Pushing Moral Buttons: The Interaction Between Personal Force and Intention in Moral Judgment

In some cases people judge it morally acceptable to sacrifice one person’s life in order to save several other lives, while in other similar cases they make the opposite judgment. Researchers have identified two general factors that may explain this phenomenon at the stimulus level: (1) the agent’s intention (i.e. whether the harmful event is intended as a means or merely foreseen as a side-effect) and (2) whether the agent harms the victim in a manner that is relatively “direct” or “personal”. Here we integrate these two classes of findings. Two experiments examine a novel personalness/directness factor that we call personal force, present when the force that directly impacts the victim is generated by the agent’s muscles (e.g., in pushing). Experiments 1a and b demonstrate the influence of personal force on moral judgment, distinguishing it from physical contact and spatial proximity. Experiments 2a and b demonstrate an interaction between personal force and intention, whereby the effect of personal force depends entirely on intention. These studies also introduce a method for controlling for people’s real-world expectations in decisions involving potentially unrealistic hypothetical dilemmas.Psycholog

Prognathodes geminus, a new species of butterflyfish (Teleostei, Chaetodontidae) from Palau

A new species of the butterflyfish genus Prognathodes (Chaetodontidae) is described from two specimens collected at a depth of 116 m off Ngemelis Island, Palau. Prognathodes geminus sp. n. is similar to P. basabei Pyle & Kosaki, 2016 from the Hawaiian archipelago, and P. guezei (Maugé & Bauchot, 1976) from the western Indian Ocean, but differs from these species in the number of soft dorsal-fin rays, size of head, body width, and body depth. There are also subtle differences in life color, and substantial differences in the mtDNA cytochrome oxidase I sequence (d ≈ 0.08). Although genetic comparisons with P. guezei are unavailable, it is expected that the genetic divergence between P. guezei and P. geminus will be even greater than that between P. geminus and P. basabei. It is named for the strikingly similar color pattern it shares with P. basabei

Trophic structure of pelagic fish and jellyfish across spatial and seasonal gradients in the greater Puget Sound

Recent analysis of community structure in the pelagic ecosystem of the greater Puget Sound has revealed a shift in species composition and abundance in some areas from those dominated by fish to those dominated gelatinous mesozooplankton (“jellyfish”). Unfortunately, the mechanisms behind these shifts are unclear due to a deficit of ecological understanding of this system. The analysis of foodweb structure, which reflects the flow of carbon and nutrients, is useful to complement composition and abundance information in order to understand the energetic processes underlying pelagic communities and why they may be changing. In this talk, we examine foodweb structure and trophic ecology of middle trophic level pelagic fish and jellyfish in six oceanographic sub-basins in Puget Sound from April to October 2011. Specifically, we assessed spatial and seasonal variation in 1) the isotopic composition of abundant species of salmonids, forage fish and jellyfish, 2) the trophic overlap between fish and jellyfish and 3) foodweb attributes of whole pelagic communities including niche width, trophic length and basal resource diversity. At the species level, there were strong spatial differences in isotopic composition among sub-basins. Seasonal patterns, possibly suggesting ontogenetic diet shifts or changes in basal carbon sources, were also evident but were more pronounced in fish than jellyfish. The degree of trophic overlap between fish and jellyfish varied among sub-basins and generally decreased seasonally. At the community level, overall community niche width was higher in Whidbey basin in spring and summer months then switched to a north-south gradient in fall months with the highest value in South Sound. Both the trophic length and basal resource diversity exhibited contrasting seasonal patterns among basins with values decreasing seasonally in northern basins (Whidbey and Rosario) and increasing in southern basins (Central and South Sound). Taken as a whole, our observations suggest that the trophic ecology and overall structure of pelagic fish and jellyfish are heavily influenced by local processes at the sub-basin scale as well as temporally dynamic biotic processes such as changes in body size. Our analysis provides an important groundwork to understand how Puget Sound’s pelagic ecosystem is structured and why it may be changing

