93 research outputs found
Does the Red Queen reign in the kingdom of digital organisms?
In competition experiments between two RNA viruses of equal or almost equal
fitness, often both strains gain in fitness before one eventually excludes the
other. This observation has been linked to the Red Queen effect, which
describes a situation in which organisms have to constantly adapt just to keep
their status quo. I carried out experiments with digital organisms
(self-replicating computer programs) in order to clarify how the competing
strains' location in fitness space influences the Red-Queen effect. I found
that gains in fitness during competition were prevalent for organisms that were
taken from the base of a fitness peak, but absent or rare for organisms that
were taken from the top of a peak or from a considerable distance away from the
nearest peak. In the latter two cases, either neutral drift and loss of the
fittest mutants or the waiting time to the first beneficial mutation were more
important factors. Moreover, I found that the Red-Queen dynamic in general led
to faster exclusion than the other two mechanisms.Comment: 10 pages, 5 eps figure
The Nakayama automorphism of the almost Calabi-Yau algebras associated to SU(3) modular invariants
We determine the Nakayama automorphism of the almost Calabi-Yau algebra A
associated to the braided subfactors or nimrep graphs associated to each SU(3)
modular invariant. We use this to determine a resolution of A as an A-A
bimodule, which will yield a projective resolution of A.Comment: 46 pages which constitutes the published version, plus an Appendix
detailing some long calculations. arXiv admin note: text overlap with
arXiv:1110.454
Performance of public private partnerships: an evolutionary perspective
PPPs are held to be a powerful way of mobilising private finance and resources to deliver public infrastructure. Theoretically, research into procurement has begun to acknowledge difficulties with the classification and assessment of different types of procurement, particularly those which do not sufficiently acknowledge variety within specific types of procurement methods. This paper advances a theoretical framework based on an evolutionary economic conceptualisation of a routine, which can accommodate the variety evident in procurement projects, in particular PPPs. The paper tests how the various elements of a PPP, as advanced in the theoretical framework, affect performance across 10 case studies. It concludes, that a limited number of elements of a PPP affect their performance, and provides strong evidence for the theoretical model advanced in this paper
On the emergence of ecological and economic niches
The origin of economic niches, conceived as potential markets, has been mostly neglected in economic theory. Ecological niches emerge as new species evolve and fit into a web of interactions, and the more species come into existence, the more (exponentially or power-law distributed) ecological niches emerge. In parallel fashion, economic niches emerge with new goods, and niche formation in economics is also exponentially or power-law distributed. In economics and ecology alike, autocatalytic processes drive the system to greater and greater diversity. Novelty begets novelty in a positive feedback loop. An autocatalytic set of self-enabling transactions feed back upon one another in combinatoric fashion to generate progressive diversity. While these combinatorial dynamics cannot be prestated, the model explains the “hockeystick of economic growth”—a pattern of prolonged stasis followed by a sudden takeoff, such as occurred during the Industrial Revolution or the Cambrian explosion in ecology. Several implications derive from our niche emergence model, including the idea that the evolutionary process of technological change is not something we do; rather, it happens to us
Explaining Technology
A long tradition explains technological change as recombination. Within this tradition, this Element develops an innovative combinatorial model of technological change and tests it with 2,000 years of global GDP data and with data from US patents filed between 1835 and 2010. The model explains 1) the pace of technological change for a least the past two millennia, 2) patent citations and 3) the increasing complexity of tools over time. It shows that combining and modifying pre-existing goods to produce new goods generates the observed historical pattern of technological change. A long period of stasis was followed by sudden super-exponential growth in the number of goods. In this model, the sudden explosion of about 250 years ago is a combinatorial explosion that was a long time in coming, but inevitable once the process began at least two thousand years ago. This Element models the Industrial Revolution as a combinatorial explosion
The national ignition facility: Path to ignition in the laboratory
The National Ignition Facility (NIF) is a 192-beam laser
facility presently under construction at LLNL. When completed, NIF will be a
1.8-MJ, 500-TW ultraviolet laser system. Its missions are to obtain fusion
ignition and to perform high energy density experiments in support of the
U.S. nuclear weapons stockpile. Four of the NIF beams have been commissioned
to demonstrate laser performance and to commission the target area including
target and beam alignment and laser timing. During this time, NIF
demonstrated on a single-beam basis that it will meet its performance goals
and demonstrated its precision and flexibility for pulse shaping, pointing,
timing and beam conditioning. It also performed four important experiments
for Inertial Confinement Fusion and High Energy Density Science. Presently,
the project is installing production hardware to complete the project in
2009 with the goal to begin ignition experiments in 2010. An integrated plan
has been developed including the NIF operations, user equipment such as
diagnostics and cryogenic target capability, and experiments and
calculations to meet this goal. This talk will provide NIF status, the plan
to complete NIF, and the path to ignition
First gut contents in a Cretaceous sea turtle
Modern sea turtles utilize a variety of feeding strategies ranging from herbivory to omnivory. In contrast, the diets of fossil sea turtles are poorly known. This study reports the first direct evidence: inoceramid bivalve shell pieces (encased in phosphatic material) preserved within the body cavities of several small protostegid turtles (cf. Notochelone) from the Lower Cretaceous of Australia. The shell fragments are densely packed and approximately 5–20 mm across. Identical shell accumulations have been found within coprolite masses from the same deposits; these are of a correct size to have originated from Notochelone, and indicate that benthic molluscs were regular food items. The thin, flexible inoceramid shells (composed of organic material integrated into a prismatic calcite framework) appear to have been bitten into segments and ingested, presumably in conjunction with visceral/mantle tissues and encrusting organisms. Although protostegids have been elsewhere interpreted as potential molluscivores, their primitive limb morphology is thought to have limited them to surface feeding. However, the evidence here that at least some forms were able to utilize benthic invertebrate prey indicates that, like modern sea turtles, protostegids probably exhibited a much broader range of feeding habits
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