bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Who Supports Global Economic Engagement? The Sources of Preferences in American Foreign Economic Policy
Authors: Milner Helen V. , Tingley Dustin H. 
Published: February 2011

AbstractIn this article we bring together opposing international relations theories to better understand U.S. foreign policy, in particular foreign trade and aid. Using votes in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1979–2004, we explore different theoretical predictions about preferences for foreign economic policy. We assess the impact of domestic factors, namely political economy and ideological preferences, versus foreign policy pressures. Our three main results highlight the differential effect of these factors in the two issue areas. First, aid preferences are as affected by domestic political economy factors as are trade preferences. Second, trade preferences, but not economic aid ones, are shaped by the president's foreign policy concerns; for economic aid, domestic political economy factors matter more than foreign policy ones. Third, aid preferences are shaped more by ideological factors than are trade ones, but ideology plays a different substantive role in each. Different constituencies support aid and trade. This finding has implications for foreign policy substitutability, “the internationalist coalition” in U.S. foreign policy, “statist” theories of foreign policy, and the connection between public opinion and legislative voting.
Explaining Public Support for the Use of Military Force: The Impact of Reference Point Framing and Prospective Decision Making
Authors: Perla Héctor 
Published: February 2011

AbstractThis article examines the determinants of public support for the use of military force. It puts forward a Framing Theory of Policy Objectives (FTPO), which contends that public support for military engagements depends on the public's perception of the policy's objective. However, it is difficult for the public to judge a policy's objective because they cannot directly observe a policy's true intention and influential political actors offer competing frames to define it. This framing contestation, carried out through the media, sets the public's decision-making reference point and determines whether the policy is perceived as seeking to avoid losses or to achieve gains. The FTPO predicts that support will increase when the public perceives policies as seeking to prevent losses and decrease when the public judges policies to be seeking gains. I operationalize and test the theory using content analysis of national news coverage and opinion polls of U.S. intervention in Central America during the 1980s. These framing effects are found to hold regardless of positive or negative valence of media coverage.
IS TRADITIONAL CONTRACEPTIVE USE IN MOLDOVA ASSOCIATED WITH POVERTY AND ISOLATION?
Authors: LYONS-AMOS MARK J. , DURRANT GABRIELE B. , PADMADAS SABU S. 
Published: February 2011

SummaryThis study investigates the correlates of traditional contraceptive use in Moldova, a poor country in Europe with one of the highest proportions of traditional contraceptive method users. The high reliance on traditional methods, particularly in the context of sub-replacement level fertility rate, has not been systematically evaluated in demographic research. Using cross-sectional data on a sub-sample of 6039 sexually experienced women from the 2005 Moldovan Demographic and Health Survey, this study hypothesizes that (a) economic and spatial disadvantages increase the likelihood of traditional method use, and (b) high exposure to family planning/reproductive health (FP/RH) programmes increases the propensity to modern method use. Multilevel multinomial models are used to examine the correlates of traditional method use controlling for exposure to sexual activity, socioeconomic and demographic characteristics and data structure. The results show that economic disadvantage increases the probability of traditional method use, but the overall effect is small. Although higher family planning media exposure decreases the reliance on traditional methods among younger women, it has only a marginal effect in increasing modern method use among older women. Family planning programmes designed to encourage women to switch from traditional to modern methods have some success – although the effect is considerably reduced in regions outside of the capital Chisinau. The study concludes that FP/RH efforts directed towards the poorest may have limited impact, but interventions targeted at older women could reduce the burden of unwanted pregnancies and abortions. Addressing differentials in accessing modern methods could improve uptake in rural areas.
The Impact of the Global Crisis on Cuba's Economy and Social Welfare
Authors: MESA-LAGO CARMELO , VIDAL-ALEJANDRO PAVEL 
Published: February 2011

