Is there a bias towards elected actors in media coverage of policy-making in European metropolitan areas?

Metropolitan areas are a typical and increasingly discussed example for fragmented governance lacking clear accountability structures. While most of the literature has focused on the legitimacy of institutions and actors so far, we add a communicational dimension to democratic accountability. In this regard we argue that public accountability/ or accountability through the mass media has become a democratic standard that can be measured/ analyzed. Comparing two types of metropolitan governance in four countries, we test a theoretical and an empirical hypothesis regarding media’s ability to be a forum for public accountability. First, we argue that the media points out who is responsible for policy decisions in a way that mirrors governance structures. By pointing out who is responsible for policy making processes, public accountability reduces the complexity of network governance and actors can be held accountable. Second, however, we expect that the media are biased in focusing more on elected actors because due to their institutional/ political accountability they are more visible and thus easier to be held accountable. Analysing newspaper content data, we come to a mixed conclusion. While both elected and non-elected policy-actors are visible in the media, elected actors are more often attributed with responsibility and blamed than they are actually responsible. Unelected actors are not only outside of the chain of delegation in governance structures, they are also less in the focus of public control. Hence, although non-elected actors are less in the focus of public control, the mass media compensate their institutional lack of accountability by holding them accountable in public

The communicational dimension of democratic accountability in metropolitan governance: Media reporting and perceived legitimacy in four European cities

As cities grow and expand, complex network governance (advocated by the so-called ‘new regionalism’) is increasingly important for policy-making in metropolitan areas. These arrangements have often been criticised as a threat to legitimacy, as they involve a wide array of policy-actors and blurrs and dilute electoral accountability. This paper focuses on the communicational dimension of democratic accountability in metropolitan governance, by exploring the role of the media. We use data from a standardized content analysis of newspaper coverage on metropolitan policy-making in four European mega- and metacities (Paris, London, Berlin and Zurich) and examine their relationship to legitimacy perceptions at the individual level on the basis of survey data. We find that institutional differences in metropolitan governance are quite adequately reflected in media reports. The results also show that media content indeed is correlated with citizen perceptions of legitimacy, i.e. trust in government as well as satisfaction with democracy. We therefore interpret the media as an additional - communicational – channel of democratic accountability in metropolitan governance

Demographic Changes in Pelvic Fracture Patterns at a Swiss Academic Trauma Center from 2007 to 2017.

BACKGROUND Increasing life expectancy has led to higher incidence of fragility fractures of the pelvis. These demographic changes may have a direct impact on fracture patterns. The goal was (1) to evaluate demographical trends in patients with pelvic ring injuries at a tertiary Swiss trauma center and (2) to analyze the influence on fracture patterns. METHODS We performed a retrospective cross-sectional study including 958 patients (mean age 57 ± 21 years, 48% women) with a pelvic ring injury between 2007 and 2017. Fractures were classified according to Tile, Young and Burgess or Rommens and Hofmann (fragility fractures) using conventional and CT imaging. Low-energy fractures were defined as fractures resulting from fall from standing height or less. Fracture classifications, age, gender, injury severity score (ISS) and trauma mechanism were compared using analysis of variance (ANOVA) or chi-square test. Cluster analysis was performed to identify groups with similarities in fracture patterns and demographic parameters. RESULTS From 2007 to 2017, the frequency of pelvic ring injuries increased by 115% (increase per decade), mean age increased by 15% (p = 0.031). A trimodal age distribution was found; highest increase for fractures occurred in the 'older' (265%) patient group. Low-energy fracture was the most common trauma mechanism (43% of all fractures, an increase of 249%). Changes in fracture pattern showed a disproportioned increase of 'lateral compression (LC)' fractures (LC type 1 in 64%) or partially stable fracture (B2: with 39%). In patient aged over 65 years, the strongest increase was found for 'non-displaced posterior' fractures with an overall prevalence of 62%. Five clusters were found with the most frequent cluster representing 'older female patients with low-energy fracture (LC, Tile type B)' in 30%. CONCLUSION The current results corroborate the trend of increasing frequency of fragility fractures in an aging society. The demographic shift has a direct impact on fracture pattern with a disproportionate increase in partially stable compression fracture of the pelvis. LEVEL OF EVIDENCE Level III

