The label-feedback hypothesis (Lupyan, 2012) states that language can modulate visual processing. In particular, hearing or reading aloud target names (labels) speeds up performance in visual search tasks by facilitating target detection. The current study conceptually expands previous investigations by comparing the effect of a multimodal label presentation (i.e., an audio+visual, AV, priming label), with that of a multimodal (i.e. noise+visual, NV, label) and two unimodal (i.e. audio, A, label or visual, V, label) control conditions in a visual search task. Furthermore, the name of a category (i.e. a label at the superordinate level) was used as a cue, instead of the more commonly used target name (a basic level label), with targets belonging to one of three categories: proper weapons, improper weapons, garments. According to legislation, objects are typically classified as weapons if they are offensive per se (referred to here as proper) and if they are adapted for use as weapons or carried with the intent of causing injury (referred to here as improper), with specific regulations on their usage and possession in public spaces. However, little evidence exists on the validity of this distinction in psychology, despite a widespread recognition of the importance of psychological states and perceptions in risk assessment. These categories were found to vary for their structure, improper weapons being an ad hoc category unlike proper weapons and garments, and for the perceived dangerousness and familiarity of their exemplars, which increase from garments to proper weapons. Results of the two experiments on the label-feedback effect show an overall transient facilitation of visual search performance in the AV condition compared to control conditions. However, for improper weapons, no significant difference was found between the AV and the NV label condition, suggesting that the specificity of the superordinate label effect can be modulated by the structural properties of a category. The findings are consistent with the idea that the AV condition prompted an "up regulation" of the label, a requirement for enhancing the label’s beneficial effects, with the exception of improper weapons. They also highlight the status of the category of improper weapons and offer additional proof that sets it apart from proper weapons.

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Yes / This report addresses the scientific and technological discoveries in the biological sciences that enabled the early interest in biological warfare to move from hurling infected corpses into enemy cities in ancient times, through use of small cultures of animal pathogens to sabotage enemy livestock in World War I, to the origins of organised military biological weapons (BW) programmes directed at humans, animals, and plants in the inter-war period. It builds on Dando¿s 1999 paper: The Impact of the Development of Modern Biology and Medicine on the Evolution of Offensive Biological Warfare Programs in the Twentieth Century.1 For the historical aspects of biological warfare programmes this report primarily draws from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute volume: Biological and Toxin Weapons: Research, Development and Use from the Middle Ages to 1945.2

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Yes / The Ad Hoc Group (AHG) of the States Parties to the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention (BTWC) has the consideration of measures to implement Article X of the Convention as an element of its mandate agreed by the Special Conference in September 1994. The AHG has considered how to address this at each of its substantive meetings with a Friend of the Chair, initially Ambassador Jorge Berguno of Chile and subsequently, Carlos Duarte of Brazil carrying out this responsibility. As progress is being made on the development of the rolling text for the Protocol to strengthen the Convention, it is timely to consider how the implementation of Article X might contribute to the strengthening of the effectiveness of the Convention. This Briefing Paper considers some of the developments that have occurred nationally, regionally and internationally in respect of the use of bacteriological (biological) agents and toxins for peaceful purposes. It has become apparent that there is increasing awareness world-wide because of public health and environmental concerns of the need to control the handling, use, storage and transfer of such biological agents. This paper examines some of the current controls and regulations for biological agents and the international initiatives that are ongoing to strengthen biosafety around the world. These are seen as building blocks which might be considered from a point of view of strengthening the BTWC as well as contributing to the implementation of Article X although care will need to be taken in the Protocol for the AHG to avoid unnecessary duplication with other international activities. The challenging goal is to identify how these other national, regional and international activities can be utilised to contribute to the strengthening of the BTWC.

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