Cheap Renewable Contracts Could Be Options In Disguise

Cheap Renewable Contracts Could Be Options In Disguise
Financial Times, September 25 2017
https://www.ft.com/content/f19f4944-a11a-11e7-b797-b61809486fe2

Jonathan Ford

When prices tumble for a product or service, there is generally an observable reason. It might be a cunning technological fix that dramatically boosts productivity, for instance, or the sudden slide in a key input cost. But nothing so obvious can convincingly explain why it is suddenly much cheaper to produce electricity from offshore wind turbines.

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Check also:

Subsidy-Free Wind Farms Risk Ruining the Industry’s Reputation. By Jess Shankleman

Bloomberg, September 19, 2017 + September 22, 2017

http://www.bipartisanalliance.com/2017/09/subsidy-free-wind-farms-risk-ruining.html
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 The latest round of renewable auctions has seen two big projects awarded contracts guaranteeing a fixed price of £57.50 per megawatt hour for their output when the blades start turning sometime in the next decade. That is a very big dip from the first round, which required subsidies of some £150/MWh to be profitable. Even the cheapest of previous vintages were north of £110.

It is not so long since British wind power bosses were vowing — amid widespread scepticism — that they could reduce costs to £100/MWh by 2020. Yet these auction results suggest a far steeper decline in offshore costs.

Of course, it is always worth peering behind the headlines to put numbers in context. The sums quoted are 2012 prices. The actual figure in today’s money is therefore £64/MWh; a still subsidy-rich 50 per cent above the current wholesale price of about £40.

The real question though is how the industry can support such a reduction. Take overall costs, for instance. Most studies do not yet point to projects breaking even at £57.50. According to a recent review by the UK’s Offshore Wind Programme Board, so-called levelised costs for new wind projects at the point of commitment (ie not yet built, but button decisively pressed) declined by 7 per cent annually from £142/MWh in 2010-11 to just £97 in 2015-16, driven by factors such as the use of larger turbines and better siting. But while these are impressive figures even they cannot explain a further £40 drop in such a short space of time.

What’s more, by far the biggest component of those costs is capital expenditure, and another study suggests that progress here is much more nuanced. A new report led by Gordon Hughes, a former professor of economics at Edinburgh University, and published by the sceptical Global Warming Policy Foundation, has analysed the reported capital costs of 86 projects across Europe. These show that while technological advances are driving down costs by 4 per cent annually, this gain is being offset as the industry moves out into deeper and more challenging waters. So, depending on where future projects are sited, there may even be no clear downward trend at all.

It may be possible that the auction-winning projects have specific reasons for being able to deliver low prices. For instance, the Hornsea II project sponsored by Denmark’s Dong Energy sits next to a first farm that is also being built by the same company (at far higher rates of subsidy), offering the opportunity to share support infrastructure, as well as the link between the turbines and the grid.

But it is also possible that the promoters view the CFD contract as a pretty loose commitment. “Potentially these bids could be seen as more of an option on future capacity,” said Allan Baker, Société Générale’s global head of power advisory and project finance at Bloomberg’s New Energy Finance Summit last week.

Just three giant wind farms have taken all the capacity in the current auction, which at 3.2GW is equivalent to 60 per cent of Britain’s current offshore fleet. That means the competition is in effect shut out.

The contracts do not represent an absolute commitment. According to the UK government, the developers could withdraw were they unable to obtain financing, with only a limited penalty. What they would mainly lose was the right to pop the same project into a later auction round.

So to the extent, for instance, that contracts depend on yet-to-be developed technologies, such as 15MW turbines, or squeezing contractor prices, there would be little cost to cancelling were developers not to get the deals they hoped for.

And even beyond construction, the CFD could conceivably be revoked by the operator were it prepared to pay a significant, not ruinous, financial penalty, Prof Hughes reckons. So should wholesale prices rise well above the level of the fixed strike price in future, developers might be able to flip across and benefit from (superior) market rates. That might happen, for instance, were the government to introduce a higher carbon price.

