Are ordinary citizens better at predicting election results than conventional voter intention polls? The authors address this question by comparing eight forecasting models for British general ...elections: one based on voters' expectations of who will win and seven based on who voters themselves intend to vote for (including ‘uniform national swing model’ and ‘cube rule’ models). The data come from ComRes and Gallup polls as well as the Essex Continuous Monitoring Surveys, 1950–2017, yielding 449 months with both expectation and intention polls. The large sample size permits comparisons of the models' prediction accuracy not just in the months prior to the election, but in the years leading up to it. Vote expectation models outperform vote intention models in predicting both the winning party and parties' seat shares.
There is growing interest in the use of quantitative high-resolution neuromuscular sonography to evaluate skeletal muscles in patients with critical illness. There is currently considerable ...methodological variability in the measurement technique of quantitative muscle analysis. The reliability of muscle parameters using different measurement techniques and assessor expertise levels has not been examined in patients with critical illness. The primary objective of this study was to determine the interobserver reliability of quantitative sonographic measurement analyses (thickness and echogenicity) between assessors of different expertise levels and using different techniques for selecting the region of interest.
We conducted a cross-sectional observational study in neurocritical care and mixed surgical-medical intensive care units from 2 tertiary referral hospitals.
Twenty diaphragm and 20 quadriceps images were evaluated. Images were obtained by using standardized imaging acquisition techniques. Quantitative sonographic measurements included muscle thickness and echogenicity analysis (either by the trace or square technique). All images were analyzed twice independently by 4 assessors of differing expertise levels. Excellent interobserver reliability was obtained for all measurement techniques regardless of expertise level (intraclass correlation coefficient, >0.75 for all comparisons). There was less variability between assessors for echogenicity values when the square technique was used for the quadriceps muscle and the trace technique for the diaphragm.
Excellent interobserver reliability exists regardless of expertise level for quantitative analysis of muscle parameters on sonography in the critically ill population. On the basis of these findings, it is recommended that echogenicity analysis be performed using the square technique for the quadriceps and the trace technique for the diaphragm.
The Rosetta software for macromolecular modeling, docking and design is extensively used in laboratories worldwide. During two decades of development by a community of laboratories at more than 60 ...institutions, Rosetta has been continuously refactored and extended. Its advantages are its performance and interoperability between broad modeling capabilities. Here we review tools developed in the last 5 years, including over 80 methods. We discuss improvements to the score function, user interfaces and usability. Rosetta is available at http://www.rosettacommons.org.
ABSTRACT
It has recently been shown that the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) has a substantial effect on the Milky Way’s stellar halo and stellar streams. Here, we explore how deformations of the Milky ...Way and LMC’s dark matter haloes affect stellar streams, and whether these effects are observable. In particular, we focus on the Orphan–Chenab (OC) stream which passes particularly close to the LMC and spans a large portion of the Milky Way’s halo. We represent the Milky Way–LMC system using basis function expansions that capture their evolution in an N-body simulation. We present the properties of this system, such as the evolution of the densities and force fields of each galaxy. The OC stream is evolved in this time-dependent, deforming potential, and we investigate the effects of the various moments of the Milky Way and the LMC. We find that the simulated OC stream is strongly influenced by the deformations of both the Milky Way and the LMC and that this effect is much larger than current observational errors. In particular, the Milky Way dipole has the biggest impact on the stream, followed by the evolution of the LMC’s monopole, and the LMC’s quadrupole. Detecting these effects would confirm a key prediction of collisionless, cold dark matter, and would be a powerful test of alternative dark matter and alternative gravity models.
