An Integrated Economic-Energy-Environmental Framework for the Assessment of Alternative Eco-Sustainable Building Designs

The International Energy Agency (2019) states 40% of CO2 emissions in cities are linked to the buildings stock, in particular to heating and cooling systems, material types and users’ performance. According to Green New Deal, the energy transition of buildings is becoming a priority. This is via investments with low environmental impacts through renewable energy sources. The paper describes an integrated economic-energy-environmental framework (IE3F), i.e., an economic evaluation protocol for new constructions and/or existing renewal projects aimed at supporting the choice phase between alternative technological solutions based on biocompatible materials. The IE3F borrows the logical-operative flow of the life cycle assessment multi-criteria approach. The value aspects translated into monetary terms that characterize the project life cycle are taken into account. The protocol was tested on an emergency project in Italy, namely in Messina City. The results obtained provide evidence of the versatile use of IE3F and its practical utility to guide economic convenience judgements on building investments and choice problems between alternatives in sustainable perspective. The research deepening will be about keeping track of multiple performance levels of the construction, not only the energy performance, and attempting to estimate the corresponding economic value in terms of increase/decrease of construction cost value.

The Decision-Making Process and the Construction of Online Sociality through the Digital Storytelling Methodology

Digital storytelling (DST) is a teaching methodology (and tool) that is very widespread in different types of training: formal and informal, professional, and for adults. Presently, education is evolving and moving towards digital storytelling, starting from the models of Lambert and Olher. Today, although DST is usually used in the training that students receive for narrative learning, experimentation on the psychological and social consequences of this online teaching practice is still scarce. The literature acknowledges the widespread use of DST online, from psychology to communication and from marketing to training, providing Lambert’s and Olher’s models as references. Thus, the purpose of experimentation in this subject has been to try to mix these two models by selecting the phases of the model that focus most on creativity and narrative writing. The purpose of this study is to illustrate the experimentation conducted in the initial training of teachers to monitor the processes of negotiating content, making decisions and building a group atmosphere through the use of a narrative technique in an educational context. The sample was offered comprehension activities on narrative categories, creativity and autobiographical writing. The process in the group choice phase (negotiation) of the story was monitored through a questionnaire that includes three scales (the Melbourne Decision Making Questionnaire, Organisational Attitude, and Negotiations Self-Assessment Inventory). The study concluded that the standardised planning of activities that, to a greater degree of depth, promote participation and emotional involvement allows the creation of strong group thinking and affects the decision-making and negotiation processes of the activities being carried out by the participants.

Interest Group Innovation

This chapter uses a case study approach to explore the political choice phase of the political communication cycle (PCC) over time. Focusing on interest groups and detailing the long history of these organizations in America, the chapter primarily examines innovations made by four of the largest interest groups in American history: AARP, the Sierra Club, the National Rifle Association (NRA), and MoveOn.org. These four interest groups have spanned multiple political communication orders (PCOs) and their overall lack of innovativeness until recent years is tied to the distinct nature of their shared political communication goals. These goals are far narrower than campaigns or social movements and therefore are much less likely to motivate innovative efforts. These trends have started to change in the internet-based era as new organizational and communication strategies have opened up interest groups to greater innovation along the lines of MoveOn.org.

The Only Constant is Change

The Only Constant Is Change presents and tests the political communication cycle (PCC), a model describing how political actors and organizations make decisions about if, how, and when to innovate their political communication practices. Generally speaking, political communication goals have remained largely stable over time, but the strategies used to accomplish these goals have changed a great deal. The PCC describes the recurring process of political communication innovation through American political history. This model incorporates the technological, political, and behavioral factors influencing how and when changes in political communication activity take place. The PCC is made up of three phases that also serve as an organizational structure for the book. First is the technological imperative, which focuses on how new information and communications technologies (ICT) are developed and what types of ICTs may be more or less likely to be used to innovate political communication. Next, the political choice phase incorporates the behavioral processes embedded in how different types of actors choose whether to innovate or not. This phase is the most critical and is analyzed through case studies evaluating how campaigns, social movements, and interest groups have or have not changed their political communication activities over time. Finally, the stabilization phase encompasses the process of how once innovative techniques become the new status quo though the establishment of new norms, regulations, and institutions. The book explores these changes through historical and contemporary analysis, which offers important context and tools to understand political communication through history and today.

