Utility Of Others Research Articles

Understanding Landscape Use Patterns of Livestock as a Consequence of Foraging Behavior

Many grazing-management challenges stem from poor livestock distribution resulting in overuse of some areas and low utilization of others. Managing livestock-distribution patterns requires knowledge of pasture characteristics and animal behavior patterns. Behavioral patterns result from recognizable processes that include inherited attributes, individual and social learning systems, cue-consequence specificity, predispositions toward novel stimuli, and spatial memory. Through these behavioral mechanisms, animals form and revise preferences and aversions for specific locations in their foraging landscape. To accomplish habitat selection, domestic herbivores use sight and sound cues to seek and return to high-quality foraging locations. Nested within habitat selection are learned diet preferences and aversions by which ungulate herbivores associate taste with positive or negative postingestive feedback. The deliberate and careful modification of animal attributes and habitat characteristics could yield options for adaptive rangeland management. In this article, we describe the basic principles that underlie how animals make decisions about where to forage and how long to stay in a particular habitat. We also suggest management practices designed to modify animal behavior and alter habitat-use patterns.

Peptide aggregation in neurodegenerative disease.

In the not-so-distant past, insoluble aggregated protein was considered as uninteresting and bothersome as yesterday's trash. More recently, protein aggregates have enjoyed considerable scientific interest, as it has become clear that these aggregates play key roles in many diseases. In this review, we focus attention on three polypeptides: beta-amyloid, prion, and huntingtin, which are linked to three feared neurodegenerative diseases: Alzheimer's, "mad cow," and Huntington's disease, respectively. These proteins lack any significant primary sequence homology, yet their aggregates possess very similar features, specifically, high beta-sheet content, fibrillar morphology, relative insolubility, and protease resistance. Because the aggregates are noncrystalline, secrets of their structure at nanometer resolution are only slowly yielding to X-ray diffraction, solid-state NMR, and other techniques. Besides structure, the aggregates may possess similar pathways of assembly. Two alternative assembly pathways have been proposed: the nucleation-elongation and the template-assisted mode. These two modes may be complementary, not mutually exclusive. Strategies for interfering with aggregation, which may provide novel therapeutic approaches, are under development. The structural similarities between protein aggregates of dissimilar origin suggest that therapeutic strategies successful against one disease may have broad utility in others.

乳幼児期における社会的参照の発達的意味およびその発達プロセスに関する理論的検討

When faced with the unknown or ambiguous, human beings tend to unconsciously consult others for guidance; they took to facial expressions or listen to vocal tones of others. Utilization of others as information sources, social referencing has been paid a lot of attention in developmental psychology, and its origin and development have been actively investigated and discussed. Nevertheless, there appear to be few integrated or comprehensive views on the developmental meanings and processes of social referencing in infancy. This paper reviews and evaluates various theoretical and empirical studies on early social referencing, and attempts to integrate them. Specifically, we first define social referencing and describe experimental paradigms to study infant social referencing. We next discuss its developmental function of effective learning facilitation and its requisites, such as understanding affect specificity and referential quality of information. We then consider some important problems in ontogeny of social referencing, in relation to theory of mind, attachment, and so on. And finally, we point out some unanswered questions and propose a new perspective for social referencing in daily situations.

Systems of Benevolent Utility Functions

This paper studies systems of utility functions in which each person's utility depends on his or her own consumption as well as on the utilities of others. We consider the question of when a system of interdependent utility functions induces unique utility functions over allocations and identifies the class of transformations on interdependent utility functions that are equivalent in the sense of inducing the same preferences over allocations. We show that well‐behaved systems of this kind can be studied by means of the theory of dominant‐diagonal matrices and that the theory of dominant‐diagonal matrices with finitely many elements extends in a satisfactory way to denumerable matrices. The theory of denumerable dominant diagonal matrices allows an elegant analysis of systems of intergenerational benevolence. We also revisit and extend the theory of two‐sided altruism as formulated by Kimball and by Hori and Kanaya.

Games in Networks

This article explores the implications of the use of time (the scarce input) in voluntary associations where members are rational maximizers but use time both “egoistically” and by “helping” others. The model leads to a picture of individuals subject to an internal prisoners' dilemma. In addition, the association is assumed to operate a division of labor where the use of “egoistic” time by one member impacts upon the utility of others. The interplay of three interrelated games is studied and implications for the use of time in associations are derived.

Exploration for and Testing of Groundwater Supplies for Secondary Recovery

Abstract The methods employed in the exploration for and testing of groundwatersupplies are largely independent of the purpose for which the water is to beused. The quantity or quality of water desired, however, may eliminate someaquifers from consideration or make possible the utilization of others notusually considered and, in this respect, eventual use may influence explorationand testing. The aquifers of primary importance in supplying groundwater forsecondary-recovery purposes are the present-day and preglacial alluvialdeposits and the sandstone beds of various Upper Cretaceous and Tertiaryformations. At the present time, the present-day alluvial deposits and the Paskapoo sandstones are the most commonly used. Once an aquifer has been selected, it is generally advisable to carry out acarefully controlled pump test, preferably with one or more observation wellsin addition to the pumping well, in order to determine all the hydrologicfactors that may combine to give rise to depletion of the aquifer during theproduction period. These include: the hydrologic characteristics of theaquifer, namely its coefficients of transmissibility and storage; the magnitudeof any leakage from overlying or underlying strata; and the location and natureof any lateral boundary. With this information, it is possible to predict, withsome degree of confidence, the safe production rate for a single well or acombination of wells for any desired production period. Introduction The availability of water that is adequate in quantity and of suitablequality is vital for the preservation and improvement of our current highstandard of living. Not only is there a large per-capita home consumption ofwater, but vast and ever- increasing quantities are required for the productionand processing of agricultural and industrial products. The injection of waterinto an oil-bearing deposit in order to maintain the pressure as oil isremoved, and thus effect a greater percentage recovery, is an importantindustrial use of water and, because the injection site is, as a rule, distantfrom municipal supply lines, the operator must assume the responsibility forthe location and exploitation of a suitable water source.

The shapes of group molecules forming the surfaces of liquids.

This chapter describes a strategy for the realization of adaptive networks based on polymer molecules and electrochemical mechanisms. As biological benchmark, the main elements of the nervous system are considered. The basic principles of neuron network realization are also presented. Constructions of individual elements are discussed. Finally, demonstration circuits and perspective developments are described. In this chapter, I have tried to draw some perspective lines to develop for the construction of adaptive networks. Of course, we are in a very beginning of such works. If we make a comparison with electronics, we are still in a pre-silicon epoch. Further developments can result in the utilization of others, more effective materials, methods of the structures formation, and architecture of elements and networks. However, even the already available results are rather promising, the attempt to make the system whose working principals and main properties are similar to those of biological systems –ideally working adaptive networks – also seems to be important. We can underline the importance of the realization of polymeric electrochemical element that is supposed to be used as a key node of the system. This synapse analog uses similar electrochemical principles that are the basis for the functioning of nervous system. The other important feature of the element is that it combines the functions of the processor with those of the memory. As we have underlined in the previous sections, this feature must be a very important property of the system that is planned to perform adaptive behavior. The other important element that has been realized is the auto-generating element that must prevent the whole system from the equilibrium. There are also biological analogs for this element. Moreover, it seems that without such elements, capable of performing rhythmic nonlinear responses even in the fixed environmental conditions, biological organisms cannot exist. Simple model circuits have demonstrated the possibility of the construction of systems capable to learn. Finally, as the possible alternative way of the adaptive network realization, it was suggested the approach, based on the realization of statistical networks of fibers of different polymers