Subsidy-Free Wind Farms Risk Ruining the Industry’s Reputation

Subsidy-Free Wind Farms Risk Ruining the Industry’s Reputation. By Jess Shankleman

Bloomberg, September 19, 2017 + September 22, 2017
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-09-19/subsidy-free-wind-farms-risk-ruined-reputations-for-industry

Energy companies that stunned the world by offering to build wind farms with no subsidy may ruin the industry’s reputation by never actually delivering on their promises.
That’s the warning of industry executives, who are cautious about the future of zero-subsidy offshore wind farms planned in Germany this year. Developers led by Energie Baden-Wuerttemberg AG and Dong Energy A/S are betting they can sell the electricity they produce from the wind farms at a profit without any help from taxpayers.
“The offshore wind industry needs to be careful,” Irene Rummelhoff, executive vice president at Statoil ASA’s New Energy Solutions unit, said at the Bloomberg New Energy Finance Summit in London on Tuesday. “They’re taking on these options, and when you get to the delivery date, if they’re not able to build the projects, it will ruin the reputation of the industry.”
The German government may not have the right rules in place to ensure developers actually deliver on their winning bids, said Thomas Karst, senior vice president at MHI Vestas Offshore Wind AS.
“The regulatory power lies with the owners of the concessions and they may or may not get built, so that model from the regulatory point of view doesn’t really work,” Karst said at the same conference.

It’s not just in Germany where the costs of offshore wind power are falling. The U.K. and Netherlands have both seen record low bids during the past year that surprised even industry insiders. Last week, developers led by Dong won bids to develop wind farms in British waters for as little as 57.50 pounds ($77.61) a megawatt-hour, well below the cost of the next nuclear reactors.
Winning bidders in the German auctions based business cases on giant wind turbines, soaring as high as The Shard in London and generating as much as 15 megawatts of power each. Those machines haven’t been built yet and aren’t due until the next decade.
“The question is are they actually deliverable? Potentially these bids could be seen as more of an option on future capacity,” said Allan Baker, global head of power advisory and project finance at Societe Generale SA.

The robotic system has reduced rejects from 20 pct to 5 pct, mostly due to improvements in hygiene & handling

Spanish farm produce supplier reduces human workers from 500 to 100 using robots. David Edwards. Robotics & Automation News, September 19, 2017, www.roboticsandautomationnews.com/2017/09/19/spanish-farm-produce-supplier-reduces-human-workers-from-500-to-100-using-robots/14148/

Spanish farm produce supplier El Dulze has reduced its human workforce from 500 down to just 100 with the use of robots, according to a report on FruitNet.com.

The company is said to be using Fanuc robots – LR Mate 200iB models – which use vision systems to even out the production line so the vegetables are not bunched up too close together for packing.

The robots also appear to be picking heads of lettuce and placing them in containers, or plastic packaging.

A total of 68 robots have been installed at the El Dulze facility in Murcia, and they process approximately 550,000 heads of lettuce every day.

The robotic system is also said to have reduced rejects from 20 per cent to 5 per cent, mostly due to improvements in hygiene and handling.

Managing director José Sánchez is quoted by FruitNet.com as saying: “This business has traditionally been labour intensive but today labour is increasingly unavailable.

“This region has a major shortage of labour – many workers in the industry are immigrants but this hasn’t solved our problem.

“As minimal skill is needed we have a real problem with labour and turnover of these workers is high – they just seem to come and go.

“Reducing the amount of people has made everything more hygienic and damage to the lettuces caused by handling is now minimal.”

