How to read “heritability” in the recipe approach to natural selection

There are two ways evolution by natural selection (ENS) is conceptualized in the literature. One provides a ‘recipe’ for ENS incorporating three ingredients: variation, differences in fitness and heritability. The other provides formal equations of evolutionary change and partitions out selection from other causes of evolutionary changes such as transmission biases or drift. When comparing the two approaches there seems to be a tension around the concept of heritability. A recent claim has be made that the recipe approach is flawed and should be abandoned. In this paper I show that the tension is only a superficial one. If one uses a concept of heritability strictly in line with the formal equations of evolutionary change, the recipe approach keeps its validity and generality. To demonstrate that the intuitive concept of heritability is not a general one, I use one formulation of the Price equation formulated by Okasha, show that the concept of heritability in his formulation incorporates both the intuitive notion of heritability as a measure of similarity between parent and offspring characters and a measure of persistence. I advocate that for persistence to be incorporated in the concept of heritability used in recipes for ENS in the same way heredity is, show that this is readily attainable and thereby dissolve any point of tension concerning heritability between the recipe and the analytical approach to ENS

Refined floor diagrams from higher genera and lambda classes

We show that, after the change of variables $q=e^{iu}$, refined floor diagrams for $\mathbb{P}^2$ and Hirzebruch surfaces compute generating series of higher genus relative Gromov-Witten invariants with insertion of a lambda class. The proof uses an inductive application of the degeneration formula in relative Gromov-Witten theory and an explicit result in relative Gromov-Witten theory of $\mathbb{P}^1$. Combining this result with the similar looking refined tropical correspondence theorem for log Gromov-Witten invariants, we obtain some non-trivial relation between relative and log Gromov-Witten invariants for $\mathbb{P}^2$ and Hirzebruch surfaces. We also prove that the Block-G\"ottsche invariants of $\mathbb{F}_0$ and $\mathbb{F}_2$ are related by the Abramovich-Bertram formula.Comment: 44 pages, 8 figures, revised version, exposition greatly improved, main results unchanged, published in Selecta Mathematic

Being Precise about Precision and One-to-one Specificity

Following from my criticisms of Calcott’s analysis on the permissive/instructive distinction, I rebut his claims that 1) he clarifies my measure one-to-one specificity; 2) for all intents and purposes of his analysis his notion of precision is different from my measure of one- to-one specificity; 3) Waddington box is a better and different model than the extension of Woodward’s radio I propose

Total Factor Productivity Change of the Swiss Dairy Sector for the Mountain Region in the Period 1999 to 2008

In view of a probable free trade agreement between Switzerland and the European Union in the agricultural and food sector and as a consequence of their actual low competitiveness in international comparison, Swiss dairy farms are under pressure to increase their productivity. In the present contribution I assess the total factor productivity (TFP) change in the period 1999-2008 of a balanced panel of 118 dairy farms located in the mountain region using the Malmquist productivity index. Particular attention is paid thereby to the issue of deflation quality for monetary input and output variables, and to the consideration of direct payments. The yearly average TFP growth rate of the sample of farms investigated amounts to 1% and is very close to the levels observed in European countries showing some similarities with Switzerland from an agricultural perspective. There seems thus to be some initial evidence that Swiss dairy farms located in the mountain region can keep up with their European counterparts in terms of TFP growth. However, due to the actual productivity gap existing between Swiss farms and their European counterparts, higher TFP growth would be necessary for the Swiss farms to increase their competitiveness in a European comparison.Livestock Production/Industries, Productivity Analysis,

Building upon Fast Multipole Methods to Detect and Model Organizations

Many models in natural and social sciences are comprised of sets of inter-acting entities whose intensity of interaction decreases with distance. This often leads to structures of interest in these models composed of dense packs of entities. Fast Multipole Methods are a family of methods developed to help with the calculation of a number of computable models such as described above. We propose a method that builds upon FMM to detect and model the dense structures of these systems

Mental Rumination: How Unwanted and Recurrent Thoughts Can Perturbate the Purchasing Behavior.

Martin and Tesser (1989) proposed a “rumination theory” to describe an unintentional and recurrent cognitive process where the individuals dwell on recurrent negative thoughts despite the absence of immediate environmental cueing. Their motivational approach presents rumination as a counterproductive thinking process triggered by the detection of a perturbation in one’s goal attainment process. This theory has received substantial attention in clinical psychology, but has not been documented in the literature on consumer behavior. Therefore, this paper aims first at synthesizing the current body of research on rumination and second at suggesting directions for research in marketing.rumination; consumer behavior; decision making process;