Election forecasting is a growing enterprise. Structural models relying on "fundamental" political and economic variables, principally to predict government performance, are popular in political ...science. Conventional wisdom though is these standard structural models fall short in predicting individual blocs' performance and their applicability to multiparty systems is restricted. We challenge this by providing a structural forecast of bloc performance in Ireland, a case primarily overlooked in the election forecasting literature. Our model spurns the economic and performance variables conventionally associated with structural forecasting enterprises and instead concentrates on Ireland's historical party and governance dynamics in the vein of testing whether these patterns alone offer solid predictions of election outcomes. Using Seemingly Unrelated Regression (SUR), our approach, comprising measures of incumbency, short-term party support, and political and economic shocks, offers reasonable predictions of the vote share performance of four blocs: Ireland's two major parties, Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael, Independents, and the Left bloc combined across 20 elections spanning 60 years.
An abundance of comparative survey research argues the presence of economic voting as an individual force in European elections, thereby refuting a possible ecological fallacy. But the hypothesis of ...economic voting at the aggregate level, with macroeconomics influencing overall electoral outcomes, seems less sure. Indeed, there might be a micrological fallacy at work, with the supposed individual economic vote effect not adding up to a national electoral effect after all. Certainly that would account for the spotty evidence linking macroeconomics and national election outcomes. We examine the possibility of a micrological fallacy through rigorous analysis of a large time-series-cross-sectional data set of European nations. From these results, it becomes clear that the macroeconomy strongly moves national election outcomes, with hard times punishing governing parties, and good times rewarding them. Further, this economy-election connection appears asymmetric, altering under economic crisis. Indeed, we show that economic crisis, defined as negative growth, has much greater electoral effects than positive economic growth. Hard times clearly make governments more accountable to their electorates.
With a resurgence in interest in covalent drugs, there is a need to identify new moieties capable of cysteine bond formation that are differentiated from commonly employed systems such as acrylamide. ...Herein, we report on the discovery of new alkynyl benzoxazine and dihydroquinazoline moieties capable of covalent reaction with cysteine. Their utility as alternative electrophilic warheads for chemical biological probes and drug molecules is demonstrated through site-selective protein modification and incorporation into kinase drug scaffolds. A potent covalent inhibitor of JAK3 kinase was identified with superior selectivity across the kinome and improvements in
pharmacokinetic profile relative to the related acrylamide-based inhibitor. In addition, the use of a novel heterocycle as a cysteine reactive warhead is employed to target Cys788 in c-KIT, where acrylamide has previously failed to form covalent interactions. These new reactive and selective heterocyclic warheads supplement the current repertoire for cysteine covalent modification while avoiding some of the limitations generally associated with established moieties.
Summary Background MEK is a member of the MAPK signalling cascade that is commonly activated in melanoma. Direct inhibition of MEK blocks cell proliferation and induces apoptosis. We aimed to analyse ...safety, efficacy, and genotyping data for the oral, small-molecule MEK inhibitor trametinib in patients with melanoma. Methods We undertook a multicentre, phase 1 three-part study (dose escalation, cohort expansion, and pharmacodynamic assessment). The main results of this study are reported elsewhere; here we present data relating to patients with melanoma. We obtained tumour samples to assess BRAF mutational status, and available tissues underwent exploratory genotyping analysis. Disease response was measured by Response Evaluation Criteria in Solid Tumors, and adverse events were defined by common toxicity criteria. This study is registered with ClinicalTrials.gov , number NCT00687622. Findings 97 patients with melanoma were enrolled, including 81 with cutaneous or unknown primary melanoma (36 BRAF mutant, 39 BRAF wild-type, six BRAF status unknown), and 16 with uveal melanoma. The most common treatment-related adverse events were rash or dermatitis acneiform (n=80; 82%) and diarrhoea (44; 45%), most of which were grade 2 or lower. No cutaneous squamous-cell carcinomas were recorded. Of 36 patients with BRAF mutations, 30 had not received a BRAF inhibitor before; two complete responses (both confirmed) and ten partial responses (eight confirmed) were noted in this subgroup (confirmed response rate, 33%). Median progression-free survival of this subgroup was 5·7 months (95% CI 4·0–7·4). Of the six patients who had received previous BRAF inhibition, one unconfirmed partial response was recorded. Of 39 patients with BRAF wild-type melanoma, four partial responses were confirmed (confirmed response rate, 10%). Interpretation Our data show substantial clinical activity of trametinib in melanoma and suggest that MEK is a valid therapeutic target. Differences in response rates according to mutations indicate the importance of mutational analyses in the future. Funding GlaxoSmithKline.