AbstractThe mechanisms by which the world economic crisis has been transmitted from developed to developing economies are conditioned by domestic factors that may attenuate or accentuate external economic shocks and their adverse social effects. Cuba is a special case: it is an open economy and hence vulnerable to trade-growth transmission mechanisms, but at the same time, it is a socialist economy with universal social services. This article reviews the literature, summarises Cuba's domestic socio-economic strengths and weaknesses prior to the crisis, evaluates the effects of the crisis on the macro-economic and social services indicators, assesses the government response and suggests alternative socio-economic policies.
The Inter-American Commission of Women and Women's Suffrage, 1920–1945
Authors: TOWNS ANN 
Published: February 2011

AbstractIn studies of the international dimensions of women's suffrage, the role of international organisations has been overlooked. This article examines the suffrage activities of the Pan-American Union (PAU), and in particular those of the Inter-American Commission of Women (IACW), between 1920 and 1945. Attentive to historical context, the examination suggests that international organisations can be both bearers of state interests and platforms for social movement interests. The article also argues that while not independent bureaucracies, the PAU and IACW nevertheless had some importance for suffrage that cannot be attributed either to their state members or to the suffragist movements.
Markers of susceptibility to acute rheumatic fever: the B-cell antigen D8/17 is not robust as a marker in South Africa
Authors: Walker Kathleen G. , Cooper Margaret , McCabe Karin , Hughes Jane , Mathiassen Wendy , Lawrenson John , Wilmshurst Jo M. 
Published: February 2011

AbstractBackgroundAcute rheumatic fever and its chronic sequelae, rheumatic cardiac disease, and neuropsychiatric movement disorders, remain major public health problems in South Africa. Early identification and treatment of streptococcal pharyngitis in susceptible individuals would prevent rheumatic cardiac disease. The B-cell antigen D8/17 is a marker of susceptibility to rheumatic fever in some populations.Methods and resultsWe assessed the significance of the D8/17 marker in a group of South Africans. Blood was collected from 107 individuals; 40 patients had previous confirmed rheumatic fever, 20 were first-degree relatives, and 47 were controls. The expression of D8/17 in each sample was analysed by flow cytometry. The mean proportion of B-cells that were D8/17 positive was 0.5% in the index cases, 0.47% in their relatives, and 0.27% in the controls. There was a significant difference between the index cases and the controls, p = 0.03, but the mean percentage positive in each group was very low.ConclusionsPatients with a history of rheumatic fever had statistically increased expression of the D8/17 marker. However, the actual percentages in this observational study were markedly lower than in other populations, ranging from 0.14%–1.53% compared to 11.6%–39.3%. The D8/17 marker would be an impractical screening tool in the South African population.
Ongoing inflammation in children with rheumatic heart disease
Authors: Habeeb Nevin M. M. , Al Hadidi Iman S. 
Published: February 2011

AbstractAim of the workTo elucidate the hypothesis of ongoing inflammation in children with chronic rheumatic heart disease, and its possible consequences.Subjects and methodsThis study was conducted on 36 patients with a mean age of 12.63 years: six with acute rheumatic carditis, and 30 with chronic rheumatic heart disease. There were 15 age- and sex-matched children who served as a control group. All subjects underwent echocardiographic assessment of valvular involvement and left ventricular function. Laboratory investigations comprised lipid profile, high-sensitivity C-reactive protein, and homocysteine assay.ResultsHigh-sensitivity C-reactive protein was significantly elevated in patients with acute rheumatic carditis and in patients with chronic rheumatic heart disease (mean and standard deviation of 78.33, 156 micrograms per millilitre and 78.33, 23.17 micrograms per millilitre, respectively) as compared to the control group (mean and standard deviation of 5.83 and 2.79 micrograms per millilitre). High-sensitivity C-reactive protein correlated with the grade of mitral regurgitation (p less than 0.05). Homocysteine was significantly elevated in patients with acute carditis and patients with rheumatic heart disease as compared to the control group (their mean and standard deviation were 2.96, 0.476 nanograms per decilitre, 2.99, 1.48 nanograms per decilitre, and 1.717, 0.733 nanograms per decilitre, respectively), but did not show significant difference between the two studied groups of patients. Neither C-reactive protein nor homocysteine correlated with any of the studied parameters of lipid profile.ConclusionThere is evidence of ongoing inflammation in children with rheumatic heart disease, which correlates with the degree of valvular involvement. This ongoing inflammation may put those children at risk for premature atherosclerosis.
John Searle on the concept of political power, the power of states and war-making: why states demand a monopoly of the organisation and use of soldiers
Authors: GRAN THORVALD 
Published: February 2011

