Norm enforcement in the city revisited: An international field experiment of altruistic punishment, norm maintenance, and broken windows

In laboratory experiments, people are willing to sanction norms at a cost—a behavioral tendency called altruistic punishment. However, the degree to which these findings can be generalized to real-world interactions is still debated. Only a small number of field experiments have been conducted, and initial results suggest that punishment is less frequent outside of the lab. This study replicates one of the first field experiments on altruistic punishment and builds ties to research on norm compliance and the broken windows theory. The original study addressed the enforcement of the anti-littering norm in Athens. We replicate this study in Bern, Zurich, and New York City. As an extension, we investigate how the experimental context (clean vs littered) impacts social norm enforcement. As a second extension, we investigate how opportunity structure impacts the maintenance of the anti-littering norm. Findings indicate that norms are universally enforced, although significantly less than in the standard laboratory experiment,and that enforcement is significantly more common in Switzerland than in New York. Moreover, individuals prefer more subtle forms of enforcement to direct punishment. We also find that enforcement is less frequent in littered than in clean contexts, suggesting that broken windows might not only foster deviant behavior but also weaken informal social control. Finally, we find that opportunity structure can encourage people to maintain norms, as indicated by the fact that people are more likely to voluntarily pick up litter when it is closer to a trash bin.

Fossil versus contemporary sources of fine elemental and organic carbonaceous particulate matter during the DAURE campaign in Northeast Spain

We present results from the international field campaign DAURE (Detn. of the sources of atm. Aerosols in Urban and Rural Environments in the Western Mediterranean), with the objective of apportioning the sources of fine carbonaceous aerosols. Submicron fine particulate matter (PM1) samples were collected during Feb.-March 2009 and July 2009 at an urban background site in Barcelona (BCN) and at a forested regional background site in Montseny (MSY). We present radiocarbon (14C) anal. for elemental and org. carbon (EC and OC) and source apportionment for these data. We combine the results with those from component anal. of aerosol mass spectrometer (AMS) measurements, and compare to levoglucosan-based ests. of biomass burning OC, source apportionment of filter data with inorg. compn. + EC + OC, submicron bulk potassium (K) concns., and gaseous acetonitrile concns. At BCN, 87 % and 91 % of the EC on av., in winter and summer, resp., had a fossil origin, whereas at MSY these fractions were 66 % and 79 %. The contribution of fossil sources to org. carbon (OC) at BCN was 40 % and 48 %, in winter and summer, resp., and 31 % and 25 % at MSY. The combination of results obtained using the 14C technique, AMS data, and the correlations between fossil OC and fossil EC imply that the fossil OC at Barcelona is ∼47 % primary whereas at MSY the fossil OC is mainly secondary (∼85 %). Day-to-day variation in total carbonaceous aerosol loading and the relative contributions of different sources predominantly depended on the meteorol. transport conditions. The estd. biogenic secondary OC at MSY only increased by ∼40 % compared to the order-of-magnitude increase obsd. for biogenic volatile org. compds. (VOCs) between winter and summer, which highlights the uncertainties in the estn. of that component. Biomass burning contributions estd. using the 14C technique ranged from similar to slightly higher than when estd. using other techniques, and the different estns. were highly or moderately correlated. Differences can be explained by the contribution of secondary org. matter (not included in the primary biomass burning source ests.), and/or by an over-estn. of the biomass burning OC contribution by the 14C technique if the estd. biomass burning EC/OC ratio used for the calcns. is too high for this region. Acetonitrile concns. correlate well with the biomass burning EC detd. by 14C. K is a noisy tracer for biomass burning. [on SciFinder(R)]

Effects of sources and meteorology on particulate matter in the Western Mediterranean Basin: An overview of the DAURE campaign

DAURE (Determination of the Sources of Atmospheric Aerosols in Urban and Rural Environments in the Western Mediterranean) was a multidisciplinary international field campaign aimed at investigating the sources and meteorological controls of particulate matter in the Western Mediterranean Basin (WMB). Measurements were simultaneously performed at an urban-coastal (Barcelona, BCN) and a rural-elevated (Montseny, MSY) site pair in NE Spain during winter and summer. State-of-the-art methods such as 14C analysis, proton-transfer reaction mass spectrometry, and high-resolution aerosol mass spectrometry were applied for the first time in the WMB as part of DAURE. WMB regional pollution episodes were associated with high concentrations of inorganic and organic species formed during the transport to inland areas and built up at regional scales. Winter pollutants accumulation depended on the degree of regional stagnation of an air mass under anticyclonic conditions and the planetary boundary layer height. In summer, regional recirculation and biogenic secondary organic aerosols (SOA) formation mainly determined the regional pollutant concentrations. The contribution from fossil sources to organic carbon (OC) and elemental carbon (EC) and hydrocarbon-like organic aerosol concentrations were higher at BCN compared with MSY due to traffic emissions. The relative contribution of nonfossil OC was higher at MSY especially in summer due to biogenic emissions. The fossil OC/EC ratio at MSY was twice the corresponding ratio at BCN indicating that a substantial fraction of fossil OC was due to fossil SOA. In winter, BCN cooking emissions were identified as an important source of modern carbon in primary organic aerosol.

