Beyond collective intelligence: Collective adaptation

We develop a conceptual framework for studying collective adaptation: the process of iterative co-adaptation of cognitive strategies, social environments, and problem structures. Going beyond searching for “intelligent” collectives, we integrate research from different disciplines to show how collective adaptation perspective can help explain why similar collectives can follow very different and sometimes counter-intuitive trajectories. We further discuss how this perspective explains why successful collectives appear to have a general collective intelligence factor, why collectives rarely optimize their behaviour for a single problem, why their behaviours can appear myopic, and why playful exploration of alternative social systems can be useful. We describe different approaches for the study of collective adaptation, including computational models inspired by evolution and statistical physics. The framework of collective adaptation enables the integration and formalization of knowledge about human collective phenomena and opens doors to a rigorous transdisciplinary pursuit of important outstanding questions about human sociality.

Integrating research into language teaching and learning: Learners and teachers as co-researchers exploring praxis

Classroom research has long been recommended as a fruitful avenue for English language teaching (ELT) in applied linguistics. Yet recognition of the value of practitioners exploring their own praxis has only recently come to the fore. In this plenary, I focus on Exploratory Practice, a form of ‘fully inclusive practitioner research’, in which learners as well as teachers are invited to integrate research and pedagogy. Drawing on studies from around the world, I spotlight the potential of learners and teachers to contribute to debates in the fields of language teaching and learning, applied linguistics and social sciences alike. This co-production between learners and teachers illuminates the nexus of research and pedagogy (praxis), providing plentiful puzzles for exploration.

Resistance, Rage, Paralysis, and Paralysis by Proxy: Reflecting on Reactions to Contentious Content in the Classroom

Sociology curricula often house a variety of “hot button” or contentious topics (e.g., race relations, crime and deviance, personal freedoms/choice, gender). While departments may be giving more attention to ensuring that these topics are included in their curriculum, here I argue that we also need to engage students in reflection about their gut reaction to these divisive topics. How students take in the material will affect their ability to successfully meet the learning outcomes throughout their program. This research was guided by past work categorizing student reactions into three categories: resistance, paralysis, and rage. Preliminary results are presented, and a fourth reaction, paralysis by proxy, is also proposed. Last is a discussion of how we as educators can integrate research on student reactions into course design/implementation, thus setting students up for success.

Systematic Review of Informal Urban Economies

Amid globalization and market liberalization, urban informality has continued to grow in leaps and bounds in many parts of the world. Against this backdrop, the purpose of this paper is to provide a systematic review of studies conducted on urban economic informality at various geopolitical contexts to provide an update on the current state of knowledge in the urban informal economy-related research. A total number of 290 studies were sourced from various academic sources; however, a total number of 166 research papers satisfied the requirements of this review paper. The findings of this paper show that research on the urban informal economy has grown from 2000 to 2021, which is a 22-year period in which this review paper was based. The main themes of urban economic informality research depict it as a multifaceted system that is constituted by inputs, processes and outputs that have linkages with the formal economy. Based on these findings, it is recommended that more research should focus on how to integrate research on urban economic informality into the broader agenda of sustainable development.

Karawun: assisting evaluation of advances in multimodal imaging for neurosurgical planning and intraoperative neuronavigation

Submitted to Magnetic Resonance in MedicinePurposeTo introduce a tool allowing neurosurgeons to evaluate the results of research tractography workflows for presurgical planning and intraoperative image-guidance, using standard neurosurgical navigation platforms.Theory and MethodsImproving communication between neurosurgeons and researchers developing new image acquisition and processing methods is critical for rapid translation of research to surgical practice. Presenting research outputs within existing clinical workflows is one approach that can assist such interdisciplinary communication. Neurosurgical navigation platforms can display and manipulate a wide range of medical image data and associated delineations and thus allow clinicians to evaluate the impact of new imaging research on their work. Currently, it is extremely difficult to integrate research-based image processing outputs into standard neurosurgical navigation platforms.ResultsIn this note we introduce Karawun, an open-source software tool for converting outputs from research imaging pipelines, especially diffusion MRI tractography reconstructions using advanced methodologies currently unavailable on commercial navigation platforms, into forms that can be imported into the Brainlab neurosurgical navigation platform (Brainlab AG, Munich, Germany). The externally created tractography images and delineations can be viewed and manipulated as if they were created by Brainlab. We illustrate how two surgical workups, created using open-source tools and different processing choices can be presented to the neurosurgeon who can evaluate the impact of the differences between the two workups on surgical decisions.ConclusionKarawun allows researchers developing novel imaging methodologies to display their results in environments that are familiar to clinical end-users, especially neurosurgeons, thus assisting translation of research into clinical practice.

