Academic literature on the topic 'Cautionary effect'

An increasingly popular approach to statistical inference is to focus on the estimation of effect size. Yet this approach is implicitly based on the assumption that there is an effect while ignoring the null hypothesis that the effect is absent. We demonstrate how this common null-hypothesis neglect may result in effect size estimates that are overly optimistic. As an alternative to the current approach, a spike-and-slab model explicitly incorporates the plausibility of the null hypothesis into the estimation process. We illustrate the implications of this approach and provide an empirical example.

Textbook discussions of the autokinetic effect often mention that this illusory movement is susceptible to suggestion. Several recently published perception texts have presented the autokinetic effect as a potential projective technique, because it is claimed that the light will write out words if the observer expects it to. The accounts in these textbooks are misleading; in a study we conducted, as well as in the original study cited by the texts, the modal event across a series of trials was a failure to see the suggested “writing” movement.

Psychiatric agents are among the most commonly prescribed medications. Despite the advent of newer generation agents, patients receiving them still experience cardiovascular (CV) side effects. However, these agents may have heterogeneous properties, calling for an individualized approach based on efficacy and also on the particular side effect profile of each specific agent. Proarrhythmic effects arising from drug-induced long-QT syndrome and consequent potentially life-threatening polymorphic ventricular arrhythmias in the form of torsade de pointes, the metabolic syndrome contributing to atherosclerosis and acute coronary syndromes, and drug-induced orthostatic hypotension raise major concerns. Of course, it is also crucial that fear of potential CV adverse effects does not deprive psychiatric patients of appropriate drug therapy. Modification of CV risk factors in psychiatric patients together with optimal management of their CV diseases and appropriate selection of psychotropic agents with greater efficacy and least CV toxicity are of paramount importance in mitigating CV risks and enhancing safety. Identifying patients at high risk of CV complications and close monitoring of all patients receiving these agents are crucial steps to prevent and manage such complications. All these issues are herein reviewed, relevant guidelines are discussed, and schemas are depicted that illustrate the interrelated connections among the psychotropic agents and their CV effects.

During the 1990s, the United States experienced a rise in the popularity of nocturnal juvenile curfews as a method of crime prevention. Prior research has not, however, found curfews to be particularly effective in achieving their goals, and concerns have been raised about discriminatory enforcement. In this article we examine the implementation of a juvenile curfew in a large southern city, Charlotte, North Carolina, and investigate its impact on different racial groups. The background characteristics of curfew violators were found to mirror those of juvenile offenders in general, and different types of violators were cited in different areas of town. However, although the curfew had a positive or at least a neutral effect on some offenders, it had an escalation effect on Asian and Hispanic youth. The policy implications of the findings are discussed.

Although meta-analysis appears to be a useful technique to verify the existence of an effect and to summarize large bodies of literature, there are problems associated with its use and interpretation. Amongst difficulties is the “file drawer problem.” With this problem it is assumed that a certain percentage of studies are not published or are not available to be included in any given meta-analysis. We present a cautionary table to quantify the magnitude of this problem. The table shows that distortions exaggerating the effect size are substantial and that the exaggerations of effects are strongest when the true effect size approaches zero. A meta-analysis could be very misleading were the true effect size close to zero.

AbstractObject recognition in the periphery is limited by clutter. This phenomenon of visual crowding is ameliorated when the objects are dissimilar. This effect of inter-object similarity has been extensively studied for low-level features and is thought to reflect bottom-up processes. Recently, crowding was also found to be reduced when objects belonged to explicitly distinct groups; that is, crowding was weak when they had low group membership similarity. It has been claimed that top-down knowledge is necessary to explain this effect of group membership, implying that the effect of similarity on crowding cannot be a purely bottom-up process. We tested the claim that the effect of group membership relies on knowledge in two experiments and found that neither explicit knowledge about differences in group membership nor the possibility of acquiring knowledge about target identities is necessary to produce the effects. These results suggest that top-down processes need not be invoked to explain the effect of group membership. Instead, we suggest that differences in flanker reportability that emerge from the differences in group membership are the source of the effect. That is, when targets and flankers are sampled from distinct groups, flankers cannot be inadvertently reported, leading to fewer errors and hence weaker crowding. Further, we argue that this effect arises at the stage of response selection. This conclusion is well supported by an analytical model based on these principles. We conclude that previously observed effects in crowding attributed to top-down or higher level processes might instead be due to post-perceptual response selection strategies.

