Is Political Moderation Ethnically Based? Italian /American Members of Congress and Congressional Polarization

Published version made available with permission from the Publisher. This item is under embargo in accordance with Publisher agreement until 1 January 2016

A Multidisciplinary Analysis of the Efficacy of Physical Therapy Intervention on Traumatic Brain Injuries and the Ethical Considerations

Traumatic brain injuries (TBIs) are severe brain injuries, typically caused by the impact of an external object, that can cause alteration in brain functioning. Those who suffer from traumatic brain injuries require an extensive range of medical services for their recovery, one of these being physical therapy. It has been established that physical therapy is a key medical service in rehabilitation of both physical and cognitive abilities as it focuses on motor skills and control, comprehension, and complex cognitive functioning in patients with traumatic brain injuries. The objective of this paper is to further investigate the efficacy of physical therapy intervention in patients with acute traumatic brain injurers and to examine the ethical dilemmas that could arise when treating this specific patient population. Using an extensive data base, research from a variety of studies and peer-reviewed sources, addressing the physical efficacy of physical therapy treatment on TBIs and its ethical implications, was analyzed in order to reach the overall findings of this paper. While results remain subjective for each individual case, this paper concludes that physical therapy is a vital tool in progressing a range of motor and cognitive functions of acute TBI patients such as posture, gait (walking), balance, cognitive patterns, and confidence. Additionally, this paper concludes that the ethical implications surrounding acute TBI patients are felt by both medical personnel, in terms of following a specific Code of ethics, and by caregivers of the patients who often find themselves suffering from a term coined as “caregiver burden.

How people look running for office can be an important factor in their electoral success or failure

Given the degree to which many people value physical attractiveness in society today, it may come as little surprise that voters’ decisions are often based to some degree on how candidate’s look. But to what extent is this the case? In new research, Rodrigo Praino finds that when a candidate runs against someone of the same gender, the most attractive candidate receives more votes, but when men and women run against one another, the candidate that looks the most competent is favored by voters

Risk Control Through the Use of Procedures - A Method for Evaluating the Change in Risk

Organizations use procedures to influence or control the behavior of their workers, but often have no basis for determining whether an additional rule, or procedural control will be beneficial. This paper outlines a proposed method for determining if the addition or removal of procedural controls will impact the occurrences of critical consequences. The proposed method focuses on two aspects: how valuable the procedural control is, based on the inevitability of the consequence and the opportunity to intervene; and how likely the control is to fail, based on five procedural design elements that address how well the rule or control has been Defined, Assigned, Trained, Organized and Monitored-referred to as the DATOM element

Control of Risks Through the Use of Procedures: A Method for Evaluating the Change in Risk

This paper considers how procedures can be used to control risks faced by an organization and proposes a means of recognizing if a particular procedure reduces risk or contributes to the organization's exposure. The proposed method was developed out of the review of work documents and the governing procedures performed in the wake of the Columbia accident by NASA and the Space Shuttle prime contractor, United Space Alliance, LLC. A technique was needed to understand the rules, or procedural controls, in place at the time in the context of how important the role of each rule was. The proposed method assesses procedural risks, the residual risk associated with a hazard after a procedure's influence is accounted for, by considering each clause of a procedure as a unique procedural control that may be beneficial or harmful. For procedural risks with consequences severe enough to threaten the survival of the organization, the method measures the characteristics of each risk on a scale that is an alternative to the traditional consequence/likelihood couple. The dual benefits of the substitute scales are that they eliminate both the need to quantify a relationship between different consequence types and the need for the extensive history a probabilistic risk assessment would require. Control Value is used as an analog for the consequence, where the value of a rule is based on how well the control reduces the severity of the consequence when operating successfully. This value is composed of two parts: the inevitability of the consequence in the absence of the control, and the opportunity to intervene before the consequence is realized. High value controls will be ones where there is minimal need for intervention but maximum opportunity to actively prevent the outcome. Failure Likelihood is used as the substitute for the conventional likelihood of the outcome. For procedural controls, a failure is considered to be any non-malicious violation of the rule, whether intended or not. The model used for describing the Failure Likelihood considers how well a task was established by evaluating that task on five components. The components selected to define a well established task are: that it be defined, assigned to someone capable, that they be trained appropriately, that the actions be organized to enable proper completion and that some form of independent monitoring be performed. Validation of the method was based on the information provided by a group of experts in Space Shuttle ground processing when they were presented with 5 scenarios that identified a clause from a procedure. For each scenario, they recorded their perception of how important the associated rule was and how likely it was to fail. They then rated the components of Control Value and Failure Likelihood for all the scenarios. The order in which each reviewer ranked the scenarios Control Value and Failure Likelihood was compared to the order in which they ranked the scenarios for each of the associated components; inevitability and opportunity for Control Value and definition, assignment, training, organization and monitoring for Failure Likelihood. This order comparison showed how the components contributed to a relative relationship to the substitute risk element. With the relationship established for Space Shuttle ground processing, this method can be used to gauge if the introduction or removal of a particular rule will increase or decrease the .risk associated with the hazard it is intended to control

