The Economy and the Vote in EP Elections. A Comparative and Dynamic Perspective

Economic factors are said to be one of the most relevant factors influencing voting behavior. That should be true for the European Parliament (EP) elections for at least two reasons. First, the European Union is seen as focusing mainly on economic issues and second, EP elections are often considered as the second-order elections, i.e. as a referendum on the state of economy in the national states and the corresponding government responsibility. This paper aims at testing to which extent economic voting explains voting behavior in the EP elections over time. As data on the 2004 and 2009 EP elections are used, the paper builds upon data before and at the peak of the world economic crisis and thus provides an ideal setting to probe a bit deeper in the mechanisms of signal extraction. The voting behavior is related to objective and subjective economic variables, as well as economic competence signals, the clarity of responsibility for economic policies and basic institutional features, and modeled in the Bayesian framework. The results reveal the context heterogeneity of economic voting, and indicate its systematic connection to alternative varieties of capitalism, to core political institutions, the clarity of the responsibility in liberal versus corporatist countries

Deservingness als Heuristik oder als Automatismus?

Previous contributions have cogently addressed the effect of individual-specific and context-related features, preferences, and values on welfare attitudes. Imminent studies have also reviewed their collective impact on the construction and reform of social security systems. This article proceeds from subject- to object-related arguments and explores the effect, robustness, and stability of deservingness attributions on the willingness to enforce active labor market policies. We utilize a comprehensive survey experiment embedded with the European Social Survey (Round 8, fieldwork in 2016/17). Across twenty-three different countries, respondents were randomly assigned vignettes that characterize diverse levels of control, need, and reciprocity of benefit claimants. The empirical findings demonstrate that deservingness cues provide consistent and robust causal effects on the willingness to enforce active labor market policies. These findings are of scientific and political relevance because they enable self-interested political actors to frame benefit claimants and thus to impact political opinion on the welfare state more directly

Analysis of complex drugs by comprehensive two-dimensional gas chromatography and high-resolution mass spectrometry: detailed chemical description of the active pharmaceutical ingredient sodium bituminosulfonate and its process intermediates

The European pharmacopeia provides analytical methods for the chemical characterization of active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs). However, the complexity of some APIs exceeds the limitations of the currently prevailing physicochemical methods. Sodium bituminosulfonate (SBS) is described by the collection of key parameters of generalizing criteria such as dry matter, sulfur and sodium content, and neutrality, but techniques to unravel the complexity on a molecular level are lacking. We present a study based on online derivatization with tetramethylammonium hydroxide in combination with comprehensive two-dimensional gas chromatography coupled to an electron ionization high-resolution time-of-flight mass spectrometer (GC × GC-HR-ToF–MS) for the chemical description of SBS as well as its process intermediates. The application of GC × GC allowed the comprehensive description of the chemical components in the API and the process intermediates for the first time. Furthermore, it was possible to classify peaks regarding their elemental and structural composition based on accurate mass information, elution behavior, and mass fragmentation pattern. This work demonstrates not only the general applicability, advantages but also limitations of GC × GC for the characterization of APIs for complex drugs. Graphical Abstract: [Figure not available: see fulltext.

Photoassociation spectroscopy of cold calcium atoms

Photoassociation spectroscopy experiments on 40Ca atoms close to the dissociation limit 4s4s 1S0 - 4s4p 1P1 are presented. The vibronic spectrum was measured for detunings of the photoassociation laser ranging from 0.6 GHz to 68 GHz with respect to the atomic resonance. In contrast to previous measurements the rotational splitting of the vibrational lines was fully resolved. Full quantum mechanical numerical simulations of the photoassociation spectrum were performed which allowed us to put constraints on the possible range of the calcium scattering length to between 50 a_0 and 300 a_0