Search

The Immune Epitope Database and Analysis Resource (IEDB) provides the scientific community with open access to epitope data, as well as epitope prediction and analysis tools. Herein, we provide insights into an objective analysis of our data identification, categorization, curation and quality‐checking processes. These experiences are shared as a case study of the benefits of process implementation and review in biomedical big data, as well as to encourage idea‐sharing among players in this ever‐growing space., Summary The Immune Epitope Database and Analysis Resource (IEDB) provides the scientific community with open access to epitope data, as well as epitope prediction and analysis tools. The IEDB houses the most extensive collection of experimentally validated B‐cell and T‐cell epitope data, sourced primarily from published literature by expert curation. The data procurement requires systematic identification, categorization, curation and quality‐checking processes. Here, we provide insights into these processes, with particular focus on the dividends they have paid in terms of attaining project milestones, as well as how objective analyses of our processes have identified opportunities for process optimization. These experiences are shared as a case study of the benefits of process implementation and review in biomedical big data, as well as to encourage idea‐sharing among players in this ever‐growing space.

Neonatal abstinence syndrome (NAS) affects 3.39 in every 1,000 live births. A literature review was conducted to determine the varying types of nonpharmacologic management being used currently and its effect on the treatment of NAS symptoms. Fourteen articles were found that used nonpharmacologic management in the treatment of NAS. Therapies included breastfeeding, positioning, rooming-in, acupuncture/acupressure, and beds. Each of the nonpharmacologic therapies in these articles, with the exception of rocking beds, was shown to have a positive effect on the newborn with NAS. These effects include a shorter length of stay, a decrease in NAS scores, a decrease need for pharmacologic treatment, less agitation, a better quality of sleep, and a decrease in the severity of NAS symptoms. This review article shows that nonpharmacologic management is an effective tool for NAS symptom treatment.

Robert Putnam is a key figure in the democratic decline debate that suggests declining political engagement represents a threat to democracy. His famous studies of the United States draw their intellectual framework from his Italian study Making Democracy Work. This paper returns to the Italian study and argues that Putnam mis-theorized the findings, and that a more cogent theoretical approach would have led him to identify different causal factors driving shifts in political culture. It proposes a re-theorization of his findings that re-interprets the Italian study. When these new conclusions are applied to the broader debate they suggest a different line of explanation for the changing patterns of civic engagement occurring across many Western countries. The paper argues that ideological debates about the nature of democracy affect citizen's political behaviour and lead to changes in democratic practice. In the Italian case, it argues that the variation in regional political cultures reflected different local beliefs about the nature of democracy. These beliefs were played out and re-made through ideological debates between political parties.

Policy innovation is a significant challenge for the public sector. This article illustrates its magnitude through a case study of the National Innovation Summit. The article concludes that the Summit represented an elaborate process of search and engagement that sanctioned an outcome that was, in most respects, largely pre-determined. Its outreach and deliberations served the political purpose of mobilising industry and media attention and communicating the government's commitment. But there is no evidence that it exercised any substantive influence on policy development. The obstacles confounding any other outcome are considerable. Strategic thinking is inhibited by various organisational factors including lock-in to a present successful strategy, the constraints on policy choices associated with multiple veto points and the need to maintain medium term fiscal and policy discipline across a wide range of agencies and claimants. The article explores ways these inhibitions might be overcome.

It has been observed that countries that implemented new public management (NPM) reforms are currently witnessing growing complaints about a decline in the policy capacity of their public services. Australia is a part of this trend with public sector leaders increasingly voicing concern about policy capacity decline within the Australian Public Service (APS). This article sets out to examine whether there is an empirical basis for this discourse and to assess allegations that NPM reforms have contributed to any related shifts. It draws on rail policy and the Department of Transport as its case study. It finds that the reforms transformed role of the department in a way that enhanced strategic policy capacity. However, the reforms also introduced a number of structural impediments that make it difficult for the new role to be effectively executed.

Robert Putnam’s work was a double‐edged sword for social capital scholars. It brought unprecedented attention to the research agenda but also created conceptual confusion. Many scholars have tried to disentangle Coleman’s concept of social capital from what some described as Putnam’s “fuzzy psychological notion” of civic culture values. Despite the rigour of these efforts, Putnam’s influence remains, because scholars and policy makers are drawn to the benefits his work promised. This article takes a different tack, and seeks to extricate Putnam’s early ideas from the social capital debates by offering an alternate theorization of his original findings. It returns to Making Democracy Work and argues that Putnam mis‐stepped when he took the rational choice route and invoked Coleman’s concept of social capital. It takes an ideational approach to explaining civic culture. The resulting “ideational social capital” suggests a different research agenda, which just might deliver on Putnam’s early promise.

This fascinating book reflects on how economics has become central to our lives, and how the 'economic rationalist' perspective has become the lens through which all matters in Australian public life are viewed. It explains how this economic worldview systematically overlooks important social issues and how it transforms Australian culture. How to Argue with an Economist invites a broad general audience into debates that were once reserved for experts. Lindy Edwards, a former economic adviser in the Prime Minister's Department, has a talent for expressing concepts simply. She distils economics' key ideas into a lively and enjoyable read, explaining how economists think and then how you can argue with them.

The events of 1993 can be seen to be indicative of a fundamental change in the nature of Japanese politics. In the postwar era Japanese politics can be seen to have been characterised by two competing visions of the polity — ‘the constitutional’ and ‘the bureaucratic’. Each of these visions were underpinned by fundamentally different conceptual structures, and subsequently legitimated different concepts of politics and different centres of power. The hybrid institutional structure left by the Allied Occupation of Japan has been able to accommodate and facilitate either of the two visions, creating a political system with no clear centre of legitimacy and no clear centre of power. The relative prominence of the two visions has shifted over time; the bureaucratic vision dominating in the early postwar period, and the constitutional vision coming to the fore during recent events.