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Introduction: Research productivity has been linked to a country's intellectual and economic wealth. Further analysis is needed to assess the association between the distribution of research across disciplines and the economic status of countries. Methods: By using 55 years of data, spanning 1962 to 2017, of Elsevier publications across a large set of research disciplines and countries globally, this manuscript explores the relationship and evolution of relative research productivity across different disciplines through a network analysis. It also explores the associations of those with economic productivity categories, as measured by the World Bank economic classification. Additional analysis of discipline similarities is possible by exploring the cross-country evolution of those disciplines. Results: Results show similarities in the relative importance of research disciplines among most high-income countries, with larger idiosyncrasies appearing among the remaining countries. This group of high-income countries shows similarities in the dynamics of the relative distribution of research productivity over time, forming a stable research productivity cluster. Lower income countries form smaller, more independent and evolving clusters, and differ significantly from each other and from higher income countries in the relative importance of their research emphases. Country-based similarities in research productivity profiles also appear to be influenced by geographical proximity. Conclusions: This new form of analyses of research productivity, and its relation to economic status, reveals novel insights to the dynamics of the economic and research structure of countries. This allows for a deeper understanding of the role a country's research structure may play in shaping its economy, and also identification of benchmark resource allocations across disciplines for developing countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The accumulation of knowledge required to produce economic value is a process that often relates to nations economic growth. Some decades ago many authors, in the absence of other available indicators, used to rely on certain measures of human capital such as years of schooling, enrollment rates, or literacy. In this paper, we show that the predictive power of years of education as a proxy for human capital started to dwindle in 1990 when the schooling of nations began to be homogenized. We developed a structural equation model that estimates a metric of human capital that is less sensitive than average years of education and remains as a significant predictor of economic growth when tested with both cross-section data and panel data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Computer experiments that mirror the evolutionary dynamics of sexual and asexual organisms as they occur in nature were used to test features proposed to explain the evolution of sexual recombination. Results show that this evolution is better described as a network of interactions between possible sexual forms, including diploidy, thelytoky, facultative sex, assortation, bisexuality, and division of labor between the sexes, rather than a simple transition from parthenogenesis to sexual recombination. Diploidy was shown to be fundamental for the evolution of sex; bisexual reproduction emerged only among anisogamic diploids with a synergistic division of reproductive labor; and facultative sex was more likely to evolve among haploids practicing assortative mating. Looking at the evolution of sex as a complex system through individual-based simulations explains better the diversity of sexual strategies known to exist in nature, compared to classical analytical models. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Polyphonic music files were analyzed using the set of symbols that produced the Minimal Entropy Description, which we call the Fundamental Scale. This allowed us to create a novel space to represent music pieces by developing: (a) a method to adjust a textual description from its original scale of observation to an arbitrarily selected scale, (b) a method to model the structure of any textual description based on the shape of the symbol frequency profiles, and (c) the concept of higher order entropy as the entropy associated with the deviations of a frequency-ranked symbol profile from a perfect Zipfian profile. We call this diversity index the ‘2nd Order Entropy’. Applying these methods to a variety of musical pieces showed how the space of ‘symbolic specific diversity-entropy’ and that of ‘2nd order entropy’ captures characteristics that are unique to each music type, style, composer and genre. Some clustering of these properties around each musical category is shown. These methods allow us to visualize a historic trajectory of academic music across this space, from medieval to contemporary academic music. We show that the description of musical structures using entropy, symbol frequency profiles and specific symbolic diversity allows us to characterize traditional and popular expressions of music. These classification techniques promise to be useful in other disciplines for pattern recognition and machine learning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Synergy is often defined as the creation of a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts. It is found at all levels of organization in physics, chemistry, biology, social sciences, and the arts. Synergy occurs in open irreversible thermodynamic systems making it difficult to quantify. Negative entropy or negentropy ( [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

