Because We Need Them...: German-Dutch relations after the occupation: economic inevitability and political acceptance, 1945-1957

German-Dutch economic relations have been so intense since the late nineteenth century that their economies have often been regarded as being mutually dependent. Although protectionism and monetary problems undermined these contacts during the interwar period, this mutual dependency has remained largely intact. The question of the relevance of this economic interdependence has been widely debated. The main protagonists in this field of discussion were, on the one hand the Liberals and on the other the (neo-)Realists. According to the Liberals, intense economic contacts guarantee political security and peace. In this they adhered to the ideas of the eighteenth century philosopher Immanuel Kant, who, in his Zum ewigen Frieden – Perpetual Peace – stated that: „The spirit of commerce, which is incompatible with war, sooner or later gains the upper hand in every state. As the power of money is perhaps the most dependable of all the powers (means) included under the state power, states see themselves forced, without any moral urge, to promote honourable peace and by mediation to prevent war wherever it threatens to break out. They do so exactly as if they stood in perpetual alliances, for great offensive alliances are in the nature of the case rare and even often less breaks out‟. Not only did Kant state that economic interdependence would ensure peace, he also believed that democracy would do so. According to Kant, merchants can influence politics and if politicians were to listen to them, peace could be achieved. After all, merchants are primarily concerned with business, and war is harmful to trade. If two countries in which the people have something to say are economically dependent on one another, this mutual dependence could lead to peaceful relations and to a desire to treat one another with respect and consideration. In De l‟esprit des Lois – The Spirit of the Laws (1758) – Charles de Montesquieu stated something similar: „The natural effect of trade is to bring about peace. Two nations which trade together, render themselves reciprocally dependent; for if one has an interest in buying, the other has an interest in selling; and all unions are based upon mutual needs‟

Leaders Care: Mitigating Violence against Emergency Department Staff

Engaging Emergency Department clinicians in identifying fears and challenges about safety will support a more secure environment. Identifying staff perceptions regarding safety guided intervention development to maximize security. A survey identified staff perceptions of security, and was repeated after the implementation of mitigation interventions in a New Hampshire community hospital Emergency Department. Staff members, Security Officers, and Patient Registrars were invited to participate in anonymous online surveys pre- and post- mitigation intervention implementation. Data were analyzed for significant differences in responses pre- and post- interventions. Following the initial survey, interventions addressing staff concerns were developed and implemented. In the post-intervention survey, significant differences were noted in 5 of 11 staff concerns. Staff security is a moving target in this environment. Leaders must look at the team as a whole. Interventions designed will drive ongoing educational initiatives, policy revision, and clarification of responsibilities among team members in order to improve safety

Midbrain Dopamine Neurons Signal Belief in Choice Accuracy during a Perceptual Decision

Central to the organization of behavior is the ability to predict the values of outcomes to guide choices. The accuracy of such predictions is honed by a teaching signal that indicates how incorrect a prediction was (“reward prediction error,” RPE). In several reinforcement learning contexts, such as Pavlovian conditioning and decisions guided by reward history, this RPE signal is provided by midbrain dopamine neurons. In many situations, however, the stimuli predictive of outcomes are perceptually ambiguous. Perceptual uncertainty is known to influence choices, but it has been unclear whether or how dopamine neurons factor it into their teaching signal. To cope with uncertainty, we extended a reinforcement learning model with a belief state about the perceptually ambiguous stimulus; this model generates an estimate of the probability of choice correctness, termed decision confidence. We show that dopamine responses in monkeys performing a perceptually ambiguous decision task comply with the model’s predictions. Consequently, dopamine responses did not simply reflect a stimulus’ average expected reward value but were predictive of the trial-to-trial fluctuations in perceptual accuracy. These confidence-dependent dopamine responses emerged prior to monkeys’ choice initiation, raising the possibility that dopamine impacts impending decisions, in addition to encoding a post-decision teaching signal. Finally, by manipulating reward size, we found that dopamine neurons reflect both the upcoming reward size and the confidence in achieving it. Together, our results show that dopamine responses convey teaching signals that are also appropriate for perceptual decisions

