Gender Differences in Risk Aversion: Do Single-Sex Environments Affect their Development?

Single-sex classes within coeducational environments are likely to modify students' risk-taking attitudes in economically important ways. To test this, we designed a controlled experiment using first year college students who made choices over real-stakes lotteries at two distinct dates. Students were randomly assigned to classes of three types: all female, all male, and coeducational. They were not allowed to change group subsequently. We found that women are less likely to make risky choices than men at both dates. However, after eight weeks in a single-sex environment, women were significantly more likely to choose the lottery than their counterparts in coeducational groups. These results are robust to the inclusion of controls for IQ and for personality type, as well as to a number of sensitivity tests. Our findings suggest that observed gender differences in behaviour under uncertainty found in previous studies might partly reflect social learning rather than inherent gender traits.gender, risk preferences, single-sex groups, cognitive ability

NATURAL HISTORY OF LEIOCEPHALUS SEMILINEATUS IN ASSOCIATION WITH SYMPATRIC LEIOCEPHALUS SCHREIBERSII AND AMEIVA LINEOLATA

We examined diet, habitat use, and behavior (focal animal observations of intraspecific interactions, escape behavior, and activity period) of Leiocephalus semilineatus from near Puerto Alejandro, Provincia de Barahona, República Dominicana, and compared some parameters to similar data collected at a site near Baní, Provincia de Peravia. Leiocephalus semilineatus is found in sympatry in dry scrub forests at both sites with Ameiva lineolata, an active-foraging teiid of approximately the same size, and at the Puerto Alejandro site with a larger congener, L. schreibersii. Leiocephalus semilineatus and L. schreibersii from Puerto Alejandro exhibited sexual size dimorphism, whereas L. semilineatus from the Baní site and A. lineolata did not. Leiocephalus semilineatus spent most of the time motionless; other observed activities were interactions with conspecifics, movement, and feeding. Lizards were active from shortly after sunrise to sundown, although activity peaked in late morning. Mean cloacal temperatures of L. semilineatus did not differ significantly from those of the other two species, but were significantly above ambient temperatures. Reproductive condition of collected specimens was examined and no correlation was found between snout-vent length and egg, follicle, or testis size. Clutch size was 1–2. Diets consisted primarily of invertebrates and did not differ significantly between the three species

Virtue perspectivism, externalism, and epistemic circularity

Virtue perspectivism is a bi-level epistemology according to which there are two grades of knowledge: animal and reflective. The exercise of reliable competences suffices to give us animal knowledge; but we can then use these same competences to gain a second-order assuring perspective, one through which we may appreciate those faculties as reliable and in doing so place our first-order (animal) knowledge in a competent second-order perspective. Virtue perspectivism has considerable theoretical power, especially when it comes to vindicating our external world knowledge against threats of scepticism and regress. Prominent critics, however, doubt whether the view ultimately hangs together without succumbing to vicious circularity. In this paper, I am going to focus on circularity-based criticisms of virtue perspectivism raised in various places by Barry Stroud, Baron Reed and Richard Fumerton, and I will argue that virtue perspectivism can ultimately withstand each of them

Introduction: Examined Live – An Epistemological Exchange Between Philosophy and Cultural Psychology on Reflection

Besides the general agreement about the human capability of reflection, there is a large area of disagreement and debate about the nature and value of “reflective scrutiny” and the role of “second-order states” in everyday life. This problem has been discussed in a vast and heterogeneous literature about topics such as epistemic injustice, epistemic norms, agency, understanding, meta-cognition etc. However, there is not yet any extensive and interdisciplinary work, specifically focused on the topic of the epistemic value of reflection. This volume is one of the first attempts aimed at providing an innovative contribution, an exchange between philosophy, epistemology and psychology about the place and value of reflection in everyday life. Our goal in the next sections is not to offer an exhaustive overview of recent work on epistemic reflection, nor to mimic all of the contributions made by the chapters in this volume. We will try to highlight some topics that have motivated a new resumption of this field and, with that, drawing on chapters from this volume where relevant. Two elements defined the scope and content of this volume, on the one hand, the crucial contribution of Ernest Sosa, whose works provide original and thought-provoking contributions to contemporary epistemology in setting a new direction for old dilemmas about the nature and value of knowledge, giving a central place to reflection. On the other hand, the recent developments of cultural psychology, in the version of the “Aalborg approach”, reconsider the object and scope of psychological sciences, stressing that “[h]uman conduct is purposeful”

Populational fluctuation and spatial distribution of Alphitobius diaperinus (Panzer) (Coleoptera; Tenebrionidae) in a poultry house, Cascavel, Parana state, Brazil.

