Resource Competitions Research Articles

Anthropogenic activities facilitate temporal overlaps and spatial partitions among sympatric canids in a human-modified landscape of Bulgaria

Mammalian carnivores (order Carnivora) occupy higher trophic levels in many terrestrial ecosystems, shaping community structures via direct predation and trophic cascades. The interference competition among sympatric carnivores (i.e., aggression and killing) has a major role in the intraguild interactions in which the large-dominant predators typically constrain behaviors and resource use patterns by exploitative (i.e., resource) competitions as well as the survival of smaller subordinate species by interference (i.e., direct) competitions. The free-roaming dog, Canis lupus familiaris, has been introduced worldwide and the species affects regional biodiversity, including native carnivore species. Using camera trapping, we investigated the temporal and spatial overlaps between the free-roaming dog and two wild canids, the golden jackal (Canis aureus) and the red fox (Vulpes vulpes), in different landscapes of central Bulgaria. We predict their interference interactions, namely that the dog, as the largest competitor, suppresses the golden jackal with intermediate body size, and, in turn, the golden jackal suppresses the smaller red fox. In mountainous forest landscapes where the free-roaming dog was absent or scarce, the golden jackal and red fox partitioned their diel activities, while there were moderate levels of spatial overlap. In agricultural lowlands where dogs were abundant and anthropogenic disturbances were relatively high, all three canids were primarily nocturnal with high temporal overlap, probably owing to human activities (e.g., hunting) in the daytime. The golden jackal was spatially separated from the dog, whereas the red fox spatially overlapped with large dogs. Our results indicated that, in human-modified landscapes with scattered forests and shrubs, spatial partitioning between the free-roaming dog and the golden jackal at fine spatial scales facilitates their sympatry by decreasing the probability of direct encounters. Furthermore, our findings also indicate that spatiotemporal interactions between the golden jackal and the red fox can change in association with various human disturbances, e.g., landscape modifications, human activities, and the introduction of dogs.

Perception-Aware Cross-Modal Signal Reconstruction: From Audio-Haptic to Visual

Cross-modal communications, devoting to collaboratively delivering and processing audio, visual, and haptic signals, have gradually become the supporting technology for the emerging multi-modal services. However, the inevitable resource competitions among different modality signals as well as the unexpected packet loss and latency during transmission seriously affect quality of the received signals and end user's immersive experience (especially visual experience). To overcome these dilemmas, this paper proposes a cross-modal signal reconstruction strategy from the perspective of human's perceptual facts. It tries to guarantee visual signal quality by considering potential correlations among modalities when processing audio and haptic signals. On the one hand, a time-frequency masking-based audio-haptic redundancy elimination mechanism is designed by resorting to the similarity of audio-haptic characteristics and human's masking effects. On the other hand, based on the fact that non-visual perception can assist to form and enhance visual perception, an audio-haptic fused visual signal restoration (AHFVR) approach for handling the impaired and delayed visual signals is proposed. Experiments on a standard multi-modal database and a constructed practical platform evaluate the performance of the proposed perception-aware cross-modal signal reconstruction strategy.

Communicating cultural identity in the management of forest related conflicts in Eastern Mau, Kenya

AbstractConflict behavior is thought to result from attitudes. Attitude which is a tendency to favor or disfavor is thought to be a function of perceptions. Perceptions are influenced by our cultural identity. In Kenya, different communities have been involved in violent identity conflicts which peaked in 2007/2008 during the post‐election violence. The role of politics and natural resource competitions as sources for conflicts in Kenya has been widely exposed. This paper enriches the discourse on manifestation of conflict by an in‐depth analysis of how cultural identity is communicated drawing examples from communities residing adjacent to Eastern Mau forests complex in Kenya. The main research question is that, since inter‐group conflict involves identity competition, how are attitudes expressed in this context? Qualitative data sources were obtained for this study through key informant interviews and Focus Group Discussions. Data analysis was through thematization, content and linguistic analysis. Results from this study reveal that conflicts involving different ethnic communities have escalated over time. The study further reveals that attitudes are expressed through figures of communication such as stereotypes and nicknames, metaphors, and naming of places. Conflicts in Eastern Mau seemed to persist, vacillating between periods of relative peace and periods of escalation. Mediation has been proposed in recent literature as a sustainable solution for intractable conflicts. This paper suggests that more research is needed on traditional dispute resolution in Eastern Mau with a view to understanding how mediation could be integrated in the existing formal conflict resolution in the study area and beyond.

