Existing and emerging powers in the G20: the case of East Asia

Over the last twenty years, global financial integration and global financial volatility have greatly increased. The 2008 crisis represented a peak in the vulnerability of all countries around the world with regard to global financial volatility. In response to this volatility and as the first line of defense, states have used a growing array of domestic tools: monetary policy, fiscal policy, financial regulatory reforms, domestic security market reforms, occasional capital controls, or the accumulation of financial reserves. Although the G20 was formed in 1999, it did not begin to take center stage in global economic governance until the global financial crisis that started in 2008. Since 2008, systemically important states - both established and aspiring powers - have taken the further steps of committing to increased global financial governance and becoming more integrated into the G20. East Asia is a region which contains a number of systemically important states, both existing economies and emerging ones. East Asian state actorsâ involvement in the G20 is used as a case study to analyze the relevance of the unfolding G20 process. Does this G20 process matter? If so, what explains key statesâ willingness to engage in it and accept new institutional constraints? What exactly drives the commitment process under the G20

Evaluation of Convalescent Plasma for Ebola Virus Disease in Guinea.

BACKGROUND: In the wake of the recent outbreak of Ebola virus disease (EVD) in several African countries, the World Health Organization prioritized the evaluation of treatment with convalescent plasma derived from patients who have recovered from the disease. We evaluated the safety and efficacy of convalescent plasma for the treatment of EVD in Guinea. METHODS: In this nonrandomized, comparative study, 99 patients of various ages (including pregnant women) with confirmed EVD received two consecutive transfusions of 200 to 250 ml of ABO-compatible convalescent plasma, with each unit of plasma obtained from a separate convalescent donor. The transfusions were initiated on the day of diagnosis or up to 2 days later. The level of neutralizing antibodies against Ebola virus in the plasma was unknown at the time of administration. The control group was 418 patients who had been treated at the same center during the previous 5 months. The primary outcome was the risk of death during the period from 3 to 16 days after diagnosis with adjustments for age and the baseline cycle-threshold value on polymerase-chain-reaction assay; patients who had died before day 3 were excluded. The clinically important difference was defined as an absolute reduction in mortality of 20 percentage points in the convalescent-plasma group as compared with the control group. RESULTS: A total of 84 patients who were treated with plasma were included in the primary analysis. At baseline, the convalescent-plasma group had slightly higher cycle-threshold values and a shorter duration of symptoms than did the control group, along with a higher frequency of eye redness and difficulty in swallowing. From day 3 to day 16 after diagnosis, the risk of death was 31% in the convalescent-plasma group and 38% in the control group (risk difference, -7 percentage points; 95% confidence interval [CI], -18 to 4). The difference was reduced after adjustment for age and cycle-threshold value (adjusted risk difference, -3 percentage points; 95% CI, -13 to 8). No serious adverse reactions associated with the use of convalescent plasma were observed. CONCLUSIONS: The transfusion of up to 500 ml of convalescent plasma with unknown levels of neutralizing antibodies in 84 patients with confirmed EVD was not associated with a significant improvement in survival. (Funded by the European Union's Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Program and others; ClinicalTrials.gov number, NCT02342171.)

Existing and emerging powers in the G20: the case of East Asia

Over the last twenty years, global financial integration and global financial volatility have greatly increased. The 2008 crisis represented a peak in the vulnerability of all countries around the world with regard to global financial volatility. In response to this volatility and as the first line of defense, states have used a growing array of domestic tools: monetary policy, fiscal policy, financial regulatory reforms, domestic security market reforms, occasional capital controls, or the accumulation of financial reserves. Although the G20 was formed in 1999, it did not begin to take center stage in global economic governance until the global financial crisis that started in 2008. Since 2008, systemically important states - both established and aspiring powers - have taken the further steps of committing to increased global financial governance and becoming more integrated into the G20. East Asia is a region which contains a number of systemically important states, both existing economies and emerging ones. East Asian state actorsâ involvement in the G20 is used as a case study to analyze the relevance of the unfolding G20 process. Does this G20 process matter? If so, what explains key statesâ willingness to engage in it and accept new institutional constraints? What exactly drives the commitment process under the G20

Psychologie cognitive

International audienceLes ouvrages de la collection Lexifac Psychologie exposent, sous forme de fiches, les thèmes majeurs figurant aux programmes des premiers cycles universitaires. Leur présentation claire et structurée vise un triple objectif : fournir une synthèse complète du cours, faisant ressortir les notions essentielles et leur articulation ; permettre une préparation efficace aux examens en donnant aux étudiants les moyens de rassembler leurs connaissances ; favoriser une consultation rapide sur un point précis. La psychologie cognitive est étudiée à travers deux tomes : le premier porte sur l'historique, les concepts fondamentaux et les thèmes essentiels (langage, mémoire, raisonnement,...), le second développe les champs spécifiques liés à la première enfance

Ce qui est beau ... est bien ! Psycho-Sociobiologie de la Beauté

National audienc

Gender is a dimension of face recognition

In an experiment, the authors investigated the impact of gender categorization on face recognition. Participants were familiarized with composite androgynous faces labeled with either a woman’s first name (Mary) or a man’s first name (John). The results indicated that participants more quickly eliminated faces of the opposite gender than faces of the same gender than the face they were looking for. This gender effect did not result from greater similarity between faces of the same gender. Rather, early gender categorization of a face during face recognition appears to speed up the comparison process between the perceptual input and the facial representation. Implications for face recognition models are discussed. A long-standing question in face recognition concerns the relationships between the different kinds of information one can extract from a face. From a single stimulus (e.g., a passport photograph) a great deal of information can be drawn (e.g., identity, gender, race, and approximate age) and many inferences can be made (e.g., honesty, attractiveness). Despite this abundance of information, many aspects of a face can be processed in less than 1 s. This is true of gender and identity. Furthermore, each piece o