Collective action research tends to focus on motivations of the disadvantaged group, rather than on which tactics are effective at driving the advantaged group to make concessions to the disadvantaged. We focused on the potential of nonnormative nonviolent action as a tactic to generate support for concessions among advantaged group members who are resistant to social change. We propose that this tactic, relative to normative nonviolent and to violent action, is particularly effective because it reflects constructive disruption: a delicate balance between disruption (which can put pressure on the advantaged group to respond) and perceived constructive intentions (which can help ensure that the response to action is a conciliatory one). We test these hypotheses across 4 contexts (total N = 3650). Studies 1-3 demonstrate that nonnormative nonviolent action (compared with inaction, normative nonviolent action, and violent action) is uniquely effective at increasing support for concessions to the disadvantaged among resistant advantaged group members (compared with advantaged group members more open to social change). Study 3 shows that constructive disruption mediates this effect. Study 4 shows that perceiving a real-world ongoing protest as constructively disruptive predicts support for the disadvantaged, whereas Study 5 examines these processes longitudinally over 2 months in the context of an ongoing social movement. Taken together, we show that nonnormative nonviolent action can be an effective tactic for generating support for concessions to the disadvantaged among those who are most resistant because it generates constructive disruption. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).
Our ability to compare sensory stimuli is a fundamental cognitive function, which is known to be affected by two biases: choice bias, which reflects a preference for a given response, and contraction bias, which reflects a tendency to perceive stimuli as similar to previous ones. To test whether both reflect supervised processes, we designed feedback protocols aimed to modify them and tested them in human participants. Choice bias was readily modifiable. However, contraction bias was not. To compare these results to those predicted from an optimal supervised process, we studied a noise-matched optimal linear discriminator (Perceptron). In this model, both biases were substantially modified, indicating that the “resilience” of contraction bias to feedback does not maximize performance. These results suggest that perceptual discrimination is a hierarchical, two-stage process. In the first, stimulus statistics are learned and integrated with representations in an unsupervised process that is impenetrable to external feedback. In the second, a binary judgment, learned in a supervised way, is applied to the combined percept.
SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT The seemingly effortless process of inferring physical reality from the sensory input is highly influenced by previous knowledge, leading to perceptual biases. Two common ones are contraction bias (the tendency to perceive stimuli as similar to previous ones) and choice bias (the tendency to prefer a specific response). Combining human psychophysical experiments with computational modeling we show that they reflect two different learning processes. Contraction bias reflects unsupervised learning of stimuli statistics, whereas choice bias results from supervised or reinforcement learning. This dissociation reveals a hierarchical, two-stage process. The first, where stimuli statistics are learned and integrated with representations, is unsupervised. The second, where a binary judgment is applied to the combined percept, is learned in a supervised way.
Teaching social sciences frequently involves politically and ideologically fraught issues. This study examines the effect of students’ perceived ideological distance from their professors on their academic experience, drawing on a survey of 1,257 students from Social Science and Law faculties in Israel across five different universities. Congruent with previous findings from the US, the study's results demonstrate that perceived ideological distance lowers students' evaluations of their professors' commitment to their success. Implications of the findings are discussed with reference to the current underrepresentation of right-wing and conservative academics in the social sciences.
{Background Multisystem Inflammatory Syndrome in Children (MIS-C) is a severe clinical phenotype of SARS-CoV-2 infection that remains poorly understood. Methods Hospitalized children <18 years of age with suspected COVID-19 (N=53) were recruited into a prospective cohort study; 32 had confirmed COVID-19, with 16 meeting the U.S. Centers for Disease Control criteria for MIS-C. Differences in nasopharyngeal viral RNA levels, SARS-CoV-2 seropositivity, and cytokine/chemokine profiles were examined, including after adjustments for age and sex. Results The median ages for those with and without MIS-C were 8.7 years (IQR 5.5-13.9) and 2.2 years (IQR 1.1-10.5), respectively, (p=0.18) and nasopharyngeal levels of SARS-CoV-2 RNA did not differ significantly between the two groups (median 63,848.25 copies/mL versus 307.1 copies/mL
The performance of the newly developed DGT technique for the platinum group elements (PGEs) rhodium (Rh), platinum (Pt) and palladium (Pd) was evaluated in two tributaries of the Scheldt River, the Marque River close to the city of Lille (France), and the Zenne River which flows through the city of Brussels (Belgium). In the Marque River, an interlaboratory comparison was performed between the two laboratories where the DGT techniques dedicated to PGEs were developed (AMGC, VUB & LASIRE, U-Lille). PGEs were also analysed in an effluent of a Brussels hospital and monthly grab sampling was performed at the wastewater treatments plants (WWTPs) of Brussels. The concentrations of the 3 elements are higher in the Zenne River than in the Marque River and much higher Pt concentrations are found in the hospital effluent. Good agreement for Pt was observed between the three selected chelating resins and a relatively good agreement was observed between the two laboratories using the same chelating resin, whereas lower results were observed with the anion-exchange resin. Larger discrepancies between the two laboratories were observed for Pd and no comparison could be made for Rh due to the low natural concentrations. The results show that in small urban rivers with high impact of urbanization, WWTPs are an important source of Pt, resulting from the use of anticancer drugs in hospitals and households. The limited retention of PGEs in WWTPs results in increased concentrations in urban rivers downstream. For Pd and Rh, similar trends were found with other traffic related elements such as Cu, Zn and Pb, showing the highest concentrations in waters collecting runoff from a highway. The data show that these elements, together with Gd, can be useful to trace specific pollution sources and their dispersion.
