Two-way Interplay Research Articles

Organizational dynamics: culture, design, and performance

Abstract We examine the two-way interplay between organizational cultures and organizational design, where culture is modeled as the prevailing social identities among workplace groups that can affect project choices. In a setting where cultural dynamics depend on the expected relative payoffs of holding different identities, we investigate how tribalism and charismatic leadership shape organizational dynamics and steady-state cultures. We show how a strong culture can be a virtue when it permits greater delegated authority, but a vice when the culture is poorly aligned with organizational objectives. We apply our analysis to concrete debates about the interaction of design, performance, and culture (JEL L23, M14).

Insulin-Like Growth Factor Pathway and the Thyroid.

The insulin-like growth factor (IGF) pathway comprises two activating ligands (IGF-I and IGF-II), two cell-surface receptors (IGF-IR and IGF-IIR), six IGF binding proteins (IGFBP) and nine IGFBP related proteins. IGF-I and the IGF-IR share substantial structural and functional similarities to those of insulin and its receptor. IGF-I plays important regulatory roles in the development, growth, and function of many human tissues. Its pathway intersects with those mediating the actions of many cytokines, growth factors and hormones. Among these, IGFs impact the thyroid and the hormones that it generates. Further, thyroid hormones and thyrotropin (TSH) can influence the biological effects of growth hormone and IGF-I on target tissues. The consequences of this two-way interplay can be far-reaching on many metabolic and immunologic processes. Specifically, IGF-I supports normal function, volume and hormone synthesis of the thyroid gland. Some of these effects are mediated through enhancement of sensitivity to the actions of TSH while others may be independent of pituitary function. IGF-I also participates in pathological conditions of the thyroid, including benign enlargement and tumorigenesis, such as those occurring in acromegaly. With regard to Graves’ disease (GD) and the periocular process frequently associated with it, namely thyroid-associated ophthalmopathy (TAO), IGF-IR has been found overexpressed in orbital connective tissues, T and B cells in GD and TAO. Autoantibodies of the IgG class are generated in patients with GD that bind to IGF-IR and initiate the signaling from the TSHR/IGF-IR physical and functional protein complex. Further, inhibition of IGF-IR with monoclonal antibody inhibitors can attenuate signaling from either TSHR or IGF-IR. Based on those findings, the development of teprotumumab, a β-arrestin biased agonist as a therapeutic has resulted in the first medication approved by the US FDA for the treatment of TAO. Teprotumumab is now in wide clinical use in North America.

Small-scale spatial structure influences large-scale invasion rates

Local interactions among individual members of a population can generate intricate small-scale spatial structure, which can strongly influence population dynamics. The two-way interplay between local interactions and population dynamics is well understood in the relatively simple case where the population occupies a fixed domain with a uniform average density. However, the situation where the average population density is spatially varying is less well understood. This situation includes ecologically important scenarios such as species invasions, range shifts, and moving population fronts. Here, we investigate the dynamics of the spatial stochastic logistic model in a scenario where an initially confined population subsequently invades new, previously unoccupied territory. This simple model combines density-independent proliferation with dispersal, and density-dependent mortality via competition with other members of the population. We show that, depending on the spatial scales of dispersal and competition, either a clustered or a regular spatial structure develops over time within the invading population. In the short-range dispersal case, the invasion speed is significantly lower than standard predictions of the mean-field model. We conclude that mean-field models, even when they account for non-local processes such as dispersal and competition, can give misleading predictions for the speed of a moving invasion front.

Circadian Rhythms and Measures of CNS/Autonomic Interaction.

The physiological role and relevance of the mechanisms sustaining circadian rhythms have been acknowledged. Abnormalities of the circadian and/or sleep-wakefulness cycles can result in major metabolic disorders or behavioral/professional inadequacies and stand as independent risk factors for metabolic, psychiatric, and cerebrovascular disorders and early markers of disease. Neuroimaging and clinical evidence have documented functional interactions between autonomic (ANS) and CNS structures that are described by a concept model (Central Autonomic Network) based on the brain-heart two-way interplay. The circadian rhythms of autonomic function, ANS-mediated processes, and ANS/CNS interaction appear to be sources of variability adding to a variety of environmental factors, and may become crucial when considering the ANS major role in internal environment constancy and adaptation that are fundamental to homeostasis. The CNS/ANS interaction has not yet obtained full attention and systematic investigation remains overdue.

