BIOMEDICAL RESEARCHERS CONFRONTING THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC

The COVID-19 pandemic represents a global challenge to be confronted by the biomedical community. This article aimed to explore how knowledgeable and competent researchers may contribute to fighting the pandemic, and to discuss the ethics and impact of this endeavor. Many medical researchers and in particular clinical practitioners are engaged in collecting new evidence and creating new knowledge by undertaking pandemic-related research. This research is frequently unplanned, and subsequently numerous obstacles to starting new but necessary studies must be overcome. To contribute research evidence in hard times represents a highly ethical move. Moreover, these new studies need ethical approvals, financial resources, and institutional frameworks. Another pandemic-related challenge is how to generate expert opinions during the period when solid evidence is missing. Unlike research studies providing necessary scientific evidence, expert opinions do not need ethical approvals or disclosures of competing interests. The apparent contrast of evidence-based versus opinion-based decision-making during the pandemic reconfirms that quality research studies have no alternatives at all times.

A global phylogeny of turtles reveals a burst of climate-associated diversification on continental margins

Living turtles are characterized by extraordinarily low species diversity given their age. The clade’s extensive fossil record indicates that climate and biogeography may have played important roles in determining their diversity. We investigated this hypothesis by collecting a molecular dataset for 591 individual turtles that, together, represent 80% of all turtle species, including representatives of all families and 98% of genera, and used it to jointly estimate phylogeny and divergence times. We found that the turtle tree is characterized by relatively constant diversification (speciation minus extinction) punctuated by a single threefold increase. We also found that this shift is temporally and geographically associated with newly emerged continental margins that appeared during the Eocene−Oligocene transition about 30 million years before present. In apparent contrast, the fossil record from this time period contains evidence for a major, but regional, extinction event. These seemingly discordant findings appear to be driven by a common global process: global cooling and drying at the time of the Eocene−Oligocene transition. This climatic shift led to aridification that drove extinctions in important fossil-bearing areas, while simultaneously exposing new continental margin habitat that subsequently allowed for a burst of speciation associated with these newly exploitable ecological opportunities.

A three-response task reveals how attention alters decision criteria but not appearance

Whether attention alters appearance or just changes decision criteria continues to be controversial. When subjects are forced to choose which of two equal targets, one of which has been pre-cued, has a higher contrast, they tend to choose the cued target. This has been interpreted as attention increasing the apparent contrast of the cued target. However, when subjects must decide whether the two targets have equal or unequal contrast, they respond veridically with no apparent effect of attention. The discrepancy between these comparative and equality judgments is explained by attention altering the decision criteria but not appearance. We supposed that when subjects are forced to choose which of two apparently equal targets has the higher contrast, they tend to proportion their uncertainty in favor of the cued target. To test this hypothesis, we employed a three-response task, in which subjects chose which target had the higher contrast but also had the option to report that the targets appeared equal. Across the population, this task disentangled potential attention effects on appearance from those on the decision criteria. We found that as subjects’ narrowed their criteria about what constituted equal contrast, they were more likely to choose the cued target, supporting our uncertainty stealing hypothesis. Across the population. the effects of the attentional cue are explained as changes in the decision criteria and not changes in appearance.

Rifabutin is inactivated by Mycobacterium abscessus Arr

Mycobacterium abscessus exhibits arr (ADP-ribosyltransferase)-dependent rifampicin (RIF) resistance. In apparent contrast, rifabutin (RBT) has demonstrated promising activity in M. abscessus infection models implying that RBT might not be inactivated by Arr. RBT susceptibility testing of M. abscessus Δarr revealed a strongly decreased minimal inhibitory concentration (MIC). Our findings therefore suggest that the efficacy of RBT might be enhanced by rendering RBT resilient to Arr-dependent modification or by blocking M. abscessus Arr activity.

Suppression durations for facial expressions under breaking continuous flash suppression: effects of faces’ low-level image properties

Perceptual biases for fearful facial expressions are observed across many studies. According to the low-level, visual-based account of these biases, fear expressions are advantaged in some way due to their image properties, such as low spatial frequency content. However, there is a degree of empirical disagreement regarding the range of spatial frequency information responsible for perceptual biases. Breaking continuous flash suppression (b. CFS) has explored these effects, showing similar biases for detecting fearful facial expressions. Recent findings from a b. CFS study highlight the role of high, rather than low spatial frequency content in determining faces’ visibility. The present study contributes to ongoing discussions regarding the efficacy of b. CFS, and shows that the visibility of facial expressions vary according to how they are normalised for physical contrast and spatially filtered. Findings show that physical contrast normalisation facilitates fear’s detectability under b. CFS more than when normalised for apparent contrast, and that this effect is most pronounced when faces are high frequency filtered. Moreover, normalising faces’ perceived contrast does not guarantee equality between expressions’ visibility under b. CFS. Findings have important implications for the use of contrast normalisation, particularly regarding the extent to which contrast normalisation facilitates fear bias effects.

