The evolution of forecasting for decision-making in dynamic environments

Climate change and technological advances are reshaping ecosystems and societies. Strategic choices that were best yesterday may be sub-optimal tomorrow; and environmental conditions that were once taken for granted may soon cease to exist. In dynamic settings, how people choose behavioral strategies has important consequences for environmental dynamics. Economic and evolutionary theories make similar predictions for strategic behavior in a static environment, even though one approach assumes perfect rationality and the other assumes no cognition whatsoever; but predictions differ in a dynamic environment. Here we explore a middle ground between economic rationality and evolutionary myopia. Starting from a population of myopic agents, we study the evolutionary viability of a new type that forms environmental forecasts when making strategic decisions. We show that forecasting types can have an advantage in changing environments, even when the act of forecasting is costly. Forecasting types can invade but rarely overtake the population, producing a stable coexistence with myopic types. Moreover, forecasting fosters collective intelligence by providing a public good which reduces the amplitude of environmental oscillations and often increases mean payoffs to forecasting and myopic types alike. We interpret our results for understanding the evolution of different modes of decision-making such as forecasting. And we discuss implications for the management of environmental systems of societal importance

Combating climate change with matching-commitment agreements

Countries generally agree that global greenhouse gas emissions are too high, but prefer other countries reduce emissions rather than reducing their own. The Paris Agreement is intended to solve this collective action problem, but is likely insufficient. One proposed solution is a matching-commitment agreement, through which countries can change each other’s incentives by committing to conditional emissions reductions, before countries decide on their unconditional reductions. Here, we study matching-commitment agreements between two heterogeneous countries. We find that such agreements (1) incentivize both countries to make matching commitments that in turn incentivize efficient emissions reductions, (2) reduce emissions from those expected without an agreement, and (3) increase both countries’ welfare. Matching-commitment agreements are attractive because they do not require a central enforcing authority and only require countries to fulfil their promises; countries are left to choose their conditional and unconditional emissions reductions according to their own interests

Indirect selection on female extra-pair reproduction? Comparing the additive genetic value of maternal half-sib extra-pair and within-pair offspring

One specific hypothesis explaining the evolution of extra-pair reproduction (EPR) by socially monogamous females is that EPR is under indirect selection because extra-pair offspring (EPO) sired by extra-pair males have higher additive genetic value for fitness than the within-pair offspring (WPO) a female would have produced had she solely mated with her socially paired male. This hypothesis has not been explicitly tested by comparing additive genetic value between EPO and the WPO they replaced. We show that the difference in additive genetic breeding value (BV) between EPO and the WPO they replaced is proportional to the genetic covariance between offspring fitness and male net paternity gain through EPR, and estimate this covariance with respect to offspring recruitment in free-living song sparrows (Melospiza melodia). Recruitment and net paternity gain showed non-zero additive genetic variance and heritability, and negative genetic covariance. Opposite to prediction, EPO therefore had lower BV for recruitment than the WPO they replaced. We thereby demonstrate an explicit quantitative genetic approach to testing the hypothesis that EPR allows polyandrous females to increase offspring additive genetic value, and suggest that there may be weak indirect selection against female EPR through reduced additive genetic value for recruitment of EPO versus WPO in song sparrows

Heritability of female extra-pair paternity rate in song sparrows (Melospiza melodia)

The forces driving the evolution of extra-pair reproduction in socially monogamous animals remain widely debated and unresolved. One key hypothesis is that female extra-pair reproduction evolves through indirect genetic benefits, reflecting increased additive genetic value of extra-pair offspring. Such evolution requires that a female's propensity to produce offspring that are sired by an extra-pair male is heritable. However, additive genetic variance and heritability in female extra-pair paternity (EPP) rate have not been quantified, precluding accurate estimation of the force of indirect selection. Sixteen years of comprehensive paternity and pedigree data from socially monogamous but genetically polygynandrous song sparrows (Melospiza melodia) showed significant additive genetic variance and heritability in the proportion of a female's offspring that was sired by an extra-pair male, constituting major components of the genetic architecture required for extra-pair reproduction to evolve through indirect additive genetic benefits. However, estimated heritabilities were moderately small (0.12 and 0.18 on the observed and underlying latent scales, respectively). The force of selection on extra-pair reproduction through indirect additive genetic benefits may consequently be relatively weak. However, the additive genetic variance and non-zero heritability observed in female EPP rate allow for multiple further genetic mechanisms to drive and constrain mating system evolution

