Relative Dominance Research Articles

How Laws Impact Our Lives And Cultural Practices As Society Changes

Law and culture interconnect with one another, each impacting and guiding the other in complex, dynamic and symbiotic relationship. Legal systems are not empty frameworks in which states must be shaped to live in ongoing relations of domination and control but are enmeshed within, but constitutive of, their cultural, social, and historical conditions. This research, brings out the two-sided relationship between law and culture: how legal norms embody and stabilize cultural values while law is an instrument of ‘cultural change.’ The first section discusses the socially constructed and culturally relative nature of legal norms and shows the same using the interaction between law and law and the contention that laws are also socially constructed and culturally relative. It goes on to investigate how the law is a cultural artifact, and to see legal systems as the product of histories and cultures that articulate the social values out of which they emerge. The study in particular analyses how the law creates and forms the identities of citizen, gender, race, and the nation. In addition, the research relates the place of law in power and in authority exercised, the role of law in pursuing justice and its potential to bring about social change. This work shows the importance of the study of legal systems by making culture the object of study to have a basis for understanding how Laws affect society through the acceptance and acceptance of norms, change promotion and legal aid defence of rights and justice.

Bladder urine microbiota in children with vesicoureteral reflux: preoperative values

Introduction. Urinary tract infections (UTIs) are prevalent among children, particularly those with anatomical anomalies such as vesicoureteral reflux (VUR). The diagnosis of VUR typically follows an episode of UTI, highlighting the importance of early detection of VUR in case of UTIs to prevent renal complications. The management of a first febrile UTI remains a subject of debate among medical professionals. Pediatricians often recommend diagnosing VUR after recurrent UTIs, while urologists advocate for early imaging and prophylaxis. Antibiotic prophylaxis (ABP) before surgery can reduce the risk of recurrent UTIs; however, it also induces antibiotic resistance and alters the microbiota.Objective. To evaluate the microbiota of bladder urine in children before surgery for VUR.Materials & methods. The study included 40 children (12 boys — group 1, 28 girls — group 2) diagnosed with MTCT after symptomatic urinary tract infection. The control groups were 18 healthy boys (group 3) and 16 healthy girls (group 4). Urine was collected and cultured using an expanded set of nutrient media (10–12) for culturing aerobic and anaerobic taxa of microbiota.Results. The median age of VUR-patients in the study groups was 3.6 years. A statistically significant predominance of girls was observed (p < 0.001). The urine samples from VUR-children were unsterile, and a total of 27 taxa of microorganisms were detected. Among them, 16 taxa were aerobes, and 11 taxa were anaerobes. The dominant taxa differed between the groups: Enterobacterales, Peptococcus spp., and Anaerococcus spp. predominated in VURboys, while coagulase-negative staphylococci, Corynebacterium spp., and Peptococcus spp. dominated in VUR-girls. Most microorganisms were found in associations. The median bacteriuria level was mostly 10² CFU/ml. In total, 29 microbiota taxa with dominant aerobic-anaerobic relationships were identified in healthy children and VUR-patients. There were more significant correlations between different taxa of the urine microbiota in VUR-patients compared to healthy children.Conclusion. Bladder urine from VUR-children contains aerobic and anaerobic bacteria. It is yet to be determined whether bacterial associations with a bacteriuria of 10² CFU/ml increase the risk of UTIs in VUR surgery, but urinary dysbiosis should be investigated as a possible risk factor for UTIs. Further studies are needed to justify the feasibility and suitability of selective ABP in the treatment of VUR.

Relative social status alters the synchrony of attribute integration in altruistic decisions.

Social status, which represents the relative dominance structure in societies, forms the backdrop against which most social decisions are made. Effective social decision-making demands flexible integration of decision attribute weight (importance of an attribute) and attribute latency (when attributes start to affect decisions). However, current understanding of how attribute weight and latency are influenced by relative social status is limited. In three experiments, we dynamically manipulated subjects' relative social status before they engaged in an altruistic decision task and found that their altruistic behavior was better explained by a time-varying drift diffusion model, in which relative social status selectively modulated attribute latency but not attribute weights. Furthermore, prosocial subjects exhibited higher sensitivity to attribute latency in response to changes in relative social status compared with individualistic subjects. Our results introduce a new dimension to the computational mechanisms underlying the intricate interplay between relative social status and attribute integration.

