the “hallucination/perception continuum (Fischer 1975). “Ecodelic” is offered as a new linguistic interface alongside “entheogen” (Wasson 1971).

Antecedent soil moisture significantly influenced the hydraulic conductivity of the A1, A2e and B21 horizons in a series of strong texture-contrast soils. Tension infiltration at six supply potentials demonstrated that in the A1 horizon, hydraulic conductivity was significantly lower in the ‘wet’ treatment than in the ‘dry’ treatment. However in the A2e horizon, micropore and mesopore hydraulic conductivity was lower in the ‘dry’ treatment than the ‘wet’ treatment, which was attributed to the precipitation of soluble amorphous silica. In the B21 horizon, desiccation of vertic clays resulted in the formation of shrinkage cracks which significantly increased near-saturated hydraulic conductivity and prevented the development of subsurface lateral flow in the ‘dry’ treatment. In the ‘wet’ treatment, the difference between the hydraulic conductivity of the A1 and B21 horizons was reduced; however, lateral flow still occurred in the A1 horizon due to difficulty displacing existing soil water further down the soil profile. Results demonstrate the need to account for temporal variation in soil porosity and hydraulic conductivity in soilwater model conceptualisation and parameterisation.

Seasonal variation in potential water repellence has not been widely reported in the literature, and little is known of the processes that cause changes in potential water repellence. In this study, the severity and stability of potential water repellence varied seasonally from being weakly hydrophobic in July 2009 (water drop penetration time, 0.19 min; water entry potential, 0.0 cm) to severely hydrophobic (water drop penetration time, 54 min; water entry potential, 14.3 cm) in May 2009. Seasonal variation in the stability of potential water repellence was significantly correlated with cumulative rainfall, air temperature and soil water deficit, which indicated that the accumulation of water-repellent compounds, presumably polar waxes, resulted from microbial or plant inputs to the soil. Laboratory experiments demonstrated that saturating and mixing the soil resulted in a two to three order of magnitude reduction in the stability of potential water repellence, even after oven drying at 40 °C and 60 ° C. Repeated leaching resulted in sequential reduction in both the stability and severity of water repellence. The significant correlation between soil water repellence and dissolved organic carbon content of the leachate, together with pedological evidence of organic staining of ped faces in the clay subsoil indicate that seasonal rainfall leached soluble water-repellent compounds from the topsoil. The reestablishment of water repellence after saturation and leaching required the input of new water-repellent compounds. These findings suggest that the use of surfactants before sowing may assist to leach water-repellent compounds from the topsoil, allowing improved infiltration and reduced runoff through the remainder of the cropping season.

Congressional earmark reform efforts began in 2006. This paper reviews the literature on earmarks and documents the rise and relative fall in earmark spending using four databases. It identifies and critiques earmark reforms, including congressional rules and initiatives taken by the appropriations committees and congressional party organizations. Rules and committee-initiated reforms were the most effective, producing significant improvements in transparency and expediting availability of information. The number of earmarks and their dollar value first dropped noticeably in 2007 after an earmark moratorium, then stabilized as reforms were implemented. It is premature to conclude that reforms will alter the policy content of earmarks or their distribution.

In response to widespread perceptions of problems associated with congressional earmarks, reform efforts began in late 2006 and continued through 2010. This essay summarizes those problems, explains the distribution of earmarks within Congress, and documents their rise and relative fall between 1991 and 2010 using government and public interest group databases. The author explains and critiques earmark reform policies, including congressional rules, initiatives taken by the congressional appropriations committees, and reforms pursued by the George W. Bush and Barack Obama administrations. Congressional rules and committee initiated reforms have been most effective, resulting in significant improvements in earmark transparency and accountability. The number and dollar value of earmarks first dropped noticeably in fiscal year 2007 after an earmark moratorium, and then stabilized as reforms were implemented. It is premature to conclude that these levels will continue or that reforms will alter the policy content of earmarks or their distribution among members of Congress.

Since 1986, presidents have been required to submit an annual National Security Strategy (NSS). Recent years have seen a proliferation of national strategies of other kinds, linked in part to the NSS. The National Security Council, led by the national security advisor and employing its committee system and the interagency process, develops the NSS. The integration of all the necessary elements within the NSS involves an opaque and irregular set of rolling negotiations among national security principals. The 2006 NSS is best viewed in comparison to the 2002 version, which was issued in the immediate aftermath of 9/11. It stipulates that the United States is at war with transnational terrorism fueled by a perversion of Islam and proposes stable democracy as the primary solution, supported by aggressive efforts to control the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and the option of taking preemptive military action. Criteria for assessing national security strategies can be process oriented or results based.

President Clinton's veto of the 1995 reconciliation bill, the largest and most ambitious such legislation ever passed by Congress, was the first time a reconciliation bill was ever rejected by a president. It was also the first reconciliation bill in two decades to include a tax reduction rather than a tax increase. The fate of this bill, and its scope and contents, suggest the need to assess the evolution of reconciliation within the congressional budget process. In the early 1980s, Congress altered budget reconciliation procedures, putting in place a powerful new capability for deficit reduction. Reconciliation became the primary means within the budget process of restraining entitlement spending and increasing taxes as part of congressional efforts to reduce the deficit. Gramm‐Rudman‐Hollings magnified certain problems Congress encountered in using reconciliation to control entitlements, producing increased pressure to cut discretionary spending. While the Budget Enforcement Act of 1990 included new authority to use reconciliation to restrain entitlements, congressional spending priorities combined with the Peace Dividend to maintain the relative sanctuary entitlement programs have enjoyed. The limits of reconciliation as a deficit reduction tool, both in terms of increasing revenues and curtailing entitlements, are detailed. The inherent procedural advantages accorded to entitlements are contrasted with the treatment of discretionary programs, explaining in part the widening gulf between these two categories of spending. Congress has attempted, without success, to find alternatives to reconciliation. The failure of the seven‐year, deficit‐eliminating reconciliation bill of 1995 may indicate that certain Limits on the use of reconciliation may have been reached.

