Politics of Aedification, Sensation and Ruination at the Brussels Wiertz Museum

This paper seeks to explain why party candidates and their party leadership have congruent policy positions or not. Despite its importance as a way through which parties are able to behave as a unitary actor, this congruence has never been studied as a dependent variable. We seek to fill this void in the literature. Our results suggest that leadership-candidate congruence comes about through two mechanisms: selection and learning. With selection, the party leadership aims to get those candidates elected whose policy preferences are congruent with the party line. Learning occurs through the process of socialization in which candidates assume the views of the party they work and candidate for as their own under. This happens under the pressure of cognitive dissonance. If a candidate learns about the position of the leadership and notices that they are incongruent, they may feel discomfort and change their opinion to be congruent with the party

Molecular Mechanisms of Taste Recognition: Considerations about the Role of Saliva

The gustatory system plays a critical role in determining food preferences and food intake, in addition to nutritive, energy and electrolyte balance. Fine tuning of the gustatory system is also crucial in this respect. The exact mechanisms that fine tune taste sensitivity are as of yet poorly defined, but it is clear that various effects of saliva on taste recognition are also involved. Specifically those metabolic polypeptides present in the saliva that were classically considered to be gut and appetite hormones (i.e., leptin, ghrelin, insulin, neuropeptide Y, peptide YY) were considered to play a pivotal role. Besides these, data clearly indicate the major role of several other salivary proteins, such as salivary carbonic anhydrase (gustin), proline-rich proteins, cystatins, alpha-amylases, histatins, salivary albumin and mucins. Other proteins like glucagon-like peptide-1, salivary immunoglobulin-A, zinc-α-2-glycoprotein, salivary lactoperoxidase, salivary prolactin-inducible protein and salivary molecular chaperone HSP70/HSPAs were also expected to play an important role. Furthermore, factors including salivary flow rate, buffer capacity and ionic composition of saliva should also be considered. In this paper, the current state of research related to the above and the overall emerging field of taste-related salivary research alongside basic principles of taste perception is reviewed

Sensory profile of portuguese white wines using long-term memory: a novel nationwide approach

White wine sensory profiling of all 12 Protected Geographical Indications (PGIs) of mainland Portugal was achieved through completion of extended sensory questionnaires by 20 professional wine experts. No samples were assessed; the experiment was based on memory alone. Three macro-zonings were found and typicality differences were statistically validated and sensory described. PGI MINHO was found the most typical of all PGIs, with several extreme rates on Color, Aroma and Taste. SOUTHERN cluster of the four meridional PGIs presented several extreme, therefore typical, sensory assessments, mostly opposite to the profile of PGI Minho. Color tonality, alcohol and acidity were mutually related and respective variations were correlated with published findings and expressed as key factors for regional macro-zoning differentiation. Moreover, with the proposed methodology it was possible to achieve a novel nationwide sensory characterization of PGIs, overcoming ongoing macroscaling and sample representativeness limitations and envisaging new nation-sized sensory studiesinfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Not-from-concentrate pilot plant ‘Wonderful’ cultivar pomegranate juice changes: Volatiles

Pilot plant ultrafiltration was used to mimic the dominant U.S. commercial pomegranate juice extraction method (hydraulic pressing whole fruit), to deliver a not-from-concentrate (NFC) juice that was high-temperature short-time pasteurized and stored at 4 and 25 °C. Recovered were 46 compounds, of which 38 were routinely isolated and subjected to analysis of variance to assess these NFC juices. Herein, 18 of the 21 consensus pomegranate compounds were recovered. Ultrafiltration resulted in significant decreases for many compounds. Conversely, pasteurization resulted in compound increases. Highly significant decreases in 12 consensus compounds were observed during storage. Principal component analysis demonstrated clearly which compounds were tightly associated, and how storage samples behaved very similarly, independent of temperature. Based on these data and previous work we reported, this solid-phase microextraction (SPME) method delivered a robust ‘Wonderful’ volatile profile in NFC juices that is likely superior qualitatively and perhaps quantitatively to typical commercial offerings

