Are there any benefits to divided parliamentary parties?

Intra-party dissent is generally considered a bad thing – for parties seeking power and for voters wishing to make sense of political conflicts. However, using a survey experiment to test people’s responses to different forms of intra-party policy disputes, Eric Merkley finds that there are circumstances in which voters find moderate divisions useful as cues for evaluating policy choices in light of their own preferences

Framing Climate Change: Economics, Ideology, and Uncertainty in American News Media Content From 1988 to 2014

The news media play an influential role in shaping public attitudes on a wide range of issues—climate change included. As climate change has risen in salience, the average American is much more likely to be exposed to news coverage now than in the past. Yet, we don't have a clear understanding of how the content of this news coverage has changed over time, despite likely playing an important part in fostering or inhibiting public support and engagement in climate action. In this paper we use a combination of automated and manual content analysis of the most influential media sources in the U.S. -the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, and the Associated Press- to illustrate the prevalence of different frames in the news coverage of climate change and their dynamics over time from the start of the climate change debate in 1988. Specifically, we focus on three types of frames, based on previous research: economic costs and benefits associated with climate mitigation, appeals to conservative and free market values and principles, and uncertainties and risk surrounding climate change. We find that many of the frames found to reduce people's propensity to support and engage in climate action have been on the decline in the mainstream media, such as frames emphasizing potential economic harms of climate mitigation policy or uncertainty. At the same time, frames conducive to such engagement by the general public have been on the rise, such as those highlighting economic benefits of climate action. News content is also more likely now than in the past to use language emphasizing risk and danger, and to use the present tense. To the extent that media framing plays an important role in fostering climate action in the public, these are welcome developments

The ephemeral effects of fact-checks on COVID-19 misperceptions in the United States, Great Britain and Canada

Widespread misperceptions about COVID-19 and the novel coronavirus threaten to exacerbate the severity of the pandemic. We conducted preregistered survey experiments in the United States, Great Britain, and Canada examining the effectiveness of fact-checks that seek to correct these false or unsupported misperceptions. Across three countries with differing levels of political conflict over the COVID-19 response, we demonstrate that fact-checks reduce targeted misperceptions, especially among the groups who are most vulnerable to these claims, and have minimal spillover effects on the accuracy of other beliefs about COVID-19. However, the positive effects of fact-checks on the accuracy of respondents’ beliefs fail to persist over time in panel data even after repeated exposure. These results suggest that fact-checks can successfully change the beliefs of the people who would benefit from them most but that their effects are disappointingly ephemeral

Identification and Characterization of MtoA: A Decaheme c-Type Cytochrome of the Neutrophilic Fe(II)-Oxidizing Bacterium Sideroxydans lithotrophicus ES-1

The Gram-negative bacterium Sideroxydans lithotrophicus ES-1 (ES-1) grows on FeCO3 or FeS at oxic–anoxic interfaces at circumneutral pH, and the ES-1-mediated Fe(II) oxidation occurs extracellularly. However, the molecular mechanisms underlying ES-1’s ability to oxidize Fe(II) remain unknown. Survey of the ES-1 genome for candidate genes for microbial extracellular Fe(II) oxidation revealed that it contained a three-gene cluster encoding homologs of Shewanella oneidensis MR-1 (MR-1) MtrA, MtrB, and CymA that are involved in extracellular Fe(III) reduction. Homologs of MtrA and MtrB were also previously shown to be involved in extracellular Fe(II) oxidation by Rhodopseudomonas palustris TIE-1. To distinguish them from those found in MR-1, the identified homologs were named MtoAB and CymAES-1. Cloned mtoA partially complemented an MR-1 mutant without MtrA with regards to ferrihydrite reduction. Characterization of purified MtoA showed that it was a decaheme c-type cytochrome and oxidized soluble Fe(II). Oxidation of Fe(II) by MtoA was pH- and Fe(II)-complexing ligand-dependent. Under conditions tested, MtoA oxidized Fe(II) from pH 7 to pH 9 with the optimal rate at pH 9. MtoA oxidized Fe(II) complexed with different ligands at different rates. The reaction rates followed the order Fe(II)Cl2 > Fe(II)–citrate > Fe(II)–NTA > Fe(II)–EDTA with the second-order rate constants ranging from 6.3 × 10-3 µM-1 s-1 for oxidation of Fe(II)Cl2 to 1.0 × 10-3 µM-1 s-1 for oxidation of Fe(II)–EDTA. Thermodynamic modeling showed that redox reaction rates for the different Fe(II)-complexes correlated with their respective estimated reaction-free energies. Collectively, these results demonstrate that MtoA is a functional Fe(II)-oxidizing protein that, by working in concert with MtoB and CymAES-1, may oxidize Fe(II) at the bacterial surface and transfer released electrons across the bacterial cell envelope to the quinone pool in the inner membrane during extracellular Fe(II) oxidation by ES-1

Minimal effects from injunctive norm and contentiousness treatments on COVID-19 vaccine intentions: evidence from 3 countries

Does information about how other people feel about COVID-19 vaccination affect immunization intentions? We conducted preregistered survey experiments in Great Britain (5,456 respondents across 3 survey waves from September 2020 to February 2021), Canada (1,315 respondents in February 2021), and the state of New Hampshire in the United States (1,315 respondents in January 2021). The experiments examine the effects of providing accurate public opinion information to people about either public support for COVID-19 vaccination (an injunctive norm) or public beliefs that the issue is contentious. Across all 3 countries, exposure to this information had minimal effects on vaccination intentions even among people who previously held inaccurate beliefs about support for COVID-19 vaccination or its perceived contentiousness. These results suggest that providing information on public opinion about COVID vaccination has limited additional effect on people’s behavioral intentions when public discussion of vaccine uptake and intentions is highly salient