Abstract:John Searle has developed a strong theory of how speech acts and agreements generate institutions. How is the general theory specified for political institutions? He, like Max Weber, suggests that a government monopoly of soldiers is a condition for the existence of political institutions. However, governments' wielding of force is only political if those attacked consider the attack a responsible and a morally acceptable act. All political power in Searle's theory is deontic. It is assigned as a right, an obligation or the like, as a status function. If power wielding by a government is not assigned, it is beyond the political; it is only brute force. My contention is that this distinction limits the power of Searle's theory in the analysis of politics. From the idea of political institutions as ultimate institutions in a specific, bordered territory it is the strong idea of deonticity that is misleading. Ultimate institutions cannot by definition have externally assigned status. Leaders of other ultimate institutions can accept their existence, but then mainly because they have the military power to defend their borders. Nation states, demanding territorial sovereignty, therefore logically demand a monopoly of soldiers. This sovereignty seen over time suggests an evolutionary first principle of political institutions.
Which institutions matter? Separating the chaff from the wheat
Authors: JOHN ARIELLE , STORR VIRGIL HENRY 
Published: February 2011

Abstract:Ha-Joon Chang (2011), in his article ‘Institutions and Economic Development: Theory, Policy and History’, argues that economists place too much faith in ‘liberalized’ institutions. Institutions matter for growth, he contends, but not the way institutional economists think they do. In this article, we offer a defense of the hypothesis that ‘institutions matter’ for economic growth and present several objections to Chang's arguments.
Institutions first
Authors: BOETTKE PETER , FINK ALEXANDER 
Published: February 2011

Abstract:Ha-Joon Chang, in his article ‘Institutions and Economic Development: Theory, Policy and History’, raises doubts about the effects of institutions on economic development and questions the positive effects of entirely free markets based on secure private property rights. We respond by stressing that institutions structure the incentives underlying individual action, secure private property rights are indispensable for prosperity, institutions have a first-order effect whereas policies only have a second-order effect, successful institutional change comes from within a society, and, given the status quo of developing countries, first-world institutions are likely not to be available to them.
Poverty of stimulus and absence of cause: some questions for Felin and Foss
Authors: HODGSON GEOFFREY M. , KNUDSEN THORBJØRN 
Published: February 2011

Abstract:We examine an aspect of the argument of Teppo Felin and Nicolai Foss (‘The Endogenous Origins of Experience, Routines, and Organizational Capabilities: The Poverty of Stimulus’; 2011) where they reject the claim of Geoffrey Hodgson and Thorbjørn Knudsen (‘Darwinism, Causality and the Social Sciences’; 2004) that habits depend crucially on stimuli from the social environment. We argue that while rightly stressing human agency they also create a false dichotomy between agential and environmental factors in the explanation. Felin and Foss create further confusion by hinting – without adequate clarification – at an untenable notion of human agency as an uncaused cause. We raise several questions of clarification for these authors.
Structural and optical properties of liquid CO2 for pressures up to 1 TPa
Authors: Boates B. , Hamel S. , Schwegler E. , Bonev S. A. 
Published: February 2011

We report on the use of first-principles molecular dynamics calculations to examine properties of liquid carbon dioxide in the pressure–temperature range of 0–1 TPa and 200–100 000 K. The computed equations of state points are used to predict a series of shock Hugoniots with initial starting conditions that are relevant to existing and ongoing shock-wave experiments. A comparison with published measurements up to 70 GPa shows excellent agreement. We find that the liquid undergoes a gradual phase transition along the Hugoniot and have characterized this transition based on changes in bonding and structural properties as well as the conductivity and reflectivity of the fluid.
Biogenesis of the pore architecture of a voltage-gated potassium channel
Authors: Gajewski Christine , Dagcan Alper , Roux Benoit , Deutsch Carol 
Published: February 2011

