A vast literature demonstrates that voters around the world who benefit from government discretionary spending increase their electoral support for the incumbent party. But, contrary to theories of ...political accountability, some suggest that voters also reward incumbent parties for “programmatic” spending, over which incumbents have no discretion, even when passed with support from all major parties. Why voters would attribute responsibility when none exists is unclear, as is why minority parties would support legislation that costs them votes. We study two prominent programmatic policies. For the first, we design and implement one of the largest randomized social experiments ever. For the second, we reanalyze studies that came to opposite conclusions, using a large-scale randomized experiment and a natural experiment. By improving statistical methods and correcting data errors, we show that evidence from all analyses of both policies is consistent: programmatic policies have no measurable effect on voter support for incumbents.
Existing studies show that party alignment between national and subnational politicians has a positive impact on government spending. However, public programs often need the approval or input from ...career bureaucrats. Since party politics do not directly affect these agents’ incentives, it is unclear whether party alignment will affect their performance and the programs they supervise. To examine this question, I rely on a uniquely large and granular data set of projects implemented under the Member of Parliament Local Area Development Scheme in India. The evidence shows that party alignment leads to lower project approval time and a higher utilization of program resources without compromising the overall quality of projects. Career concerns emerge, over political selection, as an important mechanism explaining bureaucratic behavior. The overall findings suggest that bureaucrats’ incentives combined with the structure of promotions in the civil service are important factors explaining the impact of party alignment on the distribution of resources.
We investigated the effects of Facebook's and Instagram's feed algorithms during the 2020 US election. We assigned a sample of consenting users to reverse-chronologically-ordered feeds instead of the ...default algorithms. Moving users out of algorithmic feeds substantially decreased the time they spent on the platforms and their activity. The chronological feed also affected exposure to content: The amount of political and untrustworthy content they saw increased on both platforms, the amount of content classified as uncivil or containing slur words they saw decreased on Facebook, and the amount of content from moderate friends and sources with ideologically mixed audiences they saw increased on Facebook. Despite these substantial changes in users' on-platform experience, the chronological feed did not significantly alter levels of issue polarization, affective polarization, political knowledge, or other key attitudes during the 3-month study period.
Does Facebook enable ideological segregation in political news consumption? We analyzed exposure to news during the US 2020 election using aggregated data for 208 million US Facebook users. We ...compared the inventory of all political news that users could have seen in their feeds with the information that they saw (after algorithmic curation) and the information with which they engaged. We show that (i) ideological segregation is high and increases as we shift from potential exposure to actual exposure to engagement; (ii) there is an asymmetry between conservative and liberal audiences, with a substantial corner of the news ecosystem consumed exclusively by conservatives; and (iii) most misinformation, as identified by Meta's Third-Party Fact-Checking Program, exists within this homogeneously conservative corner, which has no equivalent on the liberal side. Sources favored by conservative audiences were more prevalent on Facebook's news ecosystem than those favored by liberals.
We studied the effects of exposure to reshared content on Facebook during the 2020 US election by assigning a random set of consenting, US-based users to feeds that did not contain any reshares over ...a 3-month period. We find that removing reshared content substantially decreases the amount of political news, including content from untrustworthy sources, to which users are exposed; decreases overall clicks and reactions; and reduces partisan news clicks. Further, we observe that removing reshared content produces clear decreases in news knowledge within the sample, although there is some uncertainty about how this would generalize to all users. Contrary to expectations, the treatment does not significantly affect political polarization or any measure of individual-level political attitudes.
Aim
The Rome IV criteria for the diagnosis of functional constipation are one month, compared with two months in the Rome III criteria. Our aim was to see whether this altered the prevalence in ...Ecuador by surveying school children and comparing the results to our previous study.
Methods
A cross‐sectional study was conducted in Quito, Ecuador, in 2013 two randomly selected schools: one private and one public. Children aged 8–15 completed the Spanish version of the Questionnaire of Paediatric Gastrointestinal Symptoms based on the Rome IV criteria. We compared our findings with our previous 2013 study based on the Rome III criteria.
Results
A total of 951 children (61% male) completed the Rome IV questionnaire from June to July 2017 at a mean age of 11.2 ± 1.8 years, and 417 children (52% male) completed the Rome III questionnaire in June 2013 at a mean age of 12.0 ± 1.8 years. We found that 14.4% met the Rome IV criteria for functional constipation compared with 11.8% for the Rome III criteria (p = 0.11).
Conclusion
Modifying the time required for a diagnosis functional constipation from two months to one month did not result in a significant difference in the prevalence.
