The neural circuitry of a broken promise

Promises are one of the oldest human-specific psychological mechanisms fostering cooperation and trust. Here, we study the neural underpinnings of promise keeping and promise breaking. Subjects first make a promise decision (promise stage), then they anticipate whether the promise affects the interaction partner's decision (anticipation stage) and are subsequently free to keep or break the promise (decision stage). Findings revealed that the breaking of the promise is associated with increased activation in the DLPFC, ACC, and amygdala, suggesting that the dishonest act involves an emotional conflict due to the suppression of the honest response. Moreover, the breach of the promise can be predicted by a perfidious brain activity pattern (anterior insula, ACC, inferior frontal gyrus) during the promise and anticipation stage, indicating that brain measurements may reveal malevolent intentions before dishonest or deceitful acts are actually committed.

Mammografie-Screening

Nur wenige Vorsorgeuntersuchungen sind so umfassend in randomisiert-kon- trollierten Studien (RCTs) untersucht worden wie das Screening auf Brustkrebs mit Hilfe der Mammografie. Es liegen derzeit acht große randomisiert-kontrol- lierte Studien und mehrere Meta-Analysen vor. Letztere kommen mehrheitlich zum Schluss, dass sich die Brustkrebssterblichkeit durch Mammografie-Screening um etwa 20 % senken lässt. Dies bedeutet im Schweizer Kontext, dass etwa 1 von 1'000 Frauen weniger an Brustkrebs stirbt, wenn Frauen ab dem 50. Lebensjahr zehn Jahre lang gescreent werden. Andererseits führt das Screening auch zu Überdiagnosen und Übertherapien. So nimmt die Zahl der Brustkrebsdiagnosen um etwa 20 % zu, was zu einer entsprechenden Zunahme an chirurgischen Ein- griffen, Strahlen- und Chemotherapien führt. Über zehn Jahre gerechnet, erhal- ten etwa 4 von 1'000 Frauen eine Brustkrebsdiagnose, die sie ohne Screening nicht erhalten hätten. Etwa 200 von 1'000 Frauen sind im Verlaufe von zehn Jahren (fünf Screening-Runden) mit abklärungsbedürftigen Befunden konfron- tiert, wobei es sich dabei mehrheitlich um falsch positive Befunde handelt. Gleichzeitig werden auch mit einem Screening-Programm 20 bis 30 % der Brust- krebse nicht im Screening erfasst. Die Information der Bevölkerung bezüglich des Mammografie-Screenings ist derzeit noch mangelhaft. Dies führt dazu, dass der mögliche Nutzen von den betroffenen Frauen überschätzt und der Schaden unterschätzt wird. Die Aufklärung der Bevölkerung im Hinblick auf Nutzen und Risiken des Mammografie-Screenings muss daher verbessert werden, denn Frau- en haben einen Anspruch auf evidenzbasierte Informationen und eine „infor- mierte Entscheidung“.

Trade Versus Culture in the Digital Environment : An Old Conflict in Need of a New Definition

Following the recent UNESCO Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions, the first wave of scholarly work has focused on clarifying the interface between the Convention and the WTO Agreements. Building upon these analyses, the present article takes however a different stance. It seeks a new, rather pragmatic definition of the relationship between trade and culture and argues that such a re-definition is particularly needed in the digital networked environment that has modified the ways markets for cultural content function and the ways in which cultural content is created, distributed and accessed. The article explores first the significance of the UNESCO Convention (or the lack thereof) and subsequently outlines a variety of ways in which the WTO framework can be improved in a ‘neutral’, not necessarily culturally motivated, manner to become more conducive to the pursuit of cultural diversity and taking into account the changed reality of digital media. The article also looks at other facets of the profoundly fragmented culture-related regulatory framework and underscores the critical importance of intellectual property rights and of other domains that appear at first sight peripheral to the trade and culture discussion, such as access to infrastructure, interoperability or net neutrality. It is argued that a number of feasible solutions exist beyond the politically charged confrontation of trade versus culture and that the new digital media landscape may require a readjustment of the priorities and the tools for the achievement of the widely accepted objective of cultural diversity.

