Desert locusts (Schistocerca gregaria) show a dramatic form of socially induced phenotypic plasticity known as phase polyphenism. In the absence of conspecifics, locusts occur in a shy and cryptic solitarious phase. Crowding with conspecifics drives a behavioural transformation towards gregariousness that occurs within hours and is followed by changes in physiology, colouration and morphology, ...

Anxiety and depression are currently classified as separate clinical syndromes despite considerable similarities in their symptoms, pathophysiological substrates and response to treatment interventions. An alternative hypothesis views anxiety and depression along a temporal continuum, a construct that the current research attempts to model in a preclinical setting. In experiment 1, socially rai...

The need for social connection is a fundamental human motive, and it is increasingly clear that feeling socially connected confers mental and physical health benefits. However, in many cultures, societal changes are leading to growing social distrust and alienation. Can feelings of social connection and positivity toward others be increased? Is it possible to self-generate these feelings? In th...

Micro-task crowdsourcing has become a successful mean to obtain high-quality data from a large crowd of diverse people. In this context, trust between all the involved actors (i.e. requesters, workers, and platform owners) is a critical factor for acceptance and long-term success. As actors have no expectation for “real life” meetings, thus trust can only be attributed through computer-mediated...

BACKGROUND/PURPOSE Anal incontinence is one of the most psychologically and socially debilitating conditions in an otherwise healthy individual. It can lead to social isolation, loss of self-esteem, self-confidence and depression. This study is devoted to the problem of anal incontinence in the adult patients. The aim of our study is to analyse the results of gracilis muscle transposition for a...

This paper shows how discontinuities in the process of drug delivery enable but also underdetermine the isolation of a culprit in adverse medication events. A case example illustrates how we are forced to abandon conceptualizations of blame that assume a dichotomy (either culpable or not), and shift instead to a more nuanced version that estimates the degree to which an actor desired, generated...

Effectively solving the problem of when and where to forage is critical for survival in many animal species. The task is further complicated when there are other agents, potentially competing for the same limited resources. Previous models of foraging consider agents either in isolation or in groups but without competition. Here, we present a novel Bayesian model for competitive foraging, Socia...

This paper focuses on the role of emotion and expressive behavior in regulating social interaction between humans and expressive anthropomorphic robots, either in communicative or teaching scenarios. We present the scientific basis underlying our humanoid robot’s emotion models and expressive behavior, and then show how these scientific viewpoints have been adapted to the current implementation...

From 1924 to 1962, Brazil used compulsory internment of Hansen's disease patients as one of the ways of controlling the disease in the community. After this policy ended, many patients continued to live in these units. The former Asilo Pirapitingui, now the Hospital Dr. Francisco Ribeiro Arantes, is the only old-style asylum for the socially determined internment of those suffering from Hansen'...

In recent years, mtDNA and Y chromosome studies involving human populations from South Asia and the rest of the world have revealed new insights about the peopling of the world by anatomically modern humans during the late Pleistocene, some 40,000-60,000 years ago, over the southern coastal route from Africa. Molecular studies and archaeological record are both largely consistent with autochtho...