The aim of this essay is to examine several categories of violence in Roald Dahl’s children’s fiction, with the background of fairy tale theory. Roald Dahl’s children’s fiction has raised criticism, and the grounds of it are reconsidered in this essay. Violence is a declining feature of children’s literature, and the sometimes-excessive use of it in Dahl’s fiction is conspicuous, therefore. If Dahl’s children’s fiction is located in the genre of fairy tales, however, and the violence analysed as a device inherited from this tradition, its function and effect become clear, as shown in this essay. In a study of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (1964), The Witches (1985), and Matilda (1988), I find that violence in Dahl’s fiction has three main effects; cautionary, entertaining, and cathartic effects. I also find that the burlesque quality of violence in Dahl’s work makes the charges of criticism less meaningful.

Nonlinear two-stage residual inclusion (2SRI) estimators have become increasingly favored over traditional linear two-stage least squares (2SLS) methods for instrumental variables analysis of empirical models with inherently nonlinear dependent variables. Rising adoption of nonlinear 2SRI is largely attributable to simulation evidence showing that nonlinear 2SRI generates consistent estimates of population average treatment effects in nonlinear models, while 2SLS and nonlinear 2SPS do not. However, while it is believed that consistency of 2SRI for population average treatment effects is a general result, current evidence is limited to simulations performed under unique and restrictive settings with regards to treatment effect heterogeneity and conditions underlying treatment choices. This research contributes by describing existing simulation evidence and investigating the ability to generate absolute estimates of population average treatment effects (ATE) and local average treatment effects (LATE) using common IV estimators using Monte Carlo simulation methods across 10 alternative scenarios of treatment effect heterogeneity and sorting-on-the-gain. Additionally, estimates for the effect of ACE/ARBs on 1-year survival for Medicare beneficiaries with acute myocardial infarction are generated and compared across alternative linear and nonlinear IV estimators. Simulation results show that, while 2SLS generates unbiased and consistent estimates of LATE across all scenarios, nonlinear 2SRI generates unbiased estimates of ATE only under very restrictive settings. If marginal patients are unique in terms of treatment effectiveness, then nonlinear 2SRI cannot be expected to generate unbiased or consistent estimates of ATE unless all factors related to treatment effect heterogeneity are fully measured.

