Books on the topic 'Negative consensus'

Chapter 7 explores how the framing of trade in public discourse – mass media and political campaigns –supports the disconnect between mass and elite opinion: while academic elites have stressed the benefits of free trade and political elites have supported trade liberalization, the mass public continues to express a negative assessment of trade’s economic impact on the U.S. This chapter describes past and current public beliefs about trade’s effect at the national level and characterizes two common sources of Americans’ economic knowledge – the national media and federal-level political campaigns. Analysis of decades of trade–related evening news coverage, illustrates both the correlation between bad trade indicators and trade coverage and the frequency and tone of evening news coverage. Additionally, the chapter offers qualitative analysis of the content of trade-related political campaign ads as well as two maps showing the concentration of trade-related ads in the 2000 and 2008 elections. This analysis of the content of TV news coverage of stories about international trade and political campaign ads that mention trade makes it clear that the messages communicated to the mass public differ from the academic/elite consensus.

India’s attempt to join the process of regional integration was marked by ambivalence. India did bypass its own region to seek integration in the adjacent one, ignoring SAARC to seek membership in some of the ASEAN led institutions. Operating by consensus through non-binding agreements, ASEAN-centered regionalism suited India’s needs for recognition and protected it against the negative repercussions of regional tensions while preventing the rise of potential regional hegemonys. Through its participation in a regional security architecture led by ASEAN rules, India established a normative buffer while being able to influence decisions. However, ASEAN’s centrality (i.e.; consensus based and a unanimous position reflecting common strategic vision) is gradually being eroded by US-China proxy struggle for influence, eroding the foundation of India’s relations with ASEAN, as it may draw New Delhi into the zero-sum game situation it has so far tried to avoid.

In the early 2000s, the US monetary policy committee, as well as other central banks around the world, began using “forward guidance,” or changes in their statement language, to signal policy changes. Underlying this shift toward clearer communication was the idea that more comprehensible monetary policy would lead to better economic performance and lower inflation. The first three chapters of this book argue that, rather than being a lofty goal set by altruistically motivated policy makers, transparency depends on the configuration of committee members’ preferences. Monetary policy committees that have central bankers with opposing preferences are argued to communicate more precisely compared to either a single decision maker or central bankers with more similar preferences. Precise communication is then shown to have positive effects by lowering inflation. Shifting focus and using data from the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC), chapter 4 presents evidence that committees with opposing preferences use a lower share of uncertainty words in policy statements and make more numerous changes to public announcements. Chapter 5 shows that households in Germany change their inflation expectations when given more precise central bank information. And chapter 6 shows that the level of precision in inflation-related news articles is negatively related to inflation in a sample of countries from Latin America. In conclusion, this book offers a new way of thinking about central bank committees and transparency. It finds that appointing a more policy-diverse central bank committee can encourage intercommittee governance and accountability as well as better economic performance.

This chapter reviews the political economy of extractive resources and the resources governance agenda. The consensus that good sector governance improves the developmental impacts of extractive resources exploitation is premised on the understanding that institutions matter for development. However, there is no straightforward answer to the question of what exactly ‘institutions’ are, how they change, or how they can be made to change to become more supportive of an extractives-led development agenda. The chapter suggests turning from the negative question ‘how can poor outcomes be prevented?’ towards the positive question ‘how can positive institutional change be brought about?’ It presents the main strands of a substantial body of literature that can help to inform answers to this question.

This chapter considers whether the reliable identification of normatively inappropriate dissent (NID) would be helpful in addressing many of the adverse epistemic and social impacts that can result from it. It considers a variety of ways in which such identification could be used to minimize the epistemic and social damages that NID can inflict, including prohibiting the dissent in question, targeting it for special scrutiny, placing limits on scientists’ epistemic obligations, guiding public beliefs, emphasizing the existence of a consensus, and discrediting dissenters. It shows that although some of these strategies could be useful, others are unhelpful in limiting the negative impacts of NID, and may even exacerbate them or generate other equally serious problems.

Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) may develop after exposure to a traumatic event (or events) such as interpersonal violence, disasters, war, or terrorism. PTSD is characterized by specific symptoms organized into core clusters, including reexperience, hyperarousal, avoidance, and negative alterations in mood and cognition. Although these symptoms may resolve without any intervention, they may also progress to a chronic, debilitating state. The characteristics of the disorder as described, as are the incidence and prevalence of PTSD and subgroups that may be at greater risk. The fact that many persons exposed to traumatic events do not develop lasting symptoms of PTSD (or PTSD at all) is explained through a discussion of risk and protective factors. Last, brief reviews of diagnostic assessments and current noncomplementary/nonalternative treatments supported by practice guidelines and clinical consensus are described.

