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We replicate Andreoni (Quarterly Journal of Economics 110: 1–21, 1995)’s finding that agents behave more selfishly when taking from a public account than when giving to a public good. Based on a neutral language setting we add new insights into motivations to give or take in a linear public good setting: we find that Andreoni’s result is partly driven by the complete elimination of giving options in the taking frame. However, a pure extension of the action space into the taking domain also leads to a significant increase in selfish behavior.
We experimentally test different rule-based contribution mechanisms in a repeated 4-player public goods game with endowment heterogeneity and compare them to a VCM, distinguishing between a random and an effort-based allocation of endowments. We find that endowment heterogeneities limit the efficiency gains from these rule-based contribution schemes under random allocation. Under effort-based allocations, substantial efficiency gains relative to a VCM occur. These are largely driven by significant reductions of contributions in VCM, while the rule-based mechanisms generate stable efficiency levels, even though falling short in realizing the maximal efficiency gains. Our results indicate that the procedure of endowment allocation impacts the perception of what constitutes a fair burden sharing.
We report laboratory evidence on the voluntary provision of threshold public goods when the exact location of the threshold is not known. Our experimental treatments explicitly compare two prominent technologies, summation, and weakest link. Uncertainty in threshold location is particularly detrimental to threshold attainment under weakest link, where low contributions by one subject cannot be compensated by others. In contrast, threshold uncertainty does not affect contributions under summation. We demonstrate that non-binding pledges improve the chances of threshold attainment under both technologies, particularly under weakest link.
We investigate the role of endowment inequality in a local and global public goods setting with multiple group membership and examine the effect of temporal role reversal on cooperation decisions. Subjects can contribute to a global public good which benefits all subjects and two local public goods which benefit only subjects of either their own group or the group of the other endowment type. Endowment inequality per-se decreases contributions of subjects with a high endowment to the global public good, but increases cooperation of subjects with a low endowment on their local public good, thereby aggravating income disparities. Exogenously induced role reversal for several periods affects cooperation behavior of subjects with a high endowment positively and induces them to contribute more to the global good. Cooperation in unequal environments thus appears to be more stable when all parties have experienced the public goods game from the disadvantageous perspective.
Employment and relationship are crucial for social integration. However, individuals with major psychiatric disorders often face challenges in these domains.
Aims
We investigated employment and relationship status changes among patients across the affective and psychotic spectrum – in comparison with healthy controls, examining whether diagnostic groups or functional levels influence these transitions.
Method
The sample from the longitudinal multicentric PsyCourse Study comprised 1260 patients with affective and psychotic spectrum disorders and 441 controls (mean age ± s.d., 39.91 ± 12.65 years; 48.9% female). Multistate models (Markov) were used to analyse transitions in employment and relationship status, focusing on transition intensities. Analyses contained multiple multistate models adjusted for age, gender, job or partner, diagnostic group and Global Assessment of Functioning (GAF) in different combinations to analyse the impact of the covariates on the hazard ratio of changing employment or relationship status.
Results
The clinical group had a higher hazard ratio of losing partner (hazard ratio 1.46, P < 0.001) and job (hazard ratio 4.18, P < 0.001) than the control group (corrected for age/gender). Compared with controls, clinical groups had a higher hazard of losing partner (affective group, hazard ratio 2.69, P = 0.003; psychotic group, hazard ratio 3.06, P = 0.001) and job (affective group, hazard ratio 3.43, P < 0.001; psychotic group, hazard ratio 4.11, P < 0.001). Adjusting for GAF, the hazard ratio of losing partner and job decreased in both clinical groups compared with controls.
Conclusion
Patients face an increased hazard of job loss and relationship dissolution compared with healthy controls, and this is partially conditioned by the diagnosis and functional level. These findings underscore a high demand for destigmatisation and support for individuals in managing their functional limitations.
The Personalized Advantage Index (PAI) shows promise as a method for identifying the most effective treatment for individual patients. Previous studies have demonstrated its utility in retrospective evaluations across various settings. In this study, we explored the effect of different methodological choices in predictive modelling underlying the PAI.
Methods
Our approach involved a two-step procedure. First, we conducted a review of prior studies utilizing the PAI, evaluating each study using the Prediction model study Risk Of Bias Assessment Tool (PROBAST). We specifically assessed whether the studies adhered to two standards of predictive modeling: refraining from using leave-one-out cross-validation (LOO CV) and preventing data leakage. Second, we examined the impact of deviating from these methodological standards in real data. We employed both a traditional approach violating these standards and an advanced approach implementing them in two large-scale datasets, PANIC-net (n = 261) and Protect-AD (n = 614).
Results
The PROBAST-rating revealed a substantial risk of bias across studies, primarily due to inappropriate methodological choices. Most studies did not adhere to the examined prediction modeling standards, employing LOO CV and allowing data leakage. The comparison between the traditional and advanced approach revealed that ignoring these standards could systematically overestimate the utility of the PAI.