Interlaboratory study on lipid oxidation during accelerated storage trials with rapeseed and sunflower oil analyzed by conjugated dienes as primary oxidation products

11 Páginas.-- 5 Figuras.-- 2 Tablas.-- Material suplementarioAccelerated storage tests are frequently used to assess the oxidative stability of foods and related systems due to its reproducibility. Various methods and experimental conditions are used to measure lipid oxidation. Differences between laboratories make it necessary to determine the repeatability and reproducibility of oxidation tests performed under the same conditions. The objective of the present interlaboratory study was to evaluate the outcome of a storage test for two different bulk oils, sunflower oil (SFO) and rapeseed oil (RSO), during a period of 9 weeks at 20°C, 30°C, 40°C, and 60°C. Sixteen laboratories were provided with bottled oils and conducted the storage tests according to a detailed protocol. Lipid oxidation was monitored by the formation of conjugated dienes (CD) and the activation energy (Ea) was determined for comparative purposes and statistically evaluated. An increase in CD formation was observed for both oils when the storage temperature was increased in all laboratories. The Ea,1 ranged from 47.9 to 73.3 kJ mol−1 in RSO and from 27.8 to 62.6 kJ mol−1 in SFO, with average values of 58.2 and 46.8 kJ mol−1, respectively. The reproducibility coefficients were 10.9% and 18.2% for RSO and SFO, respectively. Practical applications: In order to compare results on oxidative stability of foods derived from different studies, the reproducibility of storage tests and methods employed to evaluate the oxidation level should be considered. This study provides fundamental data on the reproducibility of lipid oxidation under accelerated storage conditions and defines important parameters to be considered for the conduction of experiments.Open access funding enabled and organized by Projekt DEAL. We thank Brökelmann + Co – Oelmühle GmbH + Co for the donation of the vegetable oils. The authors gratefully acknowledge Lina Stuthmann from the Food Technology Division, Kiel University and Inge Holmberg from the National Food Institute, Technical University of Denmark for their skillful help.Peer reviewe

Large expert-curated database for benchmarking document similarity detection in biomedical literature search

Document recommendation systems for locating relevant literature have mostly relied on methods developed a decade ago. This is largely due to the lack of a large offline gold-standard benchmark of relevant documents that cover a variety of research fields such that newly developed literature search techniques can be compared, improved and translated into practice. To overcome this bottleneck, we have established the RElevant LIterature SearcH consortium consisting of more than 1500 scientists from 84 countries, who have collectively annotated the relevance of over 180 000 PubMed-listed articles with regard to their respective seed (input) article/s. The majority of annotations were contributed by highly experienced, original authors of the seed articles. The collected data cover 76% of all unique PubMed Medical Subject Headings descriptors. No systematic biases were observed across different experience levels, research fields or time spent on annotations. More importantly, annotations of the same document pairs contributed by different scientists were highly concordant. We further show that the three representative baseline methods used to generate recommended articles for evaluation (Okapi Best Matching 25, Term Frequency-Inverse Document Frequency and PubMed Related Articles) had similar overall performances. Additionally, we found that these methods each tend to produce distinct collections of recommended articles, suggesting that a hybrid method may be required to completely capture all relevant articles. The established database server located at https://relishdb.ict.griffith.edu.au is freely available for the downloading of annotation data and the blind testing of new methods. We expect that this benchmark will be useful for stimulating the development of new powerful techniques for title and title/abstract-based search engines for relevant articles in biomedical research.Peer reviewe

Accountability in the metropolis: a media content analysis across European city regions

