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Abstract  Obesity is a major public health challenge with over 65% of US adults either overweight or obese. Estimated annual costs of obesity are $78.5 billion. Self-monitoring is a critical skill for successful weight management. However, self-monitoring is labor-intensive, and compliance is often difficult. In this paper, the authors describe the Patient-Centered Assessment and Counseling Mobile Energy Balance (PmEB) mobile phone application that allows users to self-monitor caloric balance in real time. The application was developed and applied in a four-phase iterative research and development methodology. A usability study and a preliminary feasibility study were conducted. The 1 month feasibility study measured compliance and satisfaction among a sample of 15 participants randomized to one of three groups: (1) a paper diary group, (2) a PmEB group with one daily prompt, and (3) a PmEB group with three daily prompts. PmEB scored highly on usability, compliance, and satisfaction. In addition, mobile phone group users scored PmEB the same as or better than Paper Group members scored the paper diary in nearly all categories. Thematic analysis of comments revealed very positive reviews of PmEB as well as areas for improvement. PmEB is both usable and feasible for weight management self-monitoring, and the iterative pilot study methodology was effective in improving its usability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

South Africa shared with the world the warning of a new strain of SARS-CoV2, Omicron, in November 2021. As a result, many high-income countries (HICs) instituted complete travel bans on persons leaving South Africa and other neighbouring countries. These bans were unnecessary from a scientific standpoint, and they ran counter to the International Health Regulations. In short, South Africa was penalized for sharing data. Data sharing during pandemics is commonly justified by appeals to solidarity. In this paper, we argue that solidarity is, at best, an aspirational ideal to work toward but that it cannot ground an obligation to share data. Instead, low-and-middle income countries (LIMCs) should be guided by the principle of reciprocity, which states that we ought to return good for good received. Reciprocity is necessarily a conditional principle. LMICs, we argue, should only share data during future pandemics on the condition that HICs provide enforceable assurances that the benefits of data sharing will be equitably distributed and that LMICs won't be penalized for sharing information. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Pregnancy and early parenthood can be challenging transitional times for many families, especially those struggling with opioid use disorder (OUD). Over 8 million children live with a parent with SUD and parental drug use has been attributed to rising rates of family instability and child welfare involvement (Lipari & Van Horn, 2017; AFCARS, 2020;). Community-based prevention programming for families with young children, such as evidence-based maternal and child home visiting (EBHV), may we well positioned to engage and support families impacted by the opioid epidemic through early childhood. This paper presents case studies to highlight promising practices for adapting EBHV models to families impacted by SUD from the perspectives of staff and administrators. Methods: Data from three pilot sites are presented as case studies. These sites were selected to represent the most innovative and developed adaptations to EBHV for families impacted by substance use from an implementation evaluation of state-funded pilot sites (N = 20) at existing home visiting agencies across Pennsylvania. Data reported here represent semi-structured interviews with 11 individuals. Data were coded to facilitators and barriers nodes to understand the process and impact of pilot implementation. Results: Systems-level collaboration and coordination were key to serving a population already engaged in multiple systems. Engagement of substance use experts allowed home visitors to focus on delivery of evidence-based curricula supporting family stability and child development. External partnerships reduced stigma among home visitors. Across sites, staff struggled with the increased acuity of social complexity of the OUD population. Conclusions for Practice: Pregnancy and early parenthood are challenging transitional times for many families, especially those with OUD. Evaluation results demonstrate the promise of systems-based adaptations to community-based prevention programming for families with young children, such as maternal and child home visiting, to better support families impacted by SUD. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

International collaborative training programs for graduate students are widespread, but studies on their educational impact are limited. As an advanced cancer institute in China, Cancer Hospital Chinese Academy of Medical Science (CHCAMS) attaches great importance to international exchanges and cooperation within graduate education. The Department of Epidemiology of CHCAMS has been involved in several existing international training programs and has also launched a short-term training program in cooperation with foreign universities and institutes from 2008. Fogarty International Clinical Research Scholars and Fellows (FICRS-F) Program and the Fulbright-Fogarty Fellowship Program are the most typical examples of our practice in international cooperation on graduate education over these years. Our department has gained substantial experience in graduate-level international collaborative training, focused on cancer epidemiology. This paper is a brief introduction to the practice of different programs in our department and students' achievements during and after training. Moreover, we attempt to serve as a reference and help promote the training of graduate students pursuing careers in cancer research or global health by other universities or research institutes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Evolutionary algorithms (EAs) have been successfully applied to solve numerous optimization problems. Neighborhood field optimization algorithm (NFO) has been proposed to integrate the neighborhood field in EAs, which utilizes local cooperation behaviors to explore new solutions. In this paper, certain new NFO variants are proposed based on the cooperation of descendent neighbors. The competitive and cooperative behaviors of NFO variants provide a remarkable ability to accelerate information exchanges and achieve global search. Experimental results show that NFO variants perform better than basic and other state-of-the-art EAs under different benchmark functions. For NFO and other EAs, it is difficult to quantify benefits of local cooperation in the optimization process. For this purpose, the cooperation behaviors are analyzed in a new network approach in this paper. In the proposed NFO variants, population graph shows a scale-free network with power-law distribution. Network characteristics, i.e., degree distribution, cluster coefficient and average degree, are used to quantify the cooperation behaviors. Experimental results show that network characteristics can effectively indicate the optimization performance of NFO variants in terms of convergence rate and population diversity. NFO variants with large cluster coefficients and significant heterogeneous characteristics can achieve a significant performance improvement on numerous problems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Health sciences education is increasingly focusing on building students' skills to work collaboratively. Therefore, instructors must intentionally incorporate team-based skill building into their courses, using teaching strategies like team-based learning (TBL). An assumption of TBL is that team dynamics facilitate learning; however, limited research has examined this connection. The primary purposes of this mixed-methods evaluation were: (a) to describe the characteristics of team dynamics in a graduate-level research methods course that employs a modified TBL approach, and (b) to examine the association between team dynamics and student grades. Given