In a recent study, Bireta et al. (2010) suggested that when participants are required to recall lists of items in the reverse order, more attention is devoted to the recall of order at the expense of item information, leading to the abolition of item-based phenomena (the item and order trade-off hypothesis). In order to test the item and order trade-off hypothesis, we manipulated 4 lexical fact...

background: to extract utility values of diabetic retinopathy on a perfect health and perfect vision scales for iranians with both types diabetes. methods: in this investigation, 150 untreated patients with diabetic retinopathy consecutively were examined and interviewed in farabi eye hospital, tehran, iran, a tertiary referral center in the iranian health care system. utility values based on p...

In vertebrates, many responses to stress as well as homeostatic maintenance of basal metabolism are regulated by plasma glucocorticoid hormones (GCs). Despite having crucial functions, levels of GCs are typically variable among individuals. We examined the contribution of several physiological factors to individual variation in plasma corticosterone (CORT) and the number of corticotropin-releas...

Computationally expensive simulations play an increasing role in engineering design, but their use in multi-objective optimization is heavily resource constrained. Specialist optimizers, such as ParEGO, exist for this setting, but little knowledge is available to guide their configuration. This paper uses a new implementation of ParEGO to examine three hypotheses relating to a key configuration...

We continuously face the dilemma of choosing between actions that gather new information or actions that exploit existing knowledge. This "exploration-exploitation" trade-off depends on the environment: stability favors exploiting knowledge to maximize gains; volatility favors exploring new options and discovering new outcomes. Here we set out to reconcile recent evidence for dopamine's involve...

A trade-off between sex and somatic maintenance is fundamental to life-history theory. Tests of this trade-off usually emphasize deleterious consequences of increased reproduction on life span. Here we show the reverse effect, that reductions in the expected life span elevate sexual activity. Experimentally parasitized male Drosophila nigrospiracula lived shorter lives, but before dying, they c...