To be informed about political news and policy making processes is a sine qua non in representative democracies. Moreover the media’s role in pointing out who is to be held accountable, who is responsible for policy decisions and to whom policy competence can be attributed is maybe the cardinal function of the media to society (cf. Gurevitch and Blumler 1990). Through the media, policy actors become accountable to the wider public – the electorate – not only in elections, but in the news media. In this respect it is argued that independent media and political communication are a resource of democratic legitimacy for policy makers and their actions. By being a forum and an actor the media provide public accountability to society and thereby through communication contribute to the democratic legitimacy of the political system. But how do the media portray political responsibility and accountability in public communication? What are the influences and determinants of accountability in public? Are complex governance networks a hindrance to the clarity of responsibility? Today’s policy making processes are intertwined and multilayered, whether on an international or on a domestic level. Denationalisation processes (Zürn 2000) together with the forces of globalization, create political spaces that ignore traditional boundaries. Metropolitan areas are an example of such new political spaces that have evolved over the last decades. They are typical multilevel frameworks where citizens are subject to decisions by different political actors from different political orders. An increase of scientific interest in metropolitan governance structures (Sellers 2005; Kübler 2012) discusses specifically the question of accountability, since decisions in metropolitan multilevel structures are not always made by an institutionalised government, but more often by loose governance networks (Kübler and Schwab 2007; Goetz et al. 2002). This is due to the fact, that more and more policy fields, for instance transport planning or economic promotion, do not affect individual municipalities only, but whole regions, usually around big cities. As a consequence, metropolitan areas can either build up new institutions that are not restricted to one municipality but govern the whole region; or all affected municipalities have to coordinate their interests, maybe even together with private actors such as transport companies, to solve regional policy problems. In the latter case, it is argued that citizens might not understand who is responsible for policy changes, and do not have any chance to sanction actors who do not represent their interests. That is when the media’s role in pointing out who is to be held accountable and to whom responsibility can be attributed becomes crucial. Moreover, it is particularly in those multilevel governance arrangements where democratic legitimacy is scarce and where public accountability may fill the gap. Taken together I argue that legitimacy through political communication is constructed and that media and political system characteristics shape the way policy actors are held publicly accountable and the way responsibility is attributed to them. A quantitative comparative investigation across European city regions based on content analysis of metropolitan newspapers will be the framework for the analysis of public accountability

Body Packing: From Seizures to Laparotomy

Body packing is a common method for illegal drug trafficking. Complications associated with body packing can be severe and even lead to rapid death. Thus, a timely diagnosis is warranted. As most body packers initially do not show any symptoms, making a correct diagnosis can be rather challenging. We describe a case of a 41-year-old male, who was admitted with an epileptic seizure and who turned out to be a cocaine intoxicated body packer. Due to neurological and cardiovascular deterioration an emergency surgery was performed. Four bags of cocaine could be removed. We discuss the current management regimen in symptomatic and asymptomatic body packers and highlight pearls and pitfalls with diagnosis and treatment

NPs for Events: Experiments in Coreference Annotation

This paper describes a pilot project which developed a methodology for NP and event coreference annotation consisting of detailed annotation schemes and guidelines. In order to develop this, a small sample annotated corpus in the domain of terrorism/security was built. The methodology developed can be used as a basis for large-scale annotation to produce much-needed resources. In contrast to related projects, ours focused almost exclusively on the development of annotation guidelines and schemes, to ensure that future annotations based on this methodology capture the phenomena both reliably and in detail. The project also involved extensive discussions in order to redraft the guidelines, as well as major extensions to PALinkA, our existing annotation tool, to accommodate event as well as NP coreference annotation. 1

Over-responsibilised and over-blamed: Elected actors in media reporting on network governance. A comparative analysis in eight European metropolitan areas

This article contributes to the study of democratic problems related to governance networks, by focusing on the role of the media. Two main rivalling hypotheses are examined. The functionalist hypothesis postulates that the media accurately inform the public about policy actors and their responsibilities, independent of these actors' institutional status. The media-bias hypothesis postulates an attention bias towards elected policy actors, resulting in reduced public visibility of non-elected policy actors. The analysis uses standardised data on decision-making processes and newspaper content relating to public transport and economic promotion policies in eight western European metropolitan areas. Findings are that the actor mix of governance networks is quite accurately reflected in newspaper reporting. However, elected actors are more often presented as responsible for policies ('over-responsibilised'), and they are more often blamed for policy failures than other actors ('over-blamed'). The extent of this media bias depends on commercial pressure on media outlets. We also show that variations of this general pattern are linked to different types of media systems found across the cases under scrutiny