Classical Competition Research Articles

Retraction: Clinical Application of Thyrotropin Receptor Antibodies.

Thyrotropin receptor antibodies (TRAb) are specific for Graves' disease (GD) and play a crucial role in the pathogenesis of GD. TRAb assays have recently been greatly improved. This review discusses the clinical application of TRAb in the differential diagnosis of hyperthyroidism, the prognosis of GD, GD in gestation and pediatrics, and GD related ophthalmopathy (GO). In addition to the classical competition and bioassays, a new bridging assay has emerged for TRAb assays. TRAb is the main pathogenic mechanism of hyperthyroidism in GD. Treated GD still has a high rate of recurrence and even a short-term surge of TRAb, leading to rapid deterioration of GO. Fetal goiter may be associated with elevated maternal TRAb during pregnancy, overtreatment may lead to fetal hypothyroidism. Pediatric patients with GD have high TRAb, poor remission from treatment, and insignificant manifestations of GO. TRAb is significantly correlated with GO activity and severity. Currently, TRAb assay has high specificity and sensitivity and can be used directly to identify the cause of hyperthyroidism. TRAb can be used to predict recurrence of drug treated GD or progression of GO after RAI therapy. TRAb should be measured regularly for GD in gestation to guide anti-thyroid medication to avoid thyrotoxicosis or hypothyroidism in the fetus. Monitoring TRAb in pediatric GD may help control the progression of GO. TRAb assay is an important guide for the treatment of GO.

A Griffith description of fracture for non-monotonic loading with application to fatigue

With the fundamental objective of establishing the universality of the Griffith energy competition to describe the growth of large cracks in solids not just under monotonic but under general loading conditions, this paper puts forth a generalization of the classical Griffith energy competition in nominally elastic brittle materials to arbitrary non-monotonic quasistatic loading conditions, which include monotonic and cyclic loadings as special cases. Centered around experimental observations, the idea consists in: (i) viewing the critical energy release rate Gcnot as a material constant but rather as a material function of both space X and time t, (ii) one that decreases in value as the loading progresses, this solely within a small region Ωℓ(t) around crack fronts, with the characteristic size ℓ of such a region being material specific, and (iii) with the decrease in value of Gc being dependent on the history of the elastic fields in Ωℓ(t). By construction, the proposed Griffith formulation is able to describe any Paris-law behavior of the growth of large cracks in nominally elastic brittle materials for the limiting case when the loading is cyclic. For the opposite limiting case when the loading is monotonic, the formulation reduces to the classical Griffith formulation. Additional properties of the proposed formulation are illustrated via a parametric analysis and direct comparisons with representative fatigue fracture experiments on a ceramic, mortar, and PMMA.

Modeling the transmission of antibiotic-resistant Enterobacterales in the community: A systematic review

BackgroundAntibiotic-resistant Enterobacterales (ARE) are a public health threat worldwide. Dissemination of these opportunistic pathogens has been largely studied in hospitals. Despite high prevalence of asymptomatic colonization in the community in some regions of the world, less is known about ARE acquisition and spread in this setting. As explaining the community ARE dynamics has not been straightforward, mathematical models can be key to explore underlying phenomena and further evaluate the impact of interventions to curb ARE circulation outside of hospitals. MethodsWe conducted a systematic review of mathematical modeling studies focusing on the transmission of AR-E in the community, excluding models only specific to hospitals. We extracted model features (population, setting), formalism (compartmental, individual-based), biological hypotheses (transmission, infection, antibiotic impact, resistant strain specificities) and main findings. We discussed additional mechanisms to be considered, open scientific questions, and most pressing data needs. ResultsWe identified 18 modeling studies focusing on the human transmission of ARE in the community (n=11) or in both community and hospital (n=7). Models aimed at (i) understanding mechanisms driving resistance dynamics; (ii) identifying and quantifying transmission routes; or (iii) evaluating public health interventions to reduce resistance. To overcome the difficulty of reproducing observed ARE dynamics in the community using the classical two-strains competition model, studies proposed to include mechanisms such as within-host strain competition or a strong host population structure. Studies inferring model parameters from longitudinal carriage data were mostly based on models considering the ARE strain only. They showed differences in ARE carriage duration depending on the acquisition mode: returning travelers have a significantly shorter carriage duration than discharged hospitalized patient or healthy individuals. Interestingly, predictions across models regarding the success of public health interventions to reduce ARE rates depended on pathogens, settings, and antibiotic resistance mechanisms. For E. coli, reducing person-to-person transmission in the community had a stronger effect than reducing antibiotic use in the community. For Klebsiella pneumoniae, reducing antibiotic use in hospitals was more efficient than reducing community use. ConclusionsThis study raises the limited number of modeling studies specifically addressing the transmission of ARE in the community. It highlights the need for model development and community-based data collection especially in low- and middle-income countries to better understand acquisition routes and their relative contribution to observed ARE levels. Such modeling will be critical to correctly design and evaluate public health interventions to control ARE transmission in the community and further reduce the associated infection burden.