Community Perceptions and Challenges to Wildlife Conservation, the Case of Borana National Park, Southern Ethiopia

Background: Despite conservationist’ efforts to safeguard natural resources, wildlife continues to disappear at an alarming rate around the world. This research focused on evaluating community perceptions and factors affecting wildlife conservation in Borana National Park in Southern Ethiopia. The study was conducted by the year 2020. Methods: Questionnaires, focus group discussions, key informant interviews and personal observation were utilized to collect data from 95 households. Quantitative data was compiled and presented in tables using a five-point rating scale with scores of 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 correspondingly. Data was analyzed using SPSS version 20 and transformed into frequency, percentages and mean. Result: Despite the abundance of wildlife and communities’ long-standing indigenous conservation practices, the study area faced challenges such as extreme resource competitions, human-wildlife conflicts, a lack of compensation, illegal hunting, settlement, variability and unfavorable weather conditions. Furthermore, invasive species expansion and increasing commercialization of wildlife products were feasible problems that require immediate attention in order to achieve sustainable wildlife resource development in the study area.

Elevational Diversity Patterns of Green Lacewings (Neuroptera: Chrysopidae) Uncovered With DNA Barcoding in a Biodiversity Hotspot of Southwest China

Elevational diversity patterns can reflect the responses of biodiversity to climate change spatially. We investigate the species diversity patterns of green lacewings (an important predatory group of insects) along the gradient of elevation from the Shaluli Mountains (Mts. Shaluli), which belong to the Hengduan Mountains in southwestern China, one of the important hotspots of global biodiversity. We combined multiple approaches, including Automatic Barcode Gap Discovery (ABGD), Assemble Species by Automatic Partitioning analysis (ASAP), General Mixed Yule Coalescent (GMYC), Poisson tree processes (bPTP), multi-rate Poisson tree processes (mPTP), to delimit the green lacewings species based on the standard barcoding region of cytochrome c oxidase subunit I (COI). The α-diversity and β-diversity patterns of green lacewings from the Mts. Shaluli along the gradient of elevation were analyzed, with further exploration on how the temperature effect elevational-diversity pattern on broad-scale (county scale) elevational gradients. The DNA barcoding reference library consisted of 40 green lacewing species from the Mts. Shaluli. The α-diversity of green lacewings decreased with the increasing elevation. The temperature was found to have a significant effect on the abundance and Shannon-Wiener diversity index but not on the species richness. Nestedness replaced turnover as the main component of Sørensen’s dissimilarity with the increasing elevation, and greater nestedness occurred at low temperature areas. The combination of a reliable DNA barcoding database could improve the accuracy and efficiency to investigate the species diversity patterns of green lacewings. Temperature, resource, and resultant interspecific competitions may have important roles in explaining the species diversity patterns of green lacewings from the Mts. Shaluli. Priority of conservation should be given to the species at low elevation, middle elevation, and relatively high temperature regions under the background of global climate warming.

Brief Report: Health Expenditures for Children with Autism and Family Financial Well-Being in China.

Little is known on the financial well-being of families raising children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD). Family financial well-being has important impacts on the development of children with ASD. The study uses a 2019 survey collected from Chinese families raising a child with ASD (N = 3064) to examine their financial well-being and its association with health expenditures for children. Extensive control variables (i.e., demographic and socioeconomic characteristics of children, respondents, and their families) are adjusted in analyses. Findings suggest that the amount of health expenditures is negatively associated with respondents' perception of their financial status. The significance of health expenditures disappears after household material hardship is adjusted. Health expenditures affect financial well-being mainly through resource competitions against family needs.

Ethical Behaviour and Compliance with Donor Reporting Requirements by Non-Governmental Organisations in Uganda: A Proposition

This study seeks to respond to the question of dwindling donor generosity in the face of the UN sponsored sustainable development goals and Uganda’s Vision 2040. Recently, most donors who support poverty alleviating efforts through the medium of Non-Governmental Organisations, have been scaling down on some of their commitments. This seems to persist even as the need for humanitarian and development aid is increasing due to neighborhood immigrations and the resulting resource competitions. Ideally, donor step back should be undesirable at this time, and any cause for the same should be established and checked. Scholars suggest managerial incentives could be at play. This study is set out to examine the relationship that exists between ethical behaviour and NGO compliance with donor reporting requirements in Uganda. The study objectives will identify the various donor reporting requirements and investigate some ethical behaviour that impede NGOs’ compliance with the donors’ reporting requirements. To address the question of why donor fatigue at such a time of need, the researchers propose to engage with donor agencies, national NGO regulators and NGO senior management teams, for their input into the response. The stakeholder views obtained will be available for integration into the national regulatory framework to rejuvenate donor trust and socio-economic participation of the NGO sector in Uganda. Keywords: ethical behaviour, compliance, donor reporting requirements, NGOs, Uganda DOI: 10.7176/RJFA/11-22-07 Publication date: November 30 th 2020

