Shift In Preference Research Articles

Role of STIM1 in the Regulation of Cardiac Energy Substrate Preference.

The heart requires a variety of energy substrates to maintain proper contractile function. Glucose and long-chain fatty acids (FA) are the major cardiac metabolic substrates under physiological conditions. Upon stress, a shift of cardiac substrate preference toward either glucose or FA is associated with cardiac diseases. For example, in pressure-overloaded hypertrophic hearts, there is a long-lasting substrate shift toward glucose, while in hearts with diabetic cardiomyopathy, the fuel is switched toward FA. Stromal interaction molecule 1 (STIM1), a well-established calcium (Ca2+) sensor of endoplasmic reticulum (ER) Ca2+ store, is increasingly recognized as a critical player in mediating both cardiac hypertrophy and diabetic cardiomyopathy. However, the cause-effect relationship between STIM1 and glucose/FA metabolism and the possible mechanisms by which STIM1 is involved in these cardiac metabolic diseases are poorly understood. In this review, we first discussed STIM1-dependent signaling in cardiomyocytes and metabolic changes in cardiac hypertrophy and diabetic cardiomyopathy. Second, we provided examples of the involvement of STIM1 in energy metabolism to discuss the emerging role of STIM1 in the regulation of energy substrate preference in metabolic cardiac diseases and speculated the corresponding underlying molecular mechanisms of the crosstalk between STIM1 and cardiac energy substrate preference. Finally, we briefly discussed and presented future perspectives on the possibility of targeting STIM1 to rescue cardiac metabolic diseases. Taken together, STIM1 emerges as a key player in regulating cardiac energy substrate preference, and revealing the underlying molecular mechanisms by which STIM1 mediates cardiac energy metabolism could be helpful to find novel targets to prevent or treat cardiac metabolic diseases.

Is there a generational shift in preferences for forest carbon sequestration vs. preservation of agricultural landscapes?

Afforestation and reforestation are considered important measures for climate change mitigation. Because the land area available for tree planting may serve multiple purposes, striking the right balance between climate goals and other objectives is crucial. We conducted a survey of the Norwegian population to investigate potential land-use conflicts that may arise from executing a large-scale afforestation programme. Respondents were presented with three land-use alternatives to replace formerly grazed agricultural land. We used manipulated landscape photos to elicit their underlying value orientations. We combined multiple correspondence analysis with latent class regression models to reveal preference heterogeneity. Our models grouped respondents into three latent classes, with 24%, 24% and 52%, respectively, expressing a preference for forest carbon sequestration, recreation or agriculture as the most crucial land-use function to be retained. Birth year emerged as a strong predictor of class membership. Specifically, generations born before 1970 were more inclined to support the continuation of agricultural landscapes, while those born in 1980 and later showed a stronger inclination towards natural forest succession for carbon sequestration or recreational purposes. Quantitatively, every 10-year reduction in age increased the odds of a respondent belonging to the forestation or recreation class (relative to the agricultural class) by a factor of 2. Interestingly, even among respondents who were classified as most climate concerned, natural forests were 50% more likely to be preferred over monoculture spruce plantation as a policy option. This suggests that there may be public resistance to spruce planting for climate mitigation purposes in Norway.

Size-selective microplastic uptake by freshwater organisms: Fish, mussel, and zooplankton

Microplastics, as an emergent pollutant, have garnered substantial attention within aquatic environments, yet a significant knowledge gap persists regarding the interplay of organism size and pollution impacts on microplastic uptake in freshwater ecosystems. The main aim of the current study is to assess the microplastic ingestion by aquatic organisms across diverse trophic levels. To achieve this objective, zooplankton, mussels (Anodonta anatina), and fish (Carassius gibelio) were collected from the highly polluted Susurluk River Basin in Türkiye. The size distribution encompassed 160.8 ± 56.9 μm for the prevailing zooplankton, 6.9 ± 2.2 cm for mussel, and 20.4 ± 3.1 cm for fish, respectively. While no microplastic ingestion was observed among zooplankton, the finding highlights the influence of body-size and pollution on microplastic ingestion. In contrast, A. anatina and C. gibelio contained 617 and 792 microplastic particles, respectively. Predominantly, fibers emerged as the most prevalent microplastic type across trophic levels (except zooplankton) followed by films. Notably, only fish exhibited fragments within their gastrointestinal tract. A substantial correlation emerged between microplastic abundance and mussel size and weight, but no such correlation manifested for fish. The study also revealed a positive link between microplastic count and turbidity (phosphate and high Chl a level), impacting mussel ingestion capacity due to the variability in the food availability and potential shifts in feeding preferences. Conversely, no distinct pattern emerged for fish concerning water quality parameters and ingested microplastics. Consequently, our study underscores diverse microplastic uptake patterns in freshwater ecosystems, with a predominant frequency of microplastics falling with the 0.3 mm–3.0 mm range, emphasizing the significance of size-selective uptake by organisms.

