Individual-level Properties Research Articles

Prepositional Verbs and the Individual-/Stage-Level distinction

Drawing on Catalan, we show how the aspectual classification of intransitive prepositional verbs is, partially, a predictor of their argument structure properties. Prepositional verbs qualifying as Stage-Level form a heterogeneous class, comprising both unergative and unaccusative verbs. By contrast, those prepositional verbs that qualify as Individual-Level predicates are homogenous as regards argument structure: their prepositional complement is robustly obligatory and their subject is not an external argument, suggesting that they involve a predicative configuration whose predicate is the prepositional complement. This result supports the more general Property Verbalization Constraint hypothesis (Acedo-Matellán 2019), which states that Individual-Level property predicates cannot be encoded as unergative verbs.

Is Secularization a Pervasive Trend in Europe?

Abstract Between 2002 and 2016, church attendance and self-attributed religiosity declines linearly, if all countries included in the European Social Survey are taken together. This analysis differentiates within Europe between two ideological and three denominational divides. Two questions are examined. First, is secularization pervasive across these groups? Second, how pervasive does secularization remain as a macro-level trend, when cohort membership and other individual-level qualities are controlled for? We find that the trend in secularization is well-explained by cohort succession in Western as well as in Catholic and Protestant countries. In Eastern Orthodox countries, however, an increase in religiosity is observed, which cannot be explained by individual-level properties. We speculate that it is triggered by a coalition of national churches and political elites.

Association of keyboarding fluency and writing performance in online-delivered assessment

Keyboard-based writing has become increasingly important in everyday living and professional working. However, keyboarding literacy is presumed in most situations; there lack systematic studies on keyboarding and its association with writing processes and qualities of written products. Using the keystroke data of over 1300 middle-school students, we investigated keyboarding fluency, a key subskill of writing transcription measured by an internally reliable metric, and its association with writing process, score, and text characteristics extracted by NLP techniques. We find that: keyboarding fluency is a reliable individual-level property, subject to demographic and linguistic factors of gender, ethnicity, and grade; there exists a threshold keyboarding fluency, which varies by writing purposes and reflects the minimum level of keyboarding skill at which other writing processes are least affected; and more and less fluent typists (differentiated by the threshold) show different text production, transcription, and editing behaviors during writing processes, and distinct linguistic qualities in written products. These findings imply a keyboarding threshold hypothesis and are informative to different stakeholders including practitioners, researchers, test developers, and policy makers. They also provide practical implications for teaching and learning writing in classrooms under a digital environment and help generate personalized feedback on improving writing practice. • Use ETS CBAL writing keystroke dataset to study keyboarding fluency and its effect on writing process and written product. • Keyboarding fluency is a reliable individual-level property subject to demographic and linguistic factors. • Threshold keyboarding fluencies exist as the minimum levels of keyboarding skill required by different writing purposes. • More and less fluent typists show vast differences in writing processes and qualities of written products. • The findings are informative to different stakeholders like practitioners, researchers, test developers, or policy makers.

Complex eco-evolutionary dynamics induced by the coevolution of predator\u2013prey movement strategies

The coevolution of predators and prey has been the subject of much empirical and theoretical research that produced intriguing insights into the interplay of ecology and evolution. To allow for mathematical analysis, models of predator–prey coevolution are often coarse-grained, focussing on population-level processes and largely neglecting individual-level behaviour. As selection is acting on individual-level properties, we here present a more mechanistic approach: an individual-based simulation model for the coevolution of predators and prey on a fine-grained resource landscape, where features relevant for ecology (like changes in local densities) and evolution (like differences in survival and reproduction) emerge naturally from interactions between individuals. Our focus is on predator–prey movement behaviour, and we present a new method for implementing evolving movement strategies in an efficient and intuitively appealing manner. Throughout their lifetime, predators and prey make repeated movement decisions on the basis of their movement strategies. Over the generations, the movement strategies evolve, as individuals that successfully survive and reproduce leave their strategy to more descendants. We show that the movement strategies in our model evolve rapidly, thereby inducing characteristic spatial patterns like spiral waves and static spots. Transitions between these patterns occur frequently, induced by antagonistic coevolution rather than by external events. Regularly, evolution leads to the emergence and stable coexistence of qualitatively different movement strategies within the same population. Although the strategy space of our model is continuous, we often observe the evolution of discrete movement types. We argue that rapid evolution, coexistent movement types, and phase shifts between different ecological regimes are not a peculiarity of our model but a result of more realistic assumptions on eco-evolutionary feedbacks and the number of evolutionary degrees of freedom.