"Modeling Diffusive Search by Non-Adaptive Sperm: Empirical and Computational Insights".

During fertilization, mammalian sperm undergo a winnowing selection process that reduces the candidate pool of potential fertilizers from ~106-1011 cells to 101-102 cells (depending on the species). Classical sperm competition theory addresses the positive or 'stabilizing' selection that acts on sperm phenotypes within populations of organisms but does not strictly address the developmental consequences of sperm traits among individual organisms that are under purifying selection during fertilization. It is the latter that is of utmost concern for improving assisted reproductive technologies (ART) because 'low fitness' sperm may be inadvertently used for fertilization during interventions that rely heavily on artificial sperm selection, such as intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI). Importantly, some form of sperm selection is used in nearly all forms of ART (e.g., differential centrifugation, swim-up, or hyaluronan binding assays, etc.). To date, there is no unifying quantitative framework (i.e., theory of sperm selection) that synthesizes causal mechanisms of selection with observed natural variation in individual sperm traits. In this report, we reframe the physiological function of sperm as a collective diffusive search process and develop multi-scale computational models to explore the causal dynamics that constrain sperm 'fitness' during fertilization. Several experimentally useful concepts are developed, including a probabilistic measure of sperm 'fitness' as well as an information theoretic measure of the magnitude of sperm selection, each of which are assessed under systematic increases in microenvironmental selective pressure acting on sperm motility patterns.

Newsvendor Competition with Endogenous Biases

Extensive studies have revealed that newsvendor decisions by human decision-makers are often biased by cognitive limitations, and, therefore, fail to achieve optimal profits prescribed by normative models. These biases are typically considered as liabilities in individual inventory decision-making, and much research has focused on developing methods to debias the decision-maker—for example, by providing decision support tools. However, in competitive settings biases can provide a competitive advantage, such that a biased newsvendor may earn a higher profit than an unbiased one. This raises the question of whether and when firms should debias their decision-makers. In this paper, we analyze decision biases that are endogenous rather than exogenous in competing newsvendor games. Specifically, we develop a two-stage game-theoretic model in which competing firms first select their decision-makers typefied by their bias levels, and then engage in a classic inventory competition game. Our analysis confirms the positive effect of the decision-maker’s bias on a firm’s economic outcome. However, this effect only appears in competitions in which decision biases are exogenously given. When biases are endogenously selected, firms are always (weakly) worse off than if they all had rational decision-makers. Our results suggest that debiasing at the industry level (e.g., adopting advanced inventory planning software) could benefit all players; however, individual firms do not have the incentive to do so in the absence of coordination mechanisms.

Extension of the Lotka-Volterra competition model

In this paper, we introduce the (p,q)-Lotka-Volterra competition model which is extension of classical Lotka-Volterra competition model. The main purpose is to give some results on the existence and non-existence of positive solutions. Upper and lower solutions technique and comparison arguments plays a significant in our main proof.

Identifying outlier scores and outlier jurors to reduce manipulation in classical music competitions

AbstractManipulations in classical music competitions are a proven problem that has as yet not been eradicated from the competition practice. Several examples are provided. We aim to compare and analyze different methods of reducing manipulation in classical music competitions, focusing on outlier scores and on outlier jurors. First, we investigate the typical approach of correcting or discarding individual jurors' scores that significantly deviate from the mean or median of scores received by a given candidate. We then introduce a new method that involves the exclusion of outlier jurors (EOJ). This approach implies that all scores of jurors with ratings that substantially differ from those of other jurors are removed and not taken into account when determining the ranking of candidates. The properties of both approaches are discussed in hypothetical voting scenarios, where one or more jurors assign scores that deviate markedly from those awarded by other jurors. Finally, we present examples of applying various methods to real-world data from classical music competitions, demonstrating the potential effectiveness and implications of each approach in reducing manipulation within these events. Two examples are taken from the International Karol Szymanowski Music Competition, which took place in September 2023 in Katowice, Poland, where EOJ was adopted for the first time as the official scoring system in four competition categories: piano, violin, vocal, and string quartet.