The important effect of soil wetting and drying cycle (WDC) on soil structure, and the consequent effect on pollutant fate is underexplored. We thoroughly investigated the changes in soil structure and in leaching of Alion (indaziflam) and Express (tribenuron methyl), pre and post WDC, from two clayey soils and two loamy soils under different land uses (uncultivated, field crops, and orchards). Soil stability was quantified by an aggregate durability index we recently developed. WDC did not affect the stability of the sandy-loam soils, as expected. However, for the sandy-clay-loam with high CaCO3 content aggregation was observed. For the clayey soils with similar CaCO3, aggregation and disaggregation were obtained, for a soil with relatively low and high SOM, respectively. The stability trends are reflected by the ratio between the contents of inorganic carbon and soil organic matter (SOM), CaCO3/SOM, normalized to the clay content. Aggregation was explained by CaCO3 cementation, while disaggregation was attributed to high clay content and to alterations in SOM conformation post WDC. These opposite trends, obtained for the two clayey soils, were confirmed by analyzing changes in soil packing employing X-ray tomography (micro-CT). Our results clearly demonstrated that soil aggregation and disaggregation, induced by a WDC, suppresses and enhances herbicide mobility, respectively. However, the effect of WDC on herbicide leaching was not noticeable for Alion upon its high adsorption to a clayey soil, indicating that herbicide physical-chemical properties may dominate. Finally, WDC induces micron-scale changes in aggregate structure, which have a notable effect on pollutant mobility and fate in the environment. (C) 2020 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Avraham Bernstein, de Vreese, Claes H. , Helberger, Natali , Schulz, Wolfgang , Zweig, Katharina , Baden, Christian , Beam, Michael A. , Hauer, Marc P. , Heitz, Lucien , Jürgens, Pascal , Katzenbach, Christian , Kille, Benjamin , Klimkiewicz, Beate , Loosen, Wiebke , Moeller, Judith , Radanovic, Goran , Shani, Guy , Tintarev, Nava , Tolmeijer, Suzanne , Van Atteveldt, Wouter , Vrijenhoek, Sanne , ו Zueger, Theresa . 2021. “Diversity In News Recommendations”. Dagstuhl Manifestos, 9, Pp. 43-61. . Publisher's Versionתקציר
News diversity in the media has for a long time been a foundational and uncontested basis for ensuring that the communicative needs of individuals and society at large are met. Today, people increasingly rely on online content and recommender systems to consume information challenging the traditional concept of news diversity. In addition, the very concept of diversity, which differs between disciplines, will need to be re-evaluated requiring a interdisciplinary investigation, which requires a new level of mutual cooperation between computer scientists, social scientists, and legal scholars. Based on the outcome of a multidisciplinary workshop, we have the following recommendations, directed at researchers, funders, legislators, regulators, and the media industry: 1. Do more research on news recommenders and diversity. 2. Create a safe harbor for academic research with industry data. 3. Optimize the role of public values in news recommenders. 4. Create a meaningful governance framework. 5. Fund a joint lab to spearhead the needed interdisciplinary research, boost practical innovation, develop. reference solutions, and transfer insights into practice.
A redox steady state is important in maintaining vital cellular functions and is therefore homeostatically controlled by a number of antioxidative agents, the most important of which are enzymes. Oxidative Stress (OS) is associated with (or/and caused by) excessive production of damaging reactive oxygen and/or nitrogen species (ROS, RNS), which play a role in many pathologies. Because OS is a risk factor for many diseases, much effort (and money) is devoted to early diagnosis and treatment of OS. The desired benefit of the "identify (OS) and treat (by low molecular weight antioxidants, LMWA)" approach is to enable selective treatment of patients under OS. The present work aims at gaining understanding of the benefit of the antioxidants based on interrelationship between the concentration of different OS biomarkers and LMWA. Both the concentrations of a variety of biomarkers and of LMWA were previously determined and some analyses have been published by the MARK-AGE team. For the sake of simplicity, we assume that the concentration of an OS biomarker is a linear function of the concentration of a LMWA (if the association is due to causal relationship). A negative slope of this dependence (and sign of the correlation coefficient) can be intuitively expected for an antioxidant, a positive slope indicates that the LMWA is pro-oxidative, whereas extrapolation of the OS biomarker to [LMWA] = 0 is an approximation of the concentration of the OS biomarker in the absence of the LMWA. Using this strategy, we studied the effects of 12 LMWA (including tocopherols, carotenoids and ascorbic acid) on the OS status, as observed with 8 biomarkers of oxidative damage (including malondialdehyde, protein carbonyls, 3-nitrotyrosine). The results of this communication show that in a cross-sectional study the LMWA contribute little to the redox state and that different "antioxidants" are very different, so that single LMWA treatment of OS is not scientifically justified assuming our simple model. In view of the difficulty of quantitating the OS and the very different effects of various LMWA, the use of the "identify and treat" approach is questionable.
