scholarly journals Not by transmission alone – the role of invention in cultural evolution

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Susan Perry ◽  
Alecia Carter ◽  
Marco Smolla ◽  
Erol Akcay ◽  
Sabine Nöbel ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Social Learning ◽  
Data Set ◽  
Process Understanding ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
New Ideas ◽  
Four Levels ◽  
New Research ◽  
Creativity And Innovation ◽  
Nonhuman Species

Invention and social learning have together empowered our species to inhabit virtually every part of the world. For the past fifty years, however, social learning has been regarded as the fundamental driver for the emergence of tradition and culture. As a result, innovation has been relatively understudied, outside the human lineage. This has left basic questions unanswered, such as: What factors promote the creation of new ideas and practices? And what affects whether they are spread or lost? We review the existing literature, focusing on the following four levels of investigation: traits (what sorts of behaviours are easiest to invent?), individuals (what intrinsic and contextual factors make some individuals more likely to invent new things?), populations (what features of social relationships and societies promote the rise and spread of new inventions?), and ecological contexts. We aim to inspire new research agendas by summarizing what is known and highlighting theoretical and empirical gaps in our understanding of the innovative process. Understanding the origin of humans’ noteworthy levels of creativity requires a well-developed theory of creativity and innovation as well as a large comparative data set investigating these processes in nonhuman species from a wide range of taxa.

scholarly journals Not by transmission alone: the role of invention in cultural evolution

2021 ◽  
Vol 376 (1828) ◽  
Author(s):  
Susan Perry ◽  
Alecia Carter ◽  
Marco Smolla ◽  
Erol Akçay ◽  
Sabine Nöbel ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Social Learning ◽  
Cognitive Processes ◽  
Cultural Evolution ◽  
Cultural Adaptation ◽  
Theme Issue ◽  
History Of ◽  
New Ideas ◽  
Four Levels ◽  
New Research

Innovation—the combination of invention and social learning—can empower species to invade new niches via cultural adaptation. Social learning has typically been regarded as the fundamental driver for the emergence of traditions and thus culture. Consequently, invention has been relatively understudied outside the human lineage—despite being the source of new traditions. This neglect leaves basic questions unanswered: what factors promote the creation of new ideas and practices? What affects their spread or loss? We critically review the existing literature, focusing on four levels of investigation: traits (what sorts of behaviours are easiest to invent?), individuals (what factors make some individuals more likely to be inventors?), ecological contexts (what aspects of the environment make invention or transmission more likely?), and populations (what features of relationships and societies promote the rise and spread of new inventions?). We aim to inspire new research by highlighting theoretical and empirical gaps in the study of innovation, focusing primarily on inventions in non-humans. Understanding the role of invention and innovation in the history of life requires a well-developed theoretical framework (which embraces cognitive processes) and a taxonomically broad, cross-species dataset that explicitly investigates inventions and their transmission. We outline such an agenda here. This article is part of the theme issue ‘Foundations of cultural evolution’.

scholarly journals Bacterial Relationships in Aquaponics: New Research Directions

2019 ◽  
pp. 145-161 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alyssa Joyce ◽  
Mike Timmons ◽  
Simon Goddek ◽  
Timea Pentz
Keyword(s):  
Microbial Communities ◽  
Plant Production ◽  
Microbial Decomposition ◽  
Recirculating Aquaculture ◽  
Recirculating Aquaculture Systems ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Technical Specifications ◽  
New Research ◽  
System 1

AbstractThe growth rates and welfare of fish and the quality of plant production in aquaponics system rely on the composition and health of the system’s microbiota. The overall productivity depends on technical specifications for water quality and its movement amongst components of the system, including a wide range of parameters  including factors such as pH and flow rates which ensure that microbial components can act effectively in nitrification and remineralization processes. In this chapter, we explore current research examining the role of microbial communities in three units of an aquaponics system: (1) the recirculating aquaculture system (RAS) for fish production which includes biofiltration systems for denitrification; (2) the hydroponics units for plant production; and (3) biofilters and bioreactors, including sludge digester systems (SDS) involved in microbial decomposition and recovery/remineralization of solid wastes. In the various sub-disciplines related to each of these components, there is existing literature about microbial communities and their importance within each system (e.g. recirculating aquaculture systems (RAS), hydroponics, biofilters and digesters), but there is currently limited work examining interactions between these components in aquaponics system, thus making it an important area for further research.

Value Relativism, Authoritarian Model, and World Order

1978 ◽  
Vol 3 (3) ◽  
pp. 445-454 ◽  
Author(s):  
William P. Kreml
Keyword(s):  
Intellectual History ◽  
Full Range ◽  
World Order ◽  
Human Society ◽  
Human Psychology ◽  
Psychological Dimension ◽  
New Ideas ◽  
New Research

This paper attempts to bring the consideration of some new ideas and new research in the area of psychology and politics into a perspective helpful in our quest for a better world order. The notion of value relativism, for which it pleads, is relatively new within intellectual history, and the notion of value relativism based upon differentiated human personalities is much newer still. The idea of moving beyond a passive tolerance of different peoples toward an active consideration of the role of differentiated contribution, a kind of psychological interfunctionality within the organic whole of man, should now be able to make a contribution to world order. Just as the element of human psychology has become increasingly relevant to so many intellectual considerations, so too in the quest for a more justly ordered world there is need to explore the psychological dimension in the context of the principal balances of human society. The principles of value relativism, along with an understanding of the full range of the authoritarian model, should be helpful in this quest.