Certainly, a decision to (dis) invest (buy/sell) in securities is largely influenced by future expectations to which in turn is informed by the fundamental analysis of historical prices. The investor supposedly extrapolated on the historical prices if below the mean you buy and vice versa. The average security prices must be the product of the passing of time but most importantly the direction must be susceptible to a particular point in time. Investor decision-making involves a selection of a combination of the individual security characteristic with the market sentiment (bearish or bullish). The market sentiments are measured on time passed, i.e., market prices are either higher or lower relative to historical prices and the investor holding period wish. Valuation is nothing but a timing exercise to which the future perspective is forged on the future outlook of both micro and macro-economic factors. The valuation is relative to a true return generating process for a ‘true' single security market portfolio, i.e., expected future earnings. The occurrence of ‘unexpected earnings' creates an expectation of above ‘true' market portfolio returns, i.e., abnormal returns (ARs). This study is premised on the appreciation and understanding of the manifestation of a ‘true' single stock market portfolio. The study presents the analysis of the contemporaneous association of unexpected earnings also referred to as cautionary earning or ‘earnings surprise' published in the Trading Statement releases (hereinafter referred to as ‘releases') and security price movement. This research study is the second to investigate, at least to the researcher's knowledge after Cata (2015), the entire price formation process on the effects of unexpected cautionary and annual earnings announcements on security market prices of the JSE listed. Firstly, the expectations are that security prices adjust immediately to earnings and /or price-sensitive market information when made public. Secondly, since earnings information is fully impounded onto security prices a not statistically significant ARs are earned on and around the disclosures. Lastly, no statistically significant cumulative abnormal returns (ie CARs) post-earnings releases and announcements (I.e., PEADs) and any non-random security return drift indicate a level of inefficiency. The study adopted a return based unexpected earnings measures or model of Foster, Olsen and Shevlin (1984), and Van Rensburg's (2002) two-factor Arbitrage Pricing Theory (APT) to be a factor analytic procedure for assessment of a true return generating process for a ‘true' single stock market portfolio. The empirical evidence suggests investors revise the security valuations to an extent of 85 to 90 (Ball and Brown, 1968) and 85 to 98 (Kornik, 2005) percentage before an unexpected earnings announcement. This observation strengthens the argument that other timelier sources of information are already factored into share price prior to unexpected earnings releases. An alternative argument on legitimate information dissemination and other timelier sources of information provides a compelling argument for an all-encompassing multi factor-model in the context of JSE. According to Dr. Holman (20181 ) a measured or weighed multi factor-model consisting of a metal index, interest rate (i.e., 5 or 10 years repo rate), inflation rate, currency, beta, economy (i.e., GDP growth), stock size (small vs large capitalisation), leverage, unemployment rate, values such as price to book value or price-earnings (P/E) ratios, momentum (market biases – a big thing). Perhaps this to provide an explanatory power or rationale of the full market reaction when all price-sensitive factors are considered at once and rated accordingly is to explain the extent of the usefulness of the market information from a piece of specific unexpected event news. In so doing provide for an opportunity to improve on the true return generating process for a ‘true' single stock market portfolio from Van Rensburg's (2002) two-factor Arbitrage Pricing Theory (APT). The study's results come from an observation of five unexpected earnings models or measures and the trading statement news sign and size to ascertain the size of the security price movement and return drift. The evidence gathered is conclusive concerning the association of the information content generated through unexpected earnings disclosures and the average CARs and their t-statistic test found to be significantly different from the theoretical or expected zero return. However, the outcome of t-statistic tests is not statistically significant at a 5% significance level of significance over the observation period, therefore, they cast doubt on the use of the initial response to consistently earn earnings above average normal returns. The study observed a security price movement in line with ‘good' and ‘bad' news portfolios on [-3; -1] and [-1; -1] releases and [-2; -1] announcements in support of Kornik's (2005) observation of a significant portion of the market reaction occurring in the two days prior to the announcement date. Kornik (2005) suggests that either a substantial information leakage or simply legitimate information dissemination and /or anticipation (ie from other timelier sources of information) allows for investors to correctly adjust their earnings prediction through 1 From the lecture notes company analysis and /or interviews with management prior to unexpected earnings announcements. This study conclusion is that there is evidence of significant association to suggests an investor reassessment of their beliefs/expectations on the occurrence and the size of ‘earnings surprise' and unexpected annual earnings. The finding violates the Efficient Markets Hypothesis (EMH) which assumes that security prices are instantly and fully reflective of all available information and that investors cannot use public information to consistently gain above-normal returns (Cata, 2014). It important to highlight that, contrary to Murie's (2014) and Cata's (2015), the study found no suggestion that investors wait to determine the uncertainty regarding the specific reason for the change in earnings on the releases date to be alleviated via the announcement or publication of actual earnings to conclude on inconsistencies observed with semi-strong form market efficiency. First and foremost a conclusion must be reached based on significant abnormal returns earned on the market news in periods surrounding earnings releases and announcements strengthened by the outcome of the unexpected earnings measures or models. Secondly, Murie (2014) correctly pointed out that unexpected earnings models or measures are not an information source to the market, unlike trading statement releases or earnings announcements. Thirdly, Murie (2014) did not investigate the entire price formation process and his [+3;+60] post-release would have included the effects of earnings announcements considering that on average it trails by approximately 9 trading days from the releases. What is known based on this study observation and Kornik's (2005) assertion is that new information should be impounded into the security price within a week (i.e., 5 days on average) of the announcement. The significant price movements appear to be taking place on intraday releases, previous studies show that the focus was only on closing and opening security prices. The observed price movement prior to, on the event date and after the release date supports the findings of Ball and Brown (1968) that the market uses other timelier sources of information available in the market to revise share valuations (Murie, 2014). However, the unexpected earnings are partly timely to the extent of approximately 15 to 10 (Ball and Brown, 1968) and /or 15 to 2 percent (Kornik, 2005) resulting from investors' revision of the security valuations to between 85 to 90 percent (Ball and Brown, 1968) and 85 to 98 (Kornik, 2005) percent before an unexpected earnings announcement. The researcher's view is that, since the expectations, in most cases, are influenced by the analysis of previous earnings announcements, the actual results and analysts' estimation, therefore, to a certain extent the price movement reflects the evolution of the investor/market sentiment and overtime change in earnings is judged in this context (i.e., reaction). At this point, it is advisable that future research looks into or considers subdividing the releases into voluntary (i.e., management forecast) and compulsory release (i.e regulatory requirement since 2010) as the latter appears to influence the extent of investors' response.

