Candidate Explanations Research Articles

Research Review: The internalizing paradox - youth anxiety and depression symptoms, psychotherapy outcomes, and implications for research and practice.

Youth anxiety and depression have long been combined within the empirically derived internalizing syndrome. The two conditions show substantial comorbidity, symptom co-occurrence, and overlap in treatment procedures, but paradoxically diverge in psychotherapy outcomes: strong, positive effects for anxiety and weak effects for depression. Drawing on recent research, we examine candidate explanations for this paradox to help identify strategies for addressing it by improving outcomes for youth depression. Candidate explanations include that youth depression, compared with youth anxiety, has more varied comorbidities and more heterogeneous symptom combinations, has greater uncertainty regarding mediators and mechanisms of change, is treated with more complex and potentially confusing protocols, and has characteristics that may impede client engagement. Candidate strategies for shrinking the psychotherapy effectiveness gap include personalizing through transdiagnostic modular treatment, simplifying therapy by focusing on empirically supported principles of change, developing effective strategies for engaging family members as intervention allies, using shared decision-making to inform clinical decisions and boost client engagement, capitalizing on youth-friendly technological advances, and shortening and digitizing treatments to enhance their accessibility and appeal. Recent advances suggest explanations for the internalizing paradox, which in turn suggest strategies for shrinking the youth anxiety-depression psychotherapy outcome gap; these form an agenda for a promising new era of research.

Why do people represent time as dynamical? An investigation of temporal dynamism and the open future

Deflationists hold that it does not seem to us, in experience, as though time robustly passes. There is some recent empirical evidence that appears to support this contention. Equally, empirical evidence suggests that we naïvely represent time as dynamical. Thus deflationists are faced with an explanatory burden. If, as they maintain, the world seems to us in experience as though it is non-dynamical, then why do we represent time as dynamical? This paper takes up the challenge of investigating, on the part of the deflationist, one candidate explanation. We hypothesise that people’s belief that the future is what we call deliberatively open partly explains why they represent time as dynamical. In a series of two experiments we test this hypothesis. We find no evidence that beliefs about deliberative openness explain why people represent time as dynamical. Hence there remains an explanatory burden for the deflationist to discharge.

Providing Post-Hoc Explanation for Node Representation Learning Models Through Inductive Conformal Predictions

Learning with graph-structured data, such as social, biological, and financial networks, requires effective low-dimensional representations to handle their large and complex interactions. Recently, with the advances of neural networks and embedding algorithms, many unsupervised approaches have been proposed for many downstream tasks with promising results; however, there has been limited research on interpreting the unsupervised representations and, specifically, on understanding which parts of the neighboring nodes contribute to the representation of a node. To mitigate this problem, we propose a statistical framework to interpret the learned representations. Many of the existing works, which are designed for supervised node presentation models, compute the difference in prediction scores after perturbing the edges of a candidate explanation node; however, our proposed framework leverages a conformal prediction (CP)-based statistical test to verify the importance of the candidate node in each node representation. In our evaluation, our proposed framework was verified in many experimental settings and presented promising results compared to those of the recent baseline methods.

Social learning and the adaptiveness of expressing and perceiving fearfulness.

The fearful ape hypothesis revolves around our ability to express and perceive fearfulness. Here, we address these abilities from a social learning perspective which casts fearfulness in a slightly different light. Our commentary argues that any theory that characterizes a (human) social signal as being adaptive, needs to address the role of social learning as an alternative candidate explanation.

“I don't mean extradimensional in a woo-woo sense”: Doing non-explanation in discussions of unidentified aerial phenomena

In everyday talk, speakers commonly provide explanations that “make plain” or “make intelligible” prior talk. Little work, however, has examined talk in which speakers offer no explanation for what is being described. We consider talk about “unidentified aerial phenomena” (UAPs) from news media interviews. Interviewees distanced themselves from accountability for explaining UAPs or proposed multiple candidate explanations. Interviewers tabled their own potential explanations. Participants’ talk did not “make plain” or “make intelligible” phenomena being discussed. These findings show that explanations are a participants’ concern. These interactions allow discussion of topics of broad public interest, thereby “doing news”.

Quantum machine learning corrects classical forcefields: Stretching DNA base pairs in explicit solvent.

