Shifts in metabolic scaling, production, and efficiency across major evolutionary transitions of life

The diversification of life involved enormous increases in size and complexity. The evolutionary transitions from prokaryotes to unicellular eukaryotes to metazoans were accompanied by major innovations inmetabolicdesign.Hereweshowthat thescalingsofmetabolic rate, population growth rate, and production efficiency with body size have changed across the evolutionary transitions.Metabolic rate scales with body mass superlinearly in prokaryotes, linearly in protists, and sublinearly inmetazoans, so Kleiber’s 3/4 power scaling law does not apply universally across organisms. The scaling ofmaximum population growth rate shifts from positive in prokaryotes to negative in protists and metazoans, and the efficiency of production declines across these groups.Major changes inmetabolic processes duringtheearlyevolutionof life overcameexistingconstraints, exploited new opportunities, and imposed new constraints. The 3.5 billion year history of life on earth was characterized by

How students view the boundaries between their science and religious education concerning the origins of life and the universe

Internationally in secondary schools, lessons are typically taught by subject specialists, raising the question of how to accommodate teaching which bridges the sciences and humanities. This is the first study to look at how students make sense of the teaching they receive in two subjects (science and religious education) when one subject’s curriculum explicitly refers to cross-disciplinary study and the other does not. Interviews with 61 students in seven schools in England suggested that students perceive a permeable boundary between science and their learning in science lessons and also a permeable boundary between religion and their learning in RE lessons, yet perceive a firm boundary between science lessons and RE lessons. We concluded that it is unreasonable to expect students to transfer instruction about cross-disciplinary perspectives across such impermeable subject boundaries. Finally we consider the implications of these findings for the successful management of cross-disciplinary education.

The value of badger populations and control of tuberculosis in cattle in England and Wales: A note

This note reports on the results of a choice experiment survey of 400 people in England and Wales, conducted to estimate the value that society places on changes to the size of the badger population. The study was undertaken in the context of the possible need to reduce the badger population by culling to help control bovine tuberculosis in cattle. The study found that people were concerned about the problem of bovine tuberculosis in cattle, which was reflected in their willingness to pay to control the disease, and gave a relatively low value to changes in the size of the badger population (within limits). However, people did not like the idea of a policy that intentionally killed large numbers of badgers and had a relatively very high willingness to pay not to have such a policy.

An application of life-cycle assessment for environmental planning and management: the potential environmental and human health impacts of growing genetically-modified herbicide-tolerant sugar beet

Life-Cycle Assessment (LCA) was used to assess the potential environmental and human health impacts of growing genetically-modified (GM), herbicide-tolerant sugar beet in the UK and Germany compared with conventional sugar beet varieties. The GM variety results in lower potential environmental impacts on global warming, airborne nutrification, ecotoxicity (of soil and water) and watercourse enrichment, and lower potential human health impacts in terms of production of toxic particulates, summer smog, carcinogens and ozone depletion. Although the overall contribution of GM sugar beet to reducing harmful emissions to the environment would be relatively small, the potential for GM crops to reduce pollution from agriculture, including diffuse water pollution, is highlighted.

Cultural value of architecture in homes and neighbourhoods

This paper provides an account of the Cultural Value of Architecture in Homes and Neighbourhoods, (CVoA), a project developed with the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA). The first stage of the project was a critical review of ‘grey literature’ since 2000, industry based research on the value of architecture subdivided into themes: overall value; health and wellbeing; neighbourhood cohesion and heritage and belonging. Findings from the review revealed a marked absence of evidence of the value of architecture and an over preoccupation with the final building, the product of an interdisciplinary team not just Architects, as well as a general confusion about what it is that Architects do. Further consultation has led to the development of a framework for defining and communicating the skillsets of Architects and for developing an evidence base for their value. Our target audience is non-Architects as we are concerned with making the profession more inclusive hence our desire to create simple definitions and terminology.

