The Political Violence Cycle HARISH, S. P.; LITTLE, ANDREW T.
The American political science review,
05/2017, Letnik:
111, Številka:
2
Journal Article
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Elections are often violent affairs, casting doubt on the canonical claim that democracy makes societies more peaceful by creating nonviolent means to contest for power. We develop a formal argument ...to demonstrate that this conclusion is incorrect. Holding elections has a direct effect of increasing levels of violence close to the voting, as this is when electoral violence can influence political outcomes. Precisely for this reason, elections also have an indirect effect of decreasing levels of violence at all other times, as parties can wait for the election when their efforts are more likely to succeed. The direct and indirect effects generate a “political violence cycle” that peaks at the election. However, when the indirect effect is larger, politics would be more violent without elections. When elections also provide an effective nonviolent means to contest for power, they unambiguously make society more peaceful while still generating a political violence cycle.
Abstract
Using photometry collected with the Zwicky Transient Facility, we are conducting an ongoing survey for binary systems with short orbital periods (
with the goal of identifying new ...gravitational-wave sources detectable by the upcoming Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA). We present a sample of 15 binary systems discovered thus far, with orbital periods ranging from 6.91 to 56.35 minutes. Of the 15 systems, seven are eclipsing systems that do not show signs of significant mass transfer. Additionally, we have discovered two AM Canum Venaticorum systems and six systems exhibiting primarily ellipsoidal variations in their lightcurves. We present follow-up spectroscopy and high-speed photometry confirming the nature of these systems, estimates of their LISA signal-to-noise ratios, and a discussion of their physical characteristics.
Huperzine A is a natural cholinesterase inhibitor derived from the Chinese herb Huperzia serrata that may compare favorably in symptomatic efficacy to cholinesterase inhibitors currently in use for ...Alzheimer disease (AD).
We assessed the safety, tolerability, and efficacy of huperzine A in mild to moderate AD in a multicenter trial in which 210 individuals were randomized to receive placebo (n = 70) or huperzine A (200 μg BID n = 70 or 400 μg BID n = 70), for at least 16 weeks, with 177 subjects completing the treatment phase. The primary analysis assessed the cognitive effects of huperzine A 200 μg BID (change in Alzheimer's Disease Assessment Scale-cognitive subscale ADAS-Cog at week 16 at 200 μg BID compared to placebo). Secondary analyses assessed the effect of huperzine A 400 μg BID, as well as effect on other outcomes including Mini-Mental State Examination, Alzheimer's Disease Cooperative Study-Clinical Global Impression of Change scale, Alzheimer's Disease Cooperative Study Activities of Daily Living scale, and Neuropsychiatric Inventory (NPI).
Huperzine A 200 μg BID did not influence change in ADAS-Cog at 16 weeks. In secondary analyses, huperzine A 400 μg BID showed a 2.27-point improvement in ADAS-Cog at 11 weeks vs 0.29-point decline in the placebo group (p = 0.001), and a 1.92-point improvement vs 0.34-point improvement in the placebo arm (p = 0.07) at week 16. Changes in clinical global impression of change, NPI, and activities of daily living were not significant at either dose.
The primary efficacy analysis did not show cognitive benefit with huperzine A 200 μg BID.
This study provides Class III evidence that huperzine A 200 μg BID has no demonstrable cognitive effect in patients with mild to moderate AD.
Severe respiratory distress in patients with COVID-19 has been associated with higher rate of neurologic manifestations. Our aim was to investigate whether the severity of chest imaging findings ...among patients with coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) correlates with the risk of acute neuroimaging findings.
This retrospective study included all patients with COVID-19 who received care at our hospital between March 3, 2020, and May 6, 2020, and underwent chest imaging within 10 days of neuroimaging. Chest radiographs were assessed using a previously validated automated neural network algorithm for COVID-19 (Pulmonary X-ray Severity score). Chest CTs were graded using a Chest CT Severity scoring system based on involvement of each lobe. Associations between chest imaging severity scores and acute neuroimaging findings were assessed using multivariable logistic regression.
Twenty-four of 93 patients (26%) included in the study had positive acute neuroimaging findings, including intracranial hemorrhage (
= 7), infarction (
= 7), leukoencephalopathy (
= 6), or a combination of findings (
= 4). The average length of hospitalization, prevalence of intensive care unit admission, and proportion of patients requiring intubation were significantly greater in patients with acute neuroimaging findings than in patients without them (
< .05 for all). Compared with patients without acute neuroimaging findings, patients with acute neuroimaging findings had significantly higher mean Pulmonary X-ray Severity scores (5.0 SD, 2.9 versus 9.2 SD, 3.4,
< .001) and mean Chest CT Severity scores (9.0 SD, 5.1 versus 12.1 SD, 5.0,
= .041). The pulmonary x-ray severity score was a significant predictor of acute neuroimaging findings in patients with COVID-19.
Patients with COVID-19 and acute neuroimaging findings had more severe findings on chest imaging on both radiographs and CT compared with patients with COVID-19 without acute neuroimaging findings. The severity of findings on chest radiography was a strong predictor of acute neuroimaging findings in patients with COVID-19.
