Caught in the Act but not Punished: on Elite Rule of Law and Deterrence

Most literature on criminal deterrence in law, economics, and criminology assumes that people who are caught for a crime will be punished. The literature focuses on how the size of sanctions and probability of being caught affect criminal behavior. However, in many countries entire groups of people are “above the law” in the sense that they are able to evade punishment even if caught violating the law. In this paper we argue that both the perceived probability of being punished if caught and the cultural acceptance of elites evading punishment are important parts of theorizing about deterrence, particularly about corruption among political elites. Looking at data on parking violations among diplomats in New York City 1997–2002, we explore how diplomats from different rule-of-law cultures respond to sudden legal immunity. The empirical observations provide clear evidence of both the stickiness and the gradual weakening of cultural constraints

Anxiety, Advice, and the Ability to Discern: Feeling Anxious Motivates Individuals to Seek and Use Advice

Across eight experiments, we describe the influence of anxiety on advice seeking and advice taking. We find that anxious individuals are more likely to seek and rely on advice than are those in a neutral emotional state (Experiment 1), but this pattern of results does not generalize to other negatively-valenced emotions (Experiment 2). The relationships between anxiety and advice seeking and anxiety and advice taking are mediated by self-confidence; anxiety lowers self-confidence, which increases advice seeking and reliance upon advice (Experiment 3). Though anxiety also impairs information processing, impaired information processing does not mediate the relationship between anxiety and advice taking (Experiment 4). Finally, we find that anxious individuals fail to discriminate between good and bad advice (Experiment 5a-c), and between advice from advisors with and without a conflict of interest (Experiment 6)

Effect of the glucocorticoid receptor antagonist Org 34850 on fast and delayed feedback of corticosterone release

We investigated the effect of the glucocorticoid receptor (GR) antagonist Org 34850 on fast and delayed inhibition of corticosterone secretion in response to the synthetic glucocorticoid methylprednisolone (MPL). Male rats were implanted with a catheter in the right jugular vein, for blood sampling and MPL administration, and with an s.c. cannula for Org 34850 administration. All experiments were conducted at the diurnal hormonal peak in the late afternoon. Rats were connected to an automated sampling system and blood samples were collected every 5 or 10 min. Org 34850 (10 mg/kg, s.c.) or vehicle (5% mulgofen in saline) was injected at 1630 h; 30 min later, rats received an injection of MPL (500 μg/rat, i.v.) or saline (0.1 ml/rat). We found that an acute administration of MPL rapidly decreased the basal corticosterone secretion and this effect was not prevented by acute pretreatment with Org 34850. However, blockade of GR with Org 34850 prevented delayed inhibition of MPL on corticosterone secretion measured between 4 and 12 h after MPL administration. Our data suggest an involvement of GR in modulating delayed, but not fast, inhibition induced by MPL on basal corticosterone secretion

Religiosity and Ways of Coping With Sport Injuries Among Christian Athletes

Although research evidence supports religiosity’s predominantly positive mental and physical health benefits to patients coping with varied health problems, there are few studies exploring the influence of religiosity on coping with sport injuries among athletes identifying with specific religions. This study examined the relationships between religiosity and the use of religious and non-religious ways of coping with sport injuries by athletes affiliated with diverse Christian denominations. Within a concurrent mixed methods design, adult athletes (N = 88) responded to an online survey asking about several religiosity factors, their most serious or challenging sport injuries, and their ways of coping with those injuries. Quantitative results showed that religious commitment correlated with specific religious beliefs and behaviors, positive religious ways of coping predominated over negative, and religious commitment fully mediated the relationship between athletes’ Christian denominations and their use of positive, but not negative, religious ways of coping with sport injuries. Thematic template analysis of qualitative data similarly revealed that religious ways of coping with sport injuries were predominantly positive in valence and benefitted physical and mental rehabilitation and recovery processes. Christian athletes relied on both religious and non-religious coping sources during their sport injury recoveries, and their ways of coping centered on their personal and religious identities. These results support that holistic care models encompassing sport psychology, sports medicine, and sports ministry should adapt intervention and treatment plans to accommodate personal religiosity and build on positive and adaptive religious ways of coping with sport injuries when working with religiously committed Christian athletes

Visuospatial encoding deficits and compensatory strategies in schizophrenia revealed by eye movement analysis during a working memory task

