Bedeutung von Nachhaltigkeitsawards in der Bio-Branche am Beispiel der milchverarbeitenden Industrie

Sustainability awards in the German food industry are a novel instrument in corporate communications. The purpose of those awards is to recognize and honor the achievements of particularly outstanding corporations. We conducted the first study to assess the importance of sustainability awards in organic and non-organic milk processing companies

Historical contingency affects signaling strategies and competitive abilities in evolving populations of simulated robots.

One of the key innovations during the evolution of life on earth has been the emergence of efficient communication systems, yet little is known about the causes and consequences of the great diversity within and between species. By conducting experimental evolution in 20 independently evolving populations of cooperatively foraging simulated robots, we found that historical contingency in the occurrence order of novel phenotypic traits resulted in the emergence of two distinct communication strategies. The more complex foraging strategy was less efficient than the simpler strategy. However, when the 20 populations were placed in competition with each other, the populations with the more complex strategy outperformed the populations with the less complex strategy. These results demonstrate a tradeoff between communication efficiency and robustness and suggest that stochastic events have important effects on signal evolution and the outcome of competition between distinct populations

Evolving team compositions by agent swapping

Optimizing collective behavior in multiagent systems requires algorithms to find not only appropriate individual behaviors but also a suitable composition of agents within a team. Over the last two decades, evolutionary methods have emerged as a promising approach for the design of agents and their compositions into teams. The choice of a crossover operator that facilitates the evolution of optimal team composition is recognized to be crucial, but so far, it has never been thoroughly quantified. Here, we highlight the limitations of two different crossover operators that exchange entire agents between teams: restricted agent swapping (RAS) that exchanges only corresponding agents between teams and free agent swapping (FAS) that allows an arbitrary exchange of agents. Our results show that RAS suffers from premature convergence, whereas FAS entails insufficient convergence. Consequently, in both cases, the exploration and exploitation aspects of the evolutionary algorithm are not well balanced resulting in the evolution of suboptimal team compositions. To overcome this problem, we propose combining the two methods. Our approach first applies FAS to explore the search space and then RAS to exploit it. This mixed approach is a much more efficient strategy for the evolution of team compositions compared to either strategy on its own. Our results suggest that such a mixed agent-swapping algorithm should always be preferred whenever the optimal composition of individuals in a multiagent system is unknown

Using robots to understand social behaviour.

A major challenge in studying social behaviour stems from the need to disentangle the behaviour of each individual from the resulting collective. One way to overcome this problem is to construct a model of the behaviour of an individual, and observe whether combining many such individuals leads to the predicted outcome. This can be achieved by using robots. In this review we discuss the strengths and weaknesses of such an approach for studies of social behaviour. We find that robots-whether studied in groups of simulated or physical robots, or used to infiltrate and manipulate groups of living organisms-have important advantages over conventional individual-based models and have contributed greatly to the study of social behaviour. In particular, robots have increased our understanding of self-organization and the evolution of cooperative behaviour and communication. However, the resulting findings have not had the desired impact on the biological community. We suggest reasons for why this may be the case, and how the benefits of using robots can be maximized in future research on social behaviour

Cross-cultural comparison of fertility specific quality of life in German, Hungarian and Jordanian couples attending a fertility center

Background: Only a few studies have reported cross-cultural comparisons regarding psychosocial consequences of infertility. Differences between societies with different cultural backgrounds were revealed and seemed to be based on the importance of pronatalism. Our aim was to measure cross-cultural differences in fertility specific quality of life of infertile couples in Germany, Hungary and Jordan who attend a fertility center in a cross-sectional study. Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted in one fertility clinic in Germany, in five fertility clinics in Hungary and in one fertility clinic in Jordan. Overall 750 couples (252 couples in Jordan, 246 couples in Germany and 252 couples in Hungary) attending the first medical infertility consultation were asked to fill out our questionnaire set. Fertility specific quality of life (FertiQoL) and sociodemographic differences were measured between couples from three countries. Results: Jordanian couples had the shortest relationship (5.8 ± 4.3 yrs.), though they reported the longest duration of child wish (4.2 ± 3.6 yrs.) and fertility treatments (3.0 ± 3.3 yrs.). The proportion of high education was considerably higher in Jordanian women and men (60 % and 66 %, respectively) compared to the other two samples. First, marked cross-country differences were obtained on Emotional, Mind/Body and Relational subscales of the FertiQoL, indicating that Jordanian couples reported poorer fertility-related quality of life than Germans and Hungarians (p < 0.001). After controlling for the sociodemographic and medical variables, a significant difference only in the Emotional domain was observed (p < 0.001). Conclusions: The study revealed only a few cultural based differences in fertility specific quality of life between the couples of the three countries. Thus, infertility counselors should pay attention to psychosocial problems rooted in individual sociocultural aspects of the infertile couple regardless of cultural stereotypes. Further studies should identify sociocultural factors within different subgroups of infertile patients instead of focusing different societies as a whole because intra-cultural psychosocial differences in experiencing infertility seem to be more important for the individual patient than intercultural differences

Phase diagram of the lattice Wess-Zumino model from rigorous lower bounds on the energy