Joint resource allocation and admission control in sliced fog radio access networks

Network slicing based fog radio access network (F-RAN) has emerged as a promising architecture to support various novel applications in 5G-and-beyond wireless networks. However, the co-existence of multiple network slices in F-RANs may lead to significant performance degradation due to the resource competitions among different network slices. In this paper, the downlink F-RANs with a hotspot slice and an Internet of Things (IoT) slice are considered, in which the user equipments (UEs) of different slices share the same spectrum. A novel joint resource allocation and admission control scheme is developed to maximize the number of UEs in the hotspot slice that can be supported with desired quality-of-service, while satisfying the interference constraint of the UEs in the IoT slice. Specifically, the admission control and beamforming vector optimization are performed in the hotspot slice to maximize the number of admitted UEs, while the joint sub-channel and power allocation is performed in the IoT slice to maximize the capability of the UEs in the IoT slice tolerating the interference from the hotspot slice. Numerical results show that our proposed scheme can effectively boost the number of UEs in the hotspot slice compared to the existing baselines.

The Napoleon Complex: When Shorter Men Take More

Inspired by an evolutionary psychological perspective on the Napoleon complex, we hypothesized that shorter males are more likely to show indirect aggression in resource competitions with taller males. Three studies provide support for our interpretation of the Napoleon complex. Our pilot study shows that men (but not women) keep more resources for themselves when they feel small. When paired with a taller male opponent (Study 1), shorter men keep more resources to themselves in a game in which they have all the power (dictator game) versus a game in which the opponent also has some power (ultimatum game). Furthermore, shorter men are not more likely to show direct, physical aggression toward a taller opponent (Study 2). As predicted by the Napoleon complex, we conclude that (relatively) shorter men show greater behavioral flexibility in securing resources when presented with cues that they are physically less competitive. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

不同坡向荩草构件的权衡关系

权衡关系是植物生活史对策理论的基础，研究不同坡向植物构件的权衡关系对理解植物在不同生境下的表型可塑性具有重要意义。本研究选取济南市长清区琵琶山不同坡向的典型植物--荩草(Arthraxon hispidus)为研究对象，分析了不同坡向影响下荩草种群构件间的关系。结果表明：坡向是影响荩草构件权衡的重要地形因子，从构件形态看，南坡的荩草相比北坡来说更倾向于茎叶生物量的增长，北坡的荩草则表现出以更大的茎节间长；从异速生长关系看，叶宽、叶面积和株高在各坡向不具有共斜率，采取不同的分配策略，其它构件在各坡向具有共斜率，只是在分配方面略有倾向。不同坡向荩草构件的权衡关系反映了异质生境中资源多重竞争下荩草生物量的分配机制和提高种群适应性的种群更新策略。 Trade-off is the basis of plant life history strategy theory. It’s very important to study the trade-off among plant modules in different aspects for understanding the phenotypic plasticity of plants under different habitat conditions. In this study, we selected one common plant-Arthraxon hispidus, on Mount Pipa in Changqing district, Jinan city as the focal species. We studied the relationship between modules of A. Hispidus populations under the effects of different aspects. The results showed that aspect had a significant effect on the trade-off of modules of A. Hispidus populations. Biomass of stems and leaves of plants on south slope was higher than those on the north slope. While, A. hispidus on the north slope improved the internode length adapting to the environment. The allometric relationships of leaf width, leaf area and height vs. plant biomass were different on different slopes, which were affected by different aspects of slopes. While the allometric relationships of other modules vs. plant biomass were not affected by different aspects of slopes. The trade-off between different modules showed that A. Hispidus can choose effective biomass allocation and regeneration strategies to survive the multiple resource competitions in heterogenous habitats.