W.D. Hamilton's Inclusive Fitness Theory explains the conditions that favor the emergence and maintenance of social cooperation. Today we know that these include direct and indirect benefits an agent obtains by its actions, and through interactions with kin and with genetically unrelated individuals. That is, in addition to kin-selection, assortation or homophily, and social synergies drive the evolution of cooperation. An Extended Inclusive Fitness Theory (EIFT) synthesizes the natural selection forces acting on biological evolution and on human economic interactions by assuming that natural selection driven by inclusive fitness produces agents with utility functions that exploit assortation and synergistic opportunities. This formulation allows to estimate sustainable cost/benefit threshold ratios of cooperation among organisms and/or economic agents, using existent analytical tools, illuminating our understanding of the dynamic nature of society, the evolution of cooperation among kin and non-kin, inter-specific cooperation, co-evolution, symbioses, division of labor and social synergies. EIFT helps to promote an interdisciplinary cross fertilization of the understanding of synergy by, for example, allowing to describe the role for division of labor in the emergence of social synergies, providing an integrated framework for the study of both, biological evolution of social behavior and economic market dynamics. Another example is a bio-economic understanding of the motivations of terrorists, which identifies different forms of terrorism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We studied the association of shame when children experience food insecurity and management strategies. The cross-sectional study assessed food insecurity in 404 children using 2 instruments with 10 and 11 items for food insecurity and management strategies. Food insecurity in children was associated with shame of others knowing that they were out of food (γ = 0.37, P < .01). Nine out of 11 management strategies were associated (P < 0.05) with feeling of shame of being out of food. Older girls were most likely to report shame when they reported lack of food (P < .01). Understanding these relations may increase access to food in socially acceptable ways. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Shame has biological roots, possibly enhancing trust, favoring social cohesion. We studied bioeconomic aspects of shame and guilt using three approaches: 1-Anthropo-linguistic studies of Guilt and Shame among the Yanomami, a culturally isolated traditional tribal society; 2-Estimates of the importance different languages assign to the concepts Shame, Guilt, Pain, Embarrassment, Fear and Trust, counting the number of synonyms listed by Google Translate; 3-Quantitative correlations between this linguistic data with socioeconomic indexes. Results showed that Yanomami is unique in having overlapping synonyms for Shame, Fear and Embarrassment. No language had overlapping synonyms for Shame and Guilt. Societies previously described as 'Guilt Societies' have more synonyms for Guilt than for Shame. A large majority of languages, including those from societies previously described as 'Shame Societies', have more words for Shame than for Guilt. The number of synonyms for Guilt and Shame strongly correlated with estimates of corruption, ease of doing business and governance, but not with levels of interpersonal trust. We propose that cultural evolution of shame has continued the work of biological evolution, but its adaptive advantage to society is still unclear. Results suggest that recent cultural evolution must be responsible for the relationship between the levels of corruption of a society and the number of synonyms for Guilt and Shame in its language. This opens a novel window for the study of complex interactions between biological and cultural evolution of cognition and emotions, which might help broaden our insight into bioeconomics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The complexity of the description of a system is a function of the entropy of its symbolic description. Prior to computing the entropy of the system's description, an observation scale has to be assumed. In texts written in artificial and natural languages, typical scales are binary, characters, and words. However, considering languages as structures built around certain preconceived set of symbols, like words or characters, limits the level of complexity that can be revealed analytically. This study introduces the notion of the fundamental description scale to analyze the essence of the structure of a language. The concept of Fundamental Scale is tested for English and musical instrument digital interface (MIDI) music texts using an algorithm developed to split a text in a collection of sets of symbols that minimizes the observed entropy of the system. This Fundamental Scale reflects more details of the complexity of the language than using bits, characters or words. Results show that this Fundamental Scale allows to compare completely different languages, such as English and MIDI coded music regarding its structural entropy. This comparative power facilitates the study of the complexity of the structure of different communication systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Do different fields of knowledge require different research strategies? A numerical model exploring different virtual knowledge landscapes, revealed two diverging optimal search strategies. Trend following is maximized when the popularity of new discoveries determine the number of individuals researching it. This strategy works best when