scholarly journals Short-term matters: the determinants of reforms of the core democratic rules

2015 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 73-93 ◽  
Author(s):  
Camille Bedock

Current theories on institutional change tend to interpret it either as the result of long-term gradual trends, or of disrupting shocks following periods of punctuated equilibrium. Less is known about the moments in which change is more frequent. Focusing on the short-term determinants of reforms of core democratic rules in consolidated democracies, the article shows that proximate shifts in the electoral arena have a distinctive impact on the number of institutional reforms that are adopted in a legislature. Using the empirical and theoretical findings of the literature on electoral reform, the article develops a model tested in statistical analyses aggregating a large sample of institutional reforms in Western European democracies between 1990 and 2010. The results show that rising electoral uncertainty measured by volatility, and the change of preferences of the actors in power measured by the advent of new forces in government lead to the adoption of more institutional reforms. These results appear consistent when some categories of reform are added or subtracted, giving confidence that this model can be applied to a wide range of institutional reforms.

Author(s):  
Camille Bedock

The aim of this fourth chapter is to understand the determinants of reforms of core democratic rules through a macro-analysis taking into account both long-term and short-term factors of change. Two dependent variables are examined: first, the total number of reforms adopted per country between 1990 and 2010; and second, the number of institutional reforms adopted by legislature. In the long term, polities with a lack of political support and majoritarian polities experience more reforms. Focusing on short-term determinants, the results show that rising electoral uncertainty, as measured by volatility, along with the changing preferences of actors in power as measured by the advent of new forces in government, lead to the adoption of greater numbers of institutional reforms in following legislatures.


Author(s):  
Vidhi Shah

Abstract: This research was conducted to gather data and understand the perception what the Indian population holds when it comes to investing in cryptocurrency. To do so, a survey was designed using the UTAUT model and was circulated by the means of google forms. A wide range of parameters were considered to avail the maximum possible accuracy for the data collected. Parameters like, the ease of investing crypto, short term and long term benefits, monetary benefits, social benefits were considered. All of these parameters were supposed to be answered on a scale of 5. After collecting all the data, the results were analyzed and evaluated using which the hypothesis made were proved. Keywords: Cryptocurrency, UTAUT, performance expectancy, effort expectancy, perceived monetary benefits, perceived safety, social influence, adoption intension.


1996 ◽  
Vol 39 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
G. Asch ◽  
K. Wylegalla ◽  
M. Hellweg ◽  
D. Seidl ◽  
H. Rademacher

During the Proyecto de Investigaciòn Sismològica de la Cordillera Occidental (PISCO '94) in the Atacama desert of Northern Chile, a continuously recording broadband seismic station was installed to the NW of the currently active volcano, Lascar. For the month of April, 1994, an additional network of three, short period, three-component stations was deployed around the volcano to help discriminate its seismic signals from other local seismicity. During the deployment, the volcanic activity at Lascar appeared to be limited mainly to the emission of steam and SO2. Tremor from Lascar is a random, «rapid-fire» series of events with a wide range of amplitudes and a quasi-fractal structure. The tremor is generated by an ensemble of independent elementary sources clustered in the volcanic edifice. In the short-term, the excitation of the sources fluctuates strongly, while the long-term power spectrum is very stationary.


Author(s):  
G. Terence Wilson ◽  
Christopher G. Fairburn

A very substantial number of well-designed studies (Type 1 and Type 2) have shown that manual-based cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) is currently the treatment of choice for bulimia nervosa (BN); roughly half of patients receiving CBT cease binge eating and purging. Well accepted by patients, CBT is the most effective means of eliminating the core features of the eating disorder and is often accompanied by improvement in psychological problems such as low self-esteem and depression; long-term maintenance of improvement is reasonably good. A large number of good to excellent outcome studies (Type 1 and Type 2) suggest that different classes of antidepressant drugs produce significantly greater reductions in the short term for binge eating and purging in BN patients than a placebo treatment; the long-term effects of antidepressant medication on BN remain untested. There is little evidence that combining CBT with antidepressant medication significantly enhances improvement in the core features of BN, although it may aid in treating comorbid anxiety and depression. The continuing paucity of controlled research on outcomes of treatment for anorexia nervosa (AN) contrasts sharply with the quantity and quality of research on outcomes of treatment for BN and binge-eating disorder (BED). Nevertheless, a specific form of family therapy, referred to as the Maudsley Model, has shown promising effects on AN in adolescent patients, although this remains to be shown to be a specific effect. Several different psychological treatments appear equally effective in reducing the frequency of binge eating in the short term in BED; these treatments include CBT, interpersonal therapy (IPT), behavioral weight loss programs, and guided self-help based on cognitive-behavioral principles. To date, only CBT and IPT have been shown to have significant longer term effects in eliminating binge eating. Evidence on the specific effects of antidepressant medication on BED is mixed. As yet, there has been no research on the treatment of the most common eating disorder diagnosis, “eating disorder not otherwise specified.”


