Political scientists routinely face the challenge of assessing the quality (validity and reliability) of measures in order to use them in substantive research. While stand-alone assessment tools exist, researchers rarely combine them comprehensively. Further, while a large literature informs data producers, data consumers lack guidance on how to assess existing measures for use in substantive rese

There is concern that immunotoxic environmental contaminants, particularly perfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), may play a role in the clinical course of COVID-19 and epidemiologic studies are needed to answer if high-exposed populations are especially vulnerable in light of the ongoing pandemic. The objective was, therefore, to determine if exposure to highly PFAS-contaminated drinking water was ass

The obligate pollination mutualism between Yucca and yucca moths is a classical example of coevolution. Oviposition and active pollination by female yucca moths occur at night when Yucca flowers are open and strongly scented. Thus, floral volatiles have been suggested as key sensory signals attracting yucca moths to their host plants, but no bioactive compounds have yet been identified. In this st

Index tracking and hedge fund replication aim at cloning the return time series properties of a given benchmark, by either using only a subset of its original constituents or by a set of risk factors. In this paper, we propose a model that relies on the Sorted (Formula presented.) Penalized Estimator, called SLOPE, for index tracking and hedge fund replication. We show that SLOPE is capable of not

The purpose of this article is to evaluate the impact of university ecosystems on entrepreneurial intention and self-efficacy of Brazilian undergraduate students. The empirical exercise relies on Structural Equations Modelling based on data of 468 students from 70 universities across the country. Results indicate that traditional approaches to foment entrepreneurship are less effective than nurtur

Leveraging the biocatalytic machinery of living organisms for fabricating functional bioelectronic interfaces, in vivo, defines a new class of micro-biohybrids enabling the seamless integration of technology with living biological systems. Previously, we have demonstrated the in vivo polymerization of conjugated oligomers forming conductors within the structures of plants.Here, we expand this conc

Morphometric relationships between populations of Papaver radicatum within the southern Norwegian mountains were investigated using canonical variates analysis and Ward's clustering on capsule and leaf character sets. The survey describes patterns of variation among 13 wild-scored populations from five geographically disjunct localities, usually assigned to five races or subspecies. Our results fr

There is a geographic separation of the 2 pollen morphs in European Silene latifolia, with the changeover zone running NW-SE from the Netherlands to Greece. Reticulate grains are characteristic of western populations, microechinate grains of eastern populations. -from AuthorsDept of Population & Evol Biol, Univ of Utrecht, Padualaan 8, 3584 CH Utrecht, The Netherlands.

Silene diclinis is a dioecious perennial herb, restricted to a small area of the SE Spanish province of Valencia. Polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis and morphometric analysis were carried out on cultivated material derived from seed collected from the main population of S. diclinis at Játiva. Only two out of 26 inferred enzyme loci showed substantial variation. There was some indication of populat

Morphological and biochemical data were analysed from 30 greenhouse-grown populations of European Silene latifolia. Six separate character sets (flavones, seed, pollen, capsules, male and female flower morphology) were used in the analyses. There was broad-scale congruence between trends of geographic variation in most character sets, with the populations being assigned to western (or southern and

Three of the loci controlling isovitexin glycosylation in Silene pratensis are polymorphic and show geographic trends which are compared with geographic trends in seed morphology (and other phenotypic characters) as demonstrated by multivariate analysis. Various lines of evidence support the hypothesis that S. pratensis spread into Europe from at least two genetically differentiated sources. S. di

Relative a absolute (pollen concentration) diagrams are presented from Bergebyvatnet, Holmfjellvatnet and Stjernevatnet on Varanger peninsula. All three sites are outside the younger Dryas (Main substage) moraines and the pollen assemblage zones are correlated biostratigraphically with chronozones from Allerød to Middle Flandrian. Radiocarbon dates from Bergebyvatnet appear to have been affected b

A relative and absolute (pollen concentration) diagram is presented from Østervatnet, southern Varanger peninsula, north of the Main sub‐stage (Tromsø‐Lyngen) moraines. The pollen assemblage zones are correlated biostratigraphically with chronozones from Bølling to Middle Flandrian. Sediment analyses (loss on ignition and particle size) and implied sedimentation rates support this chronology. The

North Hoy is an area containing a remarkable diversity of vegetation in a small area. A phytosociological account of the hill vegetation of North Hoy is presented, making use of an ordination method to clarify the inter‐relationships of the moorland vegetation types, as well as traditional methods. It has proved very interesting to compare the vegetation with the account of Scottish Highland veget

The Protein Ensemble Database (PED) (https://proteinensemble.org), which holds structural ensembles of intrinsically disordered proteins (IDPs), has been significantly updated and upgraded since its last release in 2016. The new version, PED 4.0, has been completely redesigned and reimplemented with cutting-edge technology and now holds about six times more data (162 versus 24 entries and 242 vers

Background and Aims: It is unclear whether obesity is associated with the development of inflammatory bowel disease despite compelling data from basic science studies. We therefore examined the association between obesity and risk of Crohn's disease (CD) and ulcerative colitis (UC). Methods: We conducted pooled analyses of 5 prospective cohorts with validated anthropometric measurements for body m

Objectives: Clinical trials demonstrated that golimumab is effective in anti-TNF naïve patients with ulcerative colitis. We aimed to assess the clinical effectiveness of golimumab in a real-world setting. Materials and methods: This was a prospective cohort study, conducted at 16 Swedish hospitals. Data were collected using an electronic case report form. Patients with active ulcerative colitis, d