the importance of preparing health professional students to work collaboratively in their careers, a secondary aim was to examine how team skills developed through a team-based learning approach could be transferred to other courses and to future jobs. We conducted surveys on team dynamics at mid-semester (n = 64) and the end of the semester (n = 66), collected students' grades for the final paper and overall course, and conducted 4 focus groups with Master of Public Health students (n = 25). Paired t tests were used to examine change in team dynamics and correlations were conducted to assess the relationship between team dynamics and grades. Thematic analysis was used to identify themes related to team dynamics from the focus group data. Overall, students reported experiencing positive and beneficial team dynamics. The findings support two main underlying categories of team dynamics, interpersonal team processes and task orientation, and the linkages between the categories that allow teams to function. Team dynamics scores were not associated with student grades. However, students recognized the value of practicing team skills in preparation for future group work and jobs. These findings suggest that active learning approaches, such as TBL, can help to facilitate the acquisition of collaborative skills. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A key application of conversational search is refining a user's search intent by asking a series of clarification questions, aiming to improve the relevance of search results. Training and evaluating such conversational systems currently requires human participation, making it infeasible to examine a wide range of user behaviors. To support robust training/evaluation of such systems, we propose a simulation framework called CoSearcher Information about code/resources available at https://github.com/amzn/cosearcher that includes a parameterized user simulator controlling key behavioral factors like cooperativeness and patience. To evaluate our approach, we use both a standard conversational query clarification benchmark and develop an extended dataset using query suggestions from a popular Web search engine as a source of additional refinement candidates. Using these datasets, we investigate the impact of a variety of conditions on search refinement and clarification effectiveness over a wide range of user behaviors, semantic policies, and dynamic facet generation. Our results quantify the effects of user behavior variation, and identify conditions required for conversational search refinement and clarification to be effective. This paper is an extended version of our previous work, and includes new experimental results for comparing semantic similarity ranking strategies for facets, using enhanced representations of facets, learning from negative user responses, among other new results and more detailed experimental descriptions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Cloud-Enabled Internet of Vehicles (CE-IoV) is a new paradigm that combines cloud computing, vehicular networks and the internet of things (IoT). It provides safety and infotainment applications for road users. It relies on the exchange of real-time messages known as beacons to achieve connectivity and ensure safety. The beacons contain the position, the identifier and the velocity of the vehicle. This data can be eavesdropped by a malicious attacker to construct a full trajectory of a target vehicle and track its user. The tracking violates the on-road users' location privacy. It is the cyber-equivalent of stalking. Its consequences may be directly related to the user's safety. Therefore, the privacy issue in CE-IoV is crucial and preserving it is a priority. In this paper, we propose a location privacy preserving solution for CE-IoV users. The solution relies on cooperativeness, obfuscation, and silence to reduce linkability and tracking. We proved its feasibility using a game theoretic approach. We further analysed the with simulations the proposed scheme performance and resiliency to Global Passive Attacker (GPA). The modelled GPA executes four eavesdropping and linking attacks to track the vehicles which are: semantic, syntactic, observation and mapping linking attacks. The simulation results prove that the solution is robust and resilient to the mentioned attacks with an average privacy level of 90%. We further analyse its robustness using an analytical model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aiming at uncooperative behaviors such as free-riding, white-washing and sybil attacks, and the lack of rationality hypothesis in the traditional economic models, the paper presents an Altruism-Based Dynamic Model (ABDM) in social networks by introducing views from reciprocal altruistic theory. Considering the initiative of nodes behind reciprocal altruistic behaviors, the ABDM improves the cooperation rate of the network and promotes the propagation of cooperative behavior by using the nodes' inherent ability of reciprocal altruism. Furthermore, based on nodes' bounded rationality, ABDM also perfects models of traditional economic theories. The simulation results show that compared with the traditional model, the proposed ABDM has the higher level of cooperation, the stronger scalability and the better robustness. On this basis, the paper analyzes the ABDM at different scenarios: varying group sizes and population; behavior selection under varying parameter settings (cost-to-benefit ratios of the psychological payoff and etc.). With the more efficient interactions among the nodes, the ABDM model can improve the efficiency of parallel processing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The nine habits of successful comprehensive cancer control coalitions (Nine Habits) is a guide that outlines the key elements of successful comprehensive cancer control (CCC) coalitions. The guide was developed under the auspices of the Comprehensive Cancer Control National Partnership (CCCNP) and is based on evaluation including a literature review, qualitative and quantitative data collection from high-performing comprehensive cancer control coalitions. Comprehensive cancer control coalitions are made up of key stakeholders who come together to create a shared vision and shared plans to fight cancer, improve health outcomes, and reduce the burden from cancer. The CCCNP produced this guide to help coalitions maintain the health of their coalition efforts by providing tools to examine the key elements of successful coalitions, including leadership, membership, organizational structure, shared resources, and efforts in planning and communications. This paper provides information on how the guide was used by two states to rebuild their coalition and ultimately improve their efforts in improving health outcomes and reducing cancer burden. Lastly, the paper outlines future efforts to continue to support CCC coalitions in their work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Embodied Virtual Agents (EVAs) are used today as interfaces for social robots, educational tutors, game counterparts, medical assistants, as well as companions for the elderly and individuals with psychological or behavioral conditions. Forming a reliable and trustworthy interaction is critical to the success and acceptability of this new form of interaction. In this paper, we report on a study investigating how trust is influenced by the cooperativeness of an EVA as well as an individuals prior experience with other agents. Participants answered two sets of multiple choice questions, working with a different agent in each set. Two types of agent behaviors were possible: Cooperative and Uncooperative. In addition to participants achieving significantly higher performance and having higher trust for the cooperative agent, we found that participants' trust for the cooperative agent was significantly higher if they interacted with an uncooperative agent in one of the sets, compared to working with cooperative agents in both sets. Furthermore, we found that participants may still decide to choose agent's suggested answer (which can be incorrect) over theirs, even if they are fairly certain their own answer is the correct one. The results suggest that trust for an EVA is relative and it is dependent on user's history of interaction with different agents in addition to current agent's behavior. The findings provide insight into important considerations for creating trustworthy EVAs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses the principles of stable cooperation for stochastic games. Starting from the non-cooperative version of a discounted, non zero-sum stochastic game, we build its cooperative form and find the cooperative solution. We then analyse the conditions under which this solution is stable. Principles of stability include subgame consistency, strategic stability and irrational behaviour proof of the cooperative solution. We finally discuss the existence of a stable cooperative solution, and consider a type of stochastic games for which the cooperative solution is found and the principles of stable cooperation are checked. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper analyses the relationship between the perception of barriers to innovation and the firm's propensity to cooperate to mitigate their effect. First, we look at whether cooperation with research organizations or private firms is associated with experiencing different types of barriers, for example, financial constraints, lack of human capital or uncertain market demand. Second, we test whether experiencing several types of barriers simultaneously has a super-modular effect on the propensity to cooperate tout court, and the choice of cooperation partner. We find that having to face a single, specific constraint leads to firms 'sharing the pain' with cooperation partners-both research organization and other firms. However, the results of a super-modularity test show that having to cope with different barriers is a deterrent to establishing cooperation agreements, especially when firms lack finance, adequate skills and information on technology or markets. The paper adds to the innovation literature by identifying the factors associated with firms' coping with different barriers by applying a selective cooperation strategy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Following John Rawls, nonideal theory is typically divided into: (1) 'partial-compliance theory' and (2) 'transitional theory." The former is concerned with those circumstances in which individuals and political regimes do not fully comply with the requirements of justice, such as when people break the law or some individuals do not do their fair share within a distributive scheme. The latter is concerned with circumstances in which background institutions may be unjust or may not exist at all. This paper focuses on issues arising in transitional theory. In particular, I am concerned with what Rawls' has called 'burdened societies," that is, those societies that find themselves in unfavorable conditions, such that their historical, social or economic circumstances make it difficult to establish just institutions. The paper investigates exactly how such burdened societies should proceed towards a more just condition in an acceptable fashion. Rawls himself tells us very little, except to suggest that societies in this condition should look for policies and courses of action that are morally permissible, politically possible and likely to be effective. In this paper I first try to anticipate what a Rawlsian might say about the best way for burdened societies to handle transitional problems and so move towards the ideal of justice. Next, I construct a model of transitional justice for burdened societies. Ultimately, I argue for a model of transitional justice that makes use of a nonideal version of Rawls' notion of the worst-off representative person. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Evolutionary game theory is an important tool to model animal and human behaviour. A key class of games is the social dilemmas, where cooperation benefits the group but defection benefits the individual within any group. Previous works have considered which games qualify as social dilemmas, and different categories of dilemmas, but have generally concentrated on fixed sizes of interacting groups. In this paper, we develop a systematic investigation of social dilemmas on all group sizes. This allows for a richer definition of social dilemmas. For example, while increasing a group size to include another defector is always bad for all existing group members, extra cooperators can be good or bad, depending upon the particular dilemma and group size. We consider a number of commonly used social dilemmas in this context and in particular show the effect of variability in group sizes for the example of a population comprising negative binomially distributed group sizes. The most striking effect is that increasing the variability in group sizes for non-threshold public goods games is favourable for the evolution of cooperation. The situation for threshold public goods games and commons dilemmas is more complex. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes the collaborative process of building a simulation model in order to understand patient waiting times in an accident and emergency department. The purpose is to explore the issues that arise when involving clients, in this case health care professionals, in the process of model building. The study background and a detailed account of the modelling process are presented. The focus of the paper is on some general themes that can be discovered running through the process. These offer some tentative insights into client involvement in system dynamics modelling, in particular its application in health care. Given this study's first promising results, further collaborative studies are encouraged. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: Despite the quantity of research on child and adolescent mental health being done in schools, little output has focused on the practical aspects of recruiting schools and students into a study. Furthermore, there is limited knowledge on how to develop and sustain productive and mutually beneficial partnerships with schools after the project finishes.Methods: A large study examining prevalence of mental health problems in young people involving nine schools is used as an example for the procedure of recruitment and carrying out a research project, while developing and sustaining partnerships with schools.Results: While recruiting the schools, a three-stage model was developed that corresponded closely to the school's needs and existing demands. The suggested procedure for the study, thus, closely reflected the varying existing cultures of participating schools. Partnerships, developed as a result of the project, were used in developing further projects and interventions for promoting good mental health in schools.Conclusions: Rather than a blanket research recruitment and procedural approach with an end to school involvement at the end of the project, the paper advocates for a deeper understanding of the schools' internal culture for improved recruitment and study outcomes. Developed partnerships, when sustained past the completion of research, prove to be a useful tool in applying the findings in promoting good mental health in schools and continuing research further. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The widespread adoption of science-based prevention requires local infrastructures for prevention service delivery. Communities That Care (CTC) is a tested prevention service delivery system that enables a local coalition of community stakeholders to use a science-based approach to prevention and improve the behavioral health of young people. This paper uses data from the Community Youth Development Study (CYDS), a community-randomized trial of CTC, to examine the extent to which better internal team functioning of CTC coalitions increases the community-wide adoption of science-based prevention within 12 communities, relative to 12 matched comparison communities. Specifically, this paper examines the potential of both a direct relationship between coalition functioning and the community-wide adoption of science-based prevention and a direct relationship between functioning and the coalition capacities that ultimately enable the adoption of science-based prevention. Findings indicate no evidence of a direct relationship between four dimensions of coalition functioning and the community-wide adoption of a science-based approach to prevention, but suggest a relationship between coalition functioning and coalition capacities (building new member skills and establishing external linkages with existing community organizations) that enable science-based prevention. