Clustered marginalization of minorities during social transitions induced by co-evolution of behaviour and network structure

Large-scale transitions in societies are associated with both individual behavioural change and restructuring of the social network. These two factors have often been considered independently, yet recent advances in social network research challenge this view. Here we show that common features of societal marginalization and clustering emerge naturally during transitions in a co-evolutionary adaptive network model. This is achieved by explicitly considering the interplay between individual interaction and a dynamic network structure in behavioural selection. We exemplify this mechanism by simulating how smoking behaviour and the network structure get reconfigured by changing social norms. Our results are consistent with empirical findings: The prevalence of smoking was reduced, remaining smokers were preferentially connected among each other and formed increasingly marginalised clusters. We propose that self-amplifying feedbacks between individual behaviour and dynamic restructuring of the network are main drivers of the transition. This generative mechanism for co-evolution of individual behaviour and social network structure may apply to a wide range of examples beyond smoking.Comment: 16 pages, 5 figure

Bioeconomic fiction between narrative dynamics and a fixed imaginary: evidence from India and Germany

Bioeconomic ideas and visions have received increasing attention from scientists and policy makers to address socioecological challenges. However, the role of imagined futures in the design of bioeconomic innovations and transitions has hitherto been widely neglected. In this study, we therefore explore the role of imaginaries of the future to understand how they shape bioeconomic innovations and transitions. We thereby build on insights from economic sociology and compare two distinct case studies from Germany and India. Based on our results, we inductively develop an analytic model that describes the co-constitution of imaginaries, fictional expectations, narratives, and innovation dynamics. Our results show that narrative dynamics are caused by irritations in the political and discursive landscape; these irritations prompt economic actors to stabilize, adapt, or reject their own bioeconomic conceptions, while the underlying imaginary of a technological fix remains fixed. We discuss this reductionist imaginary and instead plead for an imaginary of a socioecological fix that reintertwines technologies with their underlying societal, cultural, and ecological factors. We conclude that this will support sustainability scholars and policy makers in remaining vigilant against premature mental and institutional lock-ins that could lead to a colonization of the future with severe negative implications for society's ability to mitigate and adapt to global environmental change in the future

How Workflow Engines Should Talk to Resource Managers: A Proposal for a Common Workflow Scheduling Interface

Scientific workflow management systems (SWMSs) and resource managers together ensure that tasks are scheduled on provisioned resources so that all dependencies are obeyed, and some optimization goal, such as makespan minimization, is fulfilled. In practice, however, there is no clear separation of scheduling responsibilities between an SWMS and a resource manager because there exists no agreed-upon separation of concerns between their different components. This has two consequences. First, the lack of a standardized API to exchange scheduling information between SWMSs and resource managers hinders portability. It incurs costly adaptations when a component should be replaced by another one (e.g., an SWMS with another SWMS on the same resource manager). Second, due to overlapping functionalities, current installations often actually have two schedulers, both making partial scheduling decisions under incomplete information, leading to suboptimal workflow scheduling. In this paper, we propose a simple REST interface between SWMSs and resource managers, which allows any SWMS to pass dynamic workflow information to a resource manager, enabling maximally informed scheduling decisions. We provide an exemplary implementation of this API for Nextflow as an SWMS and Kubernetes as a resource manager. Our experiments with nine real-world workflows show that this strategy reduces makespan by up to 25.1% and 10.8% on average compared to the standard Nextflow/Kubernetes configuration. Furthermore, a more widespread implementation of this API would enable leaner code bases, a simpler exchange of components of workflow systems, and a unified place to implement new scheduling algorithms.Comment: Paper accepted in: 2023 23rd IEEE International Symposium on Cluster, Cloud and Internet Computing (CCGrid

Modulation of Elementary Calcium Release Mediates a Transition from Puffs to Waves in an IP3R Cluster Model

The oscillating concentration of intracellular calcium is one of the most important examples for collective dynamics in cell biology. Localized releases of calcium through clusters of inositol 1,4,5-trisphosphate receptor channels constitute elementary signals called calcium puffs. Coupling by diffusing calcium leads to global releases and waves, but the exact mechanism of inter- cluster coupling and triggering of waves is unknown. To elucidate the relation of puffs and waves, we here model a cluster of IP3R channels using a gating scheme with variable non-equilibrium IP3 binding. Hybrid stochastic and deterministic simulations show that puffs are not stereotyped events of constant duration but are sensitive to stimulation strength and residual calcium. For increasing IP3 concentration, the release events become modulated at a timescale of minutes, with repetitive wave-like releases interspersed with several puffs. This modulation is consistent with experimental observations we present, including refractoriness and increase of puff frequency during the inter-wave interval. Our results suggest that waves are established by a random but time-modulated appearance of sustained release events, which have a high potential to trigger and synchronize activity throughout the cell

Irreversible proliferation of magnetic moments at cleaved surfaces of the topological Kondo insulator SmB6

The compound SmB$_6$ is the best established realization of a topological Kondo insulator, in which a topological insulator state is obtained through Kondo coherence. Recent studies have found evidence that the surface of SmB$_6$ hosts ferromagnetic domains, creating an intrinsic platform for unidirectional ballistic transport at the domain boundaries. Here, surface-sensitive X-ray absorption (XAS) and bulk-sensitive resonant inelastic X-ray scattering (RIXS) spectra are measured at the Sm N$_{4,5}$-edge, and used to evaluate electronic symmetries, excitations and temperature dependence near the surface of cleaved samples. The XAS data show that the density of large-moment atomic multiplet states on a cleaved surface grows irreversibly over time, to a degree that likely exceeds a related change that has recently been observed in the surface 4f orbital occupation

The New Zealand Kauri (Agathis Australis) Research Project: A Radiocarbon Dating Intercomparison of Younger Dryas Wood and Implications for IntCal13

We describe here the New Zealand kauri (Agathis australis) Younger Dryas (YD) research project, which aims to undertake Δ14C analysis of ~140 decadal floating wood samples spanning the time interval ~13.1–11.7 kyr cal BP. We report 14C intercomparison measurements being undertaken by the carbon dating laboratories at University of Waikato (Wk), University of California at Irvine (UCI), and University of Oxford (OxA). The Wk, UCI, and OxA laboratories show very good agreement with an interlaboratory comparison of 12 successive decadal kauri samples (average offsets from consensus values of –7 to +4 14C yr). A University of Waikato/University of Heidelberg (HD) intercomparison involving measurement of the YD-age Swiss larch tree Ollon505, shows a HD/Wk offset of ~10–20 14C yr (HD younger), and strong evidence that the positioning of the Ollon505 series is incorrect, with a recommendation that the 14C analyses be removed from the IntCal calibration database

Dynamic Transcription of Distinct Classes of Endogenous Retroviral Elements Marks Specific Populations of Early Human Embryonic Cells

SummaryAbout half of the human genome consists of highly repetitive elements, most of which are considered dispensable for human life. Here, we report that repetitive elements originating from endogenous retroviruses (ERVs) are systematically transcribed during human early embryogenesis in a stage-specific manner. Our analysis highlights that the long terminal repeats (LTRs) of ERVs provide the template for stage-specific transcription initiation, thereby generating hundreds of co-expressed, ERV-derived RNAs. Conversion of human embryonic stem cells (hESCs) to an epiblast-like state activates blastocyst-specific ERV elements, indicating that their activity dynamically reacts to changes in regulatory networks. In addition to initiating stage-specific transcription, many ERV families contain preserved splice sites that join the ERV segment with non-ERV exons in their genomic vicinity. In summary, we find that ERV expression is a hallmark of cellular identity and cell potency that characterizes the cell populations in early human embryos