The Ouroborous of Political Institutions: Party Rules in Institutional Context

Political parties are essential elements of the political landscape in most of the world and their role is essential as they connect citizens to policy change. Though precisely because they do so much and mean so much there is little agreement among scholars on how they should be studied or understood. Indeed, despite the centrality of parties, the comprehensive large-N analysis of institutions and politics inside rather than among them is yet to be attempted. Instead, cross-national data collection efforts are mostly driven by theories that take party structures as given and focus on systems of parties and competition among parties in those systems. The basic question of why parties look like they do and how their organizational features affect political outcomes is left unasked. We believe that advancing scholarship demands that political scientists address the increasingly salient questions of source and purpose of the design of the formal and informal rules that define party organization— intraparty institutions—and (further down the line) of the effects they have on politics and political outcomes. In this paper we introduce a theory-driven approach for empirically examining variation in internal party organization (i.e., rules) in cross-national as well as country-specific context. The gist of our measurement strategy is to trace the degree of centralization in intraparty resource flows

Legislative Vetoes and Corruption: The Effect of Formal Checks on Governance

What keeps corruption in check? Politicians have incentives to both avoid and actively oppose corruption when voters can hold them accountable for it. But to punish malfeasance voters have to know about it, and corrupt actors don’t want such information to be easy to find. Moreover, we argue that the very people best positioned to observe and block corruption—legislators with influence in the policy-making process—also are well-positioned to benefit from corruption. We thus focus on political elites and explore the conditions affecting the corrupt exercise of influence in the policy-making process. To that end, we look at the role of institutional checks in the legislative process and conclude, contra conventional wisdom, that as the number of checks increase so also should corruption increase, all else equal. This conclusion follows from the argument that checks give the individuals who control them influence and, importantly, an incentive to collude with other veto players in order to channel public resources to private ends. As long as the benefits of collusion (e.g., among coalition partners or even copartisans) outweigh the costs, increasing the number and potency of checks only increases opportunities for corruption. We find, testing our claim against data from a sample of 97 countries, strong support for our hypothesized relationship between institutional checks and corruption

Legislative Vetoes and Corruption: The Effect of Formal Checks on Governance

What keeps corruption in check? Politicians have incentives to both avoid and actively oppose corruption when voters can hold them accountable for it. But to punish malfeasance voters have to know about it, and corrupt actors don’t want such information to be easy to find. Moreover, we argue that the very people best positioned to observe and block corruption—legislators with influence in the policy-making process—are also well-positioned to benefit from corruption. We thus focus on political elites and explore the conditions affecting the corrupt exercise of influence in the policy-making process. To that end, we look at the role of institutional checks in the legislative process and conclude, contra conventional wisdom, that as the number of checks increase so also should corruption increase, all else equal. This conclusion follows from the argument that checks give the individuals who control them influence and, importantly, an incentive to collude with other veto players in order to channel public resources to private ends. As long as the benefits of collusion (e.g., among coalition partners or even copartisans) outweigh the costs, increasing the number and potency of checks only increases opportunities for corruption. We find, testing our claim against data from a sample of 97 countries, strong support for our hypothesized relationship between institutional checks and corruption

Single-Unit Responses Selective for Whole Faces in the Human Amygdala

The human amygdala is critical for social cognition from faces, as borne out by impairments in recognizing facial emotion following amygdala lesions and differential activation of the amygdala by faces. Single-unit recordings in the primate amygdala have documented responses selective for faces, their identity, or emotional expression, yet how the amygdala represents face information remains unknown. Does it encode specific features of faces that are particularly critical for recognizing emotions (such as the eyes), or does it encode the whole face, a level of representation that might be the proximal substrate for subsequent social cognition? We investigated this question by recording from over 200 single neurons in the amygdalae of seven neurosurgical patients with implanted depth electrodes. We found that approximately half of all neurons responded to faces or parts of faces. Approximately 20% of all neurons responded selectively only to the whole face. Although responding most to whole faces, these neurons paradoxically responded more when only a small part of the face was shown compared to when almost the entire face was shown. We suggest that the human amygdala plays a predominant role in representing global information about faces, possibly achieved through inhibition between individual facial features

Alogliptin after acute coronary syndrome in patients with type 2 diabetes

Background - To assess potentially elevated cardiovascular risk related to new antihyperglycemic drugs in patients with type 2 diabetes, regulatory agencies require a comprehensive evaluation of the cardiovascular safety profile of new antidiabetic therapies. We assessed cardiovascular outcomes with alogliptin, a new inhibitor of dipeptidyl peptidase 4 (DPP-4), as compared with placebo in patients with type 2 diabetes who had had a recent acute coronary syndrome. Methods - We randomly assigned patients with type 2 diabetes and either an acute myocardial infarction or unstable angina requiring hospitalization within the previous 15 to 90 days to receive alogliptin or placebo in addition to existing antihyperglycemic and cardiovascular drug therapy. The study design was a double-blind, noninferiority trial with a prespecified noninferiority margin of 1.3 for the hazard ratio for the primary end point of a composite of death from cardiovascular causes, nonfatal myocardial infarction, or nonfatal stroke. Results - A total of 5380 patients underwent randomization and were followed for up to 40 months (median, 18 months). A primary end-point event occurred in 305 patients assigned to alogliptin (11.3%) and in 316 patients assigned to placebo (11.8%) (hazard ratio, 0.96; upper boundary of the one-sided repeated confidence interval, 1.16; P<0.001 for noninferiority). Glycated hemoglobin levels were significantly lower with alogliptin than with placebo (mean difference, -0.36 percentage points; P<0.001). Incidences of hypoglycemia, cancer, pancreatitis, and initiation of dialysis were similar with alogliptin and placebo. Conclusions - Among patients with type 2 diabetes who had had a recent acute coronary syndrome, the rates of major adverse cardiovascular events were not increased with the DPP-4 inhibitor alogliptin as compared with placebo. (Funded by Takeda Development Center Americas; EXAMINE ClinicalTrials.gov number, NCT00968708.

