A stochastic movement simulator improves estimates of landscape connectivity

Acknowledgments This publication issued from the project TenLamas funded by the French Ministère de l'Energie, de l'Ecologie, du Développement Durable et de la Mer through the EU FP6 BiodivERsA Eranet; by the Agence Nationale de la Recherche (ANR) through the open call INDHET and 6th extinction MOBIGEN to V. M. Stevens, M. Baguette, and A. Coulon, and young researcher GEMS (ANR-13-JSV7-0010-01) to V. M. Stevens and M. Baguette; and by a VLIR-VLADOC scholarship awarded to J. Aben. L. Lens, J. Aben, D. Strubbe, and E. Matthysen are grateful to the Research Foundation Flanders (FWO) for financial support of fieldwork and genetic analysis (grant G.0308.13). V. M. Stevens and M. Baguette are members of the “Laboratoire d'Excellence” (LABEX) entitled TULIP (ANR-10-LABX-41). J. M. J. Travis and S. C. F. Palmer also acknowledge the support of NERC. A. Coulon and J. Aben contributed equally to the work.Peer reviewedPublisher PD

The Growth of Incarceration in the United States: Exploring Causes and Consequences

After decades of stability from the 1920s to the early 1970s, the rate of incarceration in the United States more than quadrupled in the past four decades. The Committee on the Causes and Consequences of High Rates of Incarceration in the United States was established under the auspices of the National Research Council, supported by the National Institute of Justice and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, to review evidence on the causes and consequences of these high incarceration rates and the implications of this evidence for public policy. Our work encompassed research on, and analyses of, the proximate causes of the dramatic rise in the prison population and the societal dynamics that supported those proximate causes. Our analysis reviewed evidence of the effects of high rates of incarceration on public safety as well as those in prison, their families, and the communities from which these men and women originate and to which they return. We also examined the effects on U.S. society. After assessing the evidence, the committee found that the normative principles that both limit and justify the use of incarceration as a response to crime were a necessary element of the analytical process. Public policy on the appropriate use of prison is not determined solely by weighing evidence of costs and benefits. Rather, a combination of empirical findings and explicit normative commitments is required. Issues regarding criminal punishment necessarily involve ideas about justice, fairness, and just deserts. Accordingly, this report includes a review of established principles of jurisprudence and governance that have historically guided society’s use of incarceration. Finally, we considered the practical implications of our conclusions for public policy and for research

Intravenous saline administration improves physical functioning.

ABSTRACT Patients with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS) have diminished physical capacity that has been linked to low blood volume (hypovolemia) and abnormal sympathoadrenal activation. Intravenous saline administration could ameliorate these problems, thereby improving the work capacity in CFS. Purpose: This study investigates the effect of 1 L/day of 0.9% saline administration in a 37 yr old female with CFS. Methods: Primary outcome measures were based on cardiopulmonary responses during maximal exercise testing. A preliminary exercise test was performed prior to beginning saline administration. Follow-up exercise tests were conducted at 15, 55, 92, 125, 180, 248, 317, 420 and 675 days post first treatment and 30 days post last treatment. Results: Measures of peak oxygen consumption (VO2 peak), minute ventilation (VE), VO2 at anaerobic threshold (AT), peak workload (WL), heart rate (HR), and systolic blood pressure (SBP) increased during the saline administration. Conclusions: These findings indicate that the diminished work capacity in CFS may result from low blood volume at least in a subset of the disease. Chronic infusion of fluids improves the disease associated hypovolemia, thereby improving CFS symptomology

LoCoMoTe – a framework for classification of natural locomotion in VR by task, technique and modality

Virtual reality (VR) research has provided overviews of locomotion techniques, how they work, their strengths and overall user experience. Considerable research has investigated new methodologies, particularly machine learning to develop redirection algorithms. To best support the development of redirection algorithms through machine learning, we must understand how best to replicate human navigation and behaviour in VR, which can be supported by the accumulation of results produced through live-user experiments. However, it can be difficult to identify, select and compare relevant research without a pre-existing framework in an ever-growing research field. Therefore, this work aimed to facilitate the ongoing structuring and comparison of the VR-based natural walking literature by providing a standardised framework for researchers to utilise. We applied thematic analysis to study methodology descriptions from 140 VR-based papers that contained live-user experiments. From this analysis, we developed the LoCoMoTe framework with three themes: navigational decisions, technique implementation, and modalities. The LoCoMoTe framework provides a standardised approach to structuring and comparing experimental conditions. The framework should be continually updated to categorise and systematise knowledge and aid in identifying research gaps and discussions