The Perfect Family: Decision Making in Biparental Care

Background Previous theoretical work on parental decisions in biparental care has emphasized the role of the conflict between evolutionary interests of parents in these decisions. A prominent prediction from this work is that parents should compensate for decreases in each other\u27s effort, but only partially so. However, experimental tests that manipulate parents and measure their responses fail to confirm this prediction. At the same time, the process of parental decision making has remained unexplored theoretically. We develop a model to address the discrepancy between experiments and the theoretical prediction, and explore how assuming different decision making processes changes the prediction from the theory. Model Description We assume that parents make decisions in behavioral time. They have a fixed time budget, and allocate it between two parental tasks: provisioning the offspring and defending the nest. The proximate determinant of the allocation decisions are parents\u27 behavioral objectives. We assume both parents aim to maximize the offspring production from the nest. Experimental manipulations change the shape of the nest production function. We consider two different scenarios for how parents make decisions: one where parents communicate with each other and act together (the perfect family), and one where they do not communicate, and act independently (the almost perfect family). Conclusions/Significance The perfect family model is able to generate all the types of responses seen in experimental studies. The kind of response predicted depends on the nest production function, i.e. how parents\u27 allocations affect offspring production, and the type of experimental manipulation. In particular, we find that complementarity of parents\u27 allocations promotes matching responses. In contrast, the relative responses do not depend on the type of manipulation in the almost perfect family model. These results highlight the importance of the interaction between nest production function and how parents make decisions, factors that have largely been overlooked in previous models

Mammary tuberculosis – importance of recognition and differentiation from that of a breast malignancy: report of three cases and review of the literature

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>While tuberculosis of the breast is an extremely uncommon entity seen in western populations, it accounts for up to 3% of all treatable breast lesions in developing countries.</p> <p>Case presentations</p> <p>We reviewed three female cases of mammary tuberculosis that were diagnosed and treated in Turkey during the same calendar year. All three patients presented with a painful breast mass. In all cases, fine needle aspiration was nondiagnostic for mammary tuberculosis. However, the diagnosis of mammary tuberculosis was confirmed by histopathologic evaluation at the time of open surgical biopsy. All three patients were treated with antituberculous therapy for six months. At the end of the treatment period, each patient appeared to be clinically and radiologically without evidence of residual disease.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>The diagnosis of mammary tuberculosis rests on the appropriate clinical suspicion and the histopathologic findings of the breast lesion. Its recognition and differentiation from that of a breast malignancy is absolutely necessary. Antituberculous chemotherapy, initiated immediately upon diagnosis, forms the mainstay of treatment for mammary tuberculosis.</p

State stigmatization in urban Turkey : Managing the 'insurgent' squatter dwellers in Dikmen Valley

This paper contributes to the accounts of territorial stigmatisation by examining the state role in it in the case of Turkey, a country that suffers from growing state power. The existing debates are mainly restricted to its function as an economic strategy paving the way for capital accumulation through devaluing working‐class people and places. Drawing on textual analysis of political speeches, local newsletters and mainstream national newspapers and fieldwork material that include interviews and observations in Dikmen Valley where some squatter communities mobilised against the state‐imposed urban transformation project, I demonstrate that state conceptualisation of “problem people” targets the “insurgent” rather than the “unprofitable” groups. Stigma in urban settings functions in inciting the desire to meet the patterns deemed appropriate by the state, rather than the market. Moving from that, I argue that stigma is used as a state‐led political strategy, which is integral to the growing authoritarianism in Turkey

Bilkent university at TRECVID 2006

We describe our third participation, that includes one high-level feature extraction run, and two manual and one interactive search runs, to the TRECVID video retrieval evaluation. All of these runs have used a system trained on the common development collection. Only visual and textual information were used where visual information consisted of color, texture and edge-based low-level features and textual information consisted of the speech transcript provided in the collection