An overview of the effect of probiotics and exercise on mood and associated health conditions

The present paper provides a review of the current knowledge relating to the health benefits of probiotics, specially focused on the effects they may have together with physical exercise on mood disorders and related chronic medical conditions. With both these conditions being a substantial contributor to the global disease burden any alternative therapy must be considered. Probiotics influence the gut microbiota through a complex network of events which can influence mechanisms leading to development of mood disorders such as depression and anxiety. Similarly, through a complex interaction between psychological and neurobiological mechanisms, exercise has been found to play a key role in mood enhancement

Community water management and agricultural extension services: effects, impacts and perceptions in the coastal zone of Bangladesh

The coastal region of Bangladesh is prone to natural disasters and these events are expected to worsen as a result of climate change. Combined with anthropogenic factors, these events challenge livelihood opportunities, especially crop production. Waterlogging, tidal activity and the lack of proper drainage facilities are major constraints to agricultural production in these areas. The CGIAR Research Program on Water, Land and Ecosystems (WLE) tested, at pilot scale, the combination of innovative agricultural technologies with improved water management to overcome these challenges. This report assesses this intervention by observing the effects, measuring the short-term impacts and understanding the perceptions. The results highlight the need to integrate the interventions into the local context, and acknowledge that institutions and markets need to mature to harness the benefits from innovations. It also underlines the potential of multi-scale interventions combining plot-level and farmer-led innovations, community management and rehabilitation of large schemes

Put on your poker face? Neural systems supporting the anticipation for expressive suppression and cognitive reappraisal

It is a unique human ability to regulate negative thoughts and feelings. Two well-investigated emotion-regulation strategies (ERSs), cognitive reappraisal and expressive suppression, are associated with overlapping prefrontal neural correlates, but differ temporally during the emotion-generation process. Although functional imaging studies have mainly investigated these ERS as a reaction to an emotion-inducing event, the intention to regulate upcoming negative emotions might already be associated with differences in neural activity. Hence, event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging was recorded in 42 participants while they completed an emotion-regulation paradigm. During this task, participants were instructed to proactively prepare to use a specific ERS knowing that a negative, high-arousing image would appear after the preparation period. As expected, the results demonstrated prefrontal and parietal activation while participants were suppressing or reappraising their emotions (family-wise error (FWE)-corrected). The intention to suppress emotions was associated with increased activation in the right inferior frontal gyrus, bilateral putamen, pre-supplementary motor area and right supramarginal gyrus (FWE-corrected). This enhanced proactive inhibitory control: (i) predicted decreased motoric activity during the actual suppression of emotional expressions and (2) trended toward a significant association with how successfully participants suppressed their emotions. However, neural correlates of preparatory control for cognitive reappraisal were not observed, possibly because contextual cues about the upcoming emotional stimulus are necessary to proactively start to cognitively reinterpret the situation

Information capacity of the Hopfield model

The information capacity of general forms of memory is formalized. The number of bits of information that can be stored in the Hopfield model of associative memory is estimated. It is found that the asymptotic information capacity of a Hopfield network of N neurons is of the order N^3b. The number of arbitrary state vectors that can be made stable in a Hopfield network of N neurons is proved to be bounded above by N

Demo: Non-classic Interference Alignment for Downlink Cellular Networks

Our demo aims at proving the concept of a recent proposed interference management scheme that reduces the inter-cell interference in downlink without complex coordination, known as non-classic interference alignment (IA) scheme. We assume a case where one main Base Station (BS) needs to serve three users equipments (UE) while another BS is causing interference. The primary goal is to construct the alignment scheme ; i.e. each UE estimates the main and interfered channel coefficients, calculates the optimal interference free directions dropped by the interfering BS and feeds them back to the main BS which in turn applies a scheduling to select the best free inter-cell interference directions. Once the scheme is build, we are able to measure the total capacity of the downlink interference channel. We run the scheme in CorteXlab ; a controlled hardware facility located in Lyon, France with remotely programmable radios and multi-node processing capabilities, and we illustrate the achievable capacity gain for different channel realizations.Comment: Joint NEWCOM/COST Workshop on Wireless Communications JNCW 2015, Oct 2015, Barcelone, Spain. 201

Justice Expectations and Applicant Perceptions

Expectations, which are beliefs about a future state of affairs, constitute a basic psychological mechanism that underlies virtually all human behavior. Although expectations serve as a central component in many theories of organizational behavior, they have received limited attention in the organizational justice literature. The goal of this paper is to introduce the concept of justice expectations and explore its implications for understanding applicant perceptions. To conceptualize justice expectations, we draw on research on expectations conducted in multiple disciplines. We discuss the three sources of expectations – direct experience, indirect influences, and other beliefs - and use this typology to identify the likely antecedents of justice expectations in selection contexts. We also discuss the impact of expectations on attitudes, cognitions, and behaviors, focusing specifically on outcomes tied to selection environments. Finally, we explore the theoretical implications of incorporating expectations into research on applicant perceptions and discuss the practical significance of justice expectations in selection contexts

Guaranteeing Defined Contribution Pensions: The Option to Buy-Back a Defined Benefit Promise

After a long commitment to defined benefit (DB) pension plans for US public sect or employees, many state legislatures have introduced defined contribution (DC) plans for their public employees. In this process, investment risk which was previously borne by state DB plans has now devolved to employees covered by the new DC plans. In light of this trend, some states have proposed a guarantee mechanism to help protect DC plan participants. One such guarantee takes the form of an option permitting DC plan participants to bu y back their DB benefit for a price. This paper develops a theoretical framewor k to analyze the option design and illustrate how employee characteristics influ ence the option's cost. We illustrate the potential magnitude of a buy-back opt ion value enacted recently by the State of Florida for its public employees. If employees were to exercise the buy-back option optimally, the market value of t his option could represent up to 100 percent of the DC contributions over the wo rklife.

Understanding Individual Account Guarantees

Demographic aging renders workers vulnerable to the inherent uncertainty of unfunded social security systems. This realization has set off a global wave of social security reforms, and more than 20 countries have set up Individual Accounts (IA) plans in response. Strengths of IAs are that participants gain ownership in their accounts, and they also may diversify their pension investments; additionally they produce a capitalized, funded system that enhances old-age economic security. While IAs reduce the risk participants face due to unfunded social security system, holding capital market investments in IAs could expose participants to fluctuations in the value of their pension assets. Concern over market volatility has prompted some to emphasize the need for “guarantees” of pension accumulations. This paper offers a way to think about guarantees in the context of a reform that includes Individual Accounts. We illustrate that guarantee costs can be important and they can vary significantly with time horizon, investment mix, and guarantee design. The findings indicate that plan designers and budget analysts would do well to recognize such costs and identify how they can be financed.