Situationism, Honesty, and the Folk

This project aims at finding a widespread folk theory of honesty in order to construct an accurate account of the philosophical nature of honesty as a character trait. Our research process involves gathering responses from the folk, then combining and interpreting the responses. Our broad goal is to discover a solid case for the existence of character traits that can be used against the recent situationist attacks being seen in psychology. Proponents of situationism reject the existence of broad character traits, arguing that behaviour is driven by situational factors and that humans posess no significant character traits at all (Harmon, 1999, 2000 and Doris 1998, 2002). Research in psychology has been used to support situationism, but skepticism arises about the interpretation of study results. For example, Kamtekar notes that “[I]t is noteworthy that the experiments appealed by situationists for the most part assume that subjects share the experimenter’s construal of the situation” (2004, p. 471). Our research aims to provide a single, agreed-upon basis for evaluating action in terms of character traits

Simple settlement decisions explain common dispersal patterns in territorial species

Dispersal is one of the least-understood aspects of animal behaviour. For example, little is known of the mechanisms that determine how individuals express different dispersal behaviours in different circumstances. Uncovering these mechanisms is important for our understanding of spatial population dynamics. Using agent-based simulations, we examine how simple decision rules generate individual-level dispersal plasticity, and how this can influence population-scale dispersal dynamics. We model a territorial, monogamous population inhabiting a completely homogeneous environment. Dispersal variability therefore emerges solely as a result of between-individual interactions (competition, settlement, reproduction), which are governed by simple decision-making algorithms. We show that complex dispersal dynamics, including sex biases and strong density dependence, emerge naturally from simple rule-based behaviours. Dispersal is particularly sensitive to the inclusion of mate availability as a criterion for settlement: if neither sex evaluates mate availability, dispersal distances tend to decline at low densities, leading to a strong Allee effect from reduced pairing success. If one sex evaluates mate availability (females), Allee effects are largely avoided, but female-biased dispersal generates increasingly male-biased adult sex ratios at low densities. Sex biases are eliminated if both sexes evaluate mate availability, but population growth rates tend to be reduced due to survival costs and reduced pairing success. Our models suggest that simple decision mechanisms can explain several dynamic patterns that are commonly observed among territorial species. Importantly, these patterns emerge in the absence of environmental heterogeneity or between-individual variation in dispersal phenotypes, two conditions that are often invoked to explain dispersal heterogeneity in nature. This has implications for studies seeking to examine the causes of dispersal variability in wild populations, suggesting that observed patterns could be largely driven by the social and demographic conditions experienced by sampled individuals. Further insights could be gained by examining how selection operates on decision rules in different life-history and environmental circumstances, and how this might interact with selection on other demographic traits. Uncovering the decision-rules used during settlement should be a priority for those wishing to understand and predict dispersal patterns in nature

Experimental Philosophy--An Emerging Discipline

This poster will explain the nature of a newly emerging field in philosophy called experimental philosophy (“X-phi”) and its presence on Boise State’s campus. BSU’s X-phi group operates via gathering data from “everyday” people, sorting and statistically analyzing the data, then reviewing trends identified people’s intuitions about certain concepts (e.g. know-how, intentional action, moral correctness, etc.). We are exploring the concept of Honesty—a concept that has, to date, not been adequately analyzed. To distinguish theories developed as a result of this research, X-phi employs the term “folk theory”, literally referring to the theory that the majority of people are found to hold. It’s then interdisciplinarily informative determine where these folk theories match up, or fail to, with existing philosophical theories. X-phi is still establishing itself in the greater academic community, but is proving its worth; philosopher and professor at Tufts University, Daniel Dennett, acknowledges in a recently published book review that “some of the work has yielded interesting results that certainly defy complacent assumptions common among philosophers.” BSU’s X-Phi group has been active on campus for two years; this poster will report the group’s evolution, current work, and explain what X-Phi is in general