Despite worries to the contrary, the evidence suggests that candidates do engage in dialogue with their opponents

Do candidates engage in dialogue with their opponents during election campaigns in the U.S? The conventional wisdom is that candidates talk past rather than to one another. In new research examining the television advertisements aired by U.S. Senate candidates, Kevin K. Banda finds that candidates do tend to partake in dialogue with their opponents and do so to a greater extent when electoral competition is higher over the course of campaigns

Primary election candidates change their campaign strategies in response to both their current and (potential) future opponents

Do candidates respond to their opponents during primary elections? If so, which opponents do they engage with: those running against them in the same primary or those who they might face in the general election? In new research, Kevin K. Banda and Thomas M. Carsey show that US Senate and gubernatorial candidates alter their television advertising strategies in response to the ads aired by both their primary election opponents and their potential general election opponents. These strategies are driven in part by the competitiveness of their primary elections; candidates who won their primary elections are more likely to react to their eventual general election opponent during the primary stage of the campaign

Sending a clear message: how citizens respond to the content of candidates' messages

During campaigns, citizens form attitudes about candidates for office by collecting information from a number of sources, the most important of which may be from the candidates themselves. This information, though limited, should influence citizens' evaluations of the candidates' ideologies and positions on issues. How do citizens respond to the informational content contained in the statements candidates make during campaigns? How does this content influence (1) citizens' evaluations of candidates and (2) their certainty about these evaluations? I use data collected through two survey experiments to show that the issues politicians choose to talk about and the positions they take drive evaluations of both their ideology and positions on issues, including issues that they do not discuss. The relationship between the information in candidates' statements and the level of certainty expressed by participants is less clear, but suggests that a greater volume of precise information about issues leads people to feel more certain about the evaluations they make

Candidate Strategy and Assessment During Election Campaigns

I examine the formation and consequences of candidates' issue agendas -- the issues on which they focus during election campaigns. I argue that candidates' issue-based messages are important for three reasons. First, the issues candidates discuss should affect the issues that their opponents talk about. Second, the issues candidates discuss and the positions they outline in their messages should influence citizens' views of the candidates' ideological and issue positions. Last, the ideological portrayal of candidates' opponents as communicated through a negative message should have two effects: it should (1) alter citizens' views of the target of the attack in the way suggested by the message and (2) lead citizens to view the sponsor of the attack as holding characteristics that are the opposite of their portrayal of their opponent. I use data from 146 U.S. Senate and gubernatorial campaigns to assess my first argument and data drawn from two survey experiments to address the second and third arguments. The results of my analyses offer strong support for my theories.Doctor of Philosoph

Screening for post-TB lung disease at TB treatment completion: Are symptoms sufficient?

Pulmonary TB survivors face a high burden of post-TB lung disease (PTLD) after TB treatment completion. In this secondary data analysis we investigate the performance of parameters measured at TB treatment completion in predicting morbidity over the subsequent year, to inform programmatic approaches to PTLD screening in low-resource settings. Cohort data from urban Blantyre, Malawi were used to construct regression models for five morbidity outcomes (chronic respiratory symptoms or functional limitation, ongoing health seeking, spirometry decline, self-reported financial impact of TB disease, and death) in the year after PTB treatment, using three modelling approaches: logistic regression; penalised regression with pre-selected predictors; elastic net penalised regression using the full parent dataset. Predictors included demographic, clinical, symptom, spirometry and chest x-ray variables. The predictive performance of models were examined using the area under the receiver-operator curve (ROC AUC) values. Key predictors were identified, and their positive and negative predictive values (NPV) determined. The presence of respiratory symptoms at TB treatment completion was the strongest predictor of morbidity outcomes. TB survivors reporting breathlessness had higher odds of spirometry decline (aOR 20.5, 95%CI:3–199.1), health seeking (aOR 10.2, 2.4–50), and symptoms or functional limitation at 1-year (aOR 16.7, 3.3–133.4). Those reporting activity limitation were more likely to report symptoms or functional limitation at 1-year (aOR 4.2, 1.8–10.3), or severe financial impact of TB disease (aOR2.3, 1.0–5.0). Models were not significantly improved by including spirometry or imaging parameters. ROC AUCs were between 0.65–0.77 for the morbidity outcomes. Activity limitation at treatment completion had a NPV value of 78–98% for adverse outcomes. Our data suggest that whilst challenging to predict the development of post-TB morbidity, the use of symptom screening tools at TB treatment completion to prioritise post-TB care should be explored. We identified little benefit from the additional use of spirometry or CXR imaging

Finishing the euchromatic sequence of the human genome

The sequence of the human genome encodes the genetic instructions for human physiology, as well as rich information about human evolution. In 2001, the International Human Genome Sequencing Consortium reported a draft sequence of the euchromatic portion of the human genome. Since then, the international collaboration has worked to convert this draft into a genome sequence with high accuracy and nearly complete coverage. Here, we report the result of this finishing process. The current genome sequence (Build 35) contains 2.85 billion nucleotides interrupted by only 341 gaps. It covers ∼99% of the euchromatic genome and is accurate to an error rate of ∼1 event per 100,000 bases. Many of the remaining euchromatic gaps are associated with segmental duplications and will require focused work with new methods. The near-complete sequence, the first for a vertebrate, greatly improves the precision of biological analyses of the human genome including studies of gene number, birth and death. Notably, the human enome seems to encode only 20,000-25,000 protein-coding genes. The genome sequence reported here should serve as a firm foundation for biomedical research in the decades ahead

