bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Leptin and resistin levels and their relationships with glucose metabolism in children with chronic renal insufficiency and undergoing dialysis
Authors: NECLA BUYAN , AYSUN BIDECI , OZAN OZKAYA , EROL ORTAC , SEVCAN BAKKALOGLU , SEVIM GONEN , HARUN PERU , OĞUZ SOYLEMEZOGLU , PEYAMI CINAZ 
Published: May 2006

SUMMARY:Aim:  The aim of the present study is: (i) to evaluate the serum concentrations of leptin and resistin in the paediatric patients with chronic renal impairment (CRI), on haemodialysis (HD) and on peritoneal dialysis (PD) treatment; (ii) to examine the relationship between these hormones; and (iii) to investigate the possible influence of these hormones on the insulin resistance and sensitivity indexes as well as on serum insulin‐like growth factor‐1 (IGF‐1) and insulin‐like growth factor binding protein‐3 (IGFBP‐3) levels.Methods:  In total, 52 patients (15 patients with CRI, 24 PD patients and 13 HD patients) and 23 healthy age‐ and sex‐matched control subjects were included in the present study.Results:  Homeostasis model assessment of insulin resistance (HOMA–IR) was higher than 2.5 in 47.1% of the patients. IGF‐1 levels of patients with CRI, PD and HD patients were significantly lower than those in the controls (P < 0.001, P < 0.001, P < 0.001, respectively). The leptin levels of patients with CRI and on PD and HD treatment were significantly higher than the control group (P = 0.038, P = 0.002, P = 0.006, respectively). Similarly, serum resistin levels of patients with CRI and those of PD and HD patients were higher when compared with healthy controls (P = 0.037, P < 0.001, P = 0.005, respectively).Conclusion:  Leptin and resistin levels were increased in the children with CRF; however, this elevation was not found to be associated with hyperinsulinism. Further studies to explain the mechanisms and consequences of the accumulation of these hormones in CRF may provide the therapeutical approach aiming to normalize their circulating levels.
ERP/CSD indices of impaired verbal working memory subprocesses in schizophrenia
Authors: Kayser Jürgen , Tenke Craig E. , Gates Nathan A. , Kroppmann Chris J. , Gil Roberto B. , Bruder Gerard E. 
Published: May 2006

AbstractTo disentangle subprocesses of verbal working memory deficits in schizophrenia, long EEG epochs (>10 s) were recorded from 13 patients and 17 healthy adults during a visual word serial position test. ERP generator patterns were summarized by temporal PCA from reference‐free current source density (CSD) waveforms to sharpen 31‐channel topographies. Patients showed poorer performance and reduced left inferior parietotemporal P3 source. Build‐up of mid‐frontal negative slow wave (SW) in controls during item encoding, integration, and active maintenance was absent in patients, whereas a sustained mid‐frontal SW sink during the retention interval was comparable across groups. Mid‐frontal SW sinks (encoding and retention periods) and posterior SW sinks and sources (encoding only) were related to performance in controls only. Data suggest disturbed processes in a frontal‐parietotemporal network in schizophrenia, affecting encoding and early item storage.
Thioredoxin inhibits NMDA‐induced neurotoxicity in the rat retina
Authors: Inomata Yasuya , Nakamura Hajime , Tanito Masaki , Teratani Akie , Kawaji Takahiro , Kondo Norihiko , Yodoi Junji , Tanihara Hidenobu 
Published: May 2006

