scholarly journals Coping with uncertainty: breeding adjustments to an unpredictable environment in an opportunistic raptor

Oecologia ◽  
2010 ◽  
Vol 166 (1) ◽  
pp. 79-90 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fabrizio Sergio ◽  
J. Blas ◽  
L. López ◽  
A. Tanferna ◽  
R. Díaz-Delgado ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Unpredictable Environment

Human Nature

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Dupré
Keyword(s):  
Life Cycle ◽  
Human Nature ◽  
Biological Theory ◽  
Developmental Plasticity ◽  
Human Behaviour ◽  
Standard Account ◽  
Important Concept ◽  
Process Perspective ◽  
Unpredictable Environment

This sketch of an account of human nature begins with the claim that we should see humans as a kind of process, a life cycle, rather than as a kind of substance or thing. A particular advantage of such a process perspective is that it readily accommodates the developmental plasticity that has been an increasingly important concept in recent biological theory. Human behaviour, on this account, should be understood as providing adaptive and flexible responses to an unpredictable environment. It is, therefore, generally misguided to provide a standard account of human nature in terms of behaviour or behavioural dispositions. If there is such a thing as human nature, it is a uniquely refined propensity for novel and unpredictable behaviour.

scholarly journals Efficient Planning of Humanoid Motions by Modifying Constraints

2013 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
ChangHyun Sung ◽  
Takahiro Kagawa ◽  
Yoji Uno
Keyword(s):  
Motion Planning ◽  
Sufficient Conditions ◽  
Computation Time ◽  
Humanoid Robots ◽  
Body Motion ◽  
Whole Body ◽  
Planning Problem ◽  
Point Representation ◽  
Efficient Planning ◽  
Unpredictable Environment

AbstractIn this paper, we propose an effective planning method for whole-body motions of humanoid robots under various conditions for achieving the task. In motion planning, various constraints such as range of motion have to be considered. Specifically, it is important to maintain balance in whole-body motion. In order to be useful in an unpredictable environment, rapid planning is an essential problem. In this research, via-point representation is used for assigning sufficient conditions to deal with various constraints in the movement. The position, posture and velocity of the robot are constrained as a state of a via-point. In our algorithm, the feasible motions are planned by modifying via-points. Furthermore, we formulate the motion planning problem as a simple iterative method with a Linear Programming (LP) problem for efficiency of the motion planning. We have applied the method to generate the kicking motion of a HOAP-3 humanoid robot. We confirmed that the robot can successfully score a goal with various courses corresponding to changing conditions of the location of an obstacle. The computation time was less than two seconds. These results indicate that the proposed algorithm can achieve efficient motion planning.

Attention U-Net with Feature Fusion Module for Robust Defect Detection

2021 ◽  
pp. 2150272
Author(s):  
Yu-Jie Xiong ◽  
Yong-Bin Gao ◽  
Hong Wu ◽  
Yao Yao
Keyword(s):  
Defect Detection ◽  
Crack Detection ◽  
Feature Fusion ◽  
Experimental Results ◽  
Feature Maps ◽  
Concrete Crack ◽  
Disaster Situation ◽  
Unpredictable Environment ◽  
Segmentation Task ◽  
Noisy Background

U-Net shows a remarkable performance and makes significant progress for segmentation task in medical images. Despite the outstanding achievements, the common case of defect detection in industrial scenes is still a challenging task, due to the noisy background, unpredictable environment, varying shapes and sizes of the defects. Traditional U-Net may not be suitable for low-quality images with low illumination and corruption, which are often presented in the practical collections in real-world scenes. In this paper, we propose an attention U-Net with feature fusion module for combining multi-scale features to detect the defects in noisy images automatically. Feature fusion module contains convolution kernels of different scales to capture shallow layer features and combine them with the high-dimensional features. Meanwhile, attention gates are used to enhance the robustness of skip connection between the feature maps. The proposed method is evaluated on two datasets. The best precision rate and MIoU of defect detection are 95.6% and 92.5%. The best F-score of concrete crack detection is 95.0%. Experimental results show that the proposed approach achieves promising results in both datasets. It demonstrates that our approach consistently outperforms other U-Net-based approaches for defect detection in low-quality images. Experimental results have shown the possibility of developing a mixture system that can be deployed in many applications, such as remote sensing image analysis, earthquake disaster situation assessment, and so on.