In order to improve the accuracy of molecular dynamics simulations, classical forcefields are supplemented with a kernel-based machine learning method trained on quantum-mechanical fragment energies. As an example application, a potential-energy surface is generalized for a small DNA duplex, taking into account explicit solvation and long-range electron exchange-correlation effects. A long-standing problem in molecular science is that experimental studies of the structural and thermodynamic behavior of DNA under tension are not well confirmed by simulation; study of the potential energy vs extension taking into account a novel correction shows that leading classical DNA models have excessive stiffness with respect to stretching. This discrepancy is found to be common across multiple forcefields. The quantum correction is in qualitative agreement with the experimental thermodynamics for larger DNA double helices, providing a candidate explanation for the general and long-standing discrepancy between single molecule stretching experiments and classical calculations of DNA stretching. The new dataset of quantum calculations should facilitate multiple types of nucleic acid simulation, and the associated Kernel Modified Molecular Dynamics method (KMMD) is applicable to biomolecular simulations in general. KMMD is made available as part of the AMBER22 simulation software.

Prefrontal cortical activation associated with prospective memory while walking around a real-world street environment

Rostral PFC (area 10) activation is common during prospective memory (PM) tasks. But it is not clear what mental processes these activations index. Three candidate explanations from cognitive neuroscience theory are: (i) monitoring of the environment; (ii) spontaneous intention retrieval; (iii) a combination of the two. These explanations make different predictions about the temporal and spatial patterns of activation that would be seen in rostral PFC in naturalistic settings. Accordingly, we plotted functional events in PFC using portable fNIRS while people were carrying out a PM task outside the lab and responding to cues when they were encountered, to decide between these explanations. Nineteen people were asked to walk around a street in London, U.K. and perform various tasks while also remembering to respond to prospective memory (PM) cues when they detected them. The prospective memory cues could be either social (involving greeting a person) or non-social (interacting with a parking meter) in nature. There were also a number of contrast conditions which allowed us to determine activation specifically related to the prospective memory components of the tasks. We found that maintaining both social and non-social intentions was associated with widespread activation within medial and right hemisphere rostral prefrontal cortex (BA 10), in agreement with numerous previous lab-based fMRI studies of prospective memory. In addition, increased activation was found within lateral prefrontal cortex (BA 45 and 46) when people were maintaining a social intention compared to a non-social one. The data were then subjected to a GLM-based method for automatic identification of functional events (AIDE), and the position of the participants at the time of the activation events were located on a map of the physical space. The results showed that the spatial and temporal distribution of these events was not random, but aggregated around areas in which the participants appeared to retrieve their future intentions (i.e., where they saw intentional cues), as well as where they executed them. Functional events were detected most frequently in BA 10 during the PM conditions compared to other regions and tasks. Mobile fNIRS can be used to measure higher cognitive functions of the prefrontal cortex in “real world” situations outside the laboratory in freely ambulant individuals. The addition of a “brain-first” approach to the data permits the experimenter to determine not only when haemodynamic changes occur, but also where the participant was when it happened. This can be extremely valuable when trying to link brain and cognition.

The ergodicity solution of the cooperation puzzle

When two entities cooperate by sharing resources, one relinquishes something of value to the other. This apparent altruism is frequently observed in nature. Why? Classical treatments assume circumstances where combining resources creates an immediate benefit, e.g. through complementarity or thresholds. Here we ask whether cooperation is predictable without such circumstances. We study a model in which resources self-multiply with fluctuations, a null model of a range of phenomena from viral spread to financial investment. Two fundamental growth rates exist: the ensemble-average growth rate, achieved by the average resources of a large population; and the time-average growth rate, achieved by individual resources over a long time. As a consequence of non-ergodicity, the latter is lower than the former by a term which depends on fluctuation size. Repeated pooling and sharing of resources reduces the effective size of fluctuations and increases the time-average growth rate, which approaches the ensemble-average growth rate in the many-cooperator limit. Therefore, cooperation is advantageous in our model for the simple reason that those who do it grow faster than those who do not. We offer this as a candidate explanation for observed cooperation in rudimentary environments, and as a behavioural baseline for cooperation more generally.This article is part of the theme issue ‘Emergent phenomena in complex physical and socio-technical systems: from cells to societies’.

Osteoderms as calcium reservoirs: Insights from the lizard Ouroborus cataphractus.

The functional significance of osteoderms-bony elements embedded in the dermis-remains a topic of much debate. Although many hypotheses have been put forward in the past, the idea that osteoderms can serve as calcium reservoirs has received little experimental attention thus far. In this study, we use micro-computed tomography to investigate inter- and intrasexual variation in osteoderm density in the viviparous lizard Ouroborus cataphractus and conduct histochemical analyses to unravel the potential mechanism involved in mineral resorption from the osteoderms. Our results show that females have denser, more compact osteoderms than males of similar body sizes, regardless of the season during which they were collected and their reproductive state. Furthermore, a histochemical study demonstrates the presence of mononucleated TRAP-positive cells in the vascular canals of the osteoderms. Based on the findings of this study, we suggest that the mineral storage hypothesis merits further attention as a candidate explanation for osteoderm evolution.

