Okay, I know this isn’t a blanket truth—and I’m a much more sympathetic person than I sound here, so I will parlay my theory into more scientifically based reasoning: dopamine rules. Dopamine ROCKS. I’d be willing to say that many of the problems facing our society today are the culprit of that tiny molecule worming its way into the pleasure receptors of our brains . . . and our craving for mor...

A key element in the construction of a physician fee schedule is the underlying relative value scale (RVS). The focus in this article is on the development and comparison of RVS's based on alternative data sources and construction methods. Results suggest that medical procedures' values are preserved across alternative charge-based RVS's. Some differences are observed, however, when comparing p...

Many forms of judgments, such as those used in economic games or measures of social comparison, require understanding relative value, as well as the more complex ability to make comparisons between relative values. To examine whether young children can accurately compare relative values, we presented children 4 to 7 years with simple judgments of relative value in two scenarios. Children then w...

Papini and Pellegrini (Papini, M. R., & Pellegrini, S. Scaling relative incentive value in consummatory behavior. Learning and Motivation, in press) observed that, within limits, the level of consummatory responding of rats exposed to incentive downshifts in the concentration of sucrose solutions was similar when the ratio of test/training solutions was the same. For example, 32fi 4% and 16fi 2...

Abstract. We study zero-sum stochastic differential games with player dynamics governed by a nondegenerate controlled diffusion process. Under the assumption of uniform stability, we establish the existence of a solution to the Isaac’s equation for the ergodic game and characterize the optimal stationary strategies. The data is not assumed to be bounded, nor do we assume geometric ergodicity. T...

In this paper we propose benchmark values for the coefficients of relative risk aversion and relative prudence on the basis of a binary choice model where the decision maker chooses between aggregating or disaggragating multiplicative risks. We relate our results to the decison maker’s willingness to trade-off the second with the first and the third (central) moment of his wealth distribution.

The analysis proposes a reduction of one moral concept (the concept of what we ought to do) to another pair of moral concepts (the concepts of goodness and badness). In order to fully understand the concept of what we ought to do, we must therefore combine the proposed analysis with an account of the nature of goodness and badness. Moore combines the analysis with his distinctive view of goodne...

For most organisms, computational operon predictions are the only source of genome-wide operon information. Operon prediction methods described in literature are based on (a combination of) the following five criteria: (i) intergenic distance, (ii) conserved gene clusters, (iii) functional relation, (iv) sequence elements and (v) experimental evidence. The performance estimates of operon predic...

abstract confused flour beetle, tribolium confusum duval (col.: tenebrionidae) is one of the most important stored product pests of flour in iran. in this research the effects of insect growth regulators (igrs): teflubenzuron, hexaflumuron and pyriproxyfen were studied on larval and imago nutritional indices of confused flour beetle. the results showed that they were more effective on relative ...