The common interpretation of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein as a cautionary tale is not inaccurate but incomplete; Victor Frankenstein’s fatal choices are not in his desire for scientific knowledge, but in his willful avoidance of knowledge about consequences of his actions and their effects on others’ well-being. Shelley parallels Victor with the Greek immortal Prometheus, but this trickster figure is ultimately not an apt parallel for Victor, who undertakes his research in the spirit of self-aggrandizement and narcissism, rather than a desire to improve people’s lives, or even curiosity about the inner workings of the world around him. Victor’s failure of empathy and his myopia about consequences make Frankenstein a powerful parable about responsibility and the need for scientists to engage in careful moral and ethical introspection about the broader ramifications of their work.

The history of the moral argument is a fascinating tale to tell. Like any good story, it is full of twists and unexpected turns, compelling conflicts, rich and idiosyncratic characters, both central and ancillary players. The narrative is as labyrinthine and circuitous as it is linear, its point remains to be fully seen, and its ending has yet to be written. What remains certain is the importance of telling it. The resources of history offer a refresher course, a teachable moment, a cautionary tale about the need to avoid making sacrosanct the trends of the times, and an often sobering lesson in why reigning assumptions may need to be rejected. If insights from luminaries of moral apologetics prove penetrating and their challenges formidable, then an intentional effort to recapture the richness of the history of the moral argument will likely prove to be illuminating. This book lets the argument’s advocates, many long dead, come alive again and speak for themselves. An historical study of the moral argument is a reminder of how classical philosophers were unafraid to ask and explore the big questions of faith, hope, and love; of truth, goodness, and beauty; of God, freedom, and immortality. It gives students and scholars alike the chance to drill down into their ideas, contexts, and arguments, inviting us all to learn to live with the moral argument. Only by a careful study of its history can we come to see its richness and the fertile range of resources it offers.

Abstract The microdosing of mind-altering substances, like LSD and magic mushrooms, is a trend among young creatives, who report enhanced creativity, improved focus, and other productivity-enhancing effects. This chapter, Chemical Creativity, describes how both users and researchers have been exploring the range of effects of microdosing, including through more experimental ethnographic research. Using virtual ethnography, we analyzed drug users’ narratives of their personal experiences, practices, and motivations with microdosing. We also collaborated with participants using online platforms focused on drug experimentation to generate data, combining their collective experiences while acknowledging individual expertise. Finally, we reviewed research on clinical trials that compare the effects of psychoactive substances, like LSD, with placebos. What emerges is a clearer picture of the benefits of microdosing, how dosages are tweaked, and how users engage in “harm reduction from below” by spreading their cautionary tales within the microdosing world. In so doing, we offer a glimpse into how this relatively new practice develops, as it gains popularity with both laypeople and the academic and scientific communities.