The Exodus from New York City during COVID-19: Evidence from Out-of-Town Home Purchases

Using millions of individual-level property transactions, we provide direct evidence on the population redistribution from densely populated metropolitan areas to nearby locations after the COVID-19 outbreak. Specifically, we study the change in property purchases by New York City (NYC) residents in the rest of the New York State. At the highest point after the pandemic, quarterly property purchases in (non-)urban areas by NYC homebuyers increase by 180% (140%) relative to pre-COVID19 levels. Regression analyses on pulling factors of destination reveal that natural amenities and internet access become more attractive to NYC homebuyers after COVID-19, while urban amenities’ attraction decreases. In addition, we find that higher COVID death and infection rates pose a significant deterrence effect on NYC homebuyers’ reallocation choices.

The grammaticalisation of a copula in vernacular Arabic

It is standardly assumed that Arabic copula constructions with present tense interpretation involve either a null copula or a pronominal copula. This paper provides evidence that some Arabic vernaculars are developing a three-way split, with an additional copula form occurring in some predicational copula clauses. This form has grammaticalised out of the active participle form of the posture verb meaning ‘sit’. While at different stages of development in different varieties of Arabic, this emergent copula shows the characteristics of a locative (temporary and/or permanent, depending on the variety) or contingent state (stage-level) copula, standing in contrast with the use of a null copula strategy, which marks characterising/defining individual-level properties. We propose a grammaticalisation trajectory for this copula in the Arabic varieties based on the comparative patterns of variation across those dialects, showing that the trajectory postulated for other, typologically distinct languages is also applicable to Arabic and hence providing further support for it. We suggest that there is also evidence of a distinct but related trajectory in some varieties which have developed a semantically bleached lexical existential predicate from this same form. We provide further evidence of the importance of the temporary/permanent split in the copula systems of Arabic arguing that the developing split copula system based on the active participle of the ‘sit’ verb is in alignment with the development of two other parallel split copula systems in other geographically diverse Arabic varieties, which use different bases/strategies for grammaticalisation.

Towards an Ecological Trait-data Standard Vocabulary

Trait-based research spans from evolutionary studies of individual-level properties to global patterns of biodiversity and ecosystem functioning. An increasing number of trait data is available for many different organism groups, published as open access data on a variety of file hosting services. Thus, standardization between datasets is generally lacking due to heterogeneous data formats and types. The compilation of these published data into centralised databases remains a difficult and time-consuming task. We reviewed existing trait databases and online services, as well as initiatives for trait data standardization. Together with data providers and users participating in a large long-term observation project on multiple taxa and research questions (the Biodiversity Exploratories, www.biodiversity-exploratories.de), we identified a need for a minimal trait-data terminology that is flexible enough to include traits from all types of organisms but simple enough to be adopted by different research communities. In order to facilitate reproducibility of analyses, the reuse of data and the combination of datasets from multiple sources, we propose a standardized vocabulary for trait data, the Ecological Trait-data Standard Vocabulary (ETS, hosted on GFBio Terminology Service, https://terminologies.gfbio.org/terms/ets/pages), which builds upon and is compatible with existing ontologies. By relying on unambiguous identifiers, the proposed minimal vocabulary for trait data captures the different degrees of resolution and measurement detail for multiple use cases of trait-based research. It further encourages the use of global Uniform Resource Identifiers (URI) for taxa and trait definitions, methods and units, thereby readying the data publication for the semantic web. An accompanying R-package (traitdataform) facilitates the upload of data to hosting services but also simplifies the access to published trait data. While originating from a current need in ecological research, in the next step, the described products are being developed for a seamless fit with broader initiatives on biodiversity data standardisation to foster a better linkage of ecological trait data and global e-infrastructures for biological data. The ETS is maintained and discussion on terms are managed via Github (https://github.com/EcologicalTraitData/ETS).

