Historical Co-evolution Research Articles

A Perspective on Probing Coral Resilience to Climate and Environmental Changes Using Stable Isotopes of Bio‐Utilized Metal Elements

AbstractIn the face of diverse challenges like global warming, ocean acidification, and human activities, the world's coral reefs are confronting a severe ecological crisis. Understanding the historical coevolution of corals with their environment and their resilience to current climate change is crucial for protecting these ecosystems and predicting their future. In this context, metal stable isotopes in corals present a novel and alternative methodology. Their significant fractionation during coral biological processes, persistent presence in coral skeletons, and relatively straightforward sources make them a valuable tool. However, the complexity of coral biology necessitates a deeper investigation into the fundamental mechanisms behind the isotopic fractionation of these biologically utilized metal elements. A comprehensive and systematic study of the roles of metal stable elements in coral biological processes is essential. This includes examining the fractionation of metal isotopes across different parts of the corals, such as tissues, zooxanthellae, and skeletons. To achieve these goals, multidisciplinary collaborations are essential. They should focus on several key areas: interpreting metal stable isotopes data in the context of coral physiology and ecology; conducting controlled laboratory experiments on coral cultivation; engaging in comparative studies with inorganically precipitated aragonites; and developing a holistic understanding within the framework of coral biomineralization models.

ПРО ЗАГАЛЬНУ І СПЕЦІАЛЬНІ ТЕОРІЇ ЦІННОСТІ

Ретроспективно розглянуто класичні й новітні концепції і теорії вартості й цінності. Акцентовано на синтетичних і фундаментальних розробках, необхідності їх розвитку з огляду на випереджальну експансію сфери олюднення. Висунуто гіпотезу про всезагальність і складність ціннісних відносин. Визначено їх філософсько-загальнонауковий і економічний зміст. Ціннісні відносини (цінність) представлено як складну систему суб’єкт-суб’єктних відносин з приводу взаємопов’язаних і економічно значимих для суб’єктів відповідностей: а) між суб’єктивним образом реального об’єкта й самим реальним об’єктом, у тому числі між різними елементами першого, з одного боку, і різними елементами останнього – з іншого; б) між різними елементами суб’єктивного образа реального об’єкта; в) між різними елементами реального об’єкта. Зазначена система є ядром фундаментальної теоретичної моделі (схеми) цінності. Охарактеризовано кориснісну і витратнісну складові цінності, а також тріалектику її загального, особливого й унікального. Загальна складова цінності притаманна всім ерам і епохам розвитку людства, особлива – окремим епохам і сферам діяльності, унікальна – окремим способам виробництва. Розроблено темпоральний простір загальної теорії цінності в координатах результатів діяльності, сфер і атрибутів, вимірів, а також історичних рамок діяльності й цінності. Показано позиціювання в ньому теорії трудової вартості. Розглянуто історичну коеволюцію діяльності й цінності в контексті співіснування та зміни ер і епох розвитку людства. Запропоновано концептуальну і фундаментальну теоретичну схему загальної теорії цінності. Ядра спеціальних теорій цінності набувають статусу часткових теоретичних схем загальної теорії цінності. Зроблено висновок про необхідність каталізації наукових пошуків тих нових спеціальних теорій цінності, які здатні адекватно описати й пояснити ціннісні відносини в олюдненні (опосередкованому, безпосередньому і в цілому), в тому числі у створенні знаннєвих і знаннєво-інформаційних продуктів

Endemic Lineages of Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis Are Associated With Reduced Chytridiomycosis-Induced Mortality in Amphibians: Evidence From a Meta-Analysis of Experimental Infection Studies.

