Human infants are aroused and concerned by moral transgressions.

Humans reason and care about ethical issues, such as avoiding unnecessary harm. But what enables us to develop a moral capacity? This question dates back at least to ancient Greece and typically results in the traditional opposition between sentimentalism (the view that morality is mainly driven by socioaffective processes) and rationalism [the view that morality is mainly driven by (socio)cognitive processes or reason]. Here, we used multiple methods (eye-tracking and observations of expressive behaviors) to assess the role of both cognitive and socioaffective processes in infants' developing morality. We capitalized on the distinction between moral (e.g., harmful) and conventional (e.g., harmless) transgressions to investigate whether 18-mo-old infants understand actions as distinctively moral as opposed to merely disobedient or unexpected. All infants watched the same social scene, but based on prior verbal interactions, an actor's tearing apart of a picture (an act not intrinsically harmful) with a tool constituted either a conventional (wrong tool), a moral (producing harm), or no violation (correct tool). Infants' anticipatory looks differentiated between conventional and no violation conditions, suggesting that they processed the verbal interactions and built corresponding expectations. Importantly, infants showed a larger increase in pupil size (physiological arousal), and more expressions indicating empathic concern, in response to a moral than to a conventional violation. Thus, infants differentiated between harmful and harmless transgressions based solely on prior verbal interactions. Together, these convergent findings suggest that human infants' moral development is fostered by both sociocognitive (inferring harm) and socioaffective processes (empathic concern for others' welfare).

Laser-Pulse-Length Effects in Ultrafast Laser Desorption.

Shortening the laser pulse length opens up new opportunities for laser desorption (LD) of molecules, with benefits for mass spectrometry (MS) sampling and ionization. The capability to ablate any material without the need for an absorbing matrix and the decrease of thermal damage and molecular fragmentation has promoted various applications with very different parameters and postionization techniques. However, the key issues of the optimum laser pulse length and intensity to achieve efficient and gentle desorption of molecules for postionization in MS are not resolved, although these parameters determine the costs and complexity of the required laser system. Here, we address this research gap with a systematic study on the effect of the pulse length on the LD of molecules. Keeping all other optical and ionization parameters constant, we directly compared the pulses in the femtosecond, picosecond, and nanosecond range with respect to LD-induced fragmentation and desorption efficiency. To represent real-world applications, we investigated the LD of over-the-counter medicaments naproxen and ibuprofen directly from tablets as well as the LD of retene and ship emission aerosols from a quartz filter. With our study design, we excluded interfering effects on fragmentation and LD efficiency from, for example, collisional cooling or postionization by performing the experiments in vacuum with resonance-enhanced multiphoton ionization as the postionization technique. Regarding LD-induced fragmentation, we already found benefits for the picosecond pulses. However, the efficiency of LD was found to continuously increase with decreasing pulse length, pointing to the application potential of ultrashort pulses in trace analytics. Because many interfering effects beyond the LD pulse length could be excluded in the experiment, our results may be directly transferable to the LD applied in other techniques.

Rooting depth and xylem vulnerability are independent woody plant traits jointly selected by aridity, seasonality, and water table depth.

Evolutionary radiations of woody taxa within arid environments were made possible by multiple trait innovations including deep roots and embolism-resistant xylem, but little is known about how these traits have coevolved across the phylogeny of woody plants or how they jointly influence the distribution of species. We synthesized global trait and vegetation plot datasets to examine how rooting depth and xylem vulnerability across 188 woody plant species interact with aridity, precipitation seasonality, and water table depth to influence species occurrence probabilities across all biomes. Xylem resistance to embolism and rooting depth are independent woody plant traits that do not exhibit an interspecific trade-off. Resistant xylem and deep roots increase occurrence probabilities in arid, seasonal climates over deep water tables. Resistant xylem and shallow roots increase occurrence probabilities in arid, nonseasonal climates over deep water tables. Vulnerable xylem and deep roots increase occurrence probabilities in arid, nonseasonal climates over shallow water tables. Lastly, vulnerable xylem and shallow roots increase occurrence probabilities in humid climates. Each combination of trait values optimizes occurrence probabilities in unique environmental conditions. Responses of deeply rooted vegetation may be buffered if evaporative demand changes faster than water table depth under climate change.

Great apes and human children rationally monitor their decisions.

