GREEN CAPITALI$M

Pusan National University researchers explore the potential of clean energy markets as a hedging tool

Researchers investigate clean energy investments emphasizing their potential to stabilize and enhance portfolios during fluctuating market conditions

Pusan National University

 

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Researchers demonstrate that investing in clean energy assets, such as renewable energy stocks, green bonds, and clean technology indices, can help mitigate risks associated with stock market volatility. These investments are influenced by different factors than traditional assets, providing diversification and reducing overall portfolio risk.

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Credit: Professor Sang Hoon Kang from Pusan National University, Korea

Climate change has significantly impacted lives worldwide and prompted governments to adopt policies promoting sustainability and use of clean energy sources. This shift to clean energy has triggered increased investments in renewable energy and technologies. Clean energy assets possess a unique advantage – they are not affected by parameters influencing their traditional stock market counterparts. However, the interactions between the clean energy and traditional stock markets are not well understood.

To fill this gap, a group of researchers led by Professor Sang Hoon Kang from Pusan National University explored the relationship between clean energy indices and major international stock markets. The researchers investigated if clean energy investments could provide stability when traditional stock markets experience turbulence. Their findings were published online on 10 July 2024 in the journal of Energy Economics.

The researchers used a method called tail quantile connectedness regression to study how different financial assets interacted, especially during extreme market conditions. This method let them examine how shocks from major stock indices like the SP500 and the FTSE100, as well as the Renewable Energy and Clean Technology Index (RECTI), affect other indices such as Japan's Nikkei225 and the Global Clean Energy Index (GCEI).

Prof. Kang explains, “Investors seek to protect their portfolios from volatility by diversifying with assets that don't follow the same trends as traditional stocks. Clean energy assets are promising for this purpose because they are influenced by different factors, such as government policies and technological advancements in renewable energy.”

The study found that financial shocks often start in major markets like the US, the EU, and the UK, and from indices such as the RECTI, then flow to markets in Japan and the GCEI. During normal and bull market (when stock prices are increasing) phases short-term effects dominated, whereas during declining or busting market states, the impacts ranged from intermediate to long-term ones. This shows that different clean energy indices play unique roles in the global financial system, affecting how information and risks are spread across markets, and highlights their resilience and lasting influence, even in challenging economic climates.

Furthermore, the study identified specific roles played by different clean energy indices in information transmission. For instance, the RECTI tends to act actively, while the Green Bond Index remains relatively isolated. The GCEI, on the other hand, tends to receive information passively.

These findings suggest that clean energy investments can act as hedges or buffers during fluctuating market conditions, promoting financial stability and resilience against economic turbulence.

Prof. Kang elaborates, “Our findings suggest that clean energy assets paired with other financial assets such as WTI and CSI300, should form a significant portion of a diversified investment portfolio to mitigate risks during different market conditions.”

He concludes with the long-term impact of their study, “Heightened awareness and better understanding of the spillover effects between these markets can drive policy decisions that support sustainable economic growth and environmental protection, ultimately fostering a more resilient global financial system​.”

In summary, the expanding clean energy sector holds great potential to promote financial stability amidst fluctuating markets.

 

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Reference

DOI: 10.1016/j.eneco.2024.107757

 

About the institute
Pusan National University, located in Busan, South Korea, was founded in 1946, and is now the No. 1 national university of South Korea in research and educational competency. The multi-campus university also has other smaller campuses in Yangsan, Miryang, and Ami. The university prides itself on the principles of truth, freedom, and service, and has approximately 30,000 students, 1200 professors, and 750 faculty members. The university is composed of 14 colleges (schools) and one independent division, with 103 departments in all.

Website: https://www.pusan.ac.kr/eng/Main.do

 

About the author
Professor Sang Hoon Kang received a PhD degree from UniSA Business, University of South Australia. He is currently working for Business of School, Pusan National University. He has publications in many refereed journals, including Energy Economies, Resource Policy, Finance Research Letters, International Review of Financial Analysis, Pacific-Basin Finance Journal etc. His research interests include financial time-series analysis, energy finance, and connectedness network.

