Hybrids (2010) at the MIC Media and Interdisciplinary Arts Centre, Auckland, New Zealand.

MIC Toi Rerehiko is pleased to present Hybrids, an exhibition featuring nine local and international artists who integrate rapid prototyping processes with other media. Rapid prototyping technology has largely been used by industrial manufacturers and has since been adopted by architects and digital media artists. Considered within an artmaking sphere, the process raises issues over ontology, authenticity and place amongst others. The works in the exhibition seek to address these while still embracing their own materiality, in model making technology and digitalculture. As the title Hybrids suggests, the works comprise a combination of these ideas with a range of media including live performance, social and formal sculpture, video installation and painting. Hybrids articulates itself as an extension of Kosuth’s One and Three Chairs, which plays on the ontological properties of an object. His theory on the unification of concept and realisation has been re-interpreted, taking into account the undefined and evolving limitations of rapid prototyping. Kosuth’s statement that art is to embody an idea that remains constant despite changes to its elements will be tested within a digital framework. Concerns of the exhibition curators include existence and what constitutes the identity of an object, authorship of digitally created work, the fluidity of transformation from data set to three dimensional object, and the relational aspect between prototyping,audiences and real-time. Hybrids investigates the ability of rapid prototyping to blur the interface between manufactured truth and objective reality

An Observation of Apparent Teaching Behavior in the Pallid Bat, \u3cem\u3eAntrozous pallidus\u3c/em\u3e

During a laboratory study of pallid bat (Antrozous pallidus) hunting behavior, we observed an interaction wherein an adult female appeared to aid a juvenile male in learning a novel foraging task. This single observation adheres to the 3 requirements of teaching outlined by Caro and Hauser (1992). A female bat experienced with a hunting task modified her behavior in the presence of a naïve observing male, resulting in a cost of reduced food availability to the female when she was hungry, while directing the male to food resources and accelerating his learning of a foraging task. The experienced female bat altered her behavior in the presence of a naïve male by nonaggressively approaching the perched male several times before flying to a bowl of live mealworms. Within minutes, her behavior led to the initiation of the foraging task by the naïve male. In sharp contrast, 5 other bats took 4–12 nights to learn this foraging task. Audio recordings of contact calls made during the interaction show possible information transfer via acoustic signals. We hope this lone observation will stimulate research on teaching in bats

Evolution of opinions on social networks in the presence of competing committed groups

Public opinion is often affected by the presence of committed groups of individuals dedicated to competing points of view. Using a model of pairwise social influence, we study how the presence of such groups within social networks affects the outcome and the speed of evolution of the overall opinion on the network. Earlier work indicated that a single committed group within a dense social network can cause the entire network to quickly adopt the group's opinion (in times scaling logarithmically with the network size), so long as the committed group constitutes more than about 10% of the population (with the findings being qualitatively similar for sparse networks as well). Here we study the more general case of opinion evolution when two groups committed to distinct, competing opinions $A$ and $B$, and constituting fractions $p_A$ and $p_B$ of the total population respectively, are present in the network. We show for stylized social networks (including Erd\H{o}s-R\'enyi random graphs and Barab\'asi-Albert scale-free networks) that the phase diagram of this system in parameter space $(p_A,p_B)$ consists of two regions, one where two stable steady-states coexist, and the remaining where only a single stable steady-state exists. These two regions are separated by two fold-bifurcation (spinodal) lines which meet tangentially and terminate at a cusp (critical point). We provide further insights to the phase diagram and to the nature of the underlying phase transitions by investigating the model on infinite (mean-field limit), finite complete graphs and finite sparse networks. For the latter case, we also derive the scaling exponent associated with the exponential growth of switching times as a function of the distance from the critical point.Comment: 23 pages: 15 pages + 7 figures (main text), 8 pages + 1 figure + 1 table (supplementary info

Food insecurity increases risk of depression and anxiety among women in Senegal living with diabetes and/or hypertension

Food insecurity affects close to half the population of Senegal, West Africa, a country simultaneously affected by the ongoing global diabetes pandemic. Diabetes and food insecurity are associated with adverse mental health, yet research exploring the relationship between chronic physical illness, food insecurity, and mental illness in Senegal is currently lacking. The objective of this study was to investigate the association between food insecurity and depression and anxiety, separately, in Senegalese women living with diabetes and hypertension. Food insecurity was measured using the Household Food Insecurity Access Scale. Occurrence of depression and anxiety symptoms was assessed using the Modified Hopkins Symptoms Checklist Survey (HSCL‑25). A sensitivity analysis examining the relationship between food insecurity and depression and anxiety was performed by comparing two previously validated cutoff values (1.75 and 2.25) on the HSCL‑25. Most participants (83%) had some level of food insecurity. More than 80% of the sample were depressed or anxious using 1.75 as the cutoff, while 42 and 60% were depressed or anxious, respectively, using 2.25 as the cutoff. Food insecurity increased relative risk for depression (RRR: 1.40, 95% CI: 1.05‑1.31, 1.75 as cutoff; RRR: 1.06, 95% CI: 0.99‑1.14, 2.25 as cutoff) and anxiety (RRR: 1.17, 95% CI: 1.05‑1.31, 1.75 as cutoff; RRR: 1.11, 95% CI: 1.04‑1.19, 2.25 as cutoff). These findings demonstrate that among populations suffering from diabetes and hypertension, food insecurity is a modifiable risk factor for depression and anxiety and a potential intervention target in this setting

Experiences of men with breast cancer: an exploratory focus group study

Management and care of men with breast cancer is based on that developed for women. Our study reports that men have specific issues regarding certain aspects of their breast cancer experience, including diagnosis, disclosure, support and gender-specific information, and offers suggestions for improved patient care