Acute kidney injury (AKI) occurs in approximately one-quarter of all patients with severe burn injury (as defined by the RIFLE consensus classification), and approximately 3% of paediatric burn patients. Overall, a three- to six-fold higher mortality for burn patients with AKI is observed, depending on the applied definition. When AKI is defined by the sensitive RIFLE classification, median mortality of AKI is approximately 35%. This chapter describes the general pathophysiology of AKI in burns, particularly the severe form of burn shock, and discusses in addition the roles of intra-abdominal hypertension, rhabdomyolysis, and the potentially negative impact of povidone-iodine burn dressing. Finally the definitions used in burn pathology, the prevention of AKI with a discussion of the fluid therapy in burned patients, and the role of renal replacement therapy in these patients is discussed.

This chapter discusses nuclear energy policy in Austria since the 1950s. It stresses that political parties were the main actors and decision-making on energy policy was strongly influenced by them. Building on the work of Strøm (1990) and Müller and Strøm (1999) it is argued that several position changes regarding nuclear energy were made by Austrian parties in response to public opinion, trading policy against votes or office. The Austrian case resembled other Western European countries until the 1970s, when a nuclear power plant was built but never made operational because of a negative referendum. After a decade of struggling with attempts at policy reversal, an anti-nuclear consensus was reached after Chernobyl. Soon parties did engage in a new form of competition on the nuclear issue—over their competence in fighting nuclear energy in other countries, in particular, plants close to the Austrian border.

Because pain is in part an affective experience, investigators over the past several decades have sought to elaborate the nature of pain-affect connections. Our evolving understanding of the intersection of pain and affect is especially relevant to intervention efforts designed to enhance the quality of life and functional health of individuals managing chronic pain. This chapter describes how pain influences arousal of the vigilance/defensive and appetitive/approach motivational systems and thus the affective health of chronic pain patients. The focus then moves to the dynamic relations between changes in pain and other stressors and changes in positive and negative affect as observed in daily life and laboratory-based experiments. A consensus emerges that sustaining positive affect during pain and stress flares may limit their detrimental effects and promote better functional health. The authors consider the implications of increased understanding of the dynamic interplay between pain and affective experience for enhancing existing interventions.

Mechanical ventilation is used to assist or replace spontaneous respiration. Gas flow can be generated by negative pressure techniques, but it is positive pressure ventilation that is the most efficacious in intensive care. There are numerous pulmonary and extrapulmonary indications for mechanical ventilation, and it is the underlying pathology that will determine the duration of ventilation required. Ventilation modes can broadly be classified as volume- or pressure-controlled, but modern ventilators combine the characteristics of both in order to complement the diverse requirements of individual patients. To avoid confusion, it is important to appreciate that there is no international consensus on the classification of ventilation modes. Ventilator manufacturers can use terms that are similar to those used by others that describe very different modes or have completely different names for similar modes. It is well established that ventilation in itself can cause or exacerbate lung injury, so the evidence-based lung-protective strategies should be adhered to. The term acute lung injury has been abolished, whilst a new definition and classification for the acute respiratory distress syndrome has been defined.

Mechanical ventilation is used to assist or replace spontaneous respiration. Gas flow can be generated by negative pressure techniques, but it is positive pressure ventilation that is the most efficacious in intensive care. There are numerous pulmonary and extrapulmonary indications for mechanical ventilation, and it is the underlying pathology that will determine the duration of ventilation required. Ventilation modes can broadly be classified as volume- or pressure-controlled, but modern ventilators combine the characteristics of both in order to complement the diverse requirements of individual patients. To avoid confusion, it is important to appreciate that there is no international consensus on the classification of ventilation modes. Ventilator manufacturers can use terms that are similar to those used by others that describe very different modes or have completely different names for similar modes. It is well established that ventilation in itself can cause or exacerbate lung injury, so the evidence-based lung-protective strategies should be adhered to. The term acute lung injury has been abolished, whilst a new definition and classification for the acute respiratory distress syndrome has been defined.

