scholarly journals A fungus infected environment does not alter the behaviour of foraging ants

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Hugo Pereira ◽  
Romain Willeput ◽  
Claire Detrain
Keyword(s):  
Cost Benefit ◽  
Fine Tuning ◽  
Ant Colonies ◽  
Eusocial Insects ◽  
Y Maze ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
The Individual ◽  
The Cost ◽  
Pathogen Avoidance ◽  
Prey Patches

AbstractEusocial insects are exposed to a wide range of pathogens while foraging outside their nest. We know that opportunistic scavenging ants are able to assess the sanitary state of food and to discriminate a prey which died from infection by the entomopathogenic fungus Metarhizium brunneum. Here, we investigate whether a contamination of the environment can also influence the behaviour of foragers, both at the individual and collective level. In a Y-maze, Myrmica rubra ants had the choice to forage on two prey patches, one of which containing sporulating items. Unexpectedly, the nearby presence of sporulating bodies did not deter foragers nor prevent them from retrieving palatable prey. Ant colonies exploited both prey patches equally, without further mortality resulting from foraging on the contaminated area. Thus, a contamination of the environment did not prompt an active avoidance by foragers of which the activity depended primarily on the food characteristics. Generalist entomopathogenic fungi such as M. brunneum in the area around the nest appear more to be of a nuisance to ant foragers than a major selective force driving them to adopt avoidance strategies. We discuss the cost–benefit balance derived from the fine-tuning of strategies of pathogen avoidance in ants.

scholarly journals International Technical Standards: An Overview

2002 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Hebner
Keyword(s):  
Hybrid System ◽  
Economic Benefit ◽  
Cost Benefit Analysis ◽  
Cost Benefit ◽  
International Standards ◽  
Benefit Analysis ◽  
Technical Standards ◽  
Global Standards ◽  
The Individual ◽  
The Cost

The growing globalization of industry is stimulating a growing emphasis on international standards. Standards are important because they provide significant economic benefit. They are also costly and much of the benefit is broad-based, i.e. it does not accrue preferentially to those who incur the cost. Finally, there is a highly disaggregated international standards system and at least two very different basic philosophies as to how standard systems should operate. The effect of the individual cost-benefit analysis by organizations may produce a hybrid system that produces both global standards in which each country participates in the development as well as less costly technical and consortium standards.

scholarly journals Religious Regulation and Churches’ Responses—A Case Study on the Anti-Demolition Actions of Christians in Wenzhou

Religions ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 9 (11) ◽  
pp. 344 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jianzhong Zhu
Keyword(s):  
Central Government ◽  
Free Market ◽  
Cost Benefit ◽  
Field Studies ◽  
Leadership Roles ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Market Operation ◽  
Government Planning ◽  
The Cost

This article focuses on the characteristics, causes, and patterns of the anti-demolition actions by churches in Wenzhou. Based on my six field studies from July 2014 to February 2016, I discovered that: (1) these actions are more explicit in Wenzhou churches due to their regional distinctiveness; (2) a wide range of differences can be observed among Wenzhou churches due to their doctrinal diversity; and (3) ‘poor pastors’ have taken the leadership roles in the anti-demolition activities instead of the ‘boss Christians’. Considering the ongoing tension in the Chinese religious environment between central government planning and free market operation, the author points out that the pastoral district system in Wenzhou plays a very important role in anti-demolition and offers the ‘cost–benefit’ exchange theory to explain the pattern of the anti-demolition activities by Wenzhou churches.

scholarly journals Cost implications and oncological outcomes for laparoscopic versus open surgery for right hemicolectomy

2016 ◽  
Vol 98 (03) ◽  
pp. 212-215
Author(s):  
K Habib ◽  
S Daniels ◽  
M Lee ◽  
V Proctor ◽  
A Saha
Keyword(s):  
Laparoscopic Surgery ◽  
Length Of Stay ◽  
Open Surgery ◽  
Cost Benefit ◽  
Right Hemicolectomy ◽  
Healthcare Management ◽  
Cost Of Treatment ◽  
Total Cost ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
The Cost