Leyla Gencer Şan Yarışması Üzerine Sistematik Bir Değerlendirme

Several prestigious classical music competitions are organized in the national and international fields. These competitions, organized in the field such as performance and composition, motivate many young artists and allow them to achieve significant successes. The Leyla Gencer Voice Competition is an international and worldwide-known voice competition, which is the oldest and most important competition held in Turkey in the opera genre. Leyla Gencer, known as La Diva Turca and entitled as State Artist by the Turkish Republic, is one of our world-renowned artists, and with her pioneering character of music, she has made significant contributions to the promotion of the art of opera to our country and the announcement of Turkish opera singers to the world. Leyla Gencer Voice Competition has been organized with different frequencies starting from 1995 until 2018. This competition has been also held in the years after her death and it has maintained its prestige until today. From the past to the present, numerous great performers started their careers with prestigious music competitions such as Leyla Gencer Voice Competition. They achieved important career positions with their success of the competitions and now they are worldwide known artists. In this study, information about the life of Leyla Gencer, who made great contributions to the development of Turkish Opera art, was given; and the findings of the voice contest organized in her name were tabulated and interpreted by using document analysis methodology. The findings were created by systematical analysis of the information on the official website of the Leyla Gencer Voice Competition and the one in the archive of the Istanbul Foundation for Culture and Arts. Data regarding terms and conditions of the competition, audition processes, winners, awards, jury members for the preliminary auditions and finals, winners by country, Turkish award winners, number of awards received by Turkish award winners, distribution of award winners by voice type, distribution of award winners by gender, organizing institutions and gala concerts were evaluated and presented by classifying them according to years. As a result, the importance of the increase in prestigious competitions in our country, the increase in the motivation of young soloists, the creation of an archive of the competitions, and most importantly the establishment of a national federation of music competitions were emphasized.

Capturing chaos: a multidisciplinary approach to nonlinear population dynamics

The hypothesis of chaotic population dynamics was proposed in ecology by Robert May in the mid-1970s. At that time the idea was controversial, and it remains a fascinating and unsettled issue today. We report the results of a 20-year laboratory research programme that continued in the tradition of the pioneering ecologist Thomas Park using the Tribolium flour beetle model. We present biological evidence of complex population dynamics – including bifurcations, chaos, saddle nodes, phase switching, resonance effects, and multiple attractors – by using a low-dimensional difference equation model for Tribolium together with carefully designed, conducted, and statistically analysed experiments. The model, parameterized with data, also explains the results of historical Tribolium experiments, such as the classical competition studies of Thomas Park and his colleagues. Our research programme has inspired other studies using the Tribolium mathematical and laboratory model. This work was conducted by a multidisciplinary team, which included Jim Cushing.

Do experts and laypersons differ? Some evidence from international classical music competitions

Do experts and laypersons differ in their judgments of quality? We investigate this question in the context of classical music performance, taking advantage of the fact that in many international music competitions, lay audiences as well as expert juries award prizes. Using novel data on 370 competition-editions held between 1979 and 2021, we find that jury and audience preferences match only 38% of the time. We then explore gender bias and host country bias as possible explanations for the divergence between jury and audience judgments by comparing first prizewinners and audience prizewinners with other finalists. Additionally, we use the fact that many musicians compete repeatedly to examine the predictive value of prizewinning on success in future competitions. We find that being female and being from the competition host country are negatively correlated with the likelihood of being the jury's top choice but have no relationship with the likelihood of winning an audience prize. Additionally, winning an audience prize predicts winning future competitions but being ranked first by the jury does not. Importantly, our findings extend the literature on the value of expert opinion to a new setting, using an explicitly non-expert counterfactual.

The influence of tactical positioning on performance in sprint cross-country skiing.

The purpose of this study was to examine the influence of tactical positioning on performance in the heats of sprint cross-country (XC) skiing among men and women and the consistency of overtaking events over repeated competitions on the same racecourse. Thirty male and thirty female elite to world-class level skiers within each competition [(sprint International Ski and Snowboard Federation (FIS) points: 40 ± 21 vs. 35 ± 24)] performed two repeated world-cup competitions at four different venues (two in the classical and two in the skating style) between 2017 and 2020. The intermediate rankings at five checkpoints were analysed using television broadcasts of the competitions. Sprint time-trial (STT) rank correlated positively with the final rank for the seven men's (ρ = .54-.82, P < .01) and the eight women's (ρ = .40-.80, P < .05) competitions, while one of the classical competitions for males did not correlate significantly (P = .23). The strength of the correlation coefficients between intermediate ranks and final ranks during the heats increased gradually from the first to the last checkpoint among both sexes in the classical style (τ = ~0.26 to ~0.70) and in the skating style (τ = ~0.22 to ~0.82), in which the majority of performance-variance was decided before the start of the finish sprint. For both sexes, ~20 and 16 overtaking events were observed in each heat for the classical and skating style, respectively. There was a significant sex-difference in the number of overtaking events in one out of the 16 competitions (P < .01), but no differences across seasons for any competition (P = .051-796). Overall, this study showed the importance of tactical positioning for performance in sprint XC skiing, with the number of overtaking events being relatively consistent for competitions performed on the same racecourse.

