bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
The impact of validated, online health education resources on patient and community members’ satisfaction and health behaviour
Authors: Atack Lynda , Luke Robert 
Published: January 2011

Objective: While access to health education information has become easier, the quality of information retrieved from the Internet varies considerably. In response to the need for accessible, quality health information that is tailored to meet individual patient needs, a patient education website, called PEPTalk, was developed. The site houses text and video material that has been validated by practicing clinicians. A study was conducted to examine patient and community members’ satisfaction with PEPTalk and the impact of the health education materials on their health behaviour. Community staff and health providers’ experiences with the new technology were also examined. Design and method: A descriptive study using surveys and interviews was conducted with 57 patients, community participants and clinicians living in a large Canadian city and First Nations communities in Northern Ontario. Results: Participants’ PEPTalk Satisfaction scores ranged from moderately to highly satisfied. Participants found the information presented on PEPTalk useful and relevant, had improved their knowledge of health, and in most cases, altered health behaviour. Clinicians and community staff who referred participants to the PEPTalk website reported that the site provided reliable, evidence-based information that they were comfortable sharing with their patients and community members. Conclusion: There is an emerging role for tools that provide tailored health education. The health provider’s role regarding interpretation, discussion and follow-up remains essential, and tools such as PEPTalk need to be part of an overall health education strategy.
Crossing the Technology Divide
Authors: Rubin Richard R. , Borgman Sarah K. , Sulik Becky T. 
Published: January 2011

Purpose To describe the benefits of continuous glucose monitoring (CGM) and continuous subcutaneous insulin infusion (CSII) systems compared with self-monitoring of blood glucose (SMBG) and multiple daily injection (MDI) therapy; to assess the benefits of sensor-augmented pump therapy (SAPT) in patients with type 1 diabetes; and to present an evidence-based practical protocol for introducing SAPT in patients with no prior pump or CGM experience. Conclusion Continuous glucose monitoring and CSII have advantages over SMBG and MDI, respectively, in terms of A1C and hypoglycemia reduction. The Sensor-Augmented Pump Therapy for A1C Reduction (STAR) 3 trial demonstrated that initiating both CGM and CSII in selected adult and pediatric patients with type 1 diabetes unable to meet glycemic goals with intensive insulin injection therapy significantly improved glucose control. In all subjects using SAPT, A1C levels fell rapidly from baseline to 3 months and remained significantly lower than among subjects in the SMBG+MDI group for 1 year. A distinguishing feature of the STAR 3 study was its stepwise protocol for systematizing education and self-management support using Web-based training modules and therapy management software. The demonstrated strengths of this education protocol recommend it as a model for implementing SAPT in the broader population of patients with type 1 diabetes who have not achieved their glycemic goals with optimized MDI therapy.
Epigenetic regulation of the calcitonin gene–related peptide gene in trigeminal glia
Authors: Park Ki-Youb , Fletcher Joshua R , Raddant Ann C , Russo Andrew F 
Published: January 2011

Background: The neuropeptide calcitonin gene–related peptide (CGRP) plays a key role in migraine. CGRP gene expression involves an enhancer that is active in neurons, yet inactive in glia. In this report, we analyze epigenetic modifications that allow enhancer activation in glia. Methods: DNA methylation and histone acetylation states were measured in rat and human- model cell lines and primary cultures of rat trigeminal ganglia glia. The functional consequence of altering the chromatin state was determined by quantitative measurements of both calcitonin (CT) and CGRP mRNAs. Results: A hypermethylated CpG island flanking the enhancer was identified in glia and non-expressing cell lines. In addition, the chromatin was hypoacetylated. Treatment with the DNA methylation inhibitor 5-aza-2’-deoxycytidine induced CT mRNA ∼30-fold in glial cultures. Treatment with a histone deacetylase inhibitor alone had little effect; however, the combination of inhibitors yielded a synergistic ∼80-fold increase in CT and ∼threefold increase in CGRP mRNA. Treated glia contained CT precursor (pro-CT) immunoreactivity. Conclusions: Epigenetic modulation is sufficient to induce the CGRP gene in glia. Because the CGRP gene is systemically activated by inflammatory conditions, this suggests that glial pro-CT may be an unexplored biomarker during migraine.
Migraine preventive drug-induced weight gain may be mediated by effects on hypothalamic peptides: The results of a pilot study
Authors: Caproni Stefano , Corbelli Ilenia , Pini Luigi Alberto , Cupini Maria Letizia , Calabresi Paolo , Sarchielli Paola 
Published: January 2011

