Liking but devaluing animals: emotional and deliberative paths to speciesism

We explore whether priming emotion versus deliberation affects speciesism—the tendency to prioritize certain individuals over others on the basis of their species-membership (three main and two supplementary studies; four pre-registered; N = 3,288). We find that the tendency to prioritize humans over animals (anthropocentric speciesism) decreases when participants were asked to think emotionally compared to deliberately. In contrast, the tendency to prioritize dogs over other animals (pet speciesism) increases when participants were asked to think emotionally compared to deliberately. We hypothesize that, emotionally, people like animals in general, and dogs in particular; however, deliberatively, people attribute higher moral status to humans than animals, and roughly equal status to dogs, chimpanzees, elephants and pigs. In support of this explanation, participants tended to discriminate between animals based on likability when thinking emotionally and based on moral status when thinking deliberately. These findings shed light on the psychological underpinnings of speciesism

Timelapse

We discuss the existence in an arbitrary frame of a finite time for the transformation of an initial quantum state into another e.g. in a decay. This leads to the introduction of a timelapse $\tilde{\tau}$ in analogy with the lifetime of a particle. An argument based upon the Heisenberg uncertainty principle suggests the value of $\tilde{\tau}=1 / M_0$. Consequences for the exponential decay formula and the modifications that $\tilde{\tau}$ introduces into the Breit-Wigner mass formula are described.Comment: 5 pages [2 figs], ReV-Te

Aqueye optical observations of the Crab Nebula pulsar

We observed the Crab pulsar in October 2008 at the Copernico Telescope in Asiago - Cima Ekar with the optical photon counter Aqueye (the Asiago Quantum Eye) which has the best temporal resolution and accuracy ever achieved in the optical domain (hundreds of picoseconds). Our goal was to perform a detailed analysis of the optical period and phase drift of the main peak of the Crab pulsar and compare it with the Jodrell Bank ephemerides. We determined the position of the main peak using the steepest zero of the cross-correlation function between the pulsar signal and an accurate optical template. The pulsar rotational period and period derivative have been measured with great accuracy using observations covering only a 2 day time interval. The error on the period is 1.7 ps, limited only by the statistical uncertainty. Both the rotational frequency and its first derivative are in agreement with those from the Jodrell Bank radio ephemerides archive. We also found evidence of the optical peak leading the radio one by ~230 microseconds. The distribution of phase-residuals of the whole dataset is slightly wider than that of a synthetic signal generated as a sequence of pulses distributed in time with the probability proportional to the pulse shape, such as the average count rate and background level are those of the Crab pulsar observed with Aqueye. The counting statistics and quality of the data allowed us to determine the pulsar period and period derivative with great accuracy in 2 days only. The time of arrival of the optical peak of the Crab pulsar leads the radio one in agreement with what recently reported in the literature. The distribution of the phase residuals can be approximated with a Gaussian and is consistent with being completely caused by photon noise (for the best data sets).Comment: 7 pages, 7 figures. Accepted for publication in Astronomy and Astrophysic

New Glueball-Meson Mass Relations

Using the ``glueball dominance'' picture of the mixing between q\bar{q} mesons of different hidden flavors, we establish new glueball-meson mass relations which serve as a basis for glueball spectral systematics. For the tensor glueball mass 2.3\pm 0.1 GeV used as an input parameter, these relations predict the following glueball masses: M(0^{++})\simeq 1.65\pm 0.05 GeV, M(1^{--})\simeq 3.2\pm 0.2 GeV, M(2^{-+})\simeq 2.95\pm 0.15 GeV, M(3^{--})\simeq 2.8\pm 0.15 GeV. We briefly discuss the failure of such relations for the pseudoscalar sector. Our results are consistent with (quasi)-linear Regge trajectories for glueballs with slope \simeq 0.3\pm 0.1 GeV^{-2}.Comment: Extensive revision including response to comments received, value of glueball Regge slope, and a consideration of radial excitations. 14 pages, LaTe

Study of γπ→ππ\gamma\pi \to \pi\pi below 1 GeV using Integral Equation Approach

The scattering of $\gamma \pi \to \pi \pi$ is studied using the axial anomaly, elastic unitarity, analyticity and crossing symmetry. Using the technique to derive the Roy's equation, an integral equation for the P-wave amplitude is obtained in terms of the strong P-wave pion pion phase shifts. Its solution is obtained numerically by an iteration procedure using the starting point as the solution of the integral equation of the Muskelshsvilli-Omnes type. It is, however, ambiguous and depends sensitively on the second derivative of the P-wave amplitude at $s=m_\pi^2$ which cannot directly be measured.Comment: 26 pages, 10 figure

The effect of norm-based messages on reading and understanding COVID-19 pandemic response governmental rules

The new coronavirus disease (COVID-19) threatens the lives of millions of people around the world, making it the largest health threat in recent times. Billions of people around the world are asked to adhere to strict shelter-in-place rules, finalised to slow down the spread of the virus. Appeals and messages are being used by leaders and policy-makers to promote pandemic response. Given the stakes at play, it is thus important for social scientists to explore which messages are most effective in promoting pandemic response. In fact, some papers in the last month have explored the effect of several messages on people’s intentions to engage in pandemic response behaviour. In this paper, we make two contributions. First, we explore the effect of messages on people’s actual engagement, and not on intentions. Specifically, our dependent variables are the level of understanding of official COVID-19 pandemic response governmental informative panels, measured through comprehension questions, and the time spent on reading these rules. Second, we test a novel set of appeals built through the theory of norms. One message targets the personal norm (what people think is the right thing to do), one targets the descriptive norm (what people think others are doing), and one targets the injunctive norm (what people think others approve or disapprove of). Our experiment is conducted online with a representative (with respect to gender, age, and location) sample of Italians. Norms are made salient using a flier. We find that norm-based fliers had no effect on comprehension and on time spent on the panels. These results suggest that norm-based interventions through fliers have very little impact on people’s reading and understanding of COVID-19 pandemic response governmental rules

"Do the right thing" for whom? An experiment on ingroup favouritism, group assorting and moral suasion

In this paper we investigate the effect of moral suasion on ingroup favouritism. We report a well-powered, pre-registered, two-stage 2x2 mixed-design experiment. In the first stage, groups are formed on the basis of how participants answer to a set of questions, concerning non-morally relevant issues in one treatment (assorting on non-moral preferences), and morally relevant issues in another treatment (assorting on moral preferences). In the second stage, participants choose how to split a given amount of money between participants of their own group and participants of the other group, first in the baseline setting and then in a setting where they are told to do what they believe to be morally right (moral suasion). Our main results are: (i) in the baseline, participants tend to favour their own group to a greater extent when groups are assorted according to moral preferences, compared to when they are assorted according to non-moral preferences; (ii) the net effect of moral suasion is to decrease ingroup favouritism, but there is also a non-negligible proportion of participants for whom moral suasion increases ingroup favouritism; (iii) the effect of moral suasion is substantially stable across group assorting and four pre-registered individual characteristics (gender, political orientation, religiosity, pro-life vs pro-choice ethical convictions)

The reality of STEM education, design and technology teachers’ perceptions: a phenomenographic study.

Set within the context of STEM education this research presents preliminary findings from the initial stages of a larger research project. The tendency of STEM educators to stay within their disciplinary silos and this work explores the emergent practice of secondary age phase Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) teachers, and investigates, from their perception, how best they develop knowledge and understanding of STEM; how new STEM knowledge is gained, evolves, develops and shared. Constructivist grounded theory (Charmaz 2006) underpinned an interpretivist ontology is utilised to elicit stakeholder viewpoints, and emergent findings are discussed in relation to the adoption of educational technology as a tool in the development of collaborative STEM knowledge communities. Moving beyond the boundaries of the physical workplace, findings suggest that STEM teachers engaged in this study perceive educational technology to be an effective tool to acquire and develop new STEM knowledge. Findings show that evolving from tacit knowledge, built from the participant’s day-to-day experience, ‘theories-in-use’ emerge, and knowledge is constructed socially within the context and culture it was learnt. Through physical or virtual self-organised systems, working independently of formal training, participants develop and share these ideas. Over time mutual trust evolves, and individuals develop their practice through collaborative knowledge communities. Information shared is unconfined, and learning is seemingly limitless. These professional informal networks provide STEM teachers with opportunities to create and learn new knowledge, and this method of learning has significant potential to enhance educator knowledge to support the development of a diverse STEM-literate society