How Can Bee Colony Algorithm Serve Medicine?

Healthcare professionals usually should make complex decisions with far reaching consequences and associated risks in health care fields. As it was demonstrated in other industries, the ability to drill down into pertinent data to explore knowledge behind the data can greatly facilitate superior, informed decisions to ensue the facts. Nature has always inspired researchers to develop models of solving the problems. Bee colony algorithm (BCA), based on the self-organized behavior of social insects is one of the most popular member of the family of population oriented, nature inspired meta-heuristic swarm intelligence method which has been proved its superiority over some other nature inspired algorithms. The objective of this model was to identify valid novel, potentially useful, and understandable correlations and patterns in existing data. This review employs a thematic analysis of online series of academic papers to outline BCA in medical hive, reducing the response and computational time and optimizing the problems. To illustrate the benefits of this model, the cases of disease diagnose system are presented

Farming bees in a dynamic social-ecology: An ethnographic exploration of knowledge practices among commercial bee farmers in the Western Cape, South Africa

In recent years theorists have challenged the certainty that there is one universally 'right' system of knowledge, arguing that there exists a diversity or plurality of ways of knowing the world (Turnbull 1997; Green 2008). Western scientific research has been reframed by these 'relational ontologists' as a set of knowledge practices that tend to produce and reinforce a dualistic view of the world. In particular, 'scientific', positivist accounts of nature have historically positioned mind and body, human beings and nature, humans and non-humans as essentially different or separate from each other (Thrift 2004; Haraway 2008). The methodological recommendation is that, as social theorists, we carefully observe knowledge practices and allow ourselves to be surprised or challenged by what we find rather than constantly performing these preconceived ways of knowing the world through our research (Law 2004; Lien & Law 2010). Farming bees commercially in the Western Cape, South Africa involves a high degree of skill and intimate daily engagements with plants, animals, landscapes and weather-worlds. As such it is an ideal case study for interrogating dualistic framings of human-environment relations through an ethnographic exploration of environmental knowledge practices. Commercial bee farmers that participated in this study raised a range of concerns about complex dynamics influencing their businesses, including challenges accessing viable land for bee sites and accessibility and security of the flowering plants upon which bees depend for food. I argue that, in practice, these challenges involved relational entanglements of farmers and other 'more-than-human' actors (Whatmore 2006) in what I refer to as a dynamic social-ecology (Ingold 2000; Berkes & Jolly 2001; Ommer et al. 2012). I argue that pollination and honey were co-produced by meshworks of more-than-human actors (Ingold 2011; Cohen 2013) and that knowledges were grounded in farmer's physical bodies and performed through practical skills. Farmers embodied multiple roles (such as farmer-businessman and farmer-researcher) and were able to move fluidly between different assemblages of skilled practices and ways of knowing in their engagements with plants, bees and other people (Turnbull 2000; Mol 2002). These insights are used to interrogate dualistic framings of inter-species relationality as well as to critically develop a relational understanding of environmental knowledge practices

Small-scale urban agriculture in northern Colorado

2022 Spring.Includes bibliographical references.Urban agriculture involves production, processing, and marketing of food and related products in urban and peri-urban areas for local consumption (Pearson et al., 2010). The purpose of my qualitative study was to explore urban agriculture in Northern Colorado using a phenomenological approach focusing on small producers. I interviewed four farmers from Larimer County, CO, with two to forty-seven years of urban agricultural experience. Farmers supplied representative photographs of their operations. The motivation for farming was self-interest, food, conventions, and income. Practitioners learned to farm through experimentation, formal, and informal approaches. Learning was experiential and self-directed. Participants experienced both challenges and rewards during farming. All the farmers would farm again with minimal changes to their current practice. This exploration highlighted urban agriculture's role in providing healthy food, fulfillment, and generating income despite challenges. The findings demonstrated a gap in utilization of educational resources within the community, which could have further improved the farmer's productivity. Examining the scope of urban agriculture would facilitate a needs analysis particularly for complementary adult education programs. Moreover, integration of small-scale urban agricultural production into the regional economic development plans and related business opportunities remains unexplored. Finally, it is critical to identify ways that local governments can support small producers through legislative and other tools