Abstract Biotic resistance to plant invasions takes many forms: consumption by native herbivores, competition with native plants and infection by native pathogens. But how often does biotic resistance prevent the damaging monocultures that typify the most problematic plant invaders, and how often is biotic resistance overwhelmed by the direct and indirect impacts of human activities? This chapter attempts to answer these questions, drawing on the long history of research into biotic resistance. We first briefly describe the major forms of biotic resistance to exotic plant invasions as an antecedent to other, more detailed chapters on competition, herbivory and pathogens. We then describe a new neutral model where variance in disturbance promotes invasions over the short term, but over longer timescales only propagule pressure drives invasions. These findings are a cautionary tale; pending increases in global trade and travel, particularly to the tropics, may provide the prerequisite disturbance and propagule pressure needed to ultimately stoke further invasions. Finally, we highlight case studies where invasions have been mitigated by restoration of biotic resistance from native herbivores and competitors. These studies provide strong empirical support that conservation of native biodiversity can be a nature-based solution to some invasions, although it remains to be seen if climate change will alter these effects over longer timescales.

Fictional Victorian readers were often prone to enjoying French novels. The dangers lurking for female readers in improper material had been something of a literary cliché for some time, and can be found in contemporary poems and cautionary tales. However, Victorian novelists were as concerned with the effects of the novels on male readers. Numerous novels engage less with ideas of immorality than with anxieties surrounding idleness and its effect on the British male. Increasingly, though, novels offered more ambivalent and thoughtful reflections on the cultural discourse surrounding French works. Their dangers were shrugged off, and their pleasures dealt with sympathetically by novelists such as Braddon and Ouida. Cautionary tales about French novel-reading never quite went away, but critics found it increasingly hard to determine the extent to which the cautionary tales themselves might be mimicking the very dangers which they purported to condemn.

Chapter 9 analyzes Kendrick Lamar’s “Swimming Pools (Drank),” a cautionary tale of alcohol abuse that musicalizes its topic through the dissociative effect of syncopation. Lamar and producer T-Minus accomplish the feat with two techniques borrowed from trap music: a triplet-rhythm rap flow popularized by artists like Migos, and super-syncopated, “rattling” hi-hats that seem to break loose from organized time altogether. The sensuality of “Swimming Pools” is so alluring that it serves both as a critique of addiction and as a testament to how compelling escape from sobriety can be. By expressing this duality through syncopation and temporal dissociation, Lamar creates sensual pleasures for listeners akin to a high.

This chapter assesses John Milton's Paradise Lost as a source for graphic satire. The many graphic satirical parodies of Paradise Lost disclose the workings of two different political readings of the poem, readings that respectively function to attenuate and foster rather different conceptions of the Miltonic sublime. The first, and more familiar, regards Milton's epic as an anti-Whig allegory that warns readers of the dangers of opposing the constitutional authority of the sovereign. In contrast to this reading of Paradise Lost, one that looks to it as a political allegory of and for the present, a different and still more complex approach to the poem emerges in a number of James Gillray's mature caricatures. In a manner that is highly idiosyncratic, Gillray seems less interested in conscripting Milton's text as a cautionary tale of rebellion and more concerned with exploiting the generic peculiarities of Paradise Lost for satirical and political effect.

This chapter looks into Mario Bava's aesthetic sensibility and synthesis of the stylistic and thematic thread that underlies the film Blood and Black Lace (6 donne per l'assassino). It explains how viewers of the film associated the gimmick of using mannequins with the opening pages of Gialli Mondadori, which include a list of characters and their qualification in order to give the reader a “human map” on which to rely when reading. It also discusses how the same concept of a human map is reinvented in the film Blood and Black Lace in a visual key with a surrealistic effect through the use of mannequins. The chapter analyzes the poses of mannequins that are considered artificial, enigmatic, and disturbing. It highlights how mannequins reiterate the initial equation between men and anthropomorphic objects, in which mannequins provide cautionary shadows for actors and actors are sometimes caught in the act of making the same gesture as the mannequins.

This chapter discusses the role of social science in the war effort. As the Second World War demonstrated, sophisticated social science methods are certainly sometimes applicable to policy. In particular, economists demonstrated that they could employ these tools yet remain directly relevant in some realms. However, the failure of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) to employ them successfully on noneconomic issues constitutes a cautionary tale for those who think that discipline ought to serve as a model for the rest of the social sciences. Strikingly, even social scientists themselves who served in government came to realize that disciplinary dynamics worked against policy relevance. Nevertheless, the social sciences' wartime experience had a positive impact on them. This wartime experience had effects across the social sciences, but it was particularly evident in the areas relevant to national security.

