E-democracy: exploring the current stage of e-government

Governments around the world have been pressured to implement e-Government programs in order to improve the government-citizen dialogue. The authors of this article review prior literature on such efforts to find if they lead to increased democratic participation ("e-Democracy") for the affected citizens, with a focus on the key concepts of transparency, openness, and engagement. The authors find that such efforts are a starting point toward e-Democracy, but the journey is far from complete

Exploring the Health-Wealth Nexus

The casual links between health and economic resources have long concerned social scientists. We use four waves of data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics to analyze the impact of wealth upon an individual's health status. The difficulty in approaching this task that has bedeviled previous studies is that wealth may be endogenous; a priori, it is just as likely that changes in health affect wealth as vice versa. We argue that inheritance is a suitable instrument for the change in wealth, and implement a straightforward instrumental variables strategy to deal with this problem. Our results suggest that the causal relationship running from wealth to health may not be as strong as first appears. In the data, wealth exerts a positive and statistically significant effect on health status, but it is very small in magnitude. Instrumental variables estimation leaves the point estimate approximately the same, but renders it insignificantly different from zero. And even when the point estimate is increased by twice its standard error, the quantitative effect is small. We conclude that the wealth-health connection is not driven by short run changes in wealth.

Sudden Collapse of a Granular Cluster

Single clusters in a vibro-fluidized granular gas in N connected compartments become unstable at strong shaking. They are experimentally shown to collapse very abruptly. The observed cluster lifetime (as a function of the driving intensity) is analytically calculated within a flux model, making use of the self-similarity of the process. After collapse, the cluster diffuses out into the uniform distribution in a self-similar way, with an anomalous diffusion exponent 1/3.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figures. Figure quality has been reduced in order to decrease file-siz

The role of microbiology and pharmacy departments in the stewardship of antibiotic prescribing in European hospitals

This observational, cross-sectional study describes the role played by clinical microbiology and pharmacy departments in the stewardship of antibiotic prescribing in European hospitals. A total of 170 acute care hospitals from 32 European countries returned a questionnaire on antibiotic policies and practices implemented in 2001. Data on antibiotic use, expressed as De.ned Daily Doses per 100 occupied bed-days (DDD/100 BD) were provided by 139 hospitals from 30 countries. A total of 124 hospitals provided both datasets. 121 (71%) of Clinical Microbiology departments and 66 (41%) of Pharmacy departments provided out of hours clinical advice. 70 (41%) of microbiology/infectious disease specialists and 28 (16%) of pharmacists visited wards on a daily basis. The majority of laboratories provided monitoring of blood cultures more than once per day and summary data of antibiotic susceptibility testing (AST) for empiric prescribing (86% and 73% respectively). Most of the key laboratory and pharmacy-led initiatives examined did not vary signi.cantly by geographical location. Hospitals from the North and West of Europe were more likely to examine blood cultures more than once daily compared with other regions (p < 0.01). Hospitals in the North were least likely routinely to report susceptibility results for restricted antibiotics compared to those in the South-East and Central/Eastern Europe (p < 0.01). Hospital wards in the North were more likely to hold antibiotic stocks (100%) compared with hospitals in the South-East which were least likely (39%) (p < 0.001). Conversely, hospital pharmacies in the North were least likely to dispense antibiotics on an individual patient basis (16%) compared with hospital pharmacies from Southern Europe (60%) (p = 0.01). Hospitals that routinely reported susceptibility results for restricted antibiotics had signi.cantly lower median total antibiotic use in 2001 (p < 0.01). Hospitals that provided prescribing advice outside normal working hours had signi.cantly higher antibiotic use compared with institutions that did not provide this service (p = 0.01). A wide range of antibiotic stewardship measures was practised in the participating hospitals in 2001, although there remains great scope for expansion of those overseen by pharmacy departments. Most hospitals had active antibiotic stewardship programmes led by specialists in infection, although there is no evidence that these were associated with reduced antibiotic consumption. There was also no evidence that pharmacy services reduced the amount of antibiotics prescribed.The ARPAC study was funded by the European Commission (project QLK2-CT-2001-00915). F.M. MacKenzie was supported by the European Study Group on Antibiotic Policies to write this manuscript

Effects of light and soil flooding on the growth and photosynthesis of ramin (Gonystylus bancanus) seedlings in Malaysia

We studied the ecophysiology of ramin (Gonystylus bancanus) seedlings in an experimental set up at the Forest Research Centre in Kuching, Sarawak, Malaysia. Ramin seedlings were grown on flooded and drained peat soil under 100, 76, 46 and 23% sunlight, thus simulating effects of different light conditions (canopy gap size) and drainage that occur in natural ramin populations. Seedling growth was highest in partial sunlight (76%) and reduced with reducing light levels. Aboveground productivity and fine root development were significantly higher in seedlings grown on flooded soil compared with those on drained soil. In contrast, investment in coarse root biomass was significantly higher in seedlings grown on drained soil. It appeared that the aboveground growth benefits in flooded conditions were the result of more advantageous conditions for allocation of carbon to leaves, thus enhancing overall relative growth rates through higher light interception rates despite lower photosynthetic capacity. The results of this experiment suggested that drainage of peat swamp forests would seriously hamper natural regeneration of ramin by limiting the growth of seedlings. It is also suggested that selective logging operations which produce medium-size canopy gaps improve ramin regeneration in hydrologically undisturbed mixed swamp forest

Microbubble shape oscillations excited through ultrasonic parametric driving\ud

An air bubble driven by ultrasound can become shape-unstable through a parametric instability. We report time-resolved optical observations of shape oscillations (mode n=2 to 6) of micron-sized single air bubbles. The observed mode number n was found to be linearly related to the ambient radius of the bubble. Above the critical driving pressure threshold for shape oscillations, which is minimal at the resonance of the volumetric radial mode, the observed mode number n is independent of the forcing pressure amplitude. The microbubble shape oscillations were also analyzed numerically by introducing a small nonspherical linear perturbation to a Rayleigh-Plesset-type equation, capturing the experimental observations in detail.\ud \u

On the Microscopic Origin of Cholesteric Pitch

We present a microscopic analysis of the instability of the nematic phase to chirality when molecular chirality is introduced perturbatively. We show that previously neglected short-range biaxial correlations play a crucial role in determining the cholesteric pitch. We propose an order parameter which quantifies the chirality of a molecule.Comment: RevTeX 3.0, 4 pages, one included eps figure. Published versio

Bifurcation Diagram for Compartmentalized Granular Gases

The bifurcation diagram for a vibro-fluidized granular gas in N connected compartments is constructed and discussed. At vigorous driving, the uniform distribution (in which the gas is equi-partitioned over the compartments) is stable. But when the driving intensity is decreased this uniform distribution becomes unstable and gives way to a clustered state. For the simplest case, N=2, this transition takes place via a pitchfork bifurcation but for all N>2 the transition involves saddle-node bifurcations. The associated hysteresis becomes more and more pronounced for growing N. In the bifurcation diagram, apart from the uniform and the one-peaked distributions, also a number of multi-peaked solutions occur. These are transient states. Their physical relevance is discussed in the context of a stability analysis.Comment: Phys. Rev. E, in press. Figure quality has been reduced in order to decrease file-siz