2004 ◽  
Vol 57 (2) ◽  
pp. 182-202 ◽  
Author(s):  
David F. Ford

The future of Cambridge University is discussed in the context of the current British and global situation of universities, the main focus being on what the core concerns of a major university should be at this time. After raising issues related to core intellectual values (truth-seeking, rationality in argument, balanced judgement, integrity, linguistic precision and critical questioning) and the sustaining of a long-term social and intellectual ecology, four main challenges are identified: uniting teaching and research fruitfully; interrelating fields of knowledge appropriately across a wide range of disciplines; contributing to society in ways that are responsible towards the long-term flourishing of our world; and sustaining and reinventing collegiality so that the university can be a place where intensive, disciplined conversations within and across generations can flourish. The latter leads into questions of polity, governance and management. Finally, the inseparability of teaching, research and knowledge from questions of meaning, value, ethics, collegiality and transgenerational responsibility leads to proposing ‘wisdom’ as an integrating concept. The relevant sources of wisdom available are both religious and secular, and in a world that is complexly both religious and secular we need universities that can be places where both are done justice. Given the seriousness and long-term nature of the conflicts associated with religious and secular forces in our world, it is especially desirable that universities in their education of future generations contribute to the healing of such divisions.


Open Heart ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. e000901
Author(s):  
Anette Borger Kvaslerud ◽  
Amjad Iqbal Hussain ◽  
Andreas Auensen ◽  
Thor Ueland ◽  
Annika E Michelsen ◽  
...  

ObjectiveThe aim of this study was to evaluate the prevalence and prognostic implication of iron deficiency (ID) and anaemia in patients with severe aortic stenosis (AS).MethodsIn an observational study of consecutive patients referred for aortic valve replacement (AVR), we assessed a wide range of biomarkers of iron status, including the definition of ID commonly applied in patients with chronic heart failure (ferritin <100 µg/L or ferritin 100–299 µg/L with a transferrin saturation <20%). The endpoints were short-term (one-year) and long-term (median 4.7 years, IQR: 3.8–5.5) mortality and major adverse cardiovascular events (MACE) within the first year after inclusion.Results464 patients were included in this substudy. 91 patients (20%) received conservative treatment and 373 patients (80%) received AVR. ID was detected in 246 patients (53%). 94 patients (20%) had anaemia. Patients with ID had an overall worse clinical profile than patients without ID. During follow-up, 129 patients (28%) died. Neither ID as defined above, soluble transferrin receptor nor hepcidin were associated with short-term or long-term mortality or MACE independent on treatment allocation. Anaemia was associated with one-year mortality in conservatively treated patients.ConclusionsID and anaemia are prevalent in patients with severe AS. In our cohort, ID did not provide independent prognostic information on top of conventional risk factors. More studies are required to determine how to correctly diagnose ID in patients with AS.Trial registration numberNCT01794832.


2009 ◽  
Vol 2009 ◽  
pp. 1-21
Author(s):  
Sanjay L. Badjate ◽  
Sanjay V. Dudul