many researchers explore few large areas of knowledge. In contrast, individuals or small groups of researchers are better in discovering small bits of information in dispersed knowledge landscapes. Bibliometric data of scientific publications showed a continuous bipolar distribution of these strategies, ranging from natural sciences, with highly cited publications in journals containing a large number of articles, to the social sciences, with rarely cited publications in many journals containing a small number of articles. The natural sciences seem to adapt their research strategies to landscapes with large concentrated knowledge clusters, whereas social sciences seem to have adapted to search in landscapes with many small isolated knowledge clusters. Similar bipolar distributions were obtained when comparing levels of insularity estimated by indicators of international collaboration and levels of country-self citations: researchers in academic areas with many journals such as social sciences, arts and humanities, were the most isolated, and that was true in different regions of the world. The work shows that quantitative measures estimating differences between academic disciplines improve our understanding of different research strategies, eventually helping interdisciplinary research and may be also help improve science policies worldwide. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scientific productivity of middle income countries correlates stronger with present and future wealth than indices reflecting its financial, social, economic or technological sophistication. We identify the contribution of the relative productivity of different scientific disciplines in predicting the future economic growth of a nation. Results show that rich and poor countries differ in the relative proportion of their scientific output in the different disciplines: countries with higher relative productivity in basic sciences such as physics and chemistry had the highest economic growth in the following five years compared to countries with a higher relative productivity in applied sciences such as medicine and pharmacy. Results suggest that the economies of middle income countries that focus their academic efforts in selected areas of applied knowledge grow slower than countries which invest in general basic sciences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

All termites secrete trail pheromones from their sternal gland, whereas ants use a variety of glands for this purpose. This and the diversity of chemical compounds that serve as trail pheromones among ants, and the uniformity of chemicals among termite trails, suggest a different evolutionary historical dynamics for the development of chemical mass recruitment in both taxa. Termites in addition show pheromonal parsimony. This suggest a single evolutionary origin of pheromone trails in Isoptera, whereas chemical mass recruitment among Formicidae seems to have evolved many times and in different ways. Despite these very different evolutionary histories, both taxa evolved chemical recruitment systems involving attractants and orientation signals, and at least two divergent decision making system for recruitment. This evolutionary analogy suggests that chemical mass recruitment is constraint by fundamental physical dynamic laws. Artificial intelligence including "mass intelligence" and "ant intelligence", emulates mass recruitment in interacting virtual agents in search of optimal solutions. This approach, however, has copied only the "Democratic" recruitment dynamics with a single compound pheromone. Ant and termite evolution shows more sophisticated recruitment dynamics which, if understood properly, will improve our understanding of nature and applications of artificial "swarm intelligence". [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What are the benefits of society? What are the adaptive advantages of social behavior? The fact that societies exist suggest that society favors synergies in the interactions between individuals. One such synergy or adaptive advantage might be the increased efficiency in the use of scarce resources. This has been postulated to occur in the 'metabolic scaling law', where larger organisms with more cells consume less energy per unit mass than smaller organisms. Here, I develop a similar scale-free index for social synergy applicable to energy consumption, and apply it to social insect colonies and human cities. The results show that all societies studied increase the efficiency of energy consumption with increased sizes. This study shows that social synergy is reliably quantifiable and that its increase with size is much larger in social insects than that observed with the metabolic scaling law in organisms. This allows for the first time to compare quantitatively very different societies, permitting novel studies in social dynamics, for example, the study shows that termite colonies achieve much higher social synergy than ant and honey bee colonies and that Brazilian cities achieve more social synergy than Danish or North American ones, posing new intriguing questions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article reports on a study published within the issue related to the significance of bird olfaction especially in kiwis. As stated, kiwis have highly developed and functional olfactory system to find food for which they are reported to have poor eye sight and visual field topography. It discusses the breathing system, uropygial gland, and olfactory behavior of the bird. Reportedly, olfaction of kiwis could be used to produce scented products that could be applied in chemical communication.

