We conduct an experiment to investigate how different information about social norms affects individuals' stated contributions to a specific pro-environment program, a student "green fee," in the context of a referendum. Compared to students that receive no information about peer contributions, on average, students that receive information about the dollar value range of contributions at peer institutions contribute less while students that learn about the high percentage of students voting "yes" on green fee programs at peer institutions contribute more. The results are economically significant as the absolute values of both effects represent approximately 25% of average contributions. These results suggest that information about participation rates can be more effective than information about dollar amounts in encouraging contributions to environmental initiatives. Of interest to stated preference researchers, we find that results do not change when controlling for self-selection into survey completion.

Antimicrobial-resistant infections are an urgent public health threat, making development of novel antimicrobials able to effectively treat these infections extremely important. Chronic and polymicrobial infections further complicate antimicrobial therapy, often through the development of microbial biofilms. Here, we describe the ability of an engineered antimicrobial peptide to disrupt biofilms formed by the ESKAPE (Enterococcus faecium, Staphylococcus aureus, Klebsiella pneumoniae, Acinetobacter baumannii, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, and Enterobacter species) pathogen Pseudomonas aeruginosa during coinfection with respiratory syncytial virus. We also observed antiviral activity, indicating the ability of engineered antimicrobial peptides to act as cross-kingdom single-molecule combination therapies.

No abstract

No abstract