Challenging the Manifesto Project Data Monopoly: Estimating Parties’ Policy Position Time-Series Using Expert and Mass Survey Data

In this research note we propose a novel approach for generating time-series for party positions as an alternative to the estimates provided by the Manifesto Project. Our approach combines multiple expert surveys from different years, filling up the missing data using a multiple imputation algorithm that uses additional information from mass surveys. We illustrate this approach by estimating time-series for eight European countries for periods up to 50 years and show that our estimates are comparable, if not superior, in richness and face validity to those of the Manifesto Project. We conclude that our approach can easily generate data that can be used to explore the robustness of empirical analyses using party position data and serve as valid benchmarks for computational text scaling and crowd-sourced manual coding of party manifestos

Continuous sedation until death: The everyday moral reasoning of physicians, nurses and family caregivers in the UK, The Netherlands and Belgium

Copyright © 2014 Raus et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited.Background - Continuous sedation is increasingly used as a way to relieve symptoms at the end of life. Current research indicates that some physicians, nurses, and relatives involved in this practice experience emotional and/or moral distress. This study aims to provide insight into what may influence how professional and/or family carers cope with such distress. Methods - This study is an international qualitative interview study involving interviews with physicians, nurses, and relatives of deceased patients in the UK, The Netherlands and Belgium (the UNBIASED study) about a case of continuous sedation at the end of life they were recently involved in. All interviews were transcribed verbatim and analysed by staying close to the data using open coding. Next, codes were combined into larger themes and categories of codes resulting in a four point scheme that captured all of the data. Finally, our findings were compared with others and explored in relation to theories in ethics and sociology. Results - The participants’ responses can be captured as different dimensions of ‘closeness’, i.e. the degree to which one feels connected or ‘close’ to a certain decision or event. We distinguished four types of ‘closeness’, namely emotional, physical, decisional, and causal. Using these four dimensions of ‘closeness’ it became possible to describe how physicians, nurses, and relatives experience their involvement in cases of continuous sedation until death. More specifically, it shined a light on the everyday moral reasoning employed by care providers and relatives in the context of continuous sedation, and how this affected the emotional impact of being involved in sedation, as well as the perception of their own moral responsibility. Conclusion - Findings from this study demonstrate that various factors are reported to influence the degree of closeness to continuous sedation (and thus the extent to which carers feel morally responsible), and that some of these factors help care providers and relatives to distinguish continuous sedation from euthanasia.The Economic and Social Research Council (UK), the Research Foundation Flanders (BE), the Flemish Cancer Association (BE), the Research Council of Ghent University (BE), the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NL) and the Netherlands Organization for Health Research and Development (NL)

Evaluation of cyber-tools in cultural tourism

Nowadays, e-services technology has demonstrated a pervasive character in the modern tourism industry. E-services implemented by the tourism industry, e.g., e-tourism, appeared to produce significant cost reductions and market efficiencies. Since online services are continuously accessible, time and geographic differences do not hinder the interaction between tourism service providers and their customers anymore. By usingICTs, (small) tourism organisations can enlarge their markets or operate in niche markets by serving a specific group of customers. The increased use of ICTs has thus resulted in a significant change in the structure of the tourism industry. The present paper aims to provide an overview of experiences and findings that address the socioeconomic impacts of e-services for the (cultural) tourist industry, on the basis of a systematic impact analysis. We use a SWOT approach to organise a systematic evaluation of various e-services effects, which are specifically differentiated for e-services and e-tourism (including cultural heritage) of socioeconomic importance. The main sources to identify the strengths and weaknesses of e-services are the academic and management literature that describes the experience in practice of various stakeholders. Copyright © 2011 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd

DNA Spools under Tension

DNA-spools, structures in which DNA is wrapped and helically coiled onto itself or onto a protein core are ubiquitous in nature. We develop a general theory describing the non-equilibrium behavior of DNA-spools under linear tension. Two puzzling and seemingly unrelated recent experimental findings, the sudden quantized unwrapping of nucleosomes and that of DNA toroidal condensates under tension are theoretically explained and shown to be of the same origin. The study provides new insights into nucleosome and chromatin fiber stability and dynamics

Organized condensation of worm-like chains

We present results relevant to the equilibrium organization of DNA strands of arbitrary length interacting with a spherical organizing center, suggestive of DNA-histone complexation in nucleosomes. We obtain a rich phase diagram in which a wrapping state is transformed into a complex multi-leafed, rosette structure as the adhesion energy is reduced. The statistical mechanics of the "melting" of a rosette can be mapped into an exactly soluble one-dimensional many-body problem.Comment: 15 pages, 2 figures in a pdf fil

Dynamics of a Driven Single Flux Line in Superconductors

We study the low temperature dynamics of a single flux line in a bulk type-II superconductor, driven by a surface current, both near and above the onset of an instability which sets in at a critical driving. We found that above the critical driving, the velocity profile of the flux line develops a discontinuity.Comment: 10 pages with 4 figures, REVTE