Iterated Prisoner\u27s Dilemma for Species

The Iterated Prisoner\u27s Dilemma (IPD) is widely used to study the evolution of cooperation between self-interested agents. Existing work asks how genes that code for cooperation arise and spread through a single-species population of IPD playing agents. In this paper, we focus on competition between different species of agents. Making this distinction allows us to separate and examine macroevolutionary phenomena. We illustrate with some species-level simulation experiments with agents that use well-known strategies, and with species of agents that use team strategies

Doctor of Philosophy

dissertationDetermining the health impacts of a nutritional regimen, suspected toxicant or other treatment is often a difficult task in both the realms of safety assessment and basic research. There are far too many examples of agents, once considered safe, found later through epidemiology (or other means) to cause adverse health effects. To prevent such experimentation on ourselves there is a great societal need for broad, sensitive assays able to detect toxicity at human-relevant exposure levels. Similarly, basic researchers often lack the experimental tools necessary to determine if a treatment adversely impacts the health of their model organism. We argue that these problems can be partially solved by using house mice in the crucible of their natural setting where they are challenged daily by the very tasks that have shaped them for millennia. Quantifying the lifelong fitness of experimentally treated animals directly competing with control individuals offers a sensitive and broad approach for detecting adverse health effects. We refer to this approach as an Organismal Performance Assay (OPA). To illustrate the effectiveness of OPAs, herein we apply them for detecting adverse health consequences of nutritional and toxic exposures. First, using OPAs we capture adverse health impacts (decreased survival, competitive ability and reproduction) from consuming 12.5% kcal of fructose; this finding now represent the lowest observed adverse effect level for dietary fructose. Next, we apply OPAs to determine if differential health impacts occur due to the consumption of one, or the other, of the two common types of added sugar, high fructose corn syrup (fructose and glucose monosaccharides) or table sugar (sucrose, which is a disaccharide of fructose and glucose), and show that the high fructose corn syrup diet increases mortality and decreases reproduction of female mice compared to sucrose, providing the first experimental evidence that the two most common forms of caloric sweeteners have differential health impacts. Next, we use OPAs to determine if an acute exposure to 3mg/kg of amine-terminated generation seven poly amido-amine dendrimers, the current maximum tolerated dose, is actually toxic and find that it is not. Finally, to address the criticism that OPAs do not lead to the underlying mechanisms of observed organismal outcomes, we illustrate the discovery of the molecular basis of the first phenomenon revealed using OPAs, major histocompatibility complex (MHC)-based mating preferences, which is done in the context of a review paper on the role of MHC during social communication

Strategic Niche Management (SNM) beyond sustainability. An exploration of key findings of SNM through the lens of ICT and privacy

Recently the governance of socio-technical transitions to sustainability is gaining attention in the field of innovation studies. One particular approach is that of Strategic Niche Management (SNM), which advocates the creation of protected space to experiment with radically new sustainable socio-technical practices. This paper contributes by asking whether this approach is also useful for analysis and governance of other types of socially desirable change. This question is addressed through a review of six key-findings of Strategic Niche Management and an original case study in the field of Near Field Communication (NFC) technologies for mobile payment. The social value at stake in this case is not sustainability but privacy. We draw three main conclusions. First, we find that the key-findings and concepts in SNM for sustainability are helpful to understand and interpret much of the data collected for the NFC case and privacy. However, there are notable differences in each of the key-findings, i.e findings related to a) the local-global distinction in SNM, b) expectations, c) social networks, d) learning, e) protection, and f) niche-regime interactions. Second, in relation to governance, the role of sustainability values (being a promising value to pursue) and privacy values (being a bottom-line value to defend) are notably different. Third, these differences result in different roles of public bodies in niche development. The paper ends with discussing the consequences for SNM for sustainability research and future research topics.Strategic Niche Management, sustainability, NFC, mobile payment, privacy

Cooperation and punishment

This chapter focuses on questions related to human cooperation, focussing in particular on punishment as a means of enforcing cooperation. We take child development processes as a means to investigate this, drawing on fieldwork material from China and Taiwan. As anthropologists would expect, we find that: (a) cooperation is not only a cultural phenomenon but also a historical and political one; (b) reciprocity is a key feature of human cooperation, but the manifestations of this in particular fieldsites are highly variable and sometimes surprising; and (c) cooperation in one domain of life tends to spill over into other domains of life. As noted, however, we go beyond standard anthropological accounts of cooperation by adding a set of questions regarding punishment and child development – questions that, in turn, may help bring the anthropological study of cooperation into closer dialogue with work being done by scholars in other disciplines on this important topic. The goal is to develop comparative questions about ethical life: ones anchored in species-level understandings of what it is to be human and to engage in human cooperation