Perverse Consequences of Well Intentioned Regulation: Evidence from India's Child Labor Ban

Perverse Consequences of Well Intentioned Regulation: Evidence from India's Child Labor Ban. Prashant Bharadwaj, Leah K. Lakdawala, and Nicholas Li. https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/19602.html

ABSTRACT: While bans against child labor are a common policy tool, there is very little empirical evidence validating their effectiveness.  In this paper, we examine the consequences of India’s landmark legislation against child labor, the Child Labor (Prohibition and Regulation) Act of 1986. Using data from employment surveys conducted before and after the ban, and using age restrictions that determined who the ban applied to, we show that child wages decrease and child labor increases after the ban. These results are consistent with a theoretical model building on the seminal work of Basu and Van (1998) and Basu (2005),  where families use child labor to reach subsistence constraints and where child wages decrease in response to bans, leading poor families to utilize more child labor. The increase in child labor comes at the expense of reduced school enrollment. We also examine the effects of the ban at the household level.  Using linked consumption and expenditure vdata, we find that along various margins of household expenditure, consumption, calorie intake and asset holdings, households are worse off after the ban.

JEL Codes: I38, J22, J82, O12

Check also: A Fine is a Price. Uri Gneezy & Aldo Rustichini. The Journal of Legal Studies, Volume 29, Number 1, January 2000. http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/468061

Abstract: The deterrence hypothesis predicts that the introduction of a penalty that leaves everything else unchanged will reduce the occurrence of the behavior subject to the fine. We present the result of a field study in a group of day‐care centers that contradicts this prediction. Parents used to arrive late to collect their children, forcing a teacher to stay after closing time. We introduced a monetary fine for late‐coming parents. As a result, the number of late‐coming parents increased significantly. After the fine was removed no reduction occurred. We argue that penalties are usually introduced into an incomplete contract, social or private. They may change the information that agents have, and therefore the effect on behavior may be opposite of that expected. If this is true, the deterrence hypothesis loses its predictive strength, since the clause “everything else is left unchanged” might be hard to satisfy.

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In a day-care center for little children... The contract signed at the beginning of the year states that the day-care center operates between 0730 and 1600. There is no mention of what happens if parents come late to pick up their children. In particular, before the beginning of the study, there was no fine for coming late. When parents did not come on time, one of the teachers had to wait with the children concerned. Teachers would rotate in this task, which is considered part of the job of a teacher, a fact that is clearly explained when a teacher is hired. Parents rarely came after 1630. [...] At the beginning of the fifth week [of 20 weeks in the study], we introduced a fine [of little money for each child and 10 minutes delay] in six of the 10 day-care centers,7 which had been selected randomly. [...] At the beginning of the seventeenth week, the fine was removed with no explanation.

[...] Fact 1.—The effect of introducing the fine was a significant increase in the number of late-coming parents.
Fact 2.—Removing the fine did not affect the number of late-coming parents relative to the time of the fine. In particular, this number remained higher in the treatment group than in the control group.
Fact 3.—There is no significant difference in the behavior of the test group and the control group in the initial 4 weeks, and there is no significant trend in the test group.

Dark Personalities on Facebook: Harmful Online Behaviors and Language

Dark Personalities on Facebook: Harmful Online Behaviors and Language. Olga Bogolyubova et al. Computers in Human Behavior, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2017.09.032

Highlights
•    We explore the interplay of the Dark Triad, harmful online behaviors and language
•    Psychopathy and male gender predict engagement in harmful online behaviors
•    Facebook users with dark traits have identifiable language characteristics
•    Findings are consistent with previous research using non-linguistic criteria

Abstract: The goal of this paper was to assess the connection between dark personality traits and engagement in harmful online behaviors in a sample of Russian Facebook users, and to describe the language they use in online communication. A total of 6,724 individuals participated in the study (mean age = 44.96 years, age range: 18–85 years, 77.9% — female). Data was collected via a purpose-built application, which served two purposes: administer the survey and download consenting user’s public wall posts, gender and age from the Facebook profile. The survey included questions on engagement in harmful online behaviors and the Short Dark Triad scale; 15,281 wall posts from 1,972 users were included in the dataset. These posts were subjected to morphological, lexical and semantic analyses. More than 25% of the sample reported engaging in harmful online behaviors. Males were more likely to send insulting or threatening messages and post aggressive comments; no gender differences were found for disseminating other people’s private information. Psychopathy and male gender were the unique predictors of engagement in harmful online behaviors. A number of significant correlations were found between the dark traits and numeric, lexical, morphological and semantic characteristics of the participants’ posts.

