Characterizing traits of coordination

How can one recognize coordination languages and technologies? As this report shows, the common approach that contrasts coordination with computation is intellectually unsound: depending on the selected understanding of the word "computation", it either captures too many or too few programming languages. Instead, we argue for objective criteria that can be used to evaluate how well programming technologies offer coordination services. Of the various criteria commonly used in this community, we are able to isolate three that are strongly characterizing: black-box componentization, which we had identified previously, but also interface extensibility and customizability of run-time optimization goals. These criteria are well matched by Intel's Concurrent Collections and AstraKahn, and also by OpenCL, POSIX and VMWare ESX.Comment: 11 pages, 3 table

Theoretical investigation into the origins of multicellularity : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of PhD in Theoretical Biology at Massey University, Albany, New Zealand

Evolution of multicellularity is a major event in the history of life. The first step is the emergence of collectives of cooperating cells. Cooperation is generally costly to cooperators, thus, non-cooperators have a selective advantage. I investigated the evolution of cooperation in a population in which cells may migrate between collectives. Four different modes of migration were considered and for each mode I identified the set of multiplayer games in which cooperation has a higher fixation probability than defection. I showed that weak altruism may evolve without coordination among cells. However, the evolution of strong altruism requires the coordination of actions among cells. The second step in the emergence of multicellularity is the transition in Darwinian individuality. A likely hallmark of the transition is fitness decoupling. In the second part of my thesis, I present a method for characterizing fitness (de-)coupling which involves an analysis of the correlation between cell and collective fitnesses. In a population with coupled fitnesses, this correlation is close to one. As a population evolves towards multicellularity, collective fitness starts to rely more on the interactions between cells rather than the individual performance of cells, so the correlation between particle and collective fitnesses decreases. This metric makes it possible to detect fitness decoupling. I used the suggested metric to investigate under which conditions fitness decoupling occurs. I constructed a model of a population defined by a linear traits-to-fitness function and used this to identify those functions that promote fitness decoupling. In this model, the fitness correlation is equal to the cosine of the angle between the gradients of fitnesses. Therefore, my results allow an estimation of the fitness (de-)coupling state before selection takes place. In the third section of my thesis, the accuracy of this estimation was tested on available experimental data and using a model simulating an experimental selection regime, which featured non-linear traits-to-fitness functions. The results obtained from the estimation of fitness correlations showed a close approximation to the fitness correlation calculated from experimental data and from simulations in a range of selection regimes

Introduction to the Special Section. Character and Citizenship: Towards an Emerging \u2018Strong Program\u2019?

The principal questions addressed in this special issue concern a crucial dimension of the educational agenda for 21st century Western societies: in the complex, uncertain, rapidly changing world we live in, which character traits matter most? How are they related with the development of a cohesive society with better rates of employability and innovation, especially among young generations? And how are they best developed? Within this context, special attention must be devoted to citizenship: what are the skills and virtues required for young people to play their role as fully integrated citizens in the emergent European economic, political, social and cultural space? And how can character education improve their social and political participation? Therefore, the scholarly challenge to be met consists of developing the theory of character education and its relation with citizenship education within a sound conceptual frame. This involves integrating approaches, models, data and research methods concerning character traits and citizenship education in Europe

Anatomic brain asymmetry in vervet monkeys.

Asymmetry is a prominent feature of human brains with important functional consequences. Many asymmetric traits show population bias, but little is known about the genetic and environmental sources contributing to inter-individual variance. Anatomic asymmetry has been observed in Old World monkeys, but the evidence for the direction and extent of asymmetry is equivocal and only one study has estimated the genetic contributions to inter-individual variance. In this study we characterize a range of qualitative and quantitative asymmetry measures in structural brain MRIs acquired from an extended pedigree of Old World vervet monkeys (n = 357), and implement variance component methods to estimate the proportion of trait variance attributable to genetic and environmental sources. Four of six asymmetry measures show pedigree-level bias and one of the traits has a significant heritability estimate of about 30%. We also found that environmental variables more significantly influence the width of the right compared to the left prefrontal lobe

Reconciling long-term cultural diversity and short-term collective social behavior

