Factions and fissions in the aftermath of the 2013 elections: why Italian politics never gets boring

The aftermath of the 2013 Italian elections produced a lengthy political stalemate between Italy’s main political parties before the formation of Enrico Letta’s coalition government. As Andrea Ceron writes, however, there are also intense rivalries within Italy’s political parties. Outlining a game-theoretic model of party factions, he assesses the effect of the elections and current developments on the stability of Italy’s main political parties, including the potential for a possible split to take place within the centre-left Partito Democratico (PD)

What an algorithm for expelling rebels and rewarding a party’s loyal MPs could look like

The use of modern technology in politics has become increasingly important in recent years, but what new opportunities could technology have for the political parties of the future? Taking inspiration from a statement by the Five Star Movement’s Beppe Grillo, Andrea Ceron outlines what an algorithm for expelling rebel MPs and rewarding loyal party members could look like. He argues that while Grillo’s comments were regarded as far-fetched, it is not too far from reality that technology could soon be used by political parties in this way

Patriotism and National Symbols in Russian and Ukrainian Elections

How do political parties leverage patriotic appeals in their online campaigning within the context of autocracies and hybrid regimes? This study delves into the digital campaign strategies deployed by political parties during the most recent legislative elections in Russia (2021) and Ukraine (2019). In light of the armed conflict between Russia-backed separatists and Ukrainian forces in the eastern area of Ukraine, war-related themes and patriotic rhetoric emerged as pivotal concerns for politicians in both countries. The "rally around the flag" phenomenon posits that, in times of crisis, citizens often experience an intensified sense of national identity and patriotic fervor. Consequently, references to patriotism and related topics may evoke positive responses and prove instrumental for politicians during elections, serving to engage, mobilize, and attract voters. Drawing on a manual content analysis of the underlying communication strategies, we assessed whether parties' reference to patriotic gestures and symbols or their attention to related policy topics (defense, war and military conflicts, and foreign policy and international relations) yielded an increased level of user engagement. Our findings reveal that references to patriotic symbols engendered increased user engagement within the Russian context, albeit without significantly affecting the engagement of Ukrainian voters. The latter tended to exhibit greater engagement with posts addressing defense and foreign policy matters though. Interestingly, Russian parties conspicuously avoided war-related topics, while Ukrainian voters displayed a propensity to penalize such content by generating fewer reactions to it

What Are Crises for? The Effects on Users' Engagement in the 2022 Italian Election

Crises were highly relevant in the 2022 Italian general election. The label of "crisis" was associated with multiple policy issues, ranging from the environment and health to foreign policy. Previous studies have extensively discussed the impact of crises on voter behavior, demonstrating that voters are particularly concerned with parties' valence attributes, such as the effectiveness of policies and leaders' ability to resolve emergencies. However, limited attention has been paid to assessing how parties mobilize the crisis paradigm on social media. This study seeks to bridge this gap by analyzing the impact of crisis-related content on Facebook user engagement, with a special focus on distinguishing the relative effectiveness of populist versus mainstream parties in deploying such narratives. Moreover, this research explores how the intertwining of crisis narratives with portrayals of party responsibility or irresponsibility influences the virality of social media posts. To answer these questions, we manually coded 4,827 election campaign posts to create an original dataset. The evidence shows that crises have an impact on boosting user engagement, although this effect seems to be limited to populist parties. The results also suggest that irresponsible claims cease to be rewarding during a crisis. This study contributes to a deeper understanding of the strategic use of crisis narratives by political parties on digital platforms and underscores the complex interplay between crisis communication and public engagement in the contemporary political landscape

Verba volant, scripta manent? Intra-party politics, party conferences and issue salience in France