ORCID ID: 0000-0002-1236-136X

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Journal

Energy Economics

DOI

10.1016/j.eneco.2024.107757 

Method of Research

Data/statistical analysis

Subject of Research

Not applicable

Article Title

Are clean energy markets hedges for stock markets? A tail quantile connectedness regression

White men weren’t the only ones who profited from slavery

Study finds white women involved in more than 30% of transactions

Reports and Proceedings

Ohio State University

The traditional historical view that white women were rarely involved in buying and selling enslaved people in the United States is not accurate, a new study shows.

Researchers analyzed records from the time and found that white women were involved in more than 30% of the transactions in the largest market for enslaved people in the antebellum era.

White women were especially likely to be involved in buying and selling of enslaved women, where they were listed as owners in nearly 40% of transactions.

The findings should change the view about the role of white women in slavery, said Trevon Logan, co-author of the study and professor of economics at The Ohio State University.

“White women were assumed to not be active owners and to have only limited involvement in transactions,” Logan said.

“Women were thought to be blind to the darker side of slavery, but these findings suggest otherwise.”

Logan conducted the research with Benton Wishart, who did the work as an undergraduate student at Ohio State. Their study is published as a working paper by the National Bureau of Economic Research.

Logan said the project began when he read the work of Stephanie Jones-Rogers, a historian at the University of California, Berkeley, who uncovered narrative evidence of white women buying and selling enslaved people.

But when he looked for data, he found that no one had analyzed the records to see how often women were involved in these transactions.

One reason was that transaction records didn’t make it easy, Wishart said.

“The data had the gender assigned to the slaves in the transaction but not to the buyers and sellers, so I had to go through and assign gender based on their given names,” Wishart said.

In order to properly assign gender, Wishart used U.S. Census records of the times to determine which given names could reliably be listed as women.

One source for the study was New Orleans sales data from 1856 to 1861, which includes all transactions as recorded in the largest market at the time in the United States. The researchers also used notary statements showing buyers and sellers from a time earlier in the antebellum era and runaway newspaper advertisements to see who was listed as the owner of the runaway slaves.

In New Orleans, white women were involved in 30.2% of all transactions as either the buyer or the seller of enslaved people. In the 1830 notary records they are involved in 15.8% of all transactions, and in runaway advertisements they are listed as the owner in 11.5% of the notices.

“That is a significant level of involvement for a group that the historical narrative has claimed were passive about the institution of slavery,” Logan said.

Just as important: Women were equally likely to be buyers as sellers.

“It wasn’t just women who had to sell their enslaved people because their husbands died,” Wishart said. “They were involved in buying, as well.”

White women were especially involved in buying Black women, whom they would use to work around the house while the men worked in the fields. Women were listed as owners in nearly 40% of transactions involving enslaved women.

For white women in the South, owning enslaved people was a ticket to financial independence.

Coverture laws generally forced women to give their money and property to their husbands when they married, but an exception was made for enslaved people.

“Women in the South couldn’t own real estate or financial assets, but they could own enslaved people,” Logan said. “These laws allowed women in the antebellum South to have much more economic independence than a woman in the North.”

Not all states in the South gave the same level of protection to women who owned enslaved people, and the study found that women were more likely to be involved in transactions in states where they had more ownership rights, he said.

The findings should lead to a new view about the role of women in slavery, Logan said.

“We need to think about the implications of this gender story. We’re not talking about just women owning people. The class of people who were enslavers had disproportionate amounts of political power and we now know that includes women,” Logan said.

“So even without direct political participation, women became very important in the continuation of slavery as an institution.”

DOI

10.3386/w32529

Method of Research

Data/statistical analysis

Subject of Research

People

Article Title

Her Property Transactions: White Women and the Frequency of Female Ownership in the Antebellum Era

 

Genetic mutation prompts ‘deadbeat dad’ fish to start raising their offspring

UMD biologists identified a pheromone receptor that controls parenting behavior in African cichlid fish

University of Maryland

 

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A male A. burtoni fish ignores its food while mouthbrooding.

