Spatiotemporal Polyrhythm Characteristics of Public Bicycle Mobility in Urban Chronotopes Context

Cycling rhythm performance is the result of a complex interplay between active travel demand and cycling network supply. Most studies focused on bicycle flow, but little attention has been paid to cycling rhythm changes for public bicycles. Full sample data of origin–destination enables an efficient description of network-wide cycling mobility efficiency in urban public bicycle systems. In this paper, we show how the spatiotemporal characteristics of cycling speed reveal the performance of cycling rhythms. The inference method of riding speed estimation is proposed with an unknown cycling path. The significant inconsistency of docking stations in cycling rhythm was unraveled by the source–sink relationship comparison. The asymmetry of the cycling rhythm on the path is manifested as the rhythm difference among paths and bidirectional inconsistency. We found that cycling rhythm has a temporal multilayer and spatial mismatch, which shows the inflection points of the cycling rhythm where the travel behavioral preference changes and the exact road segments with different rhythms. This finding suggests that a well-designed cycling environment and occupation-residential function should be considered in active transport demand management and urban planning to help induce active travel behavior decisions.

Quantifying the Preference of Stakeholders in the Utilization of Forest Resources

The economic contribution of forest resources to the communities surrounding nature reserves cannot be ignored. The method for which to find a forest resource utilization path to balance the contradiction between local farmers’ economic development and ecological protection in the development of nature reserves is important. However, little attention has been given to the effect of forest resource users’ behavioral preferences on forest resource utilization. This study selected Wolong Nature Reserve as a case study and randomly interviewed different stakeholders with semi-structured questionnaires to investigate the differences in forest resource utilization patterns among stakeholders with different behavioral preferences. According to the results of multi-attribute decision analysis with behavioral preference, stakeholders form different behavioral preferences by judging their own resource endowment. With a change of in the behavioral preference value λ, when the behavioral preference of stakeholders is more pessimistic (λ = 0.1), cautious (λ = 0.3), or neutral (λ = 0.5), they are more inclined to choose the economically dominant forest resource utilization mode; when the behavioral preference of stakeholders is optimistic (λ = 0.7) or even radical (λ = 0.9), they choose the eco-economic or eco-dominant forest resource utilization mode, respectively. This study confirms that stakeholders’ behavioral preferences have an important impact on forest resource utilization patterns. Therefore, policy making should focus on improving the economic benefits of forest resources and providing alternative livelihoods, which will change the resource endowment of the stakeholders of nature reserve, guide them to turn to relatively optimistic behavioral preferences, enhance their awareness and motivation of ecological protection, and thereby improve forest conservation outcomes.

Neuromodulation and Individuality

Within populations, individuals show a variety of behavioral preferences, even in the absence of genetic or environmental variability. Neuromodulators affect these idiosyncratic preferences in a wide range of systems, however, the mechanism(s) by which they do so is unclear. I review the evidence supporting three broad mechanisms by which neuromodulators might affect variability in idiosyncratic behavioral preference: by being a source of variability directly upstream of behavior, by affecting the behavioral output of a circuit in a way that masks or accentuates underlying variability in that circuit, and by driving plasticity in circuits leading to either homeostatic convergence toward a given behavior or divergence from a developmental setpoint. I find evidence for each of these mechanisms and propose future directions to further understand the complex interplay between individual variability and neuromodulators.

Multidimensional Fair Fuzzy Equilibrium Evaluation of Housing Expropriation Compensation from the Perspective of Behavioral Preference: A Case Study from China

With the rapid development of urbanization, substantial land areas and houses are expropriated, which can cause huge numbers of disputes related to expropriation compensation. The root of the disputes is that the associated subjects are affected by various behavioral preferences and make different cognitive fairness judgments based on the same compensation price. However, the existing expropriation compensation strategies based on the market value under the assumption of “the economic man” hypothesis cannot meet the fairness preference demands of the expropriated. Therefore, finding a compensation price that satisfies subjects’ multidimensional fairness preferences, including profit-seeking, loss aversion, and interactive fairness preferences, is necessary. Only in this way can the subjects reach an agreement regarding fair compensation and resolve their disputes. Because of the fuzziness of subjects’ expected revenues, this paper innovatively introduces trigonometric intuitional fuzzy numbers to construct one-dimensional and multidimensional fair fuzzy equilibrium evaluation models. The Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to an Ideal Solution (TOPSIS) method is adopted to convert a multidimensional problem into a multiattribute group decision problem, which simplifies the problem of finding multidimensional equilibrium when considering the multidimensional fairness preferences of the two subjects. Real case data are introduced to verify the validity of this method. The research results show that upward revision of the multidimensional fairness preferences based on the market value assists in achieving a fair compensation agreement. Consideration of the influence of the subjects’ multidimensional fairness preferences on the fairness equilibrium is conducive to resolving the disputes, and provides a reference for the settlement of expropriation compensation disputes in developing countries.

