European integration at the crossroads: Democratic deepening for stability, solidarity and social justice. EuroMemorandum 2012

The euro area crisis threatens the future of European integration, but instead of challenging the power of the financial institutions which are driving the crisis, the European authorities have imposed austerity programmes on Greece and other peripheral euro area countries, and developed centralised policies for imposing highly restrictive fiscal discipline on all member states which risk undermining the democratic legitimacy of the European Union (EU)

Perfectionism, achievement motives, and attribution of success and failure in female soccer players

While some researchers have identified adaptive perfectionism as a key characteristic to achieving elite performance in sport, others see perfectionism as a maladaptive characteristic that undermines, rather than helps, athletic performance. Arguing that perfectionism in sport contains both adaptive and maladaptive facets, the present article presents a study of N 5 74 female soccer players investigating how two facets of perfectionism—perfectionistic strivings and negative reactions to imperfection (Stoeber, Otto, Pescheck, Becker, & Stoll, 2007)—are related to achievement motives and attributions of success and failure. Results show that striving for perfection was related to hope of success and self-serving attributions (internal attribution of success). Moreover, once overlap between the two facets of perfectionism was controlled for, striving for perfection was inversely related to fear of failure and self-depreciating attributions (internal attribution of failure). In contrast, negative reactions to imperfection were positively related to fear of failure and self-depreciating attributions (external attribution of success) and inversely related to self-serving attributions (internal attribution of success and external attribution of failure). It is concluded that striving for perfection in sport is associated with an adaptive pattern of positive motivational orientations and self-serving attributions of success and failure, which may help athletic performance. In contrast, negative reactions to imperfection are associated with a maladaptive pattern of negative motivational orientations and self-depreciating attributions, which is likely to undermine athletic performance. Consequently, perfectionism in sport may be adaptive in those athletes who strive for perfection, but can control their negative reactions when performance is less than perfect

Development of an Enzyme-Linked Immunosorbent Assay (ELISA) for the Quantification of ARID1A in Tissue Lysates

ARID1A is a subunit of the mammalian SWI/SNF complex, which is thought to regulate gene expression through restructuring chromatin structures. Its gene ARID1A is frequently mutated and ARID1A levels are lowered in several human cancers, especially gynecologic ones. A functional ARID1A loss may have prognostic or predictive value in terms of therapeutic strategies but has not been proposed based on a quantitative method. Hardly any literature is available on ARID1A levels in tumor samples. We developed an indirect enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) for ARID1A based on the current EMA and FDA criteria. We demonstrated that our ELISA provides the objective, accurate, and precise quantification of ARID1A concentrations in recombinant protein solutions, cell culture standards, and tissue lysates of tumors. A standard curve analysis yielded a ‘goodness of fit’ of R2 = 0.99. Standards measured on several plates and days achieved an inter-assay accuracy of 90.26% and an inter-assay precision with a coefficient of variation of 4.53%. When tumor lysates were prepared and measured multiple times, our method had an inter-assay precision with a coefficient of variation of 11.78%. We believe that our suggested method ensures a high reproducibility and can be used for a high sample throughput to determine the ARID1A concentration in different tumor entities. The application of our ELISA on various tumor and control tissues will allow us to explore whether quantitative ARID1A measurements in tumor samples are of predictive value

Violation of a Leggett-Garg inequality with ideal non-invasive measurements

The quantum superposition principle states that an entity can exist in two different states simultaneously, counter to our 'classical' intuition. Is it possible to understand a given system's behaviour without such a concept? A test designed by Leggett and Garg can rule out this possibility. The test, originally intended for macroscopic objects, has been implemented in various systems. However to-date no experiment has employed the 'ideal negative result' measurements that are required for the most robust test. Here we introduce a general protocol for these special measurements using an ancillary system which acts as a local measuring device but which need not be perfectly prepared. We report an experimental realisation using spin-bearing phosphorus impurities in silicon. The results demonstrate the necessity of a non-classical picture for this class of microscopic system. Our procedure can be applied to systems of any size, whether individually controlled or in a spatial ensemble.Comment: 6+4 pages. Supplementary Methods section include