'Word from the street' : when non-electoral representative claims meet electoral representation in the United Kingdom

Taking the specific case of street protests in the UK – the ‘word from the street’– this article examines recent (re)conceptualizations of political representation, most particularly Saward’s notion of ‘representative claim’. The specific example of nonelectoral claims articulated by protestors and demonstrators in the UK is used to illustrate: the processes of making, constituting, evaluating and accepting claims for and by constituencies and audiences; and the continuing distinctiveness of claims based upon electoral representation. Two basic questions structure the analysis: first, why would the political representative claims of elected representatives trump the nonelectoral claims of mass demonstrators and, second, in what ways does the ‘perceived legitimacy’ of the former differ from the latter

Universal photonic processors fabricated by femtosecond laser writing

Universal photonic processors (UPPs) are reconfigurable photonic integrated circuits able to implement arbitrary unitary transformations on an input photonic state. Femtosecond laser writing (FLW) allows for rapid and cost-effective fabrication of circuits with low propagation losses. A FLW process featuring thermal isolation allows for a dramatic reduction in dissipated power and crosstalk in integrated thermally-reconfigurable Mach-Zehnder interferometers (MZIs), especially when operated in vacuum, with 0.9 mW dissipation for full reconfiguration and 0.5% crosstalk at 785 nm wavelength. To demonstrate the potential of this technology we fabricated and characterized a 6-mode FLW-UPP in a rectangular MZI mesh with 30 thermal shifters

Virtual Drug Repositioning as a Tool to Identify Natural Small Molecules That Synergize with Lumacaftor in F508del-CFTR Binding and Rescuing

Cystic fibrosis is a hereditary disease mainly caused by the deletion of the Phe 508 (F508del) of the cystic fibrosis transmembrane conductance regulator (CFTR) protein that is thus withheld in the endoplasmic reticulum and rapidly degraded by the ubiquitin/proteasome system. Cystic fibrosis remains a potentially fatal disease, but it has become treatable as a chronic condition due to some CFTR-rescuing drugs that, when used in combination, increase in their therapeutic effect due to a synergic action. Also, dietary supplementation of natural compounds in combination with approved drugs could represent a promising strategy to further alleviate cystic fibrosis symptoms. On these bases, we screened by in silico drug repositioning 846 small synthetic or natural compounds from the AIFA database to evaluate their capacity to interact with the highly druggable lumacaftor binding site of F508del-CFTR. Among the identified hits, nicotinamide (NAM) was predicted to accommodate into the lumacaftor binding region of F508del-CFTR without competing against the drug but rather stabilizing its binding. The effective capacity of NAM to bind F508del-CFTR in a lumacaftor-uncompetitive manner was then validated experimentally by surface plasmon resonance analysis. Finally, the capacity of NAM to synergize with lumacaftor increasing its CFTR-rescuing activity was demonstrated in cell-based assays. This study suggests the possible identification of natural small molecules devoid of side effects and endowed with the capacity to synergize with drugs currently employed for the treatment of cystic fibrosis, which hopefully will increase the therapeutic efficacy with lower doses

Seroprevalence of five neglected parasitic diseases among immigrants accessing five infectious and tropical diseases units in Italy: a cross-sectional study.

: This multicentre cross-sectional study aims to estimate the prevalence of five neglected tropical diseases (Chagas disease, filariasis, schistosomiasis, strongyloidiasis, toxocariasis) among immigrants accessing health care facilities in five Italian cities (Bologna, Brescia, Florence, Rome, Verona). : Individuals underwent a different set of serological tests, according to country of origin and presence of eosinophilia. Seropositive patients were treated and further followed up. : A total of 930 adult immigrants were enrolled: 477 men (51.3%), 445 women (47.9%), 8 transgender (0.8%); median age was 37.81 years (range 18-80). Most of them were coming from the African continent (405/930, 43.5%), the rest from East Europe, South America and Asia. A portion of 9.6% (89/930) were diagnosed with at least one of the infections under study. Seroprevalence of each specific infection varied from 3.9% (7/180) for Chagas diseases to 9.7% (11/113) for toxocariasis. Seropositive people were more likely to be 35 to 40 years-old male and to come from South East Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa or South America. : The results of our study confirm that neglected tropical diseases represent a substantial health problem among immigrants and highlight the need for addressing this emerging public health issue.<br/

Rethinking Radical Democracy

Over the course of three decades, vocabularies of radical democracy have pressed their stamp on democratic thought. Trading on the intuition that there is more to democracy than elections, they have generated critical insights into the important role that practices of pluralisation and critique play in bettering institutional politics. As a result, few would today deny the radical democratic contribution to democratic thought. What many might question, however, is its continuing traction. The paper probes this question, focusing on the nuanced place of democracy in contemporary radical work. It grapples with the difficulties that this poses for radical democrats and it suggests that a way of overcoming these difficulties – that threaten to undermine the coherence of radical democracy – is to rethink and reconstruct the distinctiveness of its vocabulary. The paper attempts such a reconstruction. It develops the idea of the promissory rule of the many and it discusses the ways it rejuvenates broader democratic thought

A multidimensional account of democratic legitimacy: how to make robust decisions in a non-idealized deliberative context

This paper analyses the possibility of granting legitimacy to democratic decisionmaking procedures in a context of deep pluralism. We defend a multidimensional account according to which a legitimate system needs to grant, on the one hand, that citizens should be included on an equal footing and acknowledged as reflexive political agents rather than mere beneficiaries of policies, and, on the other hand, that their decisions have an epistemic quality. While Estlund\u2019s account of imperfect epistemic proceduralism might seem to embody a dualistic conception of democratic legitimacy, we point out that it is not able to recognize citizens as reflexive political agents and is grounded in an idealized model of the circumstances of deliberation. To overcome these ambiguities, we develop an account of democratic legitimacy according to which disagreement is the proper expression of citizens\u2019 reflexive agency and the attribution of epistemic authority does not stem from a major expertise or specific ability, but it comes through the public confrontation among disagreeing agents. Consequently, the epistemic value of deliberation should be derived from the reasons-giving process rather than from the reference to the alleged quality of its outcomes. In this way, we demonstrate the validity of the multidimensional perspective of legitimacy, yet abstain from introducing any outcome-oriented criterion. Finally, we argue that this account of legitimacy is well suited for modeling deliberative democracy as a decision-making procedure that respects the agency of every citizen and grants her opportunity to influence public choices

Perioperative risk stratification in non cardiac surgery: role of pharmacological stress echocardiography

Perioperative ischemia is a frequent event in patients undergoing major non-cardiac vascular or general surgery. This is in agreement with clinical, pathophysiological, and epidemiological evidence and constitutes an additional diagnostic therapeutic factor in the assessment of these patients. Form a clinical standpoint, it is well known that multidistrict disease, especially at the coronary level, is a severe aggravation of the operative risk. From a pathophysiological point of view, however, surgery creates conditions able to unmask coronary artery disease. Prolonged hypotension, hemorrhages, and haemodynamic stresses caused by aortic clamping and unclamping during major vascular surgery are the most relevant factors endangering the coronary circulation with critical stenoses. From the epidemiological standpoint, coronary disease is known to be the leading cause of perioperative mortality and morbidity following vascular and general surgery: The diagnostic therapeutic corollary of these considerations is that coronary artery disease – and therefore the perioperative risk – in these patients has to be identified in an effective way preoperatively