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Credit: Cheng-Yu Li

University of Maryland researcher Cheng-Yu Li was in the lab one day when he noticed a fish with a protruding jaw: a telltale sign that it was incubating eggs in its mouth, keeping its offspring safe until they were big enough to swim solo.

While not an unusual behavior for this particular species, Li was stunned to realize it was a male with a mouthful of eggs. That’s because females exclusively perform this parenting role—known as “mouthbrooding”—in Astatotilapia burtoni, a fish in the cichlid family found in African lakes and rivers.

“I didn’t know if I was having hallucinations or imagining things,” recalled Li, a postdoctoral associate in the Department of Biology and lead author of a new study published on August 1, 2024, in the journal Current Biology. “That was the first mouthbrooding male that I found, so I was very excited.”

After setting up cameras to keep closer tabs on the tanks, Li and his colleagues made a surprising discovery: Nearly all of the male A. burtoni fish with a specific genetic mutation picked up eggs in their mouths.

“This was one of those moments in science that is sort of jaw-dropping,” said the study’s senior author, Scott Juntti, an assistant professor of biology at UMD. “I've been working with these fish for more than a decade and I'd never seen that in my entire life.”

Typically, it takes about two weeks for eggs to turn into free-swimming juveniles, and fish are unable to eat while mouthbrooding. Since females are the ones doing the parenting in the wild, this task can take a physical toll on A. burtoni moms.

“They lose weight, they get really skinny—and for an animal of that size not to eat for two weeks, it’s a real sacrifice,” Juntti said. “Meanwhile, the males are sort of deadbeat dads. They’ll jealously guard their territory and attempt to mate with additional females, or at least that’s the way it normally works with these animals."

While looking for an explanation for this sudden shift in the males’ behavior, Li and Juntti found the pheromone receptor that controls parenting behavior in A. burtoni: or113a. They believe there is a “parental circuit” in the brains of both males and females that drives a mouthbrooding instinct, but when males detect a pheromone emitted by females before laying eggs, it prevents that circuit from being activated.

“A pheromone emitted by fertile females attracts the male to the female initially, but when it comes time to lay the eggs, it seems to cause the male to avoid retrieving the eggs,” Juntti explained.

A mutation introduced by CRISPR, a gene-editing technique, essentially switched off the or113a receptor, making the males unable to detect the pheromone. Silencing the ability of neurons to respond to this pheromone prompts male fish to become more hands-on—or “mouths-on,” as Juntti put it—fathers.

About 30% of the male fish with this genetic mutation continued to mouthbrood for at least 60 minutes, and some continued to mouthbrood for the entire two weeks. Every female with the same mutation continued to mouthbrood normally for two weeks, hinting that other differences between males and females might be at play.

There are presumably other factors that explain why some of the males held the eggs for a long time while others dropped them quickly, and Li and Juntti are continuing to hunt for answers to those questions.

From an evolutionary perspective, Juntti believes that males’ evasive behavior could work to their advantage. If all the males in the wild suddenly started mouthbrooding, they would miss out on mates and potentially lower the number of their offspring that survive.

“If you are already a big, dominant male who's getting opportunities to spawn with females, providing that energy-intensive parental care may not be your best strategy,” Juntti said. “It might make more sense to just try and court as many females as possible.”

A. burtoni and other cichlids make great research candidates because the family contains about 2,000 species that exhibit a wide range of social behaviors. For example, blackchin tilapia (Sarotherodon melanotheron) males mouthbroodeggs, which is rare for wild cichlids. UMD Biology Professor Tom Kocher and his colleagues previously sequenced the genome of this species, which carries a mutation in the same pheromone receptor, or113a—another sign that smell and parenting are strongly linked.

“It seems as though an evolving olfactory system can change this social behavior of mouthbrooding,” Juntti said.

Ultimately, Li and Juntti believe their findings could lead to future studies that help demystify parenting and its evolutionary diversity.

