Do Television Debates in Multiparty Systems affect Viewers? A Quasi‐ experimental Study with First‐time Voters

Television debates have become the centre stage for political debate in advanced societies. Although presidential debates in the United States have achieved much attention, the same cannot be said of the more typical panel debates in multiparty systems. This article investigates whether winning or losing panel debates matters in that it influences important attitudes among the electorate. Based on a quasi-experimental design prior to the 2001 Norwegian parliamentary election, this study finds that the outcome of the television debates does matter. Winning a debate can actually make a difference, and significant changes in issue ownership and issue hegemony are demonstrated. These findings are important for understanding some of the factors underlying the increase in last minute voter volatility.     

Suspicious circumstances on discovery of the cadaver

The authors report on three autopsy cases in which the findings at the death scene gave rise to the suspect of non-natural, in two cases even violent causes of death. The medico-legal and criminalistic investigations led to surprising results: Death was due to acute intoxication with narcotics, supposed delirium tremens and a suicide attempt in the presence of bronchopneumonia. External force was ruled out in all three fatalities by cooperative work of police investigators and forensic medicine.     

Mitochondrial DNA error prophylaxis: assessing the causes of errors in the GEP'02-03 proficiency testing trial

A qualitative and quantitative analytical method was developed and validated for the determination of 49 licit and illicit drugs in oral fluid. Small oral fluid samples, volume 1mL, were collected from volunteers using a modified Omni-Sal device and the analytes were extracted from an oral fluid/buffer mixture using a single Bond Elut Certify solid phase extraction cartridge. Liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS-MS) and gas chromatography-repetitive full scan mass spectrometry (GC-MS) were used in parallel to analyze the extracts for the targeted drugs. Extracts were analyzed by GC-MS in their underivatized form and as their pentafluoropropionyl derivatives. Deuterated internal standards were used for quantification of drugs of abuse by LC-MS-MS to minimize matrix effects. Methadone-d(9) and tumoxetine were used as the internal standards for quantification of non-derivatized and derivatized analytes respectively by GC-MS. Linearity was demonstrated over the range 5-200 ng/mL and limits of detection were less than 4 ng/mL for each drug analyzed. The method demonstrated acceptable recoveries for most of the analytes and good intra- and inter-day precision. Acquisition of data by repetitive full scan GC-MS allows the addition of further analytes to the target menu.     

Relationships between the deinstitutionalization of healthcare for patients with mental disorder, substance abuse, and isolated death

Isolated death (ID) (i.e., dying alone without anyone noticing for several days) has been suggested to be related to social isolation, mental disorder, and alcohol and/or drug abuse. A major transfer of patients with a mental disorder and/or alcohol and/or drug abuse from institutionalized care to treatment as outpatients has been enacted in Sweden during the past decade. On the basis of the assumption that such deinstitutionalization is likely to result in increased social isolation, our working hypothesis was that the incidence of ID among patients belonging to these categories has increased in Sweden. The present study involved all deaths subjected to a medicolegal examination in Stockholm County (with a population of approximately 1.9 million people) during the period 1992-2000. The pattern of ID (defined as cases involving a postmortem delay between death and discovery of at least 1 week), as well as the incidence of fatalities subjected to medicolegal examination with a record of mental disorder and/or alcohol and/or drug abuse was evaluated. Throughout this period, the proportion of the deceased with a record of a mental disorder was high among all the cases examined and higher still among the cases of ID, especially among those younger than 65 years of age. There was a rather limited increase in the incidence of ID and a much more pronounced increase in the number of former psychiatric patients whose deaths were subjected to medicolegal examination, but did not satisfy the criteria for ID. A record of alcohol and/or drug abuse was more common than a diagnosis of mental disorder among both the males and females who died at an age of less than 65, with a clear difference between the cases of ID and non-ID in the case of men. There was no significant increase in incidence over the course of this study. Thus, this study reveals a slight increase in the number of IDs and a more pronounced increase in the number of medicolegal examination of non-IDs of individuals with a record of a mental disorder.     

What Patent Data Reveal about Universities: The Case of Belgium

In recent years, there has been a surge in patenting by Belgian universities. It appears that this increase can be attributed to growth of biotechnology, where there is a greater propensity to patent, to a desire on the part of universities to enhance commercialization through technology transfer offices (TTOs), and to effective collaboration between universities and government-sponsored research centers. Our qualitative analysis reveals that patent statistics could be a misleading indicator of an individual university's technological productivity, since many inventions are developed at universities, yet applied by other institutions.     

Does knowledge diffusion between university and industry increase innovativeness?

This paper presents an econometric analysis of the impact of collaboration with universities on the innovative output of firms. We also illustrate the differences that emerge from robustness checks, based on different matching estimators and samples. Our findings strongly suggest that university collaboration has a positive influence on the innovative activity of large manufacturing firms. In contrast, there appears to be an insignificant association between university collaboration and the average service firm’s innovation output.     

The Effect of Distributive Justice on Willingness to Pay for Municipality Child Care: An Extension of the GEF Hypothesis

Public-goods dilemmas are characterized by conflicts between self-interest and the welfare of a group or society at large. Research has identified several factors that enhance cooperation in such dilemmas. However, less is known about how concern for distributive justice affects willingness to contribute in asymmetric public-goods dilemmas. To test the hypothesis that contributions to a common resource is related to perceived fairness, experiments were performed to investigate willingness to pay to the social service of child care in hypothetical societies. Experiment 1 aimed at replicating a previous survey study (Biel et al., 1997). Experiments 2 and 3 were extensions. In all three experiments subjects were asked to indicate how fair they considered different distributions of the quality of child care provided by their municipality. These distributions corresponded to the principles of equality, equity, and need. University students (32, 48, and 32 in the three experiments, respectively) served as subjects. Ratings of perceived fairness were positively related to willingness to pay. Other factors also positively related to willingness to pay included ability to pay, personal need, expected payment from others, and the number of households who had to contribute in order to maintain the quality. Furthermore, decreasing municipality size increased willingness to pay.