Social environment and reproduction in female European rabbits (Oryctolagus cuniculus): benefits of the presence of litter sisters

The authors investigated in an observational study the consequences of the presence of litter sisters on the social interactions and on reproductive performance of young female European rabbits (Oryctolagus cuniculus) from a population living under seminatural conditions. In early winter, when all young females were settled in a social group, they were characterized by the presence or absence of litter sisters in their groups. Females with litter sisters in their groups displayed significantly more positive social interaction with females of their social group compared to females without sisters, whereas this difference was mainly due to the high frequency of positive social interactions among the respective sisters. Such differences between the females of both categories were already apparent during the animals' juvenile phase, before the females integrated into a particular group: females which later had litter sisters in their group showed more positive social behavior than females which later no longer had litter sisters. During their first breeding season, females with litter sisters present generally started to breed earlier by an average of 14 days. A more favorable social environment might have possibly facilitated the earlier onset of breeding in females with present litter sisters by attenuating the negative consequences of stress.     

Inanspruchnahme, Verlauf und Ergebnis ambulanter Psychotherapie

This paper summarizes the major results of the study ?Optimizing psychotherapy service provision via transparency and outcome orientation: evaluating outpatient psychotherapy“ (TRANS-OP). Between September 1998 and February 2000, all insured persons of a major German health insurance company (?Deutsche Krankenversicherung“) who requested reimbursement of outpatient psychotherapy were asked to participate in the study. Comprehensive data concerning structural, process and outcome criteria of outpatient psychotherapy were collected from 714 participants and from the majority of their psychotherapists during a 2-year observation period. Participants applied for the following treatments eligible for reimbursement in the German health insurance system: psychodynamically oriented psychotherapy (52%), cognitive behavioral therapy (31%), and psychoanalytic psychotherapy (17%). The amounts of sessions claimed for reimbursement were approved almost without exception. Participants in the three treatment modalities did not differ in socio-demographic characteristics, or in initial symptom severity as assessed by standardized measures. Even though courses of improvement of the symptoms varied, therapy outcome after 2 years was similar in the three forms of treatment. In addition, a cost offset was found, i.e. medical costs, especially for hospital days, substantially decreased during the course of psychotherapy. These findings support the effectiveness as well as the economic significance of outpatient psychotherapy across different treatment modalities in routine care. However, allocation of psychotherapeutic resources should be more considerate of individual patient needs and treatment outcome.     

The role of elaboration in the persistence of awareness for degraded objects

When a fragmented line-drawing of an object moves relative to a background of randomly oriented lines, the previously hidden object can be segregated from the background and consequently enters awareness. In this shape-from-motion paradigm, the percept of the object briefly persists after the motion stops, demonstrating the maintenance of a bound percept in awareness. This study investigated how the manipulation of object features that are crucial to recognition influences both the binding process and the maintenance of objects in awareness. Overall, we found that objects that took longer to recognize (i.e., objects missing their vertices) were nonetheless maintained in awareness for longer. We argue that this effect is mediated by additional elaborative processing that is required to bind these less recognizable forms, which generates stronger and more robust representations. These representations are then more easily maintained in awareness, suggesting an important role of elaborative mechanisms for conscious representations.     

Multidisciplinary Engagement with Nanoethics Through Education—The Nanobio-RAISE Advanced Courses as a Case Study and Model

This paper presents and evaluates two advanced courses organised in Oxford as part of the European project Nanobio-RAISE and suggests using their format to encourage multidisciplinary engagement between nanoscientists and nanoethicists. Several nanoethicists have recently identified the need for ‘better’ ethics of emerging technologies, arguing that ethical reflection should become part and parcel of the research and development (R&D) process itself. Such new forms of ethical deliberation, it is argued, transcend traditional disciplinary boundaries and require the active engagement and involvement of both nanoethicists and nanoscientists with the broader issues surrounding technological developments. Whereas significant research efforts into multi- and interdisciplinary collaborations during R&D processes are now emerging, opportunities for encouraging multidisciplinary engagement through education have remained relatively underexplored. This paper argues that educational programmes could be a natural extension of ongoing collaborative research efforts ‘in the lab’ and analyses how the Nanobio-RAISE courses could be used as a model for course development. In addition to exploring how the elements that were conducive to multidisciplinary engagement in this course could be preserved in future courses, this paper suggests shifting the emphasis from public communication towards ethical deliberation. Further course work could thus build capacity among both nanoscientists and nanoethicists for doing ‘better’ nanoethics.     

Perceived Risk of AIDS: Assessing the Behavioral and Psychosocial Consequences in a Cohort of Gay Men1

Longitudinal analyses reported here explored the relationship between a perceived sense of being at risk for AIDS and a variety of behavioral, social, and psychological consequences. Data were obtained from a cohort of 637 homosexual men living in Chicago, who are participating in a psychosocial study and have completed two waves of data collection. Their perceptions of risk were quantified using both an absolute and a comparative measure; these were combined into a risk index, scored from one to nine (x?= 3.91; SD= 1.64). Univariate analyses demonstrated that level of risk was related to several measures of subsequent behavioral risk reduction. However, after adjustment for sociodemographic variables, initial behavior, and other components of a model predicting behavior change, this was no longer true. Of the 12 behavioral outcomes assessed, only one was related to risk after appropriate adjustment, and this relationship was negative. Other longitudinal analyses examined the impact of a sense of risk on measures of psychosocial functioning which have been theoretically linked to health behaviors and to measures of psychological/ social distress. These demonstrated a range of potentially adverse consequences for those who perceived themselves to be at greater risk for AIDS, including increased barriers to behavioral change, obsessive/compulsive behavior, social role impairment, and more intrusive worries and concerns about AIDS. Taken together, these results suggest that there is little or no observable benefit to an increased sense of risk, but that such a sense subsequently leads to distress and dysfunction in a variety of realms. The implications of these findings for development of policy concerning antibody testing of at-risk populations is discussed.     

Worldly Reasons: An Ontological Inquiry into Motivating Considerations and Normative Reasons

In this article I advocate a worldly account of normative reasons according to which there is an ontological gap between these and the premises of practical thought, i.e. motivating considerations. While motivating considerations are individuated fine‐grainedly, normative reasons should be classified as coarse‐grained entities, e.g. as states of affairs, in order to explain certain necessary truths about them and to make sense of how we count and weigh them. As I briefly sketch, acting for normative reasons is nonetheless possible if the connection between normative reasons and motivating considerations is a competence‐based correspondence.