Leader Survival and Natural Disasters

Analyses of the occurrence of natural disasters show that in large coalition systems, such as democracies, their occurrence has little effect on protest or leader survival. However, if large numbers of people die in these disasters, more protests occur and leader survival diminishes. In contrast, for leaders in small coalition systems, the occurrence of disasters increases protests and reduces tenure, but the level of fatalities has little effect. The anticipation of these potential political effects accounts for why many more people die in disasters in small coalition systems than in large coalition systems

The 'Beeching Axe' and Electoral Support in Britain

Policy implementation has important electoral effects, but there is often a problem in determining if policy changes drive electoral behaviour or if the process works in reverse. To address this issue we exploit a unique natural experiment in Britain: the closure of thousands of train stations, known as the Beeching Cuts, on the eve of General Election of 1964. We use several statistical methods to show that policy implementation was unaffected by partisan considerations and therefore it can be regarded as an exogenous intervention. An individual level model of voting intentions from the first British Election Study conducted in 1963, and an aggregate model of party vote shares in the General Election of 1964 show that the closures significantly changed voting support for the Conservative party. The 1964 election was very competitive and the closures clearly contributed to the defeat of the incumbent government after 13 years of uninterrupted rule

Variation in the timing of Covid-19 communication across universities in the UK.

During the Covid-19 pandemic, universities in the UK used social media to raise awareness and provide guidance and advice about the disease to students and staff. We explain why some universities used social media to communicate with stakeholders sooner than others. To do so, we identified the date of the first Covid-19 related tweet posted by each university in the country and used survival models to estimate the effect of university-specific characteristics on the timing of these messages. In order to confirm our results, we supplemented our analysis with a study of the introduction of coronavirus-related university webpages. We find that universities with large numbers of students are more likely to use social media and the web to speak about the pandemic sooner than institutions with fewer students. Universities with large financial resources are also more likely to tweet sooner, but they do not introduce Covid-19 webpages faster than other universities. We also find evidence of a strong process of emulation, whereby universities are more likely to post a coronavirus-related tweet or webpage if other universities have already done so

Understanding Domestic Abuse Perpetrators: Using quantitative analysis to develop perpetrator profiles and exploring their implications for targeted intervention and risk assessment

This project set out to address the following question: Are there any common profiles of domestic abuse perpetrators in Essex, and do they present different risks and opportunities for targeted interventions? To answer this question we conducted a mixed-methods study, analysing a large, longitudinal database of domestic abuse incidents and suspect data -relating to 16,491 suspects and 40,488 observations between 2016-2020- provided by Essex Police. Our findings, presented in this executive summary, reveal at least 4 distinct clusters of domestic abuse suspects in Essex. We explore the implications of these for interventions, training, and commissioning, and make recommendations for further research

Application of Air Micronanobubbles to Reduce Arsenic Present in an Effluent Generated at the Laboratory Level

The objective of this research was applying air Micronanobubbles to reduce Arsenic present in an effluent generated at the laboratory level. In this research, an effluent with arsenic metal was used from a mixture of minerals with the presence of arsenopyrite with 19% As content. This mixture of minerals was stirred in a hot alkaline leaching medium at a temperature of 80 °C, with Na2S (1.5 M) and NaOH (1.0 M), then it was diluted with distilled water to obtain a volume of 100 L with a concentration of 150 ppm As. This effluent was treated with the air micronanobubble (MNB) generator equipment patented by Dr. Jhonny Valverde Flores. The variables of the pressure and the insufflation time of air as MNB in the effluent with content of the arsenic element were analyzed. A 40% decrease of As was obtained in the effluent. The results indicate that the use of MNB is promising in terms of the reduction of arsenic in solutions with concentrations of the same