Conclusion
Our study cautions that violating standards in predictive modeling may strongly influence the evaluation of the PAI's utility, possibly leading to false positive results. To support an unbiased evaluation, crucial for potential clinical application, we provide a low-bias, openly accessible, and meticulously annotated script implementing the PAI.
Lynchets, often the defining component of historic agricultural landscapes in northern Europe, are generally associated with soft-limestone geologies and are particularly well developed on loess-mantled landscapes. To understand their formation and chronology, the authors present their geoarchaeological analyses of lynchet soils and loess deposits at Blick Mead and Charlton Forest in southern England, and Sint Martens-Voeren in Belgium. The lynchets date from the late prehistoric to the medieval periods and were constructed by plough action at the English sites, and by both cut-and-fill and ploughing in Belgium. This has resulted in the preservation of highly fertile loessic soils across chalk slopes, lost elsewhere. Although each example is associated with local/regional agricultural histories, the lynchets’ effective soil-retention capacities allowed them to survive as important heritage features with environmental benefits over millennia.
With a proliferation of scholarly work focusing on populist, far-left, and far-right parties, questions have arisen about the correct ways to ideologically classify such parties. To ensure transparency and uniformity in research, the discipline could benefit from a systematic procedure. In this letter, we discuss how we have employed the method of ‘Expert-informed Qualitative Comparative Classification’ (EiQCC) to construct the newest version of The PopuList (3.0) – a database of populist, far-left, and far-right parties in Europe since 1989. This method takes into account the in-depth knowledge of national party experts while allowing for systematic comparative analysis across cases and over time. We also examine how scholars have made use of the previous versions of the dataset, explain how the new version of The PopuList differs from previous ones, and compare it to other data. We conclude with a discussion of the strengths and limitations of The PopuList dataset.
Terracing is found widely in the Mediterranean and in other hilly and mountainous regions of the world. Yet while archaeological attention to these ‘mundane’ landscape features has grown, they remain understudied, particularly in Northern Europe. Here, the authors present a multidisciplinary study of terraces in the Breamish Valley, Northumberland. The results date their construction to the Early to Middle Bronze Age, when they were built by cutting back the hillside, stone clearance and wall construction. Environmental evidence points to their use for cereal cultivation. The authors suggest that the construction and use of these terraces formed part of an Early to Middle Bronze Age agricultural intensification, which may have been both demographically and culturally driven.
The severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) pandemic, with its impact on our way of life, is affecting our experiences and mental health. Notably, individuals with mental disorders have been reported to have a higher risk of contracting SARS-CoV-2. Personality traits could represent an important determinant of preventative health behaviour and, therefore, the risk of contracting the virus.
Aims
We examined overlapping genetic underpinnings between major psychiatric disorders, personality traits and susceptibility to SARS-CoV-2 infection.
Method
Linkage disequilibrium score regression was used to explore the genetic correlations of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) susceptibility with psychiatric disorders and personality traits based on data from the largest available respective genome-wide association studies (GWAS). In two cohorts (the PsyCourse (n = 1346) and the HeiDE (n = 3266) study), polygenic risk scores were used to analyse if a genetic association between, psychiatric disorders, personality traits and COVID-19 susceptibility exists in individual-level data.
Results
We observed no significant genetic correlations of COVID-19 susceptibility with psychiatric disorders. For personality traits, there was a significant genetic correlation for COVID-19 susceptibility with extraversion (P = 1.47 × 10−5; genetic correlation 0.284). Yet, this was not reflected in individual-level data from the PsyCourse and HeiDE studies.
Conclusions
We identified no significant correlation between genetic risk factors for severe psychiatric disorders and genetic risk for COVID-19 susceptibility. Among the personality traits, extraversion showed evidence for a positive genetic association with COVID-19 susceptibility, in one but not in another setting. Overall, these findings highlight a complex contribution of genetic and non-genetic components in the interaction between COVID-19 susceptibility and personality traits or mental disorders.
People living in precarious housing or homelessness have higher than expected rates of psychotic disorders, persistent psychotic symptoms, and premature mortality. Psychotic symptoms can be modeled as a complex dynamic system, allowing assessment of roles for risk factors in symptom development, persistence, and contribution to premature mortality.
Method
The severity of delusions, conceptual disorganization, hallucinations, suspiciousness, and unusual thought content was rated monthly over 5 years in a community sample of precariously housed/homeless adults (n = 375) in Vancouver, Canada. Multilevel vector auto-regression analysis was used to construct temporal, contemporaneous, and between-person symptom networks. Network measures were compared between participants with (n = 219) or without (n = 156) history of psychotic disorder using bootstrap and permutation analyses. Relationships between network connectivity and risk factors including homelessness, trauma, and substance dependence were estimated by multiple linear regression. The contribution of network measures to premature mortality was estimated by Cox proportional hazard models.