Political Choice

Chapter 4 explains the concept of political choice, the second and most important phase of the political communication cycle (PCC). The political choice phase is the process in which political actors choose if and when to incorporate new information and communications technologies (ICTs) into their communication strategies. This chapter details the process that political actors or organizations go through when determining whether to innovate and helps to identify characteristics of those parties that are more likely to innovate earlier than others, known as innovativeness. Political choice is the behavioral component of the political communication cycle. These innovation decisions are the primary determinants regarding if and how ICT innovations are used to change political communication activity. Therefore, political choice is the most important phase of the PCC, differentiating political communication change from social and societal communication change more broadly.

Introduction

This introduction serves several important goals. It lays out both the research objective and theoretical framework placing this study on an interdisciplinary foundation that combines work from political science, American political development, mass communication, history, and diffusion studies. It introduces the core concepts of the book, concentrated around a recurring multistage process called the political communication cycle (PCC). The three stages of the PCC, detailed in the following chapters, include the information and communications technology (ICT)–focused technological imperative phase; the political choice phase, which emphasizes the behavioral process central to innovation; and stabilization through the establishment of new norms, regulations, and institutions. This process has repeated throughout history, where long periods of relative stability, known as political communication orders (PCOs), are disrupted by shorter periods of permanent change, identified as political communication revolutions (PCRs). The introduction concludes by introducing the three claims that are used throughout the book and outlining the chapters that follow.

Gain/Loss Framing Effects on Learning in Economic Decision Making Investigated with Eye Tracking

Previous research has revealed a domain-based bias when people estimate payout likelihoods for probabilistic choice options that minimize losses versus those that maximize gains (Kuhnen, 2015). For instance, in economic boom situations, people overestimate how valuable a low profit stock is. Conversely, in economic recession situations, individuals underestimate stocks that minimize losses. Cognitive neuroscience posits that gain and loss information is processed differently in the brain (Knutson and Bossaerts, 2007; Kuhnen and Knutson, 2005), but the precise mechanisms of these domain differences are still unclear. The current study investigated two potential causes of this domain-based bias. Bias may be driven by a high magnitude effect, owing to greater salience for large gains and losses and subsequent overweighting in probability estimations. This would be evidenced by enhanced attention and memory for stimuli associated with high-magnitude dividend choice options and payouts. Domain-based bias in probability estimations could also be driven by incongruence between objective probabilities and dividend payout valence (e.g., “bad” choice options in the gain domain; “good” choice options in the loss domain; valence incongruence effect). If true, we would expect enhanced estimation errors, reaction times (RT), and attention when there is incongruence between the valence of choice payout probabilities and their payouts. To test these hypotheses, 26 students from the University of Central Florida (UCF) participated in an economic decision-making study. The main task involved choosing between pairs of stocks (probabilistic payouts) and bonds (sure-thing payouts). Choice pairs were embedded in either a gain or loss block, with both choice options paying either positive or negative dividends, respectively. Stocks within a block were pseudorandomly drawn from either the “good distribution” (70% high payouts) or the “bad distribution” (30% high payouts). After choosing a security, the stock payout was shown and participants were then asked to estimate the probability that the current stock was drawn from the good distribution. Performance bonus payments were paid based on accurate stock probability estimates and 10% of the total earned from stock/bond choices. The study was approved by the UCF Institutional Review Board. Eye movements were recorded throughout to measure overt visual attention as a potential mechanism of domainbased bias. Measures included the fixation duration on each stimulus (dwell time) and average number of oscillations between choice options to determine when and where one looks (Carpenter and McDonald, 2007). Interest areas were created a priori around each critical stimulus in the choice and stock payout phases. To test memory for choice and stock payout phases, participants completed an incidental memory test at the end of the experiment. Here memory was assessed for fractal images associated with each stock and bond option, as well as face images associated with each stock payout (“stockbrokers”). The critical dependent variables to measure domain-based bias were estimation error, response time, oscillation between choice stimuli, and stimulus dwell time. The impact of memory, attention, and congruence of information on measures of domain-based estimation bias was examined with 2 x2 domain (gain, loss) by dividend payout (high, low payout) repeated-measures analysis of variance models (ANOVA). Mixed effects modeling was used to examine the power of outcome RT and visual dwell time to predict probability estimate bias. Behavioral results. Consistent with the valence incongruence hypothesis, absolute errors for stock payout probabilities were relatively higher when gain-domain stocks had worse expected values (gain stock was “bad”) than associated bonds and when loss-domain stocks had better expected values than associated bonds (loss stock was “good”). In addition, RT during the choice phase was greater in the loss domain, as participants had to update their estimations the stock came from the “good distribution” even though it only lost money. For stock payout RT, the mixed effects model found an interaction of domain, payout magnitude, and outcome RT where the longer participants spent on gain outcome screens, the more positive their bias and the longer they spent on loss outcome screens, the more negative their bias. Results from the two incidental memory test scores did not reveal any main effects or interactions of domain or dividend payout, lessening support for the high magnitude hypothesis. The data provide support for both attentional effects. Eye tracking data. Greater oscillations between stock and bond options at choice was observed in the loss condition, suggesting greater choice uncertainty when stocks lose money. Stimulus dwell times were higher in the loss domain during the choice phase but did not differ by dividend payout. However, the mixed effects model found an interaction of domain and stock dwell times where the longer participants spent on gain information, the more positive their bias and the longer they spent on loss information, the more negative their bias. The mix of results provide support for both attentional effects. The behavioral results were in line with previous research (Kuhnen, 2015). Together with the eye tracking data, the results support the both the valence incongruence and high magnitude effects. We have evidence that one effect influences overall error rate (incongruence) and the other drives the direction of the error (magnitude). Thus, future interventions should consider both effects when seeking to improve decision making.