The accumulation of anthropogenic stressors induces a progressive shift in the ecological preferences and morphological traits shared by riparian plant communities

Abstract In riverine ecosystems, human‐induced stressors related to flow regulation and bank stabilisation have accumulated over time. The restoration of these highly anthropised ecosystems has become a major issue over the last few decades, with ambitious stated objectives. However, while the individual impact of flow regulation and channelisation on river functioning has been extensively studied, the response of ecological communities to multiple co‐occurring human‐induced stressors remains largely unexplored. Using a sampling design based on five river reaches in the Rhône catchment, ranging from unregulated in flow and bedload transport to intensively regulated reaches, we sought to understand how the accumulation of anthropogenic stressors influenced the functional response of riparian plants communities on gravel bars. By using 12 ecological and morphological traits, we performed a classification analysis to construct six riparian guilds and investigated whether their representativeness, as well as the mean value of individual traits, varied with increasing levels of anthropogenic stressors. Species cover and redundancy in several guilds increased or decreased significantly with increasing pressures. Thus, the guild of small taproot herbs with low nutrient and soil moisture requirements (xero‐oligotro‐taproot species guild) and the guild of taproot herbs adapted to very bright and dry conditions (mesoxero‐mesotro‐taproot species guild) dominated the unregulated reaches with active bedload transport. Conversely, regulated reaches with stabilised baseflow and inactive transport were dominated by the guild of flood‐tolerant trees (hygro‐perennial tall species guild) and the guild of vegetatively reproducing and flood‐tolerant perennial herbs (hygro‐perennial clonal species guild). Analysis of individual traits revealed a shift in environmental conditions, from full light to shade tolerance and from dry to humid, with increasing anthropogenic stressors. In response to this decrease in drought levels, plants traits shifted from annual to perennial species, from sexual to vegetative strategies and from taproots to a fibrous root system. Our results highlight the accumulated effects that anthropogenic stressors can have on riparian communities, inducing a progressive shift in certain traits related to life history, reproductive strategies, and drought adaptations. This effect on a set of shared traits reveals the strong influence that human infrastructures can have on the ecological niche of species and the morphological adaptations of riparian vegetation. From an applied point of view, and for highly anthropised rivers, our results suggest that restoration actions targeting a single stressor will not be sufficient to reorient riparian plant communities towards an ecological state closer to reference systems. Since human‐induced stressors have often deeply altered the flow and sediment regimes of rivers, a more integrated approach based on the restoration of erosion and flooding processes is essential to allow the expression of a wider diversity of riparian plant communities and habitats.

Causal Disentangled Recommendation against User Preference Shifts

Recommender systems easily face the issue of user preference shifts. User representations will become out-of-date and lead to inappropriate recommendations if user preference has shifted over time. To solve the issue, existing work focuses on learning robust representations or predicting the shifting pattern. There lacks a comprehensive view to discover the underlying reasons for user preference shifts. To understand the preference shift, we abstract a causal graph to describe the generation procedure of user interaction sequences. Assuming user preference is stable within a short period, we abstract the interaction sequence as a set of chronological environments. From the causal graph, we find that the changes of some unobserved factors (e.g., becoming pregnant) cause preference shifts between environments. Besides, the fine-grained user preference over item categories sparsely affects the interactions with different items. Inspired by the causal graph, our key considerations to handle preference shifts lie in modeling the interaction generation procedure by: (1) capturing the preference shifts across environments for accurate preference prediction and (2) disentangling the sparse influence from user preference to interactions for accurate effect estimation of preference. To this end, we propose a Causal Disentangled Recommendation (CDR) framework, which captures preference shifts via a temporal variational autoencoder and learns the sparse influence from multiple environments. Specifically, an encoder is adopted to infer the unobserved factors from user interactions while a decoder is to model the interaction generation process. Besides, we introduce two learnable matrices to disentangle the sparse influence from user preference to interactions. Last, we devise a multi-objective loss to optimize CDR. Extensive experiments on three datasets show the superiority of CDR in enhancing the generalization ability under user preference shifts.