Results
Delusions and unusual thought content were central symptoms in the multilevel network. Each psychotic symptom was positively reinforcing over time, an effect most pronounced in participants with a history of psychotic disorder. Global connectivity was similar between those with and without such a history. Greater connectivity between symptoms was associated with methamphetamine dependence and past trauma exposure. Auto-regressive connectivity was associated with premature mortality in participants under age 55.
Conclusions
Past and current experiences contribute to the severity and dynamic relationships between psychotic symptoms. Interrupting the self-perpetuating severity of psychotic symptoms in a vulnerable group of people could contribute to reducing premature mortality.
Homeless and precariously housed individuals experience a high burden of comorbid illnesses, and excess mortality. Cross-sectional studies report a high rate of cognitive impairment. Long-term trajectories have not been well investigated in this group.
Aims
To longitudinally assess risks for premature and/or accelerated cognitive ageing, and the relationship with early mortality in homeless and precariously housed people.
Method
This is a 9-year community-based study of 375 homeless and precariously housed individuals from Vancouver, Canada. Annual cognitive testing assessed verbal learning and memory, and inhibitory control. Linear mixed-effects models examined associations between clinical risk factors (traumatic brain injury, psychotic disorders, viral exposure, alcohol dependence) and cognitive change over 9 years. Cox regression models examined the association between cognition and mortality.
Results
Traumatic brain injury and alcohol dependence were associated with decline in verbal memory. Inhibitory control declined, independent of risk factors and to a greater extent in those who died during the study. Better inhibitory control was associated with a 6.6% lower risk of mortality at study entry, with a 0.3% greater effect for each year of life. For each one-point increase in the Charlson Comorbidity Index score at study entry, the risk of mortality was 9.9% higher, and was consistent across age. Adjusting for comorbidities, inhibitory control remained a significant predictor of mortality.
Conclusions
Findings raise the possibility of a premature onset, and accelerated trajectory, of cognitive ageing in this group of homeless and precariously housed people. Traumatic brain injury, alcohol dependence and cognition could be treatment priorities.
Paleoprecipitation reconstructions on the basis of pollen are well known, but they do not provide high temporal resolution for glacial periods. High-resolution paleoprecipitation reconstructions for the last glaciation based on the isotopic record organic matter in loess from Nussloch (Rhine Valley, Germany) are consistent with paleoprecipitation inferred from peat in the same area using an independant method. Thus, δ13C of loess organic matter can be used as a proxy for paleoprecipitation.
We exploit the deep Hα IFU kinematic data from the KMOS3D and SINS/zC-SINF surveys to explore the so far unconstrained outer rotation curves of star-forming disk galaxies at high redshift. Through stacking the signal of ~ 100 massive disks at 0.7 < z < 2.6, we construct a representative rotation curve reaching out to several effective radii. Our stacked rotation curve exhibits a turnover with a steep falloff in the outer regions, significantly strengthening the tantalizing evidence previously hinted at in a handful only of individual disks among the sample with the deepest data.
This finding confirms the high baryon fractions found by comparing the stellar, gas and dynamical masses of high redshift galaxies independently of assumptions on the light-to-mass conversion and Initial stellar Mass Function (IMF). The rapid falloff of the stacked rotation curve is most naturally explained by the effects of pressure gradients, which are significant in the gas-rich, turbulent high-z disks and which would imply a possible pressure-driven truncation of the outer disk.
This article adopts a historical approach to examine the role played by maritime entrepreneurs and maritime policy-makers in the unprecedented growth of world trade during the second half of the twentieth century. The purpose is to show how globalization as a macroeconomic process was shaped and sustained by human agency operating within maritime business and maritime politics. For more than two decades, economic globalization has been a major field of study within the social sciences. While providing many valuable insights, this literature tends to approach globalization primarily from a macro-perspective and to treat the process largely in quantitative terms. Through a series of separate historical case studies, this article shows the possibilities of more micro- and meso-oriented analysis, focusing more on processes and transformations than stages and outcomes.
We report on the analysis of virtual powder-diffraction patterns from serial femtosecond crystallography (SFX) data collected at an X-ray free-electron laser. Different approaches to binning and normalizing these patterns are discussed with respect to the microstructural characteristics which each highlights. Analysis of SFX data from a powder of Pr0.5Ca0.5MnO3 in this way finds evidence of other trace phases in its microstructure which was not detectable in a standard powder-diffraction measurement. Furthermore, a comparison between two virtual powder pattern integration strategies is shown to yield different diffraction peak broadening, indicating sensitivity to different types of microstrain. This paper is a first step in developing new data analysis methods for microstructure characterization from serial crystallography data.
The presence of elongation, streak and blurring artifacts in tomograms recorded under a missing wedge of rotation angles presents a major challenge for the quantitative analysis of tomographic image data. We show that the missing wedge artifacts of standard reconstruction algorithms may be reduced by the innovative reconstruction technique DIRECTT. For the comparison of missing wedge artifacts we apply techniques from spatial statistics, which have been specifically designed to investigate the shape of phase boundaries in tomograms.