New Experimental Limits on Macroscopic Forces Below 100 Microns

Results of an experimental search for new macroscopic forces with Yukawa range between 5 and 500 microns are presented. The experiment uses 1 kHz mechanical oscillators as test masses with a stiff conducting shield between them to suppress backgrounds. No signal is observed above the instrumental thermal noise after 22 hours of integration time. These results provide the strongest limits to date between 10 and 100 microns, improve on previous limits by as much as three orders of magnitude, and rule out half of the remaining parameter space for predictions of string-inspired models with low-energy supersymmetry breaking. New forces of four times gravitational strength or greater are excluded at the 95% confidence level for interaction ranges between 200 and 500 microns.Comment: 25 Pages, 7 Figures: Minor Correction

Revisiting the HIP 41378 System with K2 and Spitzer

We present new observations of the multiplanet system HIP 41378, a bright star (V = 8.9, K s = 7.7) with five known transiting planets. Previous K2 observations showed multiple transits of two Neptune-sized bodies and single transits of three larger planets (R P = 0.33R J , 0.47R J , 0.88R J ). K2 recently observed the system again in Campaign 18 (C18). We observe one new transit each of two of the larger planets d/f, giving maximal orbital periods of 1114/1084 days, as well as integer divisions of these values down to a lower limit of about 50 days. We use all available photometry to determine the eccentricity distributions of HIP 41378 d & f, finding that periods lesssim300 days require non-zero eccentricity. We check for overlapping orbits of planets d and f to constrain their mutual periods, finding that short periods (P < 300 days) for planet f are disfavored. We also observe transits of planets b and c with Spitzer/Infrared Array Camera (IRAC), which we combine with the K2 observations to search for transit timing variations (TTVs). We find a linear ephemeris for planet b, but see a significant TTV signal for planet c. The ability to recover the two smaller planets with Spitzer shows that this fascinating system will continue to be detectable with Spitzer, CHEOPS, TESS, and other observatories, allowing us to precisely determine the periods of d and f, characterize the TTVs of planet c, recover the transits of planet e, and further enhance our view of this remarkable dynamical laboratory

Chaotic systems in complex phase space

This paper examines numerically the complex classical trajectories of the kicked rotor and the double pendulum. Both of these systems exhibit a transition to chaos, and this feature is studied in complex phase space. Additionally, it is shown that the short-time and long-time behaviors of these two PT-symmetric dynamical models in complex phase space exhibit strong qualitative similarities.Comment: 22 page, 16 figure

The Stellar Halos of Massive Elliptical Galaxies

We use the Mitchell Spectrograph (formerly VIRUS-P) on the McDonald Observatory 2.7m Harlan J. Smith Telescope to search for the chemical signatures of massive elliptical galaxy assembly. The Mitchell Spectrograph is an integral-field spectrograph with a uniquely wide field of view (107x107 sq arcsec), allowing us to achieve remarkably high signal-to-noise ratios of ~20-70 per pixel in radial bins of 2-2.5 times the effective radii of the eight galaxies in our sample. Focusing on a sample of massive elliptical galaxies with stellar velocity dispersions sigma* > 150 km/s, we study the radial dependence in the equivalent widths (EWs) of key metal absorption lines. By twice the effective radius, the Mgb EWs have dropped by ~50%, and only a weak correlation between sigma* and Mgb EW remains. The Mgb EWs at large radii are comparable to those seen in the centers of elliptical galaxies that are approximately an order of magnitude less massive. We find that the well-known metallicity gradients often observed within an effective radius continue smoothly to 2.5R_e, while the abundance ratio gradients remain flat. Much like the halo of the Milky Way, the stellar halos of our galaxies have low metallicities and high alpha-abundance ratios, as expected for very old stars formed in small stellar systems. Our observations support a picture in which the outer parts of massive elliptical galaxies are built by the accretion of much smaller systems whose star formation history was truncated at early times.Comment: To appear in ApJ, 15 pages, 9 figure