Historic Consensus Research Articles

Parliamentary practices in Holyrood: ‘new politics’ and the SNP

The Scottish Parliament was meant to represent a revolution in the way that Scots were governed as its supporters frequently expressed the hope that such a body would be a new type of institution that would represent a break with the Westminster model and would offer a new approach to the way that the business of government is carried on. The political arena that emerged out of the blueprint produced by the Scottish Constitutional Convention in the 1990s was the result of a historic consensus and was designed as a more inclusive, representative, transparent and collegial body which was to usher in ‘new politics’ for Scotland. This paper will therefore seek to examine to what extent the Scottish Constitutional Convention’s initial goal of a more open, representative and participative approach to politics has been met and question the impact of its relative success on the surge of nationalism in Scotland.

Enigmatic rocks and sarsen stones of the West Sussex Coastal Plain, southern Britain

The coastal plain of West Sussex and south-east Hampshire preserves a succession of Pleistocene raised beaches, periglacial deposits, and estuarine channels. These incorporate numerous ‘erratics’ or ‘exotic’ rocks, here described as enigmatic rocks, and sarsen stones. The enigmatic rocks include large boulders of non-local igneous, metamorphic, and sedimentary rocks, which have attracted interest since the early 19th century. Many suggestions have been made regarding their origins, transport, and date of emplacement. More recently, it has been realised that these rocks may have important implications for understanding the Quaternary history of southern Britain and the palaeogeography of the English Channel region during the Pleistocene. This paper presents a literature review, supported by details of historic and extant boulders, distribution, and dimensions. In agreement with previous authors, it is concluded that the enigmatic rocks were likely transported within ice floes or icebergs, but further studies are required to identify possible sources. Suggestions have included northern Britain, Scotland, Scandinavia, Greenland and Laurentia. There are doubts concerning an adequate build-up of periglacial sea-ice to accept the historic consensus for a source in Brittany, the Cotentin Peninsula, and the Channel Islands. The date of emplacement is suggested to be MIS 13, but multiple phases of emplacement cannot be excluded. In contrast, the sarsen stones are considered to be relic of pre-MIS 7 periglacial erosion of weathered Lambeth Group in a regolith of Clay-with-flints formerly capping the local Chalk outcrop. Many questions remain unanswered, particularly regarding the enigmatic rocks, so aspects for future study are identified.

Predicting economists: Generating scenarios for stress testing future loss reserves

Stress testing under the US Comprehensive Capital Analysis and Review (CCAR) regulations and those of many other countries seeks to assess the full possible financial position of a lender through an economic crisis. The introduction of lifetime loan loss reserves under FASB’s Current Expected Credit Loss (CECL) and IASB’s International Financial Reporting Standards 9 (IFRS 9) rules complicates the task of stress testing, because lenders need to estimate future losses using scenarios that are contingent on the stress testing scenario, but without perfect foresight of the future stress test scenario. This work casts the CECL and IFRS 9 stress testing problem as one of generating future economic scenarios that are consistent with how future economists would create scenarios. To that end, we obtained historic consensus economic scenarios for testing. The results here demonstrate that a second-order Ornstein–Uhlenbeck model fits historic scenarios well and could be used to generate future scenarios that would be a realistic representation of what economists would predict given economic conditions up to that point. This approach was tested for US real gross domestic product (RGDP) and unemployment rate scenarios through the 2009 recession. The RGDP modeling was straight-forward, but we discovered that consensus economic scenarios for unemployment rate appear to be conditional on the phase of the economy.

Towards global consensus on core outcomes for hidradenitis suppurativa research: an update from the HISTORIC consensus meetings I and II

Towards global consensus on core outcomes for hidradenitis suppurativa research: an update from the HISTORIC consensus meetings I and II

Towards global consensus on core outcomes for hidradenitis suppurativa research: an update from the HISTORIC consensus meetings I and II.

A core outcomes set (COS) is an agreed minimum set of outcomes that should be measured and reported in all clinical trials for a specific condition. Hidradenitis suppurativa (HS) has no agreed-upon COS. A central aspect in the COS development process is to identify a set of candidate outcome domains from a long list of items. Our long list had been developed from patient interviews, a systematic review of the literature and a healthcare professional survey, and initial votes had been cast in two e-Delphi surveys. In this manuscript, we describe two in-person consensus meetings of Delphi participants designed to ensure an inclusive approach to generation of domains from related items. To consider which items from a long list of candidate items to exclude and which to cluster into outcome domains. The study used an international and multistakeholder approach, involving patients, dermatologists, surgeons, the pharmaceutical industry and medical regulators. The study format was a combination of formal presentations, small group work based on nominal group theory and a subsequent online confirmation survey. Forty-one individuals from 13 countries and four continents participated. Nine items were excluded and there was consensus to propose seven domains: disease course, physical signs, HS-specific quality of life, satisfaction, symptoms, pain and global assessments. The HISTORIC consensus meetings I and II will be followed by further e-Delphi rounds to finalize the core domain set, building on the work of the in-person consensus meetings.