Neural correlates of anticipation risk reflect risk preferences

Individual risk preferences have a large influence on decisions, such as financial investments, career and health choices, or gambling. Decision making under risk has been studied both behaviorally and on a neural level. It remains unclear, however, how risk attitudes are encoded and integrated with choice. Here, we investigate how risk preferences are reflected in neural regions known to process risk. We collected functional magnetic resonance images of 56 human subjects during a gambling task (Preuschoff et al., 2006). Subjects were grouped into risk averters and risk seekers according to the risk preferences they revealed in a separate lottery task. We found that during the anticipation of high-risk gambles, risk averters show stronger responses in ventral striatum and anterior insula compared to risk seekers. In addition, risk prediction error signals in anterior insula, inferior frontal gyrus, and anterior cingulate indicate that risk averters do not dissociate properly between gambles that are more or less risky than expected. We suggest this may result in a general overestimation of prospective risk and lead to risk avoidance behavior. This is the first study to show that behavioral risk preferences are reflected in the passive evaluation of risky situations. The results have implications on public policies in the financial and health domain.

Saving the Australian War Effort in 1916? The Significance and Impact of Global Climatic Conditions and Pests on William Morris Hughes’ Negotiations with the British Government

Taking up the thesis of Dipesh Chakrabarty (2009) that human history (including cultural history) on the one hand and natural history on the other must be brought into conversation more than has been done so in the past, this presentation will focus more closely on the significance and the impact of global climatic conditions and pests on the negotiations that Australian Prime Minister William Morris Hughes carried on with the British government between March and November 1916. Whereas Australia had been able to sell most of its produce in 1914 and 1915 the situation looked more serious in 1916, not least due to the growing shortage in shipping. It was therefore imperative for the Australian government to find a way to solve this problem, not least because it wanted to keep up its own war effort at the pace it had been going so far. In this context intentions to make or press ahead with a contribution to a war perceived to be more total those of the past interacted with natural phenomena such as the declining harvest in many parts of the world in 1916 as a consequence of climatic conditions as well as pests in many parts of the world.

Dominance, Competition, Compromise or Consensus? Explaining Decision-Making Structures

The previous chapter uncovered important differences between decision-making structures across the 11 processes investigated by this study. As we have noted, both historically and in much contemporary literature, the Swiss political system has been described as highly consensual. And yet, when we focus on differences between decision-making structures across different policy domains, important elements appear that point toward a more conflictual style of decision-making. Both when there is a power balance between coalitions and in the presence of a dominant coalition, coalition interactions are conflictual in the majority of cases. Based on the descriptive account of these differences in Chapter 4, the present chapter studies the conditions under which given decision-making structures emerge. Under which circumstances are actors able to form a dominant coalition, and which conditions lead to a situation where power is more evenly balanced between coalitions? Which conditions lead actors to develop a conflictual rather than a consensual type of interaction? Answering these questions can give us some indication of the factors responsible for different types of decision-making structures.

Competition for neuronal resources: how hallucinations make themselves heard

BACKGROUND: Hallucinations are perceptions in the absence of a corresponding external sensory stimulus. However, during auditory verbal hallucinations, activation of the primary auditory cortex has been described. AIMS: The objective of this study was to investigate whether this activation of the auditory cortex contributes essentially to the character of hallucinations and attributes them to alien sources, or whether the auditory activation is a sign of increased general auditory attention to external sounds. METHOD: The responsiveness of the auditory cortex was investigated by auditory evoked potentials (N100) during the simultaneous occurrence of hallucinations and external stimuli. Evoked potentials were computed separately for periods with and without hallucinations; N100 power, topography and brain electrical sources were analysed. RESULTS: Hallucinations lowered the N100 amplitudes and changed the topography, presumably due to a reduced left temporal responsivity. CONCLUSIONS: This finding indicates competition between auditory stimuli and hallucinations for physiological resources in the primary auditory cortex. The abnormal activation of the primary auditory cortex may thus be a constituent of auditory hallucinations.