Shift in symbiotic lifestyle as the major process shaping the evolution of pea crabs (Decapoda: Brachyura: Pinnotheroidea)

The pea crabs, superfamily Pinnotheroidea, are exceptional among brachyuran crabs in their diverse symbiotic associations involving both inquilinism and protective symbiosis. While this group presents a rare opportunity for evolutionary comparative study of host switching and morphological evolution in marine macroinvertebrates, previous phylogenetic studies have been focused on systematics. Here, we reconstructed the most extensive phylogeny of Pinnotheroidea based on two mitochondrial and six nuclear markers, with the aim of elucidating the host switching pathways and the correlation between symbiotic lifestyles and selected morphological adaptations. Ancestral state reconstruction of host association revealed a monophyletic origin of symbiosis in the form of inquilinism. Subsequent shifts in microhabitat preference for burrows or worm tubes, and the move to protective symbiosis, primarily in the switch to mollusc endosymbiosis, contributed to radiation in Pinnotheridae. Further parallel colonisations of echinoderms and tunicates occurred but did not lead to extensive diversification, except in the Clypeasterophilus + Dissodactylus lineage, which experienced a unique switch to echinoderm ectosymbiosis. The evolution of the third maxillipeds, carapace shape and ambulatory pereiopods suggests a rather strong coupling with the symbiotic lifestyle (whether inquilinism or protective symbiosis). Phenotypic diversity of these characters was higher among species engaged in protective symbiosis, with convergence in form (or function) among those sharing the same host affiliation. Species having different host affiliations or symbiotic lifestyles might also exhibit convergence in the form of the three morphological traits, suggesting a common adaptive value of the specialisations. Pinnotherid crabs overall exhibited a lower trait diversity than the also symbiotic palaemonid shrimps with comparable species diversity. This may plausibly be attributed to differences in potential for morphological modification to serve additional functions among the traits analysed in the two groups, the less frequent host switching and the less diverse host affiliations, and thus a less complicated evolutionary history in pinnotherids.

Reconsidering Miranda rights: Modeling strategic action during the invocation stage of a police interrogation

This paper develops a method to identify manipulation of custodial suspects who attempt to invoke the Miranda right to legal counsel during a custodial interrogation. The method, developed from a combination of framing theory and hypergame theory, first documents the point where custodial suspects’ preferences shift and second identifies the proximate cause of that shift using excerpts from legal cases. The method applies linguistic analysis within a hypergame framework to reveal rational behavior of custodial suspects who, despite owning an initial preference to invoke, waive their right to counsel without explicit pressure from police. The paper terms this shift in preferences “manipulation” adding the concept to hypergames and to the literature on noncooperative discursive exchanges.

Parental investment, school choice, and the persistent benefits of an early childhood intervention

We present evidence from a randomised experiment testing the impacts of a six-month early childhood home-visiting program on child outcomes and parental investment behaviour at school entry. Two and a half years after completion of the program, we find large persistent effects on parental investment at home, as well as large effects on preschool enrolment. Children in treatment villages were enrolled earlier and in higher quality preschools, the latter reflecting a shift in preferences over preschool attributes towards quality. Finally, we find evidence that the program increased child working memory, but do not find strong evidence of impacts on other cognitive sub-domains or on non-cognitive skills of children at school entry.

