scholarly journals Scarce and directly beneficial reputations support cooperation

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Flóra Samu ◽  
Szabolcs Számadó ◽  
Károly Takács

ABSTRACTA human solution to the problem of cooperation is the construction and maintenance of informal reputation hierarchies. Reputational information contributes to cooperation by providing guidelines about previous group-beneficial or free-rider behavior of opponents in social dilemma interactions. How reputation information could be credible, however, when outcomes of interactions are not publicly known, remains a puzzle. In this study, we propose that credibility could be ensured if reputation is a scarce resource and it is not believed to be earned for direct benefits. We tested these propositions in a laboratory experiment in which participants played two-person Prisoner’s Dilemma games without partner selection, could observe some other interactions and could communicate reputational information about possible prospective opponents to each other. We found that scarcity is a necessary condition for reputation scores to be informative. While cooperation has not been sustained at a high level in any of the conditions, reputational information clearly influenced cooperation decisions. The possibility of exchanging third-party information was able to increase the level of cooperation the most if reputation was a scarce resource and contrary to our expectations, when reputational scores have been directly translated into monetary benefits.

Blood ◽  
2001 ◽  
Vol 97 (2) ◽  
pp. 557-564 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter J. Quesenberry ◽  
Suju Zhong ◽  
Han Wang ◽  
Marc Stewart

Abstract We have previously shown that the keys to high-level nontoxic chimerism in syngeneic models are stem cell toxic, nonmyelotoxic host treatment as provided by 100-cGy whole-body irradiation and relatively high levels of marrow stem cells. This approach was unsuccessful in H-2 mismatched B6.SJL to BALB/c marrow transplants, but with tolerization, stable multilineage chimerism was obtained. Ten million B6.SJL spleen cells were infused intravenously into BALB/c hosts on day −10 and (MR-1) anti-CD40 ligand monoclonal antibody (mAb) injected intraperitoneally at varying levels on days −10, −7, −3, 0, and +3 and the BALB/c mice irradiated (100 cGy) and infused with 40 million B6.SJL/H-2 mismatched marrow cells on day 0. Stable multilineage chimerism at levels between 30% to 40% was achieved in the great majority of mice at 1.6 mg anti-CD40 ligand mAb per injection out to 64 weeks after transplantation, without graft-versus-host disease. The transplanted mice were also tolerant of donor B6.SJL, but not third-party CBA/J skin grafts at 8 to 9 and 39 to 43 weeks after marrow transplantation. These data provide a unique model for obtaining stable partial chimerism in H-2 mismatched mice, which can be applied to various clinical diseases of man such as sickle cell anemia, thalassemia, and autoimmune disorders.


2021 ◽  
pp. 107-127
Author(s):  
O.A. Sychev ◽  
◽  
K.I. Belousov ◽  

Patriotism and attitude to the motherland attract much interest of researchers in the field of social sciences, although psychological foundations of these phenomena have not been sufficiently studied. On the basis of Moral Foundations Theory (by J. Haidt) we hypothesized that the characteristics of the moral sphere may be associated with some ideas about the motherland. In particular, binding moral foundations (including loyalty, authority and purity) which are more typical for conservatives should support positive patriotic ideas about the homeland. The low level of binding moral foundations can be related with a critical attitude towards the motherland, the presence of negative assessments of their country. This assump-tion is supported by the results of past studies of patriotism among individuals with different ideological views. The individualizing moral foundations dominating among liberals can be associated with a less global and narrower view of the motherland, which is linked with con-cepts of “family” and “home” rather than “society” or “country”. The aim of this study was to analyze the association between the individualizing and binding moral foundations with the content of ideas about the motherland. The important task of the study was to develop the Russian version of the moral foundations dictionary, which is necessary for analyzing the moral content of ideas about the motherland. To test the hypotheses we conducted a paper-pencil and online survey, obtained data included the answers on Moral Foundations Question-naire and textual answers characterizing the image of the motherland. The sample comprised 831 people (72% women) from 11 regions of Russia. Text responses were processed via com-puter content analysis in the LIWC program (by J. Pennebaker) using the moral foundations dictionary (all categories) and the general dictionary (10 categories most relevant to the prob-lem). To analyze the relations between the results of content analysis and MFQ questionnaire we calculated correlations of the individualizing and binding moral foundations with the presence or absence of each category in the participants’ responses. The results of the correlation analysis indicate that the individualizing moral foundations supports relatively narrow ideas about the motherland, associated with family and home, while people with a high level of binding moral foundations associate the motherland mostly with society and religion. Binding moral founda-tions support a positive image of the motherland, which is manifested in the more frequent use of positive assessments and avoidance of negative evaluations. Persons with a high level of binding moral foundations tend to ignore negative phenomena in the country, reflecting a violation of the individualizing moral norms (care and fairness). In particular, they less often mention violations of human rights and the poverty of the country's inhabitants. The necessary condition analysis revealed the effect of binding moral foundations as a necessary but insuffi-cient condition for maintaining a positive image of the motherland and the absence of negative ideas about it.


