RESULTS: Fifty-five participants (31 patients and 24 parents) completed all questionnaires, 98.2% preferred active involvement in therapeutic decision-making. The SDM-Q-9 scores, assessed by patients and physicians, were acceptable (mean 68 out of 100). However, the independently assessed OPTION-5 scores were significantly lower (mean 31 out of 100). In the consultations, physicians rarely aske...

Some US states have introduced measures to increase voter participation. I develop a formal model of elections to study how these measures affect political outcomes. I find that at high enough levels, measures to increase turnout lead to candidates converging at the median voter’s ideal point, as candidates switch from choosing policies that motivate their partisan base to competing over centri...

This article uses a microsimulation model to estimate how freezing all remaining private-sector and one-third of all public-sector defined benefit (DB) pension plans over the next 5 years would affect retirement incomes of baby boomers. If frozen plans were supplemented with new or enhanced defined contribution (DC) retirement plans, there would be more losers than winners, and average family i...

Self-criticism of physicians and patient participation are the pillars of modern medical ethics and medical programmes. Patients expect risk minimisation from physicians, mostly without realising how much they could actively do themselves in this respect. But what about the willingness of German people to take risks, how high is it really at present? Direct empirical data are not available, but...

Since the work of André Martinet back in the 60’s [7], the notion of ‘economy’ has been accepted as one of the main principles underlying the organization of phonological inventories (hereafter PI). This principle, also named MUAF (‘Maximal Use of Available Features’) by John Ohala [8], states that PI are organized along a few phonetic dimensions that they tend to maximize in terms of number of...

The freedom to consent to participate in medical research is a complex subject, particularly in socio-economically vulnerable communities, where numerous factors may limit the efficacy of the informed consent process. Informal consultation among members of the Switching the Poles Clinical Research Network coming from various sub-Saharan African countries, that is Burkina Faso, The Gambia, Rwand...