“Parenting is an ancient behavior, but we don't have a good sense of how parental behavior evolves,” Juntti said. “Now that we have a little bit more insight into what regulates parenting behavior, this can provide some new ways to study the neurons and the genes within the brain that are responsible for controlling parenting behavior.”

###

In addition to Li and Juntti, co-authors of this study included biological sciences major Peter Jackson and Ph.D. students Kristen Behrens and Jessica Bowers, as well as alums Theresa Alexander (B.S. ’15, mathematics; Ph.D. ’23, biological sciences) and Cyrus Amini (B.S. ’24, biological sciences).

Their paper, “A pheromone receptor in cichlid fish mediates attraction to females but inhibits male parental care,” was published in Current Biology on August 1, 2024.

This study was supported by the U.S. National Science Foundation (Grant No. IOS-1825723), the National Institutes of Health (Grant Nos. R35GM142872 and DP2MH125812) and the William J Higgins endowment. Microscopy in the CMNS imaging core was supported by the National Institutes of Health (Award No. 1S10OD025223-01A1). This story does not necessarily reflect the views of these organizations.

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Journal

Current Biology

DOI

10.1016/j.cub.2024.07.029 

Method of Research

Experimental study

Subject of Research

Animals

Article Title

A pheromone receptor in cichlid fish mediates attraction to females but inhibits male parental care

Article Publication Date

1-Aug-2024

 

State abortion policy and moral distress among clinicians providing abortion after the Dobbs decision

JAMA Network

About The Study: In this purposive national survey study of clinicians providing abortion, moral distress was elevated among all clinicians and more than twice as high among those practicing in states that restrict abortion compared with those in states that protect abortion. The findings suggest that structural changes addressing bans on necessary health care, such as federal protections for abortion, are needed at institutional, state, and federal policy levels to combat widespread moral distress. 

Corresponding Author: To contact the corresponding author, Katherine Rivlin, M.D., M.Sc., email krivlin@bsd.uchicago.edu.

To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/

(doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2024.26248)

Editor’s Note: Please see the article for additional information, including other authors, author contributions and affiliations, conflict of interest and financial disclosures, and funding and support.

#  #  #

Embed this link to provide your readers free access to the full-text article This link will be live at the embargo time http://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2024.26248?utm_source=For_The_Media&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=ftm_links&utm_term=080124

About JAMA Network Open: JAMA Network Open is an online-only open access general medical journal from the JAMA Network. On weekdays, the journal publishes peer-reviewed clinical research and commentary in more than 40 medical and health subject areas. Every article is free online from the day of publication. 

 

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Journal

JAMA Network Open

Gun permits may be more effective than background checks alone at reducing firearm homicides

Tufts University School of Medicine analysis suggests universal background checks alone aren’t associated with significantly lower shooting death rates in the US

Tufts University

Despite widespread support, laws enforcing universal background checks at the time of firearm purchase may not be enough to move the needle on reducing shooting deaths in the United States. A Tufts University School of Medicine study, published August 1 in the journal JAMA Network Open, reports that states that require gun permits rather than relying solely on universal background checks see firearm homicide rates, on average, 18% lower than states with background check policies alone.

The analysis compared firearm homicide data from the 12 states with universal background check laws but no permit requirements (e.g., New York, Nevada, Vermont) and the 7 states with gun permit laws (e.g., Massachusetts, California, Rhode Island) from 1976 to 2022. States in the former group showed slight variations in firearm homicide rates while those with permit laws saw reductions in shooting deaths ranging from 2% to 32%.

“These findings cast doubt on the main strategy currently being used by gun violence prevention advocates and policymakers to reduce firearm fatalities,” says study author Michael Siegel, a professor of public health and community medicine at the School of Medicine. “If state lawmakers really want to reduce gun violence, the most effective policy they can enact is one that requires permits in order to purchase or possess a gun.”

While research on universal background check laws shows that they are associated with decreases in firearm homicides, most of this work has not differentiated between policies requiring permits and those that do not. By separating them, two studies from 2018 and 2020 found early evidence that the success of universal background checks can be attributed to the permit laws. These findings are further supported by Siegel’s investigation, which compared firearm death rates recorded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to the State Firearm Law Database, a database he oversees at Tufts that aggregates and updates all state firearm legislation.                                 