Emerging infectious wildlife diseases have caused devastating declines, particularly when pathogens have been introduced in naïve host populations. The outcome of disease emergence in any host population will be dictated by a series of factors including pathogen virulence, host susceptibility, and prior opportunity for coevolution between hosts and pathogens. Historical coevolution can lead to increased resistance in hosts and/or reduced virulence in endemic pathogens that allows stable persistence of host and pathogen populations. Adaptive coevolution may also occur on relatively short time scales following introduction of a novel pathogen. Here, we performed a meta-analysis of multi-strain Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis (Bd) infection experiments to test whether: (1) amphibian hosts exhibit lower mortality rates when infected with strains belonging to endemic Bd lineages relative to the Global Panzootic Lineage (Bd-GPL), hypothetically owing to long co-evolutionary histories between endemic Bd lineages and their amphibian hosts; and (2) amphibians exhibit lower mortality rates when infected with local Bd-GPL strains compared with non-local Bd-GPL strains, hypothetically owing to recent selection for tolerance or resistance to local Bd-GPL strains. We found that in a majority of cases, amphibians in endemic Bd treatments experienced reduced mortality relative to those in Bd-GPL treatments. Hosts presumed to have historically coexisted with endemic Bd did not show reduced mortality to Bd-GPL compared with hosts that have not historically coexisted with endemic Bd. Finally, we detected no overall difference in amphibian mortality between local and non-local Bd-GPL treatments. Taken together, our results suggest that long-term historical coexistence is associated with less disease-induced mortality potentially due to hypovirulence in endemic Bd lineages, and that more recent coexistence between amphibians and Bd-GPL has not yet resulted in reduced host susceptibility or pathogen virulence. This corroborates previous findings that Bd-GPL introduced via the global amphibian trade has a high capacity for causing disease-induced mortality.

Energy and the Complexity of International Order

Abstract This article explores the role of states and industrial policy in shaping the historical coevolution of energy and international order. I explore how states, by narrowly self-interested pecuniary goals, the desire for geopolitical advantage, and concerns about the political ramifications of domestic economic structure, use industrial policy to encourage the development of energy-intensive transportation and agricultural systems. Over time, increasingly energy-intensive systems allowed an increasingly complex international order to develop, one characterized by significant differentiation and specialization organized over a geographically expansive area. This contemporary complex order is dependent on fossil fuels. I argue that states retain geopolitical and domestic political incentives to use green industrial policy to develop the technologies needed to transition away from this fossil fuel dependence, but industrial policy today faces greater challenges than it did in the past.

The Role of Cultural Embeddedness and Social Salience in Coevolution of Related Industries

Previous research suggests that an emerging industry may erode the life prospects of a related incumbent market, when the newcomer industry is based on superior technology, has a more appealing ideology, or generates collective action. It is not well understood, however, why an incumbent industry may decline when those factors are weak or absent. We develop two new mechanisms of cultural embeddedness and social salience to explain such cases. When organizations in the nascent market embed their offerings in cultural artifacts of a related incumbent market and/or achieve social salience by reflecting public discourse, they invoke a sense of familiarity in audiences and in this way alleviate the uncertainty surrounding the novelty on which the emerging market is based. Decreased uncertainty draws audience attention to the new industry, often away from the incumbent market. This effect should be especially strong in the early stages of a new industry development and attenuate as the industry matures. We find support to our theorizing in the archival study of the historical coevolution of the emerging U.S. TV programming industry and the related incumbent market of all movie theaters in Illinois in 1944-1962.

The Rise and Fall of German Innovation

In this paper, we describe the historical co-evolution of innovation and economic growth in Germany since 1871. The country's rise as an industrial power in the late 19th century, through its innovation and entrepreneurial performance, is contrasted with the post-World War II period. This latter period, although it contained the German economic miracle, was nevertheless a period during which innovation went into relative decline. We document this decline and offer four broad, interrelated explanations: (i) an innovation system locked into incremental innovation, (ii) a slowdown in the diffusion of technology, (iii) weaknesses in the education system, and (iv) entrepreneurial stagnation. Implications for policy are noted. Our paper contributes to the growing literature attempting to understand the decline in business dynamism that characterises many advanced economies.

A historical and political epistemology of microbes.

