Continuity and change in party positions towards Europe in Italian parties: an examination of parties' manifestos

This paper analyses Italian parties' manifestos for national and European elections from 1979 to 1999 with the 'Wordscore' programme in order to gauge whether party positions with regard to the European Union have changed and whether the salience of the European Union has increased. Results indicate that, although there is no sign of increased salience, the leading Italian political parties have repositioned themselves in their attitudes towards the European Union, indicating that the European political space matters for national parties

EU external policy-making and the case of Morocco: 'Realistically' dealing with authoritarianism?

The literature on the external relations of the EU often emphasises the normative nature of the Union’s policies. It follows that specific policy initiatives such as the Euro–Mediterranean Partnership (EMP) are then assessed according to normative parameters. This paper challenges this assumption and argues that a realist interpretation of the Union–s external policies contributes to a better understanding of what the EU does abroad. In order to substantiate such theoretical claims, the paper analyses in detail the EU’s relations with the authoritarian state of Morocco and highlights how realist concerns dominate the Union’s preoccupations to the detriment of the normative values it espouses on paper. The paper concludes by arguing that if a different theoretical framework from the mainstream normative one is used to assess the Union’s policies, the outcome of this assessment changes quite radically. In the case of EMP, for instance, we claim that the Union has been rather successful in pursuing its material, realist interests. This has important implications for how the EU will operate when more integration on foreign policy matters occurs

Intra-Campaign Changes in Voting Preferences: The Impact of Media and Party Communication

An increasing number of citizens change and adapt their party preferences during the electoral campaign. We analyze which short-term factors explain intra-campaign changes in voting preferences, focusing on the visibility and tone of news media reporting and party canvassing. Our analyses rely on an integrative data approach, linking data from media content analysis to public opinion data. This enables us to investigate the relative impact of news media reporting as well as party communication. Inherently, we overcome previously identified methodological problems in the study of communication effects on voting behavior. Our findings reveal that campaigns matter: Especially interpersonal party canvassing increases voters’ likelihood to change their voting preferences in favor of the respective party, whereas media effects are limited to quality news outlets and depend on individual voters’ party ambivalence

Family therapy for schizophrenia: cultural challenges and implementation barriers in the South African context

Family therapy is an effective, evidence based intervention for schizophrenia. This literature review explores the impact of culture on family therapy as a treatment model for schizophrenia and examines how cultural beliefs impact on access to care. Although there is a good deal of evidence to suggest that certain principles of family therapy such as empathy and psycho-education are universal, there is a paucity of literature about the role of culture in designing family interventions for people living with schizophrenia in a culturally diverse setting such as South Africa. It is well acknowledged that cultural ideologies influence families’ belief systems of schizophrenia, expected expressed emotion, and levels of stigma in relation to mental illness. Additionally, in adapting models designed for first-world settings, consideration needs to be given to aspects such as language, educational level and accessibility of mental health care facilities. Family therapists are increasingly recognising the need for the study and implementation of evidence based culture-relevant and culture-responsive therapeutic techniques. These techniques need to be cost-effective and will require training, supervision, staff support, and management input in order to become generally available.Keywords: Schizophrenia; Family therapy; South Africa; Cultur

The effect of varying dietary nutrient densities on the relative growth of ostrich body components

The influence of varying dietary protein and energy levels on the relative growth of body components of ostriches was evaluated over a 244-day growth period. One hundred twenty 1-day-old ostrich chicks were randomly assigned to 15 pens. Three varying energy regimes (high, medium and low) and five protein levels (1–5) were supplied ad libitum to each pen. A randomly selected bird from each pen was slaughtered at 1, 35, 63, 103, 159, 168 and 244 days of age. Each bird was weighed, stunned, exsanguinated, defeathered and eviscerated. Individual body components were dissected and weighed at every slaughter age. Proximate analysis was performed on these components, which were ground with the remainder of the carcass, excluding gut content, but including blood and feathers

Priming Europe: Media Effects on Loyalty, Voice and Exit in European Parliament Elections

ArticleThis is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from Palgrave Macmillan via the DOI in this record.Parties in government face a decline in EP elections after experiencing a surge in votes to win the national election. This occurs because voters are more inclined to give voice to their dissatisfaction with current government performance by voting for the opposition or exiting because less is at stake in second‐order elections. These elections negatively affect the electoral fortunes of governing parties as voters opt to punish poorly performing national governments in EP elections. Meanwhile, greater reliance on the EU issue dimension in vote choice models is taken as evidence for the increasing Europeanisation of EP elections. We examine the role of the media in making the EU issue dimension salient in such a way that government parties may benefit electorally from this increased saliency. To examine whether visibility of government party actors in media coverage increases loyalty for the governing parties either directly or via priming the EU issues for voters, we combine survey data from the 2009 European Election Studies (EES) with data on news coverage of those elections that links the governing party to the EU issue. We show that where the government is visible in EU news coverage, EU issue voting tends to increase loyalty while decreasing the probability to vote for the opposition and thus improves the electoral prospects for governing parties. This is even more the case if the issue is primed by negative campaign coverage.Support for this research was provided by the Austrian Science Fund (S10902-G11)

Wesselsbron disease : a cause of congenital porencephaly and cerebellar hypoplasia in calves

Fifteen pregnant cows were inoculated subcutaneously and intravenously between 101-147 days of gestation with the wild-type Wesselsbron disease virus. In addition, 2 foetuses were injected directly through the uterine wall after surgical exposure of the pregnant horn. The clinical symptoms, viraemia and serology in the cows are reported, as also the gross- and histopathology and the virological and serological results of the calves and foetuses. Abortion was not an important manifestation of experimental Wesselsbron disease in cows, as it occurred in 3 animals only. Apart from a short temperature reaction in some cows no other clinical symptoms were recorded. A viraemia was not always present in these cows and, when detected, was of low magnitude and short duration. One cow, in which the foetus was inoculated at 115 days of gestation, aborted at 231 days. The foetus showed marked porencephaly and cerebellar hypoplasia.This article has been scanned in colour with a HP Scanjet 5590; 300dpi. Adobe Acrobat XI Pro was used to OCR the text and also for the merging and conversion to the final presentation PDF-Format

Model-Based EIS Performability Analysis

In this paper we propose a methodology for the modelling, verification and performance evaluation of communication components of software for enterprise information systems. The methodology is centered upon model-driven development using a subset of UML 2.0 diagrams. It is supported by the proSPEX model processing tool which offers a simulation-based executable verification environment. The model-based development of communication components of wireless middleware solutions is discussed as a motivational example

Using UML Models for the Performance Analysis of Network Systems

The automated functional and performance analysis of communication systems specified with some Formal Description Technique has long been the goal of telecommunication engineers. In the past SDL and Petri nets have been the most popular FDTs for the purpose. With the growth in popularity of UML the most obvious question to ask is whether one can translate one or more UML diagrams describing a system to a performance model. Until the advent of UML 2.0, that has been an impossible task since the semantics were not clear. Even though the UML semantics is still not clear for the purpose, with UML 2.0 now released and using ITU recommendation Z.109, we describe in this paper a methodology and tool called proSPEX, for the design and performance analysis of communication protocols specified with UML