AbstractThioredoxin (TRX) plays a variety of redox‐related roles in organisms. To investigate its function as an endogenous redox regulator in NMDA‐induced retinal neurotoxicity, we injected NMDA with TRX, mutant TRX or saline into the vitreous cavity of rat eyes. Retinal ganglion cells were rescued by TRX, compared with saline, when evaluated by retrograde labeling analysis at 7 days after NMDA injection. TRX, but not its mutant form, prevented NMDA‐induced apoptosis in the retina, as measured by terminal deoxynucleotidyl transferase‐mediated UTP nick‐end labeling. The induction of caspase 3 and 9, but not caspase 8, by NMDA was significantly lower in TRX‐treated eyes than in saline‐treated eyes. NMDA‐induced activation of the MAPKs, p38 kinase and c‐Jun N‐terminal kinase after 6 h and of the MAPK kinases (MKKs) MKK3/6 and MKK4 after 3 h was markedly suppressed in retinal ganglion cells by TRX but not by the mutant form. NMDA‐induced increases in protein carbonylation, nitrosylation and lipid peroxidation were also suppressed in TRX‐treated eyes. We concluded that the intravitreous injection of TRX effectively attenuated NMDA‐induced retinal cell damage and that suppression of oxidative stress and inhibition of apoptotic signaling pathways were involved in this neuroprotection.
DO BUTLER AND STOKES REALLY EXPLAIN POLITICAL CHANGE IN BRITAIN?
Authors: CREWE IVOR 
Published: May 2006

ABSTRACTButler and Stokes’Political Change in Britain is reviewed, and criticised for focussing on a notion of electoral change which is singularly restrictive and which, moreover, has been noticeably absent in post‐war Britain compared with other Western democracies. Three other kinds of electoral change, although ignored in the book, are shown to have been peculiar to Britain since 1945. These are (i) a persistent decline in the combined major party share of the electorate; (ii) a gradual fall in turnout; and (iii) an accelerating volatility of support between the two main parties. A more disturbing weakness in the study is that its general model of electoral behaviour, largely borrowed from the earlier Michigan studies, cannot account for these three electoral trends. Indeed, the model leads to predictions of electoral behaviour which are the very opposite of what has in fact taken place. In the light of the model's failure, some of its key concepts such as party identification, political generation and the model of partisan development as a learning process are subjected to critical scrutiny. No alternative model is tested, but plausible explanations of British voting behaviour since 1945 are offered which place a much greater emphasis on sociological and historical factors and on changes at the macro and elite level.
PUBLIC ORGANIZATION AND THE WANING OF THE WELFARE STATE: A RESEARCH PERSPECTIVE*
Authors: SCHARPF FRITZ W. 
Published: May 2006

ABSTRACTThe political economy of the welfare state, which had emerged as the successful response of capitalist democracies to the economic crisis of the nineteen‐thirties, is now confronted with new problems and demands which seem to challenge its continuing viability. The resulting crisis of transition may lead into political regression and even catstrophe unless political systems increase both their capacity for policy innovation and their ability to avoid dramatic policy failures. The essay suggests that organizational studies may offer a significant contribution to the successful management of the macro‐societal transition process if they will systematically relate their own work to substantive policy studies. By focusing closely on the organizational causes of policy failures, they may contribute to the practical improvement of public policy‐making as well as to systematic theory development. The potential of this approach is illustrated through brief sketches of three studies combining substantive policy analysis with the analysis of public sector organization.
STATUS POLITICS AND CONSERVATIVE IDEOLOGY: A FRENCH‐SWISS CASE IN NATIONAL AND COMPARATIVE PERSPECTIVE*
Authors: SCHWEITZER DAVID R. 
Published: May 2006

ABSTRACTThe accent on status‐anxiety factors which shape ideologies and political directions has emerged as a popular, but relatively speculative and untested, theme in contemporary political analysis. This article traces the evolution of the “status politics” theme, from its essayist interpretations of American right‐wing radicalism to comparative applications in other Western industrialized societies. The task is to make more organized sense of this theme and to submit several derivative statements to a systematic empirical test. The results are based on a secondary analysis of Lausanne survey data and the preliminary findings of a recent nation‐wide survey of the Swiss general electorate. The Lausanne results indicate that emotive dissatisfaction with personal status failures and felt aspiration—achievement discrepancies, especially among occupational skidders and immobile respondents, are among the more influential status‐anxiety factors associated with classical conservative ideology. The national survey results point to other related status insecurities and dissatisfactions which distinguish ultraconservative National Action and Republican party supporters from other party supporters in the Swiss general electorate. These results lend some comparative weight to the status politics explanation.
WOMEN IN PARLIAMENT: THE CAUSES OF UNDERREPRESENTATION EXEMPLIFIED BY DENMARK AND NORWAY IN THE 1960s *
Authors: FOVERSKOV PETER 
Published: May 2006

