Social norms and altruistic punitive behaviours are both based on the integration of information from multiple contexts. Individual behavioural performance can be altered by loss and gain contexts, which produce different mental states and subjective perceptions. In this study, we used event-related potential and time-frequency techniques to examine performance on a third-party punishment task and to explore the neural mechanisms underlying context-dependent differences in punishment decisions. The results indicated that individuals were more likely to reject unfairness in the context of loss (vs. gain) and to increase punishment as unfairness increased. In contrast, fairness appeared to cause an early increase in cognitive control signal enhancement, as indicated by the P2 amplitude and theta oscillations, and a later increase in emotional and motivational salience during decision-making in gain vs. loss contexts, as indicated by the medial frontal negativity and beta oscillations. In summary, individuals were more willing to sanction violations of social norms in the loss context than in the gain context and rejecting unfair losses induced more equity-related cognitive conflict than accepting unfair gains, highlighting the importance of context (i.e., gain vs. loss) in equity-related social decision-making processes.

Optomechanical crystals allow controlling both light and mechanical vibrations by presenting simultaneously photonic and phononic bandgaps. Tuning the position of these bandgaps is essential to address different technological applications. In this study, we present a one-dimensional optomechanical crystal with wings and a hole whose position is shifting sideways. Simulations of the photonic and phononic band diagrams show that the hole shift effectively controls the width and position of the band gaps. Furthermore, the hole shift also opens new TE and TM bandgaps that extend the frequency range with full photonic bandgaps. The width of the phononic bandgap peaks for a hole shift σ=0.28 to be 42% wider than without a hole shift. Despite large band movements with the hole shift, the average displacement is null, which means that the hole shift does not impact the photon and phonon DOS. These results can be used to optimize the design of optomechanical cavities for specific frequency range applications.

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