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Environmental psychologists have established multiple psychological benefits of interaction with natural, compared to urban, environments on emotion, cognition, and attention. Yet, given the increasing urbanisation worldwide, it is equally important to understand how differences within different urban environments influence human psychological experience. We developed a laboratory experiment to examine the psychophysiological effects of the physical (outdoor or indoor) and social (crowded versus uncrowded) environment in healthy young adults, and to validate the use of mobile electroencephalography (EEG) and electrodermal activity (EDA) measurements during active walking. Participants (N = 42) were randomly assigned into a walking or a standing group, and watched six 1-min walk-through videos of green, urban indoor and urban outdoor environments, depicting high or low levels of social density. Self-reported emotional states show that green spaces is perceived as more calm and positive, and reduce attentional demands. Further, the outdoor urban space is perceived more positively than the indoor environment. These findings are consistent with earlier studies on the psychological benefits of nature and confirm the effectiveness of our paradigm and stimuli. In addition, we hypothesised that even short-term exposure to crowded scenes would have negative psychological effects. We found that crowded scenes evoked higher self-reported arousal, more negative self-reported valence, and recruited more cognitive and attentional resources. However, in walking participants, they evoked higher frontal alpha asymmetry, suggesting more positive affective responses. Furthermore, we found that using recent signal-processing methods, the EEG data produced a comparable signal-to-noise ratio between walking and standing, and that despite differences between walking and standing, skin-conductance also captured effectively psychophysiological responses to stimuli. These results suggest that emotional responses to visually presented stimuli can be measured effectively using mobile EEG and EDA in ambulatory settings, and that there is complex interaction between active walking, the social density of urban spaces, and direct and indirect affective responses to such environments.

Visibility is the degree to which different parts of the environment can be observed from a given vantage point. In the absence of previous familiarity or signage, the visibility of key elements in a multilevel environment (e.g., the entrance, exit, or the destination itself) becomes a primary input to make wayfinding decisions and avoid getting lost. Previous research has focused on memory-based wayfinding and mental representation of 3D space, but few studies have investigated the direct effects of visibility on wayfinding. Moreover, to our knowledge, there are no studies that have explicitly observed the interaction between visibility and wayfinding under uncertainty in a multilevel environment. To bridge this gap, we studied how the visibility of destinations, as well as the continuity of sight-lines along the vertical dimension, affects unaided and goal-directed wayfinding behavior in a multilevel desktop Virtual Reality (VR) study. We obtained results from a total of 69 participants. Each participant performed a total of 24 wayfinding trials in a multilevel environment. Results showcase a significant and nonlinear correlation between the visibility of destinations and wayfinding behavioral characteristics. Specifically, once the destination was in sight, regardless of whether it was highly or barely visible, participants made an instantaneous decision to switch floors and move up towards the destination. In contrast, if the destination was out-of-sight, participants performed ‘visual exploration’, indicated by an increase in vertical head movements and greater time taken to switch floors. To demonstrate the direct applicability of this fundamental wayfinding behavioral pattern, we formalize these results by modeling a visibility-based cognitive agent. Our results show that by modeling the transition between exploration and exploitation as a function of visibility, cognitive agents were able to replicate human wayfinding patterns observed in the desktop VR study. This simple demonstration shows the potential of extending our main findings concerning the nonlinear relationship between visibility and wayfinding to inform the modeling of human cognition.

Online investing is often facilitated by digital platforms, where the information of peer top performers can be widely accessible and distributed. However, the influence of such information on retail investors’ psychology, their trading behaviour and potential risks they may be prone to is poorly understood. We investigate the impact of upward social comparison on risk-taking, trading activity and investor satisfaction using a tailored experiment with 807 experienced retail investors trading on a dynamically evolving simulated stock market, designed to systematically measure various facets of trading activity. We find that investors presented with an upward social comparison take more risk and trade more actively, and they report significantly lower satisfaction with their own performance. Our findings demonstrate the pitfalls of modern investment platforms with peer information and social trading. The broad implications of this study also provide guidelines for improving retail investor satisfaction and protection.