Salesperson Solution Involvement and Sales Performance: The Contingent Role of Supplier Firm and Customer–Supplier Relationship Characteristics

2017 ◽  
Vol 81 (4) ◽  
pp. 144-164 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nikolaos G. Panagopoulos ◽  
Adam A. Rapp ◽  
Jessica L. Ogilvie
Keyword(s):  
Sales Performance ◽  
Product Portfolio ◽  
Data Set ◽  
Relational Processes ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Performance Effects ◽  
Time Lagged ◽  
The Stability ◽  
Supplier Relationship

Salespeople play a crucial role in their firms’ efforts to provide customer solutions. However, little research has examined how salesperson involvement in customer solutions can be conceptualized, whether it pays off, and what boundary conditions might heighten its performance effects. This study addresses these gaps and offers a conceptualization of salesperson solution involvement by focusing on the set of salesperson-related activities that enact the four relational processes inherent in customer solutions. The authors collect a unique data set that includes a wide range of firms, industries, and countries, as well as the perspectives of both salespeople and customers, across five studies. Results validate the stability of the conceptualization across contexts. They also reveal that salesperson solution involvement is systematically related to increases in both subjective and objective, time-lagged measures of sales performance. Finally, results show that the performance effects of salesperson solution involvement are amplified under higher levels of firm's product portfolio scope, sales unit cross-functional cooperation, and customer–supplier relationship tie strength. Surprisingly, customer adaptiveness is not found to moderate the performance effects of salesperson solution involvement.

scholarly journals Is there more to human social learning than enhanced facilitation? Prolonged learning and its impact on culture

2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Csilla Dallos
Keyword(s):  
Social Learning ◽  
Informal Learning ◽  
Skill Acquisition ◽  
Hunter Gatherers ◽  
Recent Scholarship ◽  
Cultural Processes ◽  
Creativity And Innovation ◽  
Facilitated Learning ◽  
Exclusive Focus

AbstractRecent scholarship has sought to understand culture by studying attributes of social learning. While celebrating the role of pedagogy and other forms of facilitated learning in human cultural uniqueness, these studies have neglected instances of restricted and prolonged knowledge and skill acquisition. This article analyses illustrative cases of such learning in the ethnographic literature to assess their implications for cultural processes and products. Combined evidence from formal apprenticeship and the informal learning of hunter-gatherers indicates that though enhanced facilitation of learning is undeniable, an exclusive focus on it has resulted in a flawed concept of human culture and its social context. The cases cited suggest that mechanisms to extend learning constitute a vital source of cultural creativity and innovation that should be considered in social learning and culture discussions.

The Sacred Home in Renaissance Italy

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Abigail Brundin ◽  
Deborah Howard ◽  
Mary Laven
Keyword(s):  
Religious Experiences ◽  
Traditional Research ◽  
Gender And Age ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Devotional Life ◽  
Renaissance Italy ◽  
New Research ◽  
The City ◽  
The Church

The Sacred Home in Renaissance Italy explores private devotional life in the Italian Renaissance home between 1400 and 1600, and suggests that piety was not confined to the Church and the convent but infused daily life within the household. Books, buildings, objects, spaces, images, and archival sources help to cast light on the practice of religion in the home. Acts of devotion, from routine prayers to extraordinary religious experiences such as miracles and visions, frequently took place at home amid the joys and trials of domestic life—childbirth, marriage, infertility, sickness, accidents, poverty, and death. The book moves beyond traditional research on the Renaissance in important ways. First, it breaks free from the usual focus on Venice, Florence, and Rome to investigate practices of piety across the Italian peninsula. In particular, new research into the city of Naples, the Marche, and the Venetian mainland offers fresh insights into the devotional life of the laity. Moreover, it goes beyond the study of elites to include artisanal and lower-status households, and points to the role of gender and age in shaping religious experience. Drawing on a wide range of textual, material, and visual sources, this book recovers a host of lost voices and compelling narratives at the intersection between the divine and the everyday. Its multidisciplinary approach enables unprecedented glimpses through the keyhole into the spiritual lives of Renaissance Italians.

