Experiments on choice under risk typically involve multiple decisions by individual subjects. The choice of mechanism for selecting decision(s) for payoff is an essential design feature unless subjects isolate each one of the multiple decisions. We report treatments with different payoff mechanisms but the same decision tasks. The data show large differences across mechanisms in subjects’ revealed risk preferences, a clear violation of isolation. We illustrate the importance of these mechanism effects by identifying their implications for classical tests of theories of decision under risk. We discuss theoretical properties of commonly used mechanisms, and new mechanisms introduced herein, in order to clarify which mechanisms are theoretically incentive compatible for which theories. We identify behavioral properties of some mechanisms that can introduce bias in elicited risk preferences—from cross-task contamination—even when the mechanism used is theoretically incentive compatible. We explain that selection of a payoff mechanism is an important component of experimental design in many topic areas including social preferences, public goods, bargaining, and choice under uncertainty and ambiguity as well as experiments on decisions under risk.

This paper reports three experiments with triadic or dyadic designs. The experiments include the moonlighting game in which first-mover actions can elicit positively or negatively reciprocal reactions from second movers. First movers can be motivated by trust in positive reciprocity or fear of negative reciprocity, in addition to unconditional other-regarding preferences. Second movers can be motivated by unconditional other-regarding preferences as well as positive or negative reciprocity. The experimental designs include control treatments that discriminate among actions with alternative motivations. Data from our three experiments and a fourth one are used to explore methodological questions, including the effects on behavioral hypothesis tests of within-subjects vs. across-subjects designs, single-blind vs. double-blind payoffs, random vs. dictator first-mover control treatments, and strategy responses vs. sequential play.

We develop and experimentally test a model of endogenous entry, exit, and bidding in common value auctions. The model and experimental design include an alternative profitable activity (a “safe haven”) that provides agent-specific opportunity costs of bidding in the auction. Each agent chooses whether to accept the safe haven income or forgo it in order to bid in the auction. Agents that enter the auction receive independently-drawn private signals that provide unbiased estimates of the common value. The auctioned item is allocated to the high bidder at a price that is equal to the high bid. Thus the market is a first-price sealed-bid common value auction with endogenous determination of market size.

Both the law and culture distinguish between acts of commission that overturn the status quo and acts of omission that uphold it. This distinction is of central importance when it comes to reciprocal actions. A stylized fact of everyday life is that acts of commission elicit stronger reciprocal responses than do acts of omission. We report experiments that directly test whether this stylized fact characterizes behavior in controlled experiments. We compare reciprocal responses to both types of acts in experiments using binary, extensive form games. Across three experiments, we examine the robustness of our results to different ways in which the status quo can be induced in experiments. The data show a clear difference between effects of acts of commission and omission by first movers on reciprocal responses by second movers.

The largest market in national economies is the labor market. Labor market contracting is characterized by job search, often from unknown wage offer distributions. This paper reports experimental tests of finite horizon models of job search in which the wage offer distribution is unknown. Theoretically-optimal search from an unknown wage offer distribution can have the seemingly paradoxical property that some offers will be accepted that are lower than other offers that will be rejected in the same period of the search horizon. Thus the reservation wage property (or lowest acceptable wage path) may not exist. This can occur because an offer that is a priori relatively high (“good news”) can imply that it is highly probable that search is from a favorable distribution, and such an offer can look unattractive when it is an a posteriori relatively low offer from a favorable distribution (“bad news”). This paper reports results from experimental treatments for search from unknown distributions in which the reservation wage property does exist and treatments in which it does not exist. We find that the consistency of search behavior with search theory reported in earlier papers is robust to the presence or absence of the reservation wage property and to whether the draws come from known or unknown distributions.

