Does climate action bring peace? Assessing the geopolitics of renewables using global investment data.

The transition toward renewables is central to climate action. The paper empirically tests whether renewables also enhance international peace, a hypothesis discussed in the International Political Economy (IPE) of renewables literature. It develops and tests hypotheses about the pacifying effects of renewables, with a view to establishing the foundations for analyzing more detailed causal mechanisms.

From delta to omicron: The role of individual factors and social context in self-reported compliance with pandemic regulations and recommendations.

As SARS-CoV-2 spreads especially when larger groups gather (e.g., at the workplace), it is crucial to understand compliance with regulations and recommendations in such settings.

Prediction at the intersection of sentence context and word form: Evidence from eye-movements and self-paced reading.

A key issue in language processing is how we recognize and understand words in sentences. Research on sentence reading indicates that the time we need to read a word depends on how (un)expected it is. Research on single word recognition shows that each word also has its own recognition dynamics based on the relation between its orthographic form and its meaning.

A call for immediate action to increase COVID-19 vaccination uptake to prepare for the third pandemic winter.

This Comment piece summarises current challenges regarding routine vaccine uptake in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic and provides recommendations on how to increase uptake. To implement these recommendations, the article points to evidence-based resources that can support health-care workers, policy makers and communicators.

Different Interventions for COVID-19 Primary and Booster Vaccination? Effects of Psychological Factors and Health Policies on Vaccine Uptake.

Background: Mitigation of the COVID-19 pandemic requires continued uptake of SARS-CoV-2 vaccines. To increase vaccination intention and uptake, key determinants of primary and booster vaccination need to be understood and potential effects of vaccination policies examined.

Design: Using experimental data collected in Germany in February 2022 ( = 2701), this study investigated 1) predictors of primary and booster vaccination and 2) potential effects of policies combining vaccination mandates and monetary incentives.

The influence of tDCS on perceived bouncing/streaming.

Processing ambiguous situations is a constant challenge in everyday life and sensory input from different modalities needs to be integrated to form a coherent mental representation on the environment. The bouncing/streaming illusion can be studied to provide insights into the ambiguous perception and processing of multi-modal environments. In short, the likelihood of reporting bouncing rather than streaming impressions increases when a sound coincides with the moment of overlap between two moving disks.

When Science Becomes Embroiled in Conflict: Recognizing the Public's Need for Debate while Combating Conspiracies and Misinformation.

Most democracies seek input from scientists to inform policies. This can put scientists in a position of intense scrutiny. Here we focus on situations in which scientific evidence conflicts with people's worldviews, preferences, or vested interests.

The association between vaccination status identification and societal polarization.

Public discord between those vaccinated and those unvaccinated for COVID-19 has intensified globally. Theories of intergroup relations propose that identifying with one's social group plays a key role in the perceptions and behaviours that fuel intergroup conflict. We test whether identification with one's vaccination status is associated with current societal polarization.

Experiencing herd immunity in virtual reality increases COVID-19 vaccination intention: Evidence from a large-scale field intervention study.

This study investigates the impact of an immersive virtual reality (VR) simulation of herd immunity on vaccination intentions and its potential underlying mechanisms. In this preregistered field study,  = 654 participants were randomly assigned to one of the three VR conditions: (1) Gamified Herd Immunity; (2) Gamified Herd Immunity + Empathy (with additional narrative elements); (3) Control (gamified with no vaccination-related content). In the Gamified Herd Immunity simulation, participants embodied a vulnerable person and navigated a wedding venue trying to avoid getting infected.

How a generally well-accepted measles vaccine mandate may lead to inequities and decreased vaccine uptake: a preregistered survey study in Germany.

Background: In Germany, a measles vaccine mandate came into effect in March 2020, requiring proof of measles immunization for children attending kindergarten or school and for staff in a variety of facilities. Mandates can be successful if implemented with care and in a context-sensitive manner. They may, however, also lead to inequities and decreased uptake of other vaccines.

Benefits and Pitfalls of Debunking Interventions to Counter mRNA Vaccination Misinformation During the COVID-19 Pandemic.

Misinformation about mRNA vaccination is a barrier in the global fight against the COVID-19 pandemic. Thus, authorities often rely on text-based refutations as a countermeasure. In two experiments ( = 2,444), text-based refutations effectively reduced the belief in misinformation and immunized participants against the impact of a misleading social media post.

Germany's fourth COVID-19 wave was mainly driven by the unvaccinated.

Background: While the majority of the German population was fully vaccinated at the time (about 65%), COVID-19 incidence started growing exponentially in October 2021 with about 41% of recorded new cases aged twelve or above being symptomatic breakthrough infections, presumably also contributing to the dynamics. So far, it remained elusive how significant this contribution was and whether targeted non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) may have stopped the amplification of the crisis.