Polypyrrole (PPy) films doped with macrocyclic calixarene anions are attractive materials for the development of selective sensor materials and membrane systems as the incorporation of the macrocycles can confer specific recognition sites within the polymer matrix. However, unlike many other PPy films a calixarene-doped system is more complicated as calixarenes are themselves electroactive. Here we present results on the electroactivity, impedance properties and morphology of polypyrrole doped with p-sulfonatocalix[4]arene. The calixarene in the polymer was found to be irreversibly oxidised at potentials greater than 0.500 V vs. SCE and reacted to form a new redox active species that was trapped within the polymer matrix. The results from the impedance and EQCM studies indicated that the calixarene was permanently trapped within the polymer matrix and the polymer acted as a cation exchange material. In addition, the data acquired from the EQCM experiments showed that while the material displayed simple cation exchange properties at high scan rates, at lower scan rates the transport of neutral species was also observed. Overall, our findings indicate that the PPy-C4S system is suitable for use as a stable conducting polymer doped with an immobile anion within the potential window of −0.800 V to 0.500 V vs. SCE.

John Gilmour. Reconcilable diferences? Congress, the Budget Process, and the Deficit. Allen Schick, The Capacity to Budget. Richard Fenno, The Emergence of a Senate Leader: Pete Domenici and the Reagan Budget. Dennis Ippolito, Uncertain Legacies: Federal Budget Policy from Roosevelt through Rragan. Stanly Collender, The Guide to the Federal Budget, Fiscal 1992.

The Budget Enforcement Act of 1990, included in the controversial and comprehensive budget legislation passed by Congress in October, makes a number of significant changes in federal budgeting. It shifts the focus of the budget process from deficit reduction to spending control, provides five-year spending totals and mini-sequesters for defense, international and domestic appropriations, and puts entitlements and revenue expenditures on a pay-as-you-go basis. The Gramm-Rudman-Hollings deficit targets have been raised substantially, Social Security surpluses taken out of the deficit calculation and allowance made for further adjustments for inflation, Operation Desert Shield, and other emergency spending, minimizing the prospect for general sequestration. OMB has been given important new estimating authority and the roles of the congressional committees involved in budgeting have been altered.

The two-way interaction between soil morphology and the processes governing soil water movement were investigated for a range of texture-contrast soil profiles. The texture-contrast soils consisted of a seasonally water-repellent sandy loam A1 horizon over a bleached silica-cemented A2e horizon and a mottled vertic clay subsoil. Differences in soil morphology and structure among sites had little influence on the proportion of soil that participated in infiltration or the maximum depth of infiltration; however, differences in subsoil structure influenced the processes by which water infiltrated and was stored within the B2 horizons. The occurrence of preferential flow was largely controlled by the effects of antecedent soil moisture content on water repellence in the A1 horizon, silica bridging in the A2e horizon, and clay shrinkage in the B2 horizons. Under dry soil conditions, infiltration resulted from up to five different forms of preferential flow. When soils were near field capacity, most forms of preferential flow ceased; however, wetting front instability and lateral flow developed in the A1 horizon. Preferential flows are not thought to have contributed to the pedogenesis of the texture-contrast soils. Development of the contrasting soil texture horizons, sand infills, and bleached A2e horizons developed before and independently of the observed preferential flow processes in which reworked aeolian sands buried previously developed clay columns.

The effect of water repellence and antecedent soil moisture on wetting front stability and infiltration rate are reported for a seasonally water repellent topsoil. The effect of water repellence on infiltration was determined by comparing the in situ infiltration of water to that of a 7M ethanol solution. Wetting front stability was measured during infiltration of water into repacked, wettable and water repellent soils, within a Hele-Shaw chamber. Water repellence restricted in situ movement of water through large macropores (>500 μm), which decreased intrinsic permeability by 1 to 2 orders of magnitude. In repacked soils, water repellence caused the development of unstable wetting fronts and reduced infiltration from 240 mm h − 1 to 101.7 mm h − 1 . Infiltration into wettable soils at moisture contents near field capacity was expected to result in rapid infiltration and stable wetting fronts. However in repacked soils, wetting front instability developed, and infiltration rates were 190% lower when air and/or water movement through the base of the chamber was restricted. Infiltration into in situ soil was also slower at high antecedent soil moisture. The hydraulic conductivity of the 7M ethanol solution decreased significantly from 112.3 mm h − 1 in dry water repellent conditions, to 35.6 mm h − 1 in wettable soils at high antecedent moisture contents. Consequently the previously reported development of wetting front instability and reduced infiltration into in situ wettable soils at high moisture contents were confirmed and attributed to difficulty displacing existing soil water during infiltration of new water.