Colonial ascidians from the Foveaux Strait region of New Zealand

Colonial ascidians collected from wharf piles and natural substrata from Bluff Harbour and Stewart Island in the South Island of New Zealand are described in this paper. Two species, Lissoclinum violaceum sp. nov. and Didemnum marineae sp. nov. are new to science and described for the first time. The ascidian fauna in this region is a mixed assemblage of southern species, species with a New Zealand-wide distribution, and two species with trans-Tasman affinities.

www.zoobank.org/urn:lsid:zoobank.org:pub:37DC0D4B-8FB9-4F1D-A5A0-E9CAB3203447     

The futility of decision making research

We have each spent more than 50 years doing research that has had little impact. Even more lamentable is that our field, judgment and decision making (JDM), has on the whole had little impact during that span. We attribute that failure to the use of methodologies that emphasize testing models rather than looking for differences in behavior. The “cognitive revolution” led the field astray, toward the goal of studying model fit rather than comparing observable results. With modeling as the goal, experimentation was stultified. Simple tasks became dominant. Although a poor metaphor for real decision making, the gambling paradigm has lasted forever because the inputs to the decision are known to the researcher and thus easily modeled.     

The modernity of Dedekind’s anticipations contained in What are numbers and what are they good for?

Archive for History of Exact Sciences - We show that Dedekind, in his proof of the principle of definition by mathematical recursion, used implicitly both the concept of an inductive cone from an...     

The expansion of GPCR transactivation-dependent signalling to include serine/threonine kinase receptors represents a new cell signalling frontier

G protein-coupled receptor (GPCR) signalling is mediated through transactivation-independent signalling pathways or the transactivation of protein tyrosine kinase receptors and the recently reported activation of the serine/threonine kinase receptors, most notably the transforming growth factor-β receptor family. Since the original observation of GPCR transactivation of protein tyrosine kinase receptors, there has been considerable work on the mechanism of transactivation and several pathways are prominent. These pathways include the “triple membrane bypass” pathway and the generation of reactive oxygen species. The recent recognition of GPCR transactivation of serine/threonine kinase receptors enormously broadens the GPCR signalling paradigm. It may be predicted that the transactivation of serine/threonine kinase receptors would have mechanistic similarities with transactivation of tyrosine kinase pathways; however, initial studies suggest that these two transactivation pathways are mechanistically distinct. Important questions are the relative importance of tyrosine and serine/threonine transactivation pathways, the contribution of transactivation to overall GPCR signalling, mechanisms of transactivation and the range of cell types in which this phenomenon occurs. The ultimate significance of transactivation-dependent signalling remains to be defined but it appears to be prominent and if so will represent a new cell signalling frontier.     

Countering medical nihilism by reconnecting facts and values

A pessimistic strain of thought is fomenting in the health studies literature regarding the status of medicine. Ioannidis’s (2005) now famous finding that “most published research findings are false” and Stegenga’s (2018) book-length argument for medical nihilism are examples of this. In this paper, we argue that these positions are incorrect insofar as they rest on an untenable account of the nature of facts. Proper attention to fallibilism and the social organization of knowledge, as well as Bayesian probabilities in medical reasoning, prompt us to ask why the cynics expect the results of quantitative studies to be incontrovertibly true in the first place. While we agree with Ioannidis and others’ identified flaws in the medical research enterprise, and encourage rectification, we conclude that medical nihilism is not the natural outcome of the current state of research.     

On the Difficulty of Measuring Forecasting Skill in Financial Markets

The use of correlation between forecasts and actual returns is commonplace in the literature, often used as a measurement of investors' skill. A prominent application of this is the concept of the information coefficient (IC). Not only can the IC be used as a tool to rate analysts and fund managers but it also represents an important parameter in the asset allocation and portfolio construction process. Nevertheless, a theoretical understanding of it has typically been limited to the partial equilibrium context where the investing activities of each agent have no effect on other market participants. In this paper we show that this can be an undesirable oversimplification and we demonstrate plausible circumstances in which conventional empirical measurements of IC can be highly misleading. We suggest that improved understanding of IC in a general equilibrium setting can lead to refined portfolio decision making ex ante and more informative analysis of performance ex post. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Cognitive Dissonance in Chinese Luxury Consumption Market

To examine the cognitive dissonance in Chinese luxury consumption,the paper contains a review of the research and development in the field of cognitive dissonance and the distinctive motivations applicable in Chinese luxury consumption.On the basis of the review,the link between cognitive dissonance and intention to repurchase luxury goods is discussed.This research aims to investigate the impact of Chinese culture on the reflections of cognitive dissonance as well as their repurchase intentions.The study was based on quantitative research,in which the motivations and the levels of cognitive dissonance were explored in the luxury consumption domain.In the study,the effects of Chinese culture(i.e.,Mianzi,group orientation,and buying out of emotions) on luxury consumption and cognitive dissonance were also examined in order to develop a more precise research framework.This study shed light on the different levels of cognitive dissonance relative to the different dimensions of Chinese culture.