An outstanding open problem is whether collective social phenomena occurring over short timescales can systematically reduce cultural heterogeneity in the long run, and whether offline and online human interactions contribute differently to the process. Theoretical models suggest that short-term collective behavior and long-term cultural diversity are mutually excluding, since they require very different levels of social influence. The latter jointly depends on two factors: the topology of the underlying social network and the overlap between individuals in multidimensional cultural space. However, while the empirical properties of social networks are well understood, little is known about the large-scale organization of real societies in cultural space, so that random input specifications are necessarily used in models. Here we use a large dataset to perform a high-dimensional analysis of the scientific beliefs of thousands of Europeans. We find that inter-opinion correlations determine a nontrivial ultrametric hierarchy of individuals in cultural space, a result unaccessible to one-dimensional analyses and in striking contrast with random assumptions. When empirical data are used as inputs in models, we find that ultrametricity has strong and counterintuitive effects, especially in the extreme case of long-range online-like interactions bypassing social ties. On short time-scales, it strongly facilitates a symmetry-breaking phase transition triggering coordinated social behavior. On long time-scales, it severely suppresses cultural convergence by restricting it within disjoint groups. We therefore find that, remarkably, the empirical distribution of individuals in cultural space appears to optimize the coexistence of short-term collective behavior and long-term cultural diversity, which can be realized simultaneously for the same moderate level of mutual influence

Assessing the impact of participatory research in rice breeding on poor rice farming households with emphasis on women farmers: a case study in eastern Uttar Pradesh, India

For the past years since the Consultative Group of International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) Systemwide Initiative on Participatory Research and Gender Analysis (PRGA) was initiated, guides for impact assessment of PRGA have been developed (Lilja and Ashby 1999; Johnson et.al., 2000; Lilja and Johnson 2001). However, according to Farnworth and Jiggins (2003) while there is rapidly growing literature on the impacts of PPB on farmers, this is not further differentiated by sex. Despite the immense literature on the impacts of production, post production technologies on women farmers, systematic studies on the impacts of PPB on women in any category, either in terms of the effects of being a participant in a participatory plant breeding process (PPB) process, or in terms of the impact of the new materials generated is few. There is practically no literature that examines the effects of PPB – either as process or in terms of the impacts of the emergent materials – on gender relations at the household, community or any other relevant social or geographic scale along the food chain. Even with women’s active involvement in rice production, post harvest and seed management, scientists who are mostly male often talk with the male farmers only. Ignoring women’s knowledge and preference for rice varieties may be an obstacle to adoption of improved varieties, particularly in areas with gender-specific tasks, and in farm activities where women have considerable influence. Feldstein (1996) cited three different ways in which gender analysis can be considered in participatory research. These are: the efficiency argument, equity oriented, and empowerment. This study attempts to fill in these research gaps. The objectives of this paper are to: a) discuss the process used in integrating participatory research and gender analysis in breeding for drought prone and submergence prone environment; b) assess how gender analysis contributed to the design and implementation of the research and development outcomes; c) assess the impacts of PVS on poor women farmers, particularly on women’s empowerment; and d) recommend strategies to further enhance women’s roles in ensuring household food (rice) food security and improving their social status within the household and the community

Evolution of Conversations in the Age of Email Overload

Email is a ubiquitous communications tool in the workplace and plays an important role in social interactions. Previous studies of email were largely based on surveys and limited to relatively small populations of email users within organizations. In this paper, we report results of a large-scale study of more than 2 million users exchanging 16 billion emails over several months. We quantitatively characterize the replying behavior in conversations within pairs of users. In particular, we study the time it takes the user to reply to a received message and the length of the reply sent. We consider a variety of factors that affect the reply time and length, such as the stage of the conversation, user demographics, and use of portable devices. In addition, we study how increasing load affects emailing behavior. We find that as users receive more email messages in a day, they reply to a smaller fraction of them, using shorter replies. However, their responsiveness remains intact, and they may even reply to emails faster. Finally, we predict the time to reply, length of reply, and whether the reply ends a conversation. We demonstrate considerable improvement over the baseline in all three prediction tasks, showing the significant role that the factors that we uncover play, in determining replying behavior. We rank these factors based on their predictive power. Our findings have important implications for understanding human behavior and designing better email management applications for tasks like ranking unread emails.Comment: 11 page, 24th International World Wide Web Conferenc