Responsibility Effects in Decision Making under Risk

We systematically explore decision situations in which a decision maker bears responsibility for somebody else's outcomes as well as for her own in situations of payoff equality. In the gain domain we confirm the intuition that being responsible for somebody else's payoffs increases risk aversion. This is however not attributable to a 'cautious shift' as often thought. Indeed, looking at risk attitudes in the loss domain, we find an increase in risk seeking under responsibility. This raises issues about the nature of various decision biases under risk, and to what extent changed behavior under responsibility may depend on a social norm of caution in situations of responsibility versus naive corrections from perceived biases. To further explore this issue, we designed a second experiment to explore risk-taking behavior for gain prospects offering very small or very large probabilities of winning. For large probabilities, we find increased risk aversion, thus confirming our earlier finding. For small probabilities however, we find an increase of risk seeking under conditions of responsibility. The latter finding thus discredits hypotheses of a social rule dictating caution under responsibility, and can be explained through flexible self-correction models predicting an accentuation of the fourfold pattern of risk attitudes predicted by prospect theory. An additional accountability mechanism does not change risk behavior, except for mixed prospects, in which it reduces loss aversion. This indicates that loss aversion is of a fundamentally different nature than probability weighting or utility curvature. Implications for debiasing are discussed

Inhibition of Escherichia coli chemotaxis by omega-conotoxin, a calcium ion channel blocker

Escherichia coli chemotaxis was inhibited by omega-conotoxin, a calcium ion channel blocker. With Tris-EDTA-permeabilized cells, nanomolar levels of omega-conotoxin inhibited chemotaxis without loss of motility. Cells treated with omega-conotoxin swam with a smooth bias, i.e., tumbling was inhibited

The Effect of Developed-Country Pesticide Standards on Health and Pesticide-Induced Morbidity of Kenya's Green Bean Family Farmers

This paper examines the effects of compliance with developed country pesticide standards (DC-PS) on pesticide-related health costs and morbidity of developing country fresh vegetable growers. DC-PS require that farmers i) only use approved pesticides (usually less toxic to humans than ones used before), ii) apply pesticides only when pest scouting reveals the need to do so, and iii) handle, use, store and dispose off pesticides in ways that do not pose health threats to farm workers and farm family members. This paper uses survey regression to estimate a model of health costs of pesticide exposure (based on cost of illness approach) and survey poisson regression to estimate a model for use of protective devices. It finds that compliance with DC-PS reduces health costs of pesticide exposure and increases the use of protective devices. The findings imply that DC-PS have health benefits to developed country fresh export vegetable growers beyond acknowledged premium market access and therefore provide an opportunity for governments to partner with fresh produce exporters to promote safe use, storage and disposal of pesticides.Agricultural and Food Policy,

Responsibility Effects in Decision Making under Risk

We systematically explore decision situations in which a decision maker bears responsibility for somebody else's outcomes as well as for her own in situations of payoff equality. In the gain domain we confirm the intuition that being responsible for somebody else's payoffs increases risk aversion. This is however not attributable to a 'cautious shift' as often thought. Indeed, looking at risk attitudes in the loss domain, we find an increase in risk seeking under responsibility. This raises issues about the nature of various decision biases under risk, and to what extent changed behavior under responsibility may depend on a social norm of caution in situations of responsibility versus naive corrections from perceived biases. To further explore this issue, we designed a second experiment to explore risk-taking behavior for gain prospects offering very small or very large probabilities of winning. For large probabilities, we find increased risk aversion, thus confirming our earlier finding. For small probabilities however, we find an increase of risk seeking under conditions of responsibility. The latter finding thus discredits hypotheses of a social rule dictating caution under responsibility, and can be explained through flexible self-correction models predicting an accentuation of the fourfold pattern of risk attitudes predicted by prospect theory. An additional accountability mechanism does not change risk behavior, except for mixed prospects, in which it reduces loss aversion. This indicates that loss aversion is of a fundamentally different nature than probability weighting or utility curvature. Implications for debiasing are discussed.risk attitude; other-regarding preferences; prospect theory; agency; social norms

Superstability of Surface Nanobubbles

Shock wave induced cavitation experiments and atomic force microscopy measurements of flat polyamide and hydrophobized silicon surfaces immersed in water are performed. It is shown that surface nanobubbles, present on these surfaces, do not act as nucleation sites for cavitation bubbles, in contrast to the expectation. This implies that surface nanobubbles are not just stable under ambient conditions but also under enormous reduction of the liquid pressure down to −6MPa. We denote this feature as superstability.Comment: 5 pages, 2 figure

Cellular tracking in time-lapse phase contrast images

The quantitative analysis of live cells is a key issue in evaluating biological processes. The current clinical practice involves the application of a tedious and time consuming manual tracking procedure on large amount of data. As a result, automatic tracking systems are currently developed and evaluated. However, problems caused by cellular division, agglomeration, Brownian motion and topology changes are difficult issues that have to be accommodated by automatic tracking techniques. In this paper, we detail the development of a fully automated multi-target tracking system that is able to deal with Brownian motion and cellular division. During the tracking process our approach includes the neighbourhood relationship and motion history to enforce the cellular tracking continuity in the spatial and temporal domain. The experimental results reported in this paper indicate that our method is able to accurately track cellular structures in time-lapse data

Mindfulness: A foothold for Rogers's humanistic person-centred approach

This article probed and contextualised the strong parallels between meditation derived mindfulness and Rogers's humanistic person-centred (PC) approach. This was done through a conceptual and evaluative literature review of the PC framework in relation to definitive descriptions of mindfulness. Elements of mindfulness within the core conditions of PC therapy were explored and verified. Quotations, pragmatic, behavioural descriptions and explications provided evidence of a shared ideology inherent in both concepts via “way of being”. The findings suggested that mindfulness cultivates, harmonises and deepens essential therapist qualities in PC therapy. This review article could supply a rationale for significant inferences in the implementation of meditation-inspired activities in the practical preparation of trainee therapists as well as optimising proficiency and refinement in professional practice

Non-collinear interaction of photons with orbital angular momentum

We elucidate the consequences of a phase-matching theory that describes second-harmonic generation of two non-collinear incident light beams that carry orbital angular momentum (OAM). More specifically, the two incident beams generate a third that, depending on the incident OAM, may experience a significantly smaller conversion efficiency in comparison to that based on the conventional phase-matching theory. This is the case even for incident angles substantially less than those required for non-conservation of OAM in the nonlinear interaction. Experiments are performed under different conditions and are in excellent agreement with the theory. Our results have implications beyond the specific case studied here of second-harmonic generation, in particular for parametric down-conversion of photons.Comment: 6 pages, 4 figure