scholarly journals Individual ant workers show self-control

2017 ◽  
Vol 13 (10) ◽  
pp. 20170450 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephanie Wendt ◽  
Tomer J. Czaczkes
Keyword(s):  
Food Source ◽  
Intertemporal Choice ◽  
Poor Quality ◽  
Self Control ◽  
Lasius Niger ◽  
High Quality ◽  
Choice Tasks

Often, the first option is not the best. Self-control can allow humans and animals to improve resource intake under such conditions. Self-control in animals is often investigated using intertemporal choice tasks—choosing a smaller reward immediately or a larger reward after a delay. However, intertemporal choice tasks may underestimate self-control, as test subjects may not fully understand the task. Vertebrates show much greater apparent self-control in more natural foraging contexts and spatial discounting tasks than in intertemporal choice tasks. However, little is still known about self-control in invertebrates. Here, we investigate self-control in the black garden ant Lasius niger . We confront individual workers with a spatial discounting task, offering a high-quality reward far from the nest and a poor-quality reward closer to the nest. Most ants (69%) successfully ignored the closer, poorer reward in favour of the further, better one. However, when both the far and the close rewards were of the same quality, most ants (83%) chose the closer feeder, indicating that the ants were indeed exercising self-control, as opposed to a fixation on an already known food source.

scholarly journals Quantifying the contribution of individual variation in timing to delay-discounting

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Evgeniya Lukinova ◽  
Jeffrey C. Erlich
Keyword(s):  
Individual Differences ◽  
Time Perception ◽  
Delay Discounting ◽  
Intertemporal Choice ◽  
Internal Clock ◽  
Self Control ◽  
Important Relationship ◽  
Psychology And Economics ◽  
Sense Of Time ◽  
Choice Tasks

AbstractDelay-discounting studies in neuroscience, psychology, and economics have been mostly focused on concepts of self-control, reward evaluation, and discounting. Another important relationship to consider is the link between intertemporal choice and time perception. We presented 50 college students with timing tasks on the range of seconds to minutes and intertemporal-choice tasks on both the time-scale of seconds and of days. We hypothesized that individual differences in time perception would influence decisions about short experienced delays but not long delays. While we found some evidence that individual differences in internal clock speed account for some unexplained variance between choices across time-horizons, overall our findings suggest a nominal contribution of the altered sense of time in intertemporal choice.

scholarly journals Association of the altered sense of time in the seconds-to-minute range with intertemporal choices across time-horizons.

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Evgeniya Lukinova ◽  
Jeffrey C Erlich
Keyword(s):  
Individual Differences ◽  
Time Perception ◽  
Intertemporal Choice ◽  
Internal Clock ◽  
Self Control ◽  
Time Horizons ◽  
Important Relationship ◽  
Psychology And Economics ◽  
Sense Of Time ◽  
Choice Tasks

Delay-discounting studies in neuroscience, psychology, and economics have been mostly focused on concepts of self-control, reward evaluation, and discounting. Another important relationship to consider is the link between intertemporal choice and time perception. We presented 50 college students with timing exercises on the range of seconds to minutes and intertemporal-choice tasks on both the time-scale of seconds and of days. We hypothesized that individual differences in time perception would influence decisions about short experienced delays but not long delays. While we found some evidence that individual differences in internal clock speed account for some unexplained variance between choices across time-horizons, overall our findings suggest a nominal contribution of the altered sense of time in intertemporal choice.

scholarly journals Small differences in learning speed for different food qualities can drive efficient collective foraging in ant colonies

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
F. B. Oberhauser ◽  
A. Koch ◽  
T. J. Czaczkes
Keyword(s):  
Food Quality ◽  
Food Source ◽  
Food Sources ◽  
Lasius Niger ◽  
Agent Based Model ◽  
High Quality ◽  
Agent Based ◽  
Quality Food ◽  
Learning Speed ◽  
Collective Decisions

AbstractSocial insects frequently make important collective decisions, such as selecting the best food sources. Many collective decisions are achieved via communication, for example by differential recruitment depending on resource quality. However, even species without recruitment can respond to a changing environment on collective level by tracking food source quality.We hypothesised that an apparent collective decision to focus on the highest quality food source can be explained by differential learning of food qualities. Ants may learn the location of higher quality food faster, with most ants finally congregating at the best food source.To test the effect of reward quality and motivation on learning in Lasius niger, we trained individual ants to find a reward of various sucrose molarities on one arm of a T-maze in spring and in autumn after one or four days of starvation.As hypothesised, ants learned fastest in spring and lowest in autumn, with reduced starvation leading to slower learning. Surprisingly, the effect of food quality and motivation on the learning speed of individuals which persisted in visiting the feeders was small. However, persistence rates varied dramatically: All ants in spring made all (6) return visits to all food qualities, in contrast to 33% of ants in autumn under low starvation.Fitting the empirical findings into an agent-based model revealed that even a tendency of ants to memorise routes to high quality food sources faster can result in ecologically sensible colony-level behaviour. Low motivation colonies are also choosier, due to increasing sensitivity to food quality.Significance statementCollective decisions of insects are often achieved via communication and/or other interactions between individuals. However, animals can also make collective decisions in the absence of communication.We show that foraging motivation and food quality can affect both route memory and the likelihood to return to the food source and thus mediate selective food exploitation. An agent-based model, implemented with our empirical findings, demonstrates that, at the collective level, even small differences in learning lead to ecologically sensible behaviour: mildly starved colonies are selective for high quality food while highly starved colonies exploit all food sources equally.We therefore suggest that non-interactive factors such as individual learning and the foraging motivation of a colony can mediate or even drive group level behaviour. Instead of accounting collective behaviour exclusively to social interactions, possible contributing individual processes should also be considered.