Explaining Excess Entry in Winner-Take-All Markets

We report experimental data from standard market entry games and winner-take-all games. At odds with traditional decision-making models with risk aversion, the winner-take-all condition results in substantially more entry than the expected-payoff-equivalent market entry game. We explore three candidate explanations for excess entry: blind spot, illusion of control, and joy of winning, none of which receive empirical support. We provide a novel theoretical explanation for excess entry based on cumulative prospect theory and test it empirically. Our results suggest that excess entry into highly competitive environments is not caused by a genuine preference for competing, but is instead driven by probability weighting. Market entrants overweight the small probabilities associated with the high payoff outcomes in winner-take-all markets, while they underweight probable failures. This paper was accepted by Yan Chen, behavioral economics and decision analysis. Funding: This work was supported by the Schweizerischer Nationalfonds zur Förderung der Wissenschaftlichen Forschung [Grants 100018_182185 and 26022621] and the Dr. h.c. Emil Zaugg-Fonds [Grant B11162135]. Supplemental Material: The data files and e-companion are available at https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2022.4397 .

Factors contributing to rising cesarean section rates in South Asian countries: A systematic review

Rising cesarean section (CS) rates are a global public health problem. The systematic review investigates key indications for performing CS and factors significantly associated with the rising rate of CS in South Asia. Primary studies in South Asia published between January 2010 and December 2018 were searched using relevant electronic databases: MEDLINE, Scopus, PubMed, Web of Science, CINAHL, NepJOL, and BanglaJOL. A narrative synthesis of the indications for performing CS and factors significantly associated with the rising CS rates was performed using content analysis. A total of 68 studies were included in this review. The most common medical indication for CS was fetal distress, followed by previous CS, antepartum hemorrhage (including placenta previa/abruption), cephalopelvic disproportion, failed induction, hypertensive disorders in pregnancy, oligohydramnios, and non-progress of labor. Maternal request was the most common non-medical indication for conducting CS. Higher maternal age was the most common significant factor associated with the rising CS rate followed by higher maternal education, urban residency, higher economic status, previous CS, pregnancy/childbirth complications, and lower parity/nulliparity. Preference for CS and increasing private number hospital were also factors contributing to the rising rate. Several key indicators and factors significantly associated with rising CS rate are revealed. These key indicators and significant factors reflect the global trend. Reduction in the use of primary CS, unless medically warranted, would help stem rates of CS. Realistic and candid explanation to pregnant women and their families regarding the benefits of vaginal birth for women and babies should form an integral part of maternity care as these are issues of public health.

SN 2020kyg and the rates of faint Iax supernovae from ATLAS

ABSTRACT We present multiwavelength follow-up observations of the ATLAS discovered faint Iax supernova SN 2020kyg that peaked at an absolute magnitude of Mg ≈ −14.9 ± 0.2, making it another member of the faint Iax supernova population. The bolometric light curve requires only ≈7 × 10−3 M⊙ of radioactive 56Ni, with an ejected mass of Mej ∼ 0.4 M⊙ and a low kinetic energy of E ≈ 0.05 ± 0.02 × 1051 erg. We construct a homogeneous volume-limited sample of 902 transients observed by ATLAS within 100 Mpc during a 3.5 yr span. Using this sample, we constrain the rates of faint Iax (Mr ≳ −16) events within 60 Mpc at $12^{+14}_{-8}{{\ \rm per\ cent}}$ of the SN Ia rate. The overall Iax rate, at $15^{+17}_{-9}{{\ \rm per\ cent}}$ of the Ia rate, is dominated by the low-luminosity events, with luminous SNe Iax (Mr ≲ −17.5) like 2002cx and 2005hk, accounting for only $0.9^{+1.1}_{-0.5}{{\ \rm per\ cent}}$ of the Ia rate (a 2σ upper limit of approximately 3 per cent). We favour the hybrid CONe WD + He star progenitor channel involving a failed deflagration of a near Chandrasekhar mass white dwarf, expected to leave a bound remnant and a surviving secondary companion, as a candidate explanation for faint Iax explosions. This scenario requires short delay times, consistent with the observed environments of SNe Iax. Furthermore, binary population synthesis calculations have suggested rates of $1\!-\!18{{\ \rm per\ cent}}$ of the SN Ia rate for this channel, consistent with our rate estimates.