ABSTRACTThe general phenomenon in Western societies of female underrepresentation is one of the results of the process of political recruitment. This article seeks to identify the causes of female underrepresentation by analysing the effect of traditional recruitment variables like level of education, occupational position and political experience on the relationship between sex and electoral success. The factors influencing the nomination of candidates for the elections are also briefly analysed. The analysis is limited to the recruitment to national parliaments in Denmark and Norway in the 1960s. The conclusion is that sex must be conceived as a resource in the process of political recruitment on a par with the traditional resources included in the theoretical frameworks of political recruitment.
CAN THE WORKERS BE REVOLUTIONARY?*
Authors: KUMAR KRISHAN 
Published: May 2006

ABSTRACTIn recent years there has been a marked revival of Marxism in the intellectual life of western societies. This has resulted not only in some impressive synoptic studies dealing with the structure of contemporary capitalist societies, but in a renewed concern with social change in these societies, and specifically with the role of the working class in the future transformation of capitalist society. This paper questions the importance attached to the proletariat as an actual or potential agent of revolutionary change. It asks: why did Marx and Engels see the proletariat in this role? What historical and theoretical considerations led them to this view? How plausible is it? The paper concludes that on the historical and sociological evidence Marx and Engels drew unwarranted inferences concerning the future role of the working class as an agency of the revolutionary transformation of capitalist society.
THE CHANGING CLASS STRUCTURE AND POLITICAL BEHAVIOUR – A COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF LOWER MIDDLE‐CLASS POLITICS IN BRITAIN AND THE NETHERLANDS
Authors: RALLINGS COLIN S. , ANDEWEG RUDY B. 
Published: May 2006

ABSTRACTA rapid increase in the non‐manual proportion of the labour force has characterised most Western nations over the past 50 years. This development appears to have had an especial impact on the socio‐economic composition and work, market and status position of the group of white‐collar workers on the lower fringes of the non‐manual stratum, and many theorists have expected that it would have implications too for their political behaviour and social attitudes. There have been a variety of prognostications, but very little supportive evidence of reactions at the individual level. Our empirical analysis of white‐collar workers in Britain and the Netherlands suggests, however, that they have not responded to change in the expected, rather dramatic way, but that the aggregate pattern of their partisanship and political attitudes remains “intermediate” between those of the solid middle and working‐class groups. Further examination shows that such a finding should not be surprising, for white‐collar workers have not been universally subject to similar experiences nor would they be likely to interpret them in exactly similar ways. Rather they constitute a group whose diverse political and social backgrounds continue importantly to influence their behaviour and outlook and to militate against any strong, “class‐based” reaction to socio‐economic change.
SUPPORT FOR THE FREEDOM OF ASSEMBLY IN WESTERN DEMOCRACIES *
Authors: MULLER EDWARD N. , PESONEN PERTTI , JUKAM THOMAS O. 
Published: May 2006

ABSTRACTAn important manifestation of freedom of assembly is the right to organize and participate in peaceful public demonstrations. Data from representative cross‐sectional surveys of the adult population of seven European countries and the United States show that mass support for this right cannot be taken for granted in Western democracies. Education, age, and political value priorities are three explanatory variables that can be expected to affect the likelihood of a person opposing any attempt by government to forbid public demonstrations. The strength, form, and nature of the relationship between disapproval of a ban on demonstration and the explanatory variables are compared cross‐nationally.
The Farmers, the Consumers and the State: Redistribution and Conflicts in Norway, Sweden and the United Kingdom*
Authors: STEEN ANTON 
Published: May 2006

