Adaptive rewiring in weighted networks

Human connectome studies suggest that the brain has a modular small world network structure with rich-club effect. Such structure emerges spontaneously in simple model neural networks, (e.g. coupled maps), through adaptive rewiring according to the dynamic functional connectivity. The utility of adaptive rewiring has so far exclusively been demonstrated for unweighted networks; it is anything but guaranteed to work as well for weighted networks. We investigate adaptive rewiring in weighted networks, comparing various right-skewed, symmetrical, and left-skewed fixed weight distributions. We examine how network clustering, path length, modularity, and rich club coefficients develop for weakly, intermediate and strongly coupled networks. At low coupling strength, the weight distribution, as well as episodes of functional synchrony, have a significant effect on network evolution. With increased coupling strengths, all weighted networks robustly develop architectures similar to the unweighted ones. Adaptive rewiring appears relatively ineffective in networks with (biologically implausibly) extreme right-skewed weight distributions but performed most economically in biologically plausible log-normal distributions.     

创新管理理念对于我国创新型医药企业发展的启示

近年来我国医药工业取得了突出成绩,但医药企业面临复杂的内外部环境,需尽快打破同质化严重、竞争力不足的格局,向创新驱动转型。创新管理的理论观点对于创新型医药企业有借鉴意义,分析了尚处于发展阶段的创新型医药企业在文化、组织和创新能力建设等方面的一些问题,参考创新理论的一些观点,认为创新型医药企业可在不断追求技术、产品创新的同时,思考对企业文化、组织管理、创新能力方面的变革,从而有效地推进创新战略实施。

     

对当前量化绩效考核的反思

通过文献研究和哲学反思等方法对高校和医疗卫生系统的量化绩效考核进行研究。认为绩效考核不能偏离组织使命,不能弱化职业精神。如何在职业精神和组织使命中一些重要内容难以进入量化指标的情况下合理设计绩效考核体系值得深思。其次,在科研绩效考核中,《科学引文索引》(science citation index,SCI)作为科研论文的产出指标有一定合理性,但也不能唯SCI论;要重视基金,因为它反映了计划性科学的价值,但也不能唯基金论;要重视量化评估,却不能唯量化评估。要保证绩效考核正确导向,就必须纠正泛行政化和官本位倾向,就必须坚持科学化、推进民主化。     

With the future behind them: convergent evidence from aymara language and gesture in the crosslinguistic comparison of spatial construals of time

Cognitive research on metaphoric concepts of time has focused on differences between moving Ego and moving time models, but even more basic is the contrast between Ego‐ and temporal‐reference‐point models. Dynamic models appear to be quasi‐universal cross‐culturally, as does the generalization that in Ego‐reference‐point models, FUTURE IS IN FRONT OF EGO and PAST IS IN BACK OF EGO. The Aymara language instead has a major static model of time wherein FUTURE IS BEHIND EGO and PAST IS IN FRONT OF EGO; linguistic and gestural data give strong confirmation of this unusual culture‐specific cognitive pattern. Gestural data provide crucial information unavailable to purely linguistic analysis, suggesting that when investigating conceptual systems both forms of expression should be analyzed complementarily. Important issues in embodied cognition are raised: how fully shared are bodily grounded motivations for universal cognitive patterns, what makes a rare pattern emerge, and what are the cultural entailments of such patterns?     

Negotiating Religious Differences: The Strategies of Interfaith Chaplains in Healthcare

Chaplains in healthcare increasingly work in interfaith roles with patients and families from a range of religious and spiritual backgrounds. Some move with ease between their own religious backgrounds and those of the individuals with whom they work. Others encounter tensions as their status as a person of faith comes into conflict with their status as an interfaith chaplain. We explore the two main strategies—neutralizing and code‐switching—chaplains at one large academic medical center use when working with patients and families whose religious and spiritual backgrounds are different from their own. Through training in clinical pastoral education and experiences on the job, chaplains learn to neutralize (use a broad language of spirituality that emphasizes commonalities rather than differences) and to code‐switch (use the languages, rituals, and practices of the people with whom they work). To the extent that the strategies evident here are present among chaplains in a broader range of institutional settings, they suggest a kind of spiritual secularism or broad approach to meaning makings that may be facilitated by interfaith chaplains in a range of settings.     

Are good students desirable friends? Evidence for friendship selection among elementary students / ¿Son los buenos estudiantes amigos deseables? Evidencia para la selección de amistad entre estudiantes de educación primaria

Abstract

This study assesses the relationship between friendship networks and academic performance among third graders from one school in Santiago, Chile. Longitudinal social network analysis (RSiena) was used to test whether friendship selection is driven by academic performance and if befriended peers tend to influence each other on their academic performance, including gender as a covariate. Results show a positive relationship between academic performance and number of friendship nominations received, and a higher probability of same-gender friendships. Students with higher academic achievement are more likely to be nominated as friends, especially by peers with lower academic achievement. These results suggest that elementary students value high performance as a desirable characteristic in their friends.     

The structure of “communities” and communications in the new millennium

The three lineages of information,—the genetic, the cultural and artifactual—will increasingly merge their constituent information contents through advances in biotechnology and information technology. This will redefine what constitutes “social” and what constitutes “community.” A community's members communicate with their “significant others” and change their internal information states (and their internal and external behaviors). Under conditions of merging, information exchanges occur across all the three lineages. In this sense, the concept of significant other,—that is, a communicating entity—, is now spread from human communities to encompass also the biological and the artifactual. A seamless merging between the three realms now occurs affecting their respective internal information stores. The resulting image of interactions that now arises is of multiple oceans of communities, operating at different levels, the genetic, the cultural and the artifactual. There are exchanges across the different levels, up and down and sideways, as information is translated from one realm to the other. These dynamics result in changes in the evolutionary characteristics of each lineage and sub‐lineage, including the internal perceptions from within a lineage, namely in the language of evolutionary epistemology, its “meanings” and “hypotheses” on the world. A future sociology must necessarily take into account these factors and incorporate the dynamics of all three realms.     

The synergetic principles of nonlinear thinking

In order to develop further the methods of scenario building and to facilitate the paths towards a desirable and sustainable future, we cannot do without a nonlinear evolutionary thinking. The theory of self‐organization of complex systems, called also synergetics, is a scientific basis for such a thinking, the main principles of which are under consideration in the paper. Synergetics provides us with the knowledge of constructive principles of coevolution of complex social systems, coevolution of countries and geopolitical regions being at different stages of development, integration of the East and the West, the North and the South.