When humans perform tasks together, they may reach a higher performance in comparison to the best member of a group (i.e., a collective benefit). Earlier research showed that interindividual performance similarities predict collective benefits for several joint tasks. Yet, researchers did not test whether this is the case for joint visuospatial tasks. Also, researchers did not investigate wheth...

Certain chords are preferred by listeners behaviorally and also occur with higher regularity in musical composition. Event-related potentials index the perceived consonance (i.e., pleasantness) of musical pitch relationships providing a cortical neural correlate for such behavioral preferences. Here, we show correlates of these harmonic preferences exist at subcortical stages of audition. Brain...

We investigated the capability of molecular triads, consisting of two strong fluorophores that were covalently linked to a photochromic molecule, for optical gating. Therefore we monitored the fluorescence intensity of the fluorophores as a function of the isomeric state of the photoswitch. From the analysis of our data we develop a kinetic model that allows us to predict quantitatively the deg...

To replicate and extend Dozier's (1992) test of Tomm's hypothesis about the differential effects of questioning styles on therapeutic alliance, an analogue study was conducted. Twenty-eight family triads, each including a son and his parents, viewed four videotaped, simulated family therapy scenarios in which Tomm's four questioning styles were separately portrayed. Participants were asked to i...

Combining data when data are collected under different study designs, such as family trios and unrelated case-control samples, gains more power and is cost-effective than analyzing each data separately. However, a potential concern is population stratification (PS) among unrelated case-control samples and analyses integrating data should address this confounding effect. In this paper, we develo...

24 families, each including both parents, a schizophrenic, and a nonschizophrenic adolescent, were subdivided into a parent-patient and a parentnonpatient triad and asked to solve collectively the questions from the Comprehension and Similarities subtests of the Wechsler-Bellevue Intelligence Scale. The groups' recorded discussions were compared for problem-solving efficiency, mutual support pa...

OBJECTIVE To study the incidence of de novo multimorbidity across all ages in a geographically defined population with an emphasis on sex and ethnic differences. DESIGN Historical cohort study. SETTING All persons residing in Olmsted County, Minnesota, USA on 1 January 2000 who had granted permission for their records to be used for research (n=123 716). PARTICIPANTS We used the Rochester...

We investigated whether the patterns of coordination that emerged during a three-participant (triadic) jumping task were defined by the symmetries of the (multi) agent-environment task space. Triads were instructed to jump around different geometrical arrangements of hoops. The symmetry of the hoop geometry was manipulated to create two symmetrical and two asymmetrical participant-hoop configur...

The catalytic properties of enzymes, containing the Asp-His-Ser triads are deeply investigated for a long time. Serine endopeptidases, cutinases, acetylcholinesterases, cellulases, among other enzymes, contain these triads. We found that solely the geometric properties of just four points in the spatial structure of these enzymes are characteristic to their family.

The widespread existence of dominance hierarchies has been a central puzzle in social evolution, yet we lack a framework for synthesizing the vast empirical data on hierarchy structure in animal groups. We applied network motif analysis to compare the structures of dominance networks from data published over the past 80 years. Overall patterns of dominance relations, including some aspects of n...