ABSTRACTIn most Western communities redistribution to agriculture seems to have enjoyed a special position. The article focuses this policy during the post‐war period in three countries, and asks which effects other interest groups and relationships between farmers and the state have had on redistributional policies. It is often assumed that redistribution produces conflictual political processes. The material suggests that the way conflicts are socialized influences both the level and kind of conflict, and in the long run the pay off to the farmers.
Local Government Expenditures in Belgium: Do Political Distinctions Matter?*
Authors: GINSBURGH VICTOR , PESTIEAU PIERRE 
Published: May 2006

ABSTRACTThe purpose of this paper is to test whether public spending by local communities in Belgium is influenced by local politics. Unlike previous studies which are briefly surveyed, we test alternative models of the local budgetary decision, and systematically favour the one which includes political variables. In spite of this deliberate bias, political factors influence neither the level nor the structure of local public spending in Belgium. This may imply little differentiation among parties at the local level, rather than institutional constraints.
Why Amateur Party Politics has Withered Away: The Club Movement, Party Reform and the Decline of American Party Organizations*
Authors: WARE ALAN 
Published: May 2006

ABSTRACTThis article is concerned with the decline of American party organizations and, in particular, with the role of amateur (issue‐oriented) activists in contributing to this. It focuses on two main problems. The first is the relevance of the post‐1968 Democratic party reforms in destroying the role of party in presidential nominations. Contrary to a widely held view, it is argued that a decentralized system of nomination would have emerged in an ‘unreformed’ party. Secondly, the decline of the Democratic club movement is examined. It is argued that the clubs did not develop as major institutions within the party, and that they were an appropriate form of organization for liberals in only very restricted circumstances. The example of Denver is used to illustrate this argument. The decline of the clubs in those parts of America where they had become established is traced to one of three possible causes, each of which would be a sufficient condition for the collapse of the club movement. In conclusion it is argued that the clubs were a transitory form of political organization, linking the period of political machines with that of candidate‐centred politics. Rather than destroying the parties, if anything, they served in the 1950s and early 1960s to diffuse potential anti‐partyism.
Gazing Up at the Bottoms: Problems of Minimal Response in the Implementation of Manpower Policy
Authors: DAVIES TOM , MASON CHARLES 
Published: May 2006

ABSTRACTThe paper discusses the implementation of manpower policy as viewed from below, and is a partial critique of ‘bottom‐up approaches’ to implementation studies. It reports on a Social Science Research Council financed study at the School of Advanced Urban Studies which employed both bottom‐up and top‐down methods, and explored the hypothesis that the nature of the employment problem tackled by policy affected implementation. Restructuring policy would be easier to implement than policy designed to ‘mop up’ the effects of restructuring, the least easy to implement being policy designed to redistribute rewards in the labour market. The research attempts to include the view from below the ‘bottom’ usually referred to by bottom‐up theorists. The paper reports, from the point of view of those affected, the failed implementation of the multiple responses at central and local level to the creation of large‐scale redundancies. It shows the presence of ‘garbage can’, ‘symbolic’, ‘crisis‐response’, and ‘ambiguity’ elements in the implementation process. It also shows ‘mobilization of bias’, reluctance to assume responsibility for policy decisions, and the power of the market in implementation. It concludes that ‘economic’ is a quality akin to ‘magic’ which makes its manipulation in implementation extremely difficult, and suggests that powerful implementation institutions are needed if those below the ‘bottoms’ are not to suffer from restructuring in the labour market.
Jürgen Habermas and the Idea of Legitimation Crisis
Authors: PLANT RAYMOND 
Published: May 2006

