Morality and Prosocial Behavior: the Role of Awareness, Responsibility and Norms in the Norm Activation Model

This paper examines the relationships between variables included in the Norm Activation Model of prosocial behaviour (NAM). Specifically, we evaluate the strength of two commonly used interpretations of this model, namely the NAM as a mediator model and the NAM as a moderator model. Five studies focussing on a variety of prosocial intentions and behaviours provide most support for the NAM as a mediator model. Furthermore, these studies validate past research by showing that variables included in the NAM are powerful in explaining a diversity of prosocial intentions and behaviours in the social as well as in the environmental context

Thou shalt not steal: Effects of normative cues on attitudes towards theft.

In this study, we examine how normative cues influence attitudes towards theft. In a 3 × 2 × 2 within-subjects design (N = 120), we found that people had more negative attitudes towards theft when: 1) a higher value item was stolen than when a lower value item was stolen; 2) the theft took place in a public setting than when it took place in a private setting; and 3) the theft took place in a tidy rather than messy setting. Furthermore, our findings showed interaction effects between the value of a stolen item and 1) the cleanliness of the environment; and 2) the privateness of a setting, on attitudes towards theft. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed

Persuasive Normative Messages: The Influence of Injunctive and Personal Norms on Using Free Plastic Bags

In this exploratory field-study, we examined how normative messages (i.e., activating an injunctive norm, personal norm, or both) could encourage shoppers to use fewer free plastic bags for their shopping in addition to the supermarket’s standard environmental message aimed at reducing plastic bags. In a one-way subjects-design (N = 200) at a local supermarket, we showed that shoppers used significantly fewer free plastic bags in the injunctive, personal and combined normative message condition than in the condition where only an environmental message was present. The combined normative message did result in the smallest uptake of free plastic bags compared to the injunctive and personal normative-only message, although these differences were not significant. Our findings imply that re-wording the supermarket’s environmental message by including normative information could be a promising way to reduce the use of free plastic bags, which will ultimately benefit the environmen

Generalized Drinfeld-Sokolov Hierarchies II: The Hamiltonian Structures

In this paper we examine the bi-Hamiltonian structure of the generalized KdV-hierarchies. We verify that both Hamiltonian structures take the form of Kirillov brackets on the Kac-Moody algebra, and that they define a coordinated system. Classical extended conformal algebras are obtained from the second Poisson bracket. In particular, we construct the $W_n^l$ algebras, first discussed for the case $n=3$ and $l=2$ by A. Polyakov and M. Bershadsky.Comment: 41 page

Cost-analysis of treatment of childhood acute lymphoblastic leukemia with asparaginase preparations: The impact of expensive chemotherapy

__Abstract__ Asparaginase is an expensive drug, but important in childhood acute lymphoblastic leukemia. In order to compare costs of PEGasparaginase, Erwinia asparaginase and native E. coli asparaginase, we performed a cost-analysis in the Dutch Childhood Oncology Group ALL-10 medium-risk group intensification protocol. Treatment costs were calculated based on patient level data of 84 subjects, and were related to the occurrence of allergy to PEGasparaginase. Simultaneously, decision tree and sensitivity analyses were conducted. The total costs of the intensification course of 30 weeks were $57,893 in patients without PEGasparaginase allergy (n=64). The costs were significantly higher ($113,558) in case of allergy (n=20) necessitating a switch to Erwinia asparaginase. Simulated scenarios (decision tree analysis) using native E. coli asparaginase in intensification showed that the costs of PEGasparaginase were equal to those of native E. coli asparaginase. Also after sensitivity analyses, the costs for PEGasparaginase were equal to those of na

Combinatorial synthesis and screening of (Ba,Sr)(Ti,Mn)O-3 thin films for optimization of tunable co-planar waveguides

The identification and optimization of tunable dielectric materials exhibiting low loss characteristics in the GHz frequencies are essential in the development of low power devices for microwave applications. We have applied a combinatorial synthetic methodology employing multiple atomic evaporative sources to produce compositional gradient thin film (Ba,Sr)(Ti,Mn)O3 perovskites. High throughput screening chips of both capacitive and waveguide structures are used to measure the compositional dependence of the dielectric properties of the fully characterised thin film materials. The co-planar waveguides are shown to allow measurements at frequencies exceeding 10 GHz. Using this methodology, we have identified (Ba,Sr)(Ti,Mn)O3 compositions which exhibit good tunability with low losses at microwave frequencies: for a single device with a 10 V DC bias one can achieve a 12° phase shift with excellent transmission characteristics, and an insertion loss of ∼3.2 dB. We show that small changes in composition can result in a significant change in dielectric characteristics and device performance, and that the experimental protocol developed provides a powerful methodology for the development of materials and microwave devices

Extensions of the matrix Gelfand-Dickey hierarchy from generalized Drinfeld-Sokolov reduction

The $p\times p$ matrix version of the $r$-KdV hierarchy has been recently treated as the reduced system arising in a Drinfeld-Sokolov type Hamiltonian symmetry reduction applied to a Poisson submanifold in the dual of the Lie algebra $\widehat{gl}_{pr}\otimes {\Complex}[\lambda, \lambda^{-1}]$. Here a series of extensions of this matrix Gelfand-Dickey system is derived by means of a generalized Drinfeld-Sokolov reduction defined for the Lie algebra $\widehat{gl}_{pr+s}\otimes {\Complex}[\lambda,\lambda^{-1}]$ using the natural embedding $gl_{pr}\subset gl_{pr+s}$ for $s$ any positive integer. The hierarchies obtained admit a description in terms of a $p\times p$ matrix pseudo-differential operator comprising an $r$-KdV type positive part and a non-trivial negative part. This system has been investigated previously in the $p=1$ case as a constrained KP system. In this paper the previous results are considerably extended and a systematic study is presented on the basis of the Drinfeld-Sokolov approach that has the advantage that it leads to local Poisson brackets and makes clear the conformal ($\cal W$-algebra) structures related to the KdV type hierarchies. Discrete reductions and modified versions of the extended $r$-KdV hierarchies are also discussed.Comment: 60 pages, plain TE