scholarly journals First report of underwater oviposition by the island bluetail damselfly, Ischnura genei (Zygoptera, Coenagrionidae)

Author(s):  
Enrico Schifani

Among odonates that exhibit endophytic oviposition, a few, mostly damselflies, are known to be able to perform underwater oviposition. Among them, just a few species do so very frequently. Here I report the first observation of underwater oviposition for the damselfly Ischnura genei, which becomes the eighth species of its genus known to adopt this strategy after I. asiatica, I. aurora, I. elegans, I. graellsii, I. hastata, I. nursei, and I. verticalis. The reasons why these species or other odonates choose this particular mode of oviposition on rare occasions are not yet known, although a number of possible costs and benefits have been proposed.

2016 ◽  
Vol 113 (31) ◽  
pp. 8658-8663 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jillian J. Jordan ◽  
Moshe Hoffman ◽  
Martin A. Nowak ◽  
David G. Rand

Humans frequently cooperate without carefully weighing the costs and benefits. As a result, people may wind up cooperating when it is not worthwhile to do so. Why risk making costly mistakes? Here, we present experimental evidence that reputation concerns provide an answer: people cooperate in an uncalculating way to signal their trustworthiness to observers. We present two economic game experiments in which uncalculating versus calculating decision-making is operationalized by either a subject’s choice of whether to reveal the precise costs of cooperating (Exp. 1) or the time a subject spends considering these costs (Exp. 2). In both experiments, we find that participants are more likely to engage in uncalculating cooperation when their decision-making process is observable to others. Furthermore, we confirm that people who engage in uncalculating cooperation are perceived as, and actually are, more trustworthy than people who cooperate in a calculating way. Taken together, these data provide the first empirical evidence, to our knowledge, that uncalculating cooperation is used to signal trustworthiness, and is not merely an efficient decision-making strategy that reduces cognitive costs. Our results thus help to explain a range of puzzling behaviors, such as extreme altruism, the use of ethical principles, and romantic love.


Author(s):  
Ana Sofía Cardenal

This chapter asks whether, and to what extent, parties are using the Internet for political mobilization. Internet offers new opportunities for political mobilization. If we believe that parties want above all to win elections, the question that follows is, how are they using the Internet to further this goal? I argue that if parties are not fully exploiting the Internet for political mobilization is because it is not always in their interest to do so. A key argument of this chapter is that using the new media to mobilize support may have different costs and benefits for parties depending on their characteristics. To test hypotheses concerning the characteristics of parties that matter for online mobilization, I propose and develop a methodology to assess the efficacy of party websites as platforms for political mobilization. To test the argument, I engage in website analysis using evidence from parties in Spain and Catalonia.


Author(s):  
Robert E. Goodin

According to a common and currently influential diagnosis, the environmental crisis has essentially economic roots. The problem is not just that there are too many people, or even that they are on average enjoying too high a standard of living. All that is true, too, of course. More fundamentally, however, problems of environmental despoliation are said to derive from skewed incentives facing agents as they pursue their various goals. For some things, people must pay full price. For others, they pay only partially or indirectly or belatedly. To an economist, it goes without saying that the lower the costs, the more people will consume of any particular commodity. Where some of the costs of their activities will be borne by others, agents looking only to their own balance sheets will overengage in those activities. Because some of the costs are “external” (which is to say, are borne by others, rather than themselves), agents will undertake more of those activities than they would have done had they been forced to pay their full costs. They will do more of them than is socially optimal, taking due account of costs and benefits to everyone concerned (Pigou 1932). Environmental despoliation poses problems of economic externalities of just that sort. Environmental inputs are typically “common property resources.” Clean air and water, fisheries, the ozone layer, the climate are everyone’s business—and no one’s. No one “owns” those things. There is no one with standing to sue you if you take them without paying; nor is there anyone you could pay for permission to impinge on them, even if you wanted to do so. That fact inevitably gives rise to a divergence between the full social costs created by your actions and the portion of those costs sheeted back to you as private costs, to be entered on your own ledger. It is, of course, only the latter sorts of costs to which economically rational agents can be expected to respond (Freeman et al. 1973; Fisher 1981; Pearce et al. 1989, esp. p. 5).


Author(s):  
William C Johnson ◽  
Jonathan M Karpoff ◽  
Sangho Yi

Abstract We document that the relation between firm value and the use of takeover defenses is positive for young firms but becomes negative as firms age. This value reversal pattern reflects specific changes in the costs and benefits of takeover defenses as firms age and arises because defenses are sticky and rarely removed. Firms can attenuate the value reversal by removing defenses, but do so only when the defenses become very costly and adjustment costs are low. The value reversal explains previous mixed evidence about takeover defenses and implies that firm age proxies for takeover defenses’ heterogeneous impacts on firm value.