Counterbalancing effects of competition for resources and facilitation against grazing in alpine snowbed communities

Alpine snowbeds are habitats where the major limiting factors for plant growth are herbivory and a small time window for growth due to late snowmelt. Despite these limitations, snowbed vegetation usually forms a dense carpet of palatable plants due to favourable abiotic conditions for plant growth within the short growing season. These environmental characteristics make snowbeds particularly interesting to study the interplay of facilitation and competition. We hypothesised an interplay between resource competition and facilitation against herbivory. Further, we investigated whether these predicted neighbour effects were species-specific and/or dependent on ontogeny, and whether the balance of positive and negative plant–plant interactions shifted along a snowmelt gradient. We determined the neighbour effects by means of neighbour removal experiments along the snowmelt gradient, and linear mixed model analyses. The results showed that the effects of neighbour removal were weak but generally consistent among species and snowmelt dates, and depended on whether biomass production or survival was considered. Higher total biomass and increased fruiting in removal plots indicated that plants competed for nutrients, water, and light, thereby supporting the hypothesis of prevailing competition for resources in snowbeds. However, the presence of neighbours reduced herbivory and thereby also facilitated survival. For plant growth the facilitative effects against herbivores in snowbeds counterbalanced competition for resources, leading to a weak negative net effect. Overall the neighbour effects were not species-specific and did not change with snowmelt date. Our finding of counterbalancing effects of competition and facilitation within a plant community is of special theoretical value for species distribution models and can explain the success of models that give primary importance to abiotic factors and tend to overlook interrelations between biotic and abiotic effects on plants.

Sugar concentration influences decision making in <i>Apis mellifera</i> L. workers during early-stage honey storage behaviour

Decision making in honeybees is based on in- formation which is acquired and processed in order to make choices between two or more al- ternatives. These choices lead to the expression of optimal behaviour strategies such as floral constancy. Optimal foraging strategies such as floral constancy improve a colony’s chances of survival, however to our knowledge, there has been no research on decision making based on optimal storage strategies. Here we show, using diagnostic radioentomology, that decision mak- ing in storer bees is influenced by nectar sugar concentrations and that, within 48 hours of col- lection, honeybees workers store carbohydrates in groups of cells with similar sugar concentra- tions in a nonrandom way. This behaviour, as evidenced by patchy spatial cell distributions, would help to hasten the ripening process by reducing the distance between cells of similar sugar concentrations. Thus, colonies which ex- hibit optimal storage strategies such as these would have an evolutionary advantage and im- prove colony survival expectations over less efficient colonies and it should be plausible to select colonies that exhibit these preferred traits.

User and Machine Authentication and Authorization Infrastructure for Distributed Wireless Sensor Network Testbeds

The intention of an authentication and authorization infrastructure (AAI) is to simplify and unify access to different web resources. With a single login, a user can access web applications at multiple organizations. The Shibboleth authentication and authorization infrastructure is a standards-based, open source software package for web single sign-on (SSO) across or within organizational boundaries. It allows service providers to make fine-grained authorization decisions for individual access of protected online resources. The Shibboleth system is a widely used AAI, but only supports protection of browser-based web resources. We have implemented a Shibboleth AAI extension to protect web services using Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP). Besides user authentication for browser-based web resources, this extension also provides user and machine authentication for web service-based resources. Although implemented for a Shibboleth AAI, the architecture can be easily adapted to other AAIs.

