The Map and the Territory: Complexity in Biology

In business administration or in economics it is absolutely relevant not to consider indexes like profit growth rate or gross domestic product as exhaustive indexes for economic wealth. Likewise, in biology it is important not to confuse the representation of life with life itself. The most important concepts in biology are information, memory, structure, plasticity, and robustness. Information is the difference that makes the difference. Memories are information registered in an organism. Plasticity is the capacity of a living organism to change its own structure/sets of behaviors for having a competitive advantage. Robustness is the ability of a living organism to resist environmental changes without changing its own structure/sets of behavior, and fragility is when a living organism undergoes changes in its own structure without being able to resist non-adaptive changes.     

改进的认知诊断模型项目功能差异检验方法——基于观察信息矩阵的Wald统计量

Hou,de la Torre和Nandakumar(2014)提出可以使用Wald统计量检验DIF,但其结果的一类错误率存在过度膨胀的问题。本研究中提出了一个使用观察信息矩阵进行计算的改进后的Wald统计量。结果表明:(1)使用观察信息矩阵计算的这一改进后的Wald统计量在DIF检验中具有良好的一类错误控制率,尤其是在项目具有较高区分能力的时候,解决了以往研究中一类错误率过度膨胀的问题。(2)随着样本量的增加以及DIF量的增大,使用观察信息矩阵计算Wald统计量的统计检验力也在增加。     

Effects of perceived weight discrimination on willingness to adopt unhealthy behaviours: influence of genomic information

Objective: Weight-based discrimination negatively influences health, potentially via increased willingness to engage in unhealthful behaviours. This study examines whether the provision of genomic obesity information in a clinical context can lead to less willingness to engage in unhealthy eating and alcohol consumption through a mediated process including reduced perceptions of blame and discrimination.

Design: A total of 201 overweight or obese women aged 20–50 interacted with a virtual physician in a simulated clinical primary care environment, which included physician-delivered information that emphasised either genomic or behavioural underpinnings of weight and weight loss.

Main Outcome Measures: Perceived blame and weight discrimination from the doctor, and willingness to eat unhealthy foods and consume alcohol.

Results: Controlling for BMI and race, participants who received genomic information perceived less blame from the doctor than participants who received behavioural information. In a serial multiple mediation model, reduced perceived blame was associated with less perceived discrimination, and in turn, lower willingness to eat unhealthy foods and drink alcohol.

Conclusion: Providing patients with genomic information about weight and weight loss may positively influence interpersonal dynamics between patients and providers by reducing perceived blame and perceived discrimination. These improved dynamics, in turn, positively influence health cognitions.     

Influence of cue word perceptual information on metamemory accuracy in judgement of learning

Previous studies have suggested that perceptual information regarding to-be-remembered words in the study phase affects the accuracy of judgement of learning (JOL). However, few have investigated whether the perceptual information in the JOL phase influences JOL accuracy. This study examined the influence of cue word perceptual information in the JOL phase on immediate and delayed JOL accuracy through changes in cue word font size. In Experiment 1, large-cue word pairs had significantly higher mean JOL magnitude than small-cue word pairs in immediate JOLs and higher relative accuracy than small-cue pairs in delayed JOLs, but font size had no influence on recall performance. Experiment 2 increased the JOL time, and mean JOL magnitude did not reliably differ for large-cue compared with small-cue pairs in immediate JOLs. However, the influence on relative accuracy still existed in delayed JOLs. Experiment 3 increased the familiarity of small-cue words in the delayed JOL phase by adding a lexical decision task. The results indicated that cue word font size no longer affected relative accuracy in delayed JOLs. The three experiments in our study indicated that the perceptual information regarding cue words in the JOL phase affects immediate and delayed JOLs in different ways.     