Beyond the powers of seduction: tracing bureaucratic agency in the making of global climate finance

ABSTRACT This paper analyzes the modalities and relations of power in and through which mid-level practitioners operate in their working lives. I situate these theoretical concerns in a context of urban policy solutions to the climate crisis that have emerged in the wake of the 2015 Sustainable Development Goals. Specifically, I focus on global climate and development initiatives that seek to reform urban bureaucracies in order to facilitate investment in ‘sustainable’ infrastructures. In explaining the implementation of these reform initiatives, some of the literature tends to assume a power play in which all-mighty foreign actors seduce or overpower municipal actors imagined to incorporate global policy projects into their agenda, thinking and working lives. Based on interviews with mid-level practitioners in Mexican municipalities, I foreground the possibilities of agency within and alongside relations of domination and seduction and discuss these in the context of Amy Allen’s theory of power, literature on everyday bureaucracy and what Rachael Dobson calls a policy ontologies approach. Pluralizing the modalities of power through which to understand how these initiatives work not only pinpoints the practitioners’ spaces of agency, but also indicates how mid-level bureaucrats manage contradictions and ambiguities and how these moments shape the workings of policy worlds.

Gully erosion is a serious obstacle in India’s land degradation neutrality mission

India is famous for her badlands. These vast, intensely degraded landscapes occur extensively across Central and Western India, wherein they have had several adverse effects on both environment and society. However, accurate information on their current spatial extents, as well as the spatial distribution and severity of gully erosion elsewhere in the country was hitherto lacking. Considering that India has planned to effectively halt land degradation by 2030 in line with the agenda of the United Nations, and as precise spatial data is indispensable in planning and implementing land management interventions, we have created an exhaustive spatial inventory of gully erosion features in India by recording their location, extents and current management status from high-resolution satellite imagery available on Google Earth Pro. Through this first of its kind mapping endeavour and attendant spatial analysis, we have recorded the presence of gully landforms in 19 of India’s 28 states and the National Capital Region of Delhi and have estimated the total gullied area in the country between 7,451 and 8,157 km2. According to our results, states occupying 38% of Indian territory (viz., Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Jharkhand, Gujarat and Chhattisgarh) are affected by 92% of the total gullied area of the country. We have noted a clear east-west divide in terms of the relative dominance of the mapped gully erosion features, with badlands being common in Western India and gully systems being the dominant gully feature in the east. A similar observation has interestingly also been made as regards gully management, with the major proportion of unmanaged gully erosion features occurring in Eastern India. Ultimately, we have identified 77 districts across India where urgent rehabilitative intervention is required, more than 70% of which are in Eastern and Southern India where unmanaged (active) gullies are common. That contemporary gully erosion in Eastern India poses a more serious land management challenge than that of the vast badlands of Central and Western India is a truly unexpected finding of our analysis. Our mapped data and analytical results shall be integral to efforts aiming to ameliorate the land degradation caused by gully erosion across India by supporting policymaking and planning at the governmental level and serving as useful guidance for land managers and practitioners on the ground.

Variation in plumage reflectance but not song reflects spatial cognitive performance in black-capped chickadees (Poecile atricapillus)

In seasonally variable environments, enhanced cognitive abilities may allow animals to adjust their behavior to changing conditions. Nonmigratory food-caching birds, like chickadees, rely on specialized spatial cognition to successfully cache and retrieve food items and survive the winter. Previous studies have linked spatial cognitive performance in chickadees to enhanced fitness, including survival and reproduction; however, it remains unknown whether females assess male cognitive ability via direct observation or secondary sexual traits. In this study, we investigated whether variation in common secondary sexual traits of songbirds, song and plumage, serve as indicators of cognitive ability in black-capped chickadees (Poecile atricapillus) when accounting for dominance rank. To explore this, we brought wild male black-capped chickadees into captivity, tested their performance in three spatial cognitive abilities (spatial learning, cognitive flexibility, and long-term retention), determined the relative social dominance ranks among all individuals, measured plumage reflectance in six body regions, and recorded their fee-bee songs to assess the relationship between these variables. Our findings show that birds with brighter white plumage and greater contrast between black and white plumage patches showed better spatial learning and memory performance. In contrast, we found no significant associations between cognitive performance and song variation. Our results suggest that females may use some secondary sexual traits as signals for cognitive performance, although, we suggest direct observation may also be important for mate choice involving cognitive ability in chickadees. This work provides insights into female mating decisions, highlighting the complex nature of sexual selection and female preferences.

