Economic development has traditionally relied on operational resources concentrated in the government's general fund balance for postinfrastructure operations. In this article, the authors explore the phenomenon of infrastructure surtax adoption for development and operation in an empirical analysis of Florida counties. The authors focus their analysis on the factors that influence the adoption grounding the analysis in the theoretical framework of the policy innovation and adoption literature. Their results support earlier findings; however, the most striking point is that fiscal stress and direct tax burden do not statistically influence the infrastructure surtax innovation.

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Dendritic cell (DC)-based vaccines have received attention as a new therapeutic modality against cancer. However, increased STAT3 activity in the tumor microenvironment makes DCs tolerogenic and suppresses their antitumor activity. In this study, we explored the effects of a combination treatment consisting of a proteasome inhibitor, bortezomib, and an antigen specific STAT3-ablated (STAT3−/−) DC-based vaccine on the control of TC-1(P3) tumors, a p53-degraded immune resistant cancer cells. We found that E7-antigen expressing STAT3−/− DC (E7-DC-1STAT3−/−) vaccination enhanced generation of E7-specific CD8+ T cells, but was not enough to control TC-1(P3) cancer cells. Therefore, we investigated whether bortezomib could create a synergistic effect with E7-DC-1STAT3−/− vaccination. We found that apoptosis via down-regulation of STAT3 and NF-κB and up-regulation of Fas and death receptor 5 (DR5) expression in TC-1(P3) induced by bortezomib was independent of p53 status. We also observed that TC-1(P3) cells pretreated with bortezomib had markedly enhanced anti-tumor effects on E7-specific CD8+ T cells through a Fas/DR5-mediated mechanism. In addition, TC-1(P3) tumor-bearing mice treated with bortezomib prior to vaccination with E7-DC-1STAT3−/− demonstrated enhanced generation of E7-specific CD8+ T cells and prolonged survival compared to those treated with monotherapy. These results suggest that the anti-tumor effects against a p53-degraded immune resistant variant generated by antigen-expressing STAT3-ablated mature DCs may be enhanced by bortezomib via death receptor-mediated apoptosis.