Siegel is not surprised that gun permits are associated with lower firearm fatalities. While requirements vary by state, permit laws typically require someone who wants to own a gun to go through a series of checks before granting authorization, valid for several years, to purchase firearms from various dealers. The advantage of state permits is that their criminal databases are more consistently kept up to date and are more likely to record lower-level crimes, such as domestic battery or a DUI, compared to the federal databases used for universal background checks, which rely on states to track this data.

Universal background checks can fail when a request for a background check takes so long to come back that it has passed the window of time—72 hours—that a person can legally be kept waiting for a gun. This loophole allows individuals with criminal records to make a firearm purchase by default. Background checks are also less effective when someone has recently committed a crime that disqualifies them from owning a gun, while permits can be immediately suspended.

“Some gun owners might hear this and say that permits are much more intrusive, but I want to emphasize it’s actually a win-win, both for gun owners and public health,” says Siegel. He argues that gun owners on average have four or more firearms, so having a permit system makes it easier for them to make multiple purchases over time because their permit wouldn’t require them to get a background check for each exchange.

Siegel plans to continue exploring the emerging association between gun permit laws and firearm homicide rates, while also examining their impact on firearm suicides. 

“One of the major implications of this research is that it supports changing the way we do things, such as encouraging all states to adopt reciprocal permitting systems, meaning a person with a gun permit in one state would be allowed to bring their license and gun legally into another state,” says Siegel.

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Journal

JAMA Network Open

DOI

10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2024.25025 

Method of Research

Data/statistical analysis

Subject of Research

Not applicable

Article Title

Universal Background Checks, Permit Requirements, and Firearm Homicide Rates

Article Publication Date

1-Aug-2024

COI Statement

Dr Siegel reported receiving grants from 97Percent, grants from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and personal fees from the State of Oregon outside the submitted work.

Universal background checks, permit requirements, and firearm homicide rates

JAMA Network

About The Study: This cross-sectional study found that universal background checks alone were not associated with firearm homicide rates, but a permit requirement for the purchase and possession of firearms was associated with substantially reduced rates of firearm homicide. The findings suggest that combining universal background checks and permit-to-purchase requirements is an effective strategy for firearm-related fatality reduction. 

Corresponding Author: To contact the corresponding author, Michael Siegel, MD, MPH, email mike.siegel@tufts.edu.

To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/

(doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2024.25025)

Editor’s Note: Please see the article for additional information, including other authors, author contributions and affiliations, conflict of interest and financial disclosures, and funding and support.

#  #  #

Embed this link to provide your readers free access to the full-text article This link will be live at the embargo time http://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2024.25025?utm_source=For_The_Media&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=ftm_links&utm_term=080124

About JAMA Network Open: JAMA Network Open is an online-only open access general medical journal from the JAMA Network. On weekdays, the journal publishes peer-reviewed clinical research and commentary in more than 40 medical and health subject areas. Every article is free online from the day of publication. 

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Journal

JAMA Network Open

 

'Cowpuppy' takes readers into secret world of cows

Caring for cattle expands the mind of a neuroscientist

Emory University

 

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Gregory Berns with members of his herd of miniature Zebu cattle.

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Credit: Photo by Carol Clark

During the height of the COVID-19 pandemic Gregory Berns, a neuroscientist at Emory University, moved from Atlanta to a farm an hour south of the city. His reinvention from city dweller to farmer led to his upcoming book “Cowpuppy: An Unexpected friendship and a Scientist’s Journey into the Secret World of Cows.”

Set for publication by Harper Collins on August 20, the book describes Berns’ crash course to becoming a cattleman and his ongoing fascination with the interior world of cows.

Berns originally bought a few cows to keep the grass in the pastures down. He writes about how he forged a deep bond with his herd as he learned each of their distinct personalities while helping them to give birth, to grow and to stay healthy. He senses a wide range of human emotions in them and finds their presence therapeutic.