Large-eddy simulations are analysed to determine the influence of suspended canopies, such as those formed in macroalgal farms, on ocean mixed layer (OML) deepening and internal wave generation. In the absence of a canopy, we show that Langmuir turbulence, when compared with wind-driven shear turbulence, results in a deeper OML and more pronounced internal waves beneath the OML. Subsequently, we examine simulations with suspended canopies of varying densities located in the OML, in the presence of a background geostrophic current. Intensified turbulence occurs in the shear layer at the canopy’s bottom edge, arising from the interaction between the geostrophic current and canopy drag. Structures resembling Kelvin–Helmholtz (KH) instability emerge as the canopy shear layer interacts with the underlying stratification, radiating internal waves beneath the OML. Both intensified turbulence and lower-frequency motions associated with KH-type structures are critical factors in enhancing mixing. Consequently, the OML depth increases by up to a factor of two compared with cases without a canopy. Denser canopies and stronger geostrophic currents lead to more pronounced KH-type structures and internal waves, stronger turbulence and greater OML deepening. Additionally, vertical nutrient transport is enhanced as the OML deepens due to the presence of the canopy. Considering that the canopy density investigated in this study closely represents offshore macroalgal farms, these findings suggest a mechanism for passive nutrient entrainment conducive to sustainable farming. Overall, this study reveals the intricate interactions between the suspended canopy, turbulent mixing and stratification, underscoring their importance in reshaping OML characteristics.

Both mainstream economics and its critics have focused on models of individual rational agents even though most important decisions are made by small groups. Little systematic work has been done to study the behavior of small groups as decision-making agents in markets and other strategic games. This may limit the relevance of both economics and its critics to the objective of developing an understanding of how most important decisions are made. In order to gain some insight into this issue, this paper compares group and individual economic behavior. The objective of the research is to learn whether there are systematic differences between decisions made by groups and individual agents in market environments characterized by risky outcomes. A quantitative measure of deviation from minimally-rational decisions is used to compare group and individual behavior in common value auctions.

Rational choice theory, including models of social preferences, is challenged by decades of robust data from public good games. Provision of public goods, funded by lump-sum taxation, does not crowd out private provision on a one-for-one basis. Provision games elicit more of a public good than payoff-equivalent appropriation games. This paper offers a morally monotonic choice theory that incorporates observable moral reference points and is consistent with the two empirical findings. The model has idiosyncratic features that motivate a new experimental design. Data from our new experiment and three previous experiments favor moral monotonicity over alternative models including rational choice theory, prominent belief-based models of kindness, and popular reference-dependent models with loss aversion.

This paper reports an experiment designed to shed light on an empirical puzzle observed by Dufwenberg and Gneezy (Games and Economic Behavior 30:163-182, 2000) that the size of the foregone outside option by the first mover does not affect the behavior of the second mover in a lost wallet game. Our conjecture was that the original protocol may not have made the size of the forgone outside option salient to second movers. Therefore, we change two features of the Dufwen- berg and Gneezy protocol: (i) instead of the strategy method we implement a direct response method (sequential play) for the decision of the second mover; and (ii) we use paper money certificates that are passed between the subjects rather than having subjects write down numbers representing their decisions. We observe that our procedure yields qualitatively the same result as the Dufwenberg and Gneezy experiment, i.e., the second movers do not respond to the change in the outside option of the first movers.

We present the first results from a new backend on the Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder, the Commensal Realtime ASKAP Fast Transient COherent (CRACO) upgrade. CRACO records millisecond time resolution visibility data, and searches for dispersed fast transient signals including fast radio bursts (FRB), pulsars, and ultra-long period objects (ULPO). With the visibility data, CRACO can localise the transient events to arcsecond-level precision after the detection. Here, we describe the CRACO system and report the result from a sky survey carried out by CRACO at 110-ms resolution during its commissioning phase. During the survey, CRACO detected two FRBs (including one discovered solely with CRACO, FRB 20231027A), reported more precise localisations for four pulsars, discovered two new RRATs, and detected one known ULPO, GPM J1839 $-$10, through its sub-pulse structure. We present a sensitivity calibration of CRACO, finding that it achieves the expected sensitivity of 11.6 Jy ms to bursts of 110 ms duration or less. CRACO is currently running at a 13.8 ms time resolution and aims at a 1.7 ms time resolution before the end of 2024. The planned CRACO has an expected sensitivity of 1.5 Jy ms to bursts of 1.7 ms duration or less and can detect $10\times$ more FRBs than the current CRAFT incoherent sum system (i.e. 0.5 $-$2 localised FRBs per day), enabling us to better constrain the models for FRBs and use them as cosmological probes.

