Is the certainty of saving a life today worth more than the less-certain possibility of saving 10 lives tomorrow? In six pre-registered studies with U.S. samples from Prolific ( = 5,095), we employed an intergenerational probability discounting task, discovering people discount the value of life as uncertainty and intergenerational distance from the present increase.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPers Soc Psychol Bull
October 2024
Humanity's long-term welfare may lie in the hands of those who are presently living, raising the question of whether people today hold the generations of tomorrow in their moral circles. Five studies (N = 1652; Prolific) reveal present-oriented bias in the moral standing of future generations, with greater perceived moral obligation, moral concern, and prosocial intentions for proximal relative to distal future targets. Yet, present-oriented bias appears stronger for socially close compared with socially distant targets and for human targets relative to non-human animals and entities in nature.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFFast radio bursts (FRBs) are millisecond-duration, bright (approximately Jy) extragalactic bursts, whose production mechanism is still unclear. Recently, two repeating FRBs were found to have a physically associated persistent radio source of non-thermal origin. These two FRBs have unusually large Faraday rotation measure values, probably tracing a dense magneto-ionic medium, consistent with synchrotron radiation originating from a nebula surrounding the FRB source.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFGlassy polymers are generally stiff and strong yet have limited extensibility. By swelling with solvent, glassy polymers can become gels that are soft and weak yet have enhanced extensibility. The marked changes in properties arise from the solvent increasing free volume between chains while weakening polymer-polymer interactions.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFFrom close friends to people on a first date, imagining a shared future appears fundamental to relationships. Yet, no previous research has conceptualized the act of imagination as a socially constructed process that affects how connected we feel to others. The present studies provide a framework for investigating imagination as a collaborative process in which individuals cocreate shared representations of hypothetical events-what we call collaborative imagination.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObservationally, kilonovae are astrophysical transients powered by the radioactive decay of nuclei heavier than iron, thought to be synthesized in the merger of two compact objects. Over the first few days, the kilonova evolution is dominated by a large number of radioactive isotopes contributing to the heating rate. On timescales of weeks to months, its behaviour is predicted to differ depending on the ejecta composition and the merger remnant.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFNotch signalling, critical for development and postnatal homeostasis of the vascular system, is highly regulated by several mechanisms including glycosylation. While the importance of O-linked glycosylation is widely accepted, the structure and function of N-glycans has yet to be defined. Here, we take advantage of lectin binding assays in combination with pharmacological, molecular, and site-directed mutagenetic approaches to study N-glycosylation of the Notch1 receptor.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFDoes empathy necessarily impede equity in altruism? Emerging findings from cognitive and affective science suggest that rationality and empathy are mutually compatible, contradicting some earlier, prominent arguments that empathy impedes equitable giving. We propose alternative conceptualizations of relationships among empathy, rationality, and equity, drawing on interdisciplinary advances in altruism research.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFImagining helping a person in need increases one's willingness to help beyond levels evoked by passively reading the same stories. We examined whether episodic simulation can increase younger and older adults' willingness to help in novel scenarios posed by the COVID-19 pandemic. Across 3 studies we demonstrate that episodic simulation of helping behavior increases younger and older adults' willingness to help during both everyday and COVID-related scenarios.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFDimens Crit Care Nurs
November 2023
Background: Although previous studies have established the association of medications with anticholinergic adverse effects and xerostomia, anticholinergic burden and xerostomia in critical care settings are poorly characterized. The objective of this study was to determine the impact of medication burdens associated with anticholinergic adverse effects, particularly the occurrence of xerostomia (dry mouth) in a critical care setting. In addition, this study explored the correlation between the timing of the first instance of xerostomia and the administration timing of medication known to have anticholinergic adverse effects.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFGlycosylation is a non-template-driven posttranslational modification during which linked-sugars and glycans are added to the nascent polypeptide. Over 70% of the eukaryotic proteome is thought to be glycosylated. It is now known that correct glycosylation is essential for the correct folding, solubility, stability, and immunogenicity of proteins.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe Department of Psychiatry at Washington University has been innovating psychiatric education during the second millennium at all levels of training - undergraduate medical, general residency, and child and adolescent psychiatry (CAP) fellowship training. Undergraduate medical education now occurs in three phases. The 18-month pre-clerkship phase is divided into seven multidisciplinary modules that span basic, social, and clinical sciences.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFLong-duration gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) are powerful cosmic explosions, signaling the death of massive stars. Among them, GRB 221009A is by far the brightest burst ever observed. Because of its enormous energy ( ≈ 10 erg) and proximity ( ≈ 0.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Acute appendicitis is the most common surgical emergency in children. Eighty percent of paediatric appendicectomies are performed by adult general surgeons on an annual basis. The remaining 20% are performed at Children's Health Ireland (CHI) centres.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe integration of semi-transparent organic solar cells (ST-OSCs) in greenhouses offers new agrivoltaic opportunities to meet the growing demands for sustainable food production. The tailored absorption/transmission spectra of ST-OSCs impacts the power generated as well as crop growth, development and responses to the biotic and abiotic environments. To characterize crop responses to ST-OSCs, we grew lettuce and tomato, traditional greenhouse crops, under three ST-OSC filters that create different light spectra.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFSoft electronics using metal nanowires have attracted notable attention attributed to their high electrical conductivity and mechanical flexibility. However, high-resolution complex patterning of metal nanowires on curvilinear substrates remains a challenge. Here, a micromolding-based method is reported for scalable printing of metal nanowires, which enables complex and highly conductive patterns on soft curvilinear and uneven substrates with high resolution and uniformity.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFA semitransparent shape memory polymer (SMP):silver nanowire (AgNW) composite is demonstrated to be capable of low-temperature actuation, thus making it attractive for wearable electronics applications that require intimate contact with the human body. We demonstrate that the SMP:AgNW composite has tunable electrical and optical transparency through variation of the AgNW loading and that the AgNW loading did not significantly change the mechanical behavior of the SMP. The SMP composite is also capable of electrical actuation through Joule heating, where applying a 4 V bias across the AgNWs resulted in full shape recovery.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFHow much we value the welfare of others has critical implications for the collective good. Yet, it is unclear what leads people to make more or less equal decisions about the welfare of those from whom they are socially distant. The current research sought to explore the psychological mechanisms that might underlie welfare judgements across social distance.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFA method of determining the mechanical relaxation behavior of polymer thin films is presented that employs a kirigami-inspired sample support. The film of interest is placed on the kirigami support and loaded into a dynamic mechanical analyzer. When the composite is placed in tension, the substrate effectively transfers the load to the film of interest.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFHow do we know what sort of people we are? Do we reflect on specific past instances of our own behaviour, or do we just have a general idea? Previous work has emphasized the role of personal semantic memory (general autobiographical knowledge) in how we assess our own personality traits. Using a standardized trait empathy questionnaire, we show in four experiments that episodic autobiographical memory (memory for specific personal events) is associated with people's judgments of their own trait empathy. Specifically, neurologically healthy young adults rated themselves as more empathic on questionnaire items that cued episodic memories of events in which they behaved empathically.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFUsing organic photodetectors for multispectral sensing is attractive due to their unique capabilities to tune spectral response, transmittance, and polarization sensitivity. Existing methods lack tandem multicolor detection and exhibit high spectral cross talk. We exploit the polarization sensitivity of organic photodetectors, together with birefringent optical filters to design single-pixel multispectral detectors that achieve high spectral selectivity and good radiometric performance.
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