Young voters, older candidates and policy preferences: Evidence from two experiments

Recent elections around the world have seen young voters come out in large numbers to support young leaders running for office, such as New Zealand’s Jacinda Ardern in October 2020. At the same time, however, young voters have shown strong support for relatively old candidates such as Jeremy Corbyn in the United Kingdom and Bernie Sanders in the United States. While the former is consistent with the descriptive representation literature, the latter is not. This article deploys an experimental design involving 1,000 young participants to analyse young voter support towards older candidates. We find that young voters are significantly more likely to support older candidates if they are aware that these candidates champion general left-wing policies, but the same is not true for young candidates. We also find that ceteris paribus younger voters do not prefer younger candidates to older candidates

The role of political parties in the Italian electoral reforms

The aim of this paper is to understand the role played by political parties in the electoral reforms that have characterised the Italian experience since 1993. In order to do so, the authors: 1) describe the scholarly debate on how parties relate to electoral rules and form of government; 2) shed light on the most significant aspects of the Italian electoral reforms at local, regional and State level; and 3) analyse these reforms from the perspective of the party context. The conclusion is that parties have played only a partial role: while strong pressure to implement change has derived from external factors (referendum and judicial interventions), a widespread tendency towards concentrating power and personalising the political forces has ignored the importance of party dynamics in the way that parliamentary forms of government function

Cerebrovascular contribution to dementia development after traumatic brain injury: promises and problems

EditorialLyndsey Collins-Praino, Frances Corriga

Case Report: Relevance of an Accurate Diagnosis and Monitoring of Infective Dermatitis Associated With Human T-Lymphotropic Virus Type 1 in Childhood

Human T-lymphotropic virus type 1 (HTLV-1) is a neglected retrovirus distributed worldwide and the ethiological agent of several pathologies, such as adult T-cell leukemia/lymphoma (ATLL), a chronic myelopathy known as HTLV-1 associated myelopathy/tropical spastic paraparesis (HAM/TSP) and infective dermatitis associated with HTLV-1 (IDH). HTLV-1 presents tropism for CD4+ T cells and induces deregulation of the cytokine profile. IDH is a severe, chronic superinfected eczema generally associated with Staphylococcus aureus and/or Streptococcus beta haemolyticus infection that responds partially to antibiotic therapy but prompt recurrence develops upon treatment withdrawal. IDH could be a risk factor for progression toward both HAM/TSP and ATLL and, similarly to other diseases associated with HTLV-1, it is sub-diagnosed particularly in non-endemic areas. Here, we present a case of IDH in a young boy living in Buenos Aires with symptoms since 2010, at the age of 5. HTLV-1 infection was suspected and confirmed in 2016. The patient exhibited chronic dermatosis with exudative eruption involving mainly the scalp, retroauricular regions, neck and abdomen. Clinical evaluations, routine laboratory tests, full blood count, and HTLV-1 diagnosis for this case are included.Fil: Benencio, Paula. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Oficina de Coordinación Administrativa Houssay. Instituto de Investigaciones Biomédicas en Retrovirus y Sida. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Medicina. Instituto de Investigaciones Biomédicas en Retrovirus y Sida; ArgentinaFil: Ducasa, Nicolás. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Oficina de Coordinación Administrativa Houssay. Instituto de Investigaciones Biomédicas en Retrovirus y Sida. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Medicina. Instituto de Investigaciones Biomédicas en Retrovirus y Sida; ArgentinaFil: Arruvito, Maria Lourdes. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Oficina de Coordinación Administrativa Houssay. Instituto de Investigaciones Biomédicas en Retrovirus y Sida. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Medicina. Instituto de Investigaciones Biomédicas en Retrovirus y Sida; ArgentinaFil: Irurzun, Inés. Gobierno de la Ciudad de Buenos Aires. Hospital General de Niños "Ricardo Gutiérrez"; ArgentinaFil: Praino, Laura. Gobierno de la Ciudad de Buenos Aires. Hospital General de Niños "Ricardo Gutiérrez"; ArgentinaFil: Lamberti, Magdalena. Gobierno de la Ciudad de Buenos Aires. Hospital General de Niños "Ricardo Gutiérrez"; ArgentinaFil: Beraza, María. Gobierno de la Ciudad de Buenos Aires. Hospital General de Niños "Ricardo Gutiérrez"; ArgentinaFil: Berini, Carolina Andrea. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Oficina de Coordinación Administrativa Houssay. Instituto de Investigaciones Biomédicas en Retrovirus y Sida. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Medicina. Instituto de Investigaciones Biomédicas en Retrovirus y Sida; ArgentinaFil: Biglione, Mirna Marcela. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Oficina de Coordinación Administrativa Houssay. Instituto de Investigaciones Biomédicas en Retrovirus y Sida. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Medicina. Instituto de Investigaciones Biomédicas en Retrovirus y Sida; Argentin