Time-critical social mobilization

The World Wide Web is commonly seen as a platform that can harness the collective abilities of large numbers of people to accomplish tasks with unprecedented speed, accuracy, and scale. To explore the Web's ability for social mobilization, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) held the DARPA Network Challenge, in which competing teams were asked to locate 10 red weather balloons placed at locations around the continental United States. Using a recursive incentive mechanism that both spread information about the task and incentivized individuals to act, our team was able to find all 10 balloons in less than 9 hours, thus winning the Challenge. We analyzed the theoretical and practical properties of this mechanism and compared it with other approaches.     

Genes and social behavior

What genes and regulatory sequences contribute to the organization and functioning of neural circuits and molecular pathways in the brain that support social behavior? How does social experience interact with information in the genome to modulate brain activity? Here, we address these questions by highlighting progress that has been made in identifying and understanding two key "vectors of influence" that link genes, the brain, and social behavior: (i) Social information alters gene expression in the brain to influence behavior, and (ii) genetic variation influences brain function and social behavior. We also discuss how evolutionary changes in genomic elements influence social behavior and outline prospects for a systems biology of social behavior.     

社会工作及社会组织管理香港高级研修班 研习心得

本文主要是针对此次社会工作及社会组织管理香港高级研修班学习的一些经验做梳 理与总结,其中包括参观访问,培训讲座以及经验分享。     

Phenotypic basis of reproductive success in a social insect: genetic and social determinants

Social insects live in societies that include both reproductive and nonreproductive adults. Understanding the factors that determine which individuals become successful reproductives is necessary to explain the evolution of these societies. The phenotypic effects of the gene Pgm-3 (or a closely linked gene) that may cause workers of the fire ant Solenopsis invicta to selectively execute all queens of a specific genotype were investigated. These effects, which involve differences in queen reproductive development, are expressed only in colonies exhibiting a particular type of social organization (multiple-queen colonies), and it is only in such colonies that selective execution on the basis of genotype occurs. This is an unusual example of genotype-environment interaction in gene expression in which the environmental component is the social environment. The queens executed are, surprisingly, those with the greatest reproductive development. Thus, there is a counterintuitive relation between the potential and realized reproductive success of queens in multiple-queen societies of this ant.     

New wheats and social progress

Will the upward trend in all food production, so dramatically exemplified by the new wheats, be adequate to meet the needs of the growing population? Yes, for a while. No one knows for how long (14). The prophets of doom will undeniably be proved right in the long run unless their basic assumptions are nullified by concrete acts, and soon. At some point in time, either a zero population growth must be achieved or vast new sources of food must be developed, and purchasing power increased. There is nothing on the research horizon to reject "a prodigious need for mankind to practice human husbandry" (12). Our waste products have reached levels that cause major concern, and it may well be that both agricultural and social advancement will be halted by the demands dictated by population growth and the by-products of what now passes for progress but also brings environmental unbalance (15). At least, life will be different, and it may be catastrophic (16, 28). The "Three Ancients" (29) who helped plan and then, after a quarter of a century, reviewed the agricultural research and development work of the Rockefeller Foundation in developing nations concluded: