Mallory-Weiss syndrome as the cause of sudden, unexpected death

The Mallory-Weiss-syndrome is an upper gastrointestinal haemorrhage due to longitudinal mucosal lacerations in the oesophagogastric junction. The mucosal lacerations occur as a sequel of vomiting or any other increase in intraabdominal pressure and account for up to 15% of all upper gastrointestinal bleedings. If death is due to a bleeding Mallory-Weiss-tear, however, massive blood stains on the corpse and around it frequently give rise to the suspicion of an unnatural cause of death. For this reason, autopsy is usually indispensable to elucidate the circumstances in which death occurred. The authors carried out a retrospective analysis of 5958 autopsies performed between 1997 and 2001 at the Institute of Legal Medicine, University of Hamburg, in order to identify all cases of Mallory-Weiss-syndrome as cause of sudden, unexpected death. The results (9 cases, amounting to 0.15% of all autopsies) suggest that Mallory-Weiss-syndrome is probably much more common as a cause of sudden death than previously described. Regarding epidemiological aspects, men clearly predominate; the average age was 48 years. It should also be stressed that in 8 of the 9 cases there was a previous history of chronic alcohol abuse.     

Representative bureaucracy,tokenism and the glass ceiling: the case of women in Quebec municipal administration

Abstract: There is an assumption running through the literature on women and politics that the local level has particular relevance for women. After all, this level of government provides many of the services that relate most directly to women's everyday lives and well-being. Theories of representative bureaucracy assume that responsiveness to women's needs and concerns will be enhanced to the extent that the bureaucracy is representative of women. It is worth asking, then, how representative local government bureaucracies actually are. Our analysis is based on data drawn from all 259 of Quebec's urban municipalities, between the period of 1985 and 1995. Over the past decade, the number of women heading municipal departments in Quebec's cities has more than doubled. It is hard to avoid the conclusion, however, that the glass ceiling is still very much in place. Close to forty per cent of cities do not even have one department headed by a woman, and a further thirty per cent of cities have only one department headed by a woman. Much of the growth that has occurred appears to be token growth. All too often the appointment of one woman to head a department fails to open the way for similar appointments for other women. And city administrations that do not have departments headed by a woman continue to outnumber those with more than one woman department-head. Moreover, women are most likely to have advanced beyond a token presence in those cities where the top municipal jobs are the least desirable. Agency stereotyping helps perpetuate the glass ceiling. Much of women's advance has occurred in stereotypically “female” functions. The stereotypically “male” departments remain overwhelmingly the preserves of men. There is no support for the supply or socialization theses as alternative explanations for these findings. Finally, the glass ceiling seems to be stubbornly resistant to government actions to dislodge it. Sommaire: Les divers ouvrages parus sur les femmes et la politique prennent pour acquis que le gouvernement au niveau local revêt me importance toute particulière pour les femmes. Après tout, c'est ce palier du gouvernement qui fournit bon nombre des services les plus directement liés à la vie quotidienne et au bien-être des femmes. Les théories sur la bureaucratie représentative prennent pour hypothèse qu'on pourra mieux répondre aux besoins et aux intérês des femmes dans la mesure où la bureaucratie est représentative en ce qui les concerne. Cela mérite donc de vérifier à quel point les gouvemements locaux sont vraiment représentatifs. Notre analyse se fonde sur des données provenant de chacune des 259 municipalités urbaines du Québe centre 1985 et 1995. Au cours de la demière décennie, le nombre de femmes à la tête de services municipaux dans les villes du Québec a plus que double. On a du mal à ne pas conclure, cependant, que les entraves à la promotion sont toujours là. Près de 40 % des villes n'ont même pas une seule femme chef de service, tandis qu'un autre 30 % des villes ont un seul service dont le chef est une femme. Une bonne partie de la croissance qui s'est produite semble avoir été purement symbolique. Très souvent, la nomination d'une femme à la tête d'un service n'entraîne pas d'autres nominations de femmes. Les administrations de ville qui n'ont pas de chef de service férninin continuent à surpasser le nombre de celles qui en ont plus d'une. De plus, la probabilité que les femmes aient avancé au-delà d'une simple presence symbolique est particulièrement élevée dans les villes où les emplois municipaux supérieurs sont les moins désirables. L'image stéréotypée de certaines fonctions perpétue elle aussi les entraves à la promotion. Une bonne partie de I'avancement des femmes s'est produite dans les fonctions stérétypiquement féminines, tandis que les services stéréotypiquement masculins demeurent largement la chasse gardée des hommes. Pour expliquer ces constatations, on ne peut pas faire appel aux thèses de l'offre réduite ou de la socialisation. Enfin, les entraves à la promotion des femmes semblent résister avec opiniAtretéà l'intervention gouvemementale visant à les éliminer.     

Time-of-voting decision and susceptibility to campaign effects

There is mounting evidence that election campaigns matter. There are also reasons to expect interpersonal heterogeneity in the susceptibility to campaign influence. Time-of-voting decision has been suggested as a key mediating variable for campaign effects. However, there is no persuasive empirical evidence to substantiate the claim that people who decide during campaigns actually respond to campaign events or campaign-specific information.This study incorporates time of decision into dynamic models of campaign effects in order to test whether there is a significant interaction effect between time of decision and campaign persuasion. In sum, the vote intentions of campaign deciders are indeed more volatile because they respond to actual campaign events and coverage, not because they fluctuate haphazardly. People who say they decided before the campaign are, reassuringly, not influenced by campaigns.     

