Crisis, Charisma and Consequences: Evidence from the 2004 US Presidential Election

We investigate how conditions of crisis affect perceptions of charisma and how these, in turn, affect blame attribution and self-sacrificial behavior. Our data are from a 2004 experimental study that preceded the U.S. presidential election, in which we manipulated concerns of a terrorist attack. The results show that those in the Crisis condition rated Bush higher on perceptions of charisma compared to those in the Good Times condition. The Crisis condition also directly and indirectly, via perceptions of charisma, affected whether Bush was blamed for failures in Iraq and our subjects’ willingness to sacrifice their personal resources for his candidacy

Terrorist Threat and Democratic Public Opinion

Streaming video requires Flash Player, RealPlayer, or Windows Media Player to view.Increased sophistication, scope, and fatalities define modern terrorism and leave few corners of the globe free from the specter of this threat. Our research suggests that individuals are more likely to reject democratic values, processes, and institutions when terrorism is a salient concern. In this presentation, we focus on data from both experiments and surveys conducted across the Americas. We show high but varying average levels of worry about terrorism across countries in this region, and we trace these feelings to both individual and contextual factors. We then present evidence linking terrorist threat to a variety of measures of democratic public opinion. Finally, we outline several ongoing theoretical and empirical extensions to this research program.Ohio State University. Mershon Center for International Security StudiesEvent Web page, streaming video, event photo

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Tolerance for Postponing Elections in Crisis Conditions

Election postponements occur around the world for a variety of reasons, but they became especially widespread during the Covid-19 pandemic. Little is known how the public perceives and reacts to such democratic delays. To shed light on this topic, we included a question module in the 2021 AmericasBarometer about tolerance for alterations to democracy during periods of crisis. The data reveal that tolerance for election postponements is quite high. Further, through a wording experiment, we find that the public is more willing to accept such a delay during a health emergency vis-à-vis an alternative condition (widespread violence). We contextualize these findings by comparing them with attitudes about a more extreme anti-democratic disruption: a coup d’etat by security forces. Coups are significantly less popular than election postponements, especially during a health emergency. The results improve our understanding of public appetite for authoritarianism during periods of crisis

Nitrous oxide emissions from soils: how well do we understand the processes and their controls?

Although it is well established that soils are the dominating source for atmospheric nitrous oxide (N2O), we are still struggling to fully understand the complexity of the underlying microbial production and consumption processes and the links to biotic (e.g. inter- and intraspecies competition, food webs, plant–microbe interaction) and abiotic (e.g. soil climate, physics and chemistry) factors. Recent work shows that a better understanding of the composition and diversity of the microbial community across a variety of soils in different climates and under different land use, as well as plant–microbe interactions in the rhizosphere, may provide a key to better understand the variability of N2O fluxes at the soil–atmosphere interface. Moreover, recent insights into the regulation of the reduction of N2O to dinitrogen (N2) have increased our understanding of N2O exchange. This improved process understanding, building on the increased use of isotope tracing techniques and metagenomics, needs to go along with improvements in measurement techniques for N2O (and N2) emission in order to obtain robust field and laboratory datasets for different ecosystem types. Advances in both fields are currently used to improve process descriptions in biogeochemical models, which may eventually be used not only to test our current process understanding from the microsite to the field level, but also used as tools for up-scaling emissions to landscapes and regions and to explore feedbacks of soil N2O emissions to changes in environmental conditions, land management and land use

The impact of immediate breast reconstruction on the time to delivery of adjuvant therapy: the iBRA-2 study

Background: Immediate breast reconstruction (IBR) is routinely offered to improve quality-of-life for women requiring mastectomy, but there are concerns that more complex surgery may delay adjuvant oncological treatments and compromise long-term outcomes. High-quality evidence is lacking. The iBRA-2 study aimed to investigate the impact of IBR on time to adjuvant therapy. Methods: Consecutive women undergoing mastectomy ± IBR for breast cancer July–December, 2016 were included. Patient demographics, operative, oncological and complication data were collected. Time from last definitive cancer surgery to first adjuvant treatment for patients undergoing mastectomy ± IBR were compared and risk factors associated with delays explored. Results: A total of 2540 patients were recruited from 76 centres; 1008 (39.7%) underwent IBR (implant-only [n = 675, 26.6%]; pedicled flaps [n = 105,4.1%] and free-flaps [n = 228, 8.9%]). Complications requiring re-admission or re-operation were significantly more common in patients undergoing IBR than those receiving mastectomy. Adjuvant chemotherapy or radiotherapy was required by 1235 (48.6%) patients. No clinically significant differences were seen in time to adjuvant therapy between patient groups but major complications irrespective of surgery received were significantly associated with treatment delays. Conclusions: IBR does not result in clinically significant delays to adjuvant therapy, but post-operative complications are associated with treatment delays. Strategies to minimise complications, including careful patient selection, are required to improve outcomes for patients