Sustaining Democracy

Democratic spaces must also be durable. Durable spaces facilitate our attachments to our communities and to other members; they help us sustain communities. Chapter 3 draws from Alexis de Tocqueville’s writing on democracy to explain how the durability of the built environment can be a powerful resource for generating the attachments that sustain democratic communities by (1) continually reminding citizens of their social obligations and (2) facilitating repeated interactions between citizens. The chapter then turns to the example of Twitter—particularly the mechanism of hashtags—to explore these dynamics in a digital environment. Hashtags provide temporary boundaries that are useful for mobilizing, but not sustaining, communities of interest; as a result, Twitter is not a platform well suited for cultivating the attachments required for longer-term cooperative activity. The chapter concludes with suggestions as to how we might design more durable spaces—and sustainable communities—in digital environments.

From the Individual to the Social

This chapter focuses on social factors in cognition. There is a puzzle about the human capacity to reflect on our beliefs. As argued in Chapter 4, this capacity, when exercised privately, does not make our belief acquisition more reliable. If we assume, however, that this capacity was selected for by evolution, like other features of the human body and human mind, then the question arises as to what it was selected for. This chapter focuses on a hypothesis due to Hugo Mercier and Dan Sperber: that our capacity to reflect was selected for its role in cooperative activity. The upshot of this hypothesis, if it should prove correct, is that reflection does indeed contribute to greater reliability in belief acquisition, but only when it is used in cooperative problem-solving rather than private reflection.

Analyzing Socially Shared Regulation of Learning during Cooperative Learning and the Role of Equal Contribution: A Grounded Theory Approach

Although cooperative learning is an effective instructional method, it cannot be taken for granted that students will gain new knowledge when engaging in a cooperative activity. Even if cooperative learning is effectively designed, problems might arise regarding cognitive, behavioral and motivational aspects of learning. For students to gain knowledge, cognition, metacognition, behavior and motivation should be collectively regulated by the group, which is called the socially shared regulation of learning (SSRL). However, up until now, there has been no consensus about how SSRL is manifested during cooperative learning. This study investigated how SSRL is manifested during cooperative learning by means of a grounded theory approach. This was done to identify what is necessary for effective SSRL and what its consequences are. A theoretical model was built based on the data in order to portray these prerequisites and consequences of SSRL. This study also investigated whether equal participation fostered SSRL. In this study, participants were students from the fourth, fifth and sixth grades of elementary school, working together in groups of four (n = 104). The data indicated that SSRL is a rare process, the absence of which caused less structured collaboration in groups who were not prompted to participate equally.

Mycobacteriophage–antibiotic therapy promotes enhanced clearance of drug-resistant Mycobacterium abscessus

ABSTRACT Infection by multidrug-resistant Mycobacterium abscessus is increasingly prevalent in cystic fibrosis (CF) patients, leaving clinicians with few therapeutic options. A compassionate study showed the clinical improvement of a CF patient with a disseminated M. abscessus (GD01) infection, following injection of a phage cocktail, including phage Muddy. Broadening the use of phage therapy in patients as a potential antibacterial alternative necessitates the development of biological models to improve the reliability and successful prediction of phage therapy in the clinic. Herein, we demonstrate that Muddy very efficiently lyses GD01 in vitro, an effect substantially increased with standard drugs. Remarkably, this cooperative activity was retained in an M. abscessus model of infection in CFTR-depleted zebrafish, associated with a striking increase in larval survival and reduction in pathological signs. The activity of Muddy was lost in macrophage-ablated larvae, suggesting that successful phage therapy relies on functional innate immunity. CFTR-depleted zebrafish represent a practical model to rapidly assess phage treatment efficacy against M. abscessus isolates, allowing the identification of drug combinations accompanying phage therapy and treatment prediction in patients. This article has an associated First Person interview with the first author of the paper.