Virtual reality environments presented on tablets and smartphones have potential to aid the early diagnosis of conditions such as Alzheimer's dementia by quantifying impairments in navigation performance. However, it is unclear whether performance on mobile devices can predict navigation errors in the real world. We compared the performance of 49 participants (25 females, 18-35 years old) at wayfinding and path integration tasks designed in our mobile app 'Sea Hero Quest' with their performance at similar tasks in a real-world environment. We first performed this experiment in the streets of London (UK) and replicated it in Paris (France). In both cities, we found a significant correlation between virtual and real-world wayfinding performance and a male advantage in both environments, although smaller in the real world (Cohen's d in the game = 0.89, in the real world = 0.59). Results in London and Paris were highly similar, and controlling for familiarity with video games did not change the results. The strength of the correlation between real world and virtual environment increased with the difficulty of the virtual wayfinding task, indicating that Sea Hero Quest does not merely capture video gaming skills. The fact that the Sea Hero Quest wayfinding task has real-world ecological validity constitutes a step toward controllable, sensitive, safe, low-cost, and easy to administer digital cognitive assessment of navigation ability.

This study describes the transcriptional programming of yolk sac–derived microglia specification in the brain, in which c-kit–positive erythromyeloid cells are further modified into three developmental subpools of microglia progenitors and their microglia differentiation is mediated by the transcription factors Pu.1 and IRF8. Microglia are crucial for immune responses in the brain. Although their origin from the yolk sac has been recognized for some time, their precise precursors and the transcription program that is used are not known. We found that mouse microglia were derived from primitive c-kit + erythromyeloid precursors that were detected in the yolk sac as early as 8 d post conception. These precursors developed into CD45 + c-kit lo CX 3 CR1 − immature (A1) cells and matured into CD45 + c-kit − CX 3 CR1 + (A2) cells, as evidenced by the downregulation of CD31 and concomitant upregulation of F4/80 and macrophage colony stimulating factor receptor (MCSF-R). Proliferating A2 cells became microglia and invaded the developing brain using specific matrix metalloproteinases. Notably, microgliogenesis was not only dependent on the transcription factor Pu.1 (also known as Sfpi), but also required Irf8, which was vital for the development of the A2 population, whereas Myb, Id2, Batf3 and Klf4 were not required. Our data provide cellular and molecular insights into the origin and development of microglia.

In this paper, we explore the mutual effect of prior background expectations and visibility afforded by the 3D configuration of the physical environment on wayfinding efficiency and strategy in multilevel buildings. We perform new analyses on data from 149 participants who performed six unaided and directed wayfinding tasks in virtual buildings with varying degrees of visibility. Our findings reveal that the interaction between visibility and prior background expectations significantly affects wayfinding efficiency and strategy during between-floor wayfinding tasks. We termed this interaction effect strategic visibility , which emphasizes the importance of the strategic allocation of visibility towards actionable building elements in promoting efficient wayfinding and shaping wayfinding strategy. Our study highlights the significance of strategic visibility in promoting inclusive and accessible built environments for neurodiversity. Finally, we provide an open-source dataset that can be used to develop and test new wayfinding theories and models to advance research in the emerging field of human-building interaction.

The immune response to mycobacteria is characterized by granuloma formation, which features multinucleated giant cells as a unique macrophage type. We previously found that multinucleated giant cells result from Toll-like receptor-induced DNA damage and cell autonomous cell cycle modifications. However, the giant cell progenitor identity remained unclear. Here, we show that the giant cell-forming potential is a particular trait of monocyte progenitors. Common monocyte progenitors potently produce cytokines in response to mycobacteria and their immune-active molecules. In addition, common monocyte progenitors accumulate cholesterol and lipids, which are prerequisites for giant cell transformation. Inducible monocyte progenitors are so far undescribed circulating common monocyte progenitor descendants with high giant cell-forming potential. Monocyte progenitors are induced in mycobacterial infections and localize to granulomas. Accordingly, they exhibit important immunological functions in mycobacterial infections. Moreover, their signature trait of high cholesterol metabolism may be piggy-backed by mycobacteria to create a permissive niche. Multinucleated giant cells characterize granuloma formation in mycobacterial infections. Here the authors identify monocyte precursors with distinct immunological and metabolic properties as a source of the granuloma multinucleated giant cell compartment.