Europe and Germany’s Age of Catastrophe, 1914–1950

Many, many comparisons have been drawn in recent years between the current rise of (right-wing) populism and the financial crisis of 2008 that shook and continues to shake Europe to its core, and the tumultuous and horrifying events of the 1930s, which in the end resulted in the Second World War. A number of recent studies which (partially) focus on this decade carry ominous titles like To Hell and Back, The Age of Catastrophe and The Triumph of the Dark. Referred to by some historians as the second Thirty Years’ War, the period from the First World War to the end of the Second still continues to draw much academic and indeed public attention. In many cases, Germany deservedly plays a central role in the analysis, either in the form of the Kaiserreich or the ill-fated Weimar Republic and, of course, Nazi Germany. The five books under review here discuss European history between 1914 and 1950 in general, and that of Germany in particular, in this period. What do these books tell us about Europe’s and Germany’s path in the first half of the twentieth century, and what new insights do they provide? https://doi.org/10.1177/0265691418777981 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/martijn-lak-71793013

The effects of water quality on growth of the reared pacific white shrimp (Litopenaeus vannamei)

We investigated effects of water quality on growth of the Pacific white shrimp (Litopenaeus vannamei) reared in Heleh region of Bushehr in the south of Iran. Physico-chemical parameters such as water temperature, dissolved oxygen, salinity, pH and clarity were investigated in three 0.5ha shrimp ponds. Nutrients (nitrate, nitrite, ammonia and total phosphate), magnesium and sulphate as water quality factors were also investigated. Using one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA), a significant correlation (P0.05) while the afternoon pH values had negative significant correlation with the growth factors (P0.05)

Dopamine axons in dorsal striatum encode contralateral visual stimuli and choices.

The striatum plays critical roles in visually-guided decision making and receives dense axonal projections from midbrain dopamine neurons. However, the roles of striatal dopamine in visual decision making are poorly understood. We trained male and female mice to perform a visual decision task with asymmetric reward payoff, and we recorded the activity of dopamine axons innervating striatum. Dopamine axons in the dorsomedial striatum (DMS) responded to contralateral visual stimuli and contralateral rewarded actions. Neural responses to contralateral stimuli could not be explained by orienting behavior such as eye movements. Moreover, these contralateral stimulus responses persisted in sessions where the animals were instructed to not move to obtain reward, further indicating that these signals are stimulus-related. Lastly, we show that DMS dopamine signals were qualitatively different from dopamine signals in the ventral striatum, which responded to both ipsi- and contralateral stimuli, conforming to canonical prediction error signaling under sensory uncertainty. Thus, during visual decisions, DMS dopamine encodes visual stimuli and rewarded actions in a lateralized fashion, and could facilitate associations between specific visual stimuli and actions

Global terrestrial distribution of penguins (Spheniscidae) and their conservation by protected areas

Establishing protected areas (PAs) ranks among the top priority actions to mitigate the global scale of modern biodiversity declines. However, the distribution of biodiversity is spatially asymmetric among regions and lineages, and the extent to which PAs offer effective protection for species and ecosystems remains uncertain. Penguins, regarded as prime bioindicator birds of the ecological health of their terrestrial and marine habitats, represent priority targets for such quantitative assessments. Of the world’s 18 penguin species, eleven are undergoing population declines, for which ten are classified as ‘Vulnerable’ or ‘Endangered’. Here, we employ a global-scale dataset to quantify the extent to which their terrestrial breeding areas are currently protected by PAs. Using quantitative methods for spatial ecology, we compare the global distribution of penguin colonies, including range and population size analyses, with the distribution of terrestrial PAs classified by the International Union for Conservation of Nature, and generate hotspot and endemism maps worldwide. Our assessment quantitatively reveals < 40% of the terrestrial range of eleven penguin species is currently protected, and that range size is the significant factor in determining PA protection. We also show that there are seven global hotspots of penguin biodiversity where four or five penguin species breed. We suggest that future penguin conservation initiatives should be implemented based on more comprehensive, quantitative assessments of the multi-dimensional interactions between areas and species to further the effectiveness of PA networks