Beekeeping Expertise as Situated Knowing in Precarious Multispecies Livelihoods

In this article I analyse beekeeping expertise as situated knowing in the precarious conditions of multispecies livelihoods. Beekeeping is knowledge-intensive: distinct expertise is required to keep colonies alive and thriving, to produce honey, and to support pollination – that is, to maintain livelihoods. The conditions in which beekeeping expertise is developed and enacted are precarious due to close entanglements with ultimately unintelligible non-human others and their changing habitats. Using ethnographic and interview data collected among urban beekeepers in Finland, I first describe the precariousness embedded in beekeeping as sharing lifeworlds and becoming with non-human others, particularly in an epoch characterized by severe environmental disturbances. Second, I analyse learning and practising beekeeping as the development and enactment of beekeeping expertise as situated ways of knowing. From beekeeping courses, books, and social relationships, beekeepers learn not only the necessary skills but also ways of knowing that value diversity and variability. By practising and observing in the hive yard, they further learn to be affected by bees and their multispecies habitats, attuning their practices and perceptions in accordance with them. Beekeeping expertise therefore entails ways of knowing that are local, relational, practical, and open to changes and even surprises, recognising the incompleteness of knowledge as well as the unprecedented agency of non-human others. Such situated knowing enables beekeepers to acknowledge and act upon the complex interdependencies of multispecies livelihoods in changing socio-ecological conditions

Simulation driven machine learning methods to optimise design of physical experiments and enhance data analysis for testing of fusion energy heat exchanger components

Plasma facing components (PFCs) must be designed to routinely withstand the harsh environment of a fusion device, where temperatures at the core of the plasma exceed 150,000,000 °C. The heat by induction to verify extremes (HIVE) experimental facility was established to replicate the thermal loads a PFC is subjected to during normal operation of a fusion device.To maximise its impact on the design of PFCs, HIVE must deliver smarter testing and improved component insight. Currently, the experimental parameters required to deliver a certain response to the component are decided at the point of testing through a combination of previous experience, intuition, and trial & error, which is both time-consuming and unreliable. To assess a PFC’s suitability, knowledge of its mechanical performance while operating at high temperatures is desirable, however HIVE only records pointwise temperature measurements on the component’s surface using thermocouples. Currently, HIVE has no method of inferring a component’s mechanical response using the temperature measure-ments.Both the challenges of smarter testing and improved component insight can be achieved through the identification of inverse solutions. A popular approach to solving engineering inverse problems is surrogate assisted optimisation, where a machine learning model is trained using finite element (FE) simulation data. Much of the work in literature use single value surrogate models on quite simplistic problems, however HIVE is a real-world, multi-physics problem which requires full field (FF) surrogate models to solve its multitude of inverse problems.The development of a method which can easily construct FE data driven FF surrogates would be invaluable for a variety of tasks in engineering, as well as solving inverse problems. In this work, it demonstrates that it can provide a much more robust and comprehensive method of characterising a PFC’s strengths and limitations, enabling more informed decisions to be made during its design cycle

Illustrated Extension apiculture education STEAM (science, technology, engineering, art, mathematics) book to support educators teaching youth in non-formal learning settings

Honeybees and pollinators have received much media attention in recent years, leading to increased public curiosity about their wellbeing and role in nature. This curiosity has increased pressure on Extension educators to provide apiculture education to the public, both youth and adults. However, many Extension youth educators are unfamiliar with the complexities of apiculture and its relationship to agricultural sustainability and natural resources stewardship. Art can help people to better understand STEM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics) topics like apiculture, agriculture and natural resources, making STEAM (science, technology, engineering, art, mathematics) a suitable learning framework for those seeking to better understand or teach these topics. This creative component resulted in an illustrated apiculture book to support Extension educators teaching youth in non-formal learning settings. The goal of the book was to increase 5th-7th grade youth understanding of the interconnectedness of the natural world and agriculture so that they recognized the value of bees, made conscientious environmental and food decisions, and applied STEAM skills to future activities. The book was designed using the STEAM framework, and is composed of eight topics in chapters; 16 youth learning objectives (two per chapter); eight activities (one per chapter), and 15 illustrations original to the author

Disembodied characters

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, School of Architecture and Planning, Program in Media Arts and Sciences, September 1999."August 1999."Includes bibliographical references (p. 72-73).A colony of social insects as a whole can be regarded as an organism that reproduces, maintains its internal structure, and survives in a hostile an unpredictable environment. Such superorganism - an entity that consists of smaller component organisms - is able to perform remarkable feats, decentralized information processing among them. For instance, a swarm of bees is able to choose the best possible nesting cavity even though only a few of the individuals have any knowledge of the available sites, and no single bee has a full knowledge of the situation. This decentralized decision making is remarkably similar to that performed by hypothetical functional agents, frequently featured in decentralist theories of the human mind. In this thesis I argue that comparing a superorganism to the mind is useful. In particular, this comparison opens up an enchanting opportunity for the creation of expressive synthetic characters that may become important incremental stepping stones on the way to complex artificial intelligence. In order to explore the space between metaphors - the human mind as a collection of interconnected mindless agents, and the superorganism as a unitary whole that exhibits functional characteristics beyond those of its component parts - I present the design and implementation of the Mask of the Hive, a character that is based on a model of a bee colony. My emphasis lies on graphic design and information visualization in order to develop a set of visuals that are informative, expressive, and artistically satisfying.by Michal Hlavac.S.M

The Bee Lab kit: activities engaging motivated lay users in the use of open technologies for citizen science activities