Hymenoptera have haploid males, which produce sperm by cloning. Sperm selection theory predicts that because termites have diploid males that produce genetically diverse sperm, they may profit from a high sperm surplus (large K), whereas Hymenoptera (ants, bees and wasps) should produce few sperm per fertilization (low K). Male reproductive ''kings'', which continuously provide spermatozoa during the whole life of the queen, allow for a large K. Available empirical evidence confirms the existence of a large difference in K between diploid insects, especially Blattodea (Isoptera) (K > 1,000), and haplo-diploids such as Hymenoptera (K < 10). The available data suggest that sperm selection may be an important evolutionary force for species with diploid, but not haploid males. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social capital is thought to be an important source of social cohesion and a key ingredient for socioeconomic expansion in developing nations. We study its role among street vendors and their money lenders in Caracas, an illegal business based solely on trust and social bonds. We analyzed demand and supply of credit by informal street vendors and money lenders, exploring the relationship between street vendors' assets, income generated, financial and human capital and financial strategies, and those of the money lenders. We found that street vendors' main source of working capital were money lenders, despite charging the highest interest rate. The kind and amount of credit was not correlated to higher incomes. On the supply side, we found that money lenders based their business almost exclusively on trust and manage all clients personally, which limits the growth of their business. This study suggests that the main constraint for increased productivity in the informal sector is not the cost of capital, but the transaction costs involved in accessing credit and a lack of legal enforcements, and that improvement of the lending business is difficult without institutional support. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Theoretical and experimental studies suggest that mating and pair formation are not likely to be random. Assortative mating, characterized as “self seeking like”, seems to be widely practiced in nature. Experimental evidence for it is strong among humans seeking a mate. Assortative mating increases the probability of finding a genetically similar mate, without fomenting inbreeding, achieving assortative mating without hindering the working of other mate-selection strategies that aim to maximize the search for “good genes”, optimizing the working of sex in evolutionary terms. Self seeking like seems to be a behavioural inborn trait among humans, and here we present evidence that the same behavioural mechanism seems to be at work when humans choose a pet. We show that in a significant proportion of human-pet pairs, sampled in pet beauty contests, the partners show much higher facial resemblances than can be expected by random pair formation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The concept of altruism is used in very different forms by computer scientists,economists, philosophers, social scientists, psychologists and biologists. Yet, in order to be useful in social simulations, the concept “altruism” requires a more precise meaning. A quantitative formulation is proposed here, based on the cost/benefit analysis of the altruist and of society at large. This formulation is applied in the analysis of the social dynamic working of behaviors that have been called “altruistic punishments”, using the agent based computer model Sociodynamica. The simulations suggest that “altruistic punishment” on its own cannot maintain altruistic behaviors. “Altruistic behavior” is sustainable in the long term only if these behaviors trigger synergetic forces in society that eventually make them produce benefits to most individuals. The simulations suggest however that “altruistic punishment” may work as a “social investment” , and is thus better called “decentralized social punishment”. This behavior is very efficient in enforcing social norms. The efficiency of decentralized social punishment in enforcing norms was dependent on the type of labor structured of the virtual society. I conclude that what is called “altruistic punishment” emerges as a type of social investment that can evolve either through individual and/or group selection, as a successful device for changing or enforcing norms in a society. Social simulations will help us in better understanding the underlying dynamic working of such devices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mate selection strategies may be as important, or even more important, to the evolutionary process than natural selection. The practical importance of strategies such as the selection for "good genes" and assortative mating is emerging in both theoretical and experimental biology. Several other mate selection strategies are possible, although little is known about them. Here I explore the range of diverse mate selection strategies known to us, both from theory and observation of nature, and the analogies between the dynamic properties of mate selection strategies in biological evolution and those of partner selection strategies in game theory and economics evolutionary theory. The aim of this exploration is not to review the extensive literature on the subject, but to detect research agendas that might help us in our understanding of the dynamic consequences of mate (partner) selection strategies in biology, economy, artificial intelligence, and sociology. Insight into the working of diverse mate selection strategies might eventually even increase our understanding of the biological basis for beauty and the adaptive value of love. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Five candidate pheromone components were identified by analyzing pheromone gland extracts by gas chromatography (GC), coupled GC-electroantennographic detection (EAD), and coupled GC-mass spectrometry (MS): ( E)-11-hexadecenol( E11–16 : OH), ( Z)-11-hexadecenol ( Z11–16 : OH),( E)-11-hexadecenal, ( E)-11-hexadecenyl acetate, and ( Z)-3,( Z)-6,( Z)-9-tricosatriene ( Z3, Z6, Z9–23 : Hy). In electroantennogram (EAG) recordings, synthetic E11–16 : OH elicited stronger antennal responses at low doses than other candidate pheromone components. Field tests demonstrated that synthetic E11–16 : OH as a trap bait was effective in attracting males, whereas addition of Z11–16 : OH inhibited the males' response. Z3, Z6, Z9–23 : Hy strongly enhanced attractiveness of E11–16 : OH, but was not attractive by itself. A pheromone blend with synergistic behavioral activity of an alcohol ( E11–16 : OH) and hydrocarbon ( Z3, Z6, Z9–23 : Hy) component is most unusual in the Lepidoptera. The synthetic two-component pheromone is approximately 60 times more attractive than the female-produced blend and might facilitate the control of this pest. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Advances in multiagent simulation techniques make it possible to study more realistic dynamics of complex systems and allow evolutionary theories to be tested. Here I use simulations to assess the relative importance of reproductive systems (haplodiploidy vs. diploidy), mate selection (assortative mating vs. random mating) and social economics (pay-off matrices of evolutionary games) in the evolutionary dynamics leading to the emergence of social cooperation in the provision of parental care. The simulations confirm that haplo-diploid organisms and organisms mating assortatively have a higher probability for fixing alleles and require less favorable conditions for their fixation, than diploids or organisms mating randomly. The simulations showed that social behavior was most likely to emerge a) when the cost for parental investment was much lower than the benefits to the offspring, b) when cooperation improved synergistically the fitness of offspring compared to the corresponding egoistic behavior and c) when alleles coding for altruistic or social behavior could be rapidly fixed in the population, thanks to mechanisms such as haplo-diploidy and/or assortative mating. Cooperative social behavior always appeared if sociality conferred much higher fitness gains compared to non cooperative alternatives suggesting that the most important factors for the emergence and maintenance of social behavior are those based on energetic or efficiency considerations. The simulations, in congruence with the scant experimental evidence available, suggest that economic considerations rather than genetic ones are critical in explaining the emergence and maintenance of sociality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using computer simulations I studied the simultaneous effect of variable environments, mutation rates, ploidy, number of loci subject to evolution and random and assortative mating on various reproductive systems. The simulations showed that mutants for sex and recombination are evolutionarily stable, displacing alleles for monosexuality in diploid populations mating assortatively under variable selection pressure. Assortative mating reduced excessive allelic variance induced by recombination and sex, especially among diploids. Results suggest a novel adaptive value for sex and recombination. They show that the adaptive value of diploidy and that of the segregation of sexes is different to that of sex and recombination. The results suggest that the emergence of sex had to be preceded by the emergence of diploid monosexual organisms and provide an explanation for the emergence and maintenance of sex among diploids and for the scarcity of sex among haploid organisms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The recovery of tropical ecosystems after disturbanceis of interest for future programs of sustainable development. The dynamicsof such processes was evaluated at 26 sites in Venezuela. Ant and plant diversitywere compared between disturbed forests and surrounding savannas, differentstages of recovery and nearby plots with primary vegetation. We estimatedthe species composition for ants, the number of species and equitability forants and plants, and the plant coverage at each site. Of these indices, percentageof plant cover showed the most rapid return to pre-disturbance values. Ina few cases, full return occurred after around 25 years in both savanna andforest. A multiple factorial analysis of ant composition showed that speciesstructure in old recovered sites converged sometimes, but not always, to thatin surrounding natural habitats. Therefore, ant diversity may