“It's the economy stupid”—is the phrase that captures the ubiquity of economics in determining election outcomes. Nevertheless, while several studies support the premise of economic voting, a ...constant critique of valence economic models is that partisan bias contaminates voters' economic perceptions, thus invaliding any independent effect of economic opinions on the vote. Here, we test whether partisanship may itself be endogenous to the macroeconomy. Aggregating data from the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems (CSES), supplemented with European Social Survey (ESS) data to bolster the time analysis, we focus on macropartisanship and find a drop‐off of party identifiers for governing parties in tandem with the economic downturn, specifically from rising unemployment. More generally, macropartisanship responds to economic conditions, suggesting that the endogeneity concern between party attachment and valence economic conditions is not unidirectional. That is, while economic perceptions may be influenced by party identification, party identification can be influenced by economic conditions.
Related Articles
Dettrey, Bryan J. 2013. “Relative Losses and Economic Voting: Sociotropic Considerations or ‘Keeping up with the Joneses?’” Politics & Policy 41(5): 788–806. https://doi.org/10.1111/polp.12038.
Fernandes, Ivan Filipe, Gustavo Andrey De Almeida Lopes Fernandes, and Artur Zimerman. 2022. “For Whom the Bell Tolls: Party Mediation Effects on Economic Voting in a Large Democratic Federation.” Politics & Policy 50(2): 324–62. https://doi.org/10.1111/polp.12453.
Stegmaier, Mary, and Michael S. Lewis‐Beck. 2009. “Learning the Economic Vote: Hungarian Forecasts, 1998–2010.” Politics & Policy 37(4): 769–80. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1747‐1346.2009.00197.x.
Macroeconomía y Macropartidismo: Condiciones Económicas e Identificación de Partidos
“Es la economía estúpida,” es la frase que captura la ubicuidad de la economía para determinar los resultados de las elecciones. Sin embargo, mientras varios estudios apoyan la premisa del voto económico, una crítica constante a los modelos económicos de valencia es que el sesgo partidista contamina las percepciones económicas de los votantes, invalidando así cualquier efecto independiente de las opiniones económicas sobre el voto. Aquí probamos si el partidismo en sí mismo puede ser endógeno a la macroeconomía. Al agregar datos del Estudio Comparativo de Sistemas Electorales (CSES), complementados con datos de la Encuesta Social Europea (ESS) para reforzar el análisis de tiempo, nos enfocamos en el macropartidismo y encontramos una caída de identificadores de partido para los partidos gobernantes junto con la recesión económica. Específicamente del aumento del desempleo. De manera más general, el macropartidismo responde a las condiciones económicas, lo que sugiere que la preocupación por la endogeneidad entre el apego al partido y las condiciones económicas de valencia no es unidireccional. Es decir, mientras que las percepciones económicas pueden verse influidas por la identificación partidaria, la identificación partidaria puede verse influida por las condiciones económicas.
宏观经济和宏观党派：经济条件和政党认同
“这是经济愚蠢”——这句话体现了经济学在决定选举结果方面的普遍性。然而，虽然有几项研究支持经济投票的前提，但对价经济模型的持续批评是，党派偏见会污染选民的经济观念，从而使经济意见对投票的任何独立影响无效。在这里，我们检验党派之争本身是否可能是宏观经济的内生因素。汇总来自选举制度比较研究 (CSES) 的数据，辅以欧洲社会调查 (ESS) 数据以支持时间分析，我们专注于宏观党派，并发现执政党的政党标识符随着经济衰退而下降，特别是失业率上升。更一般地说，宏观党派对经济状况作出反应，这表明政党依附和效价经济状况之间的内生性关注不是单向的。也就是说，虽然经济观念可能会受到政党认同的影响，但政党认同也会受到经济条件的影响。
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