The cognitive deterioration of politicians is a critical emerging issue. As professions including law and medicine develop and implement cognitive assessments, their insights may inform the proper strategy within politics. The aging, lifetime-appointed judiciary raises legal and administrative questions of such assessments, while testing of older physicians experiencing cognitive decline provides real-life examples of implementation. In politics, cognitive assessment must contend with the field’s unique challenges, also taking context-dependent interpretations of cognitive-neuropsychological status into account. These perspectives, from legal and medical experts, political scientists, and officeholders, can contribute toward an equitable, functioning, and non-discriminatory system of assessing cognition that educates the public and enables politicians to maintain their public responsibilities. With proper implementation and sufficient public knowledge, we believe cognitive assessments for politicians, particularly political candidates, can be valuable for maintaining properly functioning governance. We offer recommendations on the development, implementation, and execution of such assessments, grappling with their democratic and legal implications.

Predation of sheep and cattle by the dingo (Canis lupus dingo) is implicated in significant stock losses throughout much of mainland Australia. Leg-hold traps are commonly used for dingo control and ways are sought to improve the humaneness of these devices. We evaluated the performance of the tranquilliser trap device (TTD) attached to Victor Soft-Catch® traps for their ability to deliver a sedative and anxiolytic drug to trapped dingoes. A trapping programme was conducted in south-west Queensland where traps were set alternatively with a TTD containing either 800 mg of diazepam (drug TTD) or a placebo (placebo TTD). All TTDs included 20 mg of the bait marker iophenoxic acid (IPA) to ascertain dosing success. Each trap was fitted with an activity-monitoring data logger that recorded time of capture and subsequent dingo activity. In 41 out of 48 (85.4%) captures the TTD was ruptured and released its contents. No elevation in serum iodine levels above I mg ml-1 resulting from the ingestion of IPA occurred in 8 out of 36 (22.2%) captures, which suggests a higher rate of dosage failure. Dingo activity was highest in both groups immediately after capture, but declined after the first hour in each. The activity of dingoes that accepted a drug TTD was significantly reduced compared to those that took the placebo. However, tooth and limb damage scores did not differ significantly between the drug and placebo group. Much of the physical trauma may have occurred within the first hour of capture when activity was intense and before drug onset in the TTD drug group. The use of TTDs containing sedative and anxiolytic drugs has the potential to reduce anxiety and distress associated with prolonged captivity, but the delivery of a lethal agent that is rapidly acting and humane may result in better welfare outcomes.

Exclusion of special populations (older adults; pregnant women, children, and adolescents; individuals of lower socioeconomic status and/or who live in rural communities; people from racial and ethnic minority groups; individuals from sexual or gender minority groups; and individuals with disabilities) in research is a pervasive problem, despite efforts and policy changes by the National Institutes of Health and other organizations. These populations are adversely impacted by social determinants of health (SDOH) that reduce access and ability to participate in biomedical research. In March 2020, the Northwestern University Clinical and Translational Sciences Institute hosted the “Lifespan and Life Course Research: integrating strategies” “Un-Meeting” to discuss barriers and solutions to underrepresentation of special populations in biomedical research. The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted how exclusion of representative populations in research can increase health inequities. We applied findings of this meeting to perform a literature review of barriers and solutions to recruitment and retention of representative populations in research and to discuss how findings are important to research conducted during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. We highlight the role of SDOH, review barriers and solutions to underrepresentation, and discuss the importance of a structural competency framework to improve research participation and retention among special populations.

Children with conduct problems and high callous-unemotional (CP+CU) traits are characterized by dampened emotional responding, limiting their ability for affective empathy and impacting the development of prosocial behaviors. However, research documenting this dampening in young children is sparse and findings vary, with attachment-related stimuli hypothesized to ameliorate deficits in emotional responding. Here we test emotional responsiveness across various emotion-eliciting stimuli using multiple measures of emotional responsiveness (behavioral, physiological, self-reported) and attention, in young children aged 2–8 years (M age = 5.37), with CP+CU traits (CP+CU; n = 36), CPs and low CU traits (CP−CU; n = 82) and a community control sample (CC; n = 27). We found no evidence that attachment-related stimulus ameliorated deficits in emotional responding. Rather, at a group level we found a consistent pattern of reduced responding across all independent measures of responsiveness for children with CP+CU compared to the CC group. Few differences were found between CP+CU and CP−CU groups. When independent measures were standardized and included in a regression model predicting to CU trait score, higher CU traits were associated with reduced emotional responding, demonstrating the importance of multimodal measurement of emotional responsiveness when investigating the impact of CU traits in young children.