Modelling multi-topic information propagation in online social networks based on resource competition

Understanding information propagation in online social networks is important in many practical applications and is of great interest to many researchers. The challenge with the existing propagation models lies in the requirement of complete network structure, topic-dependent model parameters and topic isolated spread assumption, etc. In this paper, we study the characteristics of multi-topic information propagation based on the data collected from Sina Weibo, one of the most popular microblogging services in China. We find that the daily total amount of user resources is finite and users’ attention transfers from one topic to another. This shows evidence on the competitions between multiple dynamical topics. According to these empirical observations, we develop a competition-based multi-topic information propagation model without social network structure. This model is built based on general mechanisms of resource competitions, i.e. attracting and distracting users’ attention, and considers the interactions of multiple topics. Simulation results show that the model can effectively produce topics with temporal popularity similar to the real data. The impact of model parameters is also analysed. It is found that topic arrival rate reflects the strength of competitions, and topic fitness is significant in modelling the small scale topic propagation.

Extreme events in multilayer, interdependent complex networks and control.

We investigate the emergence of extreme events in interdependent networks. We introduce an inter-layer traffic resource competing mechanism to account for the limited capacity associated with distinct network layers. A striking finding is that, when the number of network layers and/or the overlap among the layers are increased, extreme events can emerge in a cascading manner on a global scale. Asymptotically, there are two stable absorption states: a state free of extreme events and a state of full of extreme events, and the transition between them is abrupt. Our results indicate that internal interactions in the multiplex system can yield qualitatively distinct phenomena associated with extreme events that do not occur for independent network layers. An implication is that, e.g., public resource competitions among different service providers can lead to a higher resource requirement than naively expected. We derive an analytical theory to understand the emergence of global-scale extreme events based on the concept of effective betweenness. We also articulate a cost-effective control scheme through increasing the capacity of very few hubs to suppress the cascading process of extreme events so as to protect the entire multi-layer infrastructure against global-scale breakdown.

A dynamic block device reconfiguration algorithm in virtual MapReduce cluster

With the advances of cloud computing and virtualization technologies, running MapReduce applications over clouds has been attracting more and more attention in recent years. However, as a fundamental problem, the performance of MapReduce applications can sometimes be severely degraded due to the overheads from I/O virtualization and resource competitions among virtual machines. In this paper, we propose a dynamic block device reconfiguration algorithm in virtual MapReduce clusters, which reduces the data transfer time between virtual machines and thereby improving the performance of MapReduce applications on top of the clouds. The proposed algorithm utilizes a block device reconfiguration scheme, where a block device attached to a virtual machine can be dynamically detached and reattached to other virtual machines at runtime. This scheme allows us to move files easily across different virtual machines without any network transfers between virtual machines. This algorithm is also dynamic in a sense that it estimates the total data transfer times between virtual machines using multiple regression analysis based on CPU utilization and data size, and adaptively determines a least-cost data transfer path between a mapper virtual machine and a reducer virtual machine. We have implemented our algorithm in Hadoop MapReduce. The benchmarking results showed that the overheads incurred by transferring data from mapper virtual machines to reducer virtual machines are minimized and the execution times of MapReduce applications are shortened up to 14 %.

Reactions, accuracy and response complexity of numerical typing on touch screens

Touch screens are popular nowadays as seen on public kiosks, industrial control panels and personal mobile devices. Numerical typing is one frequent task performed on touch screens, but this task on touch screen is subject to human errors and slow responses. This study aims to find innate differences of touch screens from standard physical keypads in the context of numerical typing by eliminating confounding issues. Effects of precise visual feedback and urgency of numerical typing were also investigated. The results showed that touch screens were as accurate as physical keyboards, but reactions were indeed executed slowly on touch screens as signified by both pre-motor reaction time and reaction time. Provision of precise visual feedback caused more errors, and the interaction between devices and urgency was not found on reaction time. To improve usability of touch screens, designers should focus more on reducing response complexity and be cautious about the use of visual feedback. Practitioner Summary: The study revealed that slower responses on touch screens involved more complex human cognition to formulate motor responses. Attention should be given to designing precise visual feedback appropriately so that distractions or visual resource competitions can be avoided to improve human performance on touch screens.

