Adaptive immune response to BNT162b2 mRNA vaccine in immunocompromised adolescent patients

Protective immunity against COVID-19 is orchestrated by an intricate network of innate and adaptive anti-viral immune responses. Several vaccines have been rapidly developed to combat the destructive effects of COVID-19, which initiate an immunological cascade that results in the generation of neutralizing antibodies and effector T cells towards the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein. Developing optimal vaccine-induced anti-SARS- CoV-2 protective immunity depends on a fully competent immune response. Some evidence was gathered on the effects of vaccination outcomes in immunocompromised adult individuals. Nonetheless, protective immunity elicited by the Pfizer Biontech BNT162b2 vaccine in immunocompromised adolescents received less attention and was mainly focused on the antibody response and their neutralization potential. The overall immune response, including T-cell activities, was largely understudied. In this study, we characterized the immune response of vaccinated immunocompromised adolescents. We found that immunocompromised adolescents, which may fail to elicit a humoral response and develop antibodies, may still develop cellular T-cell immunity towards SARS-CoV-2 infections. Furthermore, most immunocompromised adolescents due to genetic disorders or drugs (Kidney and liver transplantation) still develop either humoral, cellular or both arms of immunity towards SARS-CoV-2 infections. We also demonstrate that most patients could mount a cellular or humoral response even after six months post 2nd vaccination. The findings that adolescents immunocompromised patients respond to some extent to vaccination are promising. Finally, they question the necessity for additional vaccination boosting regimens for this population who are not at high risk for severe disease, without further testing of their post-vaccination immune status

Meta-analysis of multidecadal biodiversity trends in Europe

Local biodiversity trends over time are likely to be decoupled from global trends, as local processes may compensate or counteract global change. We analyze 161 long-term biological time series (15-91 years) collected across Europe, using a comprehensive dataset comprising similar to 6,200 marine, freshwater and terrestrial taxa. We test whether (i) local long-term biodiversity trends are consistent among biogeoregions, realms and taxonomic groups, and (ii) changes in biodiversity correlate with regional climate and local conditions. Our results reveal that local trends of abundance, richness and diversity differ among biogeoregions, realms and taxonomic groups, demonstrating that biodiversity changes at local scale are often complex and cannot be easily generalized. However, we find increases in richness and abundance with increasing temperature and naturalness as well as a clear spatial pattern in changes in community composition (i.e. temporal taxonomic turnover) in most biogeoregions of Northern and Eastern Europe. The global biodiversity decline might conceal complex local and group-specific trends. Here the authors report a quantitative synthesis of longterm biodiversity trends across Europe, showing how, despite overall increase in biodiversity metric and stability in abundance, trends differ between regions, ecosystem types, and taxa.peerReviewe

Giving advice under uncertainty: What you do, what you should do, and what others think you do

The current paper examines whether advisors rely primarily on their personal beliefs and risk preferences or on their estimates of their clients' beliefs and risk preferences. The results of two studies show that risk preferences predicted for other individuals were more risk neutral than personal risk preferences under uncertainty, though no differences were found between personal beliefs and those attributed to other individuals. This suggests that advice that is based primarily on personal risk preferences may differ from advice which is based primarily on advisors' estimates of clients' risk preferences. The results of a third study show that advisors rely on their personal risk preferences when giving advice. Based on these findings we suggest that managers should be cautious in accepting advice concerning which alternative ought to be pursued, as advisors tend to instinctively rely on their own risk preferences, which may differ from the manager's actual risk preferences.Advice giving Decisions under uncertainty Two-stage model Self-other discrepancy

"Decisions from experience" = sampling error + prospect theory

According to prospect theory, people overweight low probability events and underweight high probability events. Several recent papers (notably, Hertwig, Barron, Weber and Erev, 2004) have argued that although this pattern holds for ``description-based'' decisions, in which people are explicitly provided with probability distributions over potential outcomes, it is actually reversed in ``experience-based'' decisions, in which people must learn these distributions through sampling. We reanalyze the data of Hertwig et al. (2004) and present a replication to determine the extent to which their phenomenon can be attributed to sampling error (a statistical rather than psychological phenomenon) versus underestimation of rare events (i.e., judgmental bias) versus actual underweighting of judged probabilities. We find that the apparent reversal of prospect theory in decisions from experience can be attributed almost entirely to sampling error, and are consistent with prospect theory and the two-stage model of decision under uncertainty (Fox and Tversky, 1998)

Information asymmetry in decision from description versus decision from experience

In this paper we investigate the claim that decisions from extit{experience} (in which the features of lotteries are learned through a sampling process) differ from decisions from extit{description} (in which features of lotteries are explicitly described). We find that the experience-description gap is not as robust as has been previously assumed. We argue that when this gap appears it is driven to a large extent by asymmetries in information concerning which events are possible and which are certain. First, we find that, when experience-based decision makers sample events without error and then are told what outcomes are associated with each possible event, they are risk seeking for low-probability gains and risk averse for high-probability gains, as in description-based decision making. Second, we find that the experience-description gap for low-probability outcomes appears when rare outcomes are never experienced but disappears when: 1) all distinct outcomes are experienced at least once or 2) never-experienced outcomes are described as possibilities. Third, we find that the experience-description gap for high-probability outcomes is pronounced when decision makers previously experience lotteries that both offered the possibility of a zero outcome (which presumably makes them doubt that an always-experienced outcome is certain), but disappears when they have not previously experienced such lotteries

"Decisions from experience" = sampling error + prospect theory: Reconsidering Hertwig, Barron, Weber & Erev (2004)

According to prospect theory, people overweight low probability events and underweight high probability events. Several recent papers (notably, Hertwig, Barron, Weber \& Erev, 2004) have argued that although this pattern holds for ``description-based'' decisions, in which people are explicitly provided with probability distributions over potential outcomes, it is actually reversed in ``experience-based'' decisions, in which people must learn these distributions through sampling. We reanalyze the data of Hertwig et al. (2004) and present a replication to determine the extent to which their phenomenon can be attributed to sampling error (a statistical rather than psychological phenomenon) versus underestimation of rare events (i.e., judgmental bias) versus actual underweighting of judged probabilities. We find that the apparent reversal of prospect theory in decisions from experience can be attributed almost entirely to sampling error, and are consistent with prospect theory and the two-stage model of decision under uncertainty (Fox \& Tversky, 1998).decisions from experience, uncertainty, Prospect Theory, two-stage model, probability learning, decision weights.

Psychological construal of economic behavior

According to construal level theory (CLT) [Trope, Y., & Liberman, N. (2003). Temporal construal. Physical Review, 110, 403-421], psychological representation of information depends on "psychological distance", that is, on whether the relevant information refers to the near or distant psychological space. While CLT was originally developed to account for intertemporal choice, Trope and Liberman proposed that it could account for other dimensions of psychological distance such as social distance. We follow up on Trope and Liberman's proposal and demonstrate how CLT accounts for a wide range of economic behaviors such as predicting the choices of others, advice giving, saving for retirement, and the failure to annuitize assets at retirement. By explaining how CLT can account for these various economic behaviors and suggesting novel predictions, we hope to stimulate researchers to investigate further the role of psychological distance in economic behavior.A12 D01 D14 D90 H55 3040 Behavioral economics Construal level theory Psychology and economics Behavioral decision making