Political science, as a discipline, has been reluctant to adopt theories and methodologies developed in fields studying human behavior from an evolutionary standpoint. I ask whether evolutionary concepts are reconcilable with standard political-science theories and whether those concepts help solve puzzles to which these theories classically are applied. I find that evolutionary concepts readil...

In December 2011, OCHA hosted a humanitarian policy and research conference on the theme of 'Risk, Adaptation and Innovation in Humanitarian Action'. The conference aimed to identify priority policy research areas for the humanitarian community, and to strengthen partnerships with and among policy and research organisations. Over 50 attendees came from a global network of research institutes, u...

The adaptive nature of biological motion perception has been documented in behavioral studies, with research showing that prolonged viewing of an action can bias judgments of subsequent actions towards the opposite of its attributes. However, the neural mechanisms underlying action adaptation aftereffects remain unknown. We examined adaptation-induced changes in brain responses to an ambiguous ...

The ability to discriminate between different actions is essential for action recognition and social interactions. Surprisingly previous research has often probed action recognition mechanisms with tasks that did not require participants to discriminate between actions, e.g., left-right direction discrimination tasks. It is not known to what degree visual processes in direction discrimination t...

insurer companies frequently reinsure part of their risks before reinsurers. the question of right of action of the insured against the reinsurer then arises. the common response to this question is negative because of the principle of the privacy of contracts. however, courts, particularly in the united states, have recognized this direct action on various grounds, especially in case of insolv...