“I started seeing the world through a cow’s eyes,” he says. “There’s a common misconception that cows are dumb animals but that’s just because most people haven’t had the opportunity to interact with them. I decided it was time to set the record straight on cow brains.”

Berns, an Emory professor of psychology, pioneered the use of brain imaging technologies to understand human motivation and decision-making. In 2012, his lab was the first to train dogs to enter a functional magnetic resonance imaging machine to lie awake and perfectly still while their brain activity was recorded.

This unique approach to explore canine cognition led Berns to become a bestselling author with the publication of “How Dogs Love Us” in 2013. It is just one of many popular books by Berns, including, in 2022, “The Self Delusion: The New Neuroscience of How We Invent — and Reinvent — Our Identities.”

“Cowpuppy” marks a new chapter in Berns’ quest to understand interspecies bonding.

His 10 miniature Zebu cattle gather around him like affectionate dogs when he enters the pasture. They even lie down and roll over so he can give them belly rubs. In return, they nuzzle him and give him cow licks.

“Cows are intelligent, emotional and loyally affectionate,” Berns says. “I’ve seen them do things that I haven’t even seen dogs do — like understanding how to use a giant mirror I erected in the pasture.”

His cows have become part of his family and will never wind up as hamburgers or steaks. Instead, Berns describes how cows teach people to slow down and connect to the environment.

He writes about leaning against the hulk of a cow chewing its cud in the evenings while he marvels at the stars: “Whenever I felt the weight of life’s challenges, I sought out the cows. I often found myself drifting off into a meditative state after these sessions. I felt relaxed in a way that I hadn’t before.”

Caption

The book describes a scientist's crash course into becoming a cattleman.

The book marks a new chapter in a scientist's quest to understand interspecies bonding.

Credit

Gregory Berns

 

Natural born consumers

Researchers including Göttingen University show that modern behaviour explains prehistoric economies

University of Göttingen

 

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One of the largest hoards of the Late Bronze Age: this scrap hoard discovered in Weißig near Dresden weighs around 20 kilogram and is made up of 63 complete objects and 328 fragments.

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Credit: Landesamt für Archäologie Sachsen / J. Lipták

What if the ‘Market Economy’ always existed? Archaeologists from the Universities of Göttingen in Germany and Salento in Italy tried to answer this question by researching how much Bronze Age people used to spend to sustain their daily lives. Their results show that, starting at least 3,500 years ago, the spending habits of prehistoric Europeans were not substantially different from what they are today. The study was published in Nature Human Behaviour.

 

The study analysed more than 20,000 metal objects from more than 1,000 hoards that were buried in Italy, Switzerland, Austria, Slovenia and Germany between around 2,300 BC and 800 BC. The researchers used a statistical technique to determine if the analysed objects are multiples of a unit of weight. They found that starting around 1,500 BC, metal objects were intentionally fragmented in order to obtain multiples of the weight unit of roughly 10 g – a unit which was used everywhere across Europe. This indicates that metal fragments circulated as money. Then they analysed the statistical distribution of the daily expenses of prehistoric households in prehistoric Europe – meaning they observed how much was spent in various amounts – and compared it with modern Western economies.

 

The researchers found that the weight values of metallic money in prehistory had the same statistical distribution of the daily expenses as a modern Western household: small everyday expenses made up the vast majority of expenses, while larger expenses were comparatively rare. Using simulations, they demonstrated that the most likely scenario to explain the prehistoric data is to imagine an economic system regulated by supply and demand, in which everyone participates proportionally to how much they earn. That is, a market economy.

 

The prehistoric economy is commonly imagined as a primitive system based on barter and on the exchange of gifts, with the market system appearing as some kind of evolutionary milestone at some point during the making of ‘advanced’ Western societies. The study challenges this notion by showing that not only did the market exist before formal coinage was invented, but even long before any form of state actually appeared in Europe. “We are used to thinking of the market economy as a product of modernity, an innovation that deeply changed people’s lives and minds as soon as it appeared,” explains Dr Nicola Ialongo, University of Göttingen’s Institute for Prehistory and Early History. “Our results suggest that it may have always existed. In a way, one could even think of it as one of the many behavioural traits that define us as humans: like warfare and marriage.”

