Envy and Altruism in Children

Envy and altruism have been studied extensively in adults. Here, we report data from an experiment studying envious and altruistic behavior in children. We study a sample of German school children aged seven to ten in a natural setting. We run two treatments. One treatment investigates envy, the other one studies altruism. Additionally, we collect data on the children's cognitive and social skills, and on their socio-demographic background. Controlling for these factors, we find that older children are significantly more altruistic. Boys care more about their relative position than girls. Socio-demographic information have limited predictive power in both treatments.artefactual field experiment, children, envy, altruism

An Extendable Multiagent Model for Behavioural Animation

This paper presents a framework for visually simulating the behaviour of actors in virtual environments. In principle, the environmental interaction follows a cyclic processing of perception, decision, and action. As natural life-forms perceive their environment by active sensing, our approach also tends to let the artificial actor actively sense the virtual world. This allows us to place the characters in non-preprocessed virtual dynamic environments, what we call generic environments. A main aspect within our framework is the strict distinction between a behaviour pattern, that we term model, and its instances, named characters, which use the pattern. This allows them sharing one or more behaviour models. Low-level tasks like sensing or acting are took over by so called subagents, which are subordinated modules extendedly plugged in the character. In a demonstration we exemplarily show the application of our framework. We place the same character in different environments and let it climb and descend stairs, ramps and hills autonomously. Additionally the reactiveness for moving objects is tested. In future, this approach shall go into action for a simulation of an urban environment

Wideband Time-Domain Digital Backpropagation via Subband Processing and Deep Learning

We propose a low-complexity sub-banded DSP architecture for digital backpropagation where the walk-off effect is compensated using simple delay elements. For a simulated 96-Gbaud signal and 2500 km optical link, our method achieves a 2.8 dB SNR improvement over linear equalization.Comment: 3 pages, 3 figur

Bob Dylan and religion

This article, which is located within the field of research on religion and popular culture, is a discussion of the relations of one particular rock artist, Bob Dylan, to religion. Religion can be seen as a recurring topic in Dylan’s work—particularly during a period at the end of the 1970s and beginning of the 1980s, often referred to as his ‘Christian era’—and also in the discourses around him. This article explores how the topic of religion appears in discourses around Bob Dylan. In this article one particular aspect of the connection between religion and popular culture is looked at: the construction of certain artists or stars as religious figures, and more specifically Bob Dylan as a case. The author does not try to discover whether Dylan is religious or not; or which religion he possibly adheres to. Rather, the author looks at how rock artists and in this case Bob Dylan are ‘constructed’ as religious figures.

Impulse for animal welfare outside the experiment

Animal welfare is a growing societal concern and the well-being of animals used for experimental purposes is under particular scrutiny. The vast majority of laboratory animals are mice living in small cages that do not offer very much variety. Moreover, the experimental procedure often takes very little time compared to the time these animals have been bred to the desired age or are being held available for animal experimentation. However, for the assessment of animal welfare, the time spent waiting for an experiment or the time spent after finishing an experiment has also to be taken into account. In addition to experimental animals, many additional animals (e.g. for breeding and maintenance of genetic lines, surplus animals) are related to animal experimentation and usually face similar living conditions. Therefore, in terms of improving the overall welfare of laboratory animals, there is not only a need for refinement of experimental conditions but especially for improving living conditions outside the experiment. The improvement of animal welfare thus depends to a large extent on the housing and maintenance conditions of all animals related to experimentation. Given the current state of animal welfare research there is indeed a great potential for improving the overall welfare of laboratory animals

Plant-derived inhibitors targeting a beetle’s pectin digestion: a biochemical study on the interaction between plant cell wall proteins and members of the glycoside hydrolase family 28 from the mustard leaf beetle Phaedon cochleariae

Plant cell walls represent the first line of defence against biotic stresses, including phytopathogens and herbivores. The mustard leaf beetle Phaedon cochleariae feeds on brassicaceous plants and possesses various plant cell wall degrading enzymes for the digestion of plant cell wall polysaccharides. Amongst those, polygalacturonases (PGs) of the glycoside hydrolase family 28 (GH28) facilitate the breakdown of pectin. Several PG-inhibiting proteins (PGIPs) – plant-derived, cell wall-associated proteins containing multiple leucine-rich repeat (LRR) motifs – have been shown to inhibit microbial PGs and thus contribute to the defence against phytopathogens. This thesis takes a biochemical approach to elucidate the interaction between the P. cochleariae pectinolytic system and plant-derived inhibitors. It provides the first direct evidence that beetle PGs are inhibited by PGIPs and suggests that PGIPs play a role in the plant defence against herbivorous beetles. Beyond the “classical” PG-PGIP interaction, my studies link new players – PG pseudoenzymes and PGIP-like proteins – to the complex interplay between herbivore and plant. These discoveries form the basis for future in-depth studies on how pectin digestion in herbivorous insects and the PGIP-mediated plant defence system co-evolved

Visual Representations of Christianity in Christian Music Videos

This article discusses Christian rock videos. Videos from a collection entitled Wow Hits 2002: the year's top Christian music videos are used as examples. The title of the collection declares that the videos are "Christian", and the question asked in the article is how this quality may be seen in the videos. How may the videos be seen as visual representations of Christianity? Using a semiotic framework, two possible types of such representations of Christianity in the videos are discussed. These are references to traditional christian imagery; and the style and appearance of the artists.