Multistep ahead prediction of a chaotic time series is a difficult task that has attracted increasing interest in the recent years. The interest in this work is the development of nonlinear neural network models for the purpose of building multistep chaotic time series prediction. In the literature there is a wide range of different approaches but their success depends on the predicting performance of the individual methods. Also the most popular neural models are based on the statistical and traditional feed forward neural networks. But it is seen that this kind of neural model may present some disadvantages when long-term prediction is required. In this paper focused time-lagged recurrent neural network (FTLRNN) model with gamma memory is developed for different prediction horizons. It is observed that this predictor performs remarkably well for short-term predictions as well as medium-term predictions. For coupled partial differential equations generated chaotic time series such as Mackey Glass and Duffing, FTLRNN-based predictor performs consistently well for different depths of predictions ranging from short term to long term, with only slight deterioration after k is increased beyond 50. For real-world highly complex and nonstationary time series like Sunspots and Laser, though the proposed predictor does perform reasonably for short term and medium-term predictions, its prediction ability drops for long term ahead prediction. However, still this is the best possible prediction results considering the facts that these are nonstationary time series. As a matter of fact, no other NN configuration can match the performance of FTLRNN model. The authors experimented the performance of this FTLRNN model on predicting the dynamic behavior of typical Chaotic Mackey-Glass time series, Duffing time series, and two real-time chaotic time series such as monthly sunspots and laser. Static multi layer perceptron (MLP) model is also attempted and compared against the proposed model on the performance measures like mean squared error (MSE), Normalized mean squared error (NMSE), and Correlation Coefficient (r). The standard back-propagation algorithm with momentum term has been used for both the models.


2000 ◽  
Vol 1 (4) ◽  
pp. 385-419 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. Michael Orszag ◽  
Dennis J. Snower

Abstract This paper explores the optimal design of subsidies for hiring unemployed workers (`employment vouchers' for short) in the context of a simple dynamic model of the labour market. Focusing on the short-term and long-term effects of the vouchers on employment and unemployment, the analysis shows how the optimal policy depends on the rates of hiring and firing, and on the problems of displacement and deadweight. It also examines the roles of the government budget constraint and of the level of unemployment benefits in optimal policy design. We calibrate the model and evaluate the effectiveness of employment vouchers in reducing unemployment for a wide range of feasible parameters.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Hunter ◽  
Diana Fusco

ABSTRACTViral co-infection occurs when multiple distinct viral particles infect the same host. This can impact viral evolution through intracellular interactions, complementation, reassortment and recombination. In nature many viral species are found to have a wide range of mechanisms to prevent co-infection, which raises the question of how viral evolution is impacted by this strategic choice. Here, we address this question in a model viral system, the ubiquitous bacteriophage and its host bacteria. Using a stochastic model of phage-host interactions in agent-based simulations, we first characterise the behaviour of neutral mutants and find that co-infection decreases the strength of genetic drift. We then quantify how variations in the phage life history parameters affect viral fitness. Importantly, we find that the growth rate (dis)advantage associated with variations in life history parameters can be dramatically different from the competitive (dis)advantage measured in direct-competition simulations. Additionally, we find that co-infection facilitates the fixation of beneficial mutations and the removal of deleterious ones, suggesting that selection is more efficient in co-infecting populations. We also observe, however, that in populations which allow co-infection, a mutant that prevents it displays a substantial competitive advantage over the rest of the population, and will eventually fix even if it displays a much lower growth rate in isolation. Our findings suggest that while preventing co-infection can have a negative impact on the long-term evolution of a viral population, in the short-term it is ultimately a winning strategy, possibly explaining the prevalence of phage capable of preventing co-infection in nature.


2021 ◽  
pp. M58-2021-5
Author(s):  
Tim Burt ◽  
Gilles Pinay ◽  
Fred Worrall ◽  
Nicholas Howden

AbstractThis chapter reviews research on solutes by fluvial geomorphologists in the period 1965 to 2000; growing links with biogeochemical research are emphasised later in the chapter. Brief reference is necessarily made to some research from before and after the study period. In relation to solutes, early research sought to relate short-term process observations to long-term landform evolution. However, very quickly, research moved into much more applied fields, less concerned with landforms and more with biogeochemical processes. The drainage basin became the focus of research with a wide range of interest including nutrient loss from agricultural and forested landscapes to dissolved organic carbon export from peatlands. In particular, the terrestrial-aquatic ecotone became a focus for research, emphasising the distinctive processes operating in the riparian zone and their contribution to river water protection from land-derived pollutants. By the end of the period, the scale and range of fluvial geomorphology had been greatly transformed from what it had been in 1965, providing a distinctive contribution to the broader field of biogeochemistry as well as an ongoing contribution to the study of Earth surface processes and landforms.


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