Ursinus College Alumni Journal, November 1965

First words • From the President • Planning for the future at Ursinus College • Start of a four-year celebration • Guide to Centennial giving • Soviet portfolio: Rise and fall of the literary temperature; Evgeny Yevtushenko, Siberian pastorale; Memories of a Russian honeymoon • Founders Day is Ladies Day • Alumni come home to Ursinus • The many lives of Wismer Hall • Matching gifts lift industry & academia • Found: Preacher Mack • On Peace Corps duty in Thailand • The war trap • Lengthening list • Sporting scene • Campus clippings • Letters • Profiles: Four Ursinus men of distinction • Class notebook • Weddings • Births • In memoriam • A tribute to J. Allen Minnich • End quotes: The measles principle of educationhttps://digitalcommons.ursinus.edu/alumnijournal/1083/thumbnail.jp

Ursinus College Alumni Journal, July 1960

President\u27s page • Dr. Paisley completes fifty years as President of the Board of Directors • Dr. McClure salutes Dr. Paisley • Senator Hugh Scott speaks at commencement • Horton preaches Baccalaureate sermon • Mrs. Omwake honored • 1960 Loyalty Fund • Dr. Boswell retires • Four professors given Bear Awards • Memorial minute • Faculty notes • A student reviews the past year at Ursinus • Alumni Day • Alumni elections • Thompson receives award • Admissions\u27 problems • Ursinus experiments in Swedish • Commencement Day • Colonel Campbell, \u2760 • The generous American • 1960 Loyalty Fund breaks all records • Lost alumni • The alumnus / alumna • A defense for the Alumni Association • Edward L. French, \u2738 • Paul E. Elicker, \u2714 • Warren K. Hess, \u2731 • Ursinus sends Morgan to NCAA track trials • Best track season in Ursinus history • Baseball review • Varsity Club news • Ursinus faces rebuilding job • Girls\u27 spring sports • Calling all grumblers • News about ourselves • Necrology • Weddings • Births • Ursinus captain\u27s chairhttps://digitalcommons.ursinus.edu/alumnijournal/1065/thumbnail.jp

Development of Type 1 Diabetes in Wild Bank Voles Associated With Islet Autoantibodies and the Novel Ljungan Virus

Wild bank voles (Clethrionomys glareolus) may develop diabetes in laboratory captivity. The aim of this study was to test whether bank voles develop type 1 diabetes in association with Ljungan virus. Two groups of bank voles were analyzed for diabetes, pancreas histology, autoantibodies to glutamic acid decarboxylase (GAD65), IA-2, and insulin by standardized radioligand-binding assays as well as antibodies to in vitro transcribed and translated Ljungan virus antigens. Group A represented 101 trapped bank voles, which were screened for diabetes when euthanized within 24 hours of capture. Group B represented 67 bank voles, which were trapped and kept in the laboratory for 1 month before being euthanized. Group A bank voles did not have diabetes. Bank voles in group B (22/67; 33%) developed diabetes due to specific lysis of pancreatic islet beta cells. Compared to nondiabetic group B bank voles, diabetic animals had increased levels of GAD65 (P < .0001), IA-2 (P < .0001), and insulin (P = .03) autoantibodies. Affected islets stained positive for Ljungan virus, a novel picorna virus isolated from bank voles. Ljungan virus inoculation of nondiabetic wild bank voles induced beta-cell lysis. Compared to group A bank voles, Ljungan virus antibodies were increased in both nondiabetic (P < .0001) and diabetic (P = .0015) group B bank voles. Levels of Ljungan virus antibodies were also increased in young age at onset of newly diagnosed type 1 diabetes in children (P < .01). These findings support the hypothesis that the development of type 1 diabetes in captured wild bank voles is associated with Ljungan virus. It is speculated that bank voles may have a possible zoonotic role as a reservoir and vector for virus that may contribute to the incidence of type 1 diabetes in humans

ruvA Mutants that resolve Holliday junctions but do not reverse replication forks

RuvAB and RuvABC complexes catalyze branch migration and resolution of Holliday junctions (HJs) respectively. In addition to their action in the last steps of homologous recombination, they process HJs made by replication fork reversal, a reaction which occurs at inactivated replication forks by the annealing of blocked leading and lagging strand ends. RuvAB was recently proposed to bind replication forks and directly catalyze their conversion into HJs. We report here the isolation and characterization of two separation-of-function ruvA mutants that resolve HJs, based on their capacity to promote conjugational recombination and recombinational repair of UV and mitomycin C lesions, but have lost the capacity to reverse forks. In vivo and in vitro evidence indicate that the ruvA mutations affect DNA binding and the stimulation of RuvB helicase activity. This work shows that RuvA's actions at forks and at HJs can be genetically separated, and that RuvA mutants compromised for fork reversal remain fully capable of homologous recombination