一个年龄序列巨桉人工林植物和土壤生物多样性

为了全面、系统研究和评价退耕后桉树人工林生物多样性,采用立地条件控制及空间代替时间法,对四川丹棱县退耕营造的巨桉 (<em>Eucalyptus grands</em>) 人工林 (1-10a) 植物和土壤生物多样性进行了同步研究。结果显示,植物和土壤动物的物种数、密度和多样性指数及土壤微生物数量呈相似变化趋势,即轮伐期前同步(4a左右)降低,此后随林龄显著增加。CCA分析显示,植物生活型随林龄由藤本植物、地面芽和1年生植物向多年生草本高位芽和高位芽植物过渡。土壤微生物以细菌占据数量优势;土壤动物以腐食性功能团占据优势,杂食性次之。腐食性功能团1-7a降低而后升高,杂食性呈S型升高趋势;植食性和捕食性功能团百分比较低随林龄显著降低。土壤动物优势类群中线虫纲个体百分比随林龄显著降低,蜱螨目百分比和A/C值(蜱螨目/弹尾目数量比)呈S型上升趋势。各林龄巨桉林地植物多样性均显著高于对照农耕地;除1, 2a及4-7a样地植物多样性显著低于对照马尾松林,其余均与其无显著差异。土壤生物多样性,轮伐期前巨桉林地与对照农耕地差异不显著,此后则显著高于农耕地;各林龄样地土壤生物多样性均显著低于对照马尾松林。植物和土壤生物多样性指标显著相关,且相关系数随土壤层次加深而降低。;Issues around the loss of diversity caused by fast-growing tree plantations such as <em>Eucalyptus</em> have aroused controversy for many years. It is generally believed that <em>Eucaluptus </em>plantations bring about a decrease of plant's biodiversity by influencing resource competitions, allelopathy, or the level of soil fertility. Above and below-ground of forest ecosystems interact implicitly. Complex interactions between above-belowground biodiversity may provide important feedbacks regulating ecosystem. However, seldom information was available on the soil organism's diversity in <em>Eucalyptus</em> plantations. Furthermore, most of the previous studies were being conducted in the short-term rotation <em>Eucalyptus </em>plantations with a certain plantation age, which might limit our understanding of the actual plantation ecosystem process. Therefore, the abundance and diversity of plants and soil biodiversity were simultaneously measured across a range of eucalypt plantation ages (1-10 years) in southwest China to determine how <em>Eucalyptus grandis</em> afforestation of agricultural lands affected the native biodiversity. The present results showed that afforestation of <em>E. grandis</em> caused changes in plant and soil biodiversity with soil depth and was dependent on the stand age. The species richness, abundance and the diversity of understory plants and soil organisms showed a parallel development during the process of the succession, viz. both of them increased significantly with time but with a‘dip' around 4 years old. CCA analysis showed that the plant's life forms transited from liana, hemicryptophytes and therophytes into perennial herbaceous-phanerophytes and phanerophytes. Bacteria quantitatively dominated the soil microbe in <em>E. grandis </em>regardless of plantation age. The individual proportion of saprozoic group quantitatively dominated in the soils of the all the study sites, followed by omnivorous group. The proportion of saprozoic groups decreased in 1-7 year old stands and then increased significantly with time. The proportion of omnivorous group increased as S shape with the plantation age. The proportion of predators and phytophage groups decreased significantly with time. The individual percentage of nematode decreased with the plantation age, but that of acarina and the number ratio of the acarina and collembola present the S shape increasing trend over time. The multiple comparisons test showed that plant diversity of the understory vegetation in 1, 2 and 4-7 years-old plantations were significantly lower than that in the control forests (<em>Pinus massoniana</em>). Plant diversity in 1-10 year-old <em>E. grandis</em> plantations were significantly higher than that of the control arable land. Soil biodiversity in the plantations before the rotation period has no significant differences compared with agricultural lands, but were significantly higher in the plantations on or after the rotation period than the crop land. There were significant correlations between the plant' s and soil organism's diversity index and the correlation coefficient decreased with soil depth.

Tackling Resource Variations Through Adaptive Multicore Execution Frameworks

Multicore architectures have been widely adopted to accommodate the rising performance demand in various application domains, ranging from high-end supercomputing to low-end consumer electronics. Yet due to the ever growing integration density and application complexity, such architectures suffer from increased level of core availability variations. At runtime, issues such as device failures, heat buildup, as well as resource competitions and preemptions can make computational resources unavailable, necessitating execution schedules capable of delivering diverse performance levels to match the varying resource allocations. The adaptive execution framework introduced in this paper delivers high-quality schedules capable of predictably reconfiguring execution and gracefully degrading performance in the face of resource unavailability. By adhering to a novel band structure, a set of possible execution schedules are compactly engendered in readiness at compile time, thus delivering predictable responses to runtime resource variations. More importantly, through the exploitation of an extra degree of freedom in the scheduling process, the scheduler can perform task assignments in such a way that adaptivity can be embedded within the preoptimized schedules at almost no cost. The efficacy of the proposed technique is confirmed by incorporating it into a conventional, widely adopted scheduling heuristic and experimentally verifying it in the context of single core degradations.