Several species can detect when they are uncertain about what decision to make-revealed by opting out of the choice, or by seeking more information before deciding. However, we do not know whether any nonhuman animals recognize when they need more information to make a decision because new evidence contradicts an already-formed belief. Here, we explore this ability in great apes and human children. First, we show that after great apes saw new evidence contradicting their belief about which of two rewards was greater, they stopped to recheck the evidence for their belief before deciding. This indicates the ability to keep track of the reasons for their decisions, or 'rational monitoring' of the decision-making process. Children did the same at 5 years of age, but not at 3 years. In a second study, participants formed a belief about a reward's location, but then a social partner contradicted them, by picking the opposite location. This time even 3-year-old children rechecked the evidence, while apes ignored the disagreement. While apes were sensitive only to the conflict in physical evidence, the youngest children were more sensitive to peer disagreement than conflicting physical evidence.

Preschoolers agree to and enforce prosocial, but not selfish, sharing norms.

Young children act prosocially in many contexts but are somewhat selfish when it comes to sharing their resources in individual decision-making situations (e.g., the dictator game). But when deciding collectively, would they make it a binding rule for themselves and others to act selfishly in a resource sharing context? Here we used a novel "group dictator game" in a norm creation paradigm to investigate whether 3- and 5-year-olds (N = 48) would agree to and enforce a selfish or prosocial sharing norm. Children from a Western cultural background were paired with two puppets at a time. Each group member had an endowment of four stickers and faced a photograph of a recipient. In the prosocial norm condition a proposer puppet suggested to share half of one's endowment, whereas in the selfish norm condition another proposer suggested to share nothing. The protagonist puppet then either followed or violated the suggested norm. We found that 5-year-olds (but not 3-year-olds) rejected selfish proposals more often than prosocial proposals. Importantly, older (but not younger) preschoolers also enforced the prosocial (but not the selfish) norm by protesting normatively and intervening when the protagonist acted selfishly (and thus violated the norm). These results indicate that a collective decision-making context may enhance preschoolers' prosociality and that moral considerations on the content of a proposed sharing rule influence preschoolers' creation and enforcement of such nonarbitrary norms.

Deconvolution of cellular subsets in human tissue based on targeted DNA methylation analysis at individual CpG sites.

BACKGROUND: The complex composition of different cell types within a tissue can be estimated by deconvolution of bulk gene expression profiles or with various single-cell sequencing approaches. Alternatively, DNA methylation (DNAm) profiles have been used to establish an atlas for multiple human tissues and cell types. DNAm is particularly suitable for deconvolution of cell types because each CG dinucleotide (CpG site) has only two states per DNA strand-methylated or non-methylated-and these epigenetic modifications are very consistent during cellular differentiation. So far, deconvolution of DNAm profiles implies complex signatures of many CpGs that are often measured by genome-wide analysis with Illumina BeadChip microarrays. In this study, we investigated if the characterization of cell types in tissue is also feasible with individual cell type-specific CpG sites, which can be addressed by targeted analysis, such as pyrosequencing. RESULTS: We compiled and curated 579 Illumina 450k BeadChip DNAm profiles of 14 different non-malignant human cell types. A training and validation strategy was applied to identify and test for cell type-specific CpGs. We initially focused on estimating the relative amount of fibroblasts using two CpGs that were either hypermethylated or hypomethylated in fibroblasts. The combination of these two DNAm levels into a "FibroScore" correlated with the state of fibrosis and was associated with overall survival in various types of cancer. Furthermore, we identified hypomethylated CpGs for leukocytes, endothelial cells, epithelial cells, hepatocytes, glia, neurons, fibroblasts, and induced pluripotent stem cells. The accuracy of this eight CpG signature was tested in additional BeadChip datasets of defined cell mixtures and the results were comparable to previously published signatures based on several thousand CpGs. Finally, we established and validated pyrosequencing assays for the relevant CpGs that can be utilized for classification and deconvolution of cell types. CONCLUSION: This proof of concept study demonstrates that DNAm analysis at individual CpGs reflects the cellular composition of cellular mixtures and different tissues. Targeted analysis of these genomic regions facilitates robust methods for application in basic research and clinical settings.

Similar factors underlie tree abundance in forests in native and alien ranges.

