Action publique et partis politiques:L’analyse de l’agenda législatif français entre 1981 et 2009

La compétition entre projets partisans est souvent citée comme un élément constitutif de toute démocratie représentative. Si les littératures francophone et anglo-saxonne ont appréhendé différemment le lien entre compétition partisane et politiques publiques, les partis sont partout le parent pauvre des théories de l’action publique. S’inspirant des théories de la mise sur agenda et de la compétition sur enjeux, cet article plaide pour une reconsidération du poids de la variable partisane, en adoptant une approche à la fois globale et différenciée visant à établir dans quelles conditions les partis aux affaires influencent les politiques publiques. Pour cela, les données du Comparative Agendas Project offrent un instrument privilégié, dont nous illustrons les potentialités en testant plusieurs hypothèses sur le cas des activités législatives françaises entre 1981 et 2009.Competition among partisan projects is often cited as a constitutive element of all representative democracies. While the Francophone and English-medium research literature have viewed the link between partisan competition and public policy differently, in both cases parties tend to be the “poor cousins” of theories of public action. Drawing from theories of agenda-setting and issue competition, this article argues for taking the partisan variable more seriously, by adopting an approach which is both global and differentiated and which aims to establish in what conditions governing parties influence public policies. Data from the Comparative Agendas Project provide a challenging basis for investigating this issue. Testing several hypotheses concerning French legislative activities between 1981 and 2009 highlights its potentialities

Executive functions in insomnia disorder: a systematic review and exploratory meta-analysis

Background: Executive functions (EFs) are involved in the control of basic psychological processes such as attention and memory and also contribute to emotion regulation. Research on the presence of EFs impairments in insomnia yielded inconsistent results. Therefore, we performed a systematic review of the literature on three EFs: inhibitory control, working memory, and cognitive flexibility in adults with insomnia in order to investigate the presence and magnitude of insomnia-related EFs impairments. Methods: PubMed, Scopus, Medline, and PsycINFO were searched. Risk of bias assessment of included studies was performed by two independent researchers. Findings were summarised using both a narrative approach and meta-analysis. Cohen’s d was calculated at 95% confidence interval (CI) as effect size of between groups differences. Results: Twenty-eight studies comparing adult individuals with a diagnosis of insomnia and healthy controls on neuropsychological measures of EFs were included. Narrative synthesis revealed substantial variability across study findings. Factors that were primarily hypothesised to account for this variability are: objective sleep impairments and test sensitivity. Exploratory meta-analysis showed impaired performance of small to moderate magnitude in individuals with insomnia as compared to controls in reaction times, but not accuracy rates, of inhibitory control (d = −0.32, 95% CI: −0.52 to −0.13) and cognitive flexibility tasks (d = −0.30, 95% CI: −0.59 to −0.01). Performance in working memory tasks was also significantly impacted (d = −0.19, 95% CI: −0.38 to −0.00). Effects sizes were larger when insomnia was associated with objective sleep impairments, rather than normal sleep. Conclusions: We gathered evidence supporting small to moderate deficits in EFs in individuals with insomnia. Due to the small sample size results should be considered preliminary and interpreted carefully

Symptomatic SARS-CoV-2 Episodes and Health-Related Quality of Life

BackgroundUnderstanding the physical and mental health needs of the population through evidence-based research is a priority for informing health policy. During the COVID-19 pandemic, population wellbeing dramatically dropped. The relationship between experiences of symptomatic illness episodes and health-related quality of life has been less documented.ObjectiveThis study analysed the association between symptomatic COVID-19 illness and health-related quality of life.MethodsThe analyses drew from a cross-sectional analysis of data from a national digital symptoms' surveillance survey conducted in the UK in 2020. We identified illness episodes using symptoms and test results data and we analysed validated health-related quality of life outcomes including health utility scores (indexed on a 0-1 cardinal scale) and visual analogue scale (VAS) scores (0-100 scale) generated by the EuroQoL's EQ-5D-5L measure. The econometric model controlled for respondents' demographic and socioeconomic characteristics, comorbidities, social isolation measures, and regional and time fixed effects.ResultsThe results showed that the experience of common SARS-CoV-2 symptoms was significantly associated with poorer health-related quality of life across all EQ-5D-5L dimensions of mobility, self-care, usual activities, pain/discomfort and anxiety/depression, a decrement in utility score of - 0.13 and a decrement in the EQ-VAS score of - 15. The findings were robust to sensitivity analyses and restrictive test results-based definitions.ConclusionThis evidence-based study highlights the need for targeting of interventions and services towards those experiencing symptomatic episodes during future waves of the pandemic and helps to quantify the benefits of SARS-CoV-2 treatment in terms of health-related quality of life