This article traces the historical co‐evolution of microbiology, bacteriology, and virology, framed within industrial and agricultural contexts, as well as their role in colonial and national history between the end of the 19th century and the first decades of the 20th century. The epistemology of germ theory, coupled with the economic interests of European colonies, has shaped the understanding of human‐microbial relationships in a reductionist way. We explore a brief history of the medical and biological sciences, focusing on microbes and the difficulty of implementing germ theory outside of biology laboratories. Furthermore, we highlight the work of Lynn Margulis, who conceptualized microbes within their ecological contexts. Such research shows the active role microbes play in handling life‐sustaining biological and biochemical processes. We outline how the industrial and technological advancements of the last two centuries not only impacted almost all human societies, but also changed the world on microbial, biological, and geological levels. The narration of these histories is a complex task, and depends on how national, international, and intergovernmental institutions (such as the World Health Organization) conceive of the selective environmental pressures exerted by industry and biotechnological companies.

Engineering modernity: Water, electricity and the infrastructure landscapes of Bangalore, India

The concept of ‘nexus’ has gained popularity in urban studies to examine the interconnections between the management of resources and the provision of urban services. This article proposes a conceptualisation of the urban nexus as the contingent product of the operation of physical, ecological and social processes around urban technologies in a specific location. The article focuses on the configuration of the nexus within particular trajectories of urban development, and the wider consequences of these trajectories for urban life. The strategy of the article is to examine the water-energy nexus within a particular infrastructure landscape, that is, as it emerges from the historical co-evolution of social practices and the built environment. Such co-evolution can be described as an urban trajectory that reveals the consolidation of different aspects of the nexus at varying levels from the household to the extra-urban connections that shape the city. This perspective is applied to analyse processes of infrastructure development in the city of Bangalore, India, since the completion of the first works to establish a water network and the electrification of the city at the beginning of the 20th century. The analysis reveals a historically built and context-dependent nexus that reflects the interconnectedness of the mechanisms of infrastructure governance and urban inequality.

The evolution of human population distance to water in the USA from 1790 to 2010

Human societies evolved alongside rivers, but how has the relationship between human settlement locations and water resources evolved over time? We conducted a dynamic analysis in the conterminous US to assess the coevolution of humans and water resources from 1790 to 2010. Here we show that humans moved closer to major rivers in pre-industrial periods but have moved farther from major rivers after 1870, demonstrating the dynamics of human reliance on rivers for trade and transport. We show that humans were preferentially attracted to areas overlying major aquifers since industrialization due to the emergent accessibility of groundwater in the 20th century. Regional heterogeneity resulted in diverse trajectories of settlement proximity to major rivers, with the attractiveness of rivers increasing in arid regions and decreasing in humid areas. Our results reveal a historical coevolution of human-water systems, which could inform water management and contribute to societal adaptation to future climate change.

The Way We Ask for Money… The Emergence and Institutionalization of Grant Writing Practices in Academia

Although existing scholarship offers critical insights into the working mechanisms of project-based research funding, little is known about the actual practice of writing grant proposals. Our study seeks to add a longitudinal dimension to the ongoing debate on the implications of competitive research funding by focusing on the incremental adjustment of the funder/fundee relationship around a common discursive practice that consists in describing and evaluating research projects: How has the perception of what constitutes a legitimate funding claim changed over time and why? By investigating the normative framework enacted in the justification strategies of applicants, we shed light on the historical coevolution of the increasing competition for project funding, the epistemic culture of applicants, and grant writing rhetoric. To do this, we mobilize a comprehensive data set consisting of archival data from Europe’s oldest and largest funding agency, the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, as well as a corpus of 80 successful grant proposals written between 1975 and 2005. We find that the 1990s mark an important normative consolidation of what we consider to be a legitimate funding claim: Ensuring the success of the project and the project’s results becomes a major concern in applicant rhetoric. This time period coincides with a substantive rise in the level of competition for project funding. Yet, even though justification strategies might seem to address the same issues in grant proposals across the disciplines under investigation, the normative framework to which applicants refer differs according to the applicant’s epistemic culture.

Relaciones entre modelos de calidad de la educación superior y de políticas de ciencia, tecnología e innovación

Los modelos de políticas de ciencia, tecnología e innovación (PCTI) y los modelos de calidad aplicada a la educación superior (CES) han cambiado en las últimas décadas. A partir de una revisión bibliográfica, se realiza un análisis comparativo de la relación entre ambos tipos de modelos, indagando acerca de una posible coevolución entre ellos. La comparación realizada permite mostrar cierta coevolución histórica entre los modelos. En dos momentos históricos se identifican claras relaciones conceptuales entre los principios generales de ambos tipos: a) el modelo lineal de PCTI y el modelo isomórfico de CES; y b) los modelos sistémicos e interactivos actuales de PCTI y el modelo de CES para la equidad. En la transición entre ambos momentos históricos existe una relación imprecisa. Se plantean hipótesis que generarían estas relaciones y se evidencia una combinación de modelos y una cierta disrupción entre discursos y realidades.