North Carolina growers have long struggled to control Italian ryegrass, and recent research has confirmed that some Italian ryegrass biotypes have become resistant to nicosulfuron, glyphosate, clethodim, and paraquat. Integrating alternative management strategies is crucial to effectively control such biotypes. The objectives of this study were to evaluate Italian ryegrass control with cover crops and fall-applied residual herbicides and investigate cover crop injury from residual herbicides. This study was conducted during the fall/winter of 2021–22 in Salisbury, NC, and fall/winter of 2021–22 and 2022–23 in Clayton, NC. The study was designed as a 3 × 5 split-plot in which the main plot consisted of three cover crop treatments (no-cover, cereal rye at 80 kg ha−1, and crimson clover at 18 kg ha−1), and the subplots consisted of five residual herbicide treatments (S-metolachlor, flumioxazin, metribuzin, pyroxasulfone, and nontreated). In the 2021–22 season at Clayton, metribuzin injured cereal rye and crimson clover 65% and 55%, respectively. However, metribuzin injured both cover crops ≤6% in 2022–23. Flumioxazin resulted in unacceptable crimson clover injury of 50% and 38% in 2021–22 and 2022–23 in Clayton and 40% in Salisbury, respectively. Without preemergence herbicides, cereal rye controlled Italian ryegrass by 85% and 61% at 24 wk after planting in 2021–22 and 2022–23 in Clayton and 82% in Salisbury, respectively. In 2021–22, Italian ryegrass seed production was lowest in cereal rye plots at both locations, except when it was treated with metribuzin. For example, in Salisbury, cereal rye plus metribuzin resulted in 39,324 seeds m–2, compared to ≤4,386 seeds m–2 from all other cereal rye treatments. In 2022–23, Italian ryegrass seed production in cereal rye was lower when either metribuzin or pyroxasulfone were used preemergence (2,670 and 1,299 seeds m–2, respectively) compared with cereal rye that did not receive an herbicide treatment (5,600 seeds m–2). cereal rye (Secale cereale L.) and crimson clover (Trifolium incarnatum L.)

With wide-field phased array feed technology, the Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder (ASKAP) is ideally suited to search for seemingly rare radio transient sources that are difficult to discover previous-generation narrow-field telescopes. The Commensal Real-time ASKAP Fast Transient (CRAFT) Survey Science Project has developed instrumentation to continuously search for fast radio transients (duration ≲ 1 second) with ASKAP, with a particular focus on finding and localising Fast Radio Bursts (FRBs). Since 2018, the CRAFT survey has been searching for FRBs and other fast transients by incoherently adding the intensities received by individual ASKAP antennas, and then correcting for the impact of frequency dispersion on these short-duration signals in the resultant incoherent sum (ICS) in real-time. This low-latency detection enables the triggering of voltage buffers, which facilitates the localisation of the transient source and the study of spectro-polarimetric properties at high time resolution. Here we report the sample of 43 FRBs discovered in this CRAFT/ICS survey to date. This includes 22 FRBs that had not previously been reported: 16 FRBs localised by ASKAP to. ≲ 1 arcsec and 6 FRBs localised to ∼ 10 arcmin. Of the new arcsecond-localised FRBs, we have identified and characterised host galaxies (and measured redshifts) for 11. The median of all 30 measured host redshifts from the survey to date is z = 0.23. We summarise results from the searches, in particular those contributing to our understanding of the burst progenitors and emission mechanisms, and on the use of bursts as probes of intervening media. We conclude by foreshadowing future FRB surveys with ASKAP using a coherent detection system that is currently being commissioned. This will increase the burst detection rate by a factor of approximately ten and also the distance to which ASKAP can localise FRBs.

