Continuous versus Step-Level Public Good Games

We will firstly outline the rationale of a public good game and explain the distinction between a continuous public good game and a threshold public good game. As a vast majority of experimental research in social psychology on public good games has used threshold public good games, we will then outline the structure of a dilemma game with a provision point. Our point is that dilemma games with a provision point violate two important assumptions commonly held for public good games: a) there is always a conflict between the group’s interest and the individual’s interest; and b) an individual is always better off defecting. A threshold dilemma game is a dilemma with a coordination game embedded in it. Hence it provides focal point solutions and may as a consequence leave less room for other factors to affect behavior. Moreover, games with a provision point might yield different results than games without a provision point. We will argue that above that threshold dilemma games do not provide good models of many the public goods problems that are encountered in real life. We will propose that a public good game with a tilted S function provides a more appropriate model of real life dilemmas while fulfilling the defining properties of public good games

Alpha Clustering and the stellar nucleosynthesis of carbon

The astrophysical S--factor and reaction rates for the triple--alpha process are calculated in the direct--capture model. It is shown that the stellar carbon production is extremely sensitive to small variations in the N--N interaction.Comment: 2 pages LaTe

Transitions between levels of a quantum bouncer induced by a noise-like perturbation

The probability of transition between levels of a quantum bouncer, induced by a noise-like perturbation, is calculated. The results are applied to two sources of noise (vibrations and mirror surface waviness) which might play an important role in future GRANIT experiment, aiming at precision studies of/with the neutron quantum bouncer

Information Sharing, Cognitive Centrality, and Influence among Business Executives during Collective Choice

Laboratory studies have shown that decision-making groups tend to focus on common information at the expense of unique information. In the current study, high level business executives completed a personnel selection task. Access to information about the candidates was not controlled as in a typical study of information sharing, but common, partially shared, and unique information arose naturally from the individual members’ information searches. During subsequent discussions, groups mentioned more common than partially shared than unique information. However, the underlying processes seemed to be different from what has been observed in laboratory studies. The popularity of information in the population from which groups were composed predicted both the number of a group’s members who accessed an item in their information searches and whether the group discussed the item. However, the number of group members who accessed an item did predict whether information was repeated during discussion, and repetition predicted which items were included on a final written summary. Finally, cognitively central group members were more influential than cognitively peripheral members

Molecular Evidence for Inclusion on the Phylum Pentastomida in the Crustacea

The phylogenetic status of the phylum Pentastomida (tongue worms) was considered on the basis of comparison of nucleotide sequences of 18S ribosomal RNA from the pentastome Porocephalus crotali, the branchiuran crustacean fish louse Argulus nobilis, other crustaceans, and representatives of the Annelida, Chelicerata, Myriapoda, and Insecta. Maximum parsimony and invariants (at P \u3c 0.04) analyses support an Argulus/Porocephalus clade, providing strong support for the proposal that tongue worms are highly modified crustaceans closely related to fish lice

Light Hadron Spectroscopy: Theory and Experiment

Rapporteur talk at the Lepton-Photon Conference, Rome, July 2001: reviewing the evidence and strategies for understanding scalar mesons, glueballs and hybrids, the gluonic Pomeron and the interplay of heavy flavours and light hadron dynamics. Dedicated to the memory of Nathan Isgur, long-time collaborator and friend, whose original ideas in hadron spectroscopy formed the basis for much of the talk.Comment: to be published in "Lepton Photon 2001 Conference Proceedings" (World Scientific Publishing), 19 pages with 6 figure