More Than a Momentary Blip in the Universe? Investigating the Link Between Religiousness and Perceived Meaning in Life.

One longitudinal and four cross-sectional studies (total N = 3,141) tested two candidate explanations for the association between religiousness and perceived meaning in life. Religiousness may foster a sense of significance, importance, or mattering-either to others (social mattering) or in the grand scheme of the universe (cosmic mattering)-which, in turn, support perceived meaning. We found that perceived social mattering mediated, but could not fully explain, the link between religiousness and perceived meaning. In contrast, perceived cosmic mattering did fully explain the association. Overall, results suggest that perceived social and cosmic mattering are each part of the explanation. Yet, perceived cosmic mattering appears to be the stronger mechanism. We discuss how religious faith may be especially suited to support such perceptions, making it a partially unique source of felt meaning.

Acute Imidacloprid Exposure Alters Mitochondrial Function in Bumblebee Flight Muscle and Brain.

Mitochondria are intracellular organelles responsible for cellular respiration with one of their major roles in the production of energy in the form of ATP. Activities with increased energetic demand are especially dependent on efficient ATP production, hence sufficient mitochondrial function is fundamental. In bees, flight muscle and the brain have particularly high densities of mitochondria to facilitate the substantial ATP production required for flight activity and neuronal signalling. Neonicotinoids are systemic synthetic insecticides that are widely utilised against crop herbivores but have been reported to cause, by unknown mechanisms, mitochondrial dysfunction, decreasing cognitive function and flight activity among pollinating bees. Here we explore, using high-resolution respirometry, how the neonicotinoid imidacloprid may affect oxidative phosphorylation in the brain and flight muscle of the buff-tailed bumblebee, Bombus terrestris. We find that acute exposure increases routine oxygen consumption in the flight muscle of worker bees. This provides a candidate explanation for prior reports of early declines in flight activity following acute exposure. We further find that imidacloprid increases the maximum electron transport capacity in the brain, with a trend towards increased overall oxygen consumption. However, intra-individual variability is high, limiting the extent to which apparent effects of imidacloprid on brain mitochondria are shown conclusively. Overall, our results highlight the necessity to examine tissue-specific effects of imidacloprid on respiration and energy production.

A Puzzle of Enforceability: Why do Moral Duties Differ in their Enforceability?

Abstract When someone is poised to fail to fulfil a moral duty, we can respond in a variety of ways. We might remind them of their duty, or seek to persuade them through argument. Or we might intervene forcibly to ensure that they act in accordance with their duty. Some duties appear to be such that the duty-bearer can be liable to forcible interference when this is necessary to ensure that they comply with them. We’ll call duties that carry such liabilities enforcement-apt. Not all duties seem to be enforcement-apt. Some, for example, accept that a person in a monogamous marriage has a moral duty to refrain from infidelity, but deny that a spouse can be compelled to comply with their duty to be faithful without transgressing her rights. More controversially, some think that our duties to assist others in severe need are not enforcement-apt. What could explain the contrast between duties that are enforcement-apt while and those that are not? We’ll call this the puzzle of enforceability and our paper considers three broad strategies for responding to it. The first strategy takes the form of identifying some substantive feature or features that are necessary and/or sufficient for a duty to possess some enforcement status. We consider a range of candidate explanations of this sort but find that none are plausible. The second strategy rejects the idea that there are genuinely enforcement-inapt duties and instead seeks to explain why there can nonetheless be marked differences amongst duties concerning how they can be enforced and who can enforce them. We find that this strategy too is largely unsuccessful. The third strategy offered seeks an explanation of differences in enforcement status by appeal to the broader social costs of enforcing certain kinds of duties. We find that this approach holds some promise but note that it requires adopting a controversial set of moral commitments. We conclude by considering our options in the absence of a solution to our puzzle.

A Rigged Game? How Candidate, Partisan, and Electoral Factors Shape Elite Support for the Party Nomination Process

The 2016 presidential nominations revealed deep, yet distinct, divisions within each major party. These divisions persisted and permeated the general election campaign and were reflected in voters’ dissatisfaction with the candidates. Movements such as the “Bernie or Bust” supporters and the “Never-Trumpers” indicated that vocal portions of the parties were dissatisfied with the party nominees or the processes that selected those candidates. There were also indications that many party elites were not pleased with the nomination processes or the outcome; yet, we lack a comprehensive understanding of the extent to which party elites support the nomination process and their party’s nominee and what explains this support. By combining the 2016 Convention Delegate Study and an original dataset of the nomination electoral rules utilized by the states, we assess how candidate, partisan, and electoral factors shape delegate support for the nomination process and nominee. Our analysis reveals that candidate and party-centric explanations better explain delegate views toward the nomination process and nominee than factors related to the electoral context.