Aims: This study was aimed to verify changes in the levels of hypothalamic neuropeptides in migraineurs under preventive treatment with amitryptiline and flunarizine. Thirty-nine migraine patients with a body mass index <25 kg/m2and without endocrinological or metabolic diseases were assigned to two treatment groups, one receiving amitryptiline, the other flunarizine, for 3 months. Orexin-A, orexin-B and neuropeptide-Y plasma levels were measured at the basal time, at the 1st, 2nd and 3rd months of preventive treatment.Results: A statistically significant reduction in plasma orexin-A and orexin-B levels emerged in both groups. Conversely, plasma neuropeptide-Y levels were markedly increased, with the highest levels at the 2nd and 3rd months, in both patient groups. Orexin-A levels were also negatively correlated to weight gain in both groups during the treatment period.Conclusions: These results suggest that changes in the levels of hypothalamic orexinergic peptides may contribute to body weight increase occurring in migraineurs during amitryptiline or flunarizine prophylactic treatment.
Intracranial hypertension as the first manifestation of primary Sjögren’s syndrome
Authors: Lim Sung-Chul , Kim Joong-Seok , Lee Young-Hyun , Park Kyung-Su , Shin Sun Young 
Published: January 2011

Background: Central nervous system involvement with primary Sjögren’s syndrome (pSS) is rare, and often undiagnosed. Sjögren’s syndrome and concomitant intracranial hypertension is a very rare event. Case: We describe a patient with pSS who presented with intracranial hypertension as the initial symptom of the disease. Conclusion: This is the first case report of a patient with pSS that presented with intracranial hypertension only.
Getting Data Through the Back Door: Techniques for Gathering Data from State Agencies
Authors: Van Dunk Emily 
Published: January 2011

AbstractGraduate schools develop research skills primarily by teaching future social scientists quantitative and qualitative research methods. A solid understanding of these methods is necessary for conducting reliable research. Yet, these skills are unusable if we cannot access data in the first place. The goal of this article is to help researchers reduce some of the barriers to collecting data by describing several methods for obtaining data from state and local agencies.
California Dreaming: Replicating the ESA Model, Unusual Cases, and Comparative State Political Analysis
Authors: Wolak Jennifer , Lowery David , Gray Virginia 
Published: January 2011

AbstractCross-sectional analyses of American state data testing models in which state size is a meaningful predictor face a nonobvious problem of limited observations. Quite simply, the limited number of large states, and especially the presence of the uniquely large state of California, provides few observations to anchor regression estimates. We explore this problem with close attention to Gray and Lowery's (1996a) energy, stability, area (ESA) model of interest system density, both replicating their results with new data and highlighting the utility and limitations of analyzing unusual cases in comparative state research. After replicating the ESA model, several diagnostics for analyzing outliers, leverage, and influence are examined. We show how supplemental data analyses can be used to assess the source, severity, and, sometimes, the solution of the problem.
Foreshadowing Strategic Pan-Ethnic Politics: Asian American Campaign Finance Activity in Varying Multicultural Contexts
Authors: Tam Cho Wendy K. 
Published: January 2011

AbstractResearch on Asian American politics is hampered by data limitations. Asian Americans comprise a small proportion of the population, and few political candidates are of Asian descent. However, because the Asian American population is growing quickly, interest in the group's political behavior has grown. One source of data that can be exploited to understand Asian American political behavior is the state of Hawaii. Hawaii provides a natural experiment since the majority of its citizens are Asian American and Asian political candidates are commonplace. This study of Hawaiian politics focuses on Asian American campaign finance behavior. I find that as Asian Americans locate themselves in more multicultural settings, they become more politically strategic, less focused on national-origin groupings, and more inclined to embrace a pan-ethnic identity.
State Interest Group Research and the Mixed Legacy of Belle Zeller
Authors: Gray Virginia , Lowery David 
Published: January 2011

AbstractHow well are the state- and national-level literatures on interest representation connected? We identify landmark studies at both levels and conclude that there is little cross-fertilization between them. Rather, the landmark state studies are more descriptive, and focus on a trade-off between group and party power, reflecting the legacy of Belle Zeller, while the national-level studies are embedded in theories used in the broader discipline and, therefore, focus on different processes. One consequence of this is that the national literature does not cite state-level studies very often. We conclude with recommendations for enhancing the impact and theoretical contribution of the state literature on interest organizations and the politics of interest representation.
Principals, Agents, and the Impact of Regulatory Federalism on the Savings-and-Loans Crisis of the 1980s
Authors: Teske Paul , Laumann Julie 
Published: January 2011