A PARTICIPAÇÃO DAS ONG’S NOS ACORDOS MULTILATERAIS AMBIENTAIS: UMA ANÁLISE DA CONVENÇÃO SOBRE O COMÉRCIO INTERNACIONAL DE ESPÉCIES DA FLORA E DA FAUNA SELVAGENS AMEAÇADAS DE EXTINÇÃO (CITES)

Diante da necessidade de democratização da elaboração e implementação das políticas internacionais ambientais, nomeadamente em função da ampla compreensão do meio ambiente como interesse da sociedade mundial e objeto de cooperação, paradigmas que se tornaram mais fortes com a aceleração do processo de globalização, as organizações não governamentais (ONG’s) se afirmaram como atores legítimos cada vez mais influentes nesse processo ao longo das duas últimas décadas do século XX. As regras e práticas consagradas em várias instituições internacionais modernas demonstram consideráveis oportunidades e direitos de participação, tal como este estudo revela à luz do regime estabelecido pela Convenção sobre o Comércio Internacional de Espécies da Flora e da Fauna Selvagens Ameaçadas de Extinção (CITES). Contudo, alguns obstáculos à participação podem ser ainda postos à reflexão para futuros desenvolvimentos, por exemplo, a necessidade de maior abertura à participação em órgãos de decisão, a real função da análise prévia de documentos encaminhados pelas ONG’s nas reuniões oficiais, a necessidade de distinção entre ONG’s nacionais e internacionais, a exigência de instrumentos de equidade na contratação de serviços para as instituições internacionais e, finalmente, a falta de mecanismos de financiamento para representação dos países em desenvolvimento. Com efeito, anomalias de fato existem e requerem soluções. Todavia, devido às tendências introduzidas pela CITES, em especial pela codificação de novas regras de participação com base no forte consenso histórico de que as ONG’s são importantes parceiras nas formulação e implementação dos regimes internacionais ambientais, a expectativa é alta em favor de novas evoluções e paradigmas para a participação nos regimes multilaterais ambientais.

ChemInform Abstract: Polymer Mechanochemistry: From Destructive to Productive

AbstractReview: 76 refs.

Polymer mechanochemistry: from destructive to productive.

When one brings "polymeric materials" and "mechanical action" into the same conversation, the topic of this discussion might naturally focus on everyday circumstances such as failure of fibers, fatigue of composites, abrasion of coatings, etc. This intuitive viewpoint reflects the historic consensus in both academia and industry that mechanically induced chemical changes are destructive, leading to polymer degradation that limits materials lifetime on both macroscopic and molecular levels. In the 1930s, Staudinger observed mechanical degradation of polymers, and Melville later discovered that polymer chain scission caused the degradation. Inspired by these historical observations, we sought to redirect the destructive mechanical energy to a productive form that enables mechanoresponsive functions. In this Account, we provide a personal perspective on the origin, barriers, developments, and key advancements of polymer mechanochemistry. We revisit the seminal events that offered molecular-level insights into the mechanochemical behavior of polymers and influenced our thinking. We also highlight the milestones achieved by our group along with the contributions from key comrades at the frontier of this field. We present a workflow for the design, evaluation, and development of new "mechanophores", a term that has come to mean a molecular unit that chemically responds in a selective manner to a mechanical perturbation. We discuss the significance of computation in identifying pairs of points on the mechanophore that promote stretch-induced activation. Attaching polymer chains to the mechanophore at the most sensitive pair and locating the mechanophore near the center of a linear polymer are thought to maximize the efficiency of mechanical-to-chemical energy transduction. We also emphasize the importance of control experiments to validate mechanochemical transformations, both in solution and in the solid state, to differentiate "mechanical" from "thermal" activation. This Account offers our first-hand perspective of the change-in-thinking in polymer mechanochemistry from "destructive" to "productive" and looks at future advances that will stimulate this growing field.