Influence of landfill use on nest‐site selection and breeding success in white storks

AbstractLandscape transformation by humans through habitat degradation, agriculture intensification and urbanization results in the loss of natural feeding areas. However, populations of certain species have adapted to these changes and benefit from some anthropogenic food sources as well as an absence of predators and milder environmental conditions in urban landscapes. Although breeding near landfills secures food availability and saves energy and time spent on foraging activities, the poor food quality and risks associated with these facilities imply some fitness costs. Our study shows the effects of landfills on nest‐site selection and breeding success in white storks (Ciconia ciconia). Birds breeding near landfills occupy more urban areas where many structures are available to nest, while breeding pairs 20–30 km from landfills select nest sites with high‐quality food sources in the vicinity such as pastures, meadows and agro‐forestry areas. Furthermore, we demonstrate that habitat quality in the surrounding area is more relevant than landfills for breeding outcomes, but both of these are crucial for brood size. The number of fledglings was higher at a medium distance to the landfill than at 20–30 km from the landfill, but not near the landfill (0–10 km). This suggests that the best strategy includes food from landfills as a complementary or alternative food source. Future studies should further investigate if these shifts in habitat preference are permanent, and the potential impact of habitat degradation and landfill closures at a population level, for this species.

Dividends, trust, and firm value

AbstractWe find evidence that investors value dividends differently depending on their level of trust. Our tests indicate that investor demand for dividend-paying stocks increases as trust decreases, and that this relationship affects market values. We begin with survey evidence showing that people think accounting fraud is less likely among dividend payers and that people with low trust are more likely to hold dividend-paying stocks. We then empirically exploit accounting fraud discoveries within a mutual fund’s portfolio as a shock to trust. In response to these shocks, we show that mutual funds tilt their portfolios toward dividend-paying stocks. This result is not explained by a shift in risk preferences, indicating that these institutional investors are seeking dividends in particular rather than stable firms that just happen to pay dividends. Finally, we provide evidence that dividend payers experience a premium in their market values relative to non-payers when their investor base becomes less trusting.

Institutionalization of Global English in Media in Multilingual Countries

Studying the areas where minority languages can be strengthened through their use and promotion as functional languages is crucial right now. The purpose of the current research is to examine the institution of media in multilingual communities. Multilingual, multicultural, and multiethnic populations can be found in Jammu and Kashmir, a union territory of India, particularly in the region of Kashmir division. In addition to the linguistic diversity, there are two non-indigenous languages—Urdu and English serving various practical domains at present. This essay aims to provide a thorough explanation of how media is crucial in forming the linguistic repertoire of Kashmiri multilingual society. And to what extent does the media influence Kashmiri society’s shift in linguistic preferences and cultural paradigms? The statistical analysis of the data demonstrates the perceptual shift in the direction of language preferences by three different age groups in favour of three languages: English, Urdu, and Kashmiri. This demonstrates how Urdu and English are progressively replacing native languages in the media, especially among young people in Srinagar.

Forced Migration and Local Public Policies: Evidence from Post-War West Germany

Abstract We study the effect of forced migration on public policy setting in the migrant-receiving country. After World War II, eight million expelled Germans arrived in West Germany within 5 years. We use regional variation in the population share of forced migrants across West German cities to estimate the effect of this inflow on cities’ taxation and spending decisions. To identify a causal effect, we pursue an instrumental variable strategy that leverages push factors of the expulsions while being orthogonal to local conditions in the destination regions. Our results show that cities with high inflows of forced migrants increased spending on welfare and education, decreased spending on infrastructure, raised local taxes, and incurred more debt. Part of these effects can be attributed to shifts in political preferences. The migrants held voting rights upon arrival and supported parties that explicitly catered to their interests and needs.

Moving to the country: Understanding the effects of Covid-19 on property values and farmland development risk

As human populations grow, one strategy for meeting housing demand is through the development of agricultural land and other open space, which can generate negative externalities. This may be addressed at local, state, or federal levels with land-use planning, including farmland preservation policies. Efficient land-use planning in the presence of competing land uses requires knowledge of development risk, housing preferences, and the full costs of farmland loss. We conduct a national scale hedonic analysis using the ZTRAX program U.S. housing transaction data to investigate how COVID-19 has affected property prices in suburban and rural areas with farmland at high risk of development, for the purpose of understanding the effects of COVID-19 driven shifts in housing location preferences. Our analysis demonstrates that the pandemic caused differential price impacts across the 33 states that we analyzed. Furthermore, our estimates suggest heterogeneous price effects driven by the characteristics of nearby urban areas, with prices appreciating faster on land at risk located near smaller urban areas than those near larger urban areas. Our analysis finds that the spatial pattern of development pressure on agricultural lands, as measured through transaction prices, changed in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Preferences of Food Consumption - Local Food vs Organic Food

