Is It Easy to Be Urban? Convergent Success in Urban Habitats among Lineages of a Widespread Native Ant

The most rapidly expanding habitat globally is the urban habitat, yet the origin and life histories of the populations of native species that inhabit this habitat remain poorly understood. We use DNA barcoding of the COI gene in the widespread native pest ant Tapinoma sessile to test two hypotheses regarding the origin of urban populations and traits associated with their success. First, we determine if urban samples of T. sessile have a single origin from natural populations by looking at patterns of haplotype clustering from across their range. Second, we examine whether polygynous colony structure – a trait associated with invasion success – is correlated with urban environments, by studying the lineage dependence of colony structure. Our phylogenetic analysis of 49 samples identified four well supported geographic clades. Within clades, Kimura-2 parameter pairwise genetic distances revealed <2.3% variation; however, between clade genetic distances were 7.5–10.0%, suggesting the possibility of the presence of cryptic species. Our results indicate that T. sessile has successfully colonized urban environments multiple times. Additionally, polygynous colony structure is a highly plastic trait across habitat, clade, and haplotype. In short, T. sessile has colonized urban habitats repeatedly and appears to do so using life history strategies already present in more natural populations. Whether similar results hold for other species found in urban habitats has scarcely begun to be considered

Expanding understanding of service exchange and value co-creation: A social construction approach

According to service-dominant logic (S-D logic), all providers are service providers, and service is the fundamental basis of exchange. Value is co-created with customers and assessed on the basis of value-in-context. However, the extensive literature on S-D logic could benefit from paying explicit attention to the fact that both service exchange and value co-creation are influenced by social forces. The aim of this study is to expand understanding of service exchange and value co-creation by complementing these central aspects of S-D logic with key concepts from social construction theories (social structures, social systems, roles, positions, interactions, and reproduction of social structures). The study develops and describes a new framework for understanding how the concepts of service exchange and value co-creation are affected by recognizing that they are embedded in social systems. The study contends that value should be understood as value-in-social-context and that value is a social construction. Value co-creation is shaped by social forces, is reproduced in social structures, and can be asymmetric for the actors involved. Service exchanges are dynamic, and actors learn and change their roles within dynamic service systems

A mathematical model of a criminal-prone society

Criminals are common to all societies. To fight against them the community takes different security measures as, for example, to bring about a police. Thus, crime causes a depletion of the common wealth not only by criminal acts but also because the cost of hiring a police force. In this paper, we present a mathematical model of a criminal-prone self-protected society that is divided into socio-economical classes. We study the effect of a non-null crime rate on a free-of-criminals society which is taken as a reference system. As a consequence, we define a criminal-prone society as one whose free-of-criminals steady state is unstable under small perturbations of a certain socio-economical context. Finally, we compare two alternative strategies to control crime: (i) enhancing police efficiency, either by enlarging its size or by updating its technology, against (ii) either reducing criminal appealing or promoting social classes at ris

Ecosystem Services in the Service-Dominant Logic Framework.

Peer reviewe

Ad Hoc Reviewers-Journal of Macromarketing Volume 33, Number 4, December 2013

[No abstract available

Ontological representation and governance of business semantics in compliant service networks

The Internet would enable new ways for service innovation and trading, as well as for analysing the resulting value networks, with an unprecedented level of scale and dynamics. Yet most related economic activities remain of a largely brittle and manual nature. Service-oriented business implementations focus on operational aspects at the cost of value creation aspects such as quality and regulatory compliance. Indeed they enforce how to carry out a certain business in a prefixed non-adaptive manner rather than capturing the semantics of a business domain in a way that would enable service systems to adapt their role in changing value propositions. In this paper we set requirements for SDL-compliant business service semantics, and propose a method for their ontological representation and governance. We demonstrate an implementation of our approach in the context of service-oriented Information Governance

e3 service: A Critical Reflection and Future Research

Commercial services are of utmost importance for the economy. Due to the widespread use of information and communication technologies, many of these services may be delivered online by means of service value networks. To automate this delivery, however, issues such as composition, integration, and operationalization need to be addressed. In this paper, the authors share their long-term vision on composition of service value networks and describe relationships with fields such as cloud computing and enterprise computing. As a demonstration of the state of the art, capabilities and limitations of e 3 service are described and research challenges are defined

Clinical outcomes of EUS-guided drainage of debris-containing pancreatic pseudocysts: a large multicenter study

Background and study aims Data on clinical outcomes of endoscopic drainage of debris-free pseudocysts (PDF) versus pseudocysts containing solid debris (PSD) are very limited. The aims of this study were to compare treatment outcomes between patients with PDF vs. PSD undergoing endoscopic ultrasound (EUS)-guided drainage via transmural stents. Patients and methods Retrospective review of 142 consecutive patients with pseudocysts who underwent EUS-guided transmural drainage (TM) from 2008 to 2014 at 15 academic centers in the United States. Main outcome measures included TM technical success, treatment outcomes (symptomatic and radiologic resolution), need for endoscopic re-intervention at follow-up, and adverse events (AEs). Results TM was performed in 90 patients with PDF and 52 with PSD. Technical success: PDF 87 (96.7 %) vs. PSD 51 (98.1 %). There was no difference in the rates for endoscopic re-intervention (5.5 % in PDF vs. 11.5 % in PSD; P = 0.33) or AEs (12.2 % in PDF vs. 19.2 % in PSD; P = 0.33). Median long-term follow-up after stent removal was 297 days (interquartile range [IQR]: 59 - 424 days) for PDF and 326 days (IQR: 180 - 448 days) for PSD (P = 0.88). There was a higher rate of short-term radiologic resolution of PDF (45; 66.2 %) vs. PSD (21; 51.2 %) (OR = 0.30; 95 % CI: 0.13 - 0.72; P = 0.009). There was no difference in long-term symptomatic resolution (PDF: 70.4 % vs. PSD: 66.7 %; P = 0.72) or radiologic resolution (PDF: 68.9 % vs. PSD: 78.6 %; P = 0.72) Conclusions There was no difference in need for endoscopic re-intervention, AEs or long-term treatment outcomes in patients with PDF vs. PSD undergoing EUS-guided drainage with transmural stents. Based on these results, the presence of solid debris in pancreatic fluid collections does not appear to be associated with a poorer outcome