Dealing with bad guys: actor- and process-level determinants of the “devil shift” in policy making

Policy actors tend to misinterpret and distrust opponents in policy processes. This phenomenon, known as the “devil shift”, consists of the following two dimensions: actors perceive opponents as more powerful and as more evil than they really are. Analysing nine policy processes in Switzerland, this article highlights the drivers of the devil shift at two levels. On the actor level, interest groups, political parties and powerful actors suffer more from the devil shift than state actors and powerless actors. On the process level, the devil shift is stronger in policy processes dealing with socio-economic issues as compared with other issues. Finally, and in line with previous studies, there is less empirical evidence of the power dimension of the devil shift phenomenon than of its evilness dimension.

Separation of small metabolites and lipids in spectra from biopsies by diffusion-weighted HR-MAS NMR: a feasibility study.

High Resolution Magic Angle Spinning (HR-MAS) NMR allows metabolic characterization of biopsies. HR-MAS spectra from tissues of most organs show strong lipid contributions that are overlapping metabolite regions, which hamper metabolite estimation. Metabolite quantification and analysis would benefit from a separation of lipids and small metabolites. Generally, a relaxation filter is used to reduce lipid contributions. However, the strong relaxation filter required to eliminate most of the lipids also reduces the signals for small metabolites. The aim of our study was therefore to investigate different diffusion editing techniques in order to employ diffusion differences for separating lipid and small metabolite contributions in the spectra from different organs for unbiased metabonomic analysis. Thus, 1D and 2D diffusion measurements were performed, and pure lipid spectra that were obtained at strong diffusion weighting (DW) were subtracted from those obtained at low DW, which include both small metabolites and lipids. This subtraction yielded almost lipid free small metabolite spectra from muscle tissue. Further improved separation was obtained by combining a 1D diffusion sequence with a T2-filter, with the subtraction method eliminating residual lipids from the spectra. Similar results obtained for biopsies of different organs suggest that this method is applicable in various tissue types. The elimination of lipids from HR-MAS spectra and the resulting less biased assessment of small metabolites have potential to remove ambiguities in the interpretation of metabonomic results. This is demonstrated in a reproducibility study on biopsies from human muscle.

Structure of the histone mRNA hairpin required for cell cycle regulation of histone gene expression.

Expression of replication-dependent histone genes requires a conserved hairpin RNA element in the 3' untranslated regions of poly(A)-less histone mRNAs. The 3' hairpin element is recognized by the hairpin-binding protein or stem-loop-binding protein (HBP/SLBP). This protein-RNA interaction is important for the endonucleolytic cleavage generating the mature mRNA 3' end. The 3' hairpin and presumably HBP/SLBP are also required for nucleocytoplasmic transport, translation, and stability of histone mRNAs. RNA 3' processing and mRNA stability are both regulated during the cell cycle. Here, we have determined the three-dimensional structure of a 24-mer RNA comprising a mammalian histone RNA hairpin using heteronuclear multidimensional NMR spectroscopy. The hairpin adopts a novel UUUC tetraloop conformation that is stabilized by base stacking involving the first and third loop uridines and a closing U-A base pair, and by hydrogen bonding between the first and third uridines in the tetraloop. The HBP interaction of hairpin RNA variants was analyzed in band shift experiments. Particularly important interactions for HBP recognition are mediated by the closing U-A base pair and the first and third loop uridines, whose Watson-Crick functional groups are exposed towards the major groove of the RNA hairpin. The results obtained provide novel structural insight into the interaction of the histone 3' hairpin with HBP, and thus the regulation of histone mRNA metabolism.