Making Sense of Resilience

While resilience is a major concept in development, climate adaptation, and related domains, many doubts remain about how to interpret this term, its relationship with closely overlapping terms, or its normativity. One major view is that, while resilience originally was a descriptive concept denoting some adaptive property of ecosystems, subsequent applications to social contexts distorted its meaning and purpose by framing it as a transformative and normative quality. This article advances an alternative philosophical account based on the scrutiny of C.S. Holling’s original work on resilience. We show that resilience had a central role among Holling’s proposals for reforming environmental science and management, and that Holling framed resilience as an ecosystem’s capacity of absorbing change and exploiting it for adapting or evolving, but also as the social ability of maintaining and opportunistically exploiting that natural capacity. Resilience therefore appears as a transformative social-ecological property that is normative in three ways: as an intrinsic ecological value, as a virtue of organizations or management styles, and as a virtuous understanding of human–nature relations. This interpretation accounts for the practical relevance of resilience, clarifies the relations between resilience and related terms, and is a firm ground for further normative work on resilience.

A novel structural configuration of modular floating wind farms with self-adaptive property

The present work proposes a novel structural configuration for floating wind farms after investigation into the structural configurations of current floating wind farms. The uniqueness of the structural configuration lies in the ability to adjust its heading to wind inflow directions, i.e., the self-adaptive property. To verify the existence of the self-adaptive property, a structural design is performed, and a quasi-static framework to analyze the responses is established. To simplify the loads on wind turbines under yawed inflow conditions, empirical expressions for wind loads are proposed, based on which the quasi-static analysis is performed under the yawed inflow direction of 90 degrees from the structural heading. The analytical result indicates that under yawed inflow conditions, the structural heading will eventually turn to align with the wind inflow direction on account of the structural configuration and the wind turbine control. Then, the effects of inflow wind velocity, initial offset, number of wind turbines, complex environmental conditions and hydroelastic properties on the responses of the structure are investigated.

Learning from informative losses boosts the sense of agency

Sense of agency, the feeling of having control over one’s actions, is modulated by whether one’s choices lead to desired or undesired outcomes. Learning similarly depends on outcome values from previous experience. In the current study, we evaluate a possible link between the sense of agency and learning, by investigating how intentional binding, an implicit measure of agency, changes during a probabilistic learning task. In two experiments, we show increased intentional binding in trials that follow losses, compared with trials that follow wins. Experiment 1 demonstrated that this post-error agency boost (PEAB) effect is rule-specific, as it did not occur if the trial following an error involved different action–outcome contingencies. Furthermore, PEAB was not modulated by the type of outcome presentation (monetary vs. affective). Experiment 2 showed that the PEAB effect can also occur when the current action involves a forced (as opposed to free) choice, but only when the previous, loss-provoking action was chosen freely. Thus, PEAB occurs when current actions are informed by outcomes of one’s own previous action choices. Electroencephalography (EEG) data linked these effects to two event-related potential components, namely, the Feedback Related Negativity and the P300. Taken together, these results support the notion that PEAB reflects an adaptive property of human sense of agency, facilitating effective learning about the action–outcome structure of a specific task, to optimise future performance. By clarifying the conditions for enhancing the sense of agency through learning, this work adds to our understanding of human learning and agency.

Tribo-dynamic analysis and motion control of a rotating manipulator based on the load and temperature dependent friction model

Joint friction has a significant influence on the dynamics and motion control of manipulators. However, the friction effect is often omitted or simplified in previous studies. In this paper, we establish the dynamics model of a single joint in a rotating industrial manipulator taking detailed friction effects into consideration and propose a new control algorithm for the friction compensation purpose. Firstly, the manipulator dynamics modeling is carried out employing a recently-proposed extended static friction model, which depicts load and temperature influence on Coulomb, Stribeck and viscous terms. Moreover, based on the established dynamics model, the paper presents a new adaptive fast nonsingular terminal sliding mode (AFNTSM) controller. The proposed approach has the advantages of continuous control inputs, fast convergence rate, no singularity and great robustness against disturbances. Furthermore, its adaptive property does not require any prior knowledge of the upper bound of the uncertainties. Finally, the proposed controller is applied to the manipulator joint trajectory tracking problem with varying friction subject to load and temperature changes. The numerical simulation verifies the effectiveness of our proposed method and its advantages over other controllers.

The influence of double tillering node on winter hardiness and yield of winter triticale (× Triticosecale Wittm.)

