195 research outputs found
Systematics and Palynology of Picrodendron Further Evidence for Relationship with the Oldfieldioideae (Euphorbiaceae)
Although known to botanical science for 285 years, the genus Picrodendron Planchon has been poorly understood for most of this time. The most pervasive problem has been that of discerning familial relationships, and there have been additional difficulties in typifying the generic name (Hayden & Reveal, 1980) and in distinguishing its three nominate species. This paper provides a systematic treatment for Picrodendron and demonstrates its relationships with Euphorbiaceae subfam. Oldfieldioideae Kohler & Webster as evidenced by data on gross morphology, palynology, anatomy, and cytology
Shaping policy curves : cognitive authority in transnational capacity building
International organizations (IOs) such as the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank are assumed to rely on âsympathetic interlocutorsâ at the national level to drive through economic reforms that conform to global policy norms. In this article we answer the following question: How do sympathetic interlocutors for IOs emerge in the first place? We address this question by examining how IOs engage in teaching norms to national officials via transnational policy training in order to increase the number of domestic reformers who are sympathetic to their prescriptions for policy change. We provide a conceptual framework for understanding how IOs seek to use their own cognitive authority to foster âdiagnostic coordinationâ across technocratic economic policy communities. This encourages officials to adapt to a common policy language and delimits the policy space within which they identify and propose solutions to economic problems
Neural Circuitry of Novelty Salience Processing in Psychosis Risk: Association With Clinical Outcome
Psychosis has been proposed to develop from dysfunction in a hippocampal-striatal-midbrain circuit, leading to aberrant salience processing. Here, we used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) during novelty salience processing to investigate this model in people at clinical high risk (CHR) for psychosis according to their subsequent clinical outcomes. Seventy-six CHR participants as defined using the Comprehensive Assessment of At-Risk Mental States (CAARMS) and 31 healthy controls (HC) were studied while performing a novelty salience fMRI task that engaged an a priori hippocampal-striatal-midbrain circuit of interest. The CHR sample was then followed clinically for a mean of 59.7 months (~5 y), when clinical outcomes were assessed in terms of transition (CHR-T) or non-transition (CHR-NT) to psychosis (CAARMS criteria): during this period, 13 individuals (17%) developed a psychotic disorder (CHR-T) and 63 did not. Functional activation and effective connectivity within a hippocampal-striatal-midbrain circuit were compared between groups. In CHR individuals compared to HC, hippocampal response to novel stimuli was significantly attenuated (P = .041 family-wise error corrected). Dynamic Causal Modelling revealed that stimulus novelty modulated effective connectivity from the hippocampus to the striatum, and from the midbrain to the hippocampus, significantly more in CHR participants than in HC. Conversely, stimulus novelty modulated connectivity from the midbrain to the striatum significantly less in CHR participants than in HC, and less in CHR participants who subsequently developed psychosis than in CHR individuals who did not become psychotic. Our findings are consistent with preclinical evidence implicating hippocampal-striatal-midbrain circuit dysfunction in altered salience processing and the onset of psychosis
Back to basics : the Great Recession and the narrowing of IMF policy advice
This article contributes to the literature on the dynamics of change and continuity in the International Monetary Fund's (IMF's) policy paradigm. The IMF embarked on a process of âstreamlining conditionalityâ during the 2000s, but many observers have argued that the IMF's policy paradigm from the 1990s remains intact. This article examines whether the scope of the IMF's policy advice to borrowers during the Great Recession narrowed in comparison to its advice to borrowers during the heyday of the Washington consensus in the 1980s and 1990s. The article uses qualitative content analysis to establish the frequency of a series of policy dialogue indicators in four sample sets of countries requesting IMF stand-by arrangements over three decades. The evidence suggests that contemporary IMF policy advice to borrowers continues to stress the importance of fiscal consolidation, with reduced emphasis on promoting the structural economic reforms associated with the Washington consensus era
Global Governance Behind Closed Doors : The IMF Boardroom, the Enhanced Structural Adjustment Facility, and the Intersection of Material Power and Norm Change in Global Politics
Up on the 12th floor of its 19th Street Headquarters, the IMF Board sits in active session for an average of 7 hours per week. Although key matters of policy are decided on in the venue, the rules governing Boardroom interactions remain opaque, resting on an uneasy combination of consensual decision-making and weighted voting. Through a detailed analysis of IMF Board discussions surrounding the Enhanced Structural Adjustment Facility (ESAF), this article sheds light on the mechanics of power in this often overlooked venue of global economic governance. By exploring the key issues of default liability and loan conditionality, I demonstrate that whilst the Boardroom is a more active site of contestation than has hitherto been recognized, material power is a prime determinant of both Executive Directorsâ preferences and outcomes reached from discussions. And as the decisions reached form the backbone of the âinstruction sheetâ used by Fund staff to guide their everyday operational decisions, these outcomesâand the processes through which they were reachedâwere factors of primary importance in stabilizing the operational norms at the heart of a controversial phase in the contemporary history of IMF concessional lending
Prefrontal GABA levels, hippocampal resting perfusion and the risk of psychosis
This article was originally published under NPGâs License to Publish, but has now been made available under a [CC BY 4.0] license. The PDF and HTML versions of the paper have been modified accordingly.</p
Integrated metastate functional connectivity networks predict change in symptom severity in clinical high risk for psychosis
The ability to identify biomarkers of psychosis risk is essential in defining effective preventive measures to potentially circumvent the transition to psychosis. Using samples of people at clinical high risk for psychosis (CHR) and Healthy controls (HC) who were administered a task fMRI paradigm, we used a framework for labelling time windows of fMRI scans as âintegratedâ FC networks to provide a granular representation of functional connectivity (FC). Periods of integration were defined using the âcartographic profileâ of time windows and kâmeans clustering, and subânetwork discovery was carried out using Network Based Statistics (NBS). There were no network differences between CHR and HC groups. Within the CHR group, using integrated FC networks, we identified a subânetwork negatively associated with longitudinal changes in the severity of psychotic symptoms. This subânetwork comprised brain areas implicated in bottomâup sensory processing and in integration with motor control, suggesting it may be related to the demands of the fMRI task. These data suggest that extracting integrated FC networks may be useful in the investigation of biomarkers of psychosis risk
Mapping EU Agencies as Political Entrepreneurs
European Union (EU) agencies are âintegral in ensuring that regulatory policies
can be implemented coherently and consistently throughout the EUâ (Rittberger
and Wonka 2012, 3). However, they do not have direct legal power to implement
regulations (Busuioc 2013), but usually must rely on fostering their reputation
and image among competent member state authorities, businesses,
professionals, consumer groups and the media to gain authority. As Gehring and
Krapohl (2007, 28) argue, agencies âOperate in highly politicized environments
and the extent to which they manage to establish themselves as credible
regulators will often be dependent on the manner in which they manage their
relations with, and competing expectations from, the multiple political actors
within their environmentâ. In short, agencies have to become political
entrepreneurs
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