Objective: The purpose of this research is to understand the change in food consumption patterns of consumers of organic food especially after the pandemic. Theoretical framework: This study draws suggestions from attitude-behaviour relationship model. The internal factors are - attitudes towards local food, and attitudes towards supporting the local economy, while the external factors are - high price and trust issues related to organic food. Method: Data from organic food consumers was quantitatively analysed using multiple regression in SPSS. A seven point Likert scale was considered to measure the responses and a Cronbach alpha score of 0.8 indicated that the constructs were reliable. Results and conclusion: The findings suggest organic food consumers who have an attitude towards local food consumption and an attitude to support local economy have positive intention towards local food purchase. Also the high price and trust issues related to organic food positively influence the intention to purchase local food. Implications of the research: This study uncovers the changes in food consumption pattern during and after the pandemic. COVID-19 has affected people financially too and affordability has become a key. Marketers will have to come up with affordable solutions to market healthy food. Originality/value: The shift in consumers' preference from organic to local has implications for the environment and the society. Local food is found to be sustainable, healthy and less expensive. Local food systems cater to food traceability and high food safety.

A Comparison of Indonesian and Dutch Generation-Z Preference Shift from Global Fashion Brands to Locals after Covid-19 Pandemic

The covid-19 pandemic which outbroke four years ago has shifted how people live, work, and shop. Governments restrictions have made people develop new habits that can be done from home. Fashion industry as one of the most influential industries in Indonesia, as well as something that was always being traded offline, becomes one of the impacted areas. The less bodily experience of fashion online shopping and more cost-conscious consumers made this industry experienced a dip especially in 2019 and 2020. However, preliminary findings suggest that this condition benefits local fashion businesses which have been operating online since before this problem emerged. Therefore, this study is conducted to investigate the post-covid-19 pandemic preferences of generation-Z consumers regarding local and global fashion brands, focusing on a cross-cultural comparison between Indonesia and the Netherlands. The research aims to understand the factors influencing Generation-Z’s fashion brand preferences and explore potential differences between the two countries. This study is done using quantitative method with online questionnaires tool distributed to a sample of generation-Z consumers from two universities in Indonesia and Netherlands. Then, the data is processed using partial least square-structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM). Results show that generation-Z of both countries prefer local fashion brands compared to global ones. The difference between the two countries is Indonesian participants emphasize the importance of brands interactivity, while the impact of it to Dutch participants is less significant. The study’s implications highlight the evolving Generation-Z consumer behavior after the pandemic especially the shift of preference to local fashion brands. Understanding these preferences can assist fashion business owners and marketing teams in tailoring their strategies to cater the current needs and values of Generation-Z consumers. Furthermore, the cross-cultural comparison sheds light for fashion business owners who are planning to expand their markets to developed countries with similar characteristics as Netherlands.

Hijrah and changing religious preferences in contemporary Islamic legal practice

This research examines how urban Muslim communities in Purwokerto understand and practice religion in the area of muamalah (social relationships between people). Religious practice in urban Muslim communities is different from other religious communities. The intersection between the reality of modernity, Islamicity, and identity provides a model for distinguishing contemporary Muslim religious practices. This study is based on field research employing a phenomenological approach. Participatory observation was used to collect data from two mosques in Purwokerto City: the General Soedirman Grand Mosque and the Gelora Indah Mosque. Both mosques serve as the hub of religious discourse for Purwokerto's urban Muslim community, and they host a variety of religious studies on a regular basis. In-depth interviews were performed with worshippers from the two mosques by the researchers. Secondary data is derived from studies, journals, books, and other sources. This article concludes that urban Muslim identity is manifested in the shift away from usury practices and the choice of halal products. Studies in urban mosques and social media cannot isolate the rhetoric from the social formation of urban Muslims. In this environment, hijrah (shifting paradigm) has emerged as one of the trends that give rise to new nuances and views of any Islamic legal concept that is an annotated version of older works. Because of these shifts in preferences, the discipline of Islamic law, particularly fiqh muamalah, has become one of the most important areas for the expression of religious experience in the lives of urban Muslims