Attitudinal and demographic determinants of diet quality and implications for policy targeting

Background:  Poor diet quality is a major public health concern that has prompted governments to introduce a range of measures to promote healthy eating. For these measures to be effective, they should target segments of the population with messages relevant to their needs, aspirations and circumstances. The present study investigates the extent to which attitudes and constraints influence healthy eating, as well as how these vary by demographic characteristics of the UK population. It further considers how such information may be used in segmented diet and health policy messages. Methods:  A survey of 250 UK adults elicited information on conformity to dietary guidelines, attitudes towards healthy eating, constraints to healthy eating and demographic characteristics. Ordered logit regressions were estimated to determine the importance of attitudes and constraints in determining how closely respondents follow healthy eating guidelines. Further regressions explored the demographic characteristics associated with the attitudinal and constraint variables. Results:  People who attach high importance to their own health and appearance eat more healthily than those who do not. Risk-averse people and those able to resist temptation also eat more healthily. Shortage of time is considered an important barrier to healthy eating, although the cost of a healthy diet is not. These variables are associated with a number of demographic characteristics of the population; for example, young adults are more motivated to eat healthily by concerns over their appearance than their health. Conclusions:  The approach employed in the present study could be used to inform future healthy eating campaigns. For example, messages to encourage the young to eat more healthily could focus on the impact of diets on their appearance rather than health.

Environmental and ecological economics in the 21st century: an age adjusted citation analysis of the influential articles, journals, authors and institutions

We investigate the influence of articles, authors, journals and institutions in the field of environmental and ecological economics. We depart from studies that investigated the literature until 2001 and include a time period that has witnessed an enormous increase of importance in the field. We adjust for the age effect given the huge impact of the year of an article's publication on its influence and we show that this adjustment does make a substantial difference — especially for disaggregated units of analysis with diverse age characteristics such as articles or authors. We analyse 6597 studies on environmental and ecological economics published between 2000 and 2009. We provide rankings of the influential articles, authors, journals and institutions and find that Ecological Economics, Energy Economics and the Journal of Environmental Economics and Management have the most influential articles, they publish very influential authors and their articles are cited most. The University of Maryland, Resources for the Future, the University of East Anglia and the World Bank appear to be the most influential institutions in the field of environmental and ecological economics.

PRESENTATION. Experimental and behavioral economics. Theory, tools and topics

This note presents the special issue on Experimental and Behavioral Economics. The volume includes some recent contributions from these correlated disciplines –empirical the former and theoretical the latter– and their potential contribution to the intersection of Economics with Psychology and Sociology. The project “El papel de la comparación social en las decisiones económicas bajo incertidumbre” (Junta de Andalucía, P07-SEJ-03155)” provided us with inspiration and financial support to publish this volume.

The impacts of learning styles, learning patterns and demographic factors on learners’ performance in a blended learning environment

Many studies have widely accepted the assumption that learning processes can be promoted when teaching styles and learning styles are well matched. In this study, the synergy between learning styles, learning patterns, and gender as a selected demographic feature and learners’ performance were quantitatively investigated in a blended learning setting. This environment adopts a traditional teaching approach of ‘one-sizefits-all’ without considering individual user’s preferences and attitudes. Hence, evidence can be provided about the value of taking such factors into account in Adaptive Educational Hypermedia Systems (AEHSs). Felder and Soloman’s Index of Learning Styles (ILS) was used to identify the learning styles of 59 undergraduate students at the University of Babylon. Five hypotheses were investigated in the experiment. Our findings show that there is no statistical significance in some of the assessed factors. However, processing dimension, the total number of hits on course website and gender indicated a statistical significance on learners’ performance. This finding needs more investigation in order to identify the effective factors on students’ achievement to be considered in Adaptive Educational Hypermedia Systems (AEHSs).

The transaction cost economics theory of the family firm: family-based human asset specificity and the bifurcation bias

We develop a transaction cost economics theory of the family firm, building upon the concepts of family-based asset specificity, bounded rationality, and bounded reliability. We argue that the prosperity and survival of family firms depend on the absence of a dysfunctional bifurcation bias. The bifurcation bias is an expression of bounded reliability, reflected in the de facto asymmetric treatment of family vs. nonfamily assets (especially human assets). We propose that absence of bifurcation bias is critical to fostering reliability in family business functioning. Our study ends the unproductive divide between the agency and stewardship perspectives of the family firm, which offer conflicting accounts of this firm type's functioning. We show that the predictions of the agency and stewardship perspectives can be usefully reconciled when focusing on how family firms address the bifurcation bias or fail to do so.