Addressing climate change with behavioral science: a global intervention tournament in 63 countries

Effectively reducing climate change requires marked, global behavior change. However, it is unclear which strategies are most likely to motivate people to change their climate beliefs and behaviors. Here, we tested 11 expert-crowdsourced interventions on four climate mitigation outcomes: beliefs, policy support, information sharing intention, and an effortful tree-planting behavioral task. Across 59,440 participants from 63 countries, the interventions’ effectiveness was small, largely limited to nonclimate skeptics, and differed across outcomes: Beliefs were strengthened mostly by decreasing psychological distance (by 2.3%), policy support by writing a letter to a future-generation member (2.6%), information sharing by negative emotion induction (12.1%), and no intervention increased the more effortful behavior—several interventions even reduced tree planting. Last, the effects of each intervention differed depending on people’s initial climate beliefs. These findings suggest that the impact of behavioral climate interventions varies across audiences and target behaviors

Entorhinal grid-like codes and time-locked network dynamics track others navigating through space

Navigating through crowded, dynamically changing environments requires the ability to keep track of other individuals. Grid cells in the entorhinal cortex are a central component of self-related navigation but whether they also track others' movement is unclear. Here, we propose that entorhinal grid-like codes make an essential contribution to socio-spatial navigation. Sixty human participants underwent functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) while observing and re-tracing different paths of a demonstrator that navigated a virtual reality environment. Results revealed that grid-like codes in the entorhinal cortex tracked the other individual navigating through space. The activity of grid-like codes was time-locked to increases in co-activation and entorhinal-cortical connectivity that included the striatum, the hippocampus, parahippocampal and right posterior parietal cortices. Surprisingly, the grid-related effects during observation were stronger the worse participants performed when subsequently re-tracing the demonstrator's paths. Our findings suggests that network dynamics time-locked to entorhinal grid-cell-related activity might serve to distribute information about the location of others throughout the brain

INFORMATION SECURITY IN BULGARIAN E-COMMERCE SYSTEMS

Осигуряването на информационната безопасност е едно от големите предизвикателства към съвременните информационни и комуникационни технологии. За решаването на проблемите в това направление е необходимо организиранена цялостен и з адълбочен анализ на всички реални и потенциални заплахи и на тази основа избор и разработване на цялостно решение. Обект на изследване в настоящата студия са системите за електронна търговия в българските бизнес организации, а предмет – политиките, стратегиите, подходите, методите, техниките и технологиите за постигане на високо ниво на сигурност на тези системи. Основната цел на настоящата студия е да бъде доказана тезата, че ефи- касната защита в електронната търговия е многопластова и трябва да отчита новите технологии, политиките и процедурите, законите и индустриалните стандарти. Задачите, които решаваме за постигане на поставената цел, са: представяне на резултатите от изследване на текущото състояние на сигурността в системите за електронна търговия в българските бизнес организации; дефиниране на проблемите на информационната сигурност в системите за електронна търговия; представяне на стратегия и технологии за противодействие на тези заплахи. The provision of information security is one of the greatest challenges that modern information and communication technologies face. To solve the problems in this area it is necessary to perform a complete and profound analysis of all real and potential threats and, on this basis, to choose and develop a complete solution. The object of study are the e-commerce systems in the Bulgarian business organizations and the subject of study are the policies, strategies, approaches, methods, techniques and technologies to achieve a high level of security of these systems. The main goal of this study is to prove the thesis statement that effective protection in e-commerce is multi-layered and the new technologies, policies and procedures, laws and industry standards have to be taken into account. The tasks to achieve the goal include: presenting the results of a survey of the current state of ecommerce systems security in the Bulgarian business organizations; defining the problems of information security in e-commerce systems; and presenting a strategy and technology to counter these threats

Acute stress reduces effortful prosocial behaviour

Acute stress can change our cognition and emotions, but what specific consequences this has for human prosocial behaviour is unclear. Previous studies have mainly investigated prosociality with financial transfers in economic games and produced conflicting results. Yet a core feature of many types of prosocial behaviour is that they are effortful. We therefore examined how acute stress changes our willingness to exert effort that benefits others. Healthy male participants – half of whom were put under acute stress – made decisions whether to exert physical effort to gain money for themselves or another person. With this design, we could independently assess the effects of acute stress on prosocial, compared to self-benefitting, effortful behaviour. Compared to controls (n = 45), participants in the stress group (n = 46) chose to exert effort more often for self- than for other-benefitting rewards at a low level of effort. Additionally, the adverse effects of stress on prosocial effort were particularly pronounced in more selfish participants. Neuroimaging combined with computational modelling revealed a putative neural mechanism underlying these effects: more stressed participants showed increased activation to subjective value in the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex and anterior insula when they themselves could benefit from their exerted effort relative to when someone else could. By using an effort-based task that better approximates real-life prosocial behaviour and incorporating trait differences in prosocial tendencies, our study provides important insights into how acute stress affects prosociality and its associated neural mechanisms

Data_Sheet_1_Music for autism: a protocol for an international randomized crossover trial on music therapy for children with autism.docx

The notion of a connection between autism and music is as old as the first reported cases of autism, and music has been used as a therapeutic tool for many decades. Music therapy holds promise as an intervention for individuals with autism, harnessing their strengths in music processing to enhance communication and expression. While previous randomized controlled trials have demonstrated positive outcomes in terms of global improvement and quality of life, their reliance on psychological outcomes restricts our understanding of underlying mechanisms. This paper introduces the protocol for the Music for Autism study, a randomized crossover trial designed to investigate the effects of a 12-week music therapy intervention on a range of psychometric, neuroimaging, and biological outcomes in school-aged children with autism. The protocol builds upon previous research and aims to both replicate and expand upon findings that demonstrated improvements in social communication and functional brain connectivity following a music intervention. The primary objective of this trial is to determine whether music therapy leads to improvements in social communication and functional brain connectivity as compared to play-based therapy. In addition, secondary aims include exploring various relevant psychometric, neuroimaging, and biological outcomes. To achieve these objectives, we will enroll 80 participants aged 6–12 years in this international, assessor-blinded, crossover randomized controlled trial. Each participant will be randomly assigned to receive either music therapy or play-based therapy for a period of 12 weeks, followed by a 12-week washout period, after which they will receive the alternate intervention. Assessments will be conducted four times, before and after each intervention period. The protocol of the Music for Autism trial provides a comprehensive framework for studying the effects of music therapy on a range of multidimensional outcomes in children with autism. The findings from this trial have the potential to contribute to the development of evidence-based interventions that leverage strengths in music processing to address the complex challenges faced by individuals with autism.Clinical Trial Registration: Clinicaltrials.gov identifier NCT04936048.</p

Type 2 Diabetes Whole-Genome Association Study in Four Populations: The DiaGen Consortium

Type 2 diabetes (T2D) is a common, polygenic chronic disease with high heritability. The purpose of this whole-genome association study was to discover novel T2D-associated genes. We genotyped 500 familial cases and 497 controls with >300,000 HapMap-derived tagging single-nucleotide–polymorphism (SNP) markers. When a stringent statistical correction for multiple testing was used, the only significant SNP was at TCF7L2, which has already been discovered and confirmed as a T2D-susceptibility gene. For a replication study, we selected 10 SNPs in six chromosomal regions with the strongest association (singly or as part of a haplotype) for retesting in an independent case-control set including 2,573 T2D cases and 2,776 controls. The most significant replicated result was found at the AHI1-LOC441171 gene region