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In contrast to a burgeoning research literature on the role of emotions in learning and instruction in Western culture, research on how emotions impact student and teacher development in Asian countries is lacking. The present paper reviews seven publications included in the 2019 Special Issue of The Asia–Pacific Education Researcher examining the role of emotions in Asian learners and in Asian educators. Three studies conducted with Asian students across education levels (primary, secondary, post-secondary) and countries (China, Singapore) explored students' emotions ranging from global constructs (engagement, satisfaction) to discrete experiences (hope, gratitude) in relation to personality, self-regulation, persistence, and contextual variables (perfectionism, self-compassion, resilience, relatedness). Four studies additionally investigated the emotional experiences of pre-service and practicing Asian teachers (China, Hong Kong, Philippines) in relation to varied motivational variables (self-efficacy, self-theories, passion, psychological capital), social-environmental factors (cooperative interactions, practicum evaluations), as well as psychological and physical health (coping styles, burnout, sleep quality). Study findings and protocols are discussed with respect to specific directions for future research on academic emotions in an Asian educational context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Situation awareness is certainly one of the important constructs for human factors practitioners especially human engineers. Indeed, it gives keys to allow breaking the dilemma of the human-machine system designer between the two opposite human roles in systems: a negative role as they may make errors and a positive role in that they are able to detect and recover their own errors as well as process malfunctions. We might have expected that the age of this concept would allow it to be rather mature and refined enough for efficient use. Instead, as practitioners discover its usefulness, it becomes more and more subject to controversy. Nevertheless, the construct has become popular enough to be used in everyday life, for instance in a legal dispute. Therefore, it can be caricatured with the metaphor: the half empty glass or the half full glass. This paper first recalls several strengths and weaknesses of the SA constructs: the usefulness of the concept, the numerous concurrent definitions despite the clarity of Endley's one, the lack of measurement methods associated with some of these definitions, the lack of organisational foundations for collective SA and therefore the lack of method for designing collective SA. As an answer to the last point, this paper proposes the framework of cooperation between agents and its similitude with collective SA. Finally, on the basis of several examples, it gives indications for designing collective SA through the concept of common workspace, a construct shared with the cooperation framework. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In an effort to tackle fragmented care in the US healthcare delivery system, we explored the use of learning collaborative (LC) to advance integration of behavioral health and primary care as one of the potential solutions to a holistic approach to the delivery of quality healthcare to individuals with physical and mental illness. How a diverse group of primary care and behavioral health providers formed a Community of Practice (CoP) with a common purpose and shared vision to advance integrated care using a LC approach is described. An account of their learning experience, key components of their quality improvement, practice changes, clinical processes, and improved outcomes are explained. This paper aims at describing the history, creative design, processes, roles of the CoP and impact of the LC on the advancement of integrated care practice and quality improvements for further exploration and replications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The evolution of cooperation is a hot and challenging topic in the field of evolutionary game theory. Altruistic behavior, as a particular form of cooperation, has been widely studied by the ultimatum game but not by the dictator game, which provides a more elegant way to identify the altruistic component of behaviors. In this paper, the evolutionary dictator game is applied to model the real motivations of altruism. A degree-based regime is utilized to assess the impact of the assignation of roles on evolutionary outcome in populations of heterogeneous structure with two kinds of strategic updating mechanisms, which are based on Darwin's theory of evolution and punctuated equilibrium, respectively. The results show that the evolutionary outcome is affected by the role assignation and that this impact also depends on the strategic updating mechanisms, the function used to evaluate players' success, and the structure of populations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is concerned with exploring the relationship between perceptions of professional identities, interprofessional education (IPE) and collaborative practice. It seeks to introduce the concept of interprofessional responsibility as both a shift in the way in which to conceptualise the professional identity of Health and Social Care (H&SC) staff and as a new set of practices that help to inform the way in which students are prepared for collaborative working. The presented research, undertaken as part of a Ph.D. study, is based upon semi-structured interviews (n = 33) with H&SC staff who were recruited from both the United Kingdom (UK) Health Service and UK universities. Drawing upon thematic analysis of the data, the results of the research identified that previous conceptualisations of professional identity aligned to a whole profession do not relate to the way in which professionals perceive their identities. Senior professionals claimed to be more comfortable with their own professional identity, and with working across professional boundaries, than junior colleagues. Academic staff also identified that much IPE currently taught in universities serves the purpose of box-ticking rather than being delivered in meaningful way. It is proposed that the findings have implications for the way in which IPE is currently taught, and that adoption of the proposed concept of 'interprofessional responsibility' may help address some of the concerns these findings raise. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Overcoming environmental challenges requires understanding when and why individuals adopt cooperative behaviors, how individual behaviors and interactions among resource users change over time, and how group structure and group dynamics impact behaviors, institutions, and resource conditions. Cultural multilevel selection (CMLS) is a theoretical framework derived from theories of cultural evolution and cultural group selection that emphasizes pressures affecting different levels of social organization as well as conflicts among these levels. As such, CMLS can be useful for understanding many environmental challenges. With this paper, we use evidence from the literature and hypothetical scenarios to show how the framework can be used to understand the emergence and persistence of sustainable social-ecological systems. We apply the framework to the Balinese system of rice production and focus on two important cultural traits (synchronized cropping and the institutions and rituals associated with water management). We use data from the literature that discusses bottom-up (self-organized, complex adaptive system) and top-down explanations for the system and discuss how (1) the emergence of group structure, (2) group-level variation in cropping strategies, institutions, and rituals, and (3) variation