Introduction Recent studies have suggested that laparoscopic surgery for colorectal resection confers a cost benefit compared with open surgery. These studies have considered a wide range of colorectal operations together rather than focusing on a single procedure. Our study compared direct clinical costs for laparoscopic versus open right hemicolectomy. Methods Clinicopathological data and cost of treatment for all patients who underwent a right hemicolectomy between 2012 and 2013 were collected. The primary outcome was total cost of treatment. Secondary outcomes were length of stay, operative time and morbidity. The minimum follow-up duration was 12 months. Costs for laparoscopic and open surgery for elective resection alone were compared. Further analyses were performed comparing emergency cases with elective cases and cancer with non-cancer cases. Results There were 83 patients who underwent a right hemicolectomy during the study period and of these, 65 had an elective procedure. The total cost of a laparoscopic procedure was £3,998.12 compared with £3,427.50 for open surgery (p=0.039). The length of stay was shorter for laparoscopic surgery while the cost of an emergency right hemicolectomy was significantly greater than for elective surgery. Conclusions Although the length of stay for laparoscopic surgery was shorter, this did not translate to a reduction in cost. The cost benefit from a shorter length of stay was offset by a greater cost of consumables. Cost effectiveness analyses should be designed carefully, and they should consider individual operations separately when making healthcare management and funding decisions.

Virtual Tools in Medical Education

2013 ◽  
pp. 364-380
Author(s):  
Jason H. Epstein ◽  
Andrew Goldberg ◽  
Marina Krol ◽  
Adam Levine
Keyword(s):  
Medical Education ◽  
Cost Benefit ◽  
Medical Department ◽  
Human Patient ◽  
Medical Practitioners ◽  
Virtual Tools ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Cost Benefit Ratio ◽  
Instructional Design Principles ◽  
The Cost

Technology has become ubiquitous throughout medical education. Currently there is a wide range of tools that can be used to supplement traditional classroom and clinical learning. Simulators and mobile devices are among the tools that may make an especially significant impact on educating medical practitioners. Simulators range from simple part-task trainers to complex high-fidelity human patient simulators. Internet-enabled handheld portable computers such as the iPad® have begun to revolutionize and expand the medical classroom to even further reaches. Instructional design principles maintain that these technologies can and should be used to allow practitioners to learn by playing. Blind investment in these technologies, however, can quickly turn these technologies into a waste of time and money. We present principles intended to ensure that factors such as cost, size and technological expertise are taken into consideration when investing in such technologies for medical education. Following these principles will allow a medical department to optimize the cost-benefit ratio of an investment in simulation and portable computer technology for medical education.

scholarly journals Infrastructure construction without information exchange: the trail clearing mechanism in Atta leafcutter ants

2019 ◽  
Vol 286 (1895) ◽  
pp. 20182539 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas Bochynek ◽  
Martin Burd ◽  
Christoph Kleineidam ◽  
Bernd Meyer
Keyword(s):  
Information Exchange ◽  
Information Transfer ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Group Living ◽  
Ant Colonies ◽  
Leafcutter Ants ◽  
Individual Interaction ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Indirect Information

A wide range of group-living animals construct tangible infrastructure networks, often of remarkable size and complexity. In ant colonies, infrastructure construction may require tens of thousands of work hours distributed among many thousand individuals. What are the individual behaviours involved in the construction and what level of complexity in inter-individual interaction is required to organize this effort? We investigate this question in one of the most sophisticated trail builders in the animal world: the leafcutter ants, which remove leaf litter, cut through overhangs and shift soil to level the path of trail networks that may cumulatively extend for kilometres. Based on obstruction experiments in the field and the laboratory, we identify and quantify different individual trail clearing behaviours. Via a computational model, we further investigate the presence of recruitment, which—through direct or indirect information transfer between individuals—is one of the main organizing mechanisms of many collective behaviours in ants. We show that large-scale transport networks can emerge purely from the stochastic process of workers encountering obstructions and subsequently engaging in removal behaviour with a fixed probability. In addition to such incidental removal, we describe a dedicated clearing behaviour in which workers remove additional obstructions independent of chance encounters. We show that to explain the dynamics observed in the experiments, no information exchange (e.g. via recruitment) is required, and propose that large-scale infrastructure construction of this type can be achieved without coordination between individuals.