AIM: Alien plant species can cause severe ecological and economic problems, and therefore attract a lot of research interest in biogeography and related fields. To identify potential future invasive species, we need to better understand the mechanisms underlying the abundances of invasive tree species in their new ranges, and whether these mechanisms differ between their native and alien ranges. Here, we test two hypotheses: that greater relative abundance is promoted by (a) functional difference from locally co-occurring trees, and (b) higher values than locally co-occurring trees for traits linked to competitive ability. LOCATION: Global. TIME PERIOD: Recent. MAJOR TAXA STUDIED: Trees. METHODS: We combined three global plant databases: sPlot vegetation-plot database, TRY plant trait database and Global Naturalized Alien Flora (GloNAF) database. We used a hierarchical Bayesian linear regression model to assess the factors associated with variation in local abundance, and how these relationships vary between native and alien ranges and depend on species' traits. RESULTS: In both ranges, species reach highest abundance if they are functionally similar to co-occurring species, yet are taller and have higher seed mass and wood density than co-occurring species. MAIN CONCLUSIONS: Our results suggest that light limitation leads to strong environmental and biotic filtering, and that it is advantageous to be taller and have denser wood. The striking similarities in abundance between native and alien ranges imply that information from tree species' native ranges can be used to predict in which habitats introduced species may become dominant.

Eighteen-Month-Old Infants Correct Non-Conforming Actions by Others.

At around their third birthday, children begin to enforce social norms on others impersonally, often using generic normative language, but little is known about the developmental building blocks of this abstract norm understanding. Here, we investigate whether even toddlers show signs of enforcing on others interpersonally how "we" do things. In an initial dyad, 18-month-old infants learnt a simple game-like action from an adult. In two experiments, the adult either engaged infants in a normative interactive activity (stressing that this is the way "we" do it) or, as a non-normative control, marked the same action as idiosyncratic, based on individual preference. In a test dyad, infants had the opportunity to spontaneously intervene when a puppet partner performed an alternative action. Infants intervened, corrected, and directed the puppet more in the normative than in the non-normative conditions. These findings suggest that, during the second year of life, infants develop second-personal normative expectations about their partner's behavior ("You should do X!") in social interactions, thus making an important step toward understanding the normative structure of human cultural activities. These simple normative expectations will later be scaled up to group-minded and abstract social norms.

Tailoring the mode-switching dynamics in quantum-dot micropillar lasers via time-delayed optical feedback.

Microlasers are ideal candidates to bring the fascinating variety of nonlinear complex dynamics found in delay-coupled systems to the realm of quantum optics. Particularly attractive is the possibility of tailoring the devices' emission properties via non-invasive delayed optical coupling. However, until now scarce research has been done in this direction. Here, we experimentally and theoretically investigate the effects of delayed optical feedback on the mode-switching dynamics of an electrically driven bimodal quantum-dot micropillar laser, characterizing its impact on the micropillar's output power, optical spectrum and photon statistics. Feedback is found to influence the switching dynamics and its characteristics time scales. In addition, stochastic switching is reduced with the subsequent impact on the microlaser photon statistics. Our results contribute to the comprehension of feedback-induced phenomena in micropillar lasers and pave the way towards the external control and tailoring of the properties of these key systems for the nanophotonics community.

Climatic differentiation in polyploid apomictic Ranunculus auricomus complex in Europe.

BACKGROUND: Polyploidy and apomixis are important factors influencing plant distributions often resulting in range shifts, expansions and geographical parthenogenesis. We used the Ranunculus auricomus complex as a model to asses if the past and present distribution and climatic preferences were determined by these phenomena. RESULTS: Ecological differentiation among diploids and polyploids was tested by comparing the sets of climatic variables and distribution modelling using 191 novel ploidy estimations and 561 literature data. Significant differences in relative genome size on the diploid level were recorded between the "auricomus" and "cassubicus" groups and several new diploid occurrences were found in Slovenia and Hungary. The current distribution of diploids overlapped with the modelled paleodistribution (22 kyr BP), except Austria and the Carpathians, which are proposed to be colonized later on from refugia in the Balkans. Current and historical presence of diploids from the R. auricomus complex is suggested also for the foothills of the Caucasus. Based on comparisons of the climatic preferences polyploids from the R. auricomus complex occupy slightly drier and colder habitats than the diploids. CONCLUSIONS: The change of reproductive mode and selection due to competition with the diploid ancestors may have facilitated the establishment of polyploids within the R. auricomus complex in environments slightly cooler and drier, than those tolerated by diploid ancestors. Much broader distribution of polyploid apomicts may have been achieved due to faster colonization mediated by uniparental reproductive system.

Preschoolers, but not adults, treat instrumental norms as categorical imperatives.