Semantic discovery and reuse of business process patterns

Patterns currently play an important role in modern information systems (IS) development and their use has mainly been restricted to the design and implementation phases of the development lifecycle. Given the increasing significance of business modelling in IS development, patterns have the potential of providing a viable solution for promoting reusability of recurrent generalized models in the very early stages of development. As a statement of research-in-progress this paper focuses on business process patterns and proposes an initial methodological framework for the discovery and reuse of business process patterns within the IS development lifecycle. The framework borrows ideas from the domain engineering literature and proposes the use of semantics to drive both the discovery of patterns as well as their reuse

Pathogen Entrapment by Transglutaminase—A Conserved Early Innate Immune Mechanism

Clotting systems are required in almost all animals to prevent loss of body fluids after injury. Here, we show that despite the risks associated with its systemic activation, clotting is a hitherto little appreciated branch of the immune system. We compared clotting of human blood and insect hemolymph to study the best-conserved component of clotting systems, namely the Drosophila enzyme transglutaminase and its vertebrate homologue Factor XIIIa. Using labelled artificial substrates we observe that transglutaminase activity from both Drosophila hemolymph and human blood accumulates on microbial surfaces, leading to their sequestration into the clot. Using both a human and a natural insect pathogen we provide functional proof for an immune function for transglutaminase (TG). Drosophila larvae with reduced TG levels show increased mortality after septic injury. The same larvae are also more susceptible to a natural infection involving entomopathogenic nematodes and their symbiotic bacteria while neither phagocytosis, phenoloxidase or—as previously shown—the Toll or imd pathway contribute to immunity. These results firmly establish the hemolymph/blood clot as an important effector of early innate immunity, which helps to prevent septic infections. These findings will help to guide further strategies to reduce the damaging effects of clotting and enhance its beneficial contribution to immune reactions

Breeding behaviour of a tropical bird: a study of the blue-throated Bee-eater (Merops viridis) using relational database and DNA fingerprinting.

The breeding behaviour of the Blue-throated Bee-eater was studied at two colonies in Peninsula Malaysia during 3 breeding seasons, with particular emphasis on pair behaviour, mixed reproductive strategies and nestling competition. This is the first study of vertebrate social behaviour and ecology to contain the documentation of a relational database. This was designed to store and manipulate all data obtained from regular captures and biometric measurements of adults and nestlings and from observations of adults. DNA fingerprinting was used to establish the true genetic relationships between nestlings and their social parents: most nestlings were genetic offspring (72%). Nestlings were classified as illegitimate offspring using 95% confidence intervals of the band sharing coefficient and number of unexplained nestling bands as criteria. Very few if any nestlings were sired by an extra-pair male (fewer than 5%). Behavioural evidence of strong cooperation between pair members throughout the breeding season supports the DNA fingerprinting results of no confirmed case of offspring fathered by extra-pair males (extra-pair offspring; EPO). The Blue-throated Bee-eater probably has a near monogamous mating system. Most illegitimate nestlings had been 'dumped'. They were either the result of intra-specific nest parasitism (INP; 7%) or of 'quasi' parasitism (the offspring of the pair-male and an extra-pair female; 7-12%). INP by relatives of the hosts could have explained some intermediate band sharing coefficients. Anti-INP behaviour was demonstrated when experimentally 'dumped' eggs were almost always expelled before the onset of laying, but never afterwards. DNA fingerprinting showed that relatives may roost together and that related males may nest close together. Compared with other colonial Bee-eaters, M. viridis had low levels of helping-at-the-nest and EPO, but similar or higher levels of INP. The high nestling mortality in Blue-throated Bee-eaters was explained by a combination of three hypotheses, some of which were tested by experiment. (1) Insurance: extra-eggs are needed to counter hatch failure. (2) Brood reduction (including resource tracking): in times of food constraint, the laterhatched nestlings in asynchrously hatched broods starve. (3) Anti-INP hypothesis: these later-hatched nestlings are eliminated because they are likely to be illegitimate. Hatching failure was about 1 in 3 eggs overall. Help from the male allows an early onset of incubation which results in asynchronous hatching. Nestling hunger was shown to be a proximate factor affecting runt mortality both directly through competition and indirectly through nestling aggression. The demise of runts was delayed when conditions improved. Blue-throated Bee-eater broods are severely limited by food. Under this severe brood size constraint, breeding females may increase reproductive output by 'dumping' their last egg. This leads to the high frequency of INP observed in Blue-throated Bee-eaters. An early onset of incubation also gives the first-laid egg(s) a temporal developmental advantage over subsequently 'dumped' parasitic eggs. The 'dumped' nestlings are eliminated by starvation and siblicide, which may itself be an adaptation to INP to eliminate of unrelated nestlings