Temporal Discounting Across Adulthood: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kendra Leigh Seaman ◽  
Sade J Abiodun ◽  
Zöe Fenn ◽  
Gregory Russell Samanez-Larkin ◽  
Rui Mata
Keyword(s):  
Age Differences ◽  
Intertemporal Choice ◽  
Meta Analysis ◽  
Empirical Work ◽  
Adult Life ◽  
Temporal Discounting ◽  
Total N ◽  
Adult Age ◽  
Adult Age Differences ◽  
Choice Tasks

A number of developmental theories have been proposed that make differential predictions about the links between age and temporal discounting; that is, the valuation of rewards at different points in time. Most empirical studies examining adult age differences in temporal discounting have relied on economic intertemporal choice tasks, which pit choosing a smaller, sooner monetary reward against choosing a larger, later one. Although initial studies using these tasks suggested older adults discount less than younger adults, follow-up studies provided heterogeneous, and thus inconclusive, results. Using an open science approach, we test the replicability of adult age differences in temporal discounting by conducting a preregistered systematic literature search and meta-analysis of adult age differences in intertemporal choice tasks. Across 37 cross-sectional studies (Total N = 104,736), we found no reliable relation between age and temporal discounting (r = -0.081, 95% CI [-0.185, 0.025]). We also found little evidence of publication bias or p-hacking. Exploratory analyses of moderators found no effect of experimental design (e.g., extreme-group vs. continuous age), incentives (hypothetical vs. rewards), amount of delay (e.g., days, weeks, months, or years), or quantification of discounting behavior (e.g., proportion of immediate choices vs. parameters from computational modeling). Additional analyses of 12 participant-level data sets found little support for a nonlinear relation between age and temporal discounting across adulthood. Overall, the results suggest that adult age is not reliably associated with individual differences in temporal discounting. We provide recommendations for future empirical work on temporal discounting across the adult life span.

scholarly journals Simple and efficient modifications of well known techniques for reliable growth of high-quality crystals of small bioorganic molecules

2014 ◽  
Vol 47 (4) ◽  
pp. 1435-1442 ◽  
Author(s):  
Denis A. Rychkov ◽  
Sergey G. Arkhipov ◽  
Elena V. Boldyreva
Keyword(s):  
Amino Acids ◽  
Secondary School ◽  
Organic Molecules ◽  
Poor Quality ◽  
Chemical Degradation ◽  
School Level ◽  
Chemistry Curriculum ◽  
High Quality ◽  
Small Organic Molecules ◽  
Secondary School Level

A number of modifications to traditional techniques are suggested in order to overcome problems that frequently arise when growing crystals from solution. These improvements, and their combination, help to avoid problems such as poor nucleation, the spontaneous precipitation of many poor-quality small powder-like crystals, crystals adhering to the crystallization vessel or to each other, and chemical degradation of the solution. The proposed techniques can be used to crystallize desirable metastable polymorphs reliably. None of the suggested methods demands the usage of any special or expensive equipment, or specific skills, and they can be implemented in the chemistry curriculum even at secondary school level. Examples are given for the crystallization of small organic molecules such as carboxylic acids, amino acids, pharmaceuticals etc., but the same techniques are applicable to other classes of compound.

scholarly journals R factors in Rietveld analysis: How good is good enough?