Keywords: Dark Triad; Facebook; cyber aggression; Russian language; distributional semantics; word clustering

Individual differences in the effects of baby images on attitudes toward getting married

Individual differences in the effects of baby images on attitudes toward getting married. Charles G. Lord, , Christopher J. Holland, and Sarah E. Hill. Personality and Individual Differences, Volume 121, 15 January 2018, Pages 106–110, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2017.09.029

Highlights
•    Women who had viewed images of smiling babies wanted to get married sooner.
•    This effect occurred for both 18- to 25-year-old and 18- to 45-year-old women.
•    Baby image priming increased accessibility of thoughts about having children.
•    Baby image priming increased positivity of thoughts about having children.
•    All of these effects occurred for women, but not for men.

Abstract: Previous research on determinants of marital and reproductive timing focused on factors prominent in evolutionary theories. We focused on complementary factors prominent in research on attitudes, social cognition, and personality. Attitude construal and situated inference theories hold that priming can increase the accessibility of specific concepts, and that valence of the primed concepts can affect subsequent judgments. In two studies, one with college students and the other with a larger, more diverse sample, women, but not men, wanted to get married sooner if they had than had not recently seen images of smiling babies. Primed women also listed a greater number of and more positive children-related thoughts about marriage. These results suggest that subtle contextual cues can alter accessibility of relevant concepts, affect attitudes even on important issues, and work differently for different individuals. The results also suggest closer links between evolutionary, social cognitive, and personality theories.

Keywords: Attitudes; Construal theories; Priming; Sex differences; Situated inference; Accessibility

European Paradox or Delusion—Are European Science and Economy Outdated?

European Paradox or Delusion—Are European Science and Economy Outdated? Alonso Rodríguez-Navarro Francis Narin. Science and Public Policy, scx021, https://doi.org/10.1093/scipol/scx021

Abstract: The European Union (EU) seems to presume that the mass production of European research papers indicates that Europe is a leading scientific power, and the so-called European paradox of strong science but weak technology is due to inefficiencies in the utilization of this top level European science by European industry. We fundamentally disagree, and will show that Europe lags far behind the USA in the production of important, highly cited research. We will show that there is a consistent weakening of European science as one ascends the citation scale, with the EU almost twice as effective in the production of minimal impact papers, while the USA is at least twice as effective in the production of very highly cited scientific papers, and garnering Nobel prizes. Only in the highly multinational, collaborative fields of Physics and Clinical Medicine does the EU seem to approach the USA in top scale impact.

Keywords: European paradox, research performance, research assessment, citation analysis.

The Mortality and Myocardial Effects of Antidepressants Are Moderated by Preexisting Cardiovascular Disease: A Meta-Analysis

The Mortality and Myocardial Effects of Antidepressants Are Moderated by Preexisting Cardiovascular Disease: A Meta-Analysis. Maslej M.M. et al. Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics, https://doi.org/10.1159/000477940

Abstract

Background: Antidepressants (ADs) are commonly prescribed medications, but their long-term health effects are debated. ADs disrupt multiple adaptive processes regulated by evolutionarily ancient biochemicals, potentially increasing mortality. However, many ADs also have anticlotting properties that can be efficacious in treating cardiovascular disease. We conducted a meta-analysis assessing the effects of ADs on all-cause mortality and cardiovascular events in general-population and cardiovascular-patient samples.

Methods: Two reviewers independently assessed articles from PubMed, EMBASE, and Google Scholar for AD-related mortality controlling for depression and other comorbidities. From these articles, we extracted information about cardiovascular events, cardiovascular risk status, and AD class. We conducted mixed-effect meta-analyses testing sample type and AD class as moderators of all-cause mortality and new cardiovascular events.