Why a convincing argument for causalism cannot entirely eschew population-level properties: discussion of Otsuka

Causalism is the thesis that natural selection can cause evolution. A standard argument for causalism involves showing that a hypothetical intervention on some population-level property that is identified with natural selection (e.g., variation in fitness) will result in evolution. In a pair of articles, one of which recently appeared in the pages of this journal, Jun Otsuka has put forward a quite different argument for causalism. Otsuka attempts to show that natural selection can cause evolution by considering a hypothetical intervention on an individual-level property. Specifically, Otsuka identifies natural selection with the causal relationship between a trait and fitness, claims an intervention on the strength of this relationship can cause evolution, then concludes that natural selection can cause evolution. Below I describe why Otsuka’s argument for causalism is unconvincing. Central to my criticism is that Otsuka’s argument works only if one adopts an indefensible account of natural selection, according to which natural selection can occur in the absence of trait or fitness variation. I go on to explain why any attempt to demonstrate the truth of causalism via a hypothetical intervention on an individual-level property would appear to require one to adopt an account of natural selection that is inadequate for the same reason. This in turn means the plausibility of causalism does indeed depend on the plausibility of the claim that population-level properties, which supervene on the properties of the individuals in the population, can be causally efficacious.

Models of collective cell motion for cell populations with different aspect ratio: Diffusion, proliferation and travelling waves

Continuum, partial differential equation models are often used to describe the collective motion of cell populations, with various types of motility represented by the choice of diffusion coefficient, and cell proliferation captured by the source terms. Previously, the choice of diffusion coefficient has been largely arbitrary, with the decision to choose a particular linear or nonlinear form generally based on calibration arguments rather than making any physical connection with the underlying individual-level properties of the cell motility mechanism. In this work we provide a new link between individual-level models, which account for important cell properties such as varying cell shape and volume exclusion, and population-level partial differential equation models. We work in an exclusion process framework, considering aligned, elongated cells that may occupy more than one lattice site, in order to represent populations of agents with different sizes. Three different idealisations of the individual-level mechanism are proposed, and these are connected to three different partial differential equations, each with a different diffusion coefficient; one linear, one nonlinear and degenerate and one nonlinear and nondegenerate. We test the ability of these three models to predict the population-level response of a cell spreading problem for both proliferative and nonproliferative cases. We also explore the potential of our models to predict long time travelling wave invasion rates and extend our results to two-dimensional spreading and invasion. Our results show that each model can accurately predict density data for nonproliferative systems, but that only one does so for proliferative systems. Hence great care must be taken to predict density data with varying cell shape.

A network view of the transmission of sexually transmitted infections in Manitoba, Canada

Diez Roux has used the concept of complex systems to describe approaches for the incorporation of social factors into health research. These systems consist of heterogeneous interdependent units that also...

Marking Individual Ants for Behavioral Sampling in a Laboratory Colony: Figure 1.

Ant societies are tractable and malleable, two features that make them ideal models for probing the organization of complex biological systems. The ability to identify specific individuals while they function as part of a colony permits an integrative analysis of social complexity, including self-organizational processes (i.e., how individual-level properties and social interactions give rise to emergent, colony-level attributes such as division of labor and collective decision making). Effects of genotype, nutrition, and physiology on individual behavior and the organization of work also can be investigated in this manner, through correlative and manipulative approaches. Moreover, aspects of colony demography (e.g., colony size, and age and size distributions of workers) can be altered experimentally to examine colony development and regulatory mechanisms underlying colony homeostasis and resiliency. This protocol describes how to sample the behavior of ants living in a colony under laboratory conditions. Specifically, it outlines how to identify and observe individuals within a colony, an approach that can be used to quantify individual- and colony-level patterns of behavior. When a lower-resolution measure of overall group behavior is desired, individual identities might not be required. Given the diversity of ants and their study, this protocol provides a very general methodology; the details can be modified according to the body size, colony size, and ecology of the focal species, as well as to specific research aims. These basic techniques can also be extended to more advanced experimental designs such as manipulation of colony demography and hormone treatment.

