Prediction of social structure and genetic relatedness in colonies of the facultative polygynous stingless bee Melipona bicolor (Hymenoptera, Apidae)

Stingless bee colonies typically consist of one single-mated mother queen and her worker offspring. The stingless bee Melipona bicolor (Hymenoptera: Apidae) shows facultative polygyny, which makes this species particularly suitable for testing theoretical expectations concerning social behavior. In this study, we investigated the social structure and genetic relatedness among workers from eight natural and six manipulated colonies of M. bicolor over a period of one year. The populations of M. bicolor contained monogynous and polygynous colonies. The estimated genetic relatedness among workers from monogynous and polygynous colonies was 0.75 ± 0.12 and 0.53 ± 0.16 (mean ± SEM), respectively. Although the parental genotypes had significant effects on genetic relatedness in monogynous and polygynous colonies, polygyny markedly decreased the relatedness among nestmate workers. Our findings also demonstrate that polygyny in M. bicolor may arise from the adoption of related or unrelated queens

The impact of social media on consumers' acculturation and purchase intentions

YesSocial media has emerged as a significant and effective means of assisting and endorsing activities and communications among peers, consumers and organizations that outdo the restrictions of time and space. While the previous studies acknowledge the role of agents of culture change, it largely remains silent on the role of social media in influencing acculturation outcomes and consumption choices. This study uses self-administered questionnaire to collect data from 514 Turkish-Dutch respondents and examines how their use of social media affects their acculturation and consumption choices. This research makes a significant contribution to consumer acculturation research by showing that social media is a vital means of culture change and a driver of acculturation strategies and consumption choices. This study is the first to investigate the role of social media as an agent of culture change in terms of how it impacts acculturation and consumption. The paper discusses implications for theory development and for practice

Probability Theory in Statistical Physics, Percolation, and Other Random Topics: The Work of C. Newman

In the introduction to this volume, we discuss some of the highlights of the research career of Chuck Newman. This introduction is divided into two main sections, the first covering Chuck's work in statistical mechanics and the second his work in percolation theory, continuum scaling limits, and related topics.Comment: 38 pages (including many references), introduction to Festschrift in honor of C.M. Newma

Geometric Properties of Grassmannian Frames for <inline-formula><graphic file="1687-6180-2006-049850-i1.gif"/></inline-formula> and <inline-formula><graphic file="1687-6180-2006-049850-i2.gif"/></inline-formula>

<p/> <p>Grassmannian frames are frames satisfying a min-max correlation criterion. We translate a geometrically intuitive approach for two- and three-dimensional Euclidean space ( <inline-formula><graphic file="1687-6180-2006-049850-i3.gif"/></inline-formula> and <inline-formula><graphic file="1687-6180-2006-049850-i4.gif"/></inline-formula>) into a new analytic method which is used to classify many Grassmannian frames in this setting. The method and associated algorithm decrease the maximum frame correlation, and hence give rise to the construction of specific examples of Grassmannian frames. Many of the results are known by other techniques, and even more generally, so that this paper can be viewed as tutorial. However, our analytic method is presented with the goal of developing it to address unresovled problems in <inline-formula><graphic file="1687-6180-2006-049850-i5.gif"/></inline-formula>-dimensional Hilbert spaces which serve as a setting for spherical codes, erasure channel modeling, and other aspects of communications theory.</p