Direct male-male competition can facilitate invasion of new colour types in Lake Victoria cichlids

The possibility that disruptive sexual selection alone can cause sympatric speciation is currently a subject of much debate. The initial difficulty for new and rare ornament phenotypes to invade a population, and the stabilisation of the resulting polymorphism in trait and preference make this hypothesis problematic. Recent theoretical work indicates that the invasion is facilitated if males with the new phenotype have an initial advantage in male-male competition. We studied a pair of sympatric incipient species of cichlids from Lake Victoria, in which the red (Pundamilia nyererei) and blue males (P. pundamilia) vigorously defend territories. Other studies suggested that red phenotypes may have repeatedly invaded blue populations in independent episodes of speciation. We hypothesised that red coloration confers an advantage in male-male competition, assisting red phenotypes to invade. To test this hypothesis, we staged contests between red and blue males from a population where the phenotypes are interbreeding morphs or incipient species. We staged contests under both white and green light condition. Green light effectively masks the difference between red and blue coloration. Red males dominated blue males under white light, but their competitive advantage was significantly diminished under green light. Contests were shorter when colour differences were visible. Experience of blue males with red males did not affect the outcome of a contest. The advantage of red over blue in combats may assist the red phenotype to invade blue populations. The apparently stable co-existence of red and blue incipient species in many populations of Lake Victoria cichlids is discussed.

Assessment of low-flow, low-gradient, severe aortic stenosis: an invasive evaluation is required for decision making.

Low-flow, low-gradient severe aortic stenosis (AS) is characterised by a small aortic valve area (AVA) and low mean gradient (MG) secondary to a low cardiac output and may occur in patients with either a preserved or reduced left ventricular ejection fraction (LVEF). Symptomatic patients presenting with low-flow, low-gradient severe AS have a dismal prognosis independent of baseline LVEF if managed conservatively and should therefore undergo aortic valve replacement if feasible. Transthoracic echocardiography (TTE) is the first-line investigation for the assessment of AS haemodynamic severity. However, when confronted with guideline-discordant AVA (small) and MG (low) values, there are several reasons other than severe AS combined with a low cardiac output which may lead to such a situation, including erroneous measurements, small body size, inherent inconsistencies in the guidelines' criteria, prolonged ejection time and aortic pseudostenosis. The distinction between these various entities poses a diagnostic challenge. However, it is important to make a distinction because each has very different implications in terms of risk stratification and therapeutic management. In such instances, cardiac catheterisation forms an integral part of the work-up of these patients in order to confirm or refute the echocardiographic findings to guide management decisions appropriately.

Foreign Direct Investment in Agriculture: Land Grab or Food Security Improvement?

“Large-scale acquisition of land by foreign investors” is the correct term for a process where the verdict of guilt is often quicker than the examination. But is there something really new about land grab except in its extent? In comparison with colonial and post-colonial plantation operations, should foreign investors today behave differently? We generally accept coffee and banana exports as pro-growth and pro-development, just as for cars, beef and insurance. What then is wrong with an investment contract allowing the holder to buy a farm and to export wheat to Saudi Arabia, or soybeans and maize as cattle feed to Korea, or to plant and process sugar cane and palm oil into ethanol for Europe and China? Assuming their land acquisition was legal, should foreigners respect more than investment contracts and national legislation? And why would they not take advantage of the legal protection offered by international investment law and treaties, not to speak of concessional finance, infrastructure and technical cooperation by a development bank, or the tax holidays offered by the host state? Remember Milton Friedman’s often-quoted quip: “The business of business is business!” And why would the governments signing those contracts not know whether and which foreign investment projects are best for their country, and how to attract them? This chapter tries to show that land grab, where it occurs, is not only yet another symptom of regulatory failures at the national level and a lack of corporate social responsibility by certain private actors. National governance is clearly the most important factor. Nonetheless, I submit that there is an international dimension involving investor home states in various capacities. The implication is that land grab is not solely a question whether a particular investment contract is legal or not. This chapter deals with legal issues which seem to have largely escaped the attention of both human rights lawyers and, especially, of investment lawyers. I address this fragmentation between different legal disciplines, rules, and policies, by asking two basic questions: (i) Do governments and parliaments in investor home countries have any responsibility in respect of the behaviour of their investors abroad? (ii) What should they and international regulators do, if anything?