Moving interdisciplinary science forward: integrating participatory modelling with mathematical modelling of zoonotic disease in Africa

This review outlines the benefits of using multiple approaches to improve model design and facilitate multidisciplinary research into infectious diseases, as well as showing and proposing practical examples of effective integration. It looks particularly at the benefits of using participatory research in conjunction with traditional modelling methods to potentially improve disease research, control and management. Integrated approaches can lead to more realistic mathematical models which in turn can assist with making policy decisions that reduce disease and benefit local people. The emergence, risk, spread and control of diseases are affected by many complex bio-physical, environmental and socio-economic factors. These include climate and environmental change, land-use variation, changes in population and people’s behaviour. The evidence base for this scoping review comes from the work of a consortium, with the aim of integrating modelling approaches traditionally used in epidemiological, ecological and development research. A total of five examples of the impacts of participatory research on the choice of model structure are presented. Example 1 focused on using participatory research as a tool to structure a model. Example 2 looks at identifying the most relevant parameters of the system. Example 3 concentrates on identifying the most relevant regime of the system (e.g., temporal stability or otherwise), Example 4 examines the feedbacks from mathematical models to guide participatory research and Example 5 goes beyond the so-far described two-way interplay between participatory and mathematical approaches to look at the integration of multiple methods and frameworks. This scoping review describes examples of best practice in the use of participatory methods, illustrating their potential to overcome disciplinary hurdles and promote multidisciplinary collaboration, with the aim of making models and their predictions more useful for decision-making and policy formulation.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s40249-016-0110-4) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

How Not to Talk Past Each Other: The Convergence of Political Representation and Deliberation

This article proposes an analytical framework for studying in a more robust manner the co-occurrence of representation and deliberation. To avoid the pitfall of treating the concept of representation and deliberation as either mutually exclusive or fully intertwined, the framework distinguishes three key features for entangling the two-way interplay of political representation and deliberation: the context of representation, deliberative performance and representative judgement. As such, it will help us discern why representatives in varying contexts of representation resort to different deliberative performances, and how representative judgement is feasible within this backdrop. This proposal builds upon reading current theoretical re-examinations as an illustration of the convergence of the two concepts. These developments also indicate not only how representation can act as a dynamic resource for deliberation, but also how deliberation can constitute and establish representation.

Weathering of stone-built heritage: A lens through which to read the Anthropocene

Abstract This paper discusses how the study of stone-built heritage decay is relevant in the context of the Anthropocene by raising the complex two-way interplay between stone and society. Natural and built stone heritage is an asset that is vulnerable to present and future climate change. Especially in the context of built heritage, stone can also be conceptualized as a “large scale laboratory” in which the evolution of weathering, and thus past exposure conditions, can be studied (analogous to physical landscape studies). This concept of built heritage as a ‘recorder’ of past environmental evolution is found from the very first moments of the development of Earth sciences as a formal discipline. The ideas reviewed and presented in the paper show how stone surfaces may be used to “read” background environmental changes, trends in pollution and even catastrophic events, such as fire. Stone surfaces teach us both about the past (since human interactions with stone began and they intensified through history) and about the nature of weathering. Understanding how past environmental changes have left a trace in stone allow us to use stone as a means to predict potential impacts of future change. Such understanding may be used to inform conservation management of our irreplaceable stone-built heritage assets, as well as to plan for future climate impacts on such assets.

Drawing the Line: Chinese Calligraphy, Cultural Materialisms and the "Remixing of Remix"

Remix in writing has very different expressions, and is grounded in very different legal, philosophical and creative materialisms, in Western and Chinese cultures. The infringement of authors’ Intellectual Property Rights (IPRs) in China is not only an irritant for Chinese-Western commercial and legal relations. It also points to different formations of the creative and legal domains across global space, and serves to introduce notions of creativity and originality that are largely unfamiliar in the West. Calligraphy, as a pictorial and material mode of writing, comprises a practice of Chinese remix in which the apprentice traces the lines of the master’s work: repetition of Yun 韵 (‘composed body movements’) stimulates the expression of Qing 情 (‘feelings’). What appears from a distance to be slavish imitation actually involves a philosophy of learning (or more precisely, of ‘unlearnt learning’) that, bypassing plagiarism’s traps, effectively ‘remixes remix’ as a creative model no longer dependent on the familiar Western rationales for the legitimacy of remix as appropriation, homage and/or pastiche. To see this though, one has to deploy a Taoist rather than a Confucian framework in the analysis of calligraphic practices. The case of Kathy Acker, allied with the work of Gilles Deleuze, reveals a largely invisible lineage of Taoist-influenced remix in Western creative writing. In this way, calligraphy emerges as a model of remix relevant to all forms of writing—for all writing is material, whether calligraphic or not. Further, as Acker shows, the materiality of writing constantly replenishes its remixing with cultural elements that may not be otherwise visible.