High air temperatures induce temporal, spatial and social changes in the foraging behaviour of wild zebra finches

Understanding how heatwaves affect organisms is becoming an important issue in animal behaviour, given the changing climate. Exposure to high air temperatures can lead to lethal hyperthermia, when individuals are no longer able to maintain body temperature within their optimal physiological range. Animals will rapidly adjust their behaviour, prioritizing heat dissipation through activities such as drinking and sitting in shade to maintain their body temperature over other activities, such as foraging. Here, we used an automated logging system to consider both the spatial and temporal foraging patterns under a range of different air temperatures at an individual level, in a strictly granivorous species in the wild. We continuously monitored individual foraging activity of wild zebra finches, Taeniopygia guttata, a species well adapted to arid conditions, in an Australian arid area across two heatwave events. High air temperatures significantly reduced foraging activity, with the extent of this effect depending on the time of day. They also led to a significant decrease in the number of birds foraging together and to birds spending a higher proportion of their foraging activity close to a water supply. As temperatures exceeded 35 °C we saw a significant escalation of heat dissipation behaviour. Our results indicate that extreme air temperatures significantly affected temporal, social and spatial characteristics of zebra finch foraging behaviour and these are likely to adversely reduce an individual's capacity to forage efficiently, and consequently its food intake in the short term, while also potentially having implications for both reproduction and survival in the long term

Do Party Manifestos Matter in Policy-Making?

A key factor in modern democracies’ legitimisation is the extent to which policies submitted for public approval before an election translate into material outcomes once a political party has won power. Current research finds no clear empirical evidence for partisanship in policy-making nor has any unified theory been offered or tested systematically. This article addresses that gap by offering a conditional approach to policy-making undertaken by parties in government. It suggests that partisan influence on policy depends on both office-holders’ capacity for implementing policies evoked during their electoral campaigns and on governing parties’ incentives to implement electoral promises. Data from French Agendas Project datasets is used to compare the contents of governing parties’ pre-election manifestos with legislation passed in France between 1981 and 2012. Panel negative binomial regressions on electoral and legislative agendas support the expected outcome, namely that issues featuring in governing parties’ electoral manifesto have had an impact on their subsequent legislative agendas, with the effect depending on both partisan capacities and incentives. Party programmes do matter in policy-making, albeit only under certain conditions

Early-life social environment predicts social network position in wild zebra finches

Early-life experience can fundamentally shape individual life-history trajectories. Previous research has suggested that exposure to stress during development causes differences in social behaviour later in life. In captivity, juvenile zebra finches exposed to elevated corticosterone levels were less socially choosy and more central in their social networks when compared to untreated siblings. These differences extended to other aspects of social life, with ‘stress-exposed’ juveniles switching social learning strategies and juvenile males less faithfully learning their father's song. However, while this body of research suggests that the impacts of early-life stress could be profound, it remains unknown whether such effects are strong enough to be expressed under natural conditions. Here, we collected data on social associations of zebra finches in the Australian desert after experimentally manipulating brood sizes. Juveniles from enlarged broods experienced heightened sibling competition, and we predicted that they would express similar patterns of social associations to stress-treated birds in the captive study by having more, but less differentiated, relationships. We show striking support for the suggested consequences of developmental stress on social network positions, with our data from the wild replicating the same results in 9 out of 10 predictions previously tested in captivity. Chicks raised in enlarged broods foraged with greater numbers of conspecifics but were less ‘choosy’ and more central in the social network. Our results confirm that the natural range of variation in early-life experience can be sufficient to predict individuals' social trajectories and support theory highlighting the potential importance of developmental conditions on behaviour