The impact of dengue illness on social distancing and caregiving behavior

Background Human mobility among residential locations can drive dengue virus (DENV) transmission dynamics. Recently, it was shown that individuals with symptomatic DENV infection exhibit significant changes in their mobility patterns, spending more time at home during illness. This change in mobility is predicted to increase the risk of acquiring infection for those living with or visiting the ill individual. It has yet to be considered, however, whether social contacts are also changing their mobility, either by socially distancing themselves from the infectious individual or increasing contact to help care for them. Social, or physical, distancing and caregiving could have diverse yet important impacts on DENV transmission dynamics; therefore, it is necessary to better understand the nature and frequency of these behaviors including their effect on mobility. Methodology and principal findings Through community-based febrile illness surveillance and RT-PCR infection confirmation, 67 DENV positive (DENV+) residents were identified in the city of Iquitos, Peru. Using retrospective interviews, data were collected on visitors and home-based care received during the illness. While 15% of participants lost visitors during their illness, 22% gained visitors; overall, 32% of all individuals (particularly females) received visitors while symptomatic. Caregiving was common (90%), particularly caring by housemates (91%) and caring for children (98%). Twenty-eight percent of caregivers changed their behavior enough to have their work (and, likely, mobility patterns) affected. This was significantly more likely when caring for individuals with low “health-related quality of well-being” during illness (Fisher’s Exact, p = 0.01). Conclusions/Significance Our study demonstrates that social contacts of individuals with dengue modify their patterns of visitation and caregiving. The observed mobility changes could impact a susceptible individual’s exposure to virus or a presymptomatic/clinically inapparent individual’s contribution to onward transmission. Accounting for changes in social contact mobility is imperative in order to get a more accurate understanding of DENV transmission

Single hadron response measurement and calorimeter jet energy scale uncertainty with the ATLAS detector at the LHC

The uncertainty on the calorimeter energy response to jets of particles is derived for the ATLAS experiment at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). First, the calorimeter response to single isolated charged hadrons is measured and compared to the Monte Carlo simulation using proton-proton collisions at centre-of-mass energies of sqrt(s) = 900 GeV and 7 TeV collected during 2009 and 2010. Then, using the decay of K_s and Lambda particles, the calorimeter response to specific types of particles (positively and negatively charged pions, protons, and anti-protons) is measured and compared to the Monte Carlo predictions. Finally, the jet energy scale uncertainty is determined by propagating the response uncertainty for single charged and neutral particles to jets. The response uncertainty is 2-5% for central isolated hadrons and 1-3% for the final calorimeter jet energy scale.Comment: 24 pages plus author list (36 pages total), 23 figures, 1 table, submitted to European Physical Journal

Measurement of χ c1 and χ c2 production with s√ = 7 TeV pp collisions at ATLAS

The prompt and non-prompt production cross-sections for the χ c1 and χ c2 charmonium states are measured in pp collisions at s√ = 7 TeV with the ATLAS detector at the LHC using 4.5 fb−1 of integrated luminosity. The χ c states are reconstructed through the radiative decay χ c → J/ψγ (with J/ψ → μ + μ −) where photons are reconstructed from γ → e + e − conversions. The production rate of the χ c2 state relative to the χ c1 state is measured for prompt and non-prompt χ c as a function of J/ψ transverse momentum. The prompt χ c cross-sections are combined with existing measurements of prompt J/ψ production to derive the fraction of prompt J/ψ produced in feed-down from χ c decays. The fractions of χ c1 and χ c2 produced in b-hadron decays are also measured

Standalone vertex finding in the ATLAS muon spectrometer

A dedicated reconstruction algorithm to find decay vertices in the ATLAS muon spectrometer is presented. The algorithm searches the region just upstream of or inside the muon spectrometer volume for multi-particle vertices that originate from the decay of particles with long decay paths. The performance of the algorithm is evaluated using both a sample of simulated Higgs boson events, in which the Higgs boson decays to long-lived neutral particles that in turn decay to bbar b final states, and pp collision data at √s = 7 TeV collected with the ATLAS detector at the LHC during 2011