The turn of the century has brought many mega threats for the West, such as terrorism, natural disasters, and virus outbreaks including SARS, H1N1, Ebola, and now COVID-19. An invisible micro-organism suddenly paused our progress towards a globally interconnected flat world. We now realize that super-structures driving economic development cannot grow in specific directions without destroying themselves in certain other directions. The precautionary logic suggests the rational planning aided by our technological progress ought to alleviate most of these problems. The manner in which we deal with disasters like COVID-19, however, does not inspire confidence. Application of the precautionary logic did not avert a calamity, and recovery efforts are now guided by some crude forms of post-facto, post-cautionary logical thinking. Tourism as well as hospitality is now in crisis.

In this paper, experimental results are presented which demonstrate the potential importance of component coupling and system effects on the pumping stability and performance of a rotor in an axial flow compressor. Three different configurations are presented: (1) series coupling, (2) parallel coupling, and (3) combined series/parallel coupling. In all three configurations the more stable component or region successfully stabilizes the entire compression system beyond the stability boundary of the less stable component or region. A novel method for assessing the relative stability of the different regions is employed. This method utilizes the small scale pre-stall disturbances of the compressor to probe the stability of the different regions. The role of length scales or domains of dependence in determining stability is consistently demonstrated. Specifically, the stability of small length scale disturbances is shown to be governed by the local environment while being relatively insensitive to other components. However, the stability of larger length scale phenomena is affected by the global environment created by considering all of the parts of the overall system. Consideration and knowledge of these results is important when modeling, analyzing, or designing a compression system. Furthermore, these results serve as a cautionary note when interpreting solutions from a simplified analytical/computational analysis.

The risk assessment for population’s exposures to low doses and low dose-rates of ionizing radiation is still subject to clear uncertainties. The issue has outstanding societal importance in relation to radiologic occupational safety, medical applications of radiation, effects of the natural background radioactivity and the future of nuclear power, due to its particular influence on the public acceptance of this form of energy. This review article analyzes, in a critical, historical and bibliographical manner, the worldwide accepted hypothesis of linearity without a threshold dose (LNT model). As well known, it rejects, from its first proposal in 1946 by American geneticist and Nobel laureate Hermann J. Muller, the concept of zero-risk for exposures to any dose level of ionizing radiation. The starting point is the dose-effects relationship provided by this model and related risk’s excess graphic curve. The biological and physical motivations for the linearity assumption are argued and challenged by the explanation of human body’s natural defense mechanisms and its repair capacity of the radiation damage. Furthermore, the historical and political truthfulness of the LNT model is also contested by the review of a recent investigation by Prof. Edward Calabrese, regarding the lack of scientific sources behind Muller’s Nobel Prize Lecture. Calabrese’s inquiry demonstrates that Muller, at the moment of his declaration on LNT model’s validity, had experimental proofs contradicting his conclusions about the unacceptability of a threshold dose. This finding is of historical importance since Muller’s Nobel Lecture is a turning point in the acceptance of the linearity model in risk assessment by the major regulatory agencies till today. Finally, the results of many epidemiological and statistical studies are shown specifically. They give further evidences concerning the inapplicability of the LNT model and its overestimation of the risk for various cases of exposures to low doses of ionizing radiation in different fields. By that, hormesis model is also discussed, with its assumption of possible benefits for the organism following low dose exposures: a dose-response model characterized by low-dose stimulation and high-dose inhibition, which has been frequently observed in the aforementioned studies. The argumentations and the experimental evidences provided here challenge the validity of the LNT model. We contest the fact that its establishment is principally based on a cautionary philosophy on nuclear public safety, rather than on actual scientific comprehension of the phenomenon. As such, it implies an exaggerated conception of the radiological hazard. In particular, this article calls attention to the need for a deeper understanding of the biological impact of low doses of ionizing radiation and the development of further specific and exhaustive researches.