Goal Missed, Self Hit: Goal-Setting, Goal-Failure, and Their Affective, Motivational, and Behavioral Consequences

Setting high and specific goals is one of the best-established management tools to increase performance and motivation. However, in recent years, potential downsides of goal-setting are being discussed. One possible downside is the high risk of failing the goal. In an approach to integrate research on the consequences of goal-failure and the basic assumptions of goal-setting theory, we investigated whether failure of a high and specific goal has detrimental effects on a person’s affect, self-esteem, and motivation. In Experiment 1, 185 participants received fictitious feedback about attaining or failing an assigned high and specific goal. In Experiment 2 with 86 participants, we manipulated goal-failure through task-difficulty and we included task choice as a behavioral measure of motivation. In both experiments, participants who failed the high and specific goal showed a decrease in affect, self-esteem, and motivation compared to participants who attained that goal. Results indicate that failing a high and specific goal can be damaging for self-related factors that may be crucial for organizational long-term outcomes. We advise organizations to consider potential undesirable effects when using goal-setting interventions.

Artificial Intelligence for Biology

Synopsis Despite efforts to integrate research across different subdisciplines of biology, the scale of integration remains limited. We hypothesize that future generations of Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies specifically adapted for biological sciences will help enable the reintegration of biology. AI technologies will allow us not only to collect, connect, and analyze data at unprecedented scales, but also to build comprehensive predictive models that span various subdisciplines. They will make possible both targeted (testing specific hypotheses) and untargeted discoveries. AI for biology will be the cross-cutting technology that will enhance our ability to do biological research at every scale. We expect AI to revolutionize biology in the 21st century much like statistics transformed biology in the 20th century. The difficulties, however, are many, including data curation and assembly, development of new science in the form of theories that connect the subdisciplines, and new predictive and interpretable AI models that are more suited to biology than existing machine learning and AI techniques. Development efforts will require strong collaborations between biological and computational scientists. This white paper provides a vision for AI for Biology and highlights some challenges.

Reframing strategic, managed retreat for transformative climate adaptation

Human societies will transform to address climate change and other stressors. How they choose to transform will depend on what societal values they prioritize. Managed retreat can play a powerful role in expanding the range of possible futures that transformation could achieve and in articulating the values that shape those futures. Consideration of retreat raises tensions about what losses are unacceptable and what aspects of societies are maintained, purposefully altered, or allowed to change unaided. Here we integrate research on retreat, transformational adaptation, climate damages and losses, and design and decision support to chart a roadmap for strategic, managed retreat. At its core, this roadmap requires a fundamental reconceptualization of what it means for retreat to be strategic and managed. The questions raised are relevant to adaptation science and societies far beyond the remit of retreat.

Teachers Learning to Implement Equitable Classroom Talk

Language in education for children and youth from low-income communities of color, including those learning English as an additional language, has been fraught for decades with ideological entanglements, conceptual ambiguities, and empirical limitations. Meanwhile, the teacher learning challenge to implement equitable teaching practices remains largely unresolved. With an eye toward improving equitable classroom talk (ECT)—that is, meaningful participation in disciplinary practices through communal and connected language interactions—for all students from minoritized communities, we integrate research on additional language development, disciplinary practices, sociocultural classroom interactions, and teacher learning. We recommend researcher-educator collaborations (a) develop indicators of ECT, (b) use lesson videos to make ECT visible, and (c) develop and test materials to support and scale teacher learning to enact ECT.

External Enablers of Entrepreneurship: A Review and Agenda for Accumulation of Strategically Actionable Knowledge

The enabling influence of environmental changes—be they technological, regulatory, demographic, sociocultural, or otherwise—on emerging ventures receives a growing interest from researchers and practitioners. To support knowledge accumulation in this important area, we systematically review and integrate research that is dispersed across disciplines, nominal types of change, and theoretical approaches. Under a unified terminology within a cross-level (environment to agent), process-aware framework, we examine what has been done and learnt. On this basis, we develop an agenda for further, future accumulation of knowledge about the strategic and serendipitous influence of environmental changes throughout and beyond the venture creation process.