Intensive hyperglycemia control reduces postoperative infections after open heart surgery

Background: Diabetes mellitus increases the risk of infections in patients undergoing cardiac surgery. We hypothesized that intensive perioperative hyperglycemia control by intravenous insulin infusion reduces postoperative infections in all patients undergoing open heart surgical procedures. Methods: Sixty diabetics patients who underwent CABG operation (Group 1) were compared with fifty-five patients who underwent other cardiac surgery (Group 2) between January 2004 and March 2005. A continuous infusion of insulin was used in all these patients. Results: There were no 30-day mortalities in either group. There was no difference in the incidence of infections between the two groups: in Group 1, 3 (5%) patients were diagnosed to have postoperative infection (superficial sternal wound infections in 1 (1.66%) and lung infection in 2 (3.33%) patients); postoperative infection occurred in only 2 patients (3.63%) in Group 2, 1 superficial sternal wound infections (1.81%) and 1 lung infection (1.81%). Conclusions: Our analysis indicates that continuous intravenous insulin infusion improves outcome and reduces postoperative infections in patients undergoing CABG as well as those undergoing other cardiac surgery procedures.

TRPV1-expressing primary afferents generate behavioral responses to pruritogens via multiple mechanisms

The mechanisms that generate itch are poorly understood at both the molecular and cellular levels despite its clinical importance. To explore the peripheral neuronal mechanisms underlying itch, we assessed the behavioral responses (scratching) produced by s.c. injection of various pruritogens in PLCβ3- or TRPV1-deficient mice. We provide evidence that at least 3 different molecular pathways contribute to the transduction of itch responses to different pruritogens: 1) histamine requires the function of both PLCβ3 and the TRPV1 channel; 2) serotonin, or a selective agonist, α-methyl-serotonin (α-Me-5-HT), requires the presence of PLCβ3 but not TRPV1, and 3) endothelin-1 (ET-1) does not require either PLCβ3 or TRPV1. To determine whether the activity of these molecules is represented in a particular subpopulation of sensory neurons, we examined the behavioral consequences of selectively eliminating 2 nonoverlapping subsets of nociceptors. The genetic ablation of MrgprD^+ neurons that represent ≈90% of cutaneous nonpeptidergic neurons did not affect the scratching responses to a number of pruritogens. In contrast, chemical ablation of the central branch of TRPV1+ nociceptors led to a significant behavioral deficit for pruritogens, including α-Me-5-HT and ET-1, that is, the TRPV1-expressing nociceptor was required, whether or not TRPV1 itself was essential. Thus, TRPV1 neurons are equipped with multiple signaling mechanisms that respond to different pruritogens. Some of these require TRPV1 function; others use alternate signal transduction pathways

Reliable lift-off patterning of graphene dispersions for humidity sensors

Dispersion-based graphene materials are promising candidates for various sensing applications. They offer the advantage of relatively simple and fast deposition via spin-coating, Langmuir-Blodgett deposition, or inkjet printing. Film uniformity and reproducibility remain challenging in all of these deposition methods. Here, we demonstrate, characterize, and successfully apply a scalable structuring method for graphene dispersions. The method is based on a standard lift-off process, is simple to implement, and increases the film uniformity of graphene devices. It is also compatible with standard semiconductor manufacturing methods. We investigate two different graphene dispersions via Raman spectroscopy and Atomic Force Microscopy and observe no degradation of the material properties by the structuring process. Furthermore, we achieve high uniformity of the structured patterns and homogeneous graphene flake distribution. Electrical characterizations show reproducible sheet resistance values correlating with material quantity and uniformity. Finally, repeatable humidity sensing is demonstrated with van der Pauw devices, with sensing limits of less than 1% relative humidity.Comment: 35 page