Male Drosophila melanogaster learn to prefer an arbitrary trait associated with female mating status

Although males are generally less discriminating than females when it comes to choosing a mate, they still benefit from distinguishing between mates that are receptive to courtship and those that are not, in order to avoid wasting time and energy. It is known that males of Drosophila melanogaster are able to learn to associate olfactory and gustatory cues with female receptivity, but the role of more arbitrary, visual cues in mate choice learning has been overlooked to date in this species. We therefore carried out a series of experiments to determine: 1) whether males had a baseline preference for female eye color (red versus brown), 2) if males could learn to associate an eye color cue with female receptivity, and 3) whether this association disappeared when the males were unable to use this visual cue in the dark. We found that naïve males had no baseline preference for females of either eye color, but that males which were trained with sexually receptive females of a given eye color showed a preference for that color during a standard binary choice experiment. The learned cue was indeed likely to be truly visual, since the preference disappeared when the binary choice phase of the experiment was carried out in darkness.This is, to our knowledge 1) the first evidence that male D. melanogaster can use more arbitrary cues and 2) the first evidence that males use visual cues during mate choice learning. Our findings suggest that that D. melanogaster has untapped potential as a model system for mate choice learning.

Automatic comparison of stimulus durations in the primate prefrontal cortex: the neural basis of across-task interference

Rhesus monkeys performed two tasks, both requiring a choice between a red square and a blue circle. In the duration task, the two stimuli appeared sequentially on each trial, for varying durations, and, later, during the choice phase of the task, the monkeys needed to choose the one that had lasted longer. In the matching-to-sample task, one of the two stimuli appeared twice as a sample, with durations matching those in the duration task, and the monkey needed to choose that stimulus during the choice phase. Although stimulus duration was irrelevant in the matching-to-sample task, the monkeys made twice as many errors when the second stimulus was shorter. This across-task interference supports an order-dependent model of the monkeys' choice and reveals something about their strategy in the duration task. The monkeys tended to choose the second stimulus when its duration exceeded the first and to choose the alternative stimulus otherwise. For the duration task, this strategy obviated the need to store stimulus-duration conjunctions for both stimuli, but it generated errors on the matching-to-sample task. We examined duration coding in prefrontal neurons and confirmed that a population of cells encoded relative duration during the matching-to-sample task, as expected from the order-dependent errors.

Temporal order memory deficits prior to clinical diagnosis in Huntington’s disease

The current study examined temporal order memory in preclinical Huntington’s disease (pre-HD). Participants were separated into less than 5 years (pre-HD near) and more than 5 years (pre-HD far) from estimated age of clinical diagnosis. Participants completed a temporal order memory task on a computerized radial eight-arm maze. On the study phase of each trial, participants viewed a random sequence of circles appearing one at a time at the end of each arm. On the choice phase, participants viewed two circles at the end of the study phase arms and chose the circle occurring earliest in the sequence. The task involved manipulations of the temporal lag, defined as the number of arms occurring in the sample phase sequence between the two choice phase arms. Research suggests that there is more interference for temporally proximal stimuli relative to temporally distal stimuli. There were no significant differences between the pre-HD far group and controls on the temporal order memory task. The pre-HD near group demonstrated significant impairments relative to the other groups on closer temporal lags, but were normal on the furthest temporal lag. Therefore, temporal order memory declines with increased temporal interference in pre-HD close to estimated diagnosis of HD. (JINS, 2009, 15, 662–670.)