China’s Belt and Road Initiative

The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is not debt trap diplomacy; rather, it is an effort by China to coalesce and capitalize on the sentiments of its participants who have expressed concurrence with China’s view of international relations. At a time when the dominant international relations narrative is being challenged, specifically by China, the BRI has provided China with an opportunity to obtain affirmation for its foreign interests and principles. This claim is made evident by evaluating, as metrics of geopolitical influence, United Nations resolutions representing China’s interests and how BRI participant nations voted on them, as well as official BRI statements that these nations have made regarding China’s foreign policy stances.

Multi‐Objective Workflow Scheduling in Cloud Using Archimedes Optimization Algorithm

ABSTRACTCloud computing has changed the technology landscape for over a decade and led to an astounding growth in the number of applications it may be used for. Consequently, there has been a significant spike in the demand for improved algorithms to schedule workflows efficiently. These were mostly concerned with heuristic, metaheuristic, and hybrid approaches to workflow scheduling that mostly suffer from the problem of local optima entrapment. Due to such heavy traffic on the cloud resources, there is still a need for less computationally complex approaches. In light of this, this article proposes a novel approach: a multi‐objective Modified Local Escaping Archimedes Optimization (MLEAO) algorithm for workflow scheduling. This strategy involves initialization of the population of Archimedes Optimization algorithm through the HEFT algorithm to provide an inclination towards the solutions with improved makespan while achieving a cost‐efficient workflow scheduling decision and avoiding the problem of local optima entrapment using a local escaping operation. To validate the efficacy of our approach, we conducted extensive experiments using scientific workflows as benchmarks. Through our investigations, we significantly improved makespan, cost, resource utilization, and energy consumption. Moreover, the effectiveness of our proposed approach is also verified by performance metrics such as hypervolume, s‐metric, and dominance relationships between the proposed and state‐of‐the‐art approaches.

Queering the ocean: Li Zishu’s The Island of the Lost Plane

This article explores The Island of the Lost Plane, a novella written by Li Zishu during her time in Europe that has largely gone unnoticed. Through an analysis of the novella’s portrayal of queer intimacy between two immigrant women—one a Sinophone Malaysian and the other a Jewish Israeli—this article examines their healing relationship and how it intertwines with the MH370 accident and the novella’s use of the ocean as an ecological trope. This analysis highlights Li Zishu’s literary intention to address themes of healing violence, and transnationalism, marking a significant departure from the canonized Sinophone Malaysian literature, which predominantly focuses on violence, rainforests, and heteronormative local experiences. My reading draws from the frameworks of queer Sinophone studies while incorporating perspectives from queer ecology, queer intimacy, and queer world-making. I first analyze how the nationalism and patriarchy tied to each character’s origins contribute to their marginalization as “others” in Europe, and how their bond forms despite differences in nationality and ethnicity. This dynamic is metaphorically reflected in their first encounter in the UK. I pay particular attention to the narrator’s experiences of discrimination in Germany, which are tied to her Sinophone Malaysian identity, particularly in the aftermath of the MH370 disappearance. These experiences reveal how nationalism, shaped by global power dynamics and rooted in origin narratives, subtly manifests as a form of violence imposed upon her. I then further examine the intimacy between the characters within the imagined oceanic space—an alternative realm that holds the potential to address the colonial violence tied to their respective origins and facilitate the healing of their traumas. By highlighting the peaceful and restorative interactions between the two characters, I argue that this imagined space offers a vision of queer world-making: one that envisions sensory, nonhierarchical, and non-patriarchal worlds that challenge heteronormative structures and dominant power relations.

Spatial multi-attribute decision making: An axiomatic incomplete preference information coverage model

Spatial multi-attribute decision making: An axiomatic incomplete preference information coverage model

Response and recovery times of vegetation productivity under drought stress: Dominant factors and relationships

Response and recovery times of vegetation productivity under drought stress: Dominant factors and relationships

A new approach for identifying dominant cloud types and relationships between cloud types and precipitation vertical structure in tropical regions

A new approach for identifying dominant cloud types and relationships between cloud types and precipitation vertical structure in tropical regions

Mapping the Social Organisation of Neglect in the Case of Fibromyalgia: Using Smith's Sociology for People to Inform a Systems-Focused Literature Review.