Deciphering the influence of the macroeconomic environment on economic preferences: A comprehensive analysis of the Global Preferences Survey

This study investigates the nuanced impact of macroeconomic conditions on various economic preferences, broadening the scope beyond conventional risk preference analysis. Utilizing the Global Preference Survey data with a sophisticated nonlinear regression model, we reveal that favorable macroeconomic conditions boost patience, yet simultaneously reduce risk aversion, altruism, willingness to penalize unfair actions, and trust levels. These significant shifts in economic preferences, driven by macroeconomic scenarios, carry substantial implications for financial markets, investment behaviors, and the broader macroeconomy, necessitating in-depth exploration in financial research and policy design.

Using connectome-based models of working memory to predict emotion regulation in older adults.

Older adulthood is characterized by enhanced emotional well-being potentially resulting from greater reliance on adaptive emotion regulation strategies. However, not all older adults demonstrate an increase in emotional well-being and instead rely on maladaptive emotion regulation strategies. An important moderator of age-related shifts in strategy preferences is working memory and its underlying neural circuitry. As such, individual differences in the neural integrity underlying working memory may predict older adults' emotion regulation strategy preferences. Our study used whole-brain working memory networks-derived from young adults using connectome-based predictive modeling-to predict working memory performance and acceptance strategy use in healthy older adults. Older adults (N = 110) completed baseline assessments as part of a randomized controlled trial examining the impact of mind-body interventions on healthy aging. Our results revealed that the working memory networks predicted working memory accuracy but not acceptance use or difficulties in emotion regulation in older adults. Individual differences in working memory performance, but not working memory networks, moderated relationships between image intensity and acceptance use. These findings highlight that robust neural markers of working memory generalize to an independent sample of healthy older adults but may not generalize beyond cognitive domains to predict emotion-based behaviors.

The world Delhi wants: official Indian conceptions of international order, c. 1998–2023

Abstract Examining India's official thinking on international order over the past quarter-century, this article maps the shift in the country's preference from liberal internationalism to the rules-based international order (RIO). It argues that despite Delhi's current narrative of a ‘New India’, the country's order conception shows continuity in being essentially reformist and mostly consistent with the pillars of the 1945 order. While its marked unease with liberalism is a consequence of the changes afoot in India's domestic politics, this development is consistent with, and contributes to, the decline of liberalism as a global force. The current Indian preference for economic protectionism also reflects the larger trend of economic deglobalization. The description of India as a resurgent civilizational state rather than a liberal democracy, while discursively arresting, does not indicate a divergence with the West on the grand strategic question of order-building. Upon reconstructing the Indian iteration of the RIO, the article finds it to be geographical—focused on Asia and the Indo-Pacific—rather than universal. Finally, it posits that India's persisting problem of inadequate power and its risk-averse responses to great power revisionism are likely to undermine its efforts to effectively partner with democracies to shape the emergent RIO.

The home state effect: How subnational governments shape climate coalitions

AbstractOrganized business interests often seek to block public interest regulations. But whether firms oppose regulation depends on institutional context. We argue that, in federal systems, sub‐national policies and politics can have a home state effect on firms' national policy preferences and the lobbying coalitions they join. State policies that force firms to absorb regulatory cost can reduce the marginal cost of national policies, leading to preference shifts. In addition, firms regulated at the state level have incentives to strategically align with their state governments to avoid future regulatory cost. We test our argument in the context of U.S. climate politics, matching original data on the positions of electric utilities toward the Clean Power Plan and data on ad hoc coalition membership with data measuring state policy stringency and state government positions. Quantitative evidence is consistent with hypotheses: both state policies and state politics influence utilities' positions on national climate policy. Qualitative evidence from elite interviews helps clarify the roles of different mechanisms. Our findings underscore the importance of sub‐national governments in shaping national lobbying coalitions.