Evolution of cooperation in spatial traveler's dilemma game

Traveler's dilemma (TD) is one of social dilemmas which has been well studied in the economics community, but it is attracted little attention in the physics community. The TD game is a two-person game. Each player can select an integer value between $R$ and $M$ ($R < M$) as a pure strategy. If both of them select the same value, the payoff to them will be that value. If the players select different values, say $i$ and $j$ ($R \le i < j \le M$), then the payoff to the player who chooses the small value will be $i+R$ and the payoff to the other player will be $i-R$. We term the player who selects a large value as the cooperator, and the one who chooses a small value as the defector. The reason is that if both of them select large values, it will result in a large total payoff. The Nash equilibrium of the TD game is to choose the smallest value $R$. However, in previous behavioral studies, players in TD game typically select values that are much larger than $R$, and the average selected value exhibits an inverse relationship with $R$. To explain such anomalous behavior, in this paper, we study the evolution of cooperation in spatial traveler's dilemma game where the players are located on a square lattice and each player plays TD games with his neighbors. Players in our model can adopt their neighbors' strategies following two standard models of spatial game dynamics. Monte-Carlo simulation is applied to our model, and the results show that the cooperation level of the system, which is proportional to the average value of the strategies, decreases with increasing $R$ until $R$ is greater than the threshold where cooperation vanishes. Our findings indicate that spatial reciprocity promotes the evolution of cooperation in TD game and the spatial TD game model can interpret the anomalous behavior observed in previous behavioral experiments

Analysis of the strong vertices of ΣcND∗\Sigma_cND^{*} and ΣbNB∗\Sigma_bNB^{*} in QCD sum rules

The strong coupling constant is an important parameter which can help us to understand the strong decay behaviors of baryons. In our previous work, we have analyzed strong vertices $\Sigma_{c}^{*}ND$, $\Sigma_{b}^{*}NB$, $\Sigma_{c}ND$, $\Sigma_{b}NB$ in QCD sum rules. Following these work, we further analyze the strong vertices $\Sigma_{c}ND^{*}$ and $\Sigma_{b}NB^{*}$ using the three-point QCD sum rules under Dirac structures $q\!\!\!/p\!\!\!/\gamma_{\alpha}$ and $q\!\!\!/p\!\!\!/p_{\alpha}$. In this work, we first calculate strong form factors considering contributions of the perturbative part and the condensate terms $\langle\overline{q}q\rangle$, $\langle\frac{\alpha_{s}}{\pi}GG\rangle$ and $\langle\overline{q}g_{s}\sigma Gq\rangle$. Then, these form factors are used to fit into analytical functions. According to these functions, we finally determine the values of the strong coupling constants for these two vertices $\Sigma_{c}ND^{*}$ and $\Sigma_{b}NB^{*}$.Comment: arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1705.0322

Metarhizium anisopliae infection alters feeding and trophallactic behavior in the ant Solenopsis invicta

In social insects, social behavior may be changed in a way that preventing the spread of pathogens. We infected workers of the ant Solenopsis invicta with an entomopathogenic fungus Metarhizium anisopliae and then videotaped and/or measured worker feeding and trophallactic behavior. Results showed that fungal infected S. invicta enhanced their preference for bitter alkaloid chemical quinine on 3 days after inoculation, which might be self-medication of S. invicta by ingesting more alkaloid substances in response to pathogenic infection. Furthermore, infected ants devoted more time to trophallactic behavior with their nestmates on 3 days post inoculation, in return receiving more food. Increased interactions between exposed ants and their naive nestmates suggest the existence of social immunity in S. invicta. Overall, our study indicates that S. invicta may use behavioral defenses such as self-medication and social immunity in response to a M. anisopliae infection. (C) 2016 Published by Elsevier Inc