in overall yields as a result of different strategies and institutions, could have allowed for the spread of group-beneficial traits and the increasing complexity of the system. We also outline cultural transmission mechanisms that can explain the spread of group-beneficial traits in Bali and describe the kinds of data that would be required to validate the framework in forward-looking studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Effective healthcare requires both competent individuals and competent teams. With this recognition, health professions education is grappling with how to factor team competence into training and assessment strategies. These efforts are impeded, however, by the absence of a sophisticated understanding of the the relationship between competent individuals and competent teams . Using data from a constructivist grounded theory study of team-based healthcare for patients with advanced heart failure, this paper explores the relationship between individual team members' perceived goals, understandings, values and routines and the collective competence of the team. Individual interviews with index patients and their healthcare team members formed Team Sampling Units (TSUs). Thirty-seven TSUs consisting of 183 interviews were iteratively analysed for patterns of convergence and divergence in an inductive process informed by complex adaptive systems theory. Convergence and divergence were identifiable on all teams, regularly co-occurred on the same team, and involved recurring themes. Convergence and divergence had nonlinear relationships to the team's collective functioning. Convergence could foster either shared action or collective paralysis; divergence could foster problematic incoherence or productive disruption. These findings advance our understanding of the complex relationship between the individual and the collective on a healthcare team, and they challenge conventional narratives of healthcare teamwork which derive largely from acute care settings and emphasize the importance of common goals and shared mental models. Complex adaptive systems theory helps us to understand the implications of these insights for healthcare teams' delivery of care for the complex, chronically ill. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Through technological innovations, patient cohorts can be examined from multiple views with high-dimensional, multiscale biomedical data to classify clinical phenotypes and predict outcomes. Here, we aim to present our approach for analyzing multimodal data using unsupervised and supervised sparse linear methods in a COVID-19 patient cohort. This prospective cohort study of 149 adult patients was conducted in a tertiary care academic center. First, we used sparse canonical correlation analysis (CCA) to identify and quantify relationships across different data modalities, including viral genome sequencing, imaging, clinical data, and laboratory results. Then, we used cooperative learning to predict the clinical outcome of COVID-19 patients: Intensive care unit admission. We show that serum biomarkers representing severe disease and acute phase response correlate with original and wavelet radiomics features in the LLL frequency channel (cor(Xu1, Zv1) = 0.596, p value < 0.001). Among radiomics features, histogram-based first-order features reporting the skewness, kurtosis, and uniformity have the lowest negative, whereas entropy-related features have the highest positive coefficients. Moreover, unsupervised analysis of clinical data and laboratory results gives insights into distinct clinical phenotypes. Leveraging the availability of global viral genome databases, we demonstrate that the Word2Vec natural language processing model can be used for viral genome encoding. It not only separates major SARS-CoV-2 variants but also allows the preservation of phylogenetic relationships among them. Our quadruple model using Word2Vec encoding achieves better prediction results in the supervised task. The model yields area under the curve (AUC) and accuracy values of 0.87 and 0.77, respectively. Our study illustrates that sparse CCA analysis and cooperative learning are powerful techniques for handling high-dimensional, multimodal data to investigate multivariate associations in unsupervised and supervised tasks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Reconciling the evolution of altruism with Darwinian natural selection is frequently presented as a fundamental problem in biology. In addition to an exponentially increasing literature on specific mechanisms that can permit altruism to evolve, there has been a recent trend to establish general principles to explain altruism in populations undergoing natural selection. This paper reviews and extends one approach to understanding the ultimate causes underlying the evolution of altruism and mechanisms that can realise them, based on the Price equation. From the Price equation, we can see that such ultimate causes equate to the different ways in which the frequency of an altruistic allele in a population can increase. Under this approach, the ultimate causes underlying the evolution of altruism, given some positive fitness costs and benefits, are positive assortment of altruistic alleles with the altruistic behaviour of others, positive deviations from additive fitness effects when multiple altruists interact or bias in the inheritance of altruistic traits. In some cases, one cause can be interpreted in terms of another. The ultimate causes thus identified can be realised by a number of different mechanisms, and to demonstrate its general applicability, I use the Price equation approach to analyse a number of classical mechanisms known to support the evolution of altruism (or cooperation): repeated interaction, 'greenbeard' traits, games played on graphs and payoff synergism. I also briefly comment on other important points for the evolution of altruism, such as the ongoing debate over the predominant status of inclusive fitness as the best way to understand its evolution. I conclude by arguing that analysing the evolution of altruism in terms of its ultimate causes is the logical way to approach the problem and that, despite some of its technical limitations, the Price equation approach is a particularly powerful way of doing so. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Reciprocity is a decisive behavioural rule resulting in successful co-operation or deterrence. In this paper, a dynamic model is proposed, where reciprocity is described by changes in altruistic (or malevolent) ties. Multiple steady states may exist in one of which there may be general cooperation (solidarity) and the other being one of universal malice (war of each individual against all other individuals). We apply our theory to a number of examples, illustrating that the agents’ initial preferences determine whether a steady state of solidarity, selfishness or malice will emerge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses how social network analyses and graph theory can be implemented in team sports performance analyses to evaluate individual (micro) and collective (macro) performance data, and how to use this information for designing practice tasks. Moreover, we briefly outline possible limitations of social network studies and provide suggestions for future research. Instead of cataloguing discrete events or player actions, it has been argued that researchers need to consider the synergistic interpersonal processes emerging between teammates in competitive performance environments. Theoretical assumptions on team coordination prompted the emergence of innovative, theoretically driven methods for assessing collective team sport behaviours. Here, we contribute to this theoretical and practical debate by re-conceptualising sports teams as complex social networks. From this perspective, players are viewed as network nodes, connected through relevant information variables (e.g. a ball-passing action), sustaining complex patterns of interaction between teammates (e.g. a ball-passing network). Specialised tools and metrics related to graph theory could be applied to evaluate structural and topological properties of interpersonal interactions of teammates, complementing more traditional analysis methods. This innovative methodology moves beyond the use of common notation analysis methods, providing a richer understanding of the complexity of interpersonal interactions sustaining collective team sports performance. The proposed approach provides practical applications for coaches, performance analysts, practitioners and researchers by establishing social network analyses as a useful approach for capturing the emergent properties of interactions between players in sports teams. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Strategic Implementation Plan of the European Innovation Partnership on Active and Healthy Ageing (EIP on AHA) proposed six Action Groups. After almost three years of activity, many achievements have been obtained through commitments or collaborative work of the Action Groups. However, they have often worked in silos and, consequently, synergies between Action Groups have been proposed to strengthen the triple win of the EIP on AHA. The paper presents the methodology and current status of the Task Force on EIP on AHA synergies. Synergies are in line with the Action Groups' new Renovated Action Plan (2016-2018) to ensure that their future objectives are coherent and fully connected. The outcomes and impact of synergies are using the Monitoring and Assessment Framework for the EIP on AHA (MAFEIP). Eight proposals for synergies have been approved by the Task Force: Five cross-cutting synergies which can be used for all current and future synergies as they consider overarching domains (appropriate polypharmacy, citizen empowerment, teaching and coaching on AHA, deployment of synergies to EU regions, Responsible Research and Innovation), and three cross-cutting synergies focussing on current Action Group activities (falls, frailty, integrated care and chronic respiratory diseases). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The economic miracle of the Chinese Diaspora in Southeast Asia has been attributed to their unique economic culture forged from Confucian thought and the emigration experience. However, this Spirit of Overseas Chinese Capitalism (SOCC) hypothesis, based largely on qualitative research, has not been validated through quantitative work. This paper provides, for the first time, empirical evidence from a values survey and experiment which show that only some of the hypothesised SOCC values and behaviours differentiate the Chinese from less economically successful ethnic groups in Malaysia. While we find no evidence that Confucian values explain the success of the Overseas Chinese we do find it may lie in their (a) more conductive work values and (b) greater intra-ethnic cooperativeness, both accentuated by the emigration experience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a typical workplace, organizational policies and their compliance requirements set the stage upon which the behavioral patterns of individual agents evolve. The agents' personal utilities, access to information, and strategic deceptions shape the signaling systems of an intricate information-asymmetric game, thus mystifying assessment and management of organizational risks, which are primarily due to unintentional insider threats. Compliance games, as discussed here, model a rudimentary version of this signaling game between a sender (employee) and a receiver (organization). The analysis of these games' equilibria as well as their dynamics in repeated game settings illuminate the effectiveness or risks of an organizational policy. These questions are explored via a repeated and agent-based simulation of compliance signaling games, leading to the following: (1) a simple but broadly applicable model for interactions between sender agents (employees) and receiver agents (principals in the organization), (2) an investigation of how the game theoretic approach yields the plausible dynamics of compliance, and (3) design of experiments to estimate parameters of the systems: evolutionary learning rates of agents, the efficacy of auditing using a trembling hand strategy, effects of non-stationary and multiple principal agents, and ultimately, the robustness of the system under perturbation of various related parameters (costs, penalties, benefits, etc.). The paper concludes with a number of empirical studies, illustrating a battery of compliance games under varying environments designed to investigate agent based learning, system control, and optimization. The studies indicate how agents through limited interactions described by behavior traces may learn and optimize responses to a stationary defense, expose sensitive parameters and emergent properties and indicate the possibility of controlling interventions which actuate game parameters. We believe that the work is of practical importance-for example, in constraining the vulnerability surfaces arising from compliance games. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Players' identity and their reputation are known to influence cooperation in economic games, but little is known about how they interact. Our study aimed to understand how presenting pre-programmed co-players' identities (face photos; names) along with their previous cooperation history (reputation) could influence participants' cooperative decisions in a public goods game. Participants (N = 759) were allocated to one of six experimental groups: (i) control (no information); (ii) only reputation (neutral, free-rider, or cooperative); (iii) only face; (iv) face with reputation; (v) only name; (vi) name with reputation. In the reputation group, cooperation significantly decreased when free-riders were playing and significantly increased when they were cooperators. Person's identity affected cooperativeness only when combined with reputation: face photo mitigated the negative effect of the free-rider reputation, while name identity mitigated any significant effect expected for reputation. Our study suggests a hierarchy: reputation changes cooperation, but a person's identity can modulate reputation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social epistemology studies knowledge and justified belief acquisition through organized group cooperation. To do this, the way such group cooperation is structured has to be modeled. The obvious way of modeling a group structure is with a directed graph; unfortunately, most types of social cooperation directed at epistemological aims are variably implementable, including in their structural expression. Furthermore, the frequency with which a practice is implemented in a certain way can vary with topology. This entails that the topology of social practices directed toward epistemological ends has to be modeled by a set of directed graphs, or their equivalent, together with a probability distribution over that set. In theory, this is eminently possible; however, there are considerable practical obstacles to the specification of a practice's topology in this way. This paper examines these practical difficulties and concludes that todays sampling protocols are either far too slow to handle pratices with 10 or more participants, or else prone to produce misleading evaluations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Philosophers have proposed accounts of shared intentions that aim at capturing what makes a joint action intentionally joint. On these accounts, having a shared intention typically presupposes cognitively and conceptually demanding theory of mind skills. Yet, young children engage in what appears to be intentional, cooperative joint action long before they master these skills. In this paper, I attempt to characterize a modest or 'lite' notion of shared intention, inspired by Michael Bacharach's approach to team-agency theory in terms of framing, group identification and team reasoning. I argue that the account of shared intentions this approach yields is less cognitively and conceptually demanding than other accounts and is thus applicable to the intentional joint actions performed by young children. I also argue that it has limitations of its own and that considering what these limitations are may help us understand why we sometimes need to take other routes to shared intentions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper presents results of recent laboratory experiments that study if and how computer-mediated communication affects cooperation and trust. It is argued that communication medium does not matter much for trust-building and maintenance, whereas relevant pre-play communication and group size can have a major influence. The implications of the findings for the design of sites that depend on trusting communities are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the past several decades, we have argued that cultural evolution can facilitate the evolution of large-scale cooperation because it often leads to more rapid adaptation than genetic evolution, and, when multiple stable equilibria exist, rapid adaptation leads to variation among groups. Recently, Lehmann, Feldman, and colleagues have published several papers questioning this argument. They analyze models showing that cultural evolution can actually reduce the range of conditions under which cooperation can evolve and interpret these models as indicating that we were wrong to conclude that culture facilitated the evolution of human cooperation. In the main, their models assume that rates of cultural adaption are not strong enough compared to migration to maintain persistent variation among groups when payoffs create multiple stable equilibria. We show that Lehmann et al. reach different conclusions because they have made different assumptions. We argue that the assumptions that underlie our models are more consistent with the empirical data on large-scale cultural variation in humans than those of Lehmann et al., and thus, our models provide a more plausible account of the cultural evolution of human cooperation in large groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An earlier article, inspired by overflow models in telecommunication systems with multiple streams of telephone calls, proposed a new analytical model for a network of intensive care units (ICUs), and a new patient referral policy for such networks to reduce the blocking probability of external emergency patients without degrading the quality of service (QoS) of canceled elective operations, due to the more efficient use of ICU capacity overall. In this work, we use additional concepts and insights from traditional teletraffic theory, including resource sharing, trunk reservation, and mutual overflow, to design a new patient referral policy to further improve ICU network efficiency. Numerical results based on the analytical model demonstrate that our proposed policy can achieve a higher acceptance level than the original policy with a smaller number of beds, resulting in improved service for all patients. In particular, our proposed policy can always achieve much lower blocking probabilities for external emergency patients while still providing sufficient service for internal emergency and elective patients. In addition, we provide new accurate and computationally efficient analytical approximations for QoS evaluation of ICU networks using our proposed policy. We demonstrate numerically that our new approximation method yields more accurate, robust and conservative results overall than the traditional approximation. Finally, we demonstrate how our proposed approximation method can be applied to solve resource planning and optimization problems for ICU networks in a scalable and computationally efficient manner. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes and analyzes the central role of human–human communication in a dynamic, high-risk environment. The empirical example is a UN peace-enforcing and peace-keeping operation where uncertainty about the situation in the environment and about the own organization’s capability was intertwined, requiring extensive control activities and, hence, special attention to communication between humans. Theoretically, focus lays on what efficient communication means, how to understand and use social relations, and use technology when making socio-technical systems also cooperative systems. We conclude that “control” largely is based on the ability to communicate and that efficient human–human communication is grounded in relations between individuals, which preferably should be based on physical meetings. Uncertainty, and how humans cope with it through interpersonal communication, is exemplified and discussed. In theoretical terms, relating the study to systems science and its application in organizational life and cognitive engineering, the case illustrates that an organization is not only an economy but also an adaptive social structure. But neither cognition nor control is an end state. The organization’s raison d’être in this kind of operation is cooperation rather than confrontation. Its use of force is strictly regulated by Rules of Engagement (ROE). In the organization, strong emotions may govern, interpersonal trust can be established and rule-sets for further cooperation established. Without considering the power of such aspects, economical rationality and detached cognitive thinking may end up in perfect, but less relevant, support technologies where people act in roles rather than as wholes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper contrasts cooperative work in two cases of distributed anomaly response, both from space shuttle mission control, to learn about the factors that make anomaly response robust. In one case (STS-76), flight controllers in mission control recognized an anomaly that began during the ascent phase of a space shuttle mission, analyzed the implications of the failure for mission plans, and made adjustments to plans (the flight ended safely). In this case, a Cooperative Advocacy approach facilitated a process in which diverse perspectives were orchestrated to provide broadening and cross-checks that reduced the risk of premature narrowing. In the second case (the Columbia space shuttle accident—STS-107), mission management treated a debris strike during launch as a side issue rather than a safety of flight concern and was unable to recognize the dangers of this event for the flight which ended in tragedy. In this case, broadening and cross-checks were missing due to fragmentation over the groups involved in the anomaly response process. The comparison of these cases points to critical requirements for designing collaboration over multiple groups in anomaly response situations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using panel data for 143 countries over the period 1973–2002, this paper empirically analyzes the influence of US aid on voting patterns in the UN General Assembly. We use disaggregated aid data to account for the fact that various forms of aid may differ in their ability to induce political support by recipients. We obtain strong evidence that US aid buys voting compliance in the Assembly. More specifically, our results suggest that general budget support and grants are the major aid categories by which recipients have been induced to vote in line with the United States. When replicating the analysis for other G7 donors, no comparable patterns emerge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The branch of evolutionary theory known as signaling theory attempts to explain various forms of communication. Social scientists have explained many traditional rituals as forms of communication that promote cooperative social relationships among participants. Both evolutionists and social scientists have realized the importance of trust for the formation and maintenance of cooperative social relationships. These factors have led to attempts to apply signaling theory to traditional cultural rituals in various ways. This paper uses the traditional ritual of mumming in small Newfoundland fishing villages to evaluate alternative hypotheses about the connection between rituals, communication, trust, and cooperation. Mumming is found to be most consistent with the hypothesis that it is a ritual of trust wherein participants take a specific type of risk: the risk of harm at the hands of other participants. Individuals who take this risk actively signal their trust. Conversely, individuals who restrain themselves from inflicting harm on other participants actively signal their trustworthiness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper deals with the problem of explaining the survival of cooperative behavior in populations in which each person interacts only with a small set of social ‘neighbors’, and individuals adjust their behavior over time by myopically imitating more successful strategies within their own neighborhood. We identify two parameters—the interaction radius and the benefit–cost ratio—which jointly determine whether or not cooperation can survive. For each value of the interaction radius, there exists a critical value of the benefit–cost ratio which serves as the threshold below which cooperation cannot be sustained. This threshold itself declines as the interaction radius rises, so there is a precise sense in which dense networks are more conducive to the evolution of cooperation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The legal landscape is changing, adapting to the global market. Differences between legal systems hinder transnational commerce. Countries reduce legal differences through non-cooperative and cooperative adaptation processes that alternatively lead to legal transplantation or harmonization. Switching costs render unification difficult. Cooperation reduces differences to a greater extent but rarely leads to legal unification. In this paper we unveil a paradox of legal harmonization. When switching costs are endogenous, countries engaging in cooperative harmonization may end up with less harmonization than those pursuing non-cooperative strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The United Kingdom Department of Health initiative on "The Expert Patient" (2001) reflects recent trends in political philosophy, ethics and health services research. The overall objective of the initiative is to encourage patients, particularly those suffering from chronic conditions to become more actively involved in decisions concerning their treatment. In doing so there would be (perhaps) an expectation of better patient compliance and (arguably) a resultant improvement in quality of life. Despite these anticipated beneficial influences on health outcomes, there may be a danger that such initiatives are being carried along by the general swell of enthusiasm for recognising and facilitating the claims of disadvantaged or discriminated against groups. What more attractive than that patients should be "liberated" from what might be seen as the oppression of medical paternalism? To a great extent the potential for success of the Expert Patient venture turns on:(a) whether and to what extent a patient can be considered truly to be an expert and (b) full acceptance by the medical and heath care professions of allowing patients a more equitable and positive role. Whilst clearly the patient is an expert in the hermeneutic sense - it is they and they alone who experience their illness - there is nevertheless a risk of confusing experience with expertise. Experience limited to an individual does not of itself give rise to the generalisations that underlie reliable clinical treatment. Neither do the vast majority of patients possess the physiological and pharmacological knowledge to fully appreciate the biological nature of their illness nor the basis, risks or limitations of therapeutic measures. Might the notion of "The Expert Patient" as informed co-decision maker become a well-meaning but rather vacuous aspiration similar to that of informed consent? Even worse, could patient "empowerment" have a deleterious effect? The paper reviews some of the major issues and concludes that the expert patient initiative could have benefits for both patients and health professionals if operated on the basis of concordance: an informed collaborative alliance that optimises the potential benefits of medical care. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is mainly about cooperation as a collective action in a group context (acting in a position or participating in the performance of a group task, etc.), although the assumption of the presence of a group context is not made in all parts of the paper. The paper clarifies what acting as a group member involves, and it analytically characterizes the "we-mode" (thinking and acting as a group member) and the "I-mode" (thinking and acting as a private person). The main task of the paper is to clarify cooperation, and this is done by dividing cooperation into I-mode and we-mode cooperation. I-mode cooperation relies on the participants' relevantly adjusting their goals toward others' goals and actions to the benefit of all participants. We-mode cooperation basically amounts to joint action in the we-mode. These kinds of cooperation are also connected to the respective kinds of acting as a group member. The paper also investigates the relationship between cooperation and trust and, basically, argues that a two-way connection is involved. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we study the cooperative theory of stable outcomes for the room-mates problem modeled as a contract choice problem. We show, that a simple generalization of the Deferred Acceptance Procedure with firms proposing due to Gale and Shapley (1962), yields outcomes for a two-sided contract choice problem, which necessarily belong to the core and are Weakly Pareto Optimal for firms. Under the additional assumptions: (a) given any two distinct workers, the set of yields achievable by a firm with the first worker is disjoint from the set of yields achievable by it with the second, and (b) the contract choice problem is pair-wise efficient, we prove that there is no stable outcome at which a firm can get more than what it gets at the unique outcome of our procedure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ideological research links liberal and conservative orientations to variations in genetic, psychological, and physiological factors. Yet, while a knowledge of the mechanistic causes of ideologies are advancing quickly, we know less about their potential functional causality. Here, we ask what the social functions of ideologies are and investigate whether the behaviors associated with different ideological orientations are consistent with different strategies for social interactions. We recruit an American sample of (N = 454) liberals and conservatives to complete two rounds of an iterated prisoner's dilemma. Using a three-wave design, we obtain a sample of each ideological group that is comparable on multiple demographic factors. We hypothesize that a liberal orientation is underpinned by an approach-oriented social strategy that is directed towards pursuing cooperative opportunities, while a conservative orientation is underpinned by a social strategy directed towards avoiding loss. On multiple measures of ideology, we find evidence that liberals and conservatives differ in their: (1) initial cooperativeness; (2) overall cooperation; and, (3) forgiveness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Flexible fiberoptic bronchoscopy is performed very frequently in pulmonology and cardiothoracic services where the patients are most critically ill. This study aims to assess the degree of satisfaction, duration, and level of cooperativeness among patients undergoing flexible bronchoscopy. A quasi-experimental study with 128 flexible bronchoscopy patients was carried out with two groups of patients (control and study group). All the steps of the procedure were discussed with the patient. The anxiety level score, patient satisfaction, cooperation, and duration of the procedure were assessed in both groups. A total of 128 patients were included. They were divided into two groups (study group and control group). In both groups, the majority were illiterate: study group 40 (62.5%), and control group 41 (64.1%). The hospital anxiety scale was statistically better in the study group than in the control group (p-value of 0.0001). The patients' satisfaction rate in the study groups was significantly higher (p-value 0.001, chi-square test 120.508). The duration of the procedure was significantly shorter in the study group (Mean ± SD 4.45, 1.381 min). Patients with better knowledge of bronchoscopy were more comfortable with the procedure and the duration of the procedure was significantly shorter. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]