Hypothetical norms apply only when agents have specific goals, whereas categorical norms apply regardless of what agents want. Deciding whether a rule is hypothetical or categorical is crucial for navigating many social situations encountered by children and adults. The current research investigated whether preschoolers viewed instrumental norms (about how to accomplish practical tasks), prudential norms (pertaining to agent welfare), and moral norms (pertaining to others' welfare) as hypothetical or categorical. A second main question was whether preschoolers draw distinctions between instrumental and other norms. Participants were interviewed about norm violations in which the agent did or did not have the relevant goal. The goal manipulation had no effect on children's judgments of permissibility; most children treated all three norm types as categorical. Nevertheless, children distinguished instrumental events from prudential and moral events along several dimensions. In contrast, participants in two adult samples treated instrumental norms, and some prudential norms, as hypothetical, but treated moral norms as categorical (applicable regardless of agent goal). These findings suggest that preschoolers do not yet reliably distinguish between hypothetical and categorical norms, yet do view rules of instrumental rationality as a distinct type of norms.

The early development of the normative mind.

Normativity is pervasive in everyday human social interactions and perhaps even constitutive of human forms of group and societal living. During the past decade, there has been increased interest in the ontogeny of normativity and the role that norms play in early social reasoning and behavior. Given the ubiquity of normativity, it is vital to investigate the development of children's normative understanding and behavior in a variety of different contexts, ranging from prosocial behavior to rational action or from linguistic competencies to cultural norms and values. Hence, in this special issue on the early development of the normative mind, researchers from different theoretical traditions have employed a number of different methods (e.g., third-party norm enforcement, judgment and reasoning, social behavior) to address different, yet related, research questions about the ontogeny of normativity. Here, we introduce the reader to the current debate and point to important research questions for the field.

Children's evaluation of verified and unverified claims.

Critical to children's learning is the ability to judiciously select what information to accept-to use as the basis for learning and inference-and what information to reject. This becomes especially difficult in a world increasingly inundated with information, where children must carefully reason about the process by which claims are made in order to acquire accurate knowledge. In two experiments, we investigated whether 3- to 7-year-old children (N = 120) understand that factual claims based on verified evidence are more acceptable than claims that have not been sufficiently verified. We found that even at preschool age, children evaluated verified claims as more acceptable than insufficiently verified claims, and that the extent to which they did so was related to their explicit understanding, as evident in their explanations of why those claims were more or less acceptable. These experiments lay the groundwork for an important line of research studying the roots and development of this foundational critical thinking skill.

Children's developing metaethical judgments.

Human adults incline toward moral objectivism but may approach things more relativistically if different cultures are involved. In this study, 4-, 6-, and 9-year-old children (N=136) witnessed two parties who disagreed about moral matters: a normative judge (e.g., judging that it is wrong to do X) and an antinormative judge (e.g., judging that it is okay to do X). We assessed children's metaethical judgment, that is, whether they judged that only one party (objectivism) or both parties (relativism) could be right. We found that 9-year-olds, but not younger children, were more likely to judge that both parties could be right when a normative ingroup judge disagreed with an antinormative extraterrestrial judge (with different preferences and background) than when the antinormative judge was another ingroup individual. This effect was not found in a comparison case where parties disagreed about the possibility of different physical laws. These findings suggest that although young children often exhibit moral objectivism, by early school age they begin to temper their objectivism with culturally relative metaethical judgments.

Young Children See a Single Action and Infer a Social Norm.

Human social life depends heavily on social norms that prescribe and proscribe specific actions. Typically, young children learn social norms from adult instruction. In the work reported here, we showed that this is not the whole story: Three-year-old children are promiscuous normativists. In other words, they spontaneously inferred the presence of social norms even when an adult had done nothing to indicate such a norm in either language or behavior. And children of this age even went so far as to enforce these self-inferred norms when third parties "broke" them. These results suggest that children do not just passively acquire social norms from adult behavior and instruction; rather, they have a natural and proactive tendency to go from "is" to "ought." That is, children go from observed actions to prescribed actions and do not perceive them simply as guidelines for their own behavior but rather as objective normative rules applying to everyone equally.

Young Children Understand the Role of Agreement in Establishing Arbitrary Norms-But Unanimity Is Key.

