The effects of dominance on leadership and energetic gain: a dynamic game between pairs of social foragers

Although social behaviour can bring many benefits to an individual, there are also costs that may be incurred whenever the members of a social group interact. The formation of dominance hierarchies could offer a means of reducing some of the costs of social interaction, but individuals within the hierarchy may end up paying differing costs dependent upon their position within the hierarchy. These differing interaction costs may therefore influence the behaviour of the group, as subordinate individuals may experience very different benefits and costs to dominants when the group is conducting a given behaviour. Here, a state-dependent dynamic game is described which considers a pair of social foragers where there is a set dominance relationship within the pair. The model considers the case where the subordinate member of the pair pays an interference cost when it and the dominant individual conduct specific pairs of behaviours together. The model demonstrates that if the subordinate individual pays these energetic costs when it interacts with the dominant individual, this has effects upon the behaviour of both subordinate and the dominant individuals. Including interaction costs increases the amount of foraging behaviour both individuals conduct, with the behaviour of the pair being driven by the subordinate individual. The subordinate will tend to be the lighter individual for longer periods of time when interaction costs are imposed. This supports earlier suggestions that lighter individuals should act as the decision-maker within the pair, giving leadership-like behaviours that are based upon energetic state. Pre-existing properties of individuals such as their dominance will be less important for determining which individual makes the decisions for the pair. This suggests that, even with strict behavioural hierarchies, identifying which individual is the dominant one is not sufficient for identifying which one is the leader

THE IMPACT OF STATE OWNED BANKS ON INTEREST RATES SPREAD

This paper develops the hypothesis that the co-existence of state owned banks with privately owned banks together tends to raise interest rates spreads and profitability of privately owned banks. This hypothesis can help explain the relationship between the share of state owned banks on total banking assets and economic growth, as reported in the literature. Three empirical tests of the two parts of the main hypothesis are presented. Two of them rely on Brazilian monthly time series data and the other one uses a cross section regression with data for a sample of countries. One of them builds on an estimation of an expanded version of the composition of a rate of return of an asset under the market efficient hypothesis. Another one estimates a factor augmented vector autoregression (FAVAR) model. All of these tests give support to the hypotheses tested.

Understanding Human Rights in Forensic Psychiatric Services: Staff Perceptions of Human Rights Issues in an Inpatient Forensic Psychiatric Service

Human rights apply universally to all human beings, however human rights violations have been well-documented in forensic services. Forensic inpatient psychiatric services (FIPS) in the UK occupy a unique position as a healthcare service with obligations to the criminal justice system. This presents challenges in providing patient-centred and human rights-supportive care due to environmental, ethical and legal constraints. In order to understand these challenges and the position of human rights in FIPS, staff were interviewed to explore their understandings of human rights and human rights issues in FIPS. A critical realist epistemological stance was taken and a qualitative research design employed. Eleven FIPS staff were individually interviewed and a thematic analysis was conducted, yielding four key themes: Theme 1: “I Don’t Know an Awful Lot About Them”: Broad Concepts of Human Rights Theme 2: “It Always, Always Comes Back to Risk”: Human Rights in FIPS Theme 3: “Do We Know We’re Violating? Maybe Not”: Human Rights Issues Theme 4: “I Think I-, I’m…Confused”: Tools and Resources in FIPS In seeking to understand staff’s perspectives of human rights in FIPS, this study found that human rights were not widely considered in practice. Practice was predominantly focused around risk and the key legislation considered was the Mental Health Act 1983 (MHA). Both of these factors were seen to justify legally infringing upon human rights, although several practices, lawful under the MHA, were raised as human rights issues, such as restraint and forced medication. Several factors were identified as obstacles to human rights-supportive practice, such as risk management requirements, service culture, and individual practice. However, participants highlighted a need for human rights principles to be integrated into FIPS to improve practice and patient outcomes

Red deer synchronise their activity with close neighbours

Models of collective animal behaviour frequently make assumptions about the effects of neighbours on the behaviour of focal individuals, but these assumptions are rarely tested. One such set of assumptions is that the switch between active and inactive behaviour seen in herding animals is influenced by the activity of close neighbours, where neighbouring animals show a higher degree of behavioural synchrony than would be expected by chance. We tested this assumption by observing the simultaneous behaviour of paired individuals within a herd of red deer Cervus elaphus. Focal individuals were more synchronised with their two closest neighbours than with the third closest or randomly selected individuals from the herd. Our results suggest that the behaviour of individual deer is influenced by immediate neighbours. Even if we assume that there are no social relationships between individuals, this suggests that the assumptions made in models about the influence of neighbours may be appropriate

Three (or Infinite) Lenses: Translucent Still Life I.

The drawing prompts the viewer’s contemplation of lenses on three different levels. (By lens, I mean a device that transforms the user's experience in some way and designates a focus.) First, disability studies serves as a lens. Simi Linton (1998) has noted that disability studies is “a prism through which one can gain a broader understanding of society and human experience” (p. 118)

Nearest-neighbour clusters as a novel technique for assessing group associations

When all the individuals in a social group can be easily identified, one of the simplest measures of social interaction that can be recorded is nearest-neighbour identity. Many field studies use sequential scan samples of groups to build up association metrics using these nearest-neighbour identities. Here, I describe a simple technique for identifying clusters of associated individuals within groups that uses nearest-neighbour identity data. Using computer-generated datasets with known associations, I demonstrate that this clustering technique can be used to build data suitable for association metrics, and that it can generate comparable metrics to raw nearest-neighbour data, but with much less initial data. This technique could therefore be of use where it is difficult to generate large datasets. Other situations where the technique would be useful are discussed