Intra-party groups influence parties’ policy priorities. However, scholars have yet to map the pathways with the greatest impact. We argue that party congresses serve as venues for decision-making, allowing speeches and motions to support differing priorities. Considering parties’ internal process, we propose that deliberations and alternate motions independently affect resulting policy statements. We examine this perspective focusing on meetings of the French Socialist Party. We use Structural Topic Models to analyze the issues included in 74 motions, 1439 speeches and 9 manifestos from congresses held between 1969 and 2015 to evaluate whether factional motions or individual speeches better reflect the content of manifestos and to assess the internal agenda-setting process. Results suggest that motions better predict the content of parties’ manifestos. However, when focusing solely on majority faction, we find that both motions and speeches predict manifestos’ contents. This supports a theory of intra-party decision-making and factional dominance

Exposure to democracy and MEPs attitude toward EU integration

This paper analyzes the effect of exposure to democracy during adolescence and early adulthood on the pro-EU attitude of the members of the European Parliament. Relying on the psychological theory of `impressionable years’, we test whether members exposed to less democratic regimes at the age of 18 to 25 have a higher probability of voting against pro-EU instances in the roll-call-voting of the first six legislatures, from 1979 to 2009. Our results suggest that exposure to democracy increases the probability of voting in favor of pro-EU policies by about 2%-7%, depending on the legislature. We find that the effect is stronger in votes with a significant cleavage on EU instances, while it is irrelevant in votes that do not involve them. Our results take into account heterogeneity in political groups, country of election, year of birth, and legislature and resist several robustness checks

Identificación del impacto de técnicas de recuperación de psicóloga deportiva en los niveles de carga metal de la empresa PQS De Colombia S.A.

Identificar el impacto de la aplicación de técnicas de recuperación de psicología deportiva en la disminución de la carga mental en la empresa PQS de Colombia SA.Los altos índices de carga mental en las organizaciones se traducen en problemas de salud y bajos niveles de productividad, por tal motivo nos interesó identificar el impacto de la aplicación de técnicas de recuperación de psicología deportiva en la disminución de la carga mental en la empresa PQS de Colombia. El grupo Objeto de Estudio, correspondió a 13 trabajadores, los instrumentos que se utilizaron para la medición de la carga mental y su impacto somático correspondieron a la herramienta NASA TLX y a una Encuesta de Morbilidad Sentida

Peptide Affinity Chromatography Applied to Therapeutic Antibodies Purification

The interest in therapeutic monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) has significantly grown in the pharmaceutical industry, exceeding 100 FDA mAbs approved. Although the upstream processing of their industrial production has been significantly improved in the last years, the downstream processing still depends on immobilized protein A affinity chromatography. The high cost, low capacity and short half-life of immobilized protein A chromatography matrices, encouraged the design of alternative short-peptide ligands for mAb purification. Most of these peptides have been obtained by screening combinatorial peptide libraries. These low-cost ligands can be easily produced by solid-phase peptide synthesis and can be immobilized on chromatographic supports, thus obtaining matrices with high capacity and selectivity. Furthermore, matrices with immobilized peptide ligands have longer half-life than those with protein A due to the higher stability of the peptides. In this review the design and synthesis of peptide ligands, their immobilization on chromatographic supports and the evaluation of the affinity supports for their application in mAb purification is described.Fil: Barredo, Gabriela Romina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Oficina de Coordinación Administrativa Houssay. Instituto de Nanobiotecnología. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Farmacia y Bioquímica. Instituto de Nanobiotecnología; ArgentinaFil: Giudicessi, Silvana Laura. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Oficina de Coordinación Administrativa Houssay. Instituto de Nanobiotecnología. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Farmacia y Bioquímica. Instituto de Nanobiotecnología; ArgentinaFil: Martínez Ceron, María Camila. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Oficina de Coordinación Administrativa Houssay. Instituto de Nanobiotecnología. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Farmacia y Bioquímica. Instituto de Nanobiotecnología; ArgentinaFil: Cascone, Osvaldo. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Oficina de Coordinación Administrativa Houssay. Instituto de Nanobiotecnología. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Farmacia y Bioquímica. Instituto de Nanobiotecnología; ArgentinaFil: Camperi, Silvia Andrea. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Oficina de Coordinación Administrativa Houssay. Instituto de Nanobiotecnología. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Farmacia y Bioquímica. Instituto de Nanobiotecnología; Argentin