Author(s):  
F. Geri ◽  
O. Cainelli ◽  
G. Salogni ◽  
P. Zatelli ◽  
M. Ciolli

Public and academic interest in environmental pollution caused by toxic substances and other sources, like noise, is constantly raising. To protect public health and ecosystems it is necessary to maintain the concentrations of pollutants below a safety threshold. In this context the development of models able to assess environmental pollution impact has been identified as a priority for future research. Scientific community has therefore produced many predictive models in the field. The vast majority of them needs to be run by specialists with a deep technical knowledge of the modeled phenomena in order to process the data and understand the results and it is not feasible to use this models for simple prescreening activities. Planners, evaluators and technical operators need reliable, usable and simple tools in order to carry out screening analysis of impact assessment. <br><br> The ENVIFATE software is currently under development by the Department of Civil, environmental and mechanical engineering of the University of Trento, Italy, in the frame of a project funded by the Italian Veneto Region with the aim to make available to nonspecialists screening analysis to assess the risks of a set of possible environmental pollution sources in protected areas. <br><br> The development of ENVIFATE follows these basic requirements: i) Open-Source ii) multiplatform iii) user friendly iv) GIS oriented. In order to respect these principles we have chosen to develop a plugin of QGIS, using python as a development language and creating a module for each environmental compartment analyzed: rivers, lakes, atmospheric dispersion, dispersion in groundwater and noise. <br><br> The plugin architecture is composed of a series of core functions characterized by command line interfaces that can be called from third-party applications (such as Grass GIS), connectable in custom data flows and with a high level of modularity and scalability. The base of the different models are highly tested and reliable algorithms adopted by the Italian Institute for Protection and Environmental Research (Istituto Superiore per la Protezione e la Ricerca Ambientale – ISPRA). Due to their simplicity, and for safety reasons, the structure of these models is constrained to provide conservative results, so to overestimate actual risk. This approach allows to provide statistically validated instruments to be used in different environmental contexts. All modules of the plugin provide numerical and cartographical results: in particular the command-line interface provides "static" results, or linked to a particular spatial and temporal state, while the Qgis plugins iterate the single analysis along space and time in order to provide georeferenced maps and time distributed results.


2020 ◽  
Vol 30 (1) ◽  
pp. 63-90

The article examines the state of the history of science as a discipline and its objectives in the context of its origins and current transformations. The establishment of this discipline and its assumptions about the nature of science together with its goals and structure are briefly discussed. The history of science became a discipline only at the beginning of the second half of the 20th century, and its start is associated with the work of chemist James Conant, a high-level administrator in Manhattan project who was also president of Harvard University and a high-ranking bureaucrat. It was based also on the narrative developed by Alfred North Whitehead, Edwin Burtt, Alexandre Koyré and other historians of science, which claimed modern science was the creator of modernity and a necessary condition for the geopolitical domination of the West. In that understanding, modern science meant science since the time of Galileo and Newton. The author provides a critical analysis of this foundation narrative for the discipline and of its consequences while showing how contemporary history of science has overcome it. The contradiction between modernism and historicism has been resolved in favor of the latter. A key role in this was played by the book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions by Thomas Kuhn, which held the potential to undo the presumed monolithic unity of science by rejecting teleology and introducing incommensurability and discontinuities into the historical process. By rejecting explanation of the knowledge of other times and places in terms of modern science, the discipline faced a radical multiplication of independent types of knowledge. This was facilitated by the reorientation to the study of knowledge practices that took place in the 1980s. As a result, the subject matter of the history of science began to erode, and this launched discussion of the prospects for a transition to a history of knowledge based on the study of practices. The sweep of this change of vision is illustrated by the example of classifying sciences according to both their subject matter and the similarities in their research practices. Finally, the advantages and disadvantages of the new discipline along with its prospects and the challenges it faces are discussed.


2011 ◽  
Vol 12 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 127-156 ◽  
Author(s):  
JOACHIM SCHIMPF ◽  
KISH SHEN

AbstractECLiPSe is a Prolog-based programming system, aimed at the development and deployment of constraint programming applications. It is also used for teaching most aspects of combinatorial problem solving, for example, problem modelling, constraint programming, mathematical programming and search techniques. It uses an extended Prolog as its high-level modelling and control language, complemented by several constraint solver libraries, interfaces to third-party solvers, an integrated development environment and interfaces for embedding into host environments. This paper discusses language extensions, implementation aspects, components, and tools that we consider relevant on the way from Logic Programming to Constraint Logic Programming.


