Context is everything : measuring institutional change in transition economies

The author presents measures with which to map institution building during the transition from centrally planned to market economies. Data collection and indicators are measured in terms of five institutional dimensions of governance: a) accountability; b) quality of the bureaucracy; c) rule of law; d) character of policy-making process; and e) strength of civil society. The author highlights the differences over time and between Central and Eastern European countries and those of the former Soviet Union. In terms of effects of per capita income and school enrollment, he finds the rule of law to be the most important institutional dimension, both for the sample as a whole and for differences between the two regions. In terms of life expectancy, however, the quality of the bureaucracy plays the most crucial role. One important message the author draws from the results is that institutions do change over time and are by no means as immutable as the literature has suggested. The range of feasible policy choices (for changing institutions) may be much wider than is often assumed.Decentralization,Economic Theory&Research,Corruption&Anitcorruption Law,Public Sector Corruption&Anticorruption Measures,Legal Products,Governance Indicators,National Governance,Corruption&Anitcorruption Law,Public Sector Corruption&Anticorruption Measures,Economic Policy, Institutions and Governance

Mina Bissell: Context is everything

Bissell remains as passionate about science as ever

Context Is Everything: Victims Who Stand Accused

Thanks to significant reforms over the past few decades, the American justice system today recognizes that intimate-partner violence is not a private wrong, but an evil that society as a whole condemns. Courts routinely issue protective orders to enhance victim safety and punish convicted batterers 1 with sentences commensurate with the seriousness of the harm they inflict. However, the dynamics of abuse and the pernicious effects of ongoing violence are not always recognized or taken into proper account when a victim of battering stands accused of some sort of wrongdoing, whether in criminal court or in the course of family-court proceedings. Victims of battering are often fearful of finding themselves in court in any capacity because they have been subjected repeatedly to threats about how the batterer will “destroy” them in court. They have become convinced, based on what the batterer has told them (and perhaps based on prior negative experiences with the justice system), that no one will believe them. Victims have seen firsthand how the batterer has been able to manipulate others (police, marriage counselors or therapists, family, neighbors, clergy, and the courts) into believing the victim is to blame for whatever problems the couple or their children are experiencing.2 Batterers are often skilled at presenting a calm, reasonable demeanor to responding officers, judges, or other court personnel, while victims may present as emotional or inarticulate as a result of the trauma they have experienced.

Antimicrobial resistance acquisition via natural transformation: context is everything

Natural transformation is a process where bacterial cells actively take up free DNA from the environment and recombine it into their genome or reconvert it into extra-chromosomal genetic elements. Although this mechanism is known to mediate the uptake of antibiotic resistance determinants in a range of human pathogens, its importance in the spread of antimicrobial resistance is not always appreciated. This review highlights the context in which transformation takes place: in diverse microbiomes, in interaction with other forms of horizontal gene transfer and in increasingly polluted environments. This examination of the abiotic and biotic drivers of transformation reveals that it could be more important in the dissemination of resistance genes than is often recognised

Context is Everything: Facilitating Fit When New Products are Ambiguous

Researchers have long believed that consumers adjust their functional expectations in accordance with a product’s physical appearance. Recently this belief has come under fire. Product categories are converging rapidly. Take modern cell phones; the physical appearance of the iPhone is only tangentially related to the breadth of its functionality. Examples like this have sparked a wealth of interest in exploring how consumers generate inferences for products with functions that span multiple categories. One important finding is that consumers tend to generate functional inferences based mainly on the knowledge of a single category. This suggests that new hybrid products are not necessarily seen as hybrid, at least not when it comes to functional expectations. Although highlighted as a major marketing challenge, very little progress has been made in explaining why single category beliefs occur, and why any one particular category is chosen above another. I seek to mend this gap by illustrating how context frames single category beliefs by inferring the manufacturer’s intent. Specifically, I demonstrate that context alters functional expectations (study 1), attribute preference (study 2), perceptions of proto-typicality (study 3), and attitude stability (study 4). When combined, the four studies offer a comprehensive extension of the literature on product categorization, and more importantly, illustrate the need to account for context when estimating how consumers will respond to new products with functions that span multiple categories

Context is everything: making the case for more nuanced citation impact measures.

Access to more and more publication and citation data offers the potential for more powerful impact measures than traditional bibliometrics. Accounting for more of the context in the relationship between the citing and cited publications could provide more subtle and nuanced impact measurement. Ryan Whalen looks at the different ways that scientific content are related, and how these relationships could be explored further to improve measures of scientific impact

Context is Everything: A Review of Comics Studies: A Guidebook

Comics Studies: A Guidebook, edited by Charles Hatfield and Bart Beaty, Rutgers University Press, 326 pages, 2020, ISBN 9780813591414. This article is a review of Comics Studies: A Guidebook, edited by Charles Hatfield and Bart Beaty (Rutgers University Press, 2020). This volume, ranging over the broad themes of Histories, Cultures, Forms, and Genres, provides an introduction to some of the major debates in comics studies. The review maintains that in the attempt to embrace a wider context, an opportunity has been missed to challenge and refresh traditional narratives. It can be argued that a single volume guidebook may not be the best place to undertake such a major reinvention of comics studies

Context is everything: an investigation of Spanish River Carbonatite and its effects on soil-plant-microorganism systems

With growing concerns about agricultural sustainability and food security, the use of rock fertilizers and agrominerals is receiving renewed interest. A wide variety of geological resources have been proposed as crop nutrient sources, with silicate rocks the predominant focus. Carbonatite rocks are known to weather more readily than silicate rocks; yet, they have received relatively little attention as it is thought their high Ca and Mg contents hinder effective nutrient release. However, there is strong evidence that the nutrients within carbonatite rocks are easily accessible to plants, and that these rocks have noticable effects on crop plant growth. Here I propose a framework to understand the mode of action of carbonatites on soil fertility and plant nutrition by integrating research at multiple scales, i.e., from individual plants to the ecosystem, including soil microorganisms. The model stems from greenhouse experiments on two crops, pea and wheat, and an extensive survey of the carbonatite deposit. It is emphasized that a systems-approach must be taken when examining carbonatites as their effects are strongly context-dependent, and there is evidence that a three-way interaction between plant-carbonatite-microorganisms is responsible for some of the observed effects on plants. The framework presented is intended not only to synthesize the current knowledge on carbonatites as rock fertilizers but also to guide future research on this and other similar geological resources