Is the left-right scale a valid measure of ideology? Individual-level variation in associations with "left" and "right" and left-right self-placement

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Direct democracy plays a prominent role in the explanation of institutional trust. To date, however, empirical findings on the effects of direct democracy remain inconclusive. In this article, we argue that this inconclusiveness can be partly ascribed to the diverse effects direct democracy has on individuals. In other words, direct democracy influences institutional trust, but how and to what degree depends on individuals’ personality traits. Running hierarchical analyses of unique survey data from a random sample of eligible Swiss voters, we document three findings: First, we show that the number of ballot measures is not directly associated with institutional trust. Second, we demonstrate that the Big Five personality traits affect the propensity to trust. Third, some of these traits also alter the relationship between direct democracy and institutional trust, suggesting that certain personality types are more likely to be sensitive to popular votes than others and that not everyone is equally likely to respond to political stimuli, even in highly democratic environments.

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Growth differentiation factor-15 (GDF-15), a divergent and distant member of the transforming growth factor-β superfamily, is suggested as a risk factor for cardiovascular diseases. Thus, we are interested to investigate the influence of GDF-15 in lipid homeostasis and autophagy in macrophages (MΦ) during foam cell formation. Our investigations represent the impairment of GDF-15 on modulators of autophagy and lipid homeostasis in PMA-differentiated human THP-1 MΦ. In this context, in vitro resulted GDF-15 silencing in a reduction of lipid accumulation, whereas the addition of recombinant (r)GDF-15 increased the lipid accumulation in human MΦ independent of oxidized (ox)LDL. Additionally, GDF-15 affected the expression of autophagy-relevant proteins (p62, Atg5 and Atg12/Atg5 protein complex) and the p62 accumulation in THP-1 MΦ. Hence, our data suggest that GDF-15 is involved in the regulation of the lipid homoeostasis of human MΦ by regulating autophagic processes.