Valle d’Aosta section of the Sesia Zone: multi-stage HP metamorphism and assembly of a rifted continental margin

The spectrum characteristic of the EMC ranges from eclogites (containing omphacite and/or jadeite, garnet, phengite, glaucophane, zoisite, chloritoid, rutile) to phengite schists, calcschists, and marbles, as well as a variety of orthogneisses. Despite the intense polyphase deformation and HP-metamorphic recrystallization, it is possible in some locations to recognize pre-Alpine characteristics in some of the protoliths. For instance, two types of felsic orthogneiss can be distinguished in the Aosta Valley, one derived from Permian granitoids (with local preservation of intrusive contacts, magmatic inclusions, leucocratic veins and other magmatic structures; Stop 3), the other derived from pre-Variscan leuco-monzogranite, such as the building stone mined at the “Argentera” quarry near Settimo Vittone / Montestrutto (Stop 2; so-called “Verde Argento” contains jadeite, phengite, K-feldspar, quartz). Polycyclic and more rarely monocyclic metasediments contain evidence of a complex Alpine PTDt-evolution, locally including relics of their prograde history from blueschist, one or more stages at eclogite facies. Recent petrochronological studies have dated this HP-evolution of the Sesia Zone in some detail. In the area visited, clear evidence of HP-cycling has been identified in one km-size tectonic slice (Stop 1), but not in adjacent parts of the EMC, indicating “yo-yo tectonics”. Partial retrogression and attendant ductile to brittle deformation of the HP-rocks is evident in one of the outcrops (Stop 4). Apart from the four localities in the Sesia Zone, a final outcrop introduces HP-rocks of the adjacent Piemonte oceanic unit, specifically calc-schists and ophiolite members of the “Zermatt-Saas” zone. The hilltop outcrop (Stop 5) displays foliated antigorite schist with peridotite relics (clinopyroxene, spinel) containing lenses derived from doleritic dykes. These fine-grained metarodingites and the folded veins containing Mg-chlorite and titanoclinohumite within serpentinite once again indicate equilibration under low-temperature eclogite facies conditions. However, these units reached that HP stage more than 20 Ma after the youngest eclogite facies imprint recognized in the Sesia Zone. Despite nearly half a century of intense study in the Sesia Zone, the complex assembly of its HP-terranes and their relation to more external parts of the Western Alps remains incompletely understood. This field guide merely introduces a few of the classic outcrops and discusses some of the critical evidence they contain, but it could not incorporate details on each stage of the evolution recognized so far.

Atlas-Based Segmentation of Brain Tumor Images Using a Markov Random Field-Based Tumor Growth Model and Non-Rigid Registration

We propose a new and clinically oriented approach to perform atlas-based segmentation of brain tumor images. A mesh-free method is used to model tumor-induced soft tissue deformations in a healthy brain atlas image with subsequent registration of the modified atlas to a pathologic patient image. The atlas is seeded with a tumor position prior and tumor growth simulating the tumor mass effect is performed with the aim of improving the registration accuracy in case of patients with space-occupying lesions. We perform tests on 2D axial slices of five different patient data sets and show that the approach gives good results for the segmentation of white matter, grey matter, cerebrospinal fluid and the tumor.

Development of a documentation instrument for the conservative treatment of spinal disorders in the International Spine Registry, Spine Tango

Spine Tango is the first and only International Spine Registry in operation to date. So far, only surgical spinal interventions have been recorded and no comparable structured and comprehensive documentation instrument for conservative treatments of spinal disorders is available. This study reports on the development of a documentation instrument for the conservative treatment of spinal disorders by using the Delphi consensus method. It was conducted with a group of international experts in the field. We also assessed the usability of this new assessment tool with a prospective feasibility study on 97 outpatients and inpatients with low back or neck pain undergoing conservative treatment. The new 'Spine Tango conservative' questionnaire proved useful and suitable for the documentation of pathologies, conservative treatments and outcomes of patients with low back or neck problems. A follow-up questionnaire seemed less important in the predominantly outpatient setting. In the feasibility study, between 43 and 63% of patients reached the minimal clinically important difference in pain relief and Core Outcome Measures Index at 3 months after therapy; 87% of patients with back pain and 85% with neck pain were satisfied with the received treatment. With 'Spine Tango conservative' a first step has been taken to develop and implement a complementary system for documentation and evaluation of non-surgical spinal interventions and outcomes within the framework of the International Spine Registry. It proved useful and feasible in a first pilot study, but it will take the experience of many more cases and therapists to develop a version similarly mature as the surgical instruments of Spine Tango.

Fully Automatic Segmentation of Brain Tumor Images using Support Vector Machine Classiffication in Combination with Hierarchical Conditional Random Field Regularization

Delineating brain tumor boundaries from magnetic resonance images is an essential task for the analysis of brain cancer. We propose a fully automatic method for brain tissue segmentation, which combines Support Vector Machine classification using multispectral intensities and textures with subsequent hierarchical regularization based on Conditional Random Fields. The CRF regularization introduces spatial constraints to the powerful SVM classification, which assumes voxels to be independent from their neighbors. The approach first separates healthy and tumor tissue before both regions are subclassified into cerebrospinal fluid, white matter, gray matter and necrotic, active, edema region respectively in a novel hierarchical way. The hierarchical approach adds robustness and speed by allowing to apply different levels of regularization at different stages. The method is fast and tailored to standard clinical acquisition protocols. It was assessed on 10 multispectral patient datasets with results outperforming previous methods in terms of segmentation detail and computation times.

Segmentation of brain tumor images based on atlas-registration combined with a Markov-Random-Field lesion growth model

We present an automatic method to segment brain tissues from volumetric MRI brain tumor images. The method is based on non-rigid registration of an average atlas in combination with a biomechanically justified tumor growth model to simulate soft-tissue deformations caused by the tumor mass-effect. The tumor growth model, which is formulated as a mesh-free Markov Random Field energy minimization problem, ensures correspondence between the atlas and the patient image, prior to the registration step. The method is non-parametric, simple and fast compared to other approaches while maintaining similar accuracy. It has been evaluated qualitatively and quantitatively with promising results on eight datasets comprising simulated images and real patient data.