Results: Seventeen studies met our search criteria. Sample type consistently moderated health risks. In general-population samples, AD use increased the risks of mortality (HR = 1.33, 95% CI: 1.14-1.55) and new cardiovascular events (HR = 1.14, 95% CI: 1.08-1.21). In cardiovascular patients, AD use did not significantly affect risks. AD class also moderated mortality, but the serotonin reuptake inhibitors were not significantly different from tricyclic ADs (TCAs) (HR = 1.10, 95% CI: 0.93-1.31, p = 0.27). Only “other ADs” were differentiable from TCAs (HR = 1.35, 95% CI: 1.08-1.69). Mortality risk estimates increased when we analyzed the subset of studies controlling for premedication depression, suggesting the absence of confounding by indication.

Conclusions: The results support the hypothesis that ADs are harmful in the general population but less harmful in cardiovascular patients.

‘Barbie Doll Syndrome’. A case report of body dysmorphic disorder

„Das Barbie Syndrom“. Ein Fallbericht über die Körperdysmorphe Störung (=‘Barbie Doll Syndrome’. A case report of body dysmorphic disorder). Gruber, M., Jahn, R., Stolba, K. et al. Neuropsychiatr (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40211-017-0241-2

Summary

Background: This case report aims to present a 37-year-old women striving to shape her body like a Barbie doll of which she has been fascinated since childhood. She could hardly tolerate any deviation from this beauty ideal. She has been admitted to the psychosomatic ward due to an eating disorder.

Methods: The ICD-10 and DSM-5 criteria were established for axis I disorders and the German version of the SCID II interview (for DSM-4) was applied for axis II disorders. Additionally, the “modified Yale-Brown Obsessive Compulsive Scale for body dysmorphic disorder” was carried out.

Results: The diagnosis of dysmorphophobia (ICD-10: F45.21) or body dysmorphic disorder (DSM-5: 300.7) and bulimia nervosa (ICD-10: F50.2; DSM-5: 307.51) was confirmed. The patient fulfilled criteria of an avoidant, depressive and histrionic personality disorder.

Psychopharmacological treatment with Fluoxetine was started and the patient participated in an intensive inpatient psychosomatic program. The body image, self-concept and the sense of shame were therapeutic key topics.

Conclusion: The present case report focuses on body dysmorphic disorder as a distinctive entity with high prevalence. Diagnostic criteria of different classification systems were contrasted and comorbidity with eating disorders was discussed. In clinical praxis, body dysmorphic disorder remains underdiagnosed, especially when cooccurring with an eating disorder. However, the correct diagnosis could be relevant for therapy planning.

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approx translation: [The appearance of the patient is impressive. Her artificial style with toupled hair and artificial hair parts (Beehive hair style), a heavily painted face with a focus on the eyes, framed by the thick eyelid with the false eyelashes and the delicate, somewhat aged skin with the dark solarium-browned complexion. The physique is delicate except the large breasts.

The patient grew up with a stable twin-sister and an older sister in stable family circumstances. She describes the twin sister as her "mirror image", both had always placed great emphasis on their appearance, compared to each other and revised and criticized each other. At school, the sisters would sometimes have been teased because of their "mirror image". Furthermore she describes a great fascination for Barbie dolls, which would continue today. At the age of 17, she met her ex-husband, with whom she became engaged and had two children. After the birth of the second child had a postpartum depression with a resulting bonding disorder to the son. The patient did not seek professional help. Four years later, she describes a two-year "happy phase", which leads her back to the successful professional life (good merit as unskilled assistant). She would have received recognition and be able to face more self-respect.

[...]