The evolving SARS-CoV-2 epidemic in Africa: Insights from rapidly expanding genomic surveillance

INTRODUCTION Investment in Africa over the past year with regard to severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) sequencing has led to a massive increase in the number of sequences, which, to date, exceeds 100,000 sequences generated to track the pandemic on the continent. These sequences have profoundly affected how public health officials in Africa have navigated the COVID-19 pandemic. RATIONALE We demonstrate how the first 100,000 SARS-CoV-2 sequences from Africa have helped monitor the epidemic on the continent, how genomic surveillance expanded over the course of the pandemic, and how we adapted our sequencing methods to deal with an evolving virus. Finally, we also examine how viral lineages have spread across the continent in a phylogeographic framework to gain insights into the underlying temporal and spatial transmission dynamics for several variants of concern (VOCs). RESULTS Our results indicate that the number of countries in Africa that can sequence the virus within their own borders is growing and that this is coupled with a shorter turnaround time from the time of sampling to sequence submission. Ongoing evolution necessitated the continual updating of primer sets, and, as a result, eight primer sets were designed in tandem with viral evolution and used to ensure effective sequencing of the virus. The pandemic unfolded through multiple waves of infection that were each driven by distinct genetic lineages, with B.1-like ancestral strains associated with the first pandemic wave of infections in 2020. Successive waves on the continent were fueled by different VOCs, with Alpha and Beta cocirculating in distinct spatial patterns during the second wave and Delta and Omicron affecting the whole continent during the third and fourth waves, respectively. Phylogeographic reconstruction points toward distinct differences in viral importation and exportation patterns associated with the Alpha, Beta, Delta, and Omicron variants and subvariants, when considering both Africa versus the rest of the world and viral dissemination within the continent. Our epidemiological and phylogenetic inferences therefore underscore the heterogeneous nature of the pandemic on the continent and highlight key insights and challenges, for instance, recognizing the limitations of low testing proportions. We also highlight the early warning capacity that genomic surveillance in Africa has had for the rest of the world with the detection of new lineages and variants, the most recent being the characterization of various Omicron subvariants. CONCLUSION Sustained investment for diagnostics and genomic surveillance in Africa is needed as the virus continues to evolve. This is important not only to help combat SARS-CoV-2 on the continent but also because it can be used as a platform to help address the many emerging and reemerging infectious disease threats in Africa. In particular, capacity building for local sequencing within countries or within the continent should be prioritized because this is generally associated with shorter turnaround times, providing the most benefit to local public health authorities tasked with pandemic response and mitigation and allowing for the fastest reaction to localized outbreaks. These investments are crucial for pandemic preparedness and response and will serve the health of the continent well into the 21st century

Replication Data for: Issue Ownership Cues and Candidate Support

Issue ownership theory suggests that candidates should focus on the issues that are owned - or associated with - their parties and mostly avoid issues that are owned by the opposing party. Doing so allows them to focus on their own party's strengths rather than on their weaknesses. Despite this expectation, contemporary research finds that candidates discuss both their own party's issues and trespass by talking about issues owned by the opposing parties. I argue that issue ownership cues - subtle information cues linking candidates to parties through the discussion of party-owned issues - should have heterogeneous effects across partisan groups. Using a survey experiment, I show that copartisans prefer candidates who focus on issues owned by their parties while opposing partisans prefer candidates who trespass; independents' preferences do not appear to shift in response to these cues. It thus appears as if cuing people to connect candidates to one party or the other can inform citizens' levels of support for those candidates. Depending on the composition of the electorate, trespassing can be an advantageous strategy for candidates

Replication Data for: Issue Ownership, Issue Positions, and Candidate Assessment

I argue that citizens alter their views of candidates' ideological and issue positions in response to two kinds of information cues: issue ownership and issue position cues. Issue ownership cues associate a candidate with the party that owns the issue discussed by a candidate. Issue position cues associate a candidate with the party that is linked to the position that the candidate discusses. These cues can either lead citizens to view the candidate as more or less extreme - both in terms of ideological and issue position assessments - than that candidate's party. When both types of cues are present, citizens should ignore the issue ownership cues in favor of the easier to process issue position cues. Evidence from a survey experiment embedded in the 2010 Cooperative Congressional Election Study provides strong support for this theory and suggests that issue ownership can convey positional information

Replication Data for: "Elite Polarization, Party Extremity, and Affective Polarization"

Elites in the U.S. have become increasingly polarized over the past several decades. More recently, the degree to which partisans view the opposing party more negatively than their own - a phenomenon called affective, or social, polarization - has increased. How does elite polarization inform affective polarization? We argue that partisans respond to increasing levels of elite polarization by expressing higher levels of affective polarization, i.e. more negative evaluations of the opposing party relative to their own. Motivated reasoning further encourages partisans to blame the opposing party more than their own. Results from surveys collected from 1978 through 2016 provide strong support for our theory. We further find that increasing levels of political interest magnify the relationship between elite and affective polarization. These results produce important implications for the health of democratic systems experiencing high levels of elite polarization