Migration as a Window into the Coevolution between Language and Behavior

Understanding the causes and consequences of language evolution in relation to social factors is challenging as we generally lack a clear picture of how languages coevolve with historical social processes. Research analyzing the relation between language and socio-economic factors relies on contemporaneous data. Because of this, such analysis may be plagued by spurious correlation concerns coming from the historical co-evolution and dependency of the relationship between language and behavior to the institutional environment. To solve this problem, we propose migrations to the same country as a microevolutionary step that may uncover constraints on behavior. We detail strategies available to other researchers by applying the epidemiological approach to study the correlation between sex-based gender distinctions and female labor force participation. Our main finding is that language must have evolved partly as a result of cultural change, but also that it may have directly constrained the evolution of norms. We conclude by discussing implications for the coevolution of language and behavior, and by comparing different methodological approaches.

From Cold War Politics to Post–Cold War Fiction: Philip Roth’s I Married a Communist and the Problem of Cultural Pluralism

I Married a Communist is arguably one of the most understudied Philip Roth novels. This article makes two claims that underline the book’s unacknowledged centrality both within the immediate context of the so-called “American Trilogy” and as a powerful example of post–Cold War historical fiction. First, despite its seemingly realist ambition, the novel denounces traditional truth questions in historical writing (and their skeptical rebuttal) and instead focuses on the uses of history as potential forms of world-making. Second, I Married a Communist complicates the notion that only the end of the Cold War conditioned the general turn away from ideology questions in favor of a dubious identitarian pluralism—a point variously reiterated and critiqued after Walter Michaels’s Shape of the Signifier ()—by arguing that such pluralistic desires in fact emerged in a necessary historical co-evolution with the rise of ideological antagonism during the 1940s and 1950s. Storytelling is featured in the novel as a pluralistic form of world-making to stress exactly this point.

Extra-Planetary Digital Cultures

Extra-Planetary Digital Cultures

Conservation Narratives and Their Implications in the Coral Triangle Initiative

Conserving coral reefs, sustaining fisheries, and ensuring food security are multi-faceted challenges. Six nations in the Southeast Asia Coral Triangle have agreed to a region-wide framework to address these challenges through the Coral Triangle Initiative on Coral Reefs, Fisheries and Food Security (CTI). Based on a review of documentation, selected discussions and ongoing work in the region, we offer an initial assessment of narratives influencing conservation practice in the CTI. Current efforts in the CTI are framed by a crisis narrative that emphasises the importance of maintaining critical ecosystems and baseline conditions. This narrative has a strong empirical basis but it can also exacerbate a dualistic view of people and nature. However, CTI documentation and programming also reflect a recognition of linked social-ecological change and the historical co-evolution of communities and coastal-marine systems. This emerging narrative places an emphasis on building resilience to change, rather than resisting change. We do not advocate here for a single narrative with which to frame policy responses in the CTI, but rather draw attention to the ways that mainstreaming of certain narratives will have material effects on initiatives and programmes promoted in this region of globally significant marine biodiversity.

Socio-hydrologic perspectives of the co-evolution of humans and water in the Tarim River basin, Western China: the Taiji–Tire model

