Understanding jumping to conclusions in patients with persecutory delusions: working memory and intolerance of uncertainty

Background. Persecutory delusions are a key psychotic experience. A reasoning style known as ‘jumping to conclusions’ (JTC) – limited information gathering before reaching certainty in decision making – has been identified as a contributory factor in the occurrence of delusions. The cognitive processes that underpin JTC need to be determined in order to develop effective interventions for delusions. In the current study two alternative perspectives were tested: that JTC partially results from impairment in information-processing capabilities and that JTC is a motivated strategy to avoid uncertainty.Method. A group of 123 patients with persistent persecutory delusions completed assessments of JTC (the 60:40 beads task), IQ, working memory, intolerance of uncertainty, and psychiatric symptoms. Patients showing JTC were compared with patients not showing JTC.Results. A total of 30 (24%) patients with delusions showed JTC. There were no differences between patients who did and did not jump to conclusions in overall psychopathology. Patients who jumped to conclusions had poorer working memory performance, lower IQ, lower intolerance of uncertainty and lower levels of worry.Working memory and worry independently predicted the presence of JTC.Conclusions. Hasty decision making in patients with delusions may partly arise from difficulties in keeping information in mind. Interventions for JTC are likely to benefit from addressing working memory performance, while in vivo techniques for patients with delusions will benefit from limiting the demands on working memory. The study provides little evidence for a contribution to JTC from top down motivational beliefs about uncertainty

Additionality effects of public support programmes on cooperation for innovation: evidence from European manufacturing SMEs

We have witnessed an increase in the number of research studies focusing on the behavioural additionality effects of research, development and innovation (RD&I) policy – where this form of additionality measures the impact of public support measures on firms' behaviour thought to promote innovation. This paper considers whether public support increases the propensity of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in traditional manufacturing industries to cooperate for innovation. Drawing on a unique dataset of SMEs from six manufacturing industries across seven European Union (EU) regions, we estimated treatment effects by applying a range of matching estimators. The results suggest a positive yet heterogeneous impact of public support on cooperation for innovation in the sample SMEs. Overall, the largest treatment parameters refer to public-private partnerships. Following best practice in matching estimation, the study reports its findings from a novel simulation-based sensitivity analysis, which indicates that the estimated treatment parameters are robust with respect to any possible unobserved heterogeneity

Two-dimensional superharmonic stability of finite-amplitude waves in plane Poiseuille flow

In recent work on shear-flow instability, the tacit assumption has been made that the two-dimensional stability of finite-amplitudes waves in plane Poiseuille flow follows a simple and well-understood pattern, namely one with a stability transition at the limit point in Reynolds number. Using numerical stability calculations we show that the application of heuristic arguments in support of this assumption has been in error, and that a much richer picture of bifurcations to quasi-periodic flows can arise from considering the two-dimensional superharmonic stability of such a shear flow

Cooperation for innovation and its impact on technological and non-technological innovation: empirical evidence from European SMEs in traditional manufacturing industries

Drawing on a sample of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in traditional manufacturing industries from seven EU regions, this study investigates how cooperation with external organizations affects technological (product and process) innovations and non-technological (organizational and marketing) innovations as well as the commercial success of product and process innovations (i.e. innovative sales). Our empirical strategy takes into account that all four types of innovation are potentially complementary. Empirical results suggest that cooperation increases firms' innovativeness and yields substantial commercial benefits. In particular, increasing the number of cooperation partnerships has a positive impact on all measures of innovation performance. We conclude that a portfolio approach to cooperation enhances innovation performance and that innovation support programs should be demand-led

Generation of internal stress and its effects

Internal stresses may be generated continually in many polycrystalline materials. Their existence is manifested by changes in crystal defect concentration and arrangement, by surface observations, by macroscopic shape changes and particularly by alteration of mechanical properties when external stresses are simultaneously imposed

Generalized nonuniform dichotomies and local stable manifolds

We establish the existence of local stable manifolds for semiflows generated by nonlinear perturbations of nonautonomous ordinary linear differential equations in Banach spaces, assuming the existence of a general type of nonuniform dichotomy for the evolution operator that contains the nonuniform exponential and polynomial dichotomies as a very particular case. The family of dichotomies considered allow situations for which the classical Lyapunov exponents are zero. Additionally, we give new examples of application of our stable manifold theorem and study the behavior of the dynamics under perturbations.Comment: 18 pages. New version with minor corrections and an additional theorem and an additional exampl