Achieving the maximum synergistic effect in production

Practical activities aimed at improving the efficiency of production often determine the theoretical developments in this area. In this practical activity, it is always possible to discover hidden patterns that can be of great importance for the completion of the relevant theoretical provisions. The article attempts to comprehend some aspects of practical human activity in the direction of increasing the efficiency of production in order to use them to build a synergistic effect management apparatus. Due to the novelty of the issue and the wide range of different approaches, it is necessary to limit ourselves only to a conceptual consideration in order to gain an opportunity to get into the field of practical use in production activities on this basis. The authors propose the concept of achieving the maximum synergistic effect in production on the basis of a new organizational form of cooperative activity, which allows purposefully obtaining an emergent, super-effective result. In order to develop and justify the concept of achieving the maximum synergistic effect in production, a multi-level analysis was carried out at the level of mental activity to develop ways to obtain a synergistic effect, at the level of distinctive features of global innovations in production, and at the level of compatibility of actions to obtain a synergistic effect. Taking into account the synonymy of the concepts of «synergy» and «cooperation», the conclusion about the dominant role of cooperation in obtaining an emergent synergistic property in man-made activities is made. It is shown that the emergent property is most evident in the new organizational form, which is the ergodynamic cooperative (EDC). Borrowing certain features of the analyzed global innovations in the formation of the EDC, the authors suggest that the EDC can claim to be an independent global innovation.

Concept of achieving maximum synergistic effect in production

The article considers a concept of achieving the maximum synergistic effect in production on the basis of a new organizational form of cooperative activity, which allows to purposefully obtain an emergent result. There is a problem of measuring the synergistic effectiveness, which is explained by the variety of ways to assess the synergistic effect in general and in individual areas of human activity. Creativity in production activities, associated with intuitive thinking, can manifest itself in the form of global innovations, which differ in scale in time and in the degree of distribution in the areas of production, and have methodological significance for the laws of management in this activity. There have been discussed several global innovations in the field of process management to achieve production efficiency (division of labor; in-line production; flexible automated production; virtual production) with the division of labor. These global innovations are not connected to each other in a formal way and are the result of human creative activity based on intuitive thinking. The division of labor simultaneously leads to cooperation. The pattern of routine-creative transformation allows us to describe a new form of labor organization based on the so-called ergodynamic cooperative, the peculiarity of the structure of which is that cooperative activity has an integral part that provides a synergistic effect. There appears an inverse method of achieving emergence, from developing the emergence of the emergence property due to the inventive activity of the creative subject to the realization of this property in the product due to the cooperative activity of the cooperative participants. It is formally proved that the ergodynamic cooperative is an emergent-producing system that functions within the traditional paradigm of production efficiency, that is, belongs to global innovations.

An Interactive & Cooperative Activity for Exploring Animal Systematics Using Cards & String

Students sometimes struggle to organize complex concepts and visualize the connectedness of hierarchical groups, yet much of the biological sciences depends on ranking, ordering, or grouping of information. Diagnosing disease, converting units, and evolutionary relationships all follow stepwise ranking of groups of information. This article presents a cooperative, low-stakes, inexpensive method for novice students to organize hierarchical information. As an example, students work together placing and rearranging animal cards according to taxonomic and evolutionary relationships along a string using shared characteristics. The cards provided address Next Generation Science Standards pertaining to inheritance/variation (LS3) and unity and diversity (LS4). I provide a detailed description of the activity as well as the tools needed to perform this lesson.

Greater Biofilm Formation and Increased Biodegradation of Polyethylene Film by a Microbial Consortium of Arthrobacter sp. and Streptomyces sp.

The widespread use of polyethylene (PE) mulch films has led to a significant accumulation of plastic waste in agricultural soils. The biodegradation of plastic waste by microorganisms promises to provide a cost-effective and environmentally-friendly alternative for mitigating soil plastic pollution. A large number of microorganisms capable of degrading PE have been reported, but degradation may be further enhanced by the cooperative activity of multiple microbial species. Here, two novel strains of Arthrobacter sp. and Streptomyces sp. were isolated from agricultural soils and shown to grow with PE film as a sole carbon source. Arthrobacter sp. mainly grew in the suspension phase of the culture, and Streptomyces sp. formed substantial biofilms on the surface of the PE film, indicating that these strains were of different metabolic types and occupied different microenvironments with contrasting nutritional access. Individual strains were able to degrade the PE film to some extent in a 90-day inoculation experiment, as indicated by decreased hydrophobicity, increased carbonyl index and CO2 evolution, and the formation of biofilms on the film surface. However, a consortium of both strains had a much greater effect on these degradation properties. Together, these results provide new insights into the mechanisms of PE biodegradation by a microbial consortium composed of different types of microbes with possible metabolic complementarities.