Neural Responses to Truth Telling and Risk Propensity under Asymmetric Information

This research was supported by the Laureate Institute for Brain Research and the William K. Warren Foundation. The funders had no role in the study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.Trust is multi-dimensional because it can be characterized by subjective trust, trust antecedent, and behavioral trust. Previous research has investigated functional brain responses to subjective trust (e.g., a judgment of trustworthiness) or behavioral trust (e.g., decisions to trust) in perfect information, where all relevant information is available to all participants. In contrast, we conducted a novel examination of the patterns of functional brain activity to a trust antecedent, specifically truth telling, in asymmetric information, where one individual has more information than others, with the effect of varying risk propensity. We used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and recruited 13 adults, who played the Communication Game, where they served as the “Sender” and chose either truth telling (true advice) or lie telling (false advice) regarding the best payment allocation for their partner. Our behavioral results revealed that subjects with recreational high risk tended to choose true advice. Moreover, fMRI results yielded that the choices of true advice were associated with increased cortical activation in the anterior rostral medial and frontopolar prefrontal cortices, middle frontal cortex, temporoparietal junction, and precuneus. Furthermore, when we specifically evaluated a role of the bilateral amygdala as the region of interest (ROI), decreased amygdala response was associated with high risk propensity, regardless of truth telling or lying. In conclusion, our results have implications for how differential functions of the cortical areas may contribute to the neural processing of truth telling.Yeshttp://www.plosone.org/static/editorial#pee

Numerical methods for the design and description of in vitro expansion processes of human mesenchymal stem cells

Human mesenchymal stem cells (hMSCs) are a valuable source of cells for clinical applications (e.g., treatment of acute myocardial infarction or inflammatory diseases), especially in the field of regenerative medicine. However, for autologous (patient-specific) and allogeneic (off-the-shelf) hMSC-based therapies, in vitro expansion is necessary prior to the clinical application in order to achieve the required cell numbers. Safe, reproducible, and economic in vitro expansion of hMSCs for autologous and allogeneic therapies can be problematic because the cell material is restricted and the cells are sensitive to environmental changes. It is beneficial to collect detailed information on the hydrodynamic conditions and cell growth behavior in a bioreactor system, in order to develop a so called “Digital Twin” of the cultivation system and expansion process. Numerical methods, such as Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) which has become widely used in the biotech industry for studying local characteristics within bioreactors or kinetic growth modelling, provide possible solutions for such tasks. In this review, we will present the current state-of-the-art for the in vitro expansion of hMSCs. Different numerical tools, including numerical fluid flow simulations and cell growth modelling approaches for hMSCs, will be presented. In addition, a case study demonstrating the applicability of CFD and kinetic growth modelling for the development of an microcarrier-based hMSC process will be shown

Professional autonomy for midwives in the contemporary UK maternity system: part 2

Professionalisation, the midwifery profession and professional autonomy are explored from a sociological perspective to answer the title question. Within part-one the obstetric influences and frictions, government policy and guidelines, risk, litigation and increasing managerialisation were considered, highlighting the complexities of professional midwifery and the challenges it faces. In part-two choice, service pressures, evidence-based care, consumerism, leadership and reflexive practice are considered in an attempt to navigate professional autonomy with the intention of retaining women’s choice as the core belief of the profession. A conceptual framework has been devised to enable this utilising the concept New Professional Midwifery. The object of this work is to keep women’s choice as the central aim

Mining Spatial Association Rules for Composite Motif Discovery

Motif discovery in biological sequences is an important field in bioinformatics. Most of the scientific research focuses on the de novo discovery of single motifs, but biological activities are typically co-regulated by several factors and this feature is properly reflected by higher order structures, called composite motifs, or cis-regulatory modules or simply modules. A module is a set of motifs, constrained both in number and location, which is statistically overrepresented and hence may be indicative of a biological function. Several methods have been studied for the de novo discovery of modules. We propose an alternative approach based on the discovery of rules that define strong spatial associations between single motifs and suggest the structure of a module. Single motifs involved in the mined rules might be either de novo discovered by motif discovery algorithms or taken from databases of single motifs. Rules are expressed in a first-order logic formalism and are mined by means of an inductive logic programming system. We also propose computational solutions to two issues: the hard discretization of numerical inter-motif distances and the choice of a minimum support threshold. All methods have been implemented and integrated in a tool designed to support biologists in the discovery and characterization of composite motifs. A case study is reported in order to show the potential of the tool