Dynamics of a Guanaco-sheep Competitive System with Unilateral and Bilateral Control

In this paper, based on a guanaco-sheep competitive system, we develop and analyze mathematical models with unilateral and bilateral control for the management of overgrazing. We first analyze the dynamics of the uncontrolled system. Then, we investigate the system with impulsive control by differential equation geometry theory. And we mainly prove the existence and stability of order-1 periodic solution for unilateral control system and order-2 periodic solution for bilateral control system. Comparing the unilateral and bilateral control strategy, we encourage bilateral control rather than unilateral control for the management of sheep species.

A Panglossian Dilemma

Ambient intelligence is a factual phenomenon of increasing magnitude. It also invites intrigued attention as carrier of meanings. Meanings are produced in a variety of contexts, which are here the focus of attention. In order to analyze contextual narratives and their effects, concepts such as intelligence, optimization, rationale, rationality and ambience are discussed. One meaning of ambient intelligence is its indicative contribution to increased unilateral control of the many by the few. Ethical guidelines may be part of prevailing rhetoric, but their success as a self-controlling factor seems fairly unrealistic. Moral confusion is not only related to artificial intelligence, but to the very essence of modern society.

Dynamics of Unilateral and Bilateral Control Systems with State Feedback for Renewable Resource Management

In this paper, mathematical models for the management of biological resources based on a given predator-prey relationship are proposed, and two types of control strategies, unilateral and bilateral control with impulsive state feedback, are studied. The existence of the order-1 homoclinic orbit, order-1 periodic solution, and bifurcation of homoclinic of the unilateral control system are obtained, and the attraction region of this system is also discussed. Besides, sufficient conditions for the existence and stability of the order-1 and order-2 periodic solutions of the bilateral control system are also gained. A series of numerical simulations including bifurcation diagrams of periodic solution are performed, which not only verify the theoretical results we get but also reveal some peculiar dynamical phenomena, such as the appearance of high-order periodic solutions and existence of parameter intervals with drastic order change of periodic solution. By comparing the two management strategies, our study encourages bilateral control rather than unilateral control for the risk of predator extinction.

Autocratic strategies for iterated games with arbitrary action spaces

The recent discovery of zero-determinant strategies for the iterated prisoner’s dilemma sparked a surge of interest in the surprising fact that a player can exert unilateral control over iterated interactions. These remarkable strategies, however, are known to exist only in games in which players choose between two alternative actions such as “cooperate” and “defect.” Here we introduce a broader class of autocratic strategies by extending zero-determinant strategies to iterated games with more general action spaces. We use the continuous donation game as an example, which represents an instance of the prisoner’s dilemma that intuitively extends to a continuous range of cooperation levels. Surprisingly, despite the fact that the opponent has infinitely many donation levels from which to choose, a player can devise an autocratic strategy to enforce a linear relationship between his or her payoff and that of the opponent even when restricting his or her actions to merely two discrete levels of cooperation. In particular, a player can use such a strategy to extort an unfair share of the payoffs from the opponent. Therefore, although the action space of the continuous donation game dwarfs that of the classic prisoner’s dilemma, players can still devise relatively simple autocratic and, in particular, extortionate strategies.