The response to levodopa (LR) is important for managing Parkinson’s Disease and is measured with clinical scales prior to (OFF) and after (ON) levodopa. The aim of this study was to ascertain whether an ambulatory wearable device could predict the LR from the response to the first morning dose. The ON and OFF scores were sorted into six categories of severity so that separating Parkinson’s Kinetigraph (PKG) features corresponding to the ON and OFF scores became a multi-class classification problem according to whether they fell below or above the threshold for each class. Candidate features were extracted from the PKG data and matched to the class labels. Several linear and non-linear candidate statistical models were examined and compared to classify the six categories of severity. The resulting model predicted a clinically significant LR with an area under the receiver operator curve of 0.92. This study shows that ambulatory data could be used to identify a clinically significant response to levodopa. This study has also identified practical steps that would enhance the reliability of this test in future studies.

Partisan dealignment is recurrently presented in the literature as one of the main drivers of the 'personalisation of politics'. Yet, on the one hand, the claim that leader effects on voting behaviour are increasing across time is short on comparative evidence. On the other hand, there is limited empirical evidence that such an increase is due to dealignment. This article explores the longitudinal relationship between partisan dealignment, leader effects and party choice, through a novel dataset pooling 109 national election surveys collected in 14 Western European parliamentary democracies across the last six decades. The results show that leader effects increased over time as a function of the decline of party identification. Additional panel evidence from selected countries shows that partisan dealignment is responsible for increasing leader effects on party choice at the individual level. The longitudinal dimension of this study contributes to the most contested aspect of the personalisation of politics debate.KEYWORDS Dealignment; leader effects; party identification; personalisation of politics; voting behaviourThe centrality of political leaders in contemporary democracies has been sustained by an increasing amount of research in political science. From an institutional point of view, research documents a transformation in the structure and organisation of modern political parties in favour of the leadership position. From the rise of catch-all parties to the emergence of personal parties, contemporary party scholars ascribe a more prominent role to party leaders both within party organisation and as executives in government. This describes a trend towards the presidentialisation of party structures (Passarelli 2015;Poguntke and Webb 2005).

Voting Advice Applications (VAAs) help users casting a vote by offering an explicit ranking of viable options. The wide amount of readily available information provided by VAAs to users has been shown to contribute to reducing the transactional costs involved in gathering relevant political information. Available evidence also supports the idea that VAA users are more likely to cast a ballot in elections as a result. The extent to which electoral participation is caused by using a VAA, however, remains unclear. Against this background, we reassess the mobilizing effect of VAAs by means of a multi-method approach. Our cross-sectional analysis of 12 national election study data sets provides further support to the idea that VAA usage increases users' chances of casting a ballot in elections as compared to non-users. This conclusion is strengthened by the results of a randomized field experiment conducted in the context of the 2013 Italian parliamentary election.

Background and purpose Hypomimia is a prominent clinical feature in people with Parkinson’s disease (PD), but it remains under‐investigated. We aimed to examine the clinical correlates of hypomimia in PD and to determine whether this is a levodopa‐responsive sign. Methods We included 89 people with PD. Hypomimia was assessed from digital video recordings by movement disorder specialists. Clinical evaluation included use of the Unified Parkinson’s Disease Rating Scale part III (UPDRS‐III), and assessment of motor and non‐motor symptoms using standardized clinical scales. The relationships between hypomimia and other clinical data were analysed using Mann–Whitney U‐tests and regression analysis. Results Hypomimia occurred in up to 70% of patients with PD. Patients with hypomimia had worse UPDRS‐III 'off‐medication' scores, mainly driven by bradykinesia and rigidity subscores. Patients with hypomimia also had worse apathy than patients without hypomimia. Finally, we found that hypomimia was levodopa‐responsive and its improvement mirrored the change by levodopa in axial motor symptoms. Conclusion Our study provides novel information regarding the clinical correlates of hypomimia in people with PD. A better understanding of hypomimia may be relevant for improving treatment and quality of life in PD.

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