People making deontological judgments in the Trapdoor dilemma are perceived to be more prosocial in economic games than they actually are

Why do people make deontological decisions, although they often lead to overall unfavorable outcomes? One account is receiving considerable attention: deontological judgments may signal commitment to prosociality and thus may increase people’s chances of being selected as social partners–which carries obvious long-term benefits. Here we test this framework by experimentally exploring whether people making deontological judgments are expected to be more prosocial than those making consequentialist judgments and whether they are actually so. In line with previous studies, we identified deontological choices using the Trapdoor dilemma. Using economic games, we take two measures of general prosociality towards strangers: trustworthiness and altruism. Our results procure converging evidence for a perception gap according to which Trapdoor-deontologists are believed to be more trustworthy and more altruistic towards strangers than Trapdoor-consequentialists, but actually they are not so. These results show that deontological judgments are not universal, reliable signals of prosociality

People making deontological judgments in the Trapdoor dilemma are perceived to be more prosocial in economic games than they actually are

Why do people make deontological decisions, although they often lead to overall unfavorable outcomes? One account is receiving considerable attention: deontological judgments may signal commitment to prosociality and thus may increase people’s chances of being selected as social partners–which carries obvious long-term benefits. Here we test this framework by experimentally exploring whether people making deontological judgments are expected to be more prosocial than those making consequentialist judgments and whether they are actually so. In line with previous studies, we identified deontological choices using the Trapdoor dilemma. Using economic games, we take two measures of general prosociality towards strangers: trustworthiness and altruism. Our results procure converging evidence for a perception gap according to which Trapdoor-deontologists are believed to be more trustworthy and more altruistic towards strangers than Trapdoor-consequentialists, but actually they are not so. These results show that deontological judgments are not universal, reliable signals of prosociality

Initial sequencing and analysis of the human genome

The human genome holds an extraordinary trove of information about human development, physiology, medicine and evolution. Here we report the results of an international collaboration to produce and make freely available a draft sequence of the human genome. We also present an initial analysis of the data, describing some of the insights that can be gleaned from the sequence.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/62798/1/409860a0.pd

Finishing the euchromatic sequence of the human genome

The sequence of the human genome encodes the genetic instructions for human physiology, as well as rich information about human evolution. In 2001, the International Human Genome Sequencing Consortium reported a draft sequence of the euchromatic portion of the human genome. Since then, the international collaboration has worked to convert this draft into a genome sequence with high accuracy and nearly complete coverage. Here, we report the result of this finishing process. The current genome sequence (Build 35) contains 2.85 billion nucleotides interrupted by only 341 gaps. It covers ∼99% of the euchromatic genome and is accurate to an error rate of ∼1 event per 100,000 bases. Many of the remaining euchromatic gaps are associated with segmental duplications and will require focused work with new methods. The near-complete sequence, the first for a vertebrate, greatly improves the precision of biological analyses of the human genome including studies of gene number, birth and death. Notably, the human enome seems to encode only 20,000-25,000 protein-coding genes. The genome sequence reported here should serve as a firm foundation for biomedical research in the decades ahead

Identification of Protein Scaffolds for Enzyme Design Using Scaffold Selection

The identification of suitable protein structures that can serve as scaffolds for the introduction of catalytic residues is crucial for the design of new enzymes. Here we describe how the automated and rapid scaffold search program ScaffoldSelection can be used to find the best starting points, namely protein structures that are most likely to tolerate the introduction and promote the proper formation of a specific catalytic motif