A new research method to test auditory preferences in young listeners: Results from a consonance versus dissonance perception study

2016 ◽  
Vol 45 (5) ◽  
pp. 699-712 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicola Di Stefano ◽  
Valentina Focaroli ◽  
Alessandro Giuliani ◽  
Domenico Formica ◽  
Fabrizio Taffoni ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Young Children ◽  
Research Method ◽  
Perception And Action ◽  
Mutual Interaction ◽  
Experimental Session ◽  
Sound Emission ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
New Research ◽  
Further Development

To date, behavioural procedures adopted to assess sound preferences in young children have evaluated the responses of participants while listening to the stimuli administered by the experimenter. Due to the difficulties which may arise in the interpretation of the results, recent studies have suggested some limitations to these procedures, stimulating the further development of behavioural methods. Here, we introduce a new method for testing sound preferences in children, in which participants actively produce the stimuli during the experimental session. The apparatus consists of a musical lever which emits different sounds depending on its rotation around a hinge. The device was programmed to emit consonant and dissonant harmonic intervals. The procedure has been tested with 22 participants from 19 to 40 months of age. Results show that: (a) sound emission strongly stimulates toy manipulation; (b) the examined participants distinguished the two types of sounds, showing a preference for producing consonant over dissonant stimuli. This method could be used to study a wide range of sound qualities in young listeners, such as rhythm or pitch. Grounded in the mutual interaction between perception and action, this procedure is in line with recent research highlighting the role of embodiment in the perception of music.

Creativity and Innovation in Higher Education Research

2013 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 90-107 ◽  
Author(s):  
Abdulkader Alfantookh ◽  
Saad Haj Bakry
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Practical Utilization ◽  
Knowledge Innovation ◽  
Different Types ◽  
New Research ◽  
Wealth Generation ◽  
Creativity And Innovation ◽  
Innovation In Higher Education ◽  
World Development

Creativity and innovation are main sources of development leading to both: wealth generation and job creation. While creativity produces knowledge, innovation makes practical utilization of it to provide value. This paper questions the contribution of higher education (HE) research to creativity and to innovation. It provides a background that identifies the various issues concerned; and it emphasizes the different types of research versus HE research considerations. It recognises the low share of HE in funding and in performing research; and it also stresses the opportunities enjoyed by HE to do better in both: creativity and innovation. It addresses various potential considerations including: HE-government and HE-business cooperation platforms; in addition to new research degrees and other potential arrangements. In this respect, it highlights experience from Saudi Arabia. The paper hopes to activate worldwide sharing of ideas on the future role of HE research in world development.

scholarly journals Advances in Viticulture, Enology and Vitivinicultural Economy: Ciência e Técnica Vitivinícola 2020

2020 ◽  
Vol 35 (2) ◽  
pp. 176-178
Author(s):  
Sara Canas ◽  
Jorge Cunha ◽  
José Eduardo Eiras-Dias
Keyword(s):  
Production Control ◽  
Environmental Issues ◽  
Climate Impact ◽  
Scientific Journals ◽  
Wine Production ◽  
Research Teams ◽  
Pests And Diseases ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
New Ideas ◽  
New Research

Research insights arising from the sciences of Viticulture, Enology and Vitivinicultural Economy are crucial for responding to an everincreasing set of challenges - such as climate change, environmental issues and a global and more competitive market - faced by the players in the vitivinicultural sector. In this context, the scientific journals play a key role in spreading the knowledge acquired worldwide and contributing to the generation of new ideas and new research lines. The Ciência e Técnica Vitivinícola is one of the oldest and few scientific journals specifically devoted to these three branches of science. In 2020, twelve articles from several international research teams were published, covering a wide range of current topics, including: sustainability of viticulture and winemaking; modelling of climate impact on wine production; control of pests and diseases; management and adaptability of grapevine varieties; quality and differentiation of wine based on minority grapevine varieties, native yeasts from grapevine and winemaking technologies; wine authenticity and traceability; botrytized wines; human resource management in small wine companies.

Current understanding of the role of microRNAs from adipose-derived extracellular vesicles in obesity

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Le Zhao ◽  
Haili Yang ◽  
Xingchun Li ◽  
Yongju Zhao
Keyword(s):  
Insulin Resistance ◽  
Adipose Tissue ◽  
Extracellular Vesicles ◽  
Metabolic Diseases ◽  
Health Concern ◽  
Regulatory Processes ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
New Research ◽  
Regulatory Functions

Obesity and its associated metabolic diseases, including diabetes, insulin resistance, and inflammation, are rapidly becoming a global health concern. Moreover, obese individuals are more likely to be infected with COVID-19. New research on adipose tissue is required to help us understand these metabolic diseases and their regulatory processes. Recently, extracellular vesicles (EVs) have been identified as novel intercellular vectors with a wide range of regulatory functions. The miRNAs carried by EVs participate in the regulation of white adipose tissue (WAT) browning, insulin resistance, diabetes, and inflammation. In addition, EV miRNAs demonstrate great potential for helping elucidating the mechanism of metabolic diseases, and for advancing their prevention and treatment. In this review, we focus on the mechanisms underlying the regulation of adipose differentiation and metabolic diseases by adipose-derived EV miRNAs. Understanding the role of these miRNAs should enrich our understanding of the etiology and pathogenesis of metabolic diseases caused by obesity.

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