Large-scale analysis of the fossil record requires aggregation of palaeontological data from individual fossil localities. Prior to computers, these synoptic datasets were compiled by hand, a ...laborious undertaking that took years of effort and forced palaeontologists to make difficult choices about what types of data to tabulate. The advent of desktop computers ushered in palaeontology's first digital revolution—online literature-based databases, such as the Paleobiology Database (PBDB). However, the published literature represents only a small proportion of the palaeontological data housed in museum collections. Although this issue has long been appreciated, the magnitude, and thus potential significance, of these so-called ‘dark data’ has been difficult to determine. Here, in the early phases of a second digital revolution in palaeontology—the digitization of museum collections—we provide an estimate of the magnitude of palaeontology's dark data. Digitization of our nine institutions' holdings of Cenozoic marine invertebrate collections from California, Oregon and Washington in the USA reveals that they represent 23 times the number of unique localities than are currently available in the PBDB. These data, and the vast quantity of similarly untapped dark data in other museum collections, will, when digitally mobilized, enhance palaeontologists’ ability to make inferences about the patterns and processes of past evolutionary and ecological changes.
Abstract The hypothalamo-pituitary–adrenal axis shows functional changes in alcoholics, with raised glucocorticoid release during alcohol intake and during the initial phase of alcohol withdrawal. ...Raised glucocorticoid concentrations are known to cause neuronal damage after withdrawal from chronic alcohol consumption and in other conditions. The hypothesis for these studies was that chronic alcohol treatment would have differential effects on corticosterone concentrations in plasma and in brain regions. Effects of chronic alcohol and withdrawal on regional brain corticosterone concentrations were examined using a range of standard chronic alcohol treatments in two strains of mice and in rats. Corticosterone was measured by radioimmunoassay and the identity of the corticosterone extracted from brain was verified by high performance liquid chromatography and mass spectrometry. Withdrawal from long term (3 weeks to 8 months) alcohol consumption induced prolonged increases in glucocorticoid concentrations in specific regions of rodent brain, while plasma concentrations remained unchanged. This effect was seen after alcohol administration via drinking fluid or by liquid diet, in both mice and rats and in both genders. Shorter alcohol treatments did not show the selective effect on brain glucocorticoid levels. During the alcohol consumption the regional brain corticosterone concentrations paralleled the plasma concentrations. Type II glucocorticoid receptor availability in prefrontal cortex was decreased after withdrawal from chronic alcohol consumption and nuclear localization of glucocorticoid receptors was increased, a pattern that would be predicted from enhanced glucocorticoid type II receptor activation. This novel observation of prolonged selective increases in brain glucocorticoid activity could explain important consequences of long term alcohol consumption, including memory loss, dependence and lack of hypothalamo-pituitary responsiveness. Local changes in brain glucocorticoid levels may also need to be considered in the genesis of other mental disorders and could form a potential new therapeutic target.
Molecular diagnostics is progressing from low-throughput, heterogeneous, mostly manual technologies to higher throughput, closed-tube, and automated methods. Fluorescence is the favored signaling ...technology for such assays, and a number of techniques rely on energy transfer between a fluorophore and a proximal quencher molecule. In these methods, dual-labeled probes hybridize to an amplicon and changes in the quenching of the fluorophore are detected. We describe a new technology that is simple to use, gives highly specific information, and avoids the major difficulties of the alternative methods. It uses a primer with an integral tail that is used to probe an extension product of the primer. The probing of a target sequence is thereby converted into a unimolecular event, which has substantial benefits in terms of kinetics, thermodynamics, assay design, and probe reliability.
AbstractThe mechanical behavior of asphalt binder is highly sensitive to temperature. The manner in which mechanical characteristics change with temperature can also vary significantly from one ...asphalt to another. With such variations, grading the rutting resistance of the binder by measuring a mechanical parameter of the binder at a single temperature will not be accurate, nor will ranking by determining the temperature at which a mechanical property reduces to a certain value. For precise characterization of rutting resistance of asphalt binders, a high-temperature binder specification should take into account both the sensitivity of mechanical behavior to changes in temperature and the variations in such temperature sensitivity from one binder to another. This study conducts an experimental investigation and an analysis of existing data in the literature to examine the nature of the temperature dependence of the various material parameters used to characterize rutting resistance of binders. Particularly, the nature of the temperature dependence of the nonrecoverable creep compliance from multiple stress creep recovery (MSCR) tests is investigated. The Arrhenius relationship is found to fit the relationship between mechanical properties and temperature in the high-temperature range reasonably accurately. The activation energy corresponding to the Arrhenius equation, however, is found to vary significantly between the binders. Taking these issues into consideration, a new approach to grading the rutting resistance of asphalt binders is developed that uses the Arrhenius-like temperature dependence exhibited by asphalt binders.
In humans, social stress over long and short term can increase alcohol consumption, but the mechanisms involved are not understood.
This study was conducted to examine the effects of social defeat, ...using the resident/intruder paradigm, on the alcohol preference of "low alcohol drinking" individuals in a colony of C57BL/10 strain mice and the effects of two anxiolytic drugs.
Alcohol preference, in a two-bottle choice (8% v/v alcohol or water), was measured, in separate experiments, after either a single experience of social defeat by a resident male mouse, five consecutive daily defeat experiences or one experience per week for 4 weeks. Comparison was made with effects of repeated social defeat on the preference for dilute sucrose. In addition, the actions of the CCKB receptor antagonist, CAM1028, and of diazepam were examined on the effects of repeated defeat experiences.
Five consecutive daily defeat experiences had a slow onset effect in increasing alcohol preference and consumption, compared with five daily exposures to a novel environment. A single defeat, or one defeat per week, did not significantly alter alcohol preference or intake. There were no effects of five daily defeat experiences on sucrose preference or consumption. The effect of repeated defeats on alcohol preference was significantly decreased by administration of the CCKB receptor antagonist, CAM1028, prior to each experience, but not by corresponding administration of diazepam.
The results show that social stress increases alcohol intake in low alcohol preference C57BL/10 mice and suggest that CCK transmission may be involved in this effect.
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