This book argues that the position of women in late medieval and early modern Europe was relatively strong. This, van Zanden, De Moor, and Carmichael argue, is evident from the fact that marriage was usually based on consensus, implying that women had a clear say in their marriage. The authors analyze the medieval roots of this European Marriage Pattern, demonstrating that it was much stronger in northwestern Europe than in the Mediterranean. That women had considerable agency was one of the factors behind the rise of Europe in the centuries before the Industrial Revolution. This had huge consequences for the average age of marriage (which was very high), fertility (which was restricted by the high age of marriage), human capital formation (resulting in high levels of numeracy and literacy), and labor-force participation by women. However, the authors also explore the negative effects of the European Marriage Pattern, such as the greater vulnerability of these relatively small families, and the large group of single women, subject to external shocks particularly in old age. Special institutions emerged, such as the beguinages, to cope with these pressures. Finally, by comparing these European households with household patterns in the rest of Eurasia, this book puts the European Marriage Pattern into global perspective.

In the past 50 years, human activities and climatic variability have caused major environmental changes in the semi-arid Sahelian zone and desertification/degradation of arable lands is of major concern for livelihoods and food security. In the wake of the Sahel droughts in the early 1970s and 1980s, the UN focused on the problem of desertification by organizing the UN Conference on Desertification (UNCOD) in Nairobi in 1976. This fuelled a significant increase in the often alarmist popular accounts of desertification as well as scientific efforts in providing an understanding of the mechanisms involved. The global interest in the subject led to the nomination of desertification as focal point for one of three international environmental conventions: the UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD), emerging from the Rio conference in 1992. This implied that substantial efforts were made to quantify the extent of desertification and to understand its causes. Desertification is a complex and multi-faceted phenomenon aggravating poverty that can be seen as both a cause and a consequence of land resource depletion. As reflected in its definition adopted by the UNCCD, desertification is “land degradation in arid, semi-arid[,] and dry sub-humid areas resulting from various factors, including climate variation and human activities” (UN, 1992). While desertification was seen as a phenomenon of relevance to drylands globally, the Sahel-Sudan region remained a region of specific interest and a significant amount of scientific efforts have been invested to provide an empirically supported understanding of both climatic and anthropogenic factors involved. Despite decades of intensive research on human–environmental systems in the Sahel, there is no overall consensus about the severity of desertification and the scientific literature is characterized by a range of conflicting observations and interpretations of the environmental conditions in the region. Earth Observation (EO) studies generally show a positive trend in rainfall and vegetation greenness over the last decades for the majority of the Sahel and this has been interpreted as an increase in biomass and contradicts narratives of a vicious cycle of widespread degradation caused by human overuse and climate change. Even though an increase in vegetation greenness, as observed from EO data, can be confirmed by ground observations, long-term assessments of biodiversity at finer spatial scales highlight a negative trend in species diversity in several studies and overall it remains unclear if the observed positive trends provide an environmental improvement with positive effects on people’s livelihood.

Innumerable studies have yielded a positive correlation between subjective confidence and accuracy, suggesting that people are skillful in discriminating between correct and wrong answers. The chapter reviews evidence from different domains indicating that people’s subjective confidence in an answer is diagnostic of the consensuality of the answer rather than of its accuracy. A self-consistency model (SCM) was proposed to explain why the confidence-accuracy correlation is positive when the correct answer is the consensually chosen answer but is negative when the wrong answer is the consensual answer. Several results that were obtained across a variety of tasks provided support for the generality of the theoretical framework underlying SCM.

Este libro busca contribuir para cerrar la brecha entre las miradas tan diferentes desde lo conceptual y lo metodológico en la concepción de fracaso y éxito en los proyectos, y se hace un intento por consensuar las causas más frecuentes de fallos reales en proyectos colombianos claramente tipifi-cados. El libro consta de cinco capítulos; en el primero se analiza un proyecto de arquitectura empresarial; en el segundo un proyecto de infraestructura pública; en el tercero y quinto capítulo se analizan dos proyectos de TIC, y en el cuarto un proyecto de construcción con inversión privada. La diversi-dad de proyectos seleccionada es adrede, ya que se preten-de demostrar, a través del método de casos, que según la tipología del proyecto se atribuyen las causas del fracaso y que éstas se podrían sistematizar no solo como lecciones aprendidas, sino además en la gestión del riesgo para anti-ciparse a impactos negativos durante el ciclo de vida del proyecto.