Abstract. This paper presents a historical socio-hydrological analysis of the Tarim River basin (TRB), Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, in Western China, from the time of the opening of the Silk Road to the present. The analysis is aimed at exploring the historical co-evolution of coupled human–water systems and at identifying common patterns or organizing principles underpinning socio-hydrological systems (SHS). As a self-organized entity, the evolution of the human–water system in the Tarim Basin reached stable states for long periods of time, but then was punctuated by sudden shifts due to internal or external disturbances. In this study, we discuss three stable periods (i.e., natural, human exploitation, and degradation and recovery) and the transitions in between during the past 2000 years. During the "natural" stage that existed pre-18th century, with small-scale human society and sound environment, evolution of the SHS was mainly driven by natural environmental changes such as river channel migration and climate change. During the human exploitation stage, especially in the 19th and 20th centuries, it experienced rapid population growth, massive land reclamation and fast socio-economic development, and humans became the principal players of system evolution. By the 1970s, the Tarim Basin had evolved into a new regime with a vulnerable eco-hydrological system seemingly populated beyond its carrying capacity, and a human society that began to suffer from serious water shortages, land salinization and desertification. With intensified deterioration of river health and increased recognition of unsustainability of traditional development patterns, human intervention and recovery measures have since been adopted. As a result, the basin has shown a reverse regime shift towards some healing of the environmental damage. Based on our analysis within TRB and a common theory of social development, four general types of SHSs are defined according to their characteristic spatio-temporal variations of historical co-evolution, including primitive agricultural, traditional agricultural, industrial agricultural, and urban SHSs. These co-evolutionary changes have been explained in the paper in terms of the Taiji–Tire model, a refinement of a special concept in Chinese philosophy, relating to the co-evolution of a system because of interactions among its components.

Cell motility as random motion: A review

.The historical co-evolution of biological motility models with models of Brownian motion is outlined. Recent results for how to derive cell-type-specific motility models from experimental cell trajectories are reviewed. Experimental work in progress, which tests the generality of this phenomenological model building is reported. So is theoretical work in progress, which explains the characteristic time scales and correlations of phenomenological models in terms of the dynamics of cytoskeleton, lamellipodia, and pseudopodia.

The Historical Triangulation of Education, Politics and Economy

In the course of the long 18th century, basic conceptual and discursive changes took place in the western world. Even words which remained the same took on new meanings.The new concepts indicate how the social reality is comprehended in the modern era. Various segments of the population relied on them to act, to understand, interpret and reform reality.These concepts are crucial to the discursive constitution of the world. They take part in the dissolution of the ‘old’ world and the emergence of a ‘new’ one.They do not merely reflect structural patterns; they accompany and stimulate an ongoing transition process.This article deals with a small aspect of the historical co-evolution of concepts and structures in education. It examines the non-random character of the variations in the discourses on the social function of education. It offers an analysis of the changing relationship between education, politics and economy in that period. It analyzes how different conceptualizations of the function of education are both a factor in, and an indicator of, the morphogenesis of the modern educational system.

Education and Society: a Plea for a Historicised Approach

In the course of the ‘long’ eighteenth century, ways of thinking in the Western world transformed in fundamental ways; even words that remained the same took on new meanings. In the field of the history of ideas, the period 1700–1850 is also called the ‘saddle-period’. Philosophers of history have argued that the new basic concepts that emerged at this time indicate how social reality has come to be comprehended in the modern era. Various segments of the population relied on them to act, understand, interpret and reform reality. These concepts are crucial to the discursive constitution of the world—in the economy, politics, science, art, education and so on. They play their part in the dissolution of the ‘old’ world and the emergence of a ‘new’ one. They can thus also be studied with regard to their functioning as both factors in and indicators of evolutionary processes. This article deals with a small aspect of the historical co-evolution of concepts and structures in education. It examines the non-random character of the variations in the discourses on the social function of education, especially in the eighteenth century.

Historical coevolution of governance and technology in the industrial revolutions

While the relationships between technological change and organisational change have been widely observed in specific cases, little has been done to generalise about such interrelationships over the longer term. The paper uses historical evidence to categorise the principal changes in governance (covering the control, structure and process of systems) in the industrial epoch, which are seen as the successive predominance of markets, (corporate) hierarchies and then networks. These correspond to the successive importance of labour processes, capital processes and information processes. There appears to be a link with the three ‘industrial revolutions’ that have arisen at century-long intervals since the later 18th century, though the causal interrelationships remain uncertain and by no means necessary. Network alignment is suggested as a means for bringing about the coevolution of governance and technology in development processes. A number of mechanisms for matching technological with organisational change are suggested by the governance literature, although no one theory of governance appears able to explain the observed historical phenomena.