The PhD work aligns technological opportunities with self-selecting motivated participants, investigating their desire to monitor wildlife within their custody. It used an ethnographic and user- centred design approach with amateur beekeepers. The work built reciprocal interest in data which users could gather from self-assembled monitoring tools. This PhD explores the relationship between Open Design and Citizen Science, testing it ‘in-the-wild’ through the Bee Lab kit. The development of the kit and territory research was carried out in close collaboration with a local beekeeping community based in the South East of England. The work engaged with the British Beekeepers Association (BBKA), a Citizen Science stakeholder and technology provider Technology Will Save Us (TWSU), informing the project at each stage. The PhD territory was highlighted in scoping design workshops with the public (Phillips. R, Baurley. S, Silve. S) and developed into: cultural probes deployed nationally investigating beekeepers’ ‘making’ activities (Phillips. R, Baurley. S, Silve. S 2013b), ethnographic studies identifying beekeepers’ product creations and re-appropriations for beekeeping praxis, participatory design workshops establishing lay users’ ‘technologically enabled conversations with bees’ (Phillips. R, Ford. Y, Sadler. K, Silve. S, Baurley. S 2013), technology kit assembly workshops testing kit design and competence of lay users (Phillips, Blum et al. 2014), and mental models of creating instructional content (Phillips, Robert., Lockton, Dan., Baurley, Sharon & Silve, Sarah 2013). The Bee Lab Kit: activities engaging motivated lay users in the use of open technologies for CS activities Page 2 of 265 The creation of a repeatable Open Design / Citizen Science model based upon the live testing from the Bee Lab project appendix (O) Open Design Standards (paper pending publication) appendix (K) The project worked with Citizen Science Vendors, Sussex Wildlife Trust and Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology, ascertaining the framing of Open Design/Citizen Science projects through a design toolkit. The design toolkit invention and testing was carried out with conservation organisations (Phillips, R & Baurley, S 2014) and technology kit deployment ‘in-the-wild’ with end users (Phillips, R., Blum, J., Brown, M. & Baurley, S 2014). Finally, the work identified the motivations of the individual stakeholders within the project

Beeing in the Willamette Valley: A Look at Human and Honey Bee Relationships and the Global Currents That Shape Them

This thesis explores interspecies relationships between humans and honey bees. Through multispecies ethnographic vignettes, beekeeper-honey bee relationships reveal the ways in which social systems inform interspecies entanglements. The research is grounded in the Willamette Valley, Oregon, and highlights the experiences of eleven beekeepers. Stories highlight how bodies interact within larger landscapes that are dictated by the dominant food system model. The bee hive becomes a meeting place for bodies to interact with, contradict, and reflect, conditions set by global currents

An Insect View of its Plain : Nature and Insects in Thoreau, Dickinson, and Muir

The simultaneous emergence of ecocriticism and cultural entomology has created a critical need for a discussion of the appearance and function of insects as they appear in literature. While nineteenth-century nature writing is frequently examined by ecocritics, very few have chosen to explore how critical writers such as Henry David Thoreau, Emily Dickinson, and John Muir incorporate insects into their work. This study explores three interrelated issues connected to encounters with and explorations of the microscopic and unacknowledged position of insects in nature: first, how insects factor into their growing knowledge about nature and ecology; second, how nature serves as a conduit to or inspiration for spirituality, revealing in its intricate processes the messages of the divine; and third, how insects are important not only for their critical ecological function but also for their symbolic value in suggesting the possibility of a renewed connection and relationship with the natural world and God, either through an awareness of ecological integration, an acknowledgement that all life participates in a joyous celebration of creation and has a right to exist, or a metamorphic process that unites the physical and spiritual in an attempt to transcend earthly experience. The introduction of this dissertation discusses how the evolution of ecocriticism establishes the legitimacy and importance of an insect\u27s point of view. Chapter one provides a partial cultural portrait of insects in the nineteenth century, examining insects in science, agriculture, folklore, fashion, religion, and literature. Chapter two focuses on Thoreau\u27s interpretation of the song of the crickets as a universal choir which nature continually invites humanity to join, on his interest in the reflective eyes of the water-skaters of Walden and their ability to exist between the margins of heaven and earth, and on his fascination with the process of metamorphosis in relation to both insects and human potential. Chapter three explores Dickinson\u27s vision of nature as an interdependent society of insects, animals, and plants, each having an important and unique purpose to fulfill, and her complex attitude toward cocoons and metamorphosis, especially in relation to her fear of death and uncertainly about salvation. Chapter four establishes Muir as a true lover of nature who views insects and all other citizens of creation as his brothers, equal members in a creation designed and lovingly maintained by God. Muir is especially interested in bees, attempting to adopt their point of view when he describes the flowers of California and idealizing apiculture as a form of agriculture in harmony with the needs of both nature and humanity