scholarly journals EMERGENT SOCIAL RATIONALITY IN A PEER-TO-PEER SYSTEM

2008 ◽  
Vol 11 (04) ◽  
pp. 581-595 ◽  
Author(s):  
ANDREA MARCOZZI ◽  
DAVID HALES
Keyword(s):  
Utility Maximization ◽  
Cost Benefit ◽  
Peer To Peer ◽  
Altruistic Behavior ◽  
Simulation Experiments ◽  
Social Rationality ◽  
Collective Benefit ◽  
The Individual ◽  
P2p Applications ◽  
The Cost

Many peer-to-peer (P2P) applications require that nodes behave altruistically in order to perform tasks collectively. Here we examine a class of simple protocols that aim to self-organize P2P networks into clusters of altruistic nodes that help each other to complete jobs requiring diverse skills. We introduce a variant (called ResourceWorld) of an existing model (called SkillWorld) and compare results obtained in extensive (ten billion interactions) simulation experiments. It was found that for both model variants altruistic behavior was selected when certain cost/benefit constraints were met. Specifically, ResourceWorld selects for altruism only when the collective benefit of an action is at least as high as the individual cost. This gives a minimal method for realizing so-called "social rationality," where nodes select behaviors for the good of the collective even though actions are based on individual greedy utility maximization. Interestingly, the SkillWorld model evidences a kind of superaltruism in which nodes are prepared to cooperate even when the cost is higher than the benefit.

Drugs and Travel

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dom Colbert
Keyword(s):  
Japanese Encephalitis ◽  
Travel Medicine ◽  
Cost Benefit ◽  
Healthy People ◽  
The Internet ◽  
Counterfeit Drugs ◽  
Travel Health ◽  
The Individual ◽  
The Cost ◽  
Over Time

Travel medicine is unique in that drugs and vaccines are given to perfectly healthy people either to prevent an illness that they have only a remote chance of acquiring, e.g. Japanese encephalitis, or to treat an illness that they do not already have, e.g. travellers’ diarrhoea. It is therefore incumbent on travel health advisors to be fully familiar with the nature of the drugs/vaccines they use, the indications and contraindications and the individual cost/benefit ratios. It is useful to give travellers a printout about any drugs prescribed so that they can refer to it when overseas, where medical help may not be always available. It is also useful to know the cost of medicines because this may play a part in choosing a generic versus a proprietary brand. In the opinion of many, buying drugs on the internet is not to be encouraged because of doubts about quality and effectiveness. Purchasing drugs abroad may be easy but beware of the profusion of illicit and counterfeit drugs which are for sale at deceptively cheap prices. There are electronic methods being developed so that any drug purchased anywhere has an identifiable secure ID. However, such methods are not available in the places where they are most needed. Some drugs deteriorate over time, especially in warm climates, so that if the patient is given a large supply before travel, e.g doxycycline, there may be difficulty in storing it correctly. Finally, carriage of drugs across borders is fraught with danger, even if the drugs are accompanied by a doctor’s letter. All medications, including codeine, should be declared at Customs if problems are to be avoided.

Sinkhole Hazards

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Francisco Gutiérrez
Keyword(s):  
Human Activities ◽  
Human Life ◽  
Ground Surface ◽  
Cost Benefit ◽  
Mitigation Strategies ◽  
Anthropogenic Factors ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Hazard And Risk ◽  
The Cost ◽  
Near Future