Author(s):  
Nur Amirah Borhan ◽  
Noryati Ahmad

Purpose This study aims to identify the determinants of Malaysian corporate Sukuk rating and attempts to find out which determinant has the most significant impact. Design/methodology/approach The framework tries to establish a relationship between firm’s size, profitability, Sukuk guarantee status and types of Sukuk with Sukuk rating from the perspective of Agency Theory and Information Asymmetry Theory. The data consist of 43 Sukuk issuances from 2006 to 2015. Multinomial Logistic Regression Model is then used to find out the significant determinants of Sukuk rating. Findings The study found that only three variables significantly impact Sukuk rating. The results show that a guaranteed Sukuk Ijarah or a guaranteed Sukuk Musyarakah that is issued by a highly profitable firm has a higher likelihood of getting rating AAA or rating AA as compared to getting rating A. A type of Sukuk, particularly Sukuk Murabahah, is the most significant variable influencing Sukuk rating. However, firm size is not a significant determinant of Sukuk rating in the context of this study. Research limitations implications The first limitation of the study is the relatively small sample size. Second, the study only tested four independent variables. Practical implications Several implications are derived from the results of the study. First, new firms that are planning to issue Sukuk should consistently maintain a high level of profit and consider issuing debt-based Sukuk to ensure that the issued Sukuk have higher rating. To increase the likelihood of getting higher rating, they should also consider providing a third-party guarantor. As for existing Sukuk issuers that are in lower rating category, they should increase their profitability to be upgraded to higher rating category. Second, risk-adverse investors should invest in highly profitable, guaranteed and debt-based Sukuk, as these Sukuk are likely to be in higher rating category and provide guarantee in terms of capital payments during liquidation or bankruptcy. Third, to reduce information asymmetry, policymakers should make it compulsory for all Sukuk issuers to have their Sukuk rated annually and make it mandatory for all rating agencies in Malaysia to publish their Sukuk rating methodologies. Originality/value This paper helps to expand the limited existing literature about the determinants of Sukuk rating, particularly for the Malaysian corporate Sukuk.


2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (21) ◽  
pp. 9257
Author(s):  
Luca Fazzi ◽  
Susanne Elsen

Southern Italy suffers from a high poverty rate, unemployment, emigration flows, and a strong presence of organized crime in the field of agriculture. This study seeks to investigate the potential of social enterprises as driving forces for the legal and eco-social development of fragile Southern Italian areas. To work in such challenging contexts requires the development of a high level of resilience, which implies the ability to adapt to difficulties and to overcome crises by coming out stronger than before. The initiatives we detected in Southern Italy are examples for the strength that can come from ideal motivations. In the case of social agriculture initiatives in Southern Italy counteracting organized crime, these motivations are an indispensable condition for their survival and growth. The accumulation of problems and difficulties, however, risks corroding motivations of the actors. This can lead to the withdrawal of members, which can have a serious impact on these small organizations. Thus, idealism is a necessary condition to face the challenges of legal and social environmental development, but it is not sufficient on its own, except in the short term, to allow social enterprises to emerge from extremely precarious conditions. Idealism can support resilience, but by itself, it cannot create a sustainable change. There is, therefore, the need to invest in these social enterprises, in the training of the actors involved, and in the selection and acquisition of the skills for strengthening the efficiency and sustainability of businesses and to foster horizontal structures of mutuality and solidarity to create a supportive environment for these social enterprises and their mission.


2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (23) ◽  
pp. 6722
Author(s):  
Shenghua Zhou ◽  
S. Thomas Ng ◽  
Dezhi Li ◽  
Jiankun Zhang ◽  
Jie Fan ◽  
...  

China currently has an elderly population of 249 million with over 97% of them ending up aging in place. Although various regional pilot programs have been conducted, a sustainable aging-in-place system has not been established to effectively and efficiently provide aging services in many cities of China. The characteristics of stakeholder networks in the aging-in-place systems have not attracted great attention from researchers. This research applies social network analysis to characterize the interactions of stakeholders in aging-in-place systems to facilitate cooperation and coordination amongst them. Using Nanjing as a case study, 23 stakeholders in Nanjing’s aging-in-place system are identified, such as the Aging Affairs Committee, Aging-in-Place Service Association, and aging-in-place service centers; and then the relationship networks of these stakeholders in terms of communication, supervision, and trust are developed and analyzed. The results show that the aging-in-place system suffers from certain defects, including the loose connection of government departments, redundant information channels, low trustworthiness of certain aging-in-place service centers, poor credibility of third-party training and assessment institutions, and excess power of the industry association. To tackle these issues, a wide spectrum of actionable measures applicable to Nanjing’s conditions, as well as high-level policy implications for other cities of China, are proposed for augmenting the communication, supervision, and trust among stakeholder groups.


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