Objective: To investigate scanpath abnormalities during the encoding of static stimuli in schizophrenia and their interaction with visuospatial working memory (VSWM) dysfunction. Methods: Outpatients with schizophrenia and control subjects were asked to encode a static pattern for subsequent recognition after a short delay. We measured the number of correct and incorrect choices. We also assessed the number and the distribution of fixations, the scanning time in specific regions of interest (ROIs) and the head movements during the encoding of the stimuli. The distributions of fixations and scanning time in definite ROIs during the discrimination of the correct pattern from the foils were also measured. Results: Patients recognised fewer correct patterns than controls. Correct trials in patients were characterised by a specific exploration of the central part of the stimulus during its presentation, whereas this feature was absent in incorrect trials. However, the scanning time and the numbers of fixations and head movements during encoding were similar in both groups and unrelated to recognition accuracy. In both groups, correct trials were associated with a selective exploration of the correct pattern amongst the six possibilities during recognition. Furthermore, patients gave more attention to incorrect patterns with a leftmost element identical to that of the correct response and also those approximating its global structure. Conclusion: Patients showed a VSWM deficit independent of oculomotor dysfunctions and head movements during encoding. Patients' correct trials were related to specific scanning during encoding and discrimination phases. Analysis of these patterns suggests that patients try to compensate for reduced VSWM ability by using specific encoding strategie

Use of library science students as search intermediaries for environmental science and engineering students

A pilot project was begun in the Fall of 1988 that teamed first-year graduate students from the School of Information and Library Science with graduate students from the Department of Environmental Sciences and Engineering at the University of North Carolina School of Public Health. Library science students served as search intermediaries for students enrolled in an introductory environmental science course and provided online search services on research topics related to the completion of an environmental science class assignment. Environmental science students received basic information management instruction. Planning, development of instructional objectives, materials and methods, costs and evaluation of the project are described. Changes made in the program for 1989 and 1990, as well as future plans, are outlined

Dynamic Katz and related network measures

We study walk-based centrality measures for time-ordered network sequences. For the case of standard dynamic walk-counting, we show how to derive and compute centrality measures induced by analytic functions. We also prove that dynamic Katz centrality, based on the resolvent function, has the unique advantage of allowing computations to be performed entirely at the node level. We then consider two distinct types of backtracking and develop a framework for capturing dynamic walk combinatorics when either or both is disallowed

Dynamic Katz and related network measures

We study walk-based centrality measures for time-ordered network sequences. For the case of standard dynamic walk-counting, we show how to derive and compute centrality measures induced by analytic functions. We also prove that dynamic Katz centrality, based on the resolvent function, has the unique advantage of allowing computations to be performed entirely at the node level. We then consider two distinct types of backtracking and develop a framework for capturing dynamic walk combinatorics when either or both is disallowed

Pericarditis and Autoinflammation: A Clinical and Genetic Analysis of Patients With Idiopathic Recurrent Pericarditis and Monogenic Autoinflammatory Diseases at a National Referral Center.

Background: Idiopathic recurrent pericarditis (IRP) is an orphan disease that carries significant morbidity, partly driven by corticosteroid dependence. Innate immune modulators, colchicine and anti-interleukin-1 agents, pioneered in monogenic autoinflammatory diseases, have demonstrated remarkable efficacy in trials, suggesting that autoinflammation may contribute to IRP. This study characterizes the phenotype of patients with IRP and monogenic autoinflammatory diseases, and establishes whether autoinflammatory disease genes are associated with IRP. Methods and Results: We retrospectively analyzed the medical records of patients with IRP (n=136) and monogenic autoinflammatory diseases (n=1910) attending a national center (London, UK) between 2000 and 2021. We examined 4 genes (MEFV, MVK, NLRP3, TNFRSF1A) by next-generation sequencing in 128 patients with IRP and compared the frequency of rare deleterious variants to controls obtained from the Genome Aggregation Database. In this cohort of patients with IRP, corticosteroid dependence was common (39/136, 28.7%) and was associated with chronic pain (adjusted odds ratio 2.8 [95% CI, 1.3-6.5], P=0.012). IRP frequently manifested with systemic inflammation (raised C-reactive protein [121/136, 89.0%] and extrapericardial effusions [68/136, 50.0%]). Pericarditis was observed in all examined monogenic autoinflammatory diseases (0.4%-3.7% of cases). Rare deleterious MEFV variants were more frequent in IRP than in ancestry-matched controls (allele frequency 9/200 versus 2932/129 200, P=0.040). Conclusions: Pericarditis is a feature of interleukin-1 driven monogenic autoinflammatory diseases and IRP is associated with variants in MEFV, a gene involved in interleukin-1β processing. We also found that corticosteroid dependence in IRP is associated with chronic noninflammatory pain. Together these data implicate autoinflammation in IRP and support reducing reliance on corticosteroids in its management