 

“To be honest, we were quite surprised by our results,” adds Giancarlo Lago, who carried out the research while at the University of Salento, Department of Cultural Heritage. “Our findings defy some long-established beliefs among archaeologists, economists and anthropologists. They also suggest that many of the differences that we see between ‘Western’ and supposedly ‘primitive’ cultures are not as substantial as we might think.”

 

Original publication: Ialongo, N., Lago, G. 2024. Consumption patterns in prehistoric Europe are consistent with modern behaviour. Nature Human Behaviour 2024. www.nature.com/articles/s41562-024-01926-4.

www.uni-goettingen.de/de/569681.html

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Journal

Nature Human Behaviour

DOI

10.1038/s41562-024-01926-4 

Method of Research

Data/statistical analysis

Subject of Research

People

Article Title

Consumption patterns in prehistoric Europe are consistent with modern economic behaviour

 

The Open Encyclopedia of Cognitive Science, a paradigm-shifting open access reference work, officially launches with first articles

The Open Encyclopedia of Cognitive Science equips readers with essential tools to apply fundamental concepts about cognition and learning to the issues of today’s society.

The MIT Press

Today the MIT Press announces the release of the first 50 articles in the Open Encyclopedia of Cognitive Science (OECS), a dynamic, comprehensive, and openly accessible web reference developed to guide the next generation of exploration in cognition and intelligence.

OECS’s predecessor, the MIT Encyclopedia of the Cognitive Sciences, has been an essential resource for researchers and students of cognitive science and neuroscience for 25 years. With the recent publication of its first articles, OECS stands to become the new benchmark in the field—made possible by generous funding from James S. McDonnell Foundation and the Allen Institute for AI. 

In our contemporary intellectual landscape, questions about the nature of the mind, its growth, interactions, and variances—from the nuances of large language models to the complexities of political polarization—demand multifaceted exploration. OECS aims to equip readers with essential tools to apply fundamental concepts about cognition and learning to the issues of today’s society, and will be one of the most contemporary, authoritative, and comprehensive reference works in the cognitive sciences currently available.

For editors-in-chief Michael C. Frank of Stanford University and Asifa Majid of the University of Oxford, OECS stands apart from other reference works because it will facilitate cross-disciplinary understanding. “Cognitive science is inherently interdisciplinary and requires shared referents,” Majid said. “The OECS will connect these resources and ideas in a single, authoritative encyclopedia.”

“These first articles give wonderful overviews in diverse areas of expertise, often with a perspective that is simply not available anywhere else,” Frank said. “Together they contribute to a field-leading resource that will continue to grow over the years to come.”

OECS’s articles will not only establish a shared understanding of foundational concepts, but also showcase cutting-edge debates and introduce core subfields, central concepts, significant phenomena, and key methodologies. The digital-first format, available on PubPub, will facilitate new forms of content, enable editors to swiftly update entries in response to new discoveries, and ensure global accessibility without cost barriers.

For further information and updates on the Open Encyclopedia of Cognitive Science, please visit oecs.mit.edu.

Explore several featured articles from the first release in the Open Encyclopedia of Cognitive Science

Articles with the most views:

• Large Language Models by Melanie Mitchell
• WEIRD by Joseph Henrich
• Attention by Wayne Wu
• Bayesian Models of Cognition by Thomas L. Griffiths
• Psycholinguistics by Fernanda Ferreira and Victor S. Ferreira

Articles with the most downloads:

• Social Epistemology by Mandi Astola and Mark Alfano
• Theory of Mind by Henry M. Wellman
• Conceptual Analysis by Frank Jackson
• Causal Learning by Alison Gopnik
• Olfaction by Asifa Majid

About the MIT Press

Established in 1962, The MIT Press is one of the largest and most distinguished university presses in the world and a leading publisher of books and journals at the intersection of science, technology, art, social science, and design.