The pore domain of voltage-gated potassium (Kv) channels consists of transmembrane helices S5 and S6, the turret, the pore helix, the selectivity filter, and the loop preceding S6, with a tertiary reentrant structure between S5 and S6. Using biogenic intermediates, mass tagging (pegylation), and a molecular tape measure, we explored the possibility that the first stages of pore formation occur prior to oligomerization of the transmembrane core. Pegylation of introduced cysteines shows that the pore helix, but not the turret, forms a compact secondary structure in the terminal 20 Å of the ribosomal tunnel. We assessed the tertiary fold of the pore loop in monomeric constructs by determining the relative accessibilities of select cysteines using the kinetics of pegylation. Turret residues are accessible at the extracellular surface. In contrast, pore helix residues are less accessible. All-atom molecular dynamics simulations of a single Kv monomer in a solvated lipid membrane indicate that secondary and tertiary folds are stable over 650 ns. These results are consistent with acquisition of a tertiary reentrant pore architecture at the monomer stage of Kv biogenesis and begin to define a plausible sequence of folding events in the formation of Kv channels.
tigre: Transcription factor inference through gaussian process reconstruction of expression for bioconductor
Authors: Honkela Antti , Gao Pei , Ropponen Jonatan , Rattray Magnus , Lawrence Neil D. 
Published: February 2011

Abstract
Summary: tigre is an R/Bioconductor package for inference of transcription factor activity and ranking candidate target genes from gene expression time series. The underlying methodology is based on Gaussian process inference on a differential equation model that allows the use of short, unevenly sampled, time series. The method has been designed with efficient parallel implementation in mind, and the package supports parallel operation even without additional software.
Availability: The tigre package is included in Bioconductor since release 2.6 for R 2.11. The package and a user's guide are available at http://www.bioconductor.org.
Contact: antti.honkela@hiit.fi; m.rattray@sheffield.ac.uk; n.lawrence@dcs.shef.ac.uk
“Aid Where It Is Needed Most”: American Labor's Military–Industrial Complex
Authors: Wehrle Edmund F. 
Published: February 2011

Between the late 1940s and mid-1960s, American organized labor emerged among the most enthusiastic supporters of the military–industrial complex. This study examines that emerging relationship, focusing on the efforts of a group of unionists to mold defense spending into a vehicle for promoting employment and addressing social and economic problems.During the Korean War, labor representatives drafted, lobbied for, and helped administration Defense Manpower Policy #4, a policy channeling defense spending to areas suffering high rates of unemployment. With the advent of the Eisenhower administration, preferential policies fell by the wayside, but organized labor continued to press, with some success for defense spending as a general antidote to economic downturns. Late in the 1950s, the Construction Trades Department of Congress of Industrial Organizations and the American Federation of Labor (AFL-CIO), reacting to double-digit unemployment in their ranks, became an active promoter of fallout shelter construction.Despite some initial success in reimplementing preferential policies during the early months of the Kennedy administration, organized labor's defense agenda quickly ran afoul of Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara's plans to systematize and rationalize the defense sector.In the end, resistance from military and business leaders greatly impeded labor's progress. At the very least, however, labor's defense agenda reflects a larger social vision and also suggests the very real attraction to many unionists of the military–industrial complex, a malleable economic realm, open to political influence and somewhat removed from the harsh forces of the market.
On the Controls of Leaf-Water Oxygen Isotope Ratios in the Atmospheric Crassulacean Acid Metabolism Epiphyte Tillandsia usneoides
Authors: Helliker Brent R. 
Published: February 2011