In this research, additive manufacturing of polylactic acid (PLA) reinforced with keratin was studied. Keratin was obtained from Angora rabbit hair and modified with NaOH. Scanning electron ...microscopy (SEM) images showed that the modified surfaces were rougher than untreated surfaces. Furthermore, SEM images in the composites' fracture regions showed surface changes, associated with the nature of the reinforcement. Likewise, thermomechanical properties of the composites were attributed to the nature of the reinforcement and the type of keratin. Besides, the 3D printed composites showed higher thermal conductivity values than PLA with the addition of keratin. Cytotoxicity tests revealed an improvement in cell growth compared to the control and PLA. These results are meaningful toward the development of high thermal conductors and biocompatible composites with applications in different fields, where the use of only natural polymers is necessary.
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•Nitrogen fertilizer dose induced a reduction of the total phenols and antioxidant activity.•B. licheniformis had an important contribution to the vitamin C and lycopene.•B. ...licheniformis had a positive net effect on the synthesis of flavonoids at a 75% nitrogen dose.•The nitrogen fertilizer/biofertilizer combination had contribution on antioxidant compounds.•B. licheniformis reduced the nitrogen dose in 25% while increasing the antioxidant activity.
Tomato is one of the principal crops worldwide due to its large consumption. In this work, biofertilization treatments, based on Bacillus licheniformis, with different nitrogen fertilization doses were investigated to improve the functional quality of tomato under greenhouse conditions. Treatments tested used nitrogen fertilization only (NF) or nitrogen combined with biofertilization (BF) with the following nitrogen doses: 0, 25, 50, 75 and 100% of the recommended nitrogen dose. The lycopene content increased with the nitrogen dose with the BF treatments resulting in lower lycopene contents in comparison with the NF counterparts. The contents of hydrophilic antioxidant compounds (vitamin C and total phenols), as well as antioxidant activity (DPPH scavenging capacity and FRAP) increased as the nitrogen dose was reduced. The biosynthesis of the hydrophilic antioxidant compounds appears to be an induced resistance mechanism caused by the nitrogen-deficiency stress. In addition, B. licheniformis had a positive net effect on the synthesis of flavonoids by the plant at a 75% nitrogen dose. A two-factorial ANOVA (nitrogen fertilizer dose×biofertilizer addition) evidenced that the greatest contribution of the nitrogen fertilizer dose was to the total phenols content and antioxidant activity, while the biofertilizer mainly contributed to the vitamin C and lycopene contents. In general, the content of antioxidant compounds was affected by the interaction of the two factors. Significantly, this is the first report about the combined effect of the nitrogen fertilization dose and biofertilization addition during tomato cultivation, on the content of antioxidant compounds in tomato fruits.
Using Bank of England voting data, we show empirically that members’ votes are driven by heterogeneous individual assessments of the economy as well as their individual policy preferences. Estimates ...indicate that internal committee members form more precise assessments than externals and are also more hawkish. The estimates allow the first quantification of the gain due to information aggregation on monetary policy committees. The marginal gain from additional committee members tapers quickly after five members. There is no evidence of gains through externals’ moderating internals’ preferences. A relatively small committee of highly informed internal members emerges as a desirable committee structure.
•We analyze decision making on the Bank of England monetary policy committee.•Private assessments emerge as an important driver of individual votes.•External members are less “hawkish” and form less precise assessments than internals.•A small committee-around five members-of highly informed members is probably best.
is a Mexican oregano, which has not been widely studied. This work aimed to describe the chemical composition, antimicrobial and antioxidant activities present in
essential oil (EO), the hydrosol ...from EO extraction and extracts from waste solid residues (WSRs), identified as ethanol extract, ethyl acetate extract and the subfractions of ethanol and ethyl acetate extracts. The chemical characterization of the EO, hydrosol and WSR extracts was performed by GC⁻MS and HPLC. Their antioxidant activity was evaluated using two methods, and their antimicrobial activity was evaluated against
,
,
,
, and
Typhimurium. Thirty-one chemical components were identified in the EO. The subfractions from the ethanol and ethyl acetate extracts contain methylmaleic anhydride, thymoquinone, thymol, carvacrol, thymol acetate, carvacrol acetate, and phenolic acids. The EO presented the highest biological activities for antioxidant (136.05 mg equivalent of ascorbic acid/g (AAE/g); IC50 83.70 μg/mL of 2, 2-diphenyl-1-picrylhydrazyl (DPPH)) and antimicrobial tests (minimal inhibitory concentration (MIC) value of 250⁻750 mg/L), while the hydrosol and the ethyl acetate extract from WSRs had the lowest antioxidant activity (14.16 and 12.29 mg AAE/g respectively), and the hydrosol had the lowest antimicrobial activity (MIC of 3000 mg/L). The data suggest that Mexican oregano
hydrosol and extracts from waste solid residues can still have compounds with antimicrobial and antioxidant capacities.
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