儿童和青少年信息加工速度发展函数的研究

选择７—１９岁的被试１４０名,对三种不同任务进行操作。结果表明,在句图匹配任务中,儿童反应时是青年反应时的函数,指数函数能较好的描述这种共同的发展变化趋势,但在字母匹配任务中,这种线性关系较差;随着年龄的变化,信息加工速度的下降速率是根据不同的加工任务变化的,简单任务（选择反应和字母匹配）下降速度快,复杂任务（句图匹配）下降速度慢     

人类颞叶皮层与视、听信息加工:Ⅱ.左颞叶癫痫病人的脑事件相关电位

记录7名左颞叶癫痫病人和9名正常人在四种实验条件下的事件相关电位：（1）听觉脑子诱发电位,（2）红色闪光刺激,（3）陌生人嗓音识别,（4）陌生人面孔识别。实验结果发现,两组被试在视觉信息加工中无差异,在嗓音识别中病人的N150和P300波潜伏期大于正常人,表明其复杂听觉认知功能受到影响．红色闪光刺激和噪音识别条件下,病人的P100波幅大于正常人,说明病人对强刺激的物理强度有较高的反应水平,不易习惯化。     

The morality of scientific openness

The ideal of scientific openness — i.e. the idea that scientific information should be freely accessible to interested parties — is strongly supported throughout the scientific community. At the same time, however, this ideal does not appear to be absolute in the everyday practice of science. In order to get the credit for new scientific advances, scientists often keep information to themselves. Also, it is common practice to withhold information obtained in commissioned research when the scientist has agreed with his or her employer to do so. The secrecy may be intended for ever, as in the military area, but also temporarily until a patent application has been made. The paper explores to what extent such secrecy is undesirable, as seems to be suggested by the ideal of scientific openness. Should this ideal be interpreted as having certain exceptions which make the above-mentioned practices acceptable? Are there, on closer inspection, good arguments for the ideal of scientific openness, and for officially upholding it? Possible versions of the ideal of scientific openness are explored and the issue is found to be rather complex, allowing for wide variations depending on the acting parties, beneficiaries, types of information and moral requirements involved. We conclude that the arguments usually given in favour of this ideal are weaker than what seems to be generally believed, and that, on closer inspection, they leave plenty of room for exceptions to it. These exceptions only partly cover the actual practice of withholding scientific information, and there may still be good reason to advocate, teach and enforce the ideal of scientific openness within the scientific community.     

Use of public information when foraging: effects of time available to sample foods

It has been proposed that use of socially acquired information by animals should increase as the time available for individual resource sampling decreases. We gave Norway rat “observers” either 2 or 5 h day^–1 to sample four foods. Three of these foods were relatively palatable, but protein-poor; the fourth was relatively unpalatable, but protein-rich. We found that observer rats that for 2 h day^–1 both sampled foods and interacted with demonstrators eating only the protein-rich food ate more of the protein-rich food than did observers that sampled for 2 h day^–1 but had no opportunity to interact with demonstrators. On the other hand, observer rats that could sample foods for 5 h day^–1 ate equal amounts of protein-rich food whether they interacted with a demonstrator fed protein-rich food or not. Subsequent analyses showed that the time available to observers to sample foods, rather than the opportunity to interact with demonstrators determined whether such interaction influenced observers’ food choices. The results are consistent with the hypothesis that animals increase their use of public information in response to temporal constraints on opportunities for resource sampling. Received: 22 December 1998 / Accepted after revision: 27 February 1999     

信息的性质对内隐社会印象的影响

为了考察信息的性质对社会印象的影响,通过语义差异法建构了具有六个维度的社会印象量表;采用２×２×８的混合设计,给被试提供自然信息和七类不同性质的社会信息（组内设计）,考察了评价人和被评价人性别特征（组间设计）在社会印象形成过程中的作用;同时,还测量了被试的外显性别态度。结果表明,在否定个人智慧、社会地位、性别特征和品质特征时,所形成的社会印象在被评价人性别特征上表现出了差异,并且男女被试都表现出了“好人主义”倾向;在外显性别态度上男女被试设有差异;此外,还分析了用语义差异法测量内隐社会印象的适用性。