Fibromyalgia is a syndrome characterised by persistent unexplained pain and fatigue. People with fibromyalgia report receiving little support to manage symptoms, difficult interactions with healthcare practitioners and stigma associated with this contested condition. In this article, we employ Dorothy E Smith's Sociology for People to undertake a systems-focused literature review from the standpoint of people with fibromyalgia, moving beyond individual subjectivities to map how problems are socially organised. This is a novel application of a Sociology for People which, although previously used to structure research projects, has not previously been reported as a framework for literature review. Our findings highlight how, within a biomedically orientated healthcare system, practitioners' activities are organised to withdraw support from people with fibromyalgia and characterise problems as "psychological". Those looking to make service improvements for this patient group need to specifically challenge biomedical systems and ideology, in order to promote alternative models of care. We highlight a Sociology for People as a powerful lens for systems-focused literature review that links frontline experiences with dominant power relations, and provides an alternative to traditional qualitative evidence syntheses. Additionally, the theoretically-grounded and creative use of published literatures is an ethical approach adding value to extant research.

Abuse of Relative Dominance by Digital Platforms: A Law and Economics Perspective

Abstract In the age of AI, digital platforms are likely to hold significant market power, giving them a superior bargaining position over their business partners and enabling them to impose unfair trading terms. However, proving that a platform holds a dominant position under Art. 102 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU) is challenging. The multi-sided nature of platforms complicates the definition of the relevant market, and their innovative digital business models makes it difficult to assess lasting market power. This could lead to false negatives, resulting in under-enforcement from an economic perspective. To address this market reality, the Digital Markets Act (DMA) has been adopted as an ex ante instrument to, inter alia, complement competition law enforcement. However, since the DMA’s quantitative thresholds remain high, numerous platforms with superior market power vis-à-vis their trading partners may not qualify as ‘gatekeepers’, leaving the risk of under-enforcement unresolved. This article explores the desirability of introducing a prohibition on ‘abuse of relative dominance’, drawing on this long-standing concept in some EU Member States. Such a measure could help tackle the concerns arising from the superior bargaining position of digital platforms.

Development of Controllable Perfusion Culture Scaffolds Using Multi-Channel Collagen Gels: Effects of Gelation Conditions on Channel Formation and Media Supply.

The development of scaffold materials that effectively mimic the extracellular matrix while enabling controlled nutrient delivery remains a critical challenge in tissue engineering. Multi-channel collagen gels (MCCGs), which form through the competition between gelation and phase separation, have emerged as promising scaffolds due to their self-organized vessel-like structures. However, a systematic understanding of the relationship between the gelation conditions and functional properties is limited. In this study, MCCGs were developed as controllable perfusion culture scaffolds by investigating the effects of carbonate buffer concentration on channel formation, permeation behavior, and cell proliferation. MCCGs were prepared using different carbonate buffer concentrations (12.5, 25, and 50 mM), with 25 mM producing optimal channel formation, characterized by an approximately 60% channel area fraction and uniform distribution. Permeation studies revealed that fluid transport through MCCGs is governed by a complex interplay between capillary phenomena and hydraulic pressure, whose relative dominance shifts with flow rate: capillary action dominates at low flow rates (2.5 mL/h), whereas hydraulic pressure becomes the primary driver at higher rates (5.0-10.0 mL/h). Cell proliferation assessments demonstrated that MCCGs prepared with 25 mM carbonate buffer provided the most favorable microenvironment, achieving superior cell growth over 168 h through balanced media supply and cell adhesion area. This optimization approach through buffer concentration adjustment offers a cost-effective and scalable method for developing perfusion culture scaffolds, advancing both the fundamental understanding of functional gel systems and practical applications in tissue engineering and regenerative medicine.

Graph domination in rooted products: equitable and outdegree equitable approaches

In this paper, equitability related domination parameters such as equitable domination number and outdegree equitable domination number are investigated in the context of rooted product of graphs. Obtained a lower bound for the equitable domination number of rooted product of graphs. Obtained upper as well as lower bound for the outdegree equitable domination number of rooted product of graphs. Some particular rooted product of graphs are examined in detail.

