The microdynamics shaping the relationship between democracy and corruption

Physics has a long tradition of laying rigorous quantitative foundations for social phenomena. Here, we up the ante for physics' forays into the territory of social sciences by (i) empirically documenting a tipping point in the relationship between democratic norms and corruption suppression, and then (ii) demonstrating how such a tipping point emerges from a micro-scale mechanistic model of spin dynamics in a complex network. Specifically, the tipping point in the relationship between democratic norms and corruption suppression is such that democratization has little effect on suppressing corruption below a critical threshold, but a large effect above the threshold. The micro-scale model of spin dynamics underpins this phenomenon by reinterpreting spins in terms of unbiased (i.e. altruistic) and biased (i.e. parochial) other-regarding behaviour, as well as the corresponding voting preferences. Under weak democratic norms, dense social connections of parochialists enable coercing enough opportunist voters to vote in favour of perpetuating parochial in-group bias. Society may, however, strengthen democratic norms in a rapid turn of events during which opportunists adopt altruism and vote to subdue bias. The emerging model outcome at the societal scale thus mirrors the data, implying that democracy either perpetuates or suppresses corruption depending on the prevailing democratic norms.

Music Education and Utopia

This chapter applies the ideas developed in the previous chapters to music education theory and practice. It presents utopia as method in music education, emphasizing its meaning as a hermeneutic, visionary, and exploratory tool. This leads to reconceptualizing music education as utopian theory and practice regarding two different approaches of music education: politically or socially responsive music education and esthetic music education. They represent two sides of music and music education, which need each other regarding political engagement and musical autonomy, being based on music as social fact or as existing for its own sake. This reconceptualization helps to overcome a long-standing dichotomy in international music education.

Regarding Two Conjectures on Clique and Biclique Partitions

For a graph $G$, let $cp(G)$ denote the minimum number of cliques of $G$ needed to cover the edges of $G$ exactly once. Similarly, let $bp_k(G)$ denote the minimum number of bicliques (i.e. complete bipartite subgraphs of $G$) needed to cover each edge of $G$ exactly $k$ times. We consider two conjectures – one regarding the maximum possible value of $cp(G) + cp(\overline{G})$ (due to de Caen, Erdős, Pullman and Wormald) and the other regarding $bp_k(K_n)$ (due to de Caen, Gregory and Pritikin). We disprove the first, obtaining improved lower and upper bounds on $\max_G cp(G) + cp(\overline{G})$, and we prove an asymptotic version of the second, showing that $bp_k(K_n) = (1+o(1))n$.

Antithrombotic Management in Adult Kidney Transplantation – A European survey study

In kidney transplantation (KTx), renal graft thrombosis (RGT) is one of the main reasons for early graft loss. Although evidence-based guidance on prevention of RGT is lacking, thromboprophylaxis is widely used. The aim of this survey was to obtain a European view of the different thromboprophylactic strategies applied in KTx. An online 22-question survey, addressed to KTx professionals, was distributed by e-mail and via platforms of the European Society for Organ Transplantation. Seventy-five responses (21 countries, 51 centers) were received: 75% had over 10 years’ clinical experience, 64% were surgeons, 29% nephrologists and 4% urologists. A written antithrombotic management protocol was available in 75% of centers. In 8 (16%) of centers respondents contradicted each other regarding the availability of a written protocol. Thromboprophylaxis is preferred by 78% of respondents, independent of existing antithrombotic management protocols. Ninety-two percent of respondents indicated that an anticipated bleeding risk is the main reason to discontinue chronic antithrombotic therapy preoperatively. Intraoperatively, 32% of respondents administer unfractionated heparin (400 – 10.000 international units with a median of 5000) in selected cases. Despite an overall preference for perioperative thromboprophylaxis in KTx, there is a high variation within Europe regarding type, timing and dosage, most likely due to the paucity of high-quality studies. Further research is warranted in order to develop better guidelines.

Benevolence and Abhorrence of Incest (the Case of Francis Hutcheson)

В статье реконструированы представления Фрэнсиса Хатчесона об истоках и моральном статусе запрета на инцест. Интерпретация этого запрета создает затруднения для любой теории морали, которая отождествляет ее содержание с непричинением вреда и помощью другому человеку. Степень морального осуждения инцеста не соответствует его относительной безвредности для других (в категориях, используемых Хатчесоном, участники инцестуальных отношений не проявляют явного «недостатка благожелательности»). Автор показывает, как Хатчесон, обсуждая универсальность морального чувства и моральные препятствия для заключения брака, пытается редуцировать «отвращение к инцесту» к благожелательным переживаниям. The paper reconstructs Francis Hutcheson’s view on the moral status of incest and origins of the incest prohibition. The phenomenon of incest creates problems for every theory of morality that identifies its content with other-regarding requirements. The intensity of moral blame that incestuous behavior faces is not consistent with its relative harmlessness in comparison with violence or refusal to help (in Hutcheson’s terms, participants of incestuous relationships do not express ‘want of benevolence’). The author shows how Hutcheson reduces the ‘abhorrence of incest’ to benevolent affections in his discussions of the universality of moral sense and moral impediments of marriage.