This article reinterprets Thucydides's analysis of the post-Periclean turn in Athenian politics by reading it within the context of contemporary “tragic” and “scientific” explanatory traditions. It finds in this analysis an ambitious attempt to reinvent the traditional, tragic pattern of hubris-driven reversal by reinterpreting its underlying causal logic according to a scientific perspective in which the overdetermining effects of deities are replaced by the variable power dynamics of democratic deliberation. The resultant analysis identifies a change in the relative standing of leaders as the determining cause of democratic reversal, not the absolute decline in leadership, thus tracing the Athenian turn towards hubris, great error, and civil discord to the egalitarian ordering of the post-Periclean assembly. In so doing, it shows how Thucydides's analysis posed a powerful challenge to previous attempts, both tragic and scientific, to prognosticate the fate of imperial democracy, as well as offering an exemplary moment of Thucydides's synthetic approach towards tragic and scientific explanatory perspectives.

In recent decades, political theorists have significantly revised their understanding of Athenian democratic thinking. By opening up the canon, shifting their focus from abstract principles to democratic practices, and employing an increasingly diverse range of interpretive approaches, they have collectively reconstructed a more robust and multi-faceted account of the Athenian democratic public sphere. Despite its ecumenical ambitions and manifest successes, however, this project has been fettered by a singular focus on language as the medium of democratic politics. As can be seen in the gloss of one of its contributors, this body of work effectively limits the democratic public sphere to ‘the domain in which judgments and public opinion are shaped and formed through speech’. This logocentric demarcation of democratic practice does not harmonize well with our own experience of modern politics, however, where public monuments, political imagery, and civic spaces play a critical role in the formation of political understanding and judgment, as well as starting points for discussion, debate, and disagreement. It seems similarly out of tune with what we know about the ancient Greeks, who demonstrated a readiness to move between visual and verbal content in reflecting on political and ethical life, and who developed the very idea of theôria out of an extension of the process of seeing. If, as political theorists, we can temper our habitual logocentrism and learn to attend more closely to the visual culture of Athenian democracy, we stand to add new dimensions to our collective reconstruction of the democratic public sphere and, in turn, to enhance our understanding of those texts that have long preoccupied our attention.

A recent suicidal drive hypothesis posits that psychotic experiences (PEs) may serve to externalize internally generated and self-directed threat (i.e., self-injurious/suicidal behavior [SIB]) in order to optimize survival; however, it must first be demonstrated that such internal threat can both precede and inform PEs. The current study conducted the first known bidirectional analysis of SIB and PEs to test whether SIB could be considered as a plausible antecedent for PEs. Prospective data were utilized from the Environmental Risk (E-Risk) Longitudinal Twin Study, a nationally representative birth cohort of 2232 twins, that captured SIB (any self-harm or suicidal attempt) and PEs at ages 12 and 18 years. Cross-lagged panel models demonstrated that the association between SIB at age 12 and PEs at age 18 was as strong as the association between PEs at age 12 and SIB at age 18. Indeed, the best representation of the data was a model where these paths were constrained to be equal (OR = 2.48, 95% CI = 1.63–3.79). Clinical interview case notes for those who reported both SIB and PEs at age 18, revealed that PEs were explicitly characterized by SIB/threat/death-related content for 39% of cases. These findings justify further investigation of the suicidal drive hypothesis.

Objectives: Treatments for childhood brain tumors (BT) confer substantial risks to neurological development and contribute to neuropsychological deficits in young adulthood. Evidence suggests that individuals who experience more significant neurological insult may lack insight into their neurocognitive limitations. The present study compared survivor, mother, and performance-based estimates of executive functioning (EF), and their associations with treatment intensity history in a subsample of young adult survivors of childhood BTs. Methods: Thirty-four survivors (52.9% female), aged 18 to 30 years (M=23.5; SD=3.4), 16.1 years post-diagnosis (SD=5.9), were administered self-report and performance-based EF measures. Mothers also rated survivor EF skills. Survivors were classified by treatment intensity history into Minimal, Average/Moderate, or Intensive/Most-Intensive groups. Discrepancies among survivor, mother, and performance-based EF estimates were compared. Results: Survivor-reported and performance-based measures were not correlated, although significant associations were found between mother-reported and performance measures. Survivors in the Intensive/Most-Intensive treatment group evidenced the greatest score discrepancies, reporting less executive dysfunction relative to mother-reported F(2,31)=7.81, p<.01, and performance-based measures F(14,50)=2.54, p<.05. Conversely, survivors in the Minimal treatment group reported greater EF difficulties relative to mothers t(8)=2.82, p<.05, but not performance-based estimates (ps>.05). Conclusions: There may be a lack of agreement among survivor, mother, and performance-based estimates of EF skills in young adult survivors of childhood BT, and these discrepancies may be associated with treatment intensity history. Neuropsychologists should use a multi-method, multi-reporter approach to assessment of EF in this population. Providers also should be aware of these discrepancies as they may be a barrier to intervention efforts. (JINS, 2016, 22, 900–910)