Different eyes on the same prize: implications of entry timing heterogeneity and incentives for contestant effort in innovation tournament

PurposeThis paper examines an apparent contrast in organizing innovation tournaments; seekers offer contestant-agnostic incentives to elicit greater effort from a heterogeneous pool of contestants. Specifically, the study tests whether and how such incentives and the underlying heterogeneity in the contestant pool, assessed in terms of contestants' entry timing, are jointly associated with contestant effort. Thus, the study contributes to the prior literature that has looked at behavioral consequences of entry timing as well as incentives in innovation tournaments.Design/methodology/approachFor hypothesis testing, the study uses a panel dataset of submission activity of over 60,000 contestants observed in nearly 200 innovation tournaments. The estimation employs multi-way fixed effects, accounting for unobserved heterogeneity across contestants, tournaments and submission week. The findings remain stable across a range of robustness checks.FindingsThe study finds that, on average, late entrant tends to exert less effort than an early entrant (H1). Results further show that the effort gap widens in tournaments that offer higher incentives. In particular, the effort gap between late and early entrants is significantly wider in tournaments that have attracted superior solutions from several contestants (H2), offer gain in status (H3, marginally significant) or offer a higher monetary reward (H4).Originality/valueThe study's findings counter conventional wisdom, which suggests that incentives have a positive effect on contestant behavior, including effort. In contrast, the study indicates that incentives may have divergent implications for contestant behavior, contingent on contestants' entry timing. As the study discusses, these findings have several implications for research and practice of managing innovation tournaments.

Contrast normalisation masks natural expression-related differences and artificially enhances the perceived salience of fear expressions.

Fearful facial expressions tend to be more salient than other expressions. This threat bias is to some extent driven by simple low-level image properties, rather than the high-level emotion interpretation of stimuli. It might be expected therefore that different expressions will, on average, have different physical contrasts. However, studies tend to normalise stimuli for RMS contrast, potentially removing a naturally-occurring difference in salience. We assessed whether images of faces differ in both physical and apparent contrast across expressions. We measured physical RMS contrast and the Fourier amplitude spectra of 5 emotional expressions prior to contrast normalisation. We also measured expression-related differences in perceived contrast. Fear expressions have a steeper Fourier amplitude slope compared to neutral and angry expressions, and consistently significantly lower contrast compared to other faces. This effect is more pronounced at higher spatial frequencies. With the exception of stimuli containing only low spatial frequencies, fear expressions appeared higher in contrast than a physically matched reference. These findings suggest that contrast normalisation artificially boosts the perceived salience of fear expressions; an effect that may account for perceptual biases observed for spatially filtered fear expressions.

Brutalization and the Civilizing Process: An Ongoing Debate Between Mosse and Elias

The objective of this article is to compare the concept of brutalization, analyzed by George Mosse, with the civilizing process, described by Norbert Elias. The intellectual life of these German-Jewish scholars will be reconstructed through the study of their relationships and their similar life experience. In this way, I’ll try to demonstrate that the apparent contrast between their different points of view is much more nuanced. Civilization and brutalization were not opposed processes that excluded one another. Therefore, a clearer understanding of the Great War can be best achieved through a combined reading of these two interconnected processes; and it is only by examining their interaction that we can understand the postwar period and the rise of Fascism and Nazism more fully.

Contrast normalisation masks natural expression-related differences and artificially enhances the perceived salience of fear expressions.

Fearful facial expressions tend to be more salient than other expressions. This threat bias is to some extent driven by simple low-level image properties, rather than the high-level emotion interpretation of stimuli. It might be expected therefore that different expressions will, on average, have different physical contrasts. However, studies tend to normalise stimuli for contrast, potentially removing a naturally-occurring difference in salience. We assessed whether images of faces differ in both physical and apparent contrast across expressions. We measured physical contrast and the Fourier amplitude spectra of 5 emotional expressions prior to contrast normalisation. We also measured expression-related differences in perceived contrast. Fear expressions have a steeper Fourier amplitude slope compared to neutral and angry expressions, and consistently significantly lower contrast compared to other faces. This effect is more pronounced at higher spatial frequencies. With the exception of stimuli containing only low spatial frequencies, fear expressions appeared higher in contrast than a physically matched reference. These findings suggest that contrast normalisation artificially boosts the perceived salience of fear expressions; an effect that may account for perceptual biases observed for spatially filtered fear expressions.