Geomorphology and vegetation on hillslopes: Interactions, dependencies, and feedback loops

The linkages between vegetation and hillslope geomorphology have been the subject of serious study for years, but traditionally, ecologists and geomorphologists have viewed these interactions as unidirectional. On the one hand, botanists and landscape ecologists have examined the effects of hillslope features, processes, and materials on vegetation structure, composition, and dynamics. Focus has been placed on the effects of topography (elevation, slope angle, slope aspect), edaphic factors, rock type, and geomorphic disturbance (mass movement, snow avalanches, land surface erosion). On the other hand, geomorphologists have traditionally treated vegetation as an independent variable that affects landforms and sediment routing at limited spatial–temporal scales. Hillslope vegetation and landforms, however, co-evolve. One key is to understand the role of time, disturbances, and feedbacks that link vegetation and geomorphology on hillslopes. The effects of vegetation on mass movement and landscape evolution are being studied in new ways. Many regional studies claim that vegetation becomes less relevant as one moves to larger and larger watershed scales, but ecoregion analysis offers a contrasting view. Whereas these efforts have produced vehicles of understanding that are simple, ordered, unified, and harmonious, they often do not reflect the complexity that leads to multiple possible outcomes—place-dependent results. Recent perspectives focus on the two-way interplay between vegetation and hillslope geomorphology, where establishing cause-and-effect linkages is made difficult by confounding factors (spatial–temporal scale, location, convergence, divergence, nonlinearity, thresholds, feedbacks). Vegetation and geomorphology interactions are controlled by a combination of global factors (independent of time and place) and the local environmental history. Continued refinement of fine-scale deterministic models should be encouraged, but the ability to translate these results to larger scales needs to be explored. At large scales, future research, especially those with predictive modeling as the goal, should concentrate on how to increase the generality of concepts and models and should seek to reduce the number of variables and factors considered.

Power and plenty: trade, war, and the world economy in the second millennium

The book provids an account of world trade and development over the course of the last millennium. Authors examine the successive waves of globalization and deglobalization that have occurred during the past thousand years, looking closely at the technological and political causes behind these long-term trends. They show how the expansion and contraction of the world economy has been directly tied to the two-way interplay of trade and geopolitics, and how war and peace have been critical determinants of international trade over the very long run. The story they tell is sweeping in scope, one that links the emergence of the Western economies with economic and political developments throughout Eurasia centuries ago. Drawing extensively upon empirical evidence and informing their systematic analysis with insights from contemporary economic theory, Findlay and O'Rourke demonstrate the close interrelationships of trade and warfare, the mutual interdependence of the world's different regions, and the crucial role these factors have played in explaining modern economic growth.

Time–space structuring in spontaneous play on educational percussion instruments among three- and four-year-olds

This article reports on a study which investigated the spontaneous instrumental music-making of three- and four-year-olds in typical pre-school educational settings in London, UK. It argues that many prior studies of children's music-making have analysed and evaluated such activity against models drawn from the practices of Western art music and its conventions of analytical theory, and suggests that this approach has certain drawbacks. The study adopted a grounded theory methodology moving through three phases in different nursery classrooms. Each phase was characterised by successive focusing and refinement of methodological tools in response to the emerging findings. Data were collected on videotape which was then repeatedly reviewed, transcribed and categorised. The children's music-making was analysed as relational processes in time and space involving the two-way interplay of child and instrument. Structures in space delineate the child's movement within the spatial potentials and constraints of the instrument design. Structures in time describe how movements and movement ideas were strung together in ever-lengthening portions.

Autism: Two-way Interplay between Research and Clinical Work

The two-way interplay between research and clinical practice in relation to autism is reviewed with respect to: (1) diagnosis and syndrome delineation; (2) the nature of the disorder; (3) intervention studies; and (4) aetiology, as manifest during four time periods; (a) the 1950s and 1960s; (b) the 1970s into the mid 1980s; (c) the late 1980s and early 1990s; and (d) the late 1990s. It is concluded that clinical practice has changed out of all recognition during the last 50 years and that research findings have been crucial in bringing about that change. It has not, however, been a one-way traffic. Many key advances were prompted by astute clinical observations and some extravagant research claims were given a more balanced perspective through the light of clinical experience. Crucial research and clinical tasks remain but the means to meet them are there if the opportunities are taken and attention is paid to the lessons of the past.

