Proposal for a National Blueprint Framework to Monitor Progress on Water-Related Sustainable Development Goals in Europe.

The 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) underpinned by 169 targets presents national governments with huge challenges for implementation. We developed a proposal for a National Blueprint Framework (NBF) with 24 water-related indicators, centered on SDG 6 (clean water and sanitation for all), each with a specific target. We applied the NBF to 28 EU Member States (EU-28) and conclude that: (1) The current SDG 6 indicators are useful for monitoring progress toward water-related targets but their usefulness can be improved by focusing more on their practical implementation.

The impact of the posterior parietal and dorsolateral prefrontal cortices on the optimization of long-term versus immediate value.

fMRI research suggests that both the posterior parietal cortex (PPC) and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) help individuals select better long-term monetary gains during intertemporal choice. Previous neuromodulation research has demonstrated that disruption of the DLPFC interferes with this ability. However, it is unclear whether the PPC performs a similarly important function during intertemporal choice, and whether the functions performed by either region impact choices involving losses.

The Balloon Analog Insurance Task (BAIT): a behavioral measure of protective risk management.

Prior methods used to assess individual differences related to risk have not focused on an important component of risk management: how willing individuals are to pay for or take actions to insure what they already have. It is not clear whether this type of protective risk management taps into the same individual differences as does risk taking propensity measured by existing risk taking tasks. We developed a novel task to assess protective risk management, the Balloon Analog Insurance Task (BAIT), which is modeled after the Balloon Analog Risk Task (BART).

Perceptual organization and visual search processes during target detection task performance in schizophrenia, as revealed by fMRI.

Background: Past studies of perceptual organization in schizophrenia have demonstrated impairments binding fragmented stimulus components into unified representations. ERP and fMRI data indicate that even under conditions of adequate behavioral task performance, significant and meaningful changes in cortical and subcortical activation are present. Here, we examined, using fMRI, activation differences on a visual task wherein feature grouping was a precursor to the formation of distinct groups in the service of target location and identification.

Increased fusiform area activation in schizophrenia during processing of spatial frequency-degraded faces, as revealed by fMRI.

Background: People with schizophrenia demonstrate perceptual organization impairments, and these are thought to contribute to their face processing difficulties.

Method: We examined the neural substrates of emotionally neutral face processing in schizophrenia by investigating neural activity under three stimulus conditions: faces characterized by the full spectrum of spatial frequencies, faces with low spatial frequency information removed [high spatial frequency (HSF) condition], and faces with high spatial frequency information removed [low spatial frequency (LSF) condition]. Face perception in the HSF condition is more reliant on local feature processing whereas perception in the LSF condition requires greater reliance on global form processing.