HIV-1/parasite co-infection and the emergence of new parasite strains

HIV-1 and parasitic infections co-circulate in many populations, and in a few well-studied examples HIV-1 co-infection is known to amplify parasite transmission. There are indications that HIV-1 interacts significantly with many other parasitic infections within individual hosts, but the population-level impacts of co-infection are not well-characterized. Here we consider how alteration of host immune status due to HIV-1 infection may influence the emergence of novel parasite strains. We review clinical and epidemiological evidence from five parasitic diseases (malaria, leishmaniasis, schistosomiasis, trypanosomiasis and strongyloidiasis) with emphasis on how HIV-1 co-infection alters individual susceptibility and infectiousness for the parasites. We then introduce a simple modelling framework that allows us to project how these individual-level properties might influence population-level dynamics. We find that HIV-1 can facilitate invasion by parasite strains in many circumstances and we identify threshold values of HIV-1 prevalence that allow otherwise unsustainable parasite strains to invade successfully. Definitive evidence to test these predicted effects is largely lacking, and we conclude by discussing challenges in interpreting available data and priorities for future studies.

Growth and wood density predict tree mortality in Amazon forests

Summary Tree mortality is an important process in forest ecology. We explored the extent to which tropical tree death is a predictable outcome of taxon and individual level properties by means of mixed‐species logistic regression, for trees ≥ 10 cm in diameter. We worked in two lowland forest regions with markedly different floristic composition and dynamic regimes – the high wood density, low‐mortality northeastern (NE) Amazon (in eastern Venezuela), and the low wood density, high‐mortality northwestern (NW) Amazon (in northern Peru). Among those genera that are shared between regions there were no detectable regional differences in mortality rates. This suggests that floristic compositional differences are a major driver of the twofold regional contrast in stand‐level mortality. In NE forests, mortality risk of individual trees is best predicted by low taxon‐level wood density, slow relative growth, and large size, reflecting phylogenetically determined life‐history strategy, physiological stress and senescence. In NW forests, trees with low wood density and slow relative growth are also at most risk, but probability of death is independent of tree size, indicating that senescence is unimportant in this region. Synthesis. This study shows that despite fundamental floristic and dynamic differences between the two Amazonian regions, mortality risk can be predicted with mixed‐species, individual‐based statistical models and that the predictors are remarkably similar, such that tree growth and wood density both play important roles.

“Discontinuous” APs in English

“Discontinuous” APs are problematic. Under P&P/minimalist assumptions, they cannot be initial structures and must result via MOVE, but MOVE should be motivated, and what the triggering feature might be is unclear, for “AP-splitting” is optional in some cases and impossible in most. This article examines why it occurs in English. Section 1 discusses the facts and what grammarians have said about them. Section 2 reviews current wisdom on adjectival modfication and considers possible approaches to discontinuity via A(P)-raising and extraposition, but shows that neither is wellmotivated nor can explain why “AP-splitting” is not generally available, which suggests still unidentified constraints. Section 3 adopts a theory of modification that bans prenominal right-branching APs, eliminates the extraposition option, and derives genuine cases of AP-splitting through A-raising from postnominal APs. A-raising is assumed to occur to prevent the adjective from inheriting focus narrowly associated with its complement, but is allowed only within unaccusative APs. Most AP “discontinuities,” therefore, cannot involve A-raising, but the theory allows them to be basegenerated when the postnominal PP/CP is a modifier and the adjective is allowed prenominally. Adjectives denoting individual-level properties are, and are predicted to occur in “discontinuous” APs, but those denoting stage-level properties are not. These predictions are confirmed on the whole, but the evidence is murky due to divided usage. Section 4 sorts out dubious cases and claims that they arise from the fuzziness of the complement/modifier and the individual-level/stage-level distinctions, and from alternative construals of the postnominal XP as a modifier of the noun or higher categories. Finally, Section 5 briefly summarizes the results and the advantages of the present approach.

Assessing the Unit of Measurement for School Climate through Psychometric and Outcome Analyses of the School Climate Survey

This study examines the appropriate unit of theory of school climate while simultaneously conducting a psychometric analysis of a modification of the School Climate Survey for an elementary school population. A conceptualization of school climate as an individual-level property unique to each school participant is compared to the idea that climate is a characteristic of the school with school participants having the role of informants. These two theories are compared by testing their differing implications. The School Climate Survey is found to have a stable and identical factor structure both within and between schools, ratings by different respondent groups are found to be moderately correlated, and average school climate within each school is found to predict a statistically significant amount of the between-school variation in children’s academic achievement and cognitive functioning. Differences between individual raters within each school are not found to have a meaningful relationship to child outcomes. It is concluded that the School Climate Survey is a valid and useful measure of school climate and the school-level theory is found to have the strongest support.