Abstract
Previous theoretical work showed that leaf-water isotope ratio (δ18OL) of Crassulacean acid metabolism epiphytes was controlled by the δ18O of atmospheric water vapor (δ18Oa), and observed δ18OL could be explained by both a non-steady-state model and a “maximum enrichment” steady-state model (δ18OL-M), the latter requiring only δ18Oa and relative humidity (h) as inputs. δ18OL, therefore, should contain an extractable record of δ18Oa. Previous empirical work supported this hypothesis but raised many questions. How does changing δ18Oa and h affect δ18OL? Do hygroscopic trichomes affect observed δ18OL? Are observations of changes in water content required for the prediction of δ18OL? Does the leaf need to be at full isotopic steady state for observed δ18OL to equal δ18OL-M? These questions were examined with a climate-controlled experimental system capable of holding δ18Oa constant for several weeks. Water adsorbed to trichomes required a correction ranging from 0.5‰ to 1‰. δ18OL could be predicted using constant values of water content and even total conductance. Tissue rehydration caused a transitory change in δ18OL, but the consequent increase in total conductance led to a tighter coupling with δ18Oa. The non-steady-state leaf water models explained observed δ18OL (y = 0.93*x − 0.07; r 2 = 0.98) over a wide range of δ18Oa and h. Predictions of δ18OL-M agreed with observations of δ18OL (y = 0.87*x − 0.99; r 2 = 0.92), and when h &gt; 0.9, the leaf did not need to be at isotopic steady state for the δ18OL-M model to predict δ18OL in the Crassulacean acid metabolism epiphyte Tillandsia usneoides.
The roles of gender, age and cognitive development in children's pedestrian route selection
Authors: Barton B. K. , Ulrich T. , Lyday B. 
Published: February 2011

AbstractObjective  Thousands of American children under the age of 10 years are injured annually as pedestrians. Despite the scope of this public health problem, knowledge about behavioural control and developmental factors involved in the aetiology of child pedestrian safety is limited. The present study examined the roles of gender, age and two aspects of cognitive development (visual search and efficiency of processing) in children's safe pedestrian route selection.Methods  Measures of cognitive functioning (visual search and efficiency) and selections of risky pedestrian routes were collected from 65 children aged 5–9 years.Results  Boys, younger children and those with less developed cognitive functioning selected riskier pedestrian routes. Cognitive functioning also subsumed age as a predictor of risky route selections.Conclusions  Our findings suggest developmental differences, specifically less developed cognitive functioning, play important roles in children's pedestrian decision making. Directions for future examination are discussed.
Serum MMP 2 and TIMP 2 in patients with inguinal hernias
Authors: Śmigielski Jacek , Brocki Marian , Kuzdak Krzysztof , Kołomecki Krzysztof 
Published: February 2011

Eur J Clin Invest 2011; 41 (6): 584–588AbstractBackground  More than sixty thousand inguinal hernia operations are performed every year in Poland. Despite many years of related research, the exact pathologic mechanism of this condition is still not fully understood. Recent studies suggested a pronounced relationship between the molecular structure of collagen fibers and the activity of metalloproteinases, the enzymes taking part in the degradation of collagen, as well as their tissue inhibitors.Materials and methods  A prospective study has been established to measure serum levels of the matrix metalloproteinase 2 (MMP‐2) and Matrix metalloproteinase tissue inhibitor 2 (TIMP‐2) in 150 males between the ages of 26 and 70. The control group (CG) consisted of thirty healthy male volunteers of a similar age distribution.Results  Our results indicate that MMP‐2 was highest in the direct hernia group, a statistically very significant elevation (P < 0.05) of 1562 ng mL−1 against the CG 684 ng mL−1. The highest level of TIMP, 78 ng mL−1, was found in the group with recurrent hernia, against 49.5 ng mL−1 of the CG (statistical significance of P < 0.05).Discussion  The MMP‐2 and TIMP‐2 levels were concurrently elevated only in the recurrent hernia group.Conclusions  The patients with inguinal hernia have a statistically significant increase in serum levels of MMP‐2. Our finding of the MMP‐2 and TIMP‐2 distinctly higher in the patients suffering from recurrence of direct inguinal hernia (reflecting a previous surgical failure) may suggest the theory that the extracellular matrix defect lies at the basis of this disorder.