2006 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 67-70 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brian H. Toby
Keyword(s):  
Rietveld Analysis ◽  
Poor Quality ◽  
Quality Data ◽  
High Quality ◽  
High Quality Data ◽  
Poor Quality Data ◽  
Error Index ◽  
R Factors ◽  
Very High

The definitions for important Rietveld error indices are defined and discussed. It is shown that while smaller error index values indicate a better fit of a model to the data, wrong models with poor quality data may exhibit smaller values error index values than some superb models with very high quality data.

scholarly journals Safe Deliveries?: a Review of New Zealand's Midwifery Regulation through the Lens of the Health and Disability Commissioner

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Claire Sweetman
Keyword(s):  
New Zealand ◽  
Maternity Care ◽  
Poor Quality ◽  
Disability Services ◽  
Birth Experience ◽  
High Quality ◽  
Quality Healthcare ◽  
Fundamental Part ◽  
Main Consumer ◽  
Pregnancy And Birth

<p>Although birth is a fundamental part of the life process, competing factions within the health profession struggle to agree on the best way to deliver maternity services. Despite this long-standing tension, the midwifery-led model has dominated New Zealand’s maternity system for more than two decades with the majority of consumers expressing satisfaction with the care provided. Unfortunately for a small number of mothers and babies the pregnancy and birth experience is not a positive one and families are left suffering life-long, and often tragic, consequences. As one of the main consumer watchdogs in New Zealand, the Health and Disability Commissioner is charged with investigating claims of poor quality healthcare. This paper examines the central themes in the Commissioner’s reports on substandard midwifery practice and proposes a number of regulatory solutions to the issues involved. Working in unison, these amendments have the potential to ease the pressure placed on midwives; enhance interprofessional relationships; improve practitioner competence; and increase overall compliance with the Code of Health and Disability Services Consumers’ Rights. By implementing these changes, the New Zealand Government could safeguard valuable midwifery-based principles whilst still ensuring that high quality maternity care is provided to all of the country’s mothers and babies.</p>

scholarly journals Burden of Parents in Children with Disability at Sekolah Luar Biasa Negeri Cileunyi

2019 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 21
Author(s):  
Yusi Desriyani ◽  
Ikeu Nurhidayah ◽  
Fanny Adistie
Keyword(s):  
Support Groups ◽  
Children With Disabilities ◽  
Univariate Analysis ◽  
Sampling Technique ◽  
Poor Quality ◽  
Self Control ◽  
Special Treatment ◽  
Cross Sectional ◽  
Children With Disability ◽  
Parents And Children

Children with disabilities are children who have limited whether physical, intellectual, mental, sensory, and multiple disability. Children with disabilities tend to have poor quality of life due to low ability fulfilled basic needs independently. Therefore, they need special treatment from their parents and that could be the reasons of burden for parents as primary caregiver. This research aims to find the general burden of parents in disabilities children who attended Sekolah Luar Biasa (SLB) Negeri Cileunyi. This is a quantitative descriptive research with cross sectional approach. The population in this research were 158 parents (father/mother) of children with disability. The sample in this research was obtained 67 people by using convenience sampling technique. The research used Zarit Burden Interview (ZBI) as research instrument. The data have been obtained and analyzed by univariate analysis. The results will be analyzed by using frequency distribution. The result showed that 46.3% means little or no burden, 37.3% means mild to moderate burden, 14,9% means moderate to severe burden and 1,5% means severe burden. The conclusions of this research show that almost half of respondents are in the category of little or no burden. However, there were still respondents who had a severe burden, this is due to parents and children characteristics, poor self-control and lack of social support. Nurses need to provide family center care such as counseling and providing health education to parents with disabilities children and optimize existing support groups.

scholarly journals Empowering conservation practice with efficient and economical genotyping from poor quality samples

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Meghana Natesh ◽  
Ryan W. Taylor ◽  
Nathan Truelove ◽  
Elizabeth A. Hadly ◽  
Stephen Palumbi ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Population Structure ◽  
Genetic Material ◽  
Cost Effective ◽  
Poor Quality ◽  
Wildlife Trade ◽  
List Type ◽  
High Quality ◽  
Conservation Practice ◽  
Queen Conch ◽  
Close Relatives

AbstractModerate to high density genotyping (100+ SNPs) is widely used to determine and measure individual identity, relatedness, fitness, population structure and migration in wild populations.However, these important tools are difficult to apply when high-quality genetic material is unavailable. Most genomic tools are developed for high quality DNA sources from labor medical settings. As a result, most genetic data from market or field settings is limited to easily amplified mitochondrial DNA or a few microsatellites.To enable genotyping in conservation contexts, we used next-generation sequencing of multiplex PCR products from very low-quality DNA extracted from feces, hair, and cooked samples. We demonstrated utility and wide-ranging potential application in endangered wild tigers and tracking commercial trade in Caribbean queen conch.We genotyped 100 SNPs from degraded tiger samples to identify individuals, discern close relatives, and detect population differentiation. Co-occurring carnivores do not amplify (e.g. Indian wild dog/Dhole) or are monomorphic (e.g. leopard). 62 SNPs from conch fritters and field-collected samples were used to test relatedness and detect population structure.We provide proof-of-concept for a rapid, simple, cost-effective, and scalable method (for both samples and number of loci), a framework that can be applied to other conservation scenarios previously limited by low quality DNA samples. These approaches provide a critical advance for wildlife monitoring and forensics, open the door to field-ready testing, and will strengthen the use of science in policy decisions and wildlife trade.

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