The Senate from an extra-institutional point of view

Chapter 8 studies how conversations and meetings impacted political deliberation and deal-making in the Senate, thus fusing extra-institutional and institutional politics. How did senators look for support and probe each other regarding specific issues? How did preparatory conversations work? It is a fact of life, in ancient Rome as nowadays, that the written text of a decision does not fully reflect the previous groundwork, negotiations, and discussions that led to it. The study of Atticus allows us to consider the role and influence of non-senatorial actors. The aim of this chapter is not to claim that a certain measure was enacted because A and B had a conversation during a dinner or because someone secured the support of C and D during a quick chat in the Forum or in a corner of the Senate house (although such actions are described). Going beyond the micro-scale and specific instances, the interest of this study is to analyse how these actions illuminate our understanding of how the Roman political system worked in practice. This chapterargues that the role of conversations and meetings did not mean that all was decided beforehand; a senator could gather support for a draft of a law or a policy through previous conversations, but he still had to defend it and fight for it in public institutions (the Senate, contiones, and assemblies), without always being able to guarantee success beforehand.

Do distributional preferences reverse on a dollar? An experiment

In settings where other-regarding motives are likely to be (and some would argue, should be) at the forefront of our minds, how much of our behavior can still be explained by narrow pecuniary self-interest by itself? In an experiment where subjects are asked to vote between two income distributions that have diametrically opposed effects on the group as a whole, I find that self-interest still appears to dwarf the combined effects of other-regarding motives in influencing the votes of the vast majority of subjects.

“Tell me about”: a logbook of teachers’ changes from face-to-face to distance mathematics education

In 2020, the emergency due to the COVID-19 pandemic brought a drastic and sudden change in teaching practices, from the physical space of the classrooms to the virtual space of an e-environment. In this paper, through a qualitative analysis of 44 collected essays composed by Italian mathematics teachers from primary school to undergraduate level during the spring of 2020, we investigate how the Italian teachers perceived the changes due to the unexpected transition from a face-to-face setting to distance education. The analysis is carried out through a double theoretical lens, one concerning the whole didactic system where the knowledge at stake is mathematics and the other regarding affective aspects. The integration of the two theoretical perspectives allows us to identify key elements and their relations in the teachers’ narratives and to analyze how teachers have experienced and perceived the dramatic, drastic, and sudden change. The analysis shows the process going from the disruption of the educational setting to the teachers’ discovery of key aspects of the didactic system including the teacher’s roles, a reflection on mathematics and its teaching, and the attempt to reconstruct the didactic system in a new way.

Respiratory Viruses Dynamics and Interactions: Ten Years of Surveillance in Central Europe

Background: Lower respiratory tract infections are among the main causes of death. Although there are many respiratory viruses, diagnostic efforts are focused mainly on influenza. The Respiratory Viruses Network (RespVir) collects infection data, primarily from German university hospitals, for a high diversity of infections by respiratory pathogens. In this study, we computationally analysed a subset of the RespVir database, covering 217,150 samples tested for 17 different viral pathogens in the time span from 2010 to 2019. Methods: We calculated the prevalence of 17 respiratory viruses, analysed their seasonality patterns using information-theoretic measures and agglomerative clustering, and analysed their propensity for dual infection using a new metric dubbed average coinfection exclusion score (ACES). Results: After initial data pre-processing, we retained 206,814 samples, corresponding to 1,408,657 performed tests. We found that Influenza viruses were reported for less than half of all infections and that they exhibited the highest degree of seasonality Coinfections of viruses are frequent, the most prevalent coinfection was rhinovirus/bocavirus and most of the virus pairs had a positive ACES indicating a tendency to exclude each other regarding infection. Conclusions: The analysis of respiratory viruses dynamics in monoinfection and coinfection contributes to the prevention, diagnostic, treatment, and development of new therapeutics. Data obtained from multiplex testing is fundamental for this analysis and should be prioritized over single pathogen testing.