Organized social complexity as an analytical problem - An introduction and explication

Systems analysis of organized social complexity in terms of independent variable

Enabling activities, professionals' experience and resource relationships - The efficacy of entrepreneurial and bootlegging activities

Role of contemporary professional in organization

Functional contributions of bootlegging and entrepreneurship in research organizations

Bootlegging and entrepreneurship by scientists in research organization

La diplomacia pública americana: lecciones para una comunicación internacional

Las estrategias que proponen los EEUU para la reactivación de la diplomacia pública son seguidas con atención por el resto de los actores internacionales y determinan sus relaciones y la forma de presentarse ante una audiencia global. En cierta medida, configuran las prácticas de la comunicación política internacional. El caso de la “guerra de las ideas”, desarrollada de forma paralela a la “guerra contra el terror” posterior al 11/S, resulta de particular interés. El artículo describe las diversas estrategias que incluyen la campaña y propone vías de evaluación de su eficacia

The Legitimacy and Effectiveness of Non-State Actors and the Public Diplomacy Concept

The concept of public diplomacy has traditionally been understood in state‐centric terms and has been closely related to a state’s foreign policy. Despite conceptual evolution towards more dialogue and networking, definitions continue to envisage public diplomacy as a state pursuit. The impact of globalization on politics however has provoked an emergence of new civil society players who have progressively increased their influence, power, legitimacy and credibility in the global arena, intensifying the crisis that besets the state. This paper proposes a new approach to the public diplomacy concept that can include actions by non‐state actors. In so doing, it explores two main conditions of civil society organizations that need to be recognized as part of the public diplomacy concept: legitimacy and effectiveness. Those preconditions are examined in the following two scenarios: (1) defending citizens’ interests before international institutions, and (2) explaining and implementing policies from those institutions locally. The case of the European Union will be specifically studied in working towards a public diplomacy concept that values the legitimacy and effectiveness of non‐state actors

NIZA: una cumbre, dos temas, tres visiones.Aproximación a la cumbre de Niza a través de la cobertura de la prensa española

El debate sobre la reforma institucional y la ampliación de la Unión Europea fueron dos de los temas principales de la cumbre de Niza, que tuvo lugar el mes de diciembre de 2000. La cumbre, caracterizada por las divergencias previas entre Francia y Alemania, centró los debates en torno al nuevo reparto de votos de los estados miembros y dejó otros asuntos pendientes de resolver, como, por ejemplo, la posibilidad de crear un texto constitucional comunitario. A través de la cobertura realizada por la prensa española, el presente artículo analiza el proceso de reforma e integración que se debatió en la cumbre, la idea de Europa que manifestaba y la actuación concreta del Gobierno español en estos aspectos. Desde la teoría de la mediación informativa, y mediante una metodología de análisis de contenido que combina métodos cualitativos y cuantitativos, se llegan a definir tres visiones de los acontecimientos en las que se destaca que, en situaciones políticas en estado de definición, como la de Niza, el papel de los medios de comunicación puede ser decisivo para la creación de imágenes políticas.The debate about the institutional reform and the enlargement of the European Union were two of the main topics in the Nice’s summit, in December 2000. Before the summit took place, the divergences between France and Germany concerning the decision-making processes had already arosen. Therefore, this issue became the main discussion topic and other topics such as the possibility to create an European Constitution were left without a definitive solution. Through the Spanish press coverage, this article analyses some important issues discussed in Nice: the process of reform and integration, the idea of Europe, and also the role of the Spanish Government in those areas. From the mediation theory of communication, and using a content analysis methodology which combines both qualitative and quantitative research methods, it is possible to define three different visions of the events. As a conclusion, the role of the media in situations of political definitions can be determinant to the creation of political images

Introduction: Studying Successful Public Policy in the Nordic Countries

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Pharmacological screening using an FXN-EGFP cellular genomic reporter assay for the therapy of Friedreich ataxia

Copyright @ 2013 Li et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.Friedreich ataxia (FRDA) is an autosomal recessive disorder characterized by neurodegeneration and cardiomyopathy. The presence of a GAA trinucleotide repeat expansion in the first intron of the FXN gene results in the inhibition of gene expression and an insufficiency of the mitochondrial protein frataxin. There is a correlation between expansion length, the amount of residual frataxin and the severity of disease. As the coding sequence is unaltered, pharmacological up-regulation of FXN expression may restore frataxin to therapeutic levels. To facilitate screening of compounds that modulate FXN expression in a physiologically relevant manner, we established a cellular genomic reporter assay consisting of a stable human cell line containing an FXN-EGFP fusion construct, in which the EGFP gene is fused in-frame with the entire normal human FXN gene present on a BAC clone. The cell line was used to establish a fluorometric cellular assay for use in high throughput screening (HTS) procedures. A small chemical library containing FDA-approved compounds and natural extracts was screened and analyzed. Compound hits identified by HTS were further evaluated by flow cytometry in the cellular genomic reporter assay. The effects on FXN mRNA and frataxin protein levels were measured in lymphoblast and fibroblast cell lines derived from individuals with FRDA and in a humanized GAA repeat expansion mouse model of FRDA. Compounds that were established to increase FXN gene expression and frataxin levels included several anti-cancer agents, the iron-chelator deferiprone and the phytoalexin resveratrol.Muscular Dystrophy Association (USA), the National Health and Medical Research Council (Australia), the Friedreich’s Ataxia Research Alliance (USA), the Brockhoff Foundation (Australia), the Friedreich Ataxia Research Association (Australasia), Seek A Miracle (USA) and the Victorian Government’s Operational Infrastructure Support Program

Prognostic value of galectin-3, a novel marker of fibrosis, in patients with chronic heart failure: data from the DEAL-HF study

Biomarkers are increasingly being used in the management of patients with chronic heart failure (HF). Galectin-3 is a recently developed biomarker associated with fibrosis and inflammation, and it may play a role in cardiac remodeling in HF. We determined its prognostic value in patients with chronic HF. Patients with chronic HF (New York Heart Association functional class III or IV) who participated in the Deventer-Alkmaar heart failure study were studied. Galectin-3 levels were determined at baseline using a novel optimized enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay. Univariate and multivariate analyses were used to determine the prognostic value of this biomarker. We studied 232 patients; their mean age was 71 +/- A 10 years, 72% were male, and 96% were in NYHA class III. During a follow-up period of 6.5 years, 98 patients died. Galectin-3 was a significant predictor of mortality risk after adjustment for age and sex, and severity of HF and renal dysfunction, as assessed by NT-proBNP and estimated glomerular filtration rate, respectively (hazard ratio per standard deviation 1.24, 95% CI 1.03-1.50, P = 0.026). Plasma galectin-3 is a novel prognostic marker in patients with chronic HF. Its prognostic value is independent of severity of HF, as assessed by NT-proBNP levels, and it may potentially be used in the management of such patients

Computing Fresnel integrals via modified trapezium rules

In this paper we propose methods for computing Fresnel integrals based on truncated trapezium rule approximations to integrals on the real line, these trapezium rules modified to take into account poles of the integrand near the real axis. Our starting point is a method for computation of the error function of complex argument due to Matta and Reichel (J Math Phys 34:298–307, 1956) and Hunter and Regan (Math Comp 26:539–541, 1972). We construct approximations which we prove are exponentially convergent as a function of N , the number of quadrature points, obtaining explicit error bounds which show that accuracies of 10−15 uniformly on the real line are achieved with N=12 , this confirmed by computations. The approximations we obtain are attractive, additionally, in that they maintain small relative errors for small and large argument, are analytic on the real axis (echoing the analyticity of the Fresnel integrals), and are straightforward to implement