Cognition and Behavior in Two-Person Guessing Games: An Experimental Study

This paper reports experiments that elicit subjects' initial responses to 16 dominancesolvable two-person guessing games. The structure is publicly announced except for varying payoff parameters, to which subjects are given free access, game by game, through an interface that records their information searches. Varying the parameters allows strong separation of the behavior implied by leading decision rules and makes monitoring search a powerful tool for studying cognition. Many subjects' decisions and searches show clearly that they understand the games and seek to maximize their payoffs, but have boundedly rational models of others' decisions, which lead to systematic deviations from equilibrium.

Stated Beliefs and Play in Normal-Form Games

Using data on one-shot games, we investigate the assumption that players respond to underlying expectations about their opponent's behavior. In our laboratory experiments, subjects play a set of 14 two-person 3x3 games, and state first order beliefs about their opponent'sbehavior. The sets of responses in the two tasks are largely inconsistent. Rather, we findevidence that the subjects perceive the games differently when they (i) choose actions, and (ii) state beliefs _ they appear to pay more attention to the opponent's incentives when they state beliefs than when they play the games. On average, they fail to best respond to their own stated beliefs in almost half of the games. The inconsistency is confirmed by estimates of a unified statistical model that jointly uses the actions and the belief statements. There, we can control for noise, and formulate a statistical test that rejects consistency. Effects of the belief elicitation procedure on subsequent actions are mostly insignificant.

Beliefs and Actions in the Trust Game: Creating Instrumental Variables to Estimate the Causal Effect

In many economic contexts, an elusive variable of interest is the agent's expectation about relevant events, e.g. about other agents' behavior. Recent experimental studies as well as surveys have asked participants to state their beliefs explicitly, but little is known about the causal relation between beliefs and other behavioral variables. This paper discusses the possibility of creating exogenous instrumental variables for belief statements, by shifting the probabilities of the relevant events. We conduct trust game experiments where the amount sent back by the second player (trustee) is exogenously varied by a random process, in a way that informs only the first player (trustor) about the realized variation. The procedure allows detecting causal links from beliefs to actions under plausible assumptions. The IV estimates indicate a significant causal effect, comparable to the connection between beliefs and actions that is suggested by OLS analyses.Social capital, trust game, instrumental variables, belief elicitation

Beliefs and Actions in the Trust Game: Creating Instrumental Variables to Estimate the Causal Effect

In many economic contexts, an elusive variable of interest is the agent's expectation about relevant events, e.g. about other agents' behavior. Recent experimental studies as well as surveys have asked participants to state their beliefs explicitly, but little is known about the causal relation between beliefs and other behavioral variables. This paper discusses the possibility of creating exogenous instrumental variables for belief statements, by shifting the probabilities of the relevant events. We conduct trust game experiments where the amount sent back by the second player (trustee) is exogenously varied by a random process, in a way that informs only the first player (trustor) about the realized variation. The procedure allows detecting causal links from beliefs to actions under plausible assumptions. The IV estimates indicate a significant causal effect, comparable to the connection between beliefs and actions that is suggested by OLS analyses.social capital, trust game, instrumental variables, belief elicitation

Experimental characterization of the out-of-plane performance of regular stone masonry walls, including test setups and axial load influence

Stone masonry is one of the oldest and most worldwide used building techniques. Nevertheless, the structural response of masonry structures is complex and the effective knowledge about their mechanical behaviour is still limited. This fact is particularly notorious when dealing with the description of their out-of-plane behaviour under horizontal loadings, as is the case of the earthquake action. In this context, this paper describes an experimental program, conducted in laboratory environment, aiming at characterizing the out-of-plane behaviour of traditional unreinforced stone masonry walls. In the scope of this campaign, six full-scale sacco stone masonry specimens were fully characterised regarding their most important mechanic, geometric and dynamic features and were tested resorting to two different loading techniques under three distinct vertical pre-compression states; three of the specimens were subjected to an out-of-plane surface load by means of a system of airbags and the remaining were subjected to an out-of-plane horizontal line-load at the top. From the experiments it was possible to observe that both test setups were able to globally mobilize the out-of-plane response of the walls, which presented substantial displacement capacity, with ratios of ultimate displacement to the wall thickness ranging between 26 and 45 %, as well as good energy dissipation capacity. Finally, very interesting results were also obtained from a simple analytical model used herein to compute a set of experimental-based ratios, namely between the maximum stability displacement and the wall thickness for which a mean value of about 60 % was found

Development and Characterization of Quercetin-Loaded Delivery Systems for Increasing Its Bioavailability in Cervical Cancer Cells

Funding Information: This work was developed within the scope of the CICS-UBI projects UIDB/00709/2020 and UIDP/00709/2020, financed by national funds through the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology/MCTES. This work was also supported by national funds from FCT—Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia, I.P., in the scope of the project UIDP/04378/2020 and UIDB/04378/2020 of the Research Unit on Applied Molecular Biosciences—UCIBIO and the project LA/P/0140/2020 of the Associate Laboratory Institute for Health and Bioeconomy—i4HB. Diana Gomes also acknowledges the doctoral fellowship from FCT ref: 2020.06792.BD. Diana Costa acknowledges FCT her Assistant Researcher Contract 2021.03946.CEECIND. The microscopy facility used in the development of this work is part of the PPBI-Portuguese Platform of BioImaging and is partially supported by the Project POCI-01-0145-FEDER-022122. Publisher Copyright: © 2023 by the authors.Quercetin is a natural flavonoid with high anticancer activity, especially for related-HPV cancers such as cervical cancer. However, quercetin exhibits a reduced aqueous solubility and stability, resulting in a low bioavailability that limits its therapeutic use. In this study, chitosan/sulfonyl-ether-β-cyclodextrin (SBE-β-CD)-conjugated delivery systems have been explored in order to increase quercetin loading capacity, carriage, solubility and consequently bioavailability in cervical cancer cells. SBE-β-CD/quercetin inclusion complexes were tested as well as chitosan/SBE-β-CD/quercetin-conjugated delivery systems, using two types of chitosan differing in molecular weight. Regarding characterization studies, HMW chitosan/SBE-β-CD/quercetin formulations have demonstrated the best results, which are obtaining nanoparticle sizes of 272.07 ± 2.87 nm, a polydispersity index (PdI) of 0.287 ± 0.011, a zeta potential of +38.0 ± 1.34 mV and an encapsulation efficiency of approximately 99.9%. In vitro release studies were also performed for 5 kDa chitosan formulations, indicating a quercetin release of 9.6% and 57.53% at pH 7.4 and 5.8, respectively. IC50 values on HeLa cells indicated an increased cytotoxic effect with HMW chitosan/SBE-β-CD/quercetin delivery systems (43.55 μM), suggesting a remarkable improvement of quercetin bioavailability.publishersversionpublishe