Evolution of social learning when high expected payoffs are associated with high risk of failure

In an environment where the availability of resources sought by a forager varies greatly, individual foraging is likely to be associated with a high risk of failure. Foragers that learn where the best sources of food are located are likely to develop risk aversion, causing them to avoid the patches that are in fact the best; the result is sub-optimal behaviour. Yet, foragers living in a group may not only learn by themselves, but also by observing others. Using evolutionary agent-based computer simulations of a social foraging game, we show that in an environment where the most productive resources occur with the lowest probability, socially acquired information is strongly favoured over individual experience. While social learning is usually regarded as beneficial because it filters out maladaptive behaviours, the advantage of social learning in a risky environment stems from the fact that it allows risk aversion to be circumvented and the best food source to be revisited despite repeated failures. Our results demonstrate that the consequences of individual risk aversion may be better understood within a social context and suggest one possible explanation for the strong preference for social information over individual experience often observed in both humans and animals.     

Correlation between mechanical properties and orientation of the crystalline and mesomorphic phases in isotactic polypropylene fibers

The microstructure and mechanical properties of melt-spun isotactic polypropylene (iPP) fibers were studied for different take-up velocities and throughputs with a combination of small- and wide-angle X-ray scattering, calorimetry and tensile tests. With the increase of take-up velocity the mesomorphic fraction of the fibers steadily decreases while the crystalline fraction increases. The addition of an alpha-nucleating agent led to an increase of crystallinity and a slight decrease of the orientation factor. By contrast, a beta-nucleator resulted in a complete suppression of the fiber crystallinity. The orientation factor of the mesophase and/or crystalline phase is found to have a one-to-one correlation with the fiber tenacity and deformation at break. At the same time, the absolute values of crystallinity and/or mesomorphicity are fully uncorrelated with these mechanical characteristics. The observed correlations can be used for example to design and control the fiber mechanical properties by tuning the processing conditions such as take-up velocity, throughput and addition of nucleating agents.     

Micelle and bilayer formation of amphiphilic janus particles in a slit-pore

We employ molecular dynamics simulations to investigate the self-assembly of amphiphilic Janus particles in a slit-pore consisting of two plane-parallel, soft walls. The Janus particles are modeled as soft spheres with an embedded unit vector pointing from the hydrophobic to the hydrophilic hemisphere. The structure formation is analyzed via cluster size distributions, density and polarization profiles, and in-plane correlation functions. At low temperatures and densities, the dominating structures are spherical micelles, whereas at higher densities we also observe wall-induced bilayer formation. Finally, we compare the MD results with those from a previous density functional study.     

Evidence for a short-range sex pheromone in female Maladera matrida beetle

Laboratory studies with live and frozen Maladera matrida female and male beetles showed that males were attracted to chemical substances emanating from the females at dusk. Beetles exhibited sexual activity (including mating) at dusk towards frozen females but not towards frozen males. Frozen females that had been extracted with methanol together with either hexane or dichloromethane or with a mixture of all three solvents did not elicit male sexual activity. Activity was fully restored when a concentrate of the extract was applied to the previously extracted frozen females. Males also responded with vigorous sexual activity to frozen males to which female extract had been applied. Deterrent chemicals appear to be absent from the male body. Males exposed to females that had been frozen during the morning displayed weak sexual activity, indicating that females lack active semiochemicals. Differences between dusk and morning extracts were found with respect to more than 20 compounds, some of which were present in much higher concentrations at dusk than in the morning, while others were not detected in the morning extract. The active component(s) of the short-range sex pheromone of female M. matrida is (are) presumably to be found among these compounds.     

New technique to accurately interpolate the complex reflection spectrum of fiber Bragg gratings

We demonstrate theoretically a new method to accurately interpolate the complex reflection spectrum of fiber Bragg gratings with a finite length at any desired frequency resolution. The required sampling resolution is significantly smaller than can be expected by directly using the sampling theorem for obtaining a low-error characterization of the reflection spectrum. A further decrease in the required sampling resolution by a factor of two is obtained by sampling both the complex reflection and the complex transmission functions. The new reconstruction technique may enable to significantly reduce the time needed to characterize fiber Bragg gratings and to interrogate fiber Bragg sensors.     

Patient compliance in glaucoma

Of a randomly selected sample of 40 patients with chronic simple glaucoma 11 were identified as having failed to comply adequately with medical advice. Noncompliers were more likely: to be men, to have had no other medical disorder but glaucoma, not to rank glaucoma as most troubling if they had another illness, to have experienced side effects from the treatment, and not to have appreciated the association between glaucoma and blindness. Detailed clinical study revealed that several interrelated psychosocial factors contributed to noncompliance.     

A prescriptive approach for counselor training.

Measured the effectiveness of A. P. Goldstein's (1973) Structured Learning Training (SLT) for teaching confrontation skills to 56 trainees varying in conceptual development (Paragraph Completion Test). Both a self-instruction approach and a standard implementation of SLT were effective for teaching confrontation skills. When trainees' conceptual level (CL) was considered, the approaches proved differentially effective (as measured by pencil-and-paper tests). Self-instruction SLT was more effective with high CL trainees than with low CL trainees; guided-instruction SLT proved more effective than self-instruction SLT with low CL trainees in each treatment. Further, differences due to instructional approach and CL failed to reach significance when the dependent variable was assessed via taped role play. Findings suggest the need for multiple ways of assessing skills as well as multiple approaches for instruction. Further investigation seems necessary to specify the variables involved in maximizing the effect of instruction. (16 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)