Исследования проводились в Московской области в 2014 2016 годах. Зимостойкость озимой тритикале является основным адаптивным свойством, определяющим урожайность культуры в регионе. Неблагоприятные условия перезимовки могут приводить к гибели узла кущения, что неминуемо вызывает гибель растений. Узел кущения обычно залегает на глубине 1,5 2,0 см от поверхности почвы. В некоторых случаях формируется нижний узел кущения, который развивается из пазушной почки колеоптиля и залегает на глубине заделки семян. В случае гибели нормального узла кущения нижний узел обеспечивает лучшую сохранность растений и снижение изреживания посевов. Данная работа посвящена поиску образцов озимой тритикале с повышенным содержанием двойных узлов кущения, оценке сопряжённости этого признака с сохранностью растений весной и урожайностью зерна. Изучено влияние данного признака на перезимовку и урожайность зерна 43 сортообразцов озимой гексаплоидной тритикале в условиях Центрального района Нечернозёмной зоны. Метеорологические условия в годы исследований различались: зимний период 2014 2015 годов был благоприятным для перезимовки растений тритикале в 2015 2016 годах наблюдались оттепели, что отрицательно сказалось на сохранности некоторых сортообразцов. Показано, что повышенное содержание растений с двумя узлами кущения положительно сказывается на перезимовке тритикале. Данный признак не оказывает прямого влияния на урожайность, однако выявлена положительная тенденция. Это даёт возможность отбора форм, сочетающих высокую адаптивность и урожайность зерна. Investigations took place in the Moscow region in 2014 2016. Winter hardiness of winter triticale is the main adaptive property that determines the crop yield in the region. Unfavorable conditions of overwintering can lead to the death of tillering node, which inevitably causes the death of plants. Tillering node usually lies at a depth of 1.5 2.0 cm below the soil surface. In some cases, the lower tillering node is formed it develops from the axillary bud of the coleoptile and lies at the depth of the seeding. In case of death of the normal tillering node, the lower node provides better plant safety and reduced thinning of crops. The research is concerned with the searching samples of winter triticale with a high content of double tillering nodes, the assessment of the association of this feature with the safety of plants for spring and grain yield. It was explored the effect of this trait on the overwintering and grain yield covering 43 varieties of winter hexaploid triticale in the Central region of the NonChernozem zone. Meteorological conditions in the years of research varied: winter in 2014 2015 was favorable for overwintering triticale plants in 2015 2016 thaws were observed, which negatively affected the safety of some varieties. It was shown that increased content of plants with two tillering nodes has a positive impact on the triticale overwintering. This trait does not directly influence crop yield, but a positive trend was revealed. This makes it possible to select forms that combine high adaptability and grain yield.

Effects of Diverse Property Rights on Rural Neighbourhood Public Open Space (POS) Governance: Evidence from Sabah, Malaysia

There are severe issues of public open space (POS) underinvestment and overexploitation. However, few studies have been conducted on the property rights structure and its impacts on rural commons governance, specifically concerning local neighbourhood residential POS quality and sustainability. The social-ecological system framework and the new institutional economics theory were employed to examine the local diverse property rights system and its effects on the emergence of POS dilemmas. Rural commons covering neighbourhood residential Country Lease (CL) and Native Title (NT) POS from the districts of Kota Kinabalu and Penampang, Sabah Malaysia were selected. A mixed-method phenomenological case study, involving multi-stakeholders’ perspectives across public-private-user sectors, was employed. This study revealed four main interconnected property rights issues, including attenuated rights, incomplete rights, maladaptive rights, and security-based de facto perceptive rights, under the complex state-private regime, which incentivise the opportunistic behaviour of individuals in externalising POS commons dilemmas. The findings further inferred that the local diverse property rights issues and POS dilemmas caused, and are associated with, other rights issues and dilemmas, forming a rights-dilemmas nexus. Not only do the institutional failures actuate POS dilemmas, but the former also engender other forms of property rights failures, while the latter cause other POS dilemmas. This paper suggests policy and management insights to public officials, in which the importance of the institutional-social-POS behavioural factor and the re-engineering of POS governance via adaptive property rights realignment are emphasised.

Theoretical analysis on the adaptive vibration attenuation of a fixed-fixed beam realized by a piezo-shape memory alloy ferrule

In this article, the vibration attenuation of a fixed-fixed beam with a piezo-shape memory alloy ferrule is theoretically investigated. First, a dynamic model of the beam with a piezo-shape memory alloy ferrule is established, and the nonlinear dynamic response of the model is numerically analysed. The results show that the stability of the beam structure can be improved adaptively through self-regulation of the stiffness of the piezo-shape memory alloy ferrule undergoing external excitations. The effects of some internal system characteristics, such as the ferrule dimensions as well as the initial ferrule temperatures and boundary conditions, on the vibration attenuation of the beam are discussed. The stability of the proposed model under different external factors, including damping and external excitations, is also investigated. Compared with an aluminium ferrule, the present ferrule is better at the suppressing vibrations of the beam, and its adaptive property avoids the structural resonances for bigger ferrule sizes, making it more intelligent, efficient and convenient.

Impact of cryopreservation on lipid composition of reproductive cells of male sterlets (Acipenser Ruthenus L.)

Aim. To estimate the impact of low temperatures on the lipid composition of reproductive cells of male sterlets (Acipenser ruthenus L) in cryopreservation environment. Methods. The determination of sperm quality (color, consistence, concentration and motility of spermatozoa) was estimated by common biochemical methods using standard equipment. Thin-layer chromatography was used to reveal fi ve fractions of neutral lipids in the sperm of investigated fi sh, which were distributed on the plates as follows: the starting line demonstrated phospholipids, cholesterol, free fatty acids, triacylglycerol and ethers of cholesterol. The adaptive property of sperm was estimated by the level of spermatozoa survival prior to and after cryopreservation. Results. The obtained results of sterlet sperm activity prior to and after cryopreservation demonstrate high quality of native sperm and its considerable deterioration after freezing/thawing. Conclusions. The impact of low temperatures on the lipid composition of reproductive cells of male sterlets (Acipenser ruthenus L) in cryopreservation environment leads to impairments of the phospholipid bilayer of their membranes. It was established that during the thawing of frozen sperm cells which preserved their viability after cryopreservation their motility and capability of fertilizing an ovum were somewhat restored with slowing down of sperm cell motility.

Modernization of adaptive matching pursuit method to analyze geophysical signals of pulse nature

The paper is devoted to the development and comparison of different numerical methods which increase the adaptive property and improve the accuracy of matching pursuit algorithm in connection to geoacoustic and electromagnetic signals. At each step of adaptive matching pursuit, a function is chosen which has the highest correlation with an initial signal. Then parameters of a chosen function are refined. The refinement is performed by the help of different grid methods and methods based on gradient direction search. The paper considers the peculiarities of application of sparse approximation methods to geophysical signals of pulse nature and compares different variants of modification of adaptive matching pursuit algorithm.