Production, chemical characterization, and sensory profile of a novel spirit elaborated from spent coffee ground

This study describes a process for the production of a spirit from spent coffee ground (SCG), the chemical composition, and sensory profile of this distillate. The process consisted in three steps starting with the extraction of aroma compounds by hydrothermal treatment of SCG, followed by the fermentation of this extract supplemented with sucrose to ethanol, and the fermented broth distillation. Seventeen volatile compounds were identified in the distillate (including alcohols, esters, aldehydes, and acids), all of them in concentrations able to promote pleasant characteristics to the product. Based on the chemical composition, \SCG\ spirit was considered as having organoleptic quality acceptable for human consumption. Twelve descriptors defined the sensory characteristics of this product, including clarity and brilliance (visual analysis), coffee, roasted, alcohol, elegance and frankly (olfactory analysis), bitter, astringent and pungent (gustatory analysis), and finesse (olfactory and gustatory analyses). Coffee was the most representative aroma by olfactory analysis. Based on the sensory analysis, \SCG\ spirit was considered as having features of a pleasant beverage, with smell and taste of coffee

The Politics of Covid-19 Vaccination Hesitancy in Southeastern Europe.

peer reviewedThe execution of Covid-19 vaccination drives in former Yugoslavia's successor states has been disappointing. The rapidly evolving literature on the Covid-19 pandemic suggests the levels of support for vaccination are correlated with education, trust in public-health institutions, and exposure to the negative economic and health effects of the pandemic. The explanations of the political foundations of vaccination hesitancy, however, need better empirical grounding. We shed light on this subject by analyzing the results of a survey conducted on more than six thousand respondents from Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia, and Serbia, as well as a combination of public-health, economic, and sociodemographic data across more than five hundred municipalities in Croatia. Most notably, we find the political sources of vaccination hesitancy to be strongly related to people's support for the ideas of political parties committed to nationalist populism

NOMAD spectrometer on the ExoMars trace gas orbiter mission: part 2—design, manufacturing, and testing of the ultraviolet and visible channel

NOMAD is a spectrometer suite on board the ESA/Roscosmos ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter, which launched in March 2016. NOMAD consists of two infrared channels and one ultraviolet and visible channel, allowing the instrument to perform observations quasi-constantly, by taking nadir measurements at the day- and night-side, and during solar occultations. Here, in part 2 of a linked study, we describe the design, manufacturing, and testing of the ultraviolet and visible spectrometer channel called UVIS. We focus upon the optical design and working principle where two telescopes are coupled to a single grating spectrometer using a selector mechanism

Choosing Women in Postwar Elections: Exposure to War Violence, Ideology, and Voters’ Gender Bias

The level of women’s parliamentary representation often increases after armed conflict, but do voters in postwar societies actually prefer female electoral candidates? We answer this question by analyzing a unique data set containing information on nearly 7,000 candidates running in three elections with preferential voting in postwar Croatia. Our analysis demonstrates that voters’ gender bias is conditional on the local electorate’s ideology and exposure to war violence, with voters of right-wing parties and voters in areas more affected by war violence being more biased against female candidates. These effects of ideology and exposure to war violence also exhibit a strong interactive relationship, suggesting that bias against women is strongest among right-wing voters in areas exposed to war violence and reversed among left-wing voters in areas exposed to war violence. Our findings highlight the need to better understand the relationship between gender, ideology, and violence in postconflict societies

SRBCorp: Corpus of Parliamentary Debates in Serbia

The repository contains a cleaned and pre-processed corpus of parliamentary debates from the National Assembly of Serbia. The corpus is accompanied by the metadata on elected representatives and their political parties. It covers the period of 1997-2020 (eight terms) and counts over 300 thousand speeches.1.1.

BiHCorp: Corpus of Parliamentary Debates in Bosnia and Herzegovina

The repository contains a cleaned and pre-processed corpus of parliamentary debates from the Parliamentary Assembly of Bosnia and Herzegovina. The corpus is accompanied by the metadata on elected representatives and their political parties. It covers the period of 1998-2018 (six complete terms) and counts over 127 thousand speeches.1.1.