Sight vs. Sound Judgments of Music Performance Depend on Relative Performer Quality: Cross-cultural Evidence From Classical Piano and Tsugaru Shamisen Competitions

Which information dominates in evaluating performance in music? Both experts and laypeople consistently report believing that sound should be the most important domain when judging music competitions, but experimental studies of Western participants rating video-only vs. audio-only versions of 6-second excerpts of Western classical performances have shown that in at least some cases visual information can play a stronger role. However, whether this phenomenon applies generally to music competitions or is restricted to specific repertoires or contexts is disputed. In this Registered Report, we focus on testing the generalizability of sight vs. sound effects by replicating previous studies of classical piano competitions with Japanese participants, while also expanding the same paradigm using new examples from competitions of a traditional Japanese folk musical instrument: the Tsugaru shamisen. For both classical piano and Tsugaru shamisen, we ask participants to choose the winner between the 1st- and 2nd- placing performers in 5 competitions and the 1st-place and low-ranking performers in 5 competitions (i.e., 40 performers total from 10 piano and 10 shamisen competitions). We tested the following three predictions twice each (once for piano and once for shamisen): 1) an interaction was predicted between domain (video-only vs. audio-only) and variance in quality (choosing between 1st and 2nd place vs. choosing between 1st and low-placing performers); 2) visuals were predicted to trump sound when variation in quality is low (1st vs. 2nd place); and 3) sound was predicted to trump visuals when variation in quality is high (1st vs. low-placing). Our experiments (n = 155 participants) confirmed our first predicted interaction between audio/visual domain and relative performer quality for both piano and shamisen conditions, suggesting that this interaction is cross-culturally general. In contrast, the second prediction was only supported for the piano stimuli and the third prediction was only supported for the shamisen condition, suggesting culturally dependent factors in the specific balance between sight and sound in the judgment of musical performance. Our results resolve discrepancies and debates from previous sight-vs-sound studies by replicating and extending them to include non-Western participants and musical traditions. Our findings may also have practical applications to evaluation criteria for performers, judges, and organizers of competitions, concerts, and auditions.

Pogorelich at the Chopin: Towards a sociology of competition scandals

Controversies are a regular feature on the international classical music competition circuit, and some of these explode into scandals that are remembered long afterward. This essay draws from the sociology of scandal to identify the conditions that predispose classical music competitions to moral disruption and to examine the cultural process through which a scandal attains legendary status. The case considered in depth is the International Fryderyk Chopin Piano Competition and the controversy surrounding Ivo Pogorelich’s elimination from the 10th Competition in 1980. Through an analysis of media coverage in Polish and English, I show how the scandal was discursively constructed through two interpretive frameworks: the collective memory of previous controversies at the Chopin Competition, and a generational divide. I also trace the legacy of the scandal over the decades that followed. Following Durkheim, I argue that controversies at classical music competitions should not be taken as an indication of their decline. Rather, scandals – especially legendary ones – can have positive effects for competition organisations and the wider social world of classical music, as long as they do not become chronic.

Shadow competition: its definition, prevalence, causes and measurement

Competition is a fundamental ecological process and an important mediating mechanism to natural selection and evolution. One form of competition, shadow competition, is evident when an approaching moving prey item is captured by a competing predator, earlier in the prey's trajectory, preventing it from reaching the attack range of a focal predator. The necessary definitional involvements of space and movement direction differentiate shadow competition from the more classical competition types of interference and exploitation, even though competition, in general, intensifies with spatial proximity. Compared to the latter two, shadow competition is understudied. Differentiating distinct competition types is important, because they may distinctively affect animal behaviour and higher levels of organisation. Although shadow competition is probably common in nature, there are only sporadic reports applying this terminology in systems of ambush predators, such as web‐building spiders, pit‐building antlions and sit‐and‐wait predatory fish, and their moving prey. Here, we summarise clear cases of shadow competition in the published literature, cases in which we believe it to be present but not explicitly described as such, and potential scenarios in which shadow competition seems likely to be present but is currently unreported. We end with potential research directions for enhancing our still‐fledgling understanding of shadow competition.