Understanding crowd behavior is critical for designing buildings and public spaces with efficient circulation. However, the interplay of social and spatial contexts makes this endeavor challenging. This paper examines scenarios in which crowds perform a search task with time constraints, akin to individuals shopping or officers searching a crime area. We formulate and test two sets of hypotheses defined at the crowd and individual levels using desktop VR experiments. We conducted four experimental sessions that employed different social incentives (collaborative versus competitive) with a total of 140 participants, using a mixed factorial design where each individual participated in 12 trials. We found that competitive incentives produced higher levels of crowd aggregation than collaborative incentives. In addition, individuals were more likely to be influenced by others’ behaviors in the collaborative compared to the competitive condition. Notably, these social signals were conveyed among participants without any verbal communication. We also developed a novel graph theoretic measure, “search attractiveness,” that accurately predicts space occupation during a search task. This paper highlights the roles of social and spatial contexts in understanding occupation and aggregation.

In view of emerging drug-resistant tuberculosis (TB), host-directed adjunct therapies are urgently needed to improve treatment outcomes with currently available anti-TB therapies. One approach is to interfere with the formation of lipid-laden \"foamy\" macrophages in the host, as they provide a nutrient-rich host cell environment for Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb). Here, we provide evidence that Wnt family member 6 (WNT6), a ligand of the evolutionarily conserved Wingless/Integrase 1 (WNT) signaling pathway, promotes foam cell formation by regulating key lipid metabolic genes including acetylCoA carboxylase 2 (ACC2) during pulmonary TB. Using genetic and pharmacological approaches, we demonstrated that lack of functional WNT6 or ACC2 significantly reduced intracellular triacylglycerol (TAG) levels and Mtb survival in macrophages. Moreover, treatment of Mtb-infected mice with a combination of a pharmacological ACC2 inhibitor and the anti-TB drug isoniazid (INH) reduced lung TAG and cytokine levels, as well as lung weights, compared with treatment with INH alone. This combination also reduced Mtb bacterial numbers and the size of mononuclear cell infiltrates in livers of infected mice. In summary, our findings demonstrate that Mtb exploits WNT6/ACC2-induced storage of TAGs in macrophages to facilitate its intracellular survival, a finding that opens new perspectives for host-directed adjunctive treatment of pulmonary TB.

Smart Cities already surround us, and yet they are still incomprehensibly far from directly impacting everyday life. While current Smart Cities are often inaccessible, the experience of everyday citizens may be enhanced with a combination of the emerging technologies Digital Twins (DTs) and Situated Analytics. DTs represent their Physical Twin (PT) in the real world via models, simulations, (remotely) sensed data, context awareness, and interactions. However, interaction requires appropriate interfaces to address the complexity of the city. Ultimately, leveraging the potential of Smart Cities requires going beyond assembling the DT to be comprehensive and accessible. Situated Analytics allows for the anchoring of city information in its spatial context. We advance the concept of embedding the DT into the PT through Situated Analytics to form Fused Twins (FTs). This fusion allows access to data in the location that it is generated in in an embodied context that can make the data more understandable. Prototypes of FTs are rapidly emerging from different domains, but Smart Cities represent the context with the most potential for FTs in the future. This paper reviews DTs, Situated Analytics, and Smart Cities as the foundations of FTs. Regarding DTs, we define five components (physical, data, analytical, virtual, and Connection Environments) that we relate to several cognates (i.e., similar but different terms) from existing literature. Regarding Situated Analytics, we review the effects of user embodiment on cognition and cognitive load. Finally, we classify existing partial examples of FTs from the literature and address their construction from Augmented Reality, Geographic Information Systems, Building/City Information Models, and DTs and provide an overview of future directions.