Abstract Knowledge of the population fluctuation and spatial distribution of pests is fundamental for establishing an appropriate control method. The population fluctuation and spatial distribution of the Alphitobius diaperinus in a poultry house in Cascavel, in the state of Parana, Brazil, was studied between October, 2001 and October 2002. Larvae and adults of the lesser mealworm were sampled weekly using Arends tube traps (n = 22) for six consecutive flock grow-outs. The temperature of the litter and of the poultry house was measured at the same locations of the tube traps. Beetle numbers increased continuously throughout all the sampling dates (average 5,137 in the first week and 18,494 insects on the sixth week). Significantly greater numbers of larvae were collected than adults (1 to 20 times in 95% of the sampling points). There was no correlation between temperature and the number of larvae and adults collected, therefore no fluctuation was observed during the sampling period. The population growth was correlated to litter re-use. The highest temperatures were observed in deep litter. The spatial distribution of larvae and adults in the poultry house was heterogeneous during the whole period of evaluation. Results suggest that monitoring in poultry houses is necessary prior to adopting and evaluating control measures due to the great variability of the insect distribution in the poultry house. Keywords: lesser mealworm, poultry house, temperature, population dynamicbitstream/item/78871/1/ID-27879.pd

Slow Tourism: A Possible Solution to Indigenous Communities’ Invisibility in San Cristobal de las Casas

Tourism is Mexico’s second largest service industry and makes up a significant amount of the country’s revenue. Scholars have considered and described the impact of Indigenous exploitation on the tourism industry; however, researchers have generally limited their investigation to the social conflict between Indigenous communities, mestizos, and tourists, instead of providing sustainable solutions to an issue that has worsened with time. Parallelly, even though recent studies have suggested Slow Tourism as a development tool to the economy, their proposal does not consider Indigenous communities as active agents. We report the results of descriptive research design, considered from a transactionalist framework, from which we draw potential steps towards a sustainable and fair industry; this methodology allows accurate description of the Fast Tourism phenomenon. Through field work in non-participant observation and field notes gathered in the span of four weeks, the observation process develops in a three-stage funnel system, manifested in the appendix. This study aims to shift the current international and capitalist touristic models to fit Indigenous communities’ necessities and values through the implementation of Slow Tourism practices

Tensor Analysis and Fusion of Multimodal Brain Images

Current high-throughput data acquisition technologies probe dynamical systems with different imaging modalities, generating massive data sets at different spatial and temporal resolutions posing challenging problems in multimodal data fusion. A case in point is the attempt to parse out the brain structures and networks that underpin human cognitive processes by analysis of different neuroimaging modalities (functional MRI, EEG, NIRS etc.). We emphasize that the multimodal, multi-scale nature of neuroimaging data is well reflected by a multi-way (tensor) structure where the underlying processes can be summarized by a relatively small number of components or "atoms". We introduce Markov-Penrose diagrams - an integration of Bayesian DAG and tensor network notation in order to analyze these models. These diagrams not only clarify matrix and tensor EEG and fMRI time/frequency analysis and inverse problems, but also help understand multimodal fusion via Multiway Partial Least Squares and Coupled Matrix-Tensor Factorization. We show here, for the first time, that Granger causal analysis of brain networks is a tensor regression problem, thus allowing the atomic decomposition of brain networks. Analysis of EEG and fMRI recordings shows the potential of the methods and suggests their use in other scientific domains.Comment: 23 pages, 15 figures, submitted to Proceedings of the IEE