Cooperative success in epithelial public goods games

Cancer cells obtain mutations which rely on the production of diffusible growth factors to confer a fitness benefit. These mutations can be considered cooperative, and studied as public goods games within the framework of evolutionary game theory. The population structure, benefit function and update rule all influence the evolutionary success of cooperators. We model the evolution of cooperation in epithelial cells using the Voronoi tessellation model. Unlike traditional evolutionary graph theory, this allows us to implement global updating, for which birth and death events are spatially decoupled. We compare, for a sigmoid benefit function, the conditions for cooperation to be favoured and/or beneficial for well mixed and structured populations. We find that when population structure is combined with global updating, cooperation is more successful than if there were local updating or the population were well-mixed. Interestingly, the qualitative behaviour for the well-mixed population and the Voronoi tessellation model is remarkably similar, but the latter case requires significantly lower incentives to ensure cooperation.Comment: 29 Pages, 13 Figure

Dynamic modelling to predict the likelihood of plant species persisting in fragmented landscapes in the face of climate change

Many species are threatened by global climate change, but plants are particularly vulnerable because, as sessile organisms, they are unable to move to areas with more suitable conditions as the climate changes. Instead they must rely on their seeds dispersing far and often to keep pace with a changing climate. This problem is exacerbated by the fragmentation of natural landscapes by clearing for agricultural or urban development, or similarly by a species requirement for particular soil types or topography. Models can help predict how different species will be affected by climate change. Most previous modelling work on predicting the persistence of plant and other species under climate change has been static, regression style modelling, known as climate envelope modelling. This has focussed on predicting where suitable environments for a species will likely occur under possible future climatic conditions, based on the species’ distribution under current conditions. While the existence of suitable environments in a new climate is a necessary condition for a species’ persistence, for sessile organisms such as plants, the ability of a species to move and colonise these suitable environments is also likely to be a major limitation. There is therefore a need for models that account for the dynamic processes involved in plant species’ migration and colonisation in changing climates. This paper presents such a dynamic model, called PPunCC (Plant Persistence under Climate Change). We describe how the PPunCC model represents the important factors and processes likely to affect a plant species’ capacity to migrate across a landscape fast enough to keep pace with a changing climate, such as the rate of climate change, the degree of landscape fragmentation, and the plant species’ life history, seed production, dispersal, and establishment. We also discuss how the model could be used to inform management decisions regarding adaptation options such as assisted migration or the creation of large-scale corridors that increase the connectivity of fragmented landscapes in order to help species migrate naturally and find suitable environments in new climates

Radiative processes in external gravitational fields

Kinematically forbidden processes may be allowed in the presence of external gravitational fields. These ca be taken into account by introducing generalized particle momenta. The corresponding transition probabilities can then be calculated to all orders in the metric deviation from the field-free expressions by simply replacing the particle momenta with their generalized counterparts. The procedure applies to particles of any spin and to any gravitational fields. transition probabilities, emission power, and spectra are, to leading order, linear in the metric deviation. It is also shown how a small dissipation term in the particle wave equations can trigger a strong backreaction that introduces resonances in the radiative process and deeply affects the resulting gravitational background.Comment: 5 pages, 1 figur

Key barriers to community cohesion: views from residents of 20 London deprived neighbourhoods

The notion of community has been central to the political project of renewal of New Labour in the UK. The paper explores how the discourses of community are framed within New Labour and discusses these in the light of the results from research which focuses on how people within urban deprived areas construct their community. It draws upon the results of one part of a larger research project (the ‘Well London’ programme) which aimed to capture the views of residents from 20 disadvantaged neighbourhoods throughout London using an innovative qualitative method known as the ‘World Café’. Our results show the centrality of young people to the development of cohesive communities, the importance of building informal relationships between residents alongside encouraging greater participation to policy making, and the need to see these places as fragile and temporary locations but with considerable social strengths. Government policies are only partially addressing these issues. They pay greater attention to formally encouraging citizens to become more involved in policy making, largely ignore the contribution young people could make to the community cohesion agenda, and weakly define the shared norms and values that are crucial in building cohesive communities. Thus, the conclusion is that whilst an emphasis of the government on ‘community’ is to be welcome, more needs to be done in terms of considering the ‘voices’ of the community as well as enabling communities to determine and act upon their priorities