Do marmosets understand others’ conversations? A thermography approach

What information animals derive from eavesdropping on interactions between conspecifics, and whether they assign value to it, is difficult to assess because overt behavioral reactions are often lacking. An inside perspective of how observers perceive and process such interactions is thus paramount. Here, we investigate what happens in the mind of marmoset monkeys when they hear playbacks of positive or negative third-party vocal interactions, by combining thermography to assess physiological reactions and behavioral preference measures. The physiological reactions show that playbacks were perceived and processed holistically as interactions rather than as the sum of the separate elements. Subsequently, the animals preferred those individuals who had been simulated to engage in positive, cooperative vocal interactions during the playbacks. By using thermography to disentangle the mechanics of marmoset sociality, we thus find that marmosets eavesdrop on and socially evaluate vocal exchanges and use this information to distinguish between cooperative and noncooperative conspecifics.

ASD Toddlers Exhibit Impaired Development of Neural Systems That Respond to and Guide Mother-Child Interactions

Motherese is an experience-expectant, human-specific and innate form of parent speech that enhances social and language learning, and affect and emotion development in infants. An early sign of ASD is the child’s lack of responding to motherese and reduced social mother-child interactions. To learn why, we devised a novel experiment quantifying (a) neural responses to motherese and other emotion speech with sleep fMRI and (b) active behavioral preference for motherese with eye tracking in ASD and TD toddlers. We combined the power of diverse neural and clinical data types using Similarity Network Fusion to reveal four neural-clinical clusters. The ASD cluster with the weakest neural responses to motherese and the poorest social and language abilities had the lowest eye tracking attention to motherese, while the TD cluster with the strongest neural response to motherese showed the opposite effects. We conclude that the ASD child’s impairment in engaging in social mother-child interactions is due to impaired development of innate neural systems that normally respond to and guide behavior that maintains mother-child interactions.

Heat tolerance and thermal preference of the copepod Tigriopus californicus are insensitive to ecologically relevant dissolved oxygen levels

Shifting climate patterns may impose novel combinations of abiotic conditions on animals, yet understanding of the present-day interactive effects of multiple stressors remains under-developed. We tested the oxygen and capacity limited thermal tolerance (OCLTT) hypothesis and quantified environmental preference of the copepod Tigriopus californicus, which inhabits rocky-shore splashpools where diel fluctuations of temperature and dissolved oxygen (DO) are substantial. Egg-mass bearing females were exposed to a 5 h heat ramp to peak temperatures of 34.1–38.0 °C crossed with each of four oxygen levels: 22, 30, 100 and 250% saturation (4.7–5.3, 5.3–6.4, 21.2–21.3, and 50.7–53.3 kPa). Survival decreased at higher temperatures but was independent of DO. The behavioral preference of females was quantified in seven combinations of gradients of both temperature (11–37 °C) and oxygen saturation (17–206% or 3.6–43.6 kPa). Females avoided high temperatures regardless of DO levels. This pattern was more pronounced when low DO coincided with high temperature. In uniform temperature treatments, the distribution shifted toward high DO levels, especially in uniform high temperature, confirming that Tigriopus can sense environmental pO2. These results question the ecological relevance of OCLTT for Tigriopus and raise the possibility of microhabitat selection being used within splashpool environments to avoid physiologically stressful combinations of conditions.

Reward activity in ventral pallidum tracks satiety-sensitive preference and drives choice behavior

A key function of the nervous system is producing adaptive behavior across changing conditions, like physiological state. Although states like thirst and hunger are known to impact decision-making, the neurobiology of this phenomenon has been studied minimally. Here, we tracked evolving preference for sucrose and water as rats proceeded from a thirsty to sated state. As rats shifted from water choices to sucrose choices across the session, the activity of a majority of neurons in the ventral pallidum, a region crucial for reward-related behaviors, closely matched the evolving behavioral preference. The timing of this signal followed the pattern of a reward prediction error, occurring at the cue or the reward depending on when reward identity was revealed. Additionally, optogenetic stimulation of ventral pallidum neurons at the time of reward was able to reverse behavioral preference. Our results suggest that ventral pallidum neurons guide reward-related decisions across changing physiological states.