Temporins: An Approach of Potential Pharmaceutic Candidates

Antimicrobial peptides (AMPs), also known as host defense peptides (HDPs), are small and mostlypolycationic molecules that form part of the innate immune response. There are currently more than3000 experimentally reported AMPs. Particularly, in frogs, the temporin family, have beendiscovered as potential AMPs. The aim of this work is to review the latest publications about thisclass of peptides, discuss their properties and make an update of the last studies and new discoveriesin the field.More than 130 temporins have been identified in this family. The most studied temporins aretemporin A (TA), temporin B (TB) and temporin L (TL). These peptides showed antimicrobialactivity against Gram-negative, Gram-positive bacteria and fungi. Since the discovery of temporinsin 1996, several groups of research isolated different peptides from various species of frogs thatwere included as members of this family. Although antimicrobial activity of many temporins has not been analyzed yet, most of them showed antimicrobial and antifungal activities. Combination ofnanotechnology and AMPs as temporins in different antimicrobial treatments could be a promisingalternative for resistance pathogens. These studies demonstrate that, even with the advancement inscientific research on the composition and antimicrobial activity of temporins, further studies arenecessary to wholly understand their components and mechanisms of action.Fil: Romero, Stella Maris. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Córdoba. Instituto Multidisciplinario de Biología Vegetal. Universidad Nacional de Córdoba. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas Físicas y Naturales. Instituto Multidisciplinario de Biología Vegetal; ArgentinaFil: Cardillo, Alejandra Beatriz. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Farmacia y Bioquímica. Departamento de Microbiología, Inmunología y Biotecnología. Cátedra de Microbiología Industrial y Biotecnología; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Oficina de Coordinación Administrativa Houssay. Instituto de Nanobiotecnología. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Farmacia y Bioquímica. Instituto de Nanobiotecnología; ArgentinaFil: Martínez Ceron, María Camila. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Oficina de Coordinación Administrativa Houssay. Instituto de Nanobiotecnología. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Farmacia y Bioquímica. Instituto de Nanobiotecnología; Argentina. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Farmacia y Bioquímica. Departamento de Microbiología, Inmunología y Biotecnología. Cátedra de Microbiología Industrial y Biotecnología; ArgentinaFil: Camperi, Silvia Andrea. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Farmacia y Bioquímica. Departamento de Microbiología, Inmunología y Biotecnología. Cátedra de Microbiología Industrial y Biotecnología; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Oficina de Coordinación Administrativa Houssay. Instituto de Nanobiotecnología. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Farmacia y Bioquímica. Instituto de Nanobiotecnología; ArgentinaFil: Giudicessi, Silvana Laura. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Farmacia y Bioquímica. Departamento de Microbiología, Inmunología y Biotecnología. Cátedra de Microbiología Industrial y Biotecnología; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Oficina de Coordinación Administrativa Houssay. Instituto de Nanobiotecnología. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Farmacia y Bioquímica. Instituto de Nanobiotecnología; Argentin

IMPORTANCIA DEL pH Y LA ALCALINIDAD EN EL TRATAMIENTO ANAEROBIO DE LAS AGUAS RESIDUALES DEL PROCESO DE EXTRACCIÓN DE ALMIDÓN DE YUCA

Las aguas residuales del proceso de extracción de almidón de yuca se caracterizan por ser un residuo acidificado con alta carga contaminante. Este artículo muestra los resultados obtenidos en la operación de un filtro anaerobio a escala de laboratorio empleando dos productos: Cal Hidratada y Bicarbonato de Sodio. Las máximas eficiencias de remoción de DQO ocurrieron en los periodos en que se empleó Bicarbonato de Sodio, el cual garantizó la capacidad buffer necesaria para neutralizar los AGV. El índice AI/AP se mostró bastante sensible por lo que se recomienda como un excelente indicador para el control del proceso anaerobio