be used to monitorecosystem recovery. However, even small scale human intervention may haveirreversible effects on tropical habitats. The estimated time constant forforest recovery could serve to calculate human carrying capacity of forestsites for eventual sustainable use of these ecosystems in the Neotropics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Results of an agent-based computer simulation of the evolution of diploid sexual organisms showed that several mate selection strategies confer much higher average fitness to the simulated populations, and higher evolutionary stability to the alleles coding for these strategies, than random mating. Strategies which select for 'good genes' were very successful, and so were strategies based on assortative mating. The results support the hypothesis that mating is not likely to be random in nature and that the most successful mate selection strategies are those based on assortative mating or on advantageous genes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Gas chromatography analyses and behavioral assays showed that Atta laevigata, a highly polymorphic ant species, has a mandibular gland secretion that varies with castes. All castes contain 4-methyl-3-heptanone as the main component and its concentration is proportional to head size. Small workers and soldiers, but not medium size workers, also contain 4-methyl-3-heptanol. Queens show variations in their chemical composition after mating, as virgin males contain a secretion dominated by 4-methyl-3-heptanol, and, in a lesser proportion, 4-methyl-3-heptanone. In mated males these proportions are inverted. The compounds 4-methyl-6-hepten-3-one, 4-methyl-4-hepten-3-one, 6-methyl-tetradecene, and 2,6-dimethyl-2-dodecene are found only in queens. The behavioral response elicited by the secretion is mainly alarm, which is elicited more strongly by glands of larger workers. The results suggest that chemical castes, behavioral castes, and morphological castes overlap in this species. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Field studies of Heliamphora nutans Benth., H. heterodoxa Steyerm., H. minor Gleason, H. ionasii maguire and H. tatei Gleason in the Guayana Highlands of Venezuela, show that the last named species is a true carnivore, possessing all of the following traits: attraction of prey through special visual and chemical signals, trapping and killing of prey, digestion of prey through secreted enzymes, presence of commensals, presence of wax scales aiding in the capture of prey, and absorption of nutrients. The other species possess all traits except they seem neither to secrete proteolytic enzymes nor produce wax scales. The pattern of the carnivorous syndrome among Heliamphora species suggests that the carnivorous habit has evolved in nutrient-poor habitats to improve the absorption of nutrients by capturing mainly ants and only H. tatei further evolved mechanisms for rapid assimilation of organic nutrients and for capturing a variety of flying insects. The carnivorous traits are lost in low light conditions, indicating that nutrient supply is limiting only under fast growth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We analyzed the behavioral responses of the ants Camponotus rufipes and Solenopsis geminata towards all instars of Dione junio and Abananote hylonome. We also analyzed ant behavior towards hexane extracts of larvae and extracts of the spines and neck glands of the fifth instars of both species and identified the chemical compounds present. Larvae of both species were repellent to ants from the first instar onward. Later instars survived ant attacks better than earlier instars. The spines and neck glands of the larvae influenced the behavior of C. rufipes. The chemical compounds contained in the hexane extracts of whole first and fifth instars and in the spines and neck glands of fifth instars were principally carboxylic acids and terpenes. Further bioassays confirmed the repellent effect of some of these acids toward ants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Facultatively sexual entomopathogenic nematodes are a promising model for the experimental study of the adaptive values of sex. Our experiments in the laboratory showed that entomopathogenic nematodes display at least two different strategies in regulating the degree of amphimix as a response to nutritional stress. One strategy promotes the production of males, amphimix and the genetic variability of the offspring, improving the chances for a successful new adaptation. Another strategy increases the production of hermaphrodites at the expense of males, increasing the total number of reproductive individuals and thus the total number of offspring produced. Surprisingly, the strategy used depends upon the strain of symbiotic bacteria the nematodes are growing. The relevance of the results, in helping to discriminate between rival theories for the evolutionary maintenance of sex, is discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A letter to the editor is presented in response to the article on the present government that created the Ministry of Science and Technology that was published in the previous issue.

A letter to the editor in response to the article "Three Cheers for Peers" published in the 2006 issue of "Nature" is presented.