The mechanisms underpinning microbial resilience to drying and rewetting – A model analysis

Soil moisture is one of the most important factors controlling the activity and diversity of soil microorganisms. Soils exposed to pronounced cycles of drying and rewetting (D/RW) exhibit disconnected patterns in microbial growth and respiration at RW. These patterns differ depending on the preceding soil moisture history, leading to contrasting amounts of carbon retained in the soil as biomass versus that respired as CO2. The mechanisms underlying these microbially-induced dynamics are still unclear. In this work, we used the process-based soil microbial model EcoSMMARTS to offer candidate explanations for: i) how soil moisture can shape the structure of microbial communities, ii) how soil moisture history affects the responses during D/RW, iii) what microbial mechanisms control the shape, intensity and duration of these responses, and iv) what carbon sources sustain the increased biogeochemical rates after RW. We first evaluated the response to D/RW in bacterial communities previously exposed to two different stress histories (‘moderate’ vs ‘severe’ soil moisture regimes). We found that both the history of soil moisture and the harshness of the dry period preceding the rewetting shaped the structure and physiology of microbial communities. The characteristics of these communities determined the harshness experienced and the nature of the responses to RW obtained. Modelled communities exposed to extended severe conditions showed a resilient response to D/RW, whereas those exposed to moderate environments exhibited a more sensitive response. We then interchanged the soil moisture regimes and found that the progressive adaptation of microbial physiology and structure to new environmental conditions resulted in a switch in the response patterns. These microbial changes also determined the contribution of biomass synthesis, osmoregulation, mineralization by cell residues, and disruption of soil aggregates to CO2 emissions.

Loss Aversion and Health Behaviors: Results from Two Incentivized Economic Experiments.

Experimental research in health economics has analyzed the effects of economic preference parameters such as risk attitude and time preference on the probability of adopting risky health behaviors. However, the existing evidence is mixed and previous research often fails to include controls for other determinants of health behaviors such as personality traits. The aim of this research is to analyze the relationships between an incentivized measure of loss aversion and three health behaviors: smoking, binge drinking, and engaging in physical activity. Loss aversion is a preference measure that has been derived from prospect theory as an alternative approach to analyze decision-making under risk, such as the decision to invest in health capital, and has never been used in an analysis of the determinants of health behaviors before. Using two experimental samples of college students in the Republic of Korea and the United States of America, and controlling for Big Five personality traits and a host of individual-level control variables, there are no statistically significant relationships between loss aversion and the three aforementioned health behaviors, but relationships for Big Five conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism. A candidate explanation might be lack of domain independence for loss aversion. Differences between the Korean and the US samples indicate the possibility of intercultural differences.

Uniqueness in the life sciences: how did the elephant get its trunk?

Researchers in the life sciences often make uniqueness attributions; about branching events generating new species, the developmental processes generating novel traits and the distinctive cultural selection pressures faced by hominins. Yet since uniqueness implies non-recurrence, such attributions come freighted with epistemic consequences. Drawing on the work of Aviezer Tucker, we show that a common reaction to uniqueness attributions is pessimism: both about the strength of candidate explanations as well as the ability to even generate such explanations. Looking at two case studies—elephant trunks and human teaching—we develop a more optimistic account. As we argue, uniqueness attributions are revisable claims about the availability of several different kinds of comparators. Yet even as researchers investigate the availability of such comparators, they are able to mobilize complex sets of empirical and theoretical tools. Rather than hindering scientific investigation, then, we argue that uniqueness attributions often spur the generation of a range of epistemic goods.

Economic Diversity and the Propagation of COVID-19: How Vulnerable is Your City?

The heterogeneity of social and economic systems in known to play an important role in the propagation of contagious pathogens such as the SARS-CoV-2 virus. This heterogeneity, usually attached directly to individuals can also be found systemically in age groups, income brackets, and other important population characteristics. In this article, we identify a set of heterogeneous factors, associated not with individuals but with geographic units that include metropolitan and larger conurbations, that correlate with worse outcomes with respect to the COVID-19 pandemic. A key predictive factor is a lack economic diversity reflected in narrower occupational and industrial compositions. Although the exact mechanism by which these factors induce worse outcomes regarding the control of COVID-19 is not clear, one candidate explanation emerges in the stubbornness of work mobility, where units with lower economic diversity have populations that continue to go to work more than higher diversity units. The effect we identify is, in practice, as strong as many typically accepted drivers of disease propagation such as population.