Human cultural groups value conformity to arbitrary norms (e.g., rituals, games) that are the result of collective "agreement." Ninety-six 3-year-olds had the opportunity to agree upon arbitrary norms with puppets. Results revealed that children normatively enforced these novel norms only on a deviator who had actually entered into the agreement (not on dissenting or ignorant individuals). Interestingly, any dissent during the norm-setting process (even if a majority of 90% preferred one course of action) prevented children from seeing a norm as established for anyone at all. These findings suggest that even young children understand something of the role of agreement in establishing mutually binding social norms, but that their notion of norm formation may be confined to conditions of unanimity.

Young children's behavioral and emotional responses to different social norm violations.

From an early age, children can talk meaningfully about differences between moral and conventional norms. But does their understanding of these differences manifest itself in their actual behavioral and emotional reactions to norm violations? And do children discriminate between norm violations that affect either themselves or a third party? Two studies (N=224) were conducted in which children observed conventional game rule violations and moral transgressions that either disadvantaged themselves directly or disadvantaged an absent third party. Results revealed that 3- and 5-year-olds evaluated both conventional and moral transgressions as normative breaches and protested against them. However, 5-year-olds also clearly discriminated these types of transgressions along further dimensions in that (a) they tattled largely on the moral violation and less on the conventional violation and (b) they showed stronger emotional reactions to moral violations compared to conventional violations. The 3-year-olds' responses to moral and conventional transgressions, however, were less discriminatory, and these younger children responded rather similarly to both kinds of violations. Importantly, most children intervened both as victims of the transgression and as unaffected third parties alike, providing strong evidence for their agent-neutral understanding of social norms.

Preschoolers understand the normativity of cooperatively structured competition.

Human institutional practices often involve competition within a cooperative structure of mutually accepted rules. In a competitive game, for instance, we not only expect adherence to the rules of the game but also expect an opponent who tries to win and, thus, follows a rational game-playing strategy. We had 3- and 5-year-olds (N=48) play for a prize against an opponent (a puppet) who played either rationally (trying to win) or irrationally (helping the children to win) while either following or breaking the rules of the game. Both age groups performed costly protest against an opponent who followed the rules but played irrationally by helping the children to win. When facing a rule-breaking opponent, 3-year-olds protested only the rule breaches of an irrational opponent but not irrational play. Five-year-olds also protested the rule breaches of a rational opponent, but in contrast to the 3-year-olds, they protested irrational behavior even in the context of rule breaches. Moreover, many children, in particular 3-year-olds, refrained from protesting. These findings suggest that 5-year-olds, but not 3-year-olds, fully understand the dual-level normative structure of cooperatively regulated competition.

Teaching versus enforcing game rules in preschoolers' peer interactions.

Children use normative language in two key contexts: when teaching others and when enforcing social norms. We presented pairs of 3- and 5-year-old peers (N=192) with a sorting game in two experimental conditions (in addition to a third baseline condition). In the teaching condition, one child was knowledgeable, whereas the other child was ignorant and so in need of instruction. In the enforcement condition, children learned conflicting rules so that each child was making mistakes from the other's point of view. When teaching rules to an ignorant partner, both age groups used generic normative language ("Bunnies go here"). When enforcing rules on a rule-breaking partner, 3-year-olds used normative utterances that were not generic and aimed at correcting individual behavior ("No, this goes there"), whereas 5-year-olds again used generic normative language, perhaps because they discerned that instruction was needed in this case as well. Young children normatively correct peers differently depending on their assessment of what their wayward partners need to bring them back into line.

Coronary CT angiography in managing atherosclerosis.

Invasive coronary angiography (ICA) was the only method to image coronary arteries for a long time and is still the gold-standard. Technology of noninvasive imaging by coronary computed-tomography angiography (CCTA) has experienced remarkable progress during the last two decades. It is possible to visualize atherosclerotic lesions in the vessel wall in contrast to "lumenography" performed by ICA. Coronary artery disease can be ruled out by CCTA with excellent accuracy. The degree of stenoses is, however, often overestimated which impairs specificity. Atherosclerotic lesions can be characterized as calcified, non-calcified and partially calcified. Calcified plaques are usually quantified using the Agatston-Score. Higher scores are correlated with worse cardiovascular outcome and increased risk of cardiac events. For non-calcified or partially calcified plaques different angiographic findings like positive remodelling, a large necrotic core or spotty calcification more frequently lead to myocardial infarctions. CCTA is an important tool with increasing clinical value for ruling out coronary artery disease or relevant stenoses as well as for advanced risk stratification.