AbstractThis paper explores one aspect of the recent work of Jürgen Habermas on Legitimation Crisis. It focuses attention on Habermas's claim that the pre‐capitalist moral values on which capitalism has hitherto relied have become progressively displaced by the growth of the capitalist economy. This has produced central problems for the state management of the economy, in the absence of an established internalized set of values which could act both as restraints upon economic demands and as reinforcements to an ethic of work. Various attempts to solve this problem proposed by Hayek and Luhman are discussed together with Habermas's own proposal for a rational consensus view of morality which could lead to a new Sittlichkeit. The conclusion of the paper is that while rational discussion of values is important, this does not entail that the possibility agreement is required to make sense of this activity. Habermas's notion of undistorted communication as a way of recommending a moral foundation for politics is not feasible.
Social Structure, Value‐Orientations, and the Party System: The Problem of Interest Accommodation in Western Democracies
Authors: KAASE MAX , KLINGEMANN HANS‐DIETER 
Published: May 2006

ABSTRACTThe relationship between social structure, value‐orientation, and party system is discussed on the basis of a comparative analysis of Austria, Great Britain, the United States and West Germany. The focus is on two central themes: the cultural interpretation of interest‐conflicts which are imposed by social structure, and the correspondence between value‐orientations and the party system. Both micro‐and macro‐level analyses are performed. The cultural interpretation of interest‐conflicts is traced back to the Left‐Right dimension and to the materialist‐postmaterialist dimension. Two different developmental tendencies lead to the prediction of growing tensions between value‐orientations and party systems. The old Left proves to be more materialistic in the formulation of its political goals; it is also more conservative in the selection of means to attain these goals. In contrast, the new Left is postmaterialistic, and progressive in its forms of participation. This constellation poses an overwhelming integrative task, especially for the parties of the Left.
Professionalism in the Welfare State: Sociological Saviour or Political Pariah?*
Authors: BJÖRKMAN JAMES WARNER 
Published: May 2006

ABSTRACTThis paper addresses the emergent centrality of professionalism and professions in the society and political economy of the welfare state. For purposes of illustration, it explores the impact and effects of professionalism in the health sector, which accounts for a major share of welfare state activities; but the aim is a more general understanding of professionalism in the welfare state. After reviewing three schools of sociological theorizing about the professions, several case‐studies of health professionals are examined. Then the convergence of political science and sociology is explored for their respective disciplinary attempts to explain these trends. Finally, two proposed solutions to the problem which professionalism poses for post‐industrial democracies are discussed.
International Negotiation: The Development of Central Concepts*
Authors: BARSTON RONALD P. 
Published: May 2006

ABSTRACTContemporary diplomacy has changed significantly since 1945. This paper examines the ways in which modern diplomacy can be better understood. As such it is based upon four sets of assumptions. In the first place, the study of international negotiation within the field of foreign policy analysis provides a route for analyzing other forms of national and international behaviour. Second, whilst some of the Characteristics of negotiation in a domestic setting are quite distinct, such as the degree of sanctions negotiators possess, international negotiations themselves can be categorized into a number of distinctive types. Third, that the process of negotiation can be best understood according to four categories of concepts: those associated with setting, the capabilities of negotiating parties, contingent variables. In the fourth category are those concepts developed to deal with new forms of negotiation (non‐ ‘convergence’ negotiations), in particular the complex multilateral type, in which the progression is not incremental or linear. A final assumption concerns the influence of the changing international agenda on negotiating mechanisms and processes: the nature and styles of conducting modem diplomacy have changed considerably as a result of the impact of several factors such as the increased number of actors and organizations, communication systems and also the nature and volume of international business. Yet whatever the impact of these changes, the crucial elements of successful negotiation remain: credit, compromise and confidence.
The Meaning and Use of ‘Political Stability’*
Authors: DOWDING KEITH M. , KIMBER RICHARD 
Published: May 2006

ABSTRACTFew extended analyses of the concept of political stability have been published, much of the literature concentrating on an analysis of its causes. This article discusses the main approaches to stability and examines two recent conceptualizations by Ake and by Sanders. It is argued that both are unsatisfactory, and an alternative definition is developed, starting from first principles. The problems of identity and change are examined, and what counts as the survival of a political object is specified. A stable political object is defined as one that possesses the capacity to prevent its own forced non‐survival. It is argued that stability cannot be quantified and that there are thus no degrees of stability.