ICPD both before and beyond 2014: The challenges of population and development in the twenty-first century

Twenty years since the historic consensus at the ICPD a global review of the International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) health in September of 1994 in Cairo Egypt a global review of the accomplishments and challenges of ICPD is currently being undertaken by the United Nations governments and civil society organizations. In anticipation of the culmination of this review process in September 2014 Global Public Health hopes to contribute to the ongoing debate on the reevaluation and reassessment of the legacy of Cairo and about the key challenges still facing the field of population and development by publishing a Special Issue of ICPD both before and beyond 2014. This Special Issue brings together articles by individuals working at the interface of research and advocacy including many people who were active participants in the 1994 ICPD process and who have continued to play significant roles in the post-ICPD period. The Special Issue opens with a number of articles that offer a broader assessment of the ICPD while contextualizing the legacy of the ICPD within current discussions on the post-2015 development agenda. [excerpt]

We Hold These Truths and the Pluralist Civilization

This essay explores the project undertaken by Murray in We Hold These Truths and its relevance to contemporary America. When it first appeared in 1960, We Hold These Truths made a powerful case to the American public for the compatibility of Catholicism and American democracy and of the need for a renewal of America’s historic public consensus rooted in natural law. It also emphasized the role that the Catholic political tradition could play in this renewal. Although parts of its argument may be problematic, and vast changes in America’s cultural and religious landscape make it dated in some respects, five decades after its original publication, Murray’s book nevertheless remains highly relevant to our contemporary situation, both as a contribution to democratic theory and as a profound reflection on the nature of “the civilization of the pluralist society.” John Courtney Murray’s justly celebrated We Hold These Truths, 1 published five decades ago, was written with two distinct but related aims in mind: the first was to establish that Catholicism and American democracy were fundamentally compatible; and the second was to elaborate a Catholic remedy for the disorders to which Murray believed democratic regimes (including the American republic) were prone. In support of the first aim, Murray stressed the enormous importance of the Gelasian principle (“Christianity’s cardinal contribution to the Western political tradition” [64]), which, by introducing a distinction between the sacred and the secular, broke with the social monism of antiquity and made possible the gradual articulation of further political and social differentiations—for instance, between state and society—that are so crucial to modern Western Constitutionalism. He further argued that it was during the medieval era that the Gelasian principle first began to bear major political fruit: for example, in the struggles between popes and emperors that marked the High Middle Ages, struggles that helped to clarify the respective jurisdictions of the two realms. In addition, Murray characterized St. Thomas Aquinas as “the first Whig” (32); maintained that scholasticism was “formative of the liberal tradition of the West” (22); and argued that the democratic idea was already implicit in the medieval period, which recognized both the

Addiction journals: amazing happenings, landmark meeting, historic consensus, evolving process.

Addiction journals: amazing happenings, landmark meeting, historic consensus, evolving process.

Addiction journals: amazing happenings, landmark meeting, historic consensus, evolving process

Addiction journals: amazing happenings, landmark meeting, historic consensus, evolving process

Welfare Reform: A Historic Consensus

Welfare Reform: A Historic Consensus

The Toryness of English Conservatism

It has often been observed that the agreement underlying British politics today extends beyond the constitution to issues of public policy. To the historic consensus on “the rules of the game” the British have added a stalemate on “the welfare state.” Common sense dictates that electoral demands have shaped the terms of political debate, so that the Conservatives, whose interests obviously are served by lower taxation and less government interference in the affairs of business, have had to bow to the pressures for collectivism built up during World War II and institutionalized by five years of rule under a Labour Government. By the same token the Labour Party has had to re-evaluate its policies of government direction and control of social and economic affairs in the face of decided satisfaction recently with the Conservative operation of the welfare machinery.Sole emphasis on electioneering, however, can overlook simultaneous and related developments on the ideological plane. For the community this can be observed in the gradual acceptance of Keynesian economics. The fact that government action can achieve and maintain full employment helped broaden and define the area of effective policy for both parties in Britain. More important for our purposes here is the inherent collectivism of British Conservatism — its “Toryness” — which permitted its adaptation to modern welfare policy and helped build the framework for that policy in the in ter-war years. It is my contention that British Conservatism exhibits its doctrinal element through its Tory tradition and that it is this tradition of the organic society, paternalism and authority, that served to interpret the demands of Conservative interests. The Tory tradition helps explain not only the collectivist similarity of the two main parties, it also contributes to an understanding of the endurance of Conservatism.