Originating from the stochastic nature of the photon emission process, the longitudinal coordinates of electrons diffuse even if the global phase slippage of a storage ring is zero, as we cannot zero ...all the local phase slippages simultaneously. This quantum diffusion is viewed as the most fundamental effect limiting the lowest bunch length realizable in an electron storage ring from single-particle dynamics perspective. Energy spread diverges when bunch length is pushed to the limit given by this diffusion. Here we report the first experimental evidence supporting the existence of this effect. The measurements confirm the breakdown of the classical formula of bunch length and energy spread in an electron storage ring with globally small and locally large phase slippage.
NK cells are promising effectors for tumor adoptive immunotherapy, particularly when considering the targeting of MHC class I low or negative tumors. Yet, NK cells cannot respond to many tumors, ...which is particularly the case for nonhematopoietic tumors such as carcinomas or melanoma even when these cells lose MHC class I surface expression. Therefore, we targeted primary human NK cells by gene transfer of an activating chimeric receptor specific for HER-2, which is frequently overexpressed on carcinomas. We found that these targeted NK cells were specifically activated upon recognition of all evaluated HER-2 positive tumor cells, including autologous targets, as indicated by high levels of cytokine secretion as well as degranulation. The magnitude of this specific response correlated with the level of HER-2 expression on the tumor cells. Finally, these receptor transduced NK cells, but not their mock transduced counterpart, efficiently eradicated tumor cells in RAG2 knockout mice as visualized by in vivo imaging. Taken together, these results indicate that the expression of this activating receptor overrides inhibitory signals in primary human NK cells and directs them specifically toward HER-2 expressing tumor cells both in vitro and in vivo.
Adhesions can cause symptoms of pelvic pain, infertility, and bowel obstruction in reproductive and postmenopausal women. The topic of adhesiolysis and adhesion barriers in gynecology has been ...studied in small, heterogeneous studies with very low to moderate quality. The efficacy for prevention and treatment strategies of adhesive disease in the gynecologic population will be reviewed here.
This article provides the first comprehensive analysis of how parties across 28 countries use digital political marketing on Facebook by drawing on the example of the 2019 European Parliament ...election. We introduce a theoretical model of political Facebook marketing and compare the paid media activity (sponsored posts, ads) of 186 parties to their owned media (posts) and earned media (user reactions, comments, shares). Our results concerning cross-country patterns indicate that differences in European parties’ paid media activity exist and only a few parties leverage sophisticated targeting strategies. Regarding temporal dynamics, we find that paid media is used to supplement owned media during similar campaign phases. In terms of engagement-triggering effects, we show that sponsoring posts is a suitable tool to increase earned media. Overall, paid media activity on Facebook is largely embedded into parties’ overall marketing strategy and national countries’ regulatory settings. Our results have implications for the understanding of public opinion, voting behaviour and the regulations of elections in modern European democracies.
The rise of right-wing populist parties in Western democracies is often attributed to populists’ ability to instrumentalize news media by making deliberate provocations (e.g., verbal attacks on ...migrants or politicians from other parties) that generate media coverage and public awareness. To explain the success of populists’ deliberate provocations, we drew from research on populism and scandal theory to develop a theoretical framework that we tested in two studies examining the rise of German right-wing populist party Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) between January 2015 and December 2018. In Study 1, an input–output analysis of 17 deliberate provocations by AfD politicians in German news media revealed much more coverage about their attacks on migrants than about their attacks on political elites, although all were covered in predominantly scandalizing ways. Next, Study 2, involving media database research and an analysis of Google Trends data, showed that the provocations had increased overall media coverage about the AfD and influenced public awareness of the party
Data-driven campaigning has become one of the key foci for academic and non-academic audiences interested in political communication. Widely seen to have transformed political practice, it is often ...argued that data-driven campaigning is a force of significant democratic disruption because it contributes to a fragmentation of political discourse, undermines prevailing systems of electoral accountability and subverts ‘free’ and ‘fair’ elections. In this article, we present one of the very first cross-national analyses of data-driven campaigning by political parties. Drawing on empirical research conducted by experts in six advanced democracies, we show that the data-driven campaign practices seen to threaten democracy are often not manifest in party campaigns. Instead, we see a set of practices that build on pre-existing techniques and which are far less sophisticated than is often assumed. Indeed, we present evidence that most political parties lack the capacity to execute the hyper-intensive practices often associated with data-driven campaigning. Hence, while there is reason to remain alert to the challenges data-driven campaigning produces for democratic norms, we argue that this practice is not inherently disruptive, but rather exemplifies the evolving nature of political campaigning in the 21st century.
The revitalisation of canvassing in recent elections is strongly related to campaigns´ growing possibilities for analysing voter data to gain knowledge about their constituents, identifying their ...most likely voters and serving up personalised messages through individual conversations. The research literature about political micro-targeting hardly ever focusses on campaigns in parliamentary democracies with strict data protection laws. Based on in-depth expert interviews we introduce a framework of constraints in strategic political communication and reveal several restrictions on the macro, meso and micro levels which hinder the implementation of sophisticated data strategies in Germany. We argue that political micro-targeting highly depends on system-level contextual factors, budgetary and legal restraints, party structures and even individual decisions and knowledge on behalf of the campaign leadership.
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