Author(s):  
William C Johnson ◽  
Jonathan M Karpoff ◽  
Sangho Yi

Abstract We document that the relation between firm value and the use of takeover defenses is positive for young firms but becomes negative as firms age. This value reversal pattern reflects specific changes in the costs and benefits of takeover defenses as firms age and arises because defenses are sticky and rarely removed. Firms can attenuate the value reversal by removing defenses, but do so only when the defenses become very costly and adjustment costs are low. The value reversal explains previous mixed evidence about takeover defenses and implies that firm age proxies for takeover defenses’ heterogeneous impacts on firm value.


2015 ◽  
Vol 7 (3) ◽  
pp. 49-65
Author(s):  
Paul Helm

The paper discusses two conceptions of divine freedom. The first, Hugh McCann’s, proposes that God is a timelessly eternal act, whose agency is not deliberative and who, in that act, creates himself and the contents of his will. God is such an act. Following discussion of this view, its costs and benefits, a more traditional account of God’s freedom, in which he possesses vestigial alternativity, the freedom to choose an alternative should there have been a sufficient reason to do so.


2005 ◽  
Vol 30 (1) ◽  
pp. 7-45 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert A. Pape

The George W. Bush administration's national security strategy, which asserts that the United States has the right to attack and conquer sovereign countries that pose no observable threat, and to do so without international support, is one of the most aggressively unilateral U.S. postures ever taken. Recent international relations scholarship has wrongly promoted the view that the United States, as the leader of a unipolar system, can pursue such a policy without fear of serious opposition. The most consequential effect of the Bush strategy will be a fundamental transformation in how major states perceive the United States and how they react to future uses of U.S. power. Major powers are already engaging in the early stages of balancing behavior against the United States, by adopting “soft-balancing” measures that do not directly challenge U.S. military preponderance but use international institutions, economic statecraft, and diplomatic arrangements to delay, frustrate, and undermine U.S. policies. If the Bush administration continues to pursue aggressive unilateral military policies, increased soft balancing could establish the basis for hard balancing against the United States. To avoid this outcome, the United States should renounce the systematic use of preventive war, as well as other aggressive unilateral military policies, and return to its traditional policy governing the use of force-a case-by-case calculation of costs and benefits.


Author(s):  
Ann Neville Miller

Many health- and risk-related behaviors have moral implications. Most obvious are altruistic behaviors like blood donation. However, issues related to promoting the wellbeing of friends and family members, such as being sure that they don’t drive drunk, and the generalized obligations that attend environmentally relevant behaviors like participating in recycling programs, also tap into moral concerns. For promoting such issues, moral appeals may be appropriate. Moral appeals are messages that acknowledge individuals’ evaluative beliefs about universal rights and wrongs. Appeals to morality produce a sense of obligation and responsibility because morals are viewed as self-evident facts. Three explanations for why people engage in moral behavior are discernible in current scholarship, each with implications for structuring moral appeals: activation of social expectations, activation of personal norms, and arousal of emotion. The first of these is based on the subjective expected utility tradition. From this perspective, the key to successfully encouraging morally relevant behavior is maximizing benefits and minimizing costs. Because prosocial behaviors are enforced by social sanctions, many of these costs and benefits are socially bestowed. Thus, altruism at its core is hedonism. Theories that focus on activation of personal norms, in contrast, contend that people sometimes make decisions to donate blood, demonstrate for healthcare reform, recycle, and so on simply because they view it as their duty and responsibility to do so. When people realize in a concrete situation that their actions have consequences for the welfare of others, and that they are personally responsible for those outcomes, personal norms for the specific case are generated from internalized moral values. In this view, a central concern with moral appeals is ensuring that messages are aligned with internalized norms and that relevance and personal responsibilities are clearly communicated. Finally, theories of emotional arousal stress that although cognitive appraisals of personal and social norms are necessary, they are insufficient to incite people to selfless behavior. Rather, people engage in helping or altruistic behavior because moral appeals are emotionally arousing. Emotions associated with such appeals include empathic concern and guilt. Guilt appeals especially have been found to be as effective in eliciting compliance when behaviors have moral significance as other popular compliance-gaining strategies. Positive emphasis on responsibility and induction of hypocrisy are also techniques that rely on the appeal to moral beliefs.


1996 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 38-44
Author(s):  
Jonathan Grove

The Education section seeks to cover education broadly, encompassing its materials, methods, assessment, evaluation, organisation and resources, and to do so by means of news, views, comments, reports, reviews and articles from the readers of History and Computing. Examples would be reports on the experience of running a new computer-based course, reflections on the value for teaching a specific piece ofsoftware, or consideration of the costs and benefits ofa particular approach to implementing the computer in the classroom. Discussions of the interconnections (or lack thereof!) between research and teaching in historical computing are also appropriate. Contributions concerning developments outside as well as within the UKare warmly welcomed. Likewise the intention to cover schools as well as higher education remains undiminished. Items for future numbers should be sent to: AllanMartin, University ofGlasgow, Office ofInformation Technology, 3, The Square, Glasgow, G12 8QQ, e-mail: [email protected]. The following two items, however, are the responsiility of the editor.


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