The patient suffers from hard-to-correct beliefs about physical disfigurement, a disturbance of body perception ("the belly would be too fat," "the legs would be too straight," "the butt would be too shallow," "cellulite would be too strong, the skin too pale ") and forced thoughts through the constant comparison of one's own appearance with others. There are numerous body-related fears ("getting too fat," "hair could slip," the make-up could be blurred), as well as social-phobic fears ("fear of appearance and behavior affect others embarrassingly or embarrassingly" ). The patient is compulsive with food and the external appearance and invests up to three hours daily in the body care and cosmetics (camouflage) and two to three hours daily in the course of ritualized eating / vomiting. At the same time, there is also a strong reinsurance tendency with frequent glances in the mirror, selfies or queries. It shows an avoidance behavior (avoids strangers looking intently, to visit public baths, or to show herself naked).]

Fake news and post-truth pronouncements are increasingly common, also in the sciences, including the medical ones

Fake news and post-truth pronouncements in general and in early human development. Victor Grech. Early Human Development, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.earlhumdev.2017.09.017

Highlights
•    Fake news and post-truth pronouncements are increasingly common.
•    They are also being to science and to medicine.
•    This editorial reviews this unsavoury trend.
•    It also highlights recent debunking of fake truths in early human development.
•    We, as scientists, must continue to uphold science's integrity and probity.

Abstract: Fake news and post-truth pronouncements are increasingly common, and are unfortunately also progressively being applied to the sciences, including the medical sciences. This editorial briefly reviews this unsavoury trend and highlights recent debunking of fake truths in early human development. Science is arguably the last metanarrative with any significant cachet in the postmodern period. We, as scientists, must strive to ensure that our work is transparent and of the highest possible standard so as to continue to uphold science's integrity and probity.

Keywords: MeSH: Humans; Public opinion; Science; Social media

Check also: Polarized Mass or Polarized Few? Assessing the Parallel Rise of Survey Nonresponse and Measures of Polarization. Amnon Cavari and Guy Freedman. The Journal of Politics, https://www.bipartisanalliance.com/2018/03/polarized-mass-or-polarized-few.html

Captive gorilla apparently trying to engage zoo visitors in a joint task of retrieving food with a stick

Luef, E. M., & Heschl, A. (2017). Triadic interactions with tools in a gorilla. Animal Behavior and Cognition, 4(2), 136–145. https://doi.org/10.12966/abc.01.05.2017

Abstract - Triadic interactions are an important developmental milestone for young human infants, ultimately enabling them to acquire language. When an infant and a caregiver share attention regarding an object, the label given to the object becomes linked with the object, hence referential communication is established through which infants learn to associate words with meanings. In fact, triadic interactions are considered so crucial to human language development that their phylogenetic origins have become the focus of investigation to study the evolutionary history of language. In this paper, we report a communicative instance of a captive zoo gorilla apparently trying to engage zoo visitors in a joint task of retrieving food. The gorilla seemed to initiate a series of combined triadic interactions with different tools used as pointing devices while attempting to recruit a human for help. Even though it is a single observation event, we argue that the gorilla possessed relevant knowledge about the various purposes for which a specific tool can be used and utilized sophisticated communicative means in her interaction with humans.

Keywords – Gorilla communication, Pointing gesture, Triadic reference, Shared attention, Social tool use, Flexible gesture-tool combinations

The Stability of Implicit Racial Bias in Police Officers -- Policemen need to sleep better

The Stability of Implicit Racial Bias in Police Officers. Lois James. Police Quarterly, https://doi.org/10.1177/1098611117732974

Abstract: Research on police officers has found that they tend to associate African Americans with threat. Little is known however about the stability of implicit racial bias in police officers, whose attitudes could be expected to fluctuate based on their day-to-day encounters or from internal stressors such as fatigue. To investigate, this study tested 80 police officers using the Weapons Implicit Association Test (IAT) on four separate occasions. Officers’ sleep was also monitored using wrist actigraphy. Officers’ IAT scores varied significantly across the testing days (f = 2.36; df = 1.468; p < .05), and differences in IAT scores were associated with officers’ sleep (f = 6.49; df = 1.468; p < .05). These findings indicate that implicit racial bias was not stable among officers, and that when officers slept less prior to testing they demonstrated stronger association between Black Americans and weapons. The implications of these findings within the current climate of police–citizen unrest are discussed.

