Action bias among elite soccer goalkeepers: The case of penalty kicks

In soccer penalty kicks, goalkeepers choose their action before they can clearly observe the kick direction. An analysis of 286 penalty kicks in top leagues and championships worldwide shows that given the probability distribution of kick direction, the optimal strategy for goalkeepers is to stay in the goal's center. Goalkeepers, however, almost always jump right or left. We propose the following explanation for this behavior: because the norm is to jump, norm theory (Kahneman and Miller, 1986) implies that a goal scored yields worse feelings for the goalkeeper following inaction (staying in the center) than following action (jumping), leading to a bias for action. The omission bias, a bias in favor of inaction, is reversed here because the norm here is reversed - to act rather than to choose inaction. The claim that jumping is the norm is supported by a second study, a survey conducted with 32 top professional goalkeepers. The seemingly biased decision making is particularly striking since the goalkeepers have huge incentives to make correct decisions, and it is a decision they encounter frequently. Finally, we discuss several implications of the action/omission bias for economics and management.Decision Making; Uncertainty; Choice Behavior; Sport Psychology; Behavioral Economics; Action Bias; Omission Bias; Commission Bias; Action Effect; Inaction Effect; Actor Effect; Economic Psychology; Heuristics and Biases; Soccer; Goalkeepers; Penalty Kicks; Risk; Norms

Cold atmospheric plasma, a novel promising anti-cancer treatment modality.

Over the past decade, cold atmospheric plasma (CAP), a near room temperature ionized gas has shown its promising application in cancer therapy. Two CAP devices, namely dielectric barrier discharge and plasma jet, show significantly anti-cancer capacity over dozens of cancer cell lines in vitro and several subcutaneous xenograft tumors in vivo. In contrast to conventional anti-cancer approaches and drugs, CAP is a selective anti-cancer treatment modality. Thus far establishing the chemical and molecular mechanism of the anti-cancer capacity of CAP is far from complete. In this review, we provide a comprehensive introduction of the basics of CAP, state of the art research in this field, the primary challenges, and future directions to cancer biologists

The effect of tuning cold plasma composition on glioblastoma cell viability

Previous research in cold atmospheric plasma (CAP) and cancer cell interaction has repeatedly proven that the cold plasma induced cell death. It is postulated that the reactive oxygen species (ROS) and reactive nitrogen species (RNS) play a major role in the CAP cancer therapy. In this paper, we seek to determine a mechanism of CAP therapy on glioblastoma cells (U87) through an understanding of the composition of the plasma, including treatment time, voltage, flow-rate and plasma-gas composition. In order to determine the threshold of plasma treatment on U87, normal human astrocytes (E6/E7) were used as the comparison cell line. Our data showed that the 30 sec plasma treatment caused 3-fold cell death in the U87 cells compared to the E6/E7 cells. All the other compositions of cold plasma were performed based on this result: plasma treatment time was maintained at 30 s per well while other plasma characteristics such as voltage, flow rate of source gas, and composition of source gas were changed one at a time to vary the intensity of the reactive species composition in the plasma jet, which may finally have various effect on cells reflected by cell viability. We defined a term “plasma dosage” to summarize the relationship of all the characteristics and cell viability

Stabilizing the cold plasma-stimulated medium by regulating medium’s composition

Over past several years, the cold plasma-stimulated medium (PSM) has shown its remarkable anti-cancer capacity in par with the direct cold plasma irradiation on cancer cells or tumor tissues. Independent of the cold plasma device, PSM has noticeable advantage of being a flexible platform in cancer treatment. Currently, the largest disadvantage of PSM is its degradation during the storage over a wide temperature range. So far, to stabilize PSM, it must be remained frozen at −80 °C. In this study, we first reveal that the degradation of PSM is mainly due to the reaction between the reactive species and specific amino acids; mainly cysteine and methionine in medium. Based on this finding, both H2O2 in PSM and the anti-cancer capacity of PSM can be significantly stabilized during the storage at 8 °C and −25 °C for at least 3 days by using phosphate-buffered saline (PBS) and cysteine/methionine-free Dulbecco’s Modified Eagle Medium (DMEM). In addition, we demonstrate that adding a tyrosine derivative, 3-Nitro-L-tyrosine, into DMEM can mitigate the degradation of PSM at 8 °C during 3 days of storage. This study provides a solid foundation for the future anti-cancer application of PSM

The Strong Cell-based Hydrogen Peroxide Generation Triggered by Cold Atmospheric Plasma.

Hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) is an important signaling molecule in cancer cells. However, the significant secretion of H2O2 by cancer cells have been rarely observed. Cold atmospheric plasma (CAP) is a near room temperature ionized gas composed of neutral particles, charged particles, reactive species, and electrons. Here, we first demonstrated that breast cancer cells and pancreatic adenocarcinoma cells generated micromolar level H2O2 during just 1 min of direct CAP treatment on these cells. The cell-based H2O2 generation is affected by the medium volume, the cell confluence, as well as the discharge voltage. The application of cold atmospheric plasma (CAP) in cancer treatment has been intensively investigated over the past decade. Several cellular responses to CAP treatment have been observed including the consumption of the CAP-originated reactive species, the rise of intracellular reactive oxygen species, the damage on DNA and mitochondria, as well as the activation of apoptotic events. This is a new previously unknown cellular response to CAP, which provides a new prospective to understand the interaction between CAP and cells in vitro and in vivo. The short-lived reactive species in CAP may activate cells in vivo to generate long-lived reactive species such as H2O2, which may trigger immune attack on tumorous tissues via the H2O2-mediated lymphocyte activation

Optimization Issues for a Micropulsed Plasma Thruster

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/76083/1/AIAA-13954-648.pd

Differential Effects of Cold Atmospheric Plasma in the Treatment of Malignant Glioma

Objective Cold atmospheric plasma (CAP) has recently been shown to selectively target cancer cells with minimal effects on normal cells. We systematically assessed the effects of CAP in the treatment of glioblastoma. Methods Three glioma cell lines, normal astrocytes, and endothelial cell lines were treated with CAP. The effects of CAP were then characterized for viability, cytotoxicity/apoptosis, and cell cycle effects. Statistical significance was determined with student\u27s t-test. Results CAP treatment decreases viability of glioma cells in a dose dependent manner, with the ID50 between 90-120 seconds for all glioma cell lines. Treatment with CAP for more than 120 seconds resulted in viability less than 35% at 24-hours posttreatment, with a steady decline to less than 20% at 72-hours. In contrast, the effect of CAP on the viability of NHA and HUVEC was minimal, and importantly not significant at 90 to 120 seconds, with up to 85% of the cells remained viable at 72-hours post-treatment. CAP treatment produces both cytotoxic and apoptotic effects with some variability between cell lines. CAP treatment resulted in a G2/M-phase cell cycle pause in all three cell lines. Conclusions This preliminary study determined a multi-focal effect of CAP on glioma cells in vitro, which was not observed in the non-tumor cell lines. The decreased viability depended on the treatment duration and cell line, but overall was explained by the induction of cytotoxicity, apoptosis, and G2/M pause. Future studies will aim at further characterization with more complex pre-clinical models