High Stakes Behavior with Low Payoffs: Inducing Preferences with Holt-Laury Gambles

A continuing goal of experiments is to understand risky decisions when the decisions are important. Often a decision’s importance is related to the magnitude of the associated monetary stake. Khaneman and Tversky (1979) argue that risky decisions in high stakes environments can be informed using questionnaires with hypothetical choices (since subjects have no incentive to answer questions falsely.) However, results reported by Holt and Laury (2002, henceforth HL), as well as replications by Harrison (2005) suggest that decisions in “high” monetary payoff environments are not well-predicted by questionnaire responses. Thus, a potential implication of the HL results is that studying decisions in high stakes environments requires using high stakes. Here we describe and implement a procedure for studying high-stakes behavior in a low-stakes environment. We use the binary-lottery reward technique (introduced by Berg, et al (1986)) to induce preferences in a way that is consistent with the decisions reported by HL under a variety of stake sizes. The resulting decisions, all of which were made in a low-stakes environment, reflect surprisingly well the noisy choice behavior reported by HL’s subjects even in their highstakes environment. This finding is important because inducing preferences evidently requires substantially less cost than paying people to participate in extremely high-stakes games.

Prevalence of shunt dependence and clinical outcome in patients with massive intraventricular haemorrhage treated via endoscopic washout versus external ventricular drainage

Methods: We have treated 16 patients with massive IVH with endoscopic washout as per study protocol to address all the undesired sequelae caused by IVH. 23 patients of the same disease were treated via external ventricular drainage. Results: All patients treated with endoscopic washout recovered well and only 3 patients required further shunt surgery at 3 months duration. There is significant difference in the shunt dependency between both control and intervention group (p-0.004). The duration of weaning of the external ventricular catheter is significantly shorter in the endoscopic washout group (p-0.007) and the Graeb score reduction is significantly more in the endoscopic washout group (p-0.001). Conclusions: Good outcomes obtained from endoscopic washout for massive intraventricular haemorrhage may be related to early removal of hematomas, creation of new cerebrospinal diversion pathway, coupled with early weaning from external ventricular drain and ventilator. The use of neuroendoscopy in patients with massive IVH has significantly reduced the drainage dependency and therefore all shunt related complications are also avoided

Eurasian watermilfoil biomass associated with insect herbivores in New York

A study of aquatic plant biomass within Cayuga Lake, New York spans twelve years from 1987-1998. The exotic Eurasian watermilfoil ( Myriophyllum spicatum L.) decreased in the northwest end of the lake from 55% of the total biomass in 1987 to 0.4% in 1998 and within the southwest end from 50% in 1987 to 11% in 1998. Concurrent with the watermilfoil decline was the resurgence of native species of submersed macrophytes. During this time we recorded for the first time in Cayuga Lake two herbivorous insect species: the aquatic moth Acentria ephemerella , first observed in 1991, and the aquatic weevil Euhrychiopsis lecontei , first found in 1996 . Densities of Acentria in southwest Cayuga Lake averaged 1.04 individuals per apical meristem of Eurasian watermilfoil for the three-year period 1996-1998. These same meristems had Euhrychiopsis densities on average of only 0.02 individuals per apical meristem over the same three-year period. A comparison of herbivore densities and lake sizes from five lakes in 1997 shows that Acentria densities correlate positively with lake surface area and mean depth, while Euhrychiopsis densities correlate negatively with lake surface area and mean depth. In these five lakes, Acentria densities correlate negatively with percent composition and dry mass of watermilfoil. However, Euhrychiopsis densities correlate positively with percent composition and dry mass of watermilfoil. Finally, Acentria densities correlate negatively with Euhrychiopsis densities suggesting interspecific competition

Justice Stevens and Securities Law

In this Article, we tell the overlooked story of Justice Stevens\u27s important role in Supreme Court securities law decisions. In Part I, where we briefly highlight Stevens\u27s career before his 1975 appointment to the Supreme Court, we observe that we can identify no evident interest in or connection to federal securities law or the securities industry, making his contributions all the more remarkable. The only foreshadowing of his prolific opinion-writing on the subject of securities law was his voluminous writing of opinions, in general, while serving on the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals. This commitment to authoring opinions stemmed, in turn, from Stevens\u27s unforgettable experience as general counsel to a special commission that investigated bribery on the Illinois Supreme Court in the late 1960s, as Part I relates

Preclinical Alzheimer Disease - The Challenges Ahead

There is growing recognition that the pathophysiological process of Alzheimer disease (AD) begins many years prior to clinically obvious symptoms, and the concept of a presymptomatic or preclinical stage of AD is becoming more widely accepted. Advances in biomarker studies have enabled detection of AD pathology in vivo in clinically normal older individuals. The predictive value of these biomarkers at the individual patient level, however, remains to be elucidated. The ultimate goal of identifying individuals in the preclinical stages of AD is to facilitate early intervention to delay and perhaps even prevent emergence of the clinical syndrome. A number of challenges remain to be overcome before this concept can be validated and translated into clinical practice

Resilience and the African American Superintendent

We sought to explore the extent to which race might influence how African American superintendents cope with the stressors of their leadership roles and the presence of support while in such positions. In order to test this question, we recruited African American superintendents across the United States. We specifically measured their ability to cope with stressors and maintain resilience in leadership. African American superintendents indicated that they primarily utilized problem-based coping to navigate role stress and that they perceived themselves as successfully bouncing back from that stress. We offer a brief set of recommendations based upon these results to foster further coping and resilience among this remarkable group of leaders