CED Update on Money & Politics: Party Fundraising in the 2006 Election

Just ahead of the 2006 mid-term elections, CED issued a Update on Money & Politics that addresses party fundraising in the 2006 election. Prepared by prominent campaign finance expert Anthony Corrado of Colby College, the brief makes a compelling case that the political parties have remained financially viable by courting small donors. The parties have not been crippled by the "soft money" ban imposed by the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002 (BCRA), as many critics of BCRA suggested would happen

Assessing the ECB’s new transmission protection mechanism

The European Central Bank is set to unveil a new tool, the Transmission Protection Mechanism, which it hopes will protect states in the eurozone from escalating borrowing costs. Anthony Bartzokas, Renato Giacon and Corrado Macchiarelli argue there should be close coordination between the new mechanism and the implementation of the EU’s Recovery and Resilience Facility

Association between adverse childhood experiences and suicidal behavior in schizophrenia spectrum disorders: A systematic review and meta-analysis

Assessing and managing suicide behaviors is highly relevant to individuals with schizophrenia spectrum disorders. Our study aims to assess the association between adverse childhood experiences and suicidal behaviors in individuals with schizophrenia spectrum disorders. We included observational studies comparing the probability of suicide behaviors in adults with schizophrenia spectrum disorders exposed and unexposed to adverse childhood experiences. Odds ratio estimates were obtained by pooling data using a random-effects pairwise meta-analysis. Standardized criteria were used to assess the strength of the association of the pooled estimate. We found 21 eligible studies reporting outcomes for 6257 individuals from 11 countries. The primary outcome revealed an association between any suicidal behavior and adverse childhood experiences, which resulted "highly suggestive" according to validated Umbrella Criteria. Similarly, a positive association was confirmed for suicidal ideation and suicide attempt and for any subtype of adverse childhood experience. This meta-analysis showed that exposure to adverse childhood experiences strongly increases the probability of suicide behaviors in people with schizophrenia spectrum disorders

The Transcription Factors SOX9 and SOX10 Are Vitiligo Autoantigens in Autoimmune Polyendocrine Syndrome Type I

Vitiligo is common in the hereditary disorder autoimmune polyendocrine syndrome type I (APS I). Patients with APS I are known to have high titer autoantibodies directed against various tissue-specific antigens. Using sera from APS I patients for immunoscreening of a cDNA library from human scalp, we identified the transcription factors SOX9 and SOX10 as novel autoantigens related to this syndrome. Immunoreactivity against SOX9 was found in 14 (15%) and against SOX10 in 20 (22%) of the 91 APS I sera studied. All patients reacting with SOX9 displayed reactivity against SOX10, suggesting shared epitopes. Among the 19 patients with vitiligo, 12 (63%) were positive for SOX10 (p0.0001). Furthermore, three of 93 sera from patients with vitiligo unrelated to APS I showed strong reactivity against SOX10, which may indicate a more general role of SOX10 as an autoantigen in vitiligo

Cardiac Screening of Young Athletes: a Practical Approach to Sudden Cardiac Death Prevention.

PURPOSE OF REVIEW: We aim to report on the current status of cardiovascular screening of athletes worldwide and review the up-to-date evidence for its efficacy in reducing sudden cardiac death in young athletes. RECENT FINDINGS: A large proportion of sudden cardiac death in young individuals and athletes occurs during rest with sudden arrhythmic death syndrome being recognised as the leading cause. The international recommendations for ECG interpretation have reduced the false-positive ECG rate to 3% and reduced the cost of screening by 25% without compromising the sensitivity to identify serious disease. There are some quality control issues that have been recently identified including the necessity for further training to guide physicians involved in screening young athletes. Improvements in our understanding of young sudden cardiac death and ECG interpretation guideline modification to further differentiate physiological ECG patterns from those that may represent underlying disease have significantly improved the efficacy of screening to levels that may make screening more attractive and feasible to sporting organisations as a complementary strategy to increased availability of automated external defibrillators to reduce the overall burden of young sudden cardiac death

Shallow magma convection evidenced by excess degassing and thermal radiation during the dome-forming Sabancaya eruption (2012–2020)

We used a large set of satellite- (visible, infrared, and radar images from Planetscope, MODIS, VIIRS, Sentinel2, Landsat 8, and Sentinel 1) and ground-based data (optical images, SO2 flux, shallow seismicity) to describe and characterize the activity of the Sabancaya volcano during the unrest and eruption phases that occurred between 2012 and 2020. The unrest phase (2012–2016) was characterized by increasing gas and thermal flux, sourced by a convective magma column rising along with the remnants of a buried plug still permeable to fluid flow. Conversely, a new conduit, adjacent to the previous one, fed the eruptive phase (2016–2020) which was instead characterized by a discontinuous extrusive activity, with phases of dome growth (at rates from 0.04 to 0.75 m3 s−1) and collapse. The extrusive activity was accompanied by fluctuating thermal anomalies (0.5–25 MW), by irregular SO2 degassing (700–7000 tons day−1), and by variable explosive activity (4–100 events d−1) producing repeated vulcanian ash plumes (500–5000 m above the crater). Magma budget calculation during the eruptive phase indicates a large excess of degassing, with the volume of degassed magma (0.25–1.28 km3) much higher than the volume of erupted magma (< 0.01 km3). Similarly, the thermal energy radiated by the eruption was much higher than that sourced by the dome itself, an unbalance that, by analogy with the degassing, we define as “excess thermal radiation”. Both of these unbalances are consistent with the presence of shallow magma convection that fed the extrusive and explosive activity of the Sabancaya dome