Development Ballot Measures, Interest Group Endorsements, and the Political Geography of Growth Preferences

In response to rapid population and economic growth, many communities have turned to voter initiatives to resolve their land use disputes. We find that despite strong public concern about growth, voters often support measures that allow or encourage new development. We consider the sources of this support by analyzing patterns of voting on a range of prodevelopment ballot initiatives. These initiatives provide a valuable opportunity to understand how economic self-interest, geography, interest group endorsements, and public goods affect citizen support for development policies. We find that interest group endorsements significantly increase public support for new development. These endorsements help voters evaluate the personal impact of complex development proposals and allow voters to behave in ways that reflect a high degree of sophistication .     

Campaign competition and policy responsiveness in direct legislation elections

Many scholars, pundits, and reform advocates argue that more competitive elections are needed to produce policy outcomes that better reflect voter interests. We challenge this argument. Using a model of direct legislation elections, we prove that greater electoral competition is neither necessary nor sufficient for more responsive postelection policy outcomes. Instead, we find that more competition increases responsivenessonly if the additional competitors are both sympathetic to voter interests and sufficiently credible to affect voter behavior. If either condition fails to hold, then increasing competition will make votersworse off, if it affects them at all. We conclude that enhanced voter competence, and not more competition, is the key to greater responsiveness.     

Measuring Party Identification: Britain, Canada, and the United States

The article proposes an empirically based reflection on how to measure party identification cross nationally, using data from the 1997 Canadian Election Study, the 1997 British Election Study, and the 1996 American National Election Study. These studies included both traditional national questions and a new common one, which allows for an assessment of the effects of question wording on the distribution and correlates of party identification. We show that the distribution of party identification is strongly affected by question wording and that the relationship between party identification and variables such as party and leader ratings, and voting behavior does not quite conform to theoretical expectations. We point out problems in the wording of party identification questions and propose an alternative formulation.     

The formation of party preferences: Testing the proximity and directional models

We review the methodological debate between defenders of the proximity and directional models. We propose what we believe to be a rigorous and fair test of the two models, using the 1997 Canadian Election Study. The analysis is based on responses to questions in which the various issue positions are explicitly spelled out. We rely on individual perceptions of party positions because it is individual perceptions that matter in the formation of party preferences but we control for projection effects through a multivariate model that incorporates, in addition to indicators of distance and direction, socio–demographic characteristics, party identification, and leader ratings. We also take into account whether a party is perceived to be extreme. The empirical evidence vindicates the proximity model.     

Characteristic Features of Pediatric Firearm Fatalities—Comparisons Between Australia and the United States

Abstract:  Gunshot deaths in children less than 17 years of age from Adelaide, SA, Australia (1969–2005) and from San Diego County, CA, United States (1988–2005) were compared. Forty-two pediatric gunshot fatalities occurred in South Australia (1.1 cases/year; M:F = 30:12). There were 6 accidents (14%), 14 suicides (33%), and 22 homicides (52%). In San Diego there were 185 cases ( c. 10 cases/year; M:F = 148:37). There were 6 accidents (3%), 42 suicides (23%), 130 homicides (70%), and 7 undetermined cases (4%). The incidence of homicide was significantly higher in San Diego County compared to Adelaide ( p  < 0.001), with a higher proportion of murder–suicides occurring in Adelaide. There were markedly more accidents and suicides involving males in Adelaide and a far higher number of male homicide victims in San Diego County compared to females. Rifles of 0.22-caliber were preferred weapons in South Australia, compared to handguns in San Diego County.     

Doing family: Responses to the constructions of ‘the migrant family’ across Europe

This paper draws on how constructions of ‘the migrant family’ in political discourse influence migrants' and their families' lives. In specific national contexts, ‘the migrant family’ is determined according to the national and European debates and expressed by their respective rules and regulations. By ‘doing family’, migrants and their families develop strategies in order to fit these requirements of living a certain family life. Fulfilling specific norms and perceptions which are not necessarily required for the majority of society is a precondition to succeed. Who is and who is not part of the family, who holds responsibility — such aspects have to be proved and repeatedly reproduced by migrants and their families. This not only affects their position in society, but also has strong implications on their lives as a couple and family, since it requires the continuous adaptation and reconstructions of their everyday reality.     

Between Scylla and Charybdis: religion,the military and support for democracy among Egyptians, 2011–2014

Democracy as a form of civilian rule must navigate a path between clerical and military powers, both of which are highly engaged in the politics of post-Mubarak Egypt. The authors ask in this article how mass support for democracy changed in Egypt between 2011 and 2014, and how this support is connected with views on religion and the role of the military. This question is important for understanding the prospects for democracy in a major state in the Arab world. It is also of comparative interest because of what change in the social and ideological drivers of mass attitudes may tell us about the nature of democratic support more generally. The authors’ analysis is based on nationally representative surveys of Egyptians in 2011 after the country’s first post-Mubarak parliamentary elections and in 2014 after the removal of the Islamist President Morsi. The findings indicate that Egyptians in large numbers favour both democracy and unfettered military intervention in politics. The authors also observe important shifts in the social bases of support for democracy away from religion but also from economic aspiration. Negative political experience with democratic procedures in 2011–2013 seems to be the strongest factor behind the observed decrease in democratic support.