Doctors should be more sensitive to the limitations of the evidence, training them to do critical appraisal, & enhancing their communication skills

Ioannidis, J. P. A., Stuart, M. E., Brownlee, S. and Strite, S. A. (), How To Survive the Medical Misinformation Mess. Eur J Clin Invest. Accepted Author Manuscript. doi:10.1111/eci.12834

Abstract: Most physicians and other healthcare professionals are unaware of the pervasiveness of poor quality clinical evidence that contributes considerably to overuse, underuse, avoidable adverse events, missed opportunities for right care and wasted healthcare resources. The Medical Misinformation Mess comprises four key problems. First, much published medical research is not reliable or is of uncertain reliability, offers no benefit to patients, or is not useful to decision makers. Second, most healthcare professionals are not aware of this problem. Third, they also lack the skills necessary to evaluate the reliability and usefulness of medical evidence. Finally, patients and families frequently lack relevant, accurate medical evidence and skilled guidance at the time of medical decision-making. Increasing the reliability of available, published evidence may not be an imminently reachable goal. Therefore, efforts should focus on making healthcare professionals, more sensitive to the limitations of the evidence, training them to do critical appraisal, and enhancing their communication skills so that they can effectively summarize and discuss medical evidence with patients to improve decision-making. Similar efforts may need to target also patients, journalists, policy makers, the lay public and other healthcare stakeholders.

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In our encounters with students, clinicians, and others working in the healthcare industry (including academicians, researchers, editors, peer reviewers, pharmacists, regulators, politicians and employees of insurance companies, hospitals, the pharmaceutical industry and new technology companies), we have found a lack of the basic skills required for determining a study’s reliability and applicability. For example, in a pre-test administered to a sampling of more than 500 physicians, clinical pharmacists and other healthcare professionals attending evidence-based medicine (EBM) training programs in 2002 and 2003, 70 percent failed a simple 3-question critical appraisal training program test. The three pre-test questions were designed to determine if attendees could recognize the absence of a control group, understand the issue of overestimating benefit when provided with relative risk reduction information without absolute difference information, and determine whether an intention-to-treat analysis was performed. Surprisingly, among those who reported feeling confident to evaluate the medical literature, 72 percent failed the test, even with generous criteria for correct answers [25]. We have repeated the same pre-test with various groups each year with similar results.

Personality Change in the Preclinical Phase of Alzheimer Disease

Personality Change in the Preclinical Phase of Alzheimer Disease. Antonio Terracciano et al.
JAMA Psychiatry. doi:10.1001/jamapsychiatry.2017.2816.

 Key Points

Question  Do changes in personality traits occur before the onset of mild cognitive impairment or clinical dementia?

Findings  In a cohort study that followed up 2046 older adults for as long as 36 years, no evidence of significant change in self-rated personality was found before the onset of mild cognitive impairment or clinical dementia.

Meaning  No personality changes that could be characterized as an early sign of dementia were found.

Abstract
Importance  Changes in behavior and personality are 1 criterion for the diagnosis of dementia. It is unclear, however, whether such changes begin before the clinical onset of the disease.

Objective  To determine whether increases in neuroticism, declines in conscientiousness, and changes in other personality traits occur before the onset of mild cognitive impairment or dementia.

Design, Setting, and Participants  A cohort of 2046 community-dwelling older adults who volunteered to participate in the Baltimore Longitudinal Study of Aging were included. The study examined personality and clinical assessments obtained between 1980 and July 13, 2016, from participants with no cognitive impairment at first assessment who were followed up for as long as 36 years (mean [SD], 12.05 [9.54] years). The self-report personality scales were not considered during consensus diagnostic conferences.