AbstractWas state financial regulation a major cause of the massive savings and loan (S&L) failures in the late 1980s? This question is critical at a time of continuing devolution of regulatory authority to the states. We employ a database of information on nearly 4,000 S&Ls in this period to understand the factors that led some of them to fail. We find that state-chartered S&Ls failed at higher rates than federally chartered firms, but that the extremely high failure rate of Texas-chartered S&Ls explains all of this difference. The actions of a single, large state can make an enormous difference in the American federal system of regulation. We also find that stock-owned S&Ls failed at a higher rate than mutually owned S&Ls, and that S&Ls chartered in jurisdictions with more autonomous regulatory structures failed at a higher rate. Thus, when the principal-agent relationship in S&L regulation was weakest, S&L failures were most prevalent.
Explaining Judicial Diversity: The Differential Ability of Women and Minorities to Attain Seats on State Supreme and Appellate Courts
Authors: Hurwitz Mark S. , Lanier Drew Noble 
Published: January 2011

AbstractRepresentation in political institutions, including the judiciary, is an important consideration for both political scientists and citizens. What factors systematically influence diversity among judges? In particular, does the method of selection affect the relative success of political minorities in attaining a seat on the bench? The answers to these questions have substantial normative and theoretical implications. We examine judges on all state supreme and intermediate appellate courts in 1985 and 1999 to assess the influence of various structural, political, and demographic factors on judicial diversity. We demonstrate that the ability of political minorities to attain a place in the judiciary is not solely a function of any single factor. Instead, their success is influenced by a multifaceted combination of factors contingent on time and the level of the court, and these influences differ for women and for minorities.
Cross-State Bias in Voting and Registration Overreporting in the Current Population Surveys
Authors: Bernstein Robert A. , Chadha Anita , Montjoy Robert 
Published: January 2011

AbstractThere is tremendous nonrandom variation from state to state in the rates at which people overreport voting in the Current Population Surveys (CPS). What accounts for this state-level bias in overreporting? We find that the determinants of statewide rates of overreporting parallel those in our earlier findings on individual-level overreporting: overreporting is a function of higher concentrations of racial and ethnic minorities, higher rates of religious membership, and being in the Deep South. These relationships are remarkably stable over time (1980-2000), and they are unaltered by improvements in how we measure overreporting. We suggest a method for deflating reported statewide registration figures to account for this bias, assuming that these registration figures are inflated in the same way as are statewide voting figures. We replicate and extend a part of Brown, Jackson, and Wright's (1999) analysis using these deflated figures, showing that our approach can improve explanation.
The Revolution against Affirmative Action in California: Racism, Economics, and Proposition 209
Authors: Alvarez R. Michael , Bedolla Lisa García 
Published: January 2011

AbstractIn 1996, California voters approved Proposition 209, which banned the use of affirmative action in state hiring, contracting, and public university admissions. We know that white voters favored Proposition 209 more than nonwhite voters—the question is, why? Did they feel that the racial preferences given to growing numbers of members of racial and ethnic groups threatened them economically, or were they just motivated by old-fashioned racism? We test these two possible explanations—economic anxiety and racial division—for the appeal of Proposition 209 to California voters using exit poll data. We find little support for the economic anxiety explanation. Instead, racial division seems to be the best way to understand white voting on Proposition 209.
Re-examining Legislative Committee Representativeness in the States
Authors: Battista James Coleman 
Published: January 2011

AbstractI re-examine theories of legislative committee organization by using simulation to assess how representative state legislative committees are of their parent bodies. I find that clearly unrepresentative committees are rare and concentrated in a few chambers. I also find that comparing committee and chamber medians leads to very different conclusions about representativeness than does comparing means. My findings tend to confirm the informational model of committees and disconfirm the partisan model, but they cannot directly address the distributive model.
Redistricting Principles and Racial Representation
Authors: Barabas Jason , Jerit Jennifer 
Published: January 2011

AbstractHow do traditional redistricting principles—contiguity, communities of interest, political subdivisions, incumbent protection, Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, preservation of district core, and compactness—affect racial minority representation in congressional districts? Using data from the 2001-02 redistricting process, we find that compactness is the only principle that significantly affects minority representation, both in terms of majority-minority districts and minority influence districts, but these effects are contingent on the size of the minority community and extent of racial segregation in a state. Two other principles, Section 5 pre-clearance and protecting political subdivisions, improve minority representation in a more limited way. Thus, race-neutral redistricting criteria like the compactness principle, can dramatically affect the racial composition of the resulting districts and, thereby, affect minority representation.
What Price Justice(s)? Understanding Campaign Spending in State Supreme Court Elections
Authors: Bonneau Chris W. 
Published: January 2011

AbstractAmong the least-researched American elections are those for seats on the states' supreme courts, arguably some of the most important political positions in the states. We know not only that campaign spending in these races has increased sharply in the past 20 years but also that there is great variation in spending among them. What factors cause campaign spending to vary among races for the states' highest courts? And what can an understanding of campaign spending in these races tell us about campaign spending for other offices? I use data from 281 state supreme court races in 21 states from 1990 to 2000 to answer these questions. I find that state supreme court campaign spending is driven by the characteristics of the race, institutional arrangements, and the electoral and state supreme court context.
Deliberative Democracy in Theory and Practice: Connecticut's Medicaid Managed Care Council
Authors: Grogan Colleen M. , Gusmano Michael K. 
Published: January 2011