Pulsed, continuous or somewhere in between? Resource dynamics matter in the optimisation of microbial communities

The optimisation of synthetic and natural microbial communities has vast potential for emerging applications in medicine, agriculture and industry. Realising this goal is contingent on a close correlation between theory, experiments, and the real world. Although the temporal pattern of resource supply can play a major role in microbial community assembly, resource dynamics are commonly treated inconsistently in theoretical and experimental research. Here we explore how the composition of communities varies under continuous resource supply, typical of theoretical approaches, versus pulsed resource supply, typical of experiments. Using simulations of classical resource competition models, we show that community composition diverges rapidly between the two regimes, with almost zero overlap in composition once the pulsing interval stretches beyond just four hours. The implication for the rapidly growing field of microbial community optimisation is that the resource supply regime must be tailored to the community being optimised. As such, we argue that resource supply dynamics should be considered both a constraint in the design of novel microbial communities and as a tuning mechanism for the optimisation of pre-existing communities like those found in the human gut.

African middle classness, politics and protest: on the context of this issue

ABSTRACT Middle classes in the Global South have become topical. They were considered mainly by economists in development-oriented institutions and praised as a factor contributing to economic development and democratic forces. We recapitulate some of the trends and remind the reader of earlier debates. We take stock of the variety of contributions and point to the efforts to have a more nuanced look at the composition and orientations of ‘middle classes’ and their political engagements. We maintain that the initial economistic reduction, measuring monetary income as the main criteria for middle classness, is insufficient and offers no reliable set of indicators as to the social and political as well as cultural positioning of members of such income groups. An appropriate analysis of the nature and role of African middle classes must consider four aspects: the specific class formations of African societies; the link between socioeconomic stratification and sociopolitical orientations; the limited knowledge and theorisation of African societies; and the need to apply a multidimensional and new research including diverse sociocultural elements and their contextual embeddedness. We argue that an intersectional lens can break up the classical competition of the one-dimensional paradigms and suggest decolonising research on protest and middle classes by integrating a perspective and theorisation from Africa. More attention should be paid to analytical concepts such as intersectionality and social milieu for the understanding of African societies and their potential for transformation through protest. This requires overcoming stereotypical and truncated assumptions about the middle classes.

Identifying Outlier Scores and Outlier Jurors to Reduce Manipulation in Classical Music Competitions.

Identifying Outlier Scores and Outlier Jurors to Reduce Manipulation in Classical Music Competitions.

Modeling of double standards and soft power in cellular automata competition systems

We consider a discrete analog of the classical A. Lotka – V. Volterra competition model by cellular automata. In the classical model, we know that the type of its time evolution depends on the double standards coefficients being at certain ranges of their possible values. The paper shows that the same situation holds for the discrete model either. We can see there is a soft power effect for the classical model. The classic competition model turns into a cooperative positional differential game, the limitations of which are the original system of competition equations by A. Lotka – V. Volterra. The controls are the coefficients of double standards when considering it concerning social systems. The effect of soft power is that the parties tend to compare the competitive pressure on them by the rival population with the one within the domestic population and may take the less stress of the opponent for his favorable attitude towards them, and more extensive – for the hostile manifestation. Whereas comparing the external competitive pressure with the internal pressure in this game does not give us any information – everything depends exclusively on the coefficients of double standards. Simulation experiments with the discrete competition model implemented in the cellular automata show that the effect of soft power also takes place in this case.

NEW APPROACHES TO THE RESULTS ANALYSIS OF SEPARATE ATHLETICS MULTISPORT COMPETITIONS

The aim of the research is to study and analyze the dynamics of the results of individual athletic multisport competitions. The research was based on the study of the results of men's decathlon and women's heptathlon at the Olympic Games from 2000 to 2020. The initial data of this study were the existing results of elite and high-class athletes, taking into account some principles known and used in the literature. Athletic Multisport race is considered a complex technical competition, which combines different classical athletic competitions. The athlete is required to demonstrate strong willpower, to master the technique of certain types of competitions, to have a high level of motor abilities. In our opinion, the further improvement of sports results in multisport race among high-class athletes largely depends on the level of development of the speed-strength types of the competition program.

An implementation on Python of the Classical Nelson and Winter Models

This paper addresses the computational implementation in Python of the family of classical Schumpeterian Competition models developed by Nelson and Winter. A simple one-shot model is presented as a seed for the development of evolutionary dynamic models. Then, a parallel development between theory and computational implementation using the inheritance capabilities present in Python is done, in order to contemplate innovation, system dynamics, adaptive innovation policies and patents. The results of the original work are compared to the results found throughout the development of this work.