The intercultural trust paradigm: Studying joint cultural interaction and social exchange in real time over the Internet

Distance transcending technology of the Internet generated a new experimental paradigm for the study of intercultural, or joint cultural interaction between members of different societies. University students from Japan, China, and Taiwan participated in experiments involving participants from their own society and another society in real time using an intercultural trust paradigm derived from a game theoretic and evolutionary approach to social exchange. The modified trust game improves on the Prisoner's Dilemma Game by eliminating greed as an explanation for lack of cooperation: the truster unilaterally decides whether or not to trust their exchange partner, and the allocator then decides whether or not to divide the reward fairly between the two of them. Participants earned real money by playing six rounds of one-shot trust games with three in-group members and three out-group members over the Internet. Across three experiments involving two interacting societies each, Japanese were found to be less trusting and trustworthy exchange partners compared to cultural Chinese. This suggests that Japanese collectivism is based more on long-term assurance networks, whereas Chinese collectivism provides a more expansive, guanxi-based approach to building new social networks. Japanese also showed less in-group favoritism in both trust and trustworthiness (or conditional fairness) at the national-level compared to cultural Chinese, suggesting that culture-specific content (e.g., collective guilt for WWII) may influence ethnocentrism at the national level.     

元好问和元结

元好问将元结视为自己的远祖,诗中多次提到他.元好问从政治、隐逸、文学三个方面评价元结,评价较为客观.元好问也正是在这三个方面受到元结的影响.     

Association between COMT Val158Met polymorphism and competition results of competitive swimmers

Recent studies have shown the contribution of genetic determinants to athletes’ physical ability. However, despite the fact that cognitive abilities like self-control and stress-tolerance influence athletes’ competitive performance, few studies to date have investigated the association between genetic polymorphism, which is linked to cognitive ability and athletic performance. The present study investigated the link between single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs), which are known to exert influences on dopaminergic neural function and competitive performance of swimmers. The results have revealed superior competitive performance in competitive swimmers with Met allele of catechol-O-methyltransferase Val158Met polymorphism than those with Val/Val genotype. The investigated SNPs of DRD2 and DRD3 were not associated with swimmer’s competitive performance. This finding indicates that genetic polymorphism linked to cognitive ability influences the athletes’ performance.     

Three attempts at “de-Wintelization”: Japan’s TRON project, the US government’s suits against Wintel, and the entry of Java and Linux

The dominance over personal computing technology by the Microsoft OS and the Intel MPU, or ‘Wintel’, has been a long-standing concern of the government and the marketplace. In the past 15 years, there have been at least three attempts to challenge the Wintel monopoly. In comparing these three attempts at de-Wintelization, this paper raises interrelated issues about innovation: (1) the path-dependent nature of innovation, especially that due to network externalities, (2) the balance between property rights and antitrust laws, and (3) the relevance of government intervention in these areas. It also examines different types of R&D organization.