AbstractDespite calls for greater deliberation among citizens on public policy, we have little information about how existing deliberation is structured or how well it works. We examine Connecticut's effort to put public deliberation to work in Medicaid policymaking. Findings from our participant-observation study and in-person interviews with 100 participants in this process suggest some important qualifications to literature on public deliberation. Greater inclusion of diverse social groups from the target population is important, but this should not replace the inclusion of professional advocates since the latter are often more willing than citizen representatives to challenge policy experts on technical issues. Incorporating public deliberation into the process at an early stage is ideal, but deliberation during the later stages of policymaking (including during implementation) can still produce useful results. Finally, the style and purpose of deliberation can shape the range of topics on the agenda, so it is important to understand how the structure of a deliberative forum can affect the style and purpose of deliberation.The essence of democracy itself is now widely taken to be deliberation, as opposed to voting, interest aggregation, constitutional rights, or even self-government. (Dryzek 2000, 1).
The Impact of Multimember State Legislative Districts on Welfare Policy
Authors: Larimer Christopher W. 
Published: January 2011

AbstractElecting members of legislatures through multimember districts (MMDs) reduces racial and ethnic minorities' descriptive representation in those bodies, but is their substantive representation also hurt? Do legislative MMDs lead to worse policy outcomes for minorities independent of their effect on legislative demographics? To address these questions, I examine welfare policy in the states from 1997 to 2000. I find evidence that suggests that states whose upper legislative chamber is comprised of MMDs have significantly less generous welfare policy. I conclude that MMDs do indeed damage the substantive representation of racial and ethnic minorities in legislatures, independent of their effect on descriptive representation.
Testing the Basis of Incumbency Advantage: Strategic Candidates and Term Limits in the California Legislature
Authors: Engstrom Erik J. , Monroe Nathan W. 
Published: January 2011

AbstractConventional wisdom suggests that incumbent politicians use the resources of office to create an electoral advantage. But Cox and Katz (2002) argue that at least part of this incumbency advantage in the United States House of Representatives can be attributed to the strategic entry and exit decisions of incumbents. We test this claim by taking advantage of the natural experiment provided by state legislative term limits in California. By comparing different types of open seats, we identify the strategic component of the incumbency advantage that exists above and beyond the resource-based advantage. The vote loss suffered by the incumbent party is smaller in term-limited seats than in voluntary open seats, indicating that incumbents do sometimes leave when their electoral prospects look dim. Further evidence of this strategic component is that quality challengers run more often in voluntary open seats, while quality incumbent-party replacements run disproportionately in term-limited seats.
Legislative Professionalism and Democratic Success: The Conditioning Effect of District Size
Authors: Dometrius Nelson C. , Ozymy Joshua 
Published: January 2011

AbstractFiorina (1992, 1994) argued that increased professionalism of state legislatures in the 1970s and 1980s increased Democratic control of those bodies. While some subsequent empirical studies have been consistent with this hypothesis, doubt remains about the causal connection of this relationship. Our review of Fiorina's theoretical argument leads us to add legislative district size as a conditioning element to the model. Using data from state legislatures in 1960-98, we find that such a model supports the claim that the empirical connection between legislative professionalism and Democratic electoral success is causal and not spurious.
Explaining Incremental and Non-Incremental Change: Medicaid Nursing Facility Reimbursement Policy, 1980-98
Authors: Miller Edward Alan 
Published: January 2011

AbstractPolitical scientists have long distinguished between incremental and non-incremental policymaking. In this study, I illustrate the relevance of this distinction for comparative state policy research by modeling both incremental and non-incremental change in the same policy area: Medicaid nursing facility reimbursement. I use mixed-modeling techniques to model incremental year-to-year changes in per diem rates and payments per recipient and event history analysis and ordered logit to model non-incremental comprehensive innovation in this policy area. My results indicate that federal action prompted non-incremental change in capital reimbursement policy by limiting state discretion over incremental year-to-year spending decisions. Incremental policy appears to be affected by regional diffusion, but there is no evidence of this effect for non-incremental policy. Furthermore, when a state's fiscal health declined and the demand for government services grew, it was more likely to respond by making incremental adjustments than non-incremental system overhauls. Whereas governing capacity influenced both incremental and non-incremental change, state ideology influenced only incremental change. The rate at which states pursue incremental or non-incremental policy change depends on their relative vulnerability to federal policy changes, their receptivity to neighboring state influences, and their susceptibility to internal political, economic, and programmatic conditions.