The development of the copula in Child English

The dissertation summarized here provides an account of the fact that young children acquiring English (around age 2) often produce utterances like (1), in which they omit a form of the copula, be. (1)I in the kitchen. Children’s production of forms like (1) is interesting for two main reasons: firstly, utterances like these do not occur in the input (adult English); secondly, children’s omission of the copula conforms to a systematic pattern (it is neither across the board, nor haphazard). In particular, children omit the copula far less frequently in utterances like (2). (2)He’s a dog. The difference between the constructions in (1) and (2) can be characterized in terms of the well-known semantic stage-level/individual-level contrast. That is, a location such as ‘in the kitchen’ denotes a stage-level property of the subject; a predicate such as ‘a dog’ denotes an individual-level property of the subject. I argue for a syntactic difference between stage- and individual-level predicates: stage-level predicates contain additional functional structure (AspP) that individual-level predicates lack. Cross-linguistic support for this proposal is provided. As for why children acquiring English omit the copula in main clauses, I link this to the fact that non-finite main clauses are permitted in child English. I define finiteness in terms of a binding relation between an abstract Tense Operator (TOP) (located in CP) and Infl. In certain grammars (among them child English) TOP may bind Asp instead of Infl, if Asp is projected in the particular clause. However, this binding relation does not result in the clause being finite. Since Asp is projected in clauses with stage-level predicates, but not in those with individual-level predicates, it follows that stage-level predicates may occur in non-finite clauses while individual-level predicates occur with a finite clause. Coupled with the hypothesis that an overt copula is finite (in the sample studied here it is inflected over 99% of the time) and an omitted copula indicates non-finiteness, the pattern of copula omission and production in child English is accounted for.

Reproductive systems and evolution in vascular plants.

Differences in the frequency with which offspring are produced asexually, through self-fertilization and through sexual outcrossing, are a predominant influence on the genetic structure of plant populations. Selfers and asexuals have fewer genotypes within populations than outcrossers with similar allele frequencies, and more genetic diversity in selfers and asexuals is a result of differences among populations than in sexual outcrossers. As a result of reduced levels of diversity, selfers and asexuals may be less able to respond adaptively to changing environments, and because genotypes are not mixed across family lineages, their populations may accumulate deleterious mutations more rapidly. Such differences suggest that selfing and asexual lineages may be evolutionarily short-lived and could explain why they often seem to be of recent origin. Nonetheless, the origin and maintenance of different reproductive modes must be linked to individual-level properties of survival and reproduction. Sexual outcrossers suffer from a cost of outcrossing that arises because they do not contribute to selfed or asexual progeny, whereas selfers and asexuals may contribute to outcrossed progeny. Selfing and asexual reproduction also may allow reproduction when circumstances reduce opportunities for a union of gametes produced by different individuals, a phenomenon known as reproductive assurance. Both the cost of outcrossing and reproductive assurance lead to an over-representation of selfers and asexuals in newly formed progeny, and unless sexual outcrossers are more likely to survive and reproduce, they eventually will be displaced from populations in which a selfing or asexual variant arises.

The relationship between gender and performance issues of concern to directors: correlates or institution?

This paper focuses on the influence of gender on performance issues which concern directors of publicly traded corporations in Israel. Two theoretical perspectives for the explanation of gender differences in occupations were examined. The first views gender as an individual-level property that is correlated with occupational and job variables and the behavioral differences between men and women as the result of these correlates. According to this perspective, when the correlates of gender are controlled, these differences disappear. The second perspective treats gender not only as a property that individuals bring with them to the workplace, but also as an institutionalized characteristic of the workplace, of occupations, and of occupational environments, as embedded in formally defined rules, roles and responsibilities. Consequently, gender influences are not easily eliminated. The dependent variable was the extent to which men and women differ in their concerns regarding their roles as directors. The independent variables included human, social capital and organizational context variables, and gender. Data were collected by means of questionnaires from a representative sample of directors (98 women and 127 men). The findings lend partial support for a view of gender as a social institution and directors as a gendered occupation. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.