Long-term fasting and realimentation in hypogean and epigean isopods: a proposed adaptive strategy for groundwater organisms

2002 ◽  
Vol 205 (14) ◽  
pp. 2079-2087 ◽  
Author(s):  
Frédéric Hervant ◽  
David Renault
Keyword(s):  
Metabolic Response ◽  
Large Body ◽  
Adaptive Strategy ◽  
Energy System ◽  
Adaptive Responses ◽  
Rapid Restoration ◽  
Surface Dwelling ◽  
Unpredictable Environment ◽  
Lipid Stores

SUMMARYThe effects of long-term fasting and subsequent refeeding on digestive physiology and energy metabolism were investigated in a subterranean aquatic crustacean, Stenasellus virei, and in a morphologically similar surface-dwelling species, Asellus aquaticus. Metabolic response to food deprivation was monophasic in A. aquaticus, with an immediate,large decrease in all energy reserves. In contrast, S. vireidisplayed three successive periods of phosphageno-glucidic, lipidic and,finally, proteo-lipidic-dominant catabolism over the course of the nutritional stress. To represent the responses of subterranean crustaceans to food stress and renutrition, a sequential energy strategy was hypothesized, suggesting that four successive phases (called stress, transition, adaptation and recovery) can be distinguished. Based on these results, a general adaptive strategy for groundwater organisms was proposed. Their remarkable resistance to long-term fasting may be partly explained by (1) a depressed metabolism,during which they mainly subsist on lipid stores, (2) a prolonged state of glycogen- and protein-sparing, (3) low energetic requirements and (4) large body stores. In addition, these groundwater species displayed high recovery abilities during refeeding, showing an optimal utilization of available food and a rapid restoration of their body reserves. These adaptive responses might be considered for numerous subterranean organisms as an efficient energy-saving strategy in a harsh and unpredictable environment where fasting(and/or hypoxic) periods of variable duration alternate with sporadic feeding events (and/or normoxic periods). Therefore, food-limited and/or hypoxia-tolerant groundwater species appear to be good examples of animals representing a low-energy system.

Strategic and Process Management

2019 ◽  
pp. 115-130
Author(s):  
Maria Olga Carvalho e Souza ◽  
Alvaro Lopes Dias ◽  
Emmanuel M.C.B. Sabino
Keyword(s):  
Qualitative Research ◽  
Competitive Advantage ◽  
Process Management ◽  
Small Enterprises ◽  
Academic World ◽  
Dynamic Capacity ◽  
The Face ◽  
Micro And Small Enterprises ◽  
Unpredictable Environment ◽  
The City

The performance of companies has been of great interest in the organizational and academic world. In Brazil it became a matter of survival, given the high number of premature corporate deaths, especially in the field of micro and small enterprises. Following this same interest, the authors began this exploratory qualitative research to find information about the specifics of some companies that manage to remain in the market with reasonable competitiveness and for many years. In this universe, they selected three companies located in the city of Teresina (PI) that presented a significant boost in the face of a turbulent and unpredictable environment. Some characteristics, behaviors, and skills have been highlighted as likely indicators of dynamic capacity leading to the achievement of a competitive advantage, which, consequently, cause these companies to be remembered and chosen by consumers among others existing in the same place or region.

scholarly journals Do Criminals Live Faster Than Soldiers and Firefighters?

Human Nature ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 31 (3) ◽  
pp. 272-295
Author(s):  
Monika Kwiek ◽  
Przemysław Piotrowski
Keyword(s):  
High Risk ◽  
Criminal Behavior ◽  
Premature Death ◽  
Elevated Risk ◽  
High Exposure ◽  
Risk Of Injury ◽  
Weak Association ◽  
Incarcerated Men ◽  
Unpredictable Environment ◽  
The Relationship

Abstract A high risk of morbidity-mortality caused by a harsh and unpredictable environment is considered to be associated with a fast life history (LH) strategy, commonly linked with criminal behavior. However, offenders are not the only group with a high exposure to extrinsic morbidity-mortality. In the present study, we investigated the LH strategies employed by two groups of Polish men: incarcerated offenders (N = 84) as well as soldiers and firefighters (N = 117), whose professions involve an elevated risk of injury and premature death. The subjects were asked to complete the Mini-K (used as a psychosocial LH indicator) and a questionnaire which included a number of biodemographic LH variables. Although biodemographic and psychosocial LH indicators should be closely linked with each other, the actual connection between them is unclear. Thus, this study was driven by two aims: comparing LH strategies in two groups of men with a high risk of premature morbidity-mortality and investigating the relationship between the biodemographic and psychosocial LH dimensions. The study showed that incarcerated men employed faster LH strategies than soldiers and firefighters, but only in relation to biodemographic variables (e.g., number of siblings, age of sexual initiation, life expectancy). No intergroup differences emerged regarding psychosocial LH indicators. Moreover, the correlation analysis showed a weak association between biodemographic and psychosocial LH indicators. The results strengthen the legitimacy of incorporating biodemographic LH traits into research models and indicate the need for further research on the accuracy of the Mini-K. The possible explanations for the intergroup differences in LH strategies are discussed.

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