The Emanuel Miller Memorial Lecture 1998: Autism: Two‐way Interplay between Research and Clinical Work

The two-way interplay between research and clinical practice in relation to autism is reviewed with respect to: (1) diagnosis and syndrome delineation; (2) the nature of the disorder: (3) intervention studies; and (4) aetiology, as manifest during four time periods; (a) the 1950s and 1960s; (b) the 1970s into the mid 1980s; (c) the late 1980s and early 1990s; and (d) the late 1990s. It is concluded that clinical practice has changed out of all recognition during the last 50 years and that research findings have been crucial in bringing about that change. It has not, however, been a one-way traffic. Many key advances were prompted by astute clinical observations and some extravagant research claims were given a more balanced perspective through the light of clinical experience. Crucial research and clinical tasks remain but the means to meet them are there if the opportunities are taken and attention is paid to the lessons of the past.

Integrating nature and nurture: Implications of person–environment correlations and interactions for developmental psychopathology

The developmental interplay between nature and nurture is discussed, with particular reference to implications for research in developmental psychopathology. The general principles include individual differences in reactivity to the environment, two-way interplay between intraindividual biology and environmental influences, and the need to consider broader social contextual features. Individuals actively process their experiences; they also act on their environment to shape and select their experiences, and individual characteristics change over time. Key findings on genetic effects include their ubiquitous influence, the multifactorial origin of most psychopathology, the involvement of several genes in most mental disorders, some genetic effects operate through dimensional risk features rather than directly on disorder, some genetic effects are dependent on gene-environment correlations and interactions, and genetic effects increase with age. Key findings on environmental effects include their ubiquitous influence, the genetic mediation of some supposed environmental effects, the importance of passive gene-environment correlations, the paucity of evidence regarding environmental effects on lifetime liability to psychopathology, the lack of understanding of environmental effects on the organism, and the importance of nonshared environmental effects. Research strategies to investigate environmental risk mediation include the range of genetically sensitive designs, migration studies, secular trend investigations, studies of nonfamilial environments, and examination of intraindividual change in relation to measured environmental alterations. Proximal processes involved in person-environment interplay are discussed in relation to person-environment interactions and evocative and active person-environment correlations.

The neurotransmitter hypothesis of urticaria

The role of the CNS in the pathophysiology of urticaria has, historically, been almost totally neglected. The concept of the urticarias as “neurovascular disorders” is not a new one, and was first proposed at the turn of the century. Recent advances in the understanding of the physiology of histamine (particularly in the CNS) permit an extension of the old “neurovascular hypothesis”. In this paper, evidence is presented to support the propositions that (i) disordered histamine metabolism and/or release is common to all forms of urticaria, and (ii) that such peripheral upsets alter the hypothalamic functions of the histaminergic, serotoninergic and other amine neurotransmitter systems. Such hypothalamic upsets may disorder peripheral vascular function, thus amplifying or perpetuating the initial antigenic insult. Thus, stress (by acting via the hypothalamic-vascular axis) may be part of the initiating event. Further, since the central histaminergic system is an ascending one, certain behavioural associations of urticaria (such as anxiety and depression) may have a physiological basis. While the physical urticarias (cold, cholinergic and solar types) have been shown to be useful models of mast-cell histamine release, behavioural sequelae of such release should be assessed: recently, cholinergic urticaria was shown to result in alterations in lung-function, so other systemic effects are likely. Mastocytosis and urticaria pigmentosa (as extreme examples of conditions with excess plasma histamine release) have been associated with gross changes in CNS function. While this paper argues the case for an intimate, two-way interplay between CNS and peripheral histamine in urticaria, it is suggested that the study of “food urticaria” might provide valuable insights into the effects of other mediators (such as prostaglandins) on CNS functioning; the effects of absorbed peptide fragments on CNS functioning provide yet another interactive pathway between the brain and peripheral vasculature. Thus, it is suggested here that the CNS plays an important role in the pathogenesis of the urticarias, and that future research should not be restricted to the skin or the mastcell.