Parallelizing the Computation of Grid Resistance to Measure the Strength of Skyline Tuples

Several indicators have been recently proposed for the measurement of various characteristics of the tuples of a dataset—particularly the so-called skyline tuples, i.e., those that are not dominated by other tuples. Numeric indicators are very important as they may, e.g., provide an additional criterion to be used to rank skyline tuples and focus on a subset thereof. We focus on an indicator of robustness that may be measured for any skyline tuple t: the grid resistance, i.e., how large-value perturbations can be tolerated for t to remain non-dominated (and thus in the skyline). The computation of this indicator typically involves one or more rounds of computation of the skyline itself or, at least, of dominance relationships. Building on recent advances in partitioning strategies allowing the parallel computation of skylines, we discuss how these strategies can be adapted to the computation of the indicator.

A Decomposition-Based Evolutionary Algorithm with Neighborhood Region Domination.

The decomposition-based multi-objective optimization algorithm MOEA/D (multi-objective evolutionary algorithm based on decomposition) introduces the concept of neighborhood, where each sub-problem requires optimization through solutions within its neighborhood. Due to the comparison being only with solutions in the neighborhood, the obtained set of solutions is not sufficiently diverse, leading to poorer convergence properties. In order to adequately acquire a high-quality set of solutions, this algorithm requires a large number of population iterations, which in turn results in relatively low computational efficiency. To address this issue, this paper proposes an algorithm termed MOEA/D-NRD, which is based on neighborhood region domination in the MOEA/D framework. In the improved algorithm, domination relationships are determined by comparing offspring solutions against neighborhood ideal points and neighborhood worst points. By selecting appropriate solution sets within these comparison regions, the solution sets can approach the ideal points more and faster, thereby accelerating population convergence and enhancing the computational efficiency of the algorithm.

Female gorillas form highly stable dominance relationships.

Animals commonly form dominance relationships that determine the priority of access to resources and influence fitness. Dominance relationships based on age, immigration order or nepotism (alliances with kin) conventions are usually more stable than those based on intrinsic characteristics such as physical strength. Unlike most mammals, female gorillas disperse from their groups, typically more than once in their lifetimes, disrupting their group tenures and/or any alliances. Thus, we predicted that they form unstable dominance relationships that are not based on conventions. Contrarily, using a 24-year dataset on five groups of both gorilla species, we found that females form strikingly stable dominance relationships, maintained over their whole co-residence in a group (mean dyadic co-residence = 4.8, max = 17.3 years). Specifically, we observed rank reversals in only two out of 92 female dyads, and all other rank improvements resulted from emigration or death of higher-ranking females (passive mobility). These results mirror observations in chimpanzees, suggesting that dominance dynamics might have deep roots in hominid evolution. Our study challenges a hypothesized link between hierarchy instability and dispersal, particularly among animals in which fitness consequences of rank improvement may not be great enough to counterbalance the potentially high costs of challenging higher-ranking individuals.

Social dominance influences individual susceptibility to an evolutionary trap in mosquitofish.

Plastic pollution threatens almost every ecosystem in the world. Critically, many animals consume plastic, in part because plastic particles often look or smell like food. Plastic ingestion is thus an evolutionary trap, a phenomenon that occurs when cues are decoupled from their previously associated high fitness outcomes. Theory predicts that dominance hierarchies could dictate individual responses to evolutionary traps across social environments, but the social dimension of evolutionary trap responses has rarely been investigated. We tested how variation in group size influences the formation of dominance relationships and, in turn, how these dominance relationships drive differences in foraging behavior in Western mosquitofish (Gambusia affinis). This included foraging for a variety of familiar and novel food-like items, including microplastics. Overall, dominant individuals were often the first to sample food and had higher bite rates than subordinates, including when foraging for microplastics. Importantly, how dominance affected foraging behavior depended on group size and on whether groups were presented with familiar or novel foods. Furthermore, individuals were consistent in their foraging behavior across trials with different group sizes, indicating the formation of stable social roles. These results suggest that predicting the ecological and evolutionary consequences of evolutionary traps will require an understanding of how social structures influence trap susceptibility.