Identification and characterization of MtoA: a decaheme \u3ci\u3ec\u3c/i\u3e-type cytochrome of the neutrophilic Fe(II)-oxidizing bacterium Sideroxydans lithotrophicus ES-1

The Gram-negative bacterium Sideroxydans lithotrophicus ES-1(ES-1) grows on FeCO3 or FeS at oxic–anoxic interfaces at circumneutral pH, and the ES-1-mediated Fe(II) oxidation occurs extracellularly. However, the molecular mechanisms underlying ES-1’s ability to oxidize Fe(II) remain unknown. Survey of the ES-1 genome for candidate genes formicrobial extracellular Fe(II) oxidation revealed that it contained a three-genecluster encoding homologs of Shewanella oneidensis MR-1(MR-1) MtrA, MtrB, and CymA that are involved in extracellular Fe(III) reduction. Homologs of MtrA and MtrB were also previously shown to be involved in extracellular Fe(II) oxidation by Rhodopseudomonas palustris TIE-1. To distinguish them from those found in MR-1, the identified homologs were named MtoAB andCymAES-1. Cloned mtoA partially complemented an MR-1 mutant without MtrA with regards to ferrihydrite reduction. Characterization of purified MtoA showed that it was a decaheme c-type cytochrome and oxidized soluble Fe(II). Oxidation of Fe(II) by MtoA was pH- and Fe (II) – complexing ligand-dependent.Under conditions tested, MtoA oxidized Fe(II) from pH 7 to pH 9 with the optimal rate at pH 9. MtoA oxidized Fe(II) complexed with different ligands at different rates. The reaction rates followed the order Fe(II)Cl2\u3e Fe(II) –citrate\u3e Fe(II)–NTA\u3eFe(II)–EDTA with the second-order rate constants ranging from 6.3×10−3μM−1s−1 for oxidation of Fe(II) Cl2 to 1.0 × 10−3 μM−1s−1 for oxidation of Fe (II)–EDTA

Defending Our Public Biological Databases as a Global Critical Infrastructure

Progress in modern biology is being driven, in part, by the large amounts of freely available data in public resources such as the International Nucleotide Sequence Database Collaboration (INSDC), the world's primary database of biological sequence (and related) information. INSDC and similar databases have dramatically increased the pace of fundamental biological discovery and enabled a host of innovative therapeutic, diagnostic, and forensic applications. However, as high-value, openly shared resources with a high degree of assumed trust, these repositories share compelling similarities to the early days of the Internet. Consequently, as public biological databases continue to increase in size and importance, we expect that they will face the same threats as undefended cyberspace. There is a unique opportunity, before a significant breach and loss of trust occurs, to ensure they evolve with quality and security as a design philosophy rather than costly “retrofitted” mitigations. This Perspective surveys some potential quality assurance and security weaknesses in existing open genomic and proteomic repositories, describes methods to mitigate the likelihood of both intentional and unintentional errors, and offers recommendations for risk mitigation based on lessons learned from cybersecurity

Learning from Divided Parties? Legislator Dissent as a Cue for Opinion Formation

Scholars have generally seen united parties as normatively desirable. However, little work has explored the implications of divided parties for public opinion. This paper examines whether legislator dissent reduces public support for the policy positions of divided parties. Dissent can do this two ways: by undermining the consistency of party cues sent to co-partisans of the divided party; or by providing a signal regarding the likely distance of the policy proposal from citizen preferences. These possibilities are evaluated here using a survey experiment. Respondents were exposed to mock news articles about a debate on a bill that manipulated the presence of dissent on government benches and its spatial location – either proximate to the opposition party or on the government party’s ideological flank. Legislator dissent appears to reduce the support of government policy for opposition co-partisans, but only when it is centrist and for those with high levels of political knowledge. These results suggest legislator dissent can act as a cue, if a complex one, to help citizens form policy evaluations in line with their preferences

When experts talk, does anyone listen? essays on the limits of expert influence on public opinion

There are large gaps in opinion between policy experts and the public on a wide variety of issues. Scholarly explanations for these observations largely focus on the tendency of citizens to selectively process information from experts in line with their ideology and values. These accounts are likely incomplete. This dissertation is comprised of three papers that examine other important limitations of expert influence on public opinion on topics featuring widespread expert agreement. The first paper looks at the degree to which information on expert agreement is available in the information environment of the average citizen – the news media – and whether or not such information is clouded by media bias towards balance and conflict. An automated and manual content analysis was conducted on over 280,000 news stories on 10 issues featuring widespread expert agreement. The results show that discussion of expert agreement is extremely rare in news content. On occasions when such discussion is featured, it is typically found in the midst of claims and counter claims by polarizing political actors. The second paper seeks to explain rising climate skepticism in the American public and related polarization of Democratic and Republican Party supporters on climate science. An automated content analysis was conducted on over 26,000 news stories to measure over time dynamics in polarizing information, such as party elite and ideological identity cues, messages from organized climate skeptics, and economic cost frames. Results show that the prevalence of party elite cues is strongly associated with aggregate levels of climate skepticism and polarization even after controlling for other possible factors. The third paper explores the role of anti-intellectualism as a predisposition that governs persuasion by expert agreement and the possibility that anti-elite rhetoric may prime this predisposition in information processing. Findings from the General Social Survey and an original survey of over 3,600 American citizens show that anti-intellectualism is strongly associated with opposition to a variety of positions of expert agreement. Results of an embedded survey experiment demonstrate that anti-intellectuals are less persuaded by messages of expert agreement and that this is particularly true when primed with anti-elite rhetoric.Arts, Faculty ofPolitical Science, Department ofGraduat