Migration-aware adaptive MPSoC static schedules with dynamic reconfigurability

Technology scalings in semiconductors have enabled the integration of dozens of processing elements (PEs) onto a single chip (MPSoC). Scheduling application tasks onto the target MPSoC has been widely reported in the literature. Both technology scalings and resource competitions among applications have led to the variations of availability resources at runtime. While adaptive static schedules with predictable responses to runtime resource variations have consequently been proposed, a large number of task migrations upon PE failures in this reconfigurable schedule scheme will lead to excessive migration cost among processors and performance degradation. In this paper, we present an algorithm to reduce the number of task migrations while retaining the benefits of the fore techniques. Through embedding several soft constraints into the baseline heuristic scheduling algorithm, the proposed algorithm can decrease the number of task migrations significantly on the basis of holding the advantages of the initial dynamic reconfigurable schedule scheme. The performance evaluation of the proposed technique is carried out by incorporation into a well known heuristic scheduling algorithm. The simulation results confirm its effectiveness in minimizing the number of task migrations during dynamic reconfiguration.

Using Transfer-Resource Graph for Software-Based Verification of System-on-Chip

The verification of system-on-chip is challenging due to its high level of integration. Multiple components in a system can behave concurrently and compete for resources. Hence, for simulation-based verification, we need a methodology that allows one to automatically generate test cases for testing concurrent and resource-competing behaviors. We introduce the use of a transfer-resource graph (TRG) as the model for test generation. From a high abstraction level, TRG is able to model the parallelism between heterogeneous interaction forms in a system. We show how TRG is used in generating test cases of resource competitions and how these test cases are structured in event-driven test programs. For coverage, TRG can be converted to a Petri net, allowing one to measure the completeness of concurrency in simulation.

Carotenoid-based plumage coloration and aggression during molt in male house finches

AbstractBirds often use colorful traits to mediate resource competitions, and typically individuals with bright or large patches of color are more competitive than or dominant to those with drab or small color patches. Male House Finches (Carpodacus mexicanus) are an exception, however, as drab males tend to be more aggressive than bright males during the breeding season and in winter. One hypothesis for this 'negatively correlated handicap' is that drab male house finches, being comparatively sexually unattractive and in poor health and condition, have more to gain by elevating aggression and increasing access to food and pursuit of (especially extra-pair) mates. It would seem important then to test this hypothesis during the period of molt, when birds are actively acquiring the foods and carotenoid pigments that make them colorful and a time in which there is a clear link between plumage color and nutrition/health in this species. We conducted two captive dominance experiments with male House Finches from the southwestern United States (their native range) to examine the relationship between carotenoid-based plumage coloration and aggression during molt. In the first experiment, where birds exhibited their natural, currently growing plumage color, we found that drab males were significantly more aggressive than bright males. However, when plumage colors were manipulated with art markers in a second experiment, color display was no longer significantly predictive of agonistic outcomes. These results suggest that: (1) drab male dominance is not an artifact in eastern US populations and instead is a conserved property of native and non-native House Finches, (2) like in our previous studies in winter, plumage color is correlated with dominance but does not serve as a visual signal of social status in this species, and (3) drab males should have a competitive advantage over access to important carotenoid-rich foods during molt, but apparently do not become as colorful because they do not adequately locate carotenoid-rich foods or do not use them efficiently for energetic or health reasons, which are perhaps exacerbated by elevated testosterone levels.

The role of trust in distributed design

Automated support of design teams, consisting of both human and automated systems, requires an understanding of the role of trust in distributed design processes. By explicating trust, an individual designer's decisions become better understood and may be better supported. Each individual designer has his or her private goals in a cooperative design setting, in which requirement conflicts and resource competitions abound. However, there are group goals that also need to be reached. This paper presents an overview of research related to trust in the context of agents and design, a computational knowledge-level model of trust based on the seven beliefs distinguished by Castelfranchi and Falcone, and an example of the use of the trust model in a specific design process, namely, Website design from the perspective of a single designer. The results are discussed in the context of distributed design in open systems.