Understanding the Plant Aphid Interaction: A Review

The interaction between plant-aphid is phenomenal and complex. Aphids possess efficient mouthparts which feed on plant sap intensively. Adaptation to host plants and successful feeding is achieved through the strategic ability of aphids to reproduce sexually and asexually (parthenogenesis). Aphid infestation damages the plant in diverse ways and induces plant defense. Though plant elicit direct and indirect defense to resist aphid feeding, the effectiveness of plant resistance depends largely on the aphid infestation rate and quality of the host plant. To control aphid infestation and plant damage, dependency on insecticides is undesirable due to insecticidal resistance of aphids and environmental pollution. The approach towards the development of the genetically engineered crops which are aphid resistant can be the considerable potential to aphid control..

Reasoning About Agents That May Know Other Agents’ Strategies

We study the semantics of knowledge in strategic reasoning. Most existing works either implicitly assume that agents do not know one another’s strategies, or that all strategies are known to all; and some works present inconsistent mixes of both features. We put forward a novel semantics for Strategy Logic with Knowledge that cleanly models whose strategies each agent knows. We study how adopting this semantics impacts agents’ knowledge and strategic ability, as well as the complexity of the model-checking problem.

Strategic Knowledge Acquisition

The article proposes a trimodal logical system that can express the strategic ability of coalitions to learn from their experience. The main technical result is the completeness of the proposed system.

Modelling of the strategic planning process at an agricultural enterprise

The development strategy is a long-term roadmap of the company's activities, which makes it possible to achieve higher performance in relation to competitors. Almost all managers of agricultural enterprises in the process of strategic management face a number of problems, such as the choice of appropriate tools for strategic analysis and methods for building a strategy. This is based on the fact that different agricultural enterprises have different existing capabilities, available resources and strategic planning needs. Depending on the strategic ability of agricultural enterprises, it is proposed to use various tools of strategic analysis and methods of strategy development. Based on the conducted research, there was formed a mechanism for implementing strategic planning at an agricultural enterprise. It consists of three stages. The developed mechanism was tested at a private agricultural enterprise 'Ridna Zemlia' (Native Land) with the typical main indicators of economic activity in the Ivano-Frankivsk region. At the first stage, using a balanced system of economic indicators, it was found that this enterprise has an average level of strategic ability. Following the recommended strategic analysis tools, at the second stage of strategic planning, SWOT analysis of an agricultural enterprise was conducted identifying its strengths and weaknesses, existing opportunities and threats. At the third stage, a roadmap for implementing the strategy was developed within the framework of using the road mapping method, which is allowed by the appropriate level of strategic capability. The main strategic goal of the developed strategy is to ensure sustainable profits in the long term by increasing the productivity and efficiency of agricultural production. Based on this, the following strategic tasks were proposed to implement: the introduction of a new technology, which consists of constant monitoring of the herd of cows, opening of a new farm to expand the existing market and increase production volumes, the construction of a pellet boiler farm using biofuels, as well as the formation of a personnel training plan and the development and implementation of training programs for employee development.

Agility Versus Flexibility? The Perception of Business Model Maturity in Agricultural Machinery Sector Manufacturing Companies

Purpose: The fundamental objective of this article is to discern whether business model maturity is perceived through the prism of the ability to deal with unexpected challenges, overcome unprecedented threats, and use emerging business opportunities (agility) or – perhaps – more as a feature of the organization, which makes a business model less vulnerable to unpredictable external changes or sets it in a better position to make it respond effectively to these changes (flexibility). Methodology: The reconnaissance of opinions requires the creation of a catalog of desiderata that significantly identify agility and flexibility. Theoretical and design layers will use a method of reconstruction and interpretation of the subject literature supported by a discussion within a group of deliberately selected experts. This will be reflected in a set of parameters, on the one hand, characteristic of the categories of agility and flexibility and, on the other hand, reflecting business model maturity. Findings: The conducted research allows us to state that mature business models – as implemented by the surveyed companies – are perceived rather through the prism of the strategic ability of enterprises to quickly adapt to unforeseen and sudden changes on the market (agility category). Originality: The article includes not only academic postulates of agility or flexibility but also practical tips that enable constructing guidelines for decision-makers and managers of the agricultural machinery sector. The study carries a charge of a theoretical and empirical study. It takes into account knowledge and expert experience.

Towards Partial Order Reductions for Strategic Ability

We propose a general semantics for strategic abilities of agents in asynchronous systems, with and without perfect information. Based on the semantics, we show some general complexity results for verification of strategic abilities in asynchronous interaction. More importantly, we develop a methodology for partial order reduction in verification of agents with imperfect information. We show that the reduction preserves an important subset of strategic properties, with as well as without the fairness assumption. We also demonstrate the effectiveness of the reduction on a number of benchmarks. Interestingly, the reduction does not work for strategic abilities under perfect information.

Parameterised Resource-Bounded ATL

It is often advantageous to be able to extract resource requirements in resource logics of strategic ability, rather than to verify whether a fixed resource requirement is sufficient for achieving a goal. We study Parameterised Resource-Bounded Alternating Time Temporal Logic where parameter extraction is possible. We give a parameter extraction algorithm and prove that the model-checking problem is 2EXPTIME-complete.

Does Strategic Ability Affect Efficiency? Evidence from Electricity Markets

Oligopoly models of price competition predict that strategic firms exercise market power and generate inefficiencies. However, heterogeneity in firms’ strategic ability also generates inefficiencies. We study the Texas electricity market where firms exhibit significant heterogeneity in how they deviate from Nash equilibrium bidding. These deviations, in turn, increase the cost of production. To explain this heterogeneity, we embed a cognitive hierarchy model into a structural model of bidding and estimate firms’ strategic sophistication. We find that firm size and manager education affect sophistication. Using the model, we show that mergers which increase sophistication can increase efficiency despite increasing market concentration. (JEL D24, D43, G34, L13, L25, L94)

INVESTIGATING THE USE OF STUDENT-GENERATED QUESTIONS IN DISCIPLINARY READING PRACTICES IN HIGHER EDUCATION ENVIRONMENTS

The paper sets out to explore the issue of students’ strategic ability of learning from disciplinary texts in tertiary education settings. While performing reading tasks, students acquire or restructure subject-area knowledge as well as improving conceptual resources and literacy skills indispensable for their academic attainment. The so-called reciprocal reading instruction promotes the adoption of a procedure in which students are required to generate their own text-based questions, then ask and answer them in pairs. The exploratory case study reported in this paper aimed to examine the performance of advanced Polish students of English during ten reciprocal reading sessions, part of a subject-specific course. The analysis of the collected data focused on selected aspects of the students’ question-generating behaviour. Additionally, the data obtained from a semi-structured interview were scrutinized in order to find out how the students evaluated their task performance. The paper finishes with a discussion of the implications of the study for the use of student-generated questions and reciprocal reading tasks in enhancing disciplinary knowledge and academic literacy skills.