Doing it when others do: a strategic model of procrastination

This paper develops a strategic model of procrastination in which present‐biased agents prefer to perform an onerous task with someone else. This turns their decision of when to perform the task into a procrastination game - a dynamic coordination game between present‐biased players. The model characterizes the conditions under which interaction mitigates or exacerbates procrastination. A procrastinator matched with a worse procrastinator may perform her task earlier than she otherwise would: she wants to avoid the increased temptation that her peer's company would generate. Procrastinators can thus use bad company as a commitment device to mitigate their self‐control problem

Pay for performance with motivated employees

Heterogeneity in intrinsic motivation affects the optimal contract offered to employees in teams. Under individual incentives, the effort exerted by both motivated and selfish employees is distorted. This distortion is mitigated if employees receive a wage based on team performance. As a result, the principal prefers to use team incentives, while motivated employees are better off with individual incentives

Investment in education under disappointment aversion

This paper develops a model of risky investment in education under disappointment aversion, modelled as loss aversion around one's endogenous expectation. The model shows that disappointment aversion reduces investments in education for lower ability people and increases investments for higher ability people, thereby magnifying the gap between them generated by the riskiness of education

Liikide vahelised suhted: inimeste ja inimahvide vahelise kommunikatsiooni zoosemiootiline analüüs

Väitekirja elektrooniline versioon ei sisalda publikatsiooneMe ei saa vältida kohtumist teiste liikidega, sest jagame oma keskkondi paljude teiste loomaliikidega. Käesolev doktoritöö pakub liikide vahelise kommunikatsiooni semiootilist analüüsi hübriidsetes keskkondades, keskendudes inimese ja inimahvide interaktsioonidele. Määratleme kommunikatsiooni kui sotsiaalse lävimise protsessi, mille käigus luuakse tähendusi loomariigis. Meie tähelepanu on koondunud komplekssete omailmadega loomadele, kelle sotsiaalne kommunikatsioon on keeruline ja hõlmab sageli paljusid indiviide. (Zoo)semiootiline lähenemisviis võimaldab meil inimkeskse vaatenurga asemel võtta teiste liikide perspektiiv. Omailma mudel osutub inspireerivaks ja võimsaks vahendiks, mida saame kasutada (osaliselt) teiste organismide maailmadele juurdepääsemiseks. Antud väitekirjas arendame „omailmade kattuvuse“ mõistet, st ideed, et omailma ei tuleks mõista ainult liigispetsiifilise ega organismispetsiifilise mudelina, vaid pigem tuleks seda laiendada, et see hõlmaks jagatud tähendusi. Selline lähenemisviis võimaldab meil analüüsida erinevate liikide sotsiaalset kommunikatsiooni, et parandada tehistingimustes peetavate loomade heaolu. Selles doktoritöös pakume välja sotsiaalse kommunikatsiooni analüüsiks sobiva mudeli, mis on tundlik analüüsitava liigi liigispetsiifiliste tunnuste suhtes. Näitame, kuidas kommunikatsiooni käigus tekivad vastastikku arusaadavad keeled, mis võimaldavad kahel erineval liigil kommunikeerida. Erinevad loomaliigid läbivad oma semiootilise keskkonna ulatusliku muutmise protsessi, kuna omandavad ja kasutavad uusi märke. Oleme seda nähtust seostanud omailma ülemineku mõistega. Leiame, et tehistingimustes peetavad loomad mõjutavad institutsionaalseid praktikaid ja muid inimese loodud märgisüsteeme. Näiteks võivad mõned loomad mõjutada hooldamispraktikaid, sealhulgas rikastamist ja tööprotsesse. Korduvad interaktsioonid toovad hübriidsetes keskkondades kaasa uusi tähendusi ja käitumist. Teeme ettepaneku, et ulukihooldajaid tuleks pidada tehistingimustes olevate inimahvide sotsiaalseteks kaaslasteks ja nende suhteid loomadega tuleb väärtustada. Ulukihooldajate mõju võib nende hoolealustel esile kutsuda liigisisese käitumise ja rikastada inimahvide elutingimusi, pakkudes mitmekihilist sotsiaalset lävimist. Seega tuleks neid käsitleda heaoluanalüüsist ja rikastamisstrateegiatest lahutamatuna.We cannot avoid encountering other species because humans do not live in isolation from other members of the animal world. We share our spaces with a multitude of other animal species. This thesis provides a semiotic analysis of interspecies communication in hybrid environments by focusing on human-ape interactions. In this work, we define communication as the process of creation and negotiation of meaning arising from social interactions in the animal kingdom. We focus on animals with more complex umwelten, whose social interactions are complex and multi-individual. A (zoo)semiotic approach enables us to abandon an anthropocentric perspective and adopt that of other species. The umwelt model proves to be an inspiring and powerful tool that we can use to (partially) access the world of other organisms. In this dissertation, we develop the concept of "umwelt overlap", that is, the idea that the umwelt should not merely be understood as a species-specific nor as an organism-specific model, but rather it should be expanded to encompass areas of shared meanings. Our approach allows us to analyze social communication of different species aiming to better the welfare of animals in captivity. In this thesis, we propose a model suitable for analyzing social communication that is sensitive to the species-specific features of the species under analysis. We show how mutually intelligible languages are created during interaction that allow two different species to communicate. Different animal species undergo an extensive modification of their semiotic environment due to the acquisition and usage of new signs, a phenomenon that we link to the concept of umwelt transition. We determine that animals in captivity shape institutional practices and other human-made sign systems. Some animals may bring changes to institutional practices by influencing handling practices, including enrichment and work routines. Repeated interactions bring about new meanings and behaviors within hybrid environments. We propose that keepers should be seen as social companions of apes in captivity, and their relationship should be valorized. Keepers may elicit intraspecific behavior and enrich apes' living conditions by providing multilayered social interactions. They should thus be seen as an integral part of welfare analysis and enrichment strategies.https://www.ester.ee/record=b547045

