Rethinking theories of change in the light of enactive cognitive science: Contributions to community-scale local sustainability initiatives.

open access articleSocial innovation projects commonly refer to operationalized theories of change to inform strategy and to deliver intended outcomes. Community based sustainability campaigns, as one example, emphasize the elicitation of pro-environmental activities and decision-making among members of a host community, drawing on mainstream psychological theories of behaviour, motivation and cognitive (mental) processes. Locating an argument within the neurobiological base of structure determinism, this paper explores how theories of change for sustainability campaigns might be reimagined through the lens of enactive theory. Following a brief introduction to the enactive model of embodied cognition, implications associated with trying to operationalize the model to inform how theories of change are mapped out and used in sustainability initiatives are discussed. The paper concludes by drawing on insights from approaches to psychotherapy, which also endeavoured to apply this model of mind, and considers these within the strategic context of sustainability initiatives and public engagement

Real-time Planning as Decision-making Under Uncertainty

In real-time planning, an agent must select the next action to take within a fixed time bound. Many popular real-time heuristic search methods approach this by expanding nodes using time-limited A* and selecting the action leading toward the frontier node with the lowest f value. In this thesis, we reconsider real-time planning as a problem of decision-making under uncertainty. We treat heuristic values as uncertain evidence and we explore several backup methods for aggregating this evidence. We then propose a novel lookahead strategy that expands nodes to minimize risk, the expected regret in case a non-optimal action is chosen. We evaluate these methods in a simple synthetic benchmark and the sliding tile puzzle and find that they outperform previous methods. This work illustrates how uncertainty can arise even when solving deterministic planning problems, due to the inherent ignorance of time-limited search algorithms about those portions of the state space that they have not computed, and how an agent can benefit from explicitly meta-reasoning about this uncertainty

A Molecular Probe Finds Evidence of NIX Pathogen in Pacific Razor Clams (\u3cem\u3eSiliqua patula\u3c/em\u3e) in Oregon

The Pacific razor clam, Siliqua patula, is an important recreational fishery species that lives in the intertidal zone of sandy beaches from Alaska to central California. Populations have had periodic, but significant, declines over the past 30-40 years. These declines have correlated with an increase in the presences of an unidentified, intranuclear bacterial parasite known as Nuclear Inclusion X (NIX). NIX, which was first identified in 1986, has generally been screened using a histological approach. We developed a PCR-based screen to reduce both the time and cost of identifying infected clams. Use of this screen resulted in amplified sequences with a 97% match to the previously published 16S rDNA sequence for NIX. The sequence data supports placement of NIX into the gamma-proteobacteria, and suggests that it is related to isolates from diseased corals. Clams collected from the northern coast of Oregon showed ~50% infection rate using the PCR screen. This is the first report of NIX present in clams from Oregon, as all previous work had been in the state of Washington. Future work will identify the incidence rate and geographical spread of the NIX parasite throughout Oregon and Washington

Kondo effect in three-dimensional Dirac and Weyl systems

Magnetic impurities in three-dimensional Dirac and Weyl systems are shown to exhibit a fascinatingly diverse range of Kondo physics, with distinctive experimental spectroscopic signatures. When the Fermi level is precisely at the Dirac point, Dirac semimetals are in fact unlikely candidates for a Kondo effect due to the pseudogapped density of states. However, the influence of a nearby quantum critical point leads to the unconventional evolution of Kondo physics for even tiny deviations in the chemical potential. Separating the degenerate Dirac nodes produces a Weyl phase: time-reversal symmetry-breaking precludes Kondo due to an effective impurity magnetic field, but different Kondo variants are accessible in time-reversal invariant Weyl systems.Comment: 4+ pages, 2 figure

Learning from the Anthropocene: Adaptive Epistemology and Complexity in Strategic Managerial Thinking

open access articleTurbulence experienced in the business and social realms resonates with turbulence unfolding throughout the biosphere, as a process of accelerating change at the stratigraphic scale termed the Anthropocene. The Anthropocene is understood as a multi‐dimensional limit point, one dimension of which concerns the limits to the lineal epistemology prevalent since the Age of the Enlightenment. This paper argues that future conditions necessitate the updating of a lineal epistemology through a transition towards resilience thinking that is both adaptive and ecosystemic. A management paradigm informed by the recognition of multiple equilibria states distinguished by thresholds, and incorporating adaptive and resilience thinking is considered. This paradigm is thought to enhance flexibility and the capacity to absorb influences without crossing thresholds into alternate stable, but less desirable, states. One consequence is that evaluations of success may change, and these changes are considered and explored as likely on‐going challenges businesses must grapple with into the future

The influence of different sources of polyphenols on submaximal cycling and time trial performance

The primary purpose of the study was to establish the effects of commercially available polyphenol-rich antioxidant supplements, Pycnogenol® with added bioflavonoids (PYC-B) and CherryActive (CHA), on 20 km cycling performance. Using a double-blind counterbalanced, repeated-measures design, nine male cyclists or triathletes (32.1 ± 11.2 years; maximal aerobic capacity 4.2 ± 0.7 L•min-1; maximal power output 391.7 ± 39.5 watts) consumed 200 mg of CHA, 120 mg of PYC-B, or 200 mg of placebo (PLA) capsules, 2 days before and on the day of each experimental trial. The experimental trials consisted of four 5 minute stages at 40%, 50%, 60%, and 70% maximal power output (Wmax), followed by a 20 km time trial (TT). Statistical analysis revealed no significant differences between trials for heart rate, respiratory exchange ratio, gross mechanical efficiency, oxygen consumption, or blood lactate, at any of the intensities completed during the initial 20 minute phase of the trial (p>0.05). Final 20 km TT times were not significantly different between trials (p=0.115), but, compared to PLA, PYC-B did significantly increase power output by 6.2% over the final 5 km of the TT (p=0.022). The study suggests that the PYC-B supplement could be beneficial towards the end of an intense bout of cycling exercise. However, as total 20 km time was not significantly different between trials the doses used are unlikely to benefit 20 km cycling time trial performance

Reconfiguring Household Management in Times of Discontinuity as an Open System: The Case of Agro-food Chains

The file attached to this record is the author's final peer reviewed version. The Publisher's final version can be found by following the DOI link.This article is based upon a heterodox approach to economics that rejects the oversimplification made by closed economic models and the mainstream concept of ‘externality.’ This approach re-imagines economics as a holistic evaluation of resources versus human needs, which requires judgement based on understanding of the complexity generated by the dynamic relations between different systems. One re-imagining of the economic model is as a holistic and systemic evaluation of agri-food systems’ sustainability that was performed through the multi-dimensional Governance Assessment Matrix Exercise (GAME). This is based on the five capitals model of sustainability, and the translation of qualitative evaluations into quantitative scores. This is based on the triangulation of big data from a variety of sources. To represent quantitative interactions, this article proposes a provisional translation of GAME’s qualitative evaluation into a quantitative form through the identification of measurement units that can reflect the different capital dimensions. For instance, a post-normal, ecological accounting method, Emergy is proposed to evaluate the natural capital. The revised GAME re-imagines economics not as the ‘dismal science,’ but as one that has potential leverage for positive, adaptive and sustainable ecosystemic analyses and global ‘household’ management. This article proposes an explicit recognition of economics nested within the social spheres of human and social capital which are in turn nested within the ecological capital upon which all life rests and is truly the bottom line. In this article, the authors make reference to an on-line retailer of local food and drink to illustrate the methods for evaluation of the five capitals model