NeuroEconomics

Over the last two years a research field has developed under the banner of 'neuroeconomics' in which recent neuroscientific methods are deploid to analyze economically relevant processes. This paper aims to provide an overview of the methodology and current state of neuroeconomic research by giving a brief definition of the concept of neuroeconomics, outlining relevant methodologies, and describing studies undertaken in the current research areas to date. Finally, some future prospects are considered.

Appetitive and Aversive Goal Values Are Encoded in the Medial Orbitofrontal Cortex at the Time of Decision Making

An essential feature of choice is the assignment of goal values (GVs) to the different options under consideration at the time of decision making. This computation is done when choosing among appetitive and aversive items. Several groups have studied the location of GV computations for appetitive stimuli, but the problem of valuation in aversive contexts at the time of decision making has been ignored. Thus, although dissociations between appetitive and aversive components of value signals have been shown in other domains such as anticipatory and outcome values, it is not known whether appetitive and aversive GVs are computed in similar brain regions or in separate ones. We investigated this question using two different functional magnetic resonance imaging studies while human subjects placed real bids in an economic auction for the right to eat/avoid eating liked/disliked foods. We found that activity in a common area of the medial orbitofrontal cortex and the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex correlated with both appetitive and aversive GVs. These findings suggest that these regions might form part of a common network

Das Buch und sein Haus - ein Digitalisierungsprojekt am Institut für Bibliothekswissenschaft

This paper reports the current state of the project „Das Buch und sein Haus“. The extensive private photo collection which emerged through the years on excursions of Engelbert Plassmann shows pictures of the architecture-photographer Christoph Seelbach. The origin, the construction as well as the digitization and finally the presentation of the pictures on the Web are in the focus of this article. In vivid pictures, this free-accessible presentation documents all important eras of library building in central Europe that occurred during the last centuries; from the late Middle Ages to the presence. http://www.bibliotheksbauten.d

Neural correlates of the affect heuristic during brand choice

In this working paper it is investigated how affect and cognition interact in consumer decision making. The research framework is multidisciplinary by applying a neuroscientific method to answer the question which information is processed during brand choice immediately when the decision is computed in the test person’s brain. In a neuroscientific experiment test persons perform binary decision-making tasks between different brands of the same product class. The results suggest that the presence of the respondent’s first choice brand leads to a specific modulation of the neural brain activity, which can be described as neural correlate of Slovic’s affect heuristic concept.Neuroeconomics, brand choice, cognition, affect

Recognizing the benefits of above-ground carbon sequestration in the carbon footprint of products derived from woody perennial systems

Calls are increasingly made for the inclusion of carbon sequestration in the product carbon footprint (PCF) of the outputs of managed woody perennial systems. However, due to methodological difficulties and a lack of common methods, the current application is inconsistent and often fails to address important issues, limiting the usefulness of available estimates of the climate mitigation potential of such systems. Suggestions are made for the future application of methods, and three situations are identified here in which it is meaningful to give credits for biogenic carbon: if management or land use changes increase total carbon stocks; if biogenic carbon replaces fossil fuels; and if biogenic carbon is stored for more than 100 years. Where these conditions are not met, other mechanisms should be used to incentivize increasing carbon stocks. All co-products arising from a plantation across its entire life cycle should be included in PCF calculations, based on a holistic view of the plantation. The aim is to reduce the inconsistency in current PCF calculations for products from woody plantations and to ensure that their climate mitigation potential is recognized in a meaningful way under the framework of product-related carbon accounting, thereby incentivizing climate-friendly management methods

How large do multi-region models need to be?

Given the connectedness of most states with their neighbors, any economic analysis of changes in a state’s policy needs to account for the interdependence between states. We examine in how much detail one needs to model the factor and commodity flows between states, and how much, if anything, is lost in the aggregation of neighboring states into larger regions. We develop nine dynamic multi-region general equilibrium models of the United States, with different aggregations of states (a two-region model, a 7-region model, and a full 51-region model) and different assumptions regarding intermediate inputs. We examine the same policy change with these nine models, and find that all nine models suggest very similar economic effects of the policy change in the first year. Our overall conclusion is that the policy implications that one might draw from small and highly aggregate models are fairly robust

Soil diversity under semi-natural grassland within the forest-steppe zone - examples from Transylvania (Romania)

In the Transylvanian Basin, extensively managed hay meadows with a particular biodiversity could survive until today. Under a temperate-continental climate of the forest steppe and within the colline zone, they are situated on north-facing slopes with an erratic ondulated relief, dominated by small slumpings. A mosaic of different site conditions is illustrated by a patchy distribution of wet meadow, dry- and semi-dry grassland sites. However, little is still known about the edaphic properties of these ecosystems. Precise pedological studies, even less entire soil sequences, are nonexistent. Therefore, the presented findings are a first approach to outline the distribution of different soil types under such semi-natural grasslands. As preliminary results, they are embedded into a pedological-morphodynamic study about the regional grassland-dependent landscape development. Two northern exposed hay meadows were investigated through the application of catenas. Soil description was done according to 'Bodenkundliche Kartieranleitung' (KA 5), based on data gathered from cores, test pits, and laboratory analysis. Several different soil types were detected: On the upper slope and on exposed positions, driest conditions and lowest clay contents led to the formation of subtypes of 'Pararendzina', 'Tschernosem', and 'Kalktschernosem'. Along more inclined parts of the slope, 'Tschernosem' and 'Pelosol' occur with accented processes of soil creep. Within colluvial infillings of punctually distributed small depressions, highest clay- and SOM-amounts were recorded. Especially in 'Pelosol'-subtypes occuring there, intense seasonal waterlogging and desiccation dominates soil formation. Along the investigated slopes, the generally deep, clay- and organic matter-rich soil cover reveals a small-scale mosaic of different soil types, reflecting the variety of site conditions. The specific soil features further let assume a long lasting constancy of semi-natural grassland on these potentially forested sites within the forest steppe

Parallel adaptive mesh refinement within the PUMAA3D Project

To enable the solution of large-scale applications on distributed memory architectures, we are designing and implementing parallel algorithms for the fundamental tasks of unstructured mesh computation. In this paper, we discuss efficient algorithms developed for two of these tasks: parallel adaptive mesh refinement and mesh partitioning. The algorithms are discussed in the context of two-dimensional finite element solution on triangular meshes, but are suitable for use with a variety of element types and with h- or p-refinement. Results demonstrating the scalability and efficiency of the refinement algorithm and the quality of the mesh partitioning are presented for several test problems on the Intel DELTA