An estimated 129000 cases of Lyme borreliosis (LB) are reported annually in Europe. In 2022, we conducted a representative web-based survey of 28034 persons aged 18–65 years old in 20 European countries to describe tick and LB risk exposures and perceptions. Nearly all respondents (95.0%) were aware of ticks (range, 90.4% in the UK to 98.8% in Estonia). Among those aware of ticks, most (85.1%) were also aware of LB (range, 70.3% in Switzerland to 97.0% in Lithuania). Overall, 8.3% of respondents reported a past LB diagnosis (range, 3.0% in Romania to 13.8% in Sweden). Respondents spent a weekly median of 7 (interquartile range [IQR] 3–14) hours in green spaces at home and 9 (IQR 4–16) hours away from home during April–November. The most common tick prevention measures always or often used were checking for ticks (44.8%) and wearing protective clothing (40.2%). This large multicountry survey provided needed data that can be used to design targeted LB prevention programmes in Europe.

Two studies were conducted in 2022 and 2023 near Rocky Mount and Clayton, NC, to determine the optimal granular ammonium sulfate (AMS) rate and application timing for pyroxasulfone-coated AMS. In the rate study, AMS rates included 161, 214, 267, 321, 374, 428, and 481 kg ha−1, equivalent to 34, 45, 56, 67, 79, 90, and 101 kg N ha−1, respectively. All rates were coated with pyroxasulfone at 118 g ai ha−1 and topdressed onto 5- to 7-leaf cotton. In the timing study, pyroxasulfone (118 g ai ha−1) was coated on AMS and topdressed at 321 kg ha−1 (67 kg N ha−1) onto 5- to 7-leaf, 9- to 11-leaf, and first bloom cotton. In both studies, weed control and cotton tolerance to pyroxasulfone-coated AMS were compared to pyroxasulfone applied POST and POST-directed. The check in both studies received non-herbicide-treated AMS (321 kg ha−1). Before treatment applications, all plots (including the check) were maintained weed-free with glyphosate and glufosinate. In both studies, pyroxasulfone applied POST was most injurious (8% to 16%), while pyroxasulfone-coated AMS resulted in ≤4% injury. Additionally, no differences in cotton lint yield were observed in either study. With the exception of the lowest rate of AMS (161 kg ha−1; 79%), all AMS rates coated with pyroxasulfone controlled Palmer amaranth ≥83%, comparably to pyroxasulfone applied POST (92%) and POST-directed (89%). In the timing study, the application method did not affect Palmer amaranth control; however, applications made at the mid- and late timings outperformed early applications. These results indicate that pyroxasulfone-coated AMS can control Palmer amaranth comparably to pyroxasulfone applied POST and POST-directed, with minimal risk of cotton injury. However, the application timing could warrant additional treatment to achieve adequate late-season weed control.

The Vicissicaudata, a group of artiopods, originated and reached their highest diversity during the Cambrian period. However, relatively few vicissicaudatan species are known from the Paleozoic. Here we report a new species of vicissicaudatan arthropod, sister to the cheloniellids, from the Late Carboniferous Mazon Creek Lagerstätte. The two specimens preserve a small eyeless head, a trunk comprising seven tergites with wide pleural lobes, a narrower postabdomen bearing two long, posteriorly directed caudal appendages, and a short, shield-shaped telson. This new species not only extends the stratigraphic range of the Vicissicaudata into the Late Paleozoic but also represents an intermediate morphology between the cheloniellids and other vicissicaudatans.

Historical narratives can satisfy basic individual psychological needs. However, an over-reliance on a group's past can marginalize those who think differently – thus, homogenizing the culture and stifling creativity. By revising narratives to balance the power of collective narratives with the richness of individuality, we foster groups that encourage varied identities.

A method of generating any number of score and correlation matrices with arbitrary population parameters is described. Either Z scores or stanines are sampled from a normal population to represent factor scores by an IBM 1620 program. These are converted to variates from a population with an a priori factor structure. The effectiveness of the method is illustrated from research data. Some further modifications and uses of the method are discussed.