Designing Deep Learning Frameworks for Plant Biology

In recent years the parallel progress in high-throughput microscopy and deep learning drastically widened the landscape of possible research avenues in life sciences. In particular, combining high-resolution microscopic images and automated imaging pipelines powered by deep learning dramatically reduced the manual annotation work required for quantitative analysis. In this work, we will present two deep learning frameworks tailored to the needs of life scientists in the context of plant biology. First, we will introduce PlantSeg, a software for 2D and 3D instance segmentation. The PlantSeg pipeline contains several pre-trained models for different microscopy modalities and multiple popular graph-based instance segmentation algorithms. In the second part, we will present CellTypeGraph, a benchmark for quantitatively evaluating graph neural networks. The benchmark is designed to test the ability of machine learning methods to classify the types of cells in an \textit{Arabidopsis thaliana} ovules. CellTypeGraph's prime aim is to give a valuable tool to the geometric learning community, but at the same time it also offers a framework for plant biologists to perform fast and accurate cell type inference on new data

Surface uplift and sea level change: constraints from Late Pleistocene paleoshorelines

A morphostratigraphic and morphotectonic study on raised paleoshorelines along the Tyrrhenian side of southern Apennines integrated by U-series datin

Deciding on behalf of others does not mitigate selfishness: an experiment

We test whether deciding on behalf of a passive third party makes participants less selfish in a subsequent decision on behalf of themselves. We find that, in a standard dictator game and in a modified dictator game that allows for "moral wiggle room”, the experience of having decided for others does not mitigate selfishness

The Failure of the Free World: Anarchy in Uncle Tom’s Cabin

Harriett Beecher Stowe is often identified as an advocate for Christianity, woman\u27s suffrage, autonomy, and the abolishment of slavery. However, inviting the reader to view her work through an anarchist lens, her magnum opus—Uncle Tom’s Cabin— offers the reader the opportunity to reconstruct her politics with immense implication. Critics regard Stowe\u27s Uncle Tom\u27s Cabin as a sermon devised with the intention to inflate the nation with the righteous spirit of God, offering to the reader the opportunity to partake in the message of her religious vision. While Stowe\u27s absolute faith in her Christian profile of God is present, she invariably injects her feminist beliefs into the scriptures and provides the reader with a gridlock between deviation from tradition and her traditional faith. What\u27s more, her Utopian society as presented with the Quaker Society oddly strips away the identity of God as the catalyst for moral good and evils. This essay critiques Stowe\u27s politics by defining her Utopian society in terms that correlate and provide evidence of an idealist anarchist society, positing that by identifying the novel through an anarchist lens we can reconstruct her stance which, in turn, eliminates the necessity of religion and government within the Utopia