Rewarding cooperation in social dilemmas

One of the most direct human mechanisms of promoting cooperation is rewarding it. We study the effect of sharing a reward among cooperators in the most stringent form of social dilemma. Thus, individuals confront a new dilemma: on the one hand, they may be inclined to choose the shared reward despite the possibility of being exploited by defectors; on the other hand, if too many players do that, cooperators will obtain a poor reward and defectors will outperform them. By appropriately tuning the amount to be shared we can cast a vast variety of scenarios, including traditional ones in the study of cooperation as well as more complex situations where unexpected behavior can occur. We provide a complete classification of the equilibria of the nplayer game as well as of the evolutionary dynamics. Beyond, we extend our analysis to a general class of public good games where competition among individuals with the same strategy exists

Killing by lung cancer or by diabetes? The trade-off between smoking and obesity

As the prevalence of smoking has decreased to below 20%, health practitioners interest has shifted towards the prevalence of obesity, and reducing it is one of the major health challenges in decades to come. In this paper we study the impact that the final product of the anti-smoking campaign, that is, smokers quitting the habit, had on average weight in the population. To these ends, we use data from the Behavioral Risk Factors Surveillance System, a large series of independent representative cross-sectional surveys. We construct a synthetic panel that allows us to control for unobserved heterogeneity and we exploit the exogenous changes in taxes and regulations to instrument the endogenous decision to give up the habit of smoking. Our estimates, are very close to estimates issued in the ’90s by the US Department of Health, and indicate that a 10% decrease in the incidence of smoking leads to an average weight increase of 2.2 to 3 pounds, depending on choice of specification. In addition, we find evidence that the effect overshoots in the short run, although a significant part remains even after two years. However, when we split the sample between men and women, we only find a significant effect for men. Finally, the implicit elasticity of quitting smoking to the probability of becoming obese is calculated at 0.58. This implies that the net benefit from reducing the incidence of smoking by 1% is positive even though the cost to society is $0.6 billions.

Tendències o direccions de l’esport contemporani en funció dels motius de la pràctica. Un estudi empíric entre els estudiants de la Universitat d’Oviedo

Les investigacions descriptives sobre els motius que porten els joves a practicar l’esport, desenvolupades majoritàriament als Estats Units i a països anglòfons, com ara Gran Bretanya, Austràlia i el Canadà, han mostrat de forma consistent una estructura multifactorial. La majoria s’emmarquen dintre de la perspectiva cognitivosocial i es recolzen en el concepte de motivació d’assoliment. A partir d’aquests resultats, el nostre objectiu ha estat analitzar l’estructura ‘motivacional’ subjacent, amb l’objecte de determinar les tendències més acusades de l’esport contemporani. Els joves sotmesos a enquesta, 2.689, són estudiants de la Universitat d’Oviedo (1.440 homes i 1.249 dones). Tots ells van respondre qüestionari dissenyat amb aquesta finalitat. Els resultats evidencien una doble estructura bipolar que sembla respondre a la ‘binarització’ de dos criteris: competició (C) i mestratge (M). La seva presència o absència origina un arbre dicotòmic de quatre branques. Aquests quatre subgrups mostren, a més a més, unes peculiaritats derivades de les diferències de gènere, tipus d’activitat i intensitat de la motivació vers l’esport. Finalment, es discuteixen els resultats i se n’extreuen algunes conclusions

Short-term microbial response after laboratory heating and ground mulching adition.

Fire alters soil organic matter inducing quantitative and qualitative changes that presumably will affect post-fire soil microbial recolonisation. Several studies have evidenced marked soil organic carbon reduction after moderate and high intensity fire, which limit the total recovery of microbial biomass during years. In order to evaluate the role of soil organic matter alteration in short-term microbial colonization process, we perform a preliminary experiment where unaltered soil from Sierra Nevada Natural Park was heated at 300 ºC during 20 minutes in a muffle furnace (H300) to simulate a medium-high intensity fire. After heating, soil samples were inoculated with unaltered fresh soil, rewetted at 55-65% of water holding capacity and incubated during 3 weeks. At the same time, unheated soil samples were incubated under the same conditions as control (UH). In addition, trying to partially alleviate soil organic matter fire-induced alterations effects on microbial colonization, we include an organic amendment treatment (M+). So, part of heated and unheated samples were amended with a mix of ground alfalfa:straw (1:1) and soil microbial abundance and activity were monitored together with soil organic matter changes. Heating process reduces total organic carbon content. After one week of incubation carbon content in heated samples was lower than the control one, in both, amended and un-amended samples. Microbial biomass and respiration were negatively affected by heating. Ground mulching addition increase microbial biomass and respiration but was not enough to reach control values during the whole study. Nevertheless, viable and cultivable fungi and bacteria showed different pattern. After two weeks of incubation both, fungi and bacteria were higher in heated samples. Ground mulching addition appears to stimulate fungal response in both, heated and unheated samples. Preliminary results of this experiment evidence the transcendence of soil organic matter fire-induced changes on microbial colonization process and the importance to determine several microbial parameters to obtain a more faithful conclusion about microbial response. The organic amendment appears to alleviate partially heated-induced damage, highlighting the positive stimulation on fungal abundance in both, heated and unheated samples.This research has been funded by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness, through research projects POSTFIRE (CGL2013-47862-C2-1-R) and GEOFIRE (CGL2012-38655-C04-01)Peer Reviewe

Partial mass concentration for fast-diffusions with non-local aggregation terms

We study well-posedness and long-time behaviour of aggregation-diffusion equations of the form $\frac{\partial \rho}{\partial t} = \Delta \rho^m + \nabla \cdot( \rho (\nabla V + \nabla W \ast \rho))$ in the fast-diffusion range, $0<m<1$, and $V$ and $W$ regular enough. We develop a well-posedness theory, first in the ball and then in $\mathbb R^d$, and characterise the long-time asymptotics in the space $W^{-1,1}$ for radial initial data. In the radial setting and for the mass equation, viscosity solutions are used to prove partial mass concentration asymptotically as $t \to \infty$, i.e. the limit as $t \to \infty$ is of the form $\alpha \delta_0 + \widehat \rho \, dx$ with $\alpha \geq 0$ and $\widehat \rho \in L^1$. Finally, we give instances of $W \ne 0$ showing that partial mass concentration does happen in infinite time, i.e. $\alpha > 0$