Sinkholes or dolines are closed depressions characteristic of terrains underlain by soluble rocks (carbonates and/or evaporites). They may be related to the differential dissolutional lowering of the ground surface (solution sinkholes) or to subsidence induced by subsurface karstification (subsidence sinkholes). Three main subsidence mechanisms may operate individually or in combination: collapse, sagging, and suffosion. Subsidence sinkholes may cause severe damage to human built structures, and the occurrence of catastrophic collapse sinkholes may lead to the loss of human life. Dissolution and subsidence processes involved in the development of subsidence sinkholes are controlled by a wide range of natural and anthropogenic factors. Recent literature reviews reveal that the vast majority of the damaging sinkholes are induced by human activities (e.g., water table decline, water input to the ground). The main steps in sinkhole hazard and risk assessment include: (a) construction of comprehensive sinkhole inventories and detailed sinkhole characterization; (b) development of independently tested sinkhole susceptibility and hazard models, preferably incorporating magnitude and frequency relationships; (c) assessing risk combining hazard and vulnerability data. Sinkhole risk models may be used as the basis to perform cost-benefit analyses that allow the cost-effectiveness of different mitigation strategies to be estimated. Three main concepts may be applied to reduce sinkhole risk: (a) avoiding sinkholes and sinkhole-prone areas (preventive planning); (b) diminishing the activity of dissolution and/or subsidence processes (hazard reduction); (c) incorporating special designs in the structures (vulnerability reduction). Although our capabilities to investigate sinkhole hazards and reduce the associated risks will continue to increase in the near future, the damage related to sinkholes will also increase, largely due to the adverse changes caused by human activities on the karst environments and the ineffective knowledge transfer between scientists, technicians, and decision-makers. This article presents the processes and factors involved in sinkhole development and reviews the main approaches used to assess and manage sinkhole hazards and risks.

Masculinities, Remittances and Failure

2017 ◽  
Vol 37 (2) ◽  
pp. 179-193 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew Maycock
Keyword(s):  
Cost Benefit Analysis ◽  
Cost Benefit ◽  
Potential Range ◽  
Benefit Analysis ◽  
Diversification Strategy ◽  
Income Diversification ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
The Cost

Migration from Nepal to India, a major issue in contemporary Nepal, has a wide range of consequences, including significant implications for the performance of masculinity. Remittances, and the associated pressures to send or bring money home, form a central part of the gendering of such migration, but many men are unable to remit to the levels expected of them. Consequently, this overshadows the cost/benefit analysis of migration for many families and brings into question the extent to which migration remains a viable income diversification strategy. The article, based on a multi-methods approach within an ethnographic framework, examines the potential range of effects that migration trajectories may have on males that migrate and are then finding themselves under pressure to remit and perform locally specific forms of masculinity.

scholarly journals Comparative study on the cost benefit between indigenous and cross bred cows reared in rural area of Dinajpur District

1970 ◽  
Vol 39 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 191-196 ◽  
Author(s):  
MM Islam ◽  
AH Topader ◽  
A Rob
Keyword(s):  
Comparative Study ◽  
Dairy Cows ◽  
Cost Benefit Analysis ◽  
Cost Benefit ◽  
Relevant Information ◽  
Benefit Ratio ◽  
Crossbred Cows ◽  
Cost Benefit Ratio ◽  
The Individual ◽  
The Cost

A comparative study on cost benefit analysis of crossbred and indigenous cows reared under the small holder dairy was conducted in Dinajpur district of Bangladesh. A total of 70 dairy cows (20 crossbred and 50 indigenous) from rural level small and marginal dairy farmers (1-3 cows) were selected. Relevant information from the individual milk producers have been collected through personal interrogation method with the help of a structured data collection questionnaire prepared for the study. The cost involvement for feed, treatment and medication of crossbred cows were significantly higher (P<0.01) than the indigenous dairy cows. The per day milk production was found 1.86 ± 0.57 liter in indigenous cow whereas 5.94 ± 3.49 liter was in crossbred cows and income level from milk yields of crossbred cows were 3.19 times higher than the indigenous cows. The cost benefit ratio of rising crossbred and indigenous dairy cows were 1.19 and 1.26, respectively. The current rearing cost of crossbred cows is 2.71 times higher than indigenous cows. Considering the other traits it may be concluded that the raising of crossbred cows was more economic than the raising of indigenous cows. Since crossbred cows were more economical and gave higher yield than the indigenous cows inclusion of a few crossbred cows can increase the income of a dairy entrepreneur which improve the livelihood and provide round the year employment of its family labour. Key words: Cross bred cows; Indigenous cows; Income; expenditure; Cost benefit ratio DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.3329/bjas.v39i1-2.9696 Bang. J. Anim. Sci. 2010, 39(1&2): 191-196

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