Does opposition to immigration mostly stem from prejudice or from sociotropic concerns about broad economic and cultural implications on the nation as a whole? Previous work on immigration preferences cannot answer this question because the two explanations are observationally equivalent when focusing on the attitudes of natives. I analyze a unique survey experiment that asks both natives and immigrants of various origins to evaluate different profiles of visa applicants to the Netherlands. The experiment also assigns an “ingroup treatment”—applications by individuals of the same ethnocultural background as the respondent. Using this rich data, I show that sociotropic concerns are the major source of immigration preferences, while ethnic biases play a moderate role. Remarkably, the ingroup treatment has limited effects on admission. However, bias against specific immigrant groups is detected in preferences of immigrant respondents and of those who sympathize with the far-right Freedom Party.
Peter van Aelst, Toth, Fanni , Castro, Laia , Štětka, Václav , de Vreese, Claes , Aalberg, Toril , Cardenal, Ana Sofia , Corbu, Nicoleta , Esser, Frank , Hopmann, David Nicolas , Koc-Michalska, Karolina , Matthes, Jörg , Schemer, Christian , Sheafer, Tamir , Splendore, Sergio , Stanyer, James , Stępińska, Agnieszka , Strömbäck, Jesper , ו Theocharis, Yannis . 2021. “Does A Crisis Change News Habits? A Comparative Study Of The Effects Of Covid-19 On News Media Use In 17 European Countries”. Digital Journalism, 9, Pp. 1208-1238.
Peter van Aelst, Toth, Fanni , Castro, Laia , Štětka, Václav , de Vreese, Claes , Aalberg, Toril , Cardenal, Ana Sofia , Corbu, Nicoleta , Esser, Frank , Hopmann, David Nicolas , Koc-Michalska, Karolina , Matthes, Jörg , Schemer, Christian , Sheafer, Tamir , Splendore, Sergio , Stanyer, James , Stępińska, Agnieszka , Strömbäck, Jesper , ו Theocharis, Yannis . 2021. “Does A Crisis Change News Habits? A Comparative Study Of The Effects Of Covid-19 On News Media Use In 17 European Countries”. Digital Journalism, 9, Pp. 1208-1238.
A protracted domestication time-frame for cereals in the Near East is widely endorsed by the plant domestication research community. This occurs in tandem with the pre-domestication cultivation concept, which rests on the assumption that human husbandry operations (namely cultivation) exerted selection pressures in favor of domesticated phenotypes (e.g., non-shattering spikes) at the expense of the wild type (WT) shattering phenotype. The protracted domestication model rests on a long series of assumptions of which we address only two: (1) that the archeobotanical assemblages found in Neolithic occupation sites are representative of the managed plant populations from the cultivated fields; (2) that WT (shattering, brittle spikes) and domesticated (non-shattering, non-brittle spikes) stocks were grown for millennia as admixed populations across the Near East before the domesticated (non-shattering) morphotype slowly came to dominate the managed cereal populations. Scrutinizing these assumptions, and their derivatives, we suggest that the proportion of wild vs. domesticated cereal remains in archeobotanical assemblages cannot possibly represent the presumed cultivated plant populations. Moreover, agronomic considerations expose severe methodological and theoretical drawbacks in the protracted domestication reconstruction vis-à-vis the proportions of shattering vs. non-shattering spikelets in archeobotanical assemblages.
In Sterile Insect Technique (SIT) programs, massive numbers of insects are reared, sterilized, and released in the field to impede reproduction of pest populations. The domestication and rearing processes used to produce insects for SIT programs may have significant evolutionary impacts on life history and reproductive biology. We assessed the effects of domestication on sexual performance of laboratory reared Queensland fruit fly,Bactrocera tryoni, by comparing an old (49 generations) and a young colony (5 generations). We evaluated mating propensity, mating latency, copula duration, sperm transfer, and ability to induce sexual inhibition in mates. Overall, both males and females from the old colony had greater mating propensity than those from the young colony. Copula duration was longer when females were from the old colony. There was no evidence of sexual isolation between the colonies as males and females from the two colonies had similar propensity to mate with flies from either colony. Males from the old colony transferred more sperm regardless of which colony their mate was from. Finally, males from both colonies were similarly able to induce sexual inhibition in their mates and were also similarly able to secure copulations with already-mated females. Positive effects of domestication on sperm transfer, coupled with maintained ability to induce sexual inhibition in mates and to secure copulations with previously mated females, highlights that domestication may have little effect, or even positive effects, on some aspects of sexual performance that may advantage mass-rearedB. tryoniin SIT programs.