Methods: We develop and introduce a contribution matrix approach based on the next-generation matrix of a population-structured compartmental infectious disease model to derive contributions of respective inter- and intragroup infection pathways of unvaccinated and vaccinated subpopulations to the effective reproduction number and new infections, considering empirical data of vaccine efficacies against infection and transmission.

Infants differentiate between successful and failed communication in a false-belief context.

Communication is based on social interaction, that is, interlocutors sharing attention to the intentions that they communicate about. In this study, we asked whether infants are aware of the fact that for information to be transferred, both interlocutors need to be present and share attention. Using a violation-of-expectation paradigm created to test infants' understanding of others' false beliefs, we asked whether 18-month-olds (n = 84) understood that correcting an agent's false belief via communication requires that the agent discerns the verbal statement.

Long-term memory representations for audio-visual scenes.

In this study, we investigated the nature of long-term memory representations for naturalistic audio-visual scenes. Whereas previous research has shown that audio-visual scenes are recognized more accurately than their unimodal counterparts, it remains unclear whether this benefit stems from audio-visually integrated long-term memory representations or a summation of independent retrieval cues. We tested two predictions for audio-visually integrated memory representations.

Fact boxes that inform individual decisions may contribute to a more positive evaluation of COVID-19 vaccinations at the population level.

Objective: For an effective control of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic with vaccines, most people in a population need to be vaccinated. It is thus important to know how to inform the public with reference to individual preferences-while also acknowledging the societal preference to encourage vaccinations. According to the health care standard of informed decision-making, a comparison of the benefits and harms of (not) having the vaccination would be required to inform undecided and skeptical people.

Medical education videos as a tool for rehearsal: efficiency and the cases of background music and difficulty.

This study reports a field experiment investigating how instructional videos with and without background music contribute to the learning of examination techniques within a formal curriculum of medical teaching. Following a classroom teaching unit on the techniques for examining the knee and the shoulder joint, our participants ( = 175) rehearsed the studied techniques for either the knee or the shoulder joint with an instructional video with or without background music. As dependent measures, we collected a general questionnaire, a prediction of test performance, as well as performance on an exam-like knowledge test covering both joints.

Crowdsourcing interventions to promote uptake of COVID-19 booster vaccines.

Background: COVID-19 booster vaccine uptake rates are behind the rate of primary vaccination in many countries. Governments and non-governmental institutions rely on a range of interventions aiming to increase booster uptake. Yet, little is known how experts and the general public evaluate these interventions.

Public policy and conspiracies: The case of mandates.

Although conspiracy theories are only endorsed by a minority, conspiracy theories can nonetheless compromise public health measures to control the COVID-19 pandemic. Individuals who endorse conspiracy theories were less likely to wear masks, comply with social distancing, or get vaccinated. This poses a challenge to public health policy, in particular because vaccine uptake lags behind targets because of resistance from a relatively small, but highly vocal, number of people.

Examining enablers of vaccine hesitancy toward routine childhood and adolescent vaccination in Malawi.

Background: The contribution of vaccination to global public health and community wellbeing has been described as one of the greatest success stories of modern medicine. However, 13.5 million children still miss at least one of their routine vaccinations, and this contributes to about 1.

Understanding drivers of vaccine hesitancy among pregnant women in Nigeria: A longitudinal study.

Vaccine-preventable-diseases are major contributors to disease burden in Sub-Saharan Africa. There is dearth of knowledge on the drivers of childhood vaccine hesitancy in Nigeria and its impact on coverage. Although understudied, pregnant women are a particularly important vulnerable group and very relevant for childhood vaccination decisions.

Measuring psychosocial determinants of vaccination behavior in healthcare professionals: validation of the Pro-VC-Be short-form questionnaire.

Background: Vaccine confidence among health care professionals (HCPs) is a key determinant of vaccination behaviors. We validate a short-form version of the 31-item Pro-VC-Be (Health Professionals Vaccine Confidence and Behaviors) questionnaire that measures HCPs' confidence in and commitment to vaccination.

Research Design And Methods: A cross-sectional survey among 2,696 HCPs established a long-form tool to measure 10 dimensions of psychosocial determinants of vaccination behaviors.

Attitudes of Patients With Chronic Heart Failure Toward Digital Device Data for Self-documentation and Research in Germany: Cross-sectional Survey Study.

Background: In recent years, the use of digital mobile measurement devices (DMMDs) for self-documentation in cardiovascular care in Western industrialized health care systems has increased. For patients with chronic heart failure (cHF), digital self-documentation plays an increasingly important role in self-management. Data from DMMDs can also be integrated into telemonitoring programs or data-intensive medical research to collect and evaluate patient-reported outcome measures through data sharing.

Context modulates the impact of auditory information on visual anticipation.

Research on the impact of auditory information on visual anticipation in tennis suggests that the intensity of racket-ball-contact sounds systematically biases estimates of the ball's speed, thereby influencing anticipatory judgments. Here we examined whether the effect of auditory information on visual anticipation is dependent on the sport-specific context in two separate experiments. In Exp.