We study the lattice N=1 Wess-Zumino model in two dimensions and we construct a sequence $\rho^{(L)}$ of exact lower bounds on its ground state energy density $\rho$, converging to $\rho$ in the limit $L\to\infty$. The bounds $\rho^{(L)}$ can be computed numerically on a finite lattice with $L$ sites and can be exploited to discuss dynamical symmetry breaking. The transition point is determined and compared with recent results based on large-scale Green Function Monte Carlo simulations with good agreement.Comment: 32 pages, 12 figure

Where do the Italians Belong? - Assessing Globalization and Identity

The processes of globalization interfere in every aspect of life. Like societies, nations and communities; individuals and their national identity are also under severe pressure from globalization. The purpose of this thesis is to deepen the understanding of how globalization transforms identity and belonging. Using written literature and qualitative interviews this thesis creates a theoretical overview and concludes that globalization indeed transforms identity and belonging and that a crisis of belonging is arising. The case study, where this theoretical framework is applied, shows how the Italians are divided into three large groups of belonging. The Italians either feel a belonging to Europe, Italy or their region/city. All three sets of belonging have roots in history, but this thesis argues that globalization makes them stand out even more. It is concluded that an identity crisis is present and that identity and belonging clashes with the processes of globalization. Identity and belonging are therefore fragmented and undergoing constant changes. The thesis hence addresses the problematic relationship between globalization and belonging and emphasizes the problems of Italian national identity

Neural dynamics of social behavior : An evolutionary and mechanistic perspective on communication, cooperation, and competition among situated agents

Social behavior can be found on almost every level of life, ranging from microorganisms to human societies. However, explaining the evolutionary emergence of cooperation, communication, or competition still challenges modern biology. The most common approaches to this problem are based on game-theoretic models. The problem is that these models often assume fixed and limited rules and actions that individual agents can choose from, which excludes the dynamical nature of the mechanisms that underlie the behavior of living systems. So far, there exists a lack of convincing modeling approaches to investigate the emergence of social behavior from a mechanistic and evolutionary perspective. Instead of studying animals, the methodology employed in this thesis combines several aspects from alternative approaches to study behavior in a rather novel way. Robotic models are considered as individual agents which are controlled by recurrent neural networks representing non-linear dynamical system. The topology and parameters of these networks are evolved following an open-ended evolution approach, that is, individuals are not evaluated on high-level goals or optimized for specific functions. Instead, agents compete for limited resources to enhance their chance of survival. Further, there is no restriction with respect to how individuals interact with their environment or with each other. As its main objective, this thesis aims at a complementary approach for studying not only the evolution, but also the mechanisms of basic forms of communication. For this purpose it can be shown that a robot does not necessarily have to be as complex as a human, not even as complex as a bacterium. The strength of this approach is that it deals with rather simple, yet complete and situated systems, facing similar real world problems as animals do, such as sensory noise or dynamically changing environments. The experimental part of this thesis is substantiated in a five-part examination. First, self-organized aggregation patterns are discussed. Second, the advantages of evolving decentralized control with respect to behavioral robustness and flexibility is demonstrated. Third, it is shown that only minimalistic local acoustic communication is required to coordinate the behavior of large groups. This is followed by investigations of the evolutionary emergence of communication. Finally, it is shown how already evolved communicative behavior changes during further evolution when a population is confronted with competition about limited environmental resources. All presented experiments entail thorough analysis of the dynamical mechanisms that underlie evolved communication systems, which has not been done so far in the context of cooperative behavior. This framework leads to a better understanding of the relation between intrinsic neurodynamics and observable agent-environment interactions. The results discussed here provide a new perspective on the evolution of cooperation because they deal with aspects largely neglected in traditional approaches, aspects such as embodiment, situatedness, and the dynamical nature of the mechanisms that underlie behavior. For the first time, it can be demonstrated how noise influences specific signaling strategies and that versatile dynamics of very small-scale neural networks embedded in sensory-motor feedback loops give rise to sophisticated forms of communication such as signal coordination, cooperative intraspecific communication, and, most intriguingly, aggressive interspecific signaling. Further, the results demonstrate the development of counteractive niche construction based on a modification of communication strategies which generates an evolutionary feedback resulting in an active reduction of selection pressure, which has not been shown so far. Thus, the novel findings presented here strongly support the complementary nature of robotic experiments to study the evolution and mechanisms of communication and cooperation.</p

Measuring self-efficacy to deal with infertility: Psychometric properties and confirmatory factor analysis of the Portuguese version of the infertility self-efficacy scale

This study explores the psychometric properties and factor structure of the Portuguese version of the Infertility Self-Efficacy Scale (ISE-P), using translation and back-translation of the original version; principal component analysis; confirmatory factor analysis (CFA); and internal consistency, and test-retest reliability analyses. A total of 287 participants (156 women and 131 men) seeking medical treatment were recruited from public and private fertility centers. CFA revealed that the single-component model fit the data well. The instrument showed excellent internal consistency, good test-retest reliability, and correlations with other mental health measures suggesting good convergent and discriminant validity. In conclusion, The ISE-P is a valid and reliable Portuguese-language measure of perceived self-efficacy to cope with infertility