Towards measures of the eradicability of rain-splashed crop diseases

Controlling rain-splashed crop diseases is an extremely difficult task. Their spread is a complicated process and large-scale field surveys to determine the extent of an incursion over a large area are often economically intractable. A failed attempt at control or eradication of a pathogen can be very costly. In 1996 there was a major incursion of lupin anthracnose in Western Australia, which crippled the albus lupin industry. At the time of the outbreak a wide-spread survey was undertaken to estimate the extent of the incursion. A containment protocol involving broad-scale crop destruction was put into place with the view of eradicating the disease. This eradication attempt subsequently failed due to wild lupins acting as a reservoir for the disease from road verges and non-arable land outside the cropping area. There was also evidence of long distance dispersal vectors such as native budworm. Had all the relevant information related to spread and spatial habitat suitability been collected and taken into account, the decision to destroy the crops may not have been made and significant economic losses to growers may have been avoided. Estimates of the current extent of an incursion based solely on incomplete empirical data are likely to be inaccurate, as are predictions of the future trajectory of an incursion that do not take into account all available information. Therefore any control or eradication attempt based on these estimates and predictions may be ineffective. Simulation modelling is an important method for making the best use of all available empirical data and integrating all available knowledge to predict the spread of rain-splashed crop diseases. With this prediction, an evaluation of the potential success of control or eradication measures may be estimated. This study describes a model that was built to simulate a situation analogous to that of the 1996 lupin anthracnose incursion in Western Australia, for the purpose of identifying general indicators of the eradicability of rain-splashed crop diseases. We extended the spatiotemporal model AnthracnoseTracer to simulate the spread of lupin anthracnose in a heterogeneous paddock environment analogous to the 1996 conditions. Three control methods aimed at eradication were investigated. A simple detection model was assumed, where the probability of detecting the disease is dependent on the level of passive surveillance and the detectability of the disease. As part of the preliminary analysis contained in this paper we investigated two scenarios to identify potential indicators of eradicability, based on the time taken to detect the disease. Our preliminary results indicate that rain-splashed pathogens are extremely difficult to eradicate and the chance of successful eradication appears strongly dependent on the level of surveillance of the susceptible areas and the detectability of the disease. The level of surveillance and detectability of the disease may both serve as general indicators of eradicability for rain-splashed crop diseases. We discuss further modelling analyses to be carried out to refine these indicators

Cricket South Africa’s Protea Fire brand

Subject area Marketing, Sports marketing and Social media marketing. Study level/applicability Graduate level. Case overview This case, based on field research and multiple secondary sources, documents the 12-month period since early 2014 during which Cricket South Africa (CSA) developed the Protea Fire brand for their national men’s cricket team, known as the Proteas. In mid-2014, Marc Jury, the Commercial and Marketing manager of CSA set up a project team to take the previously in-house Protea Fire brand public. With the 2015 Cricket World Cup in Australia and New Zealand less than a year away, Jury worked with a diverse project team of Proteas players, cricket brand managers and external consultants to build a public brand identity for the national team, to nurture greater fan affinity and to mobilize South Africans behind their team for the World Cup. The project team developed a range of Protea Fire multimedia content as the core of the campaign. These included video diaries, scripts which were written by the Proteas players themselves, player profile videos, motivational team-talk videos and good luck video messages featuring ordinary and famous South Africans. Having invested in creating this content, the project team faced the difficult task of allocating a limited media budget to broadcast and amplify the content. Another significant challenge was to ensure that the Proteas team values were authentically communicated across all content, including via the social media strategy using Twitter, Instagram and YouTube. As the World Cup tournament kicked off on February 14th 2015, South Africa was well placed to overcome their previous inability to reach a final, although Jury wondered whether another exit in the knockout round would weaken the strong and positive emotions the Protea Fire campaign had ignited. With the last two balls remaining in South Africa’s semi-final game against New Zealand on March 24th 2015, and the home team requiring just five runs to win, Jury joined 60 million South Africans hoping that Protea Fire was strong enough. The case concludes with South Africa losing the semi-final game and Jury turning his attention to how the #ProteaFire campaign should respond. Expected learning outcomes This study aimed to analyse the development of a sport team brand and a megaevent campaign; to assess the efficiency and effectiveness of a marketing campaign; and to consider appropriate brand responses to the team’s failure to deliver on expectations. Subject code CSS 8: Marketing. </jats:sec