Main Outcomes and Measures  Change in self-rated personality traits assessed in the preclinical phase of Alzheimer disease and other dementias with the Revised NEO Personality Inventory, a 240-item questionnaire that assesses 30 facets, 6 for each of the 5 major dimensions: neuroticism, extraversion, openness, agreeableness, and conscientiousness.

Results  Of the 2046 participants, 931 [45.5%] were women; mean (SD) age at first assessment was 62.56 (14.63) years. During 24 569 person-years, mild cognitive impairment was diagnosed in 104 (5.1%) individuals, and all-cause dementia was diagnosed in 255 (12.5%) participants, including 194 (9.5%) with Alzheimer disease. Multilevel modeling that accounted for age, sex, race, and educational level found significant differences on the intercept of several traits: individuals who developed dementia scored higher on neuroticism (β = 2.83; 95% CI, 1.44 to 4.22; P < .001) and lower on conscientiousness (β = −3.34; 95% CI, −4.93 to −1.75; P < .001) and extraversion (β = −1.74; 95% CI, −3.23 to −0.25; P = .02). Change in personality (ie, slope), however, was not significantly different between the nonimpaired and the Alzheimer disease groups (eg, neuroticism: β = 0.00; 95% CI, −0.08 to 0.08; P = .91; conscientiousness: β = −0.06; 95% CI, −0.16 to 0.04; P = .24). Slopes for individuals who developed mild cognitive impairment (eg, neuroticism: β = 0.00; 95% CI, −0.12 to 0.12; P = .98; conscientiousness: β = −0.09; 95% CI, −0.23 to 0.05; P = .18) and all-cause dementia (eg, neuroticism: β = 0.02; 95% CI, −0.06 to 0.10; P = .49; conscientiousness: β = −0.08; 95% CI, −0.16 to 0.00; P = .07) were also similar to those for nonimpaired participants.

Conclusions and Relevance  No evidence for preclinical change in personality before the onset of mild cognitive impairment or dementia was identified. These findings provide evidence against the reverse causality hypothesis and strengthen evidence for personality traits as a risk factor for dementia.

The Cognitive-Evolutionary Model of Surprise: A Review of the Evidence

Reisenzein, R., Horstmann, G. and Schützwohl, A. (2017), The Cognitive-Evolutionary Model of Surprise: A Review of the Evidence. Topics in Cogn Sci. doi:10.1111/tops.12292
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/tops.12292/full

Abstract: Research on surprise relevant to the cognitive-evolutionary model of surprise proposed by Meyer, Reisenzein, and Schützwohl (1997) is reviewed. The majority of the assumptions of the model are found empirically supported. Surprise is evoked by unexpected (schema-discrepant) events and its intensity is determined by the degree if schema-discrepancy, whereas the novelty and the valence of the eliciting events probably do not have an independent effect. Unexpected events cause an automatic interruption of ongoing mental processes that is followed by an attentional shift and attentional binding to the events, which is often followed by causal and other event analysis processes and by schema revision. The facial expression of surprise postulated by evolutionary emotion psychologists has been found to occur rarely in surprise, for as yet unknown reasons. A physiological orienting response marked by skin conductance increase, heart rate deceleration, and pupil dilation has been observed to occur regularly in the standard version of the repetition-change paradigm of surprise induction, but the specificity of these reactions as indicators of surprise is controversial. There is indirect evidence for the assumption that the feeling of surprise consists of the direct awareness of the schema-discrepancy signal, but this feeling, or at least the self-report of surprise, is also influenced by experienced interference. In contrast, facial feedback probably does contribute substantially to the feeling of surprise and the evidence for the hypothesis that surprise is affected by the difficulty of explaining an unexpected event is, in our view, inconclusive. Regardless of how the surprise feeling is constituted, there is evidence that it has both motivational and informational effects. Finally, the prediction failure implied by unexpected events sometimes causes a negative feeling, but there is no convincing evidence that this is always the case, and we argue that even if it were so, this would not be a sufficient reason for regarding this feeling as a component, rather than as an effect of surprise.