Complexity and Verisimilitude: Realism for Ecology

When data are limited, simple models of complex ecological systems tend to wind up closer to the truth than more complex models of the same systems. This greater proximity to the truth, or verisimilitude, leads to greater predictive success. When more data are available, the advantage of simplicity decreases, and more complex models may gain the upper hand. In ecology, holistic models are usually simpler than reductionistic models. Thus, when data are limited, holistic models have an advantage over reductionistic models, with respect to verisimilitude and predictive success. I illustrate these points with models designed to explain and predict the numbers of species on islands.     

Time and Complexity in Historical Ecology: Studies in the Neotropical Lowlands

Time and Complexity in Historical Ecology: Studies in the Neotropical Lowlands . William Baleé and Clark L. Erickson, eds. New York: Columbia University Press, 2006. 417 pp.     

利用“复杂性”解说经济生态发展模式

前言在研究生态经济问题时,常常感到理论上的虚弱,不能从理论上解说生态经济这一庞大、复杂的综合体是如何由生态、经济的相互作用衍变而成的。在生态和经济的复杂性的尺度上我们能把握多少?我们对于生态、经济关系能否及时调控和调控到什么程度?等等,如能从理论上给这些问题作出说明,相信会对生态经济理论及实践都有裨益。为此,我们对生态经济系统作了简化,只讨论了工业增长、农业增长和环境质量三者间的相互作用并用微分方程组表述,试定量说明生态系统、经济系统的复合系统的复杂性和发展。生态系统的复杂性自牛顿建立牛顿力学以来,尽管经典物理     

Civet Cats, Fried Grasshoppers, and David Beckham's Pajamas: Unruly Bodies after SARS

This article discusses the viscerality of consumption; in particular, consumption-as-eating and consumption-as-spending as a set of heterogeneous, contestatory discourses and practices of identity production and subject formation. To do so, I bring together two intersecting events: the Chinese government's ban on wild animal markets during the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) outbreak, and Chinese and European media frenzy over the visit to China by the Spanish football club Real Madrid in the wake of the epidemic. In discussing these events, I pay specific attention to unruly bodies—both human and nonhuman—as consumables and those who consume them. In examining translocal encounters of these unruly bodies, I suggest that, in post-SARS China, discourses and practices of consumption produce emergent socialities that at once refigure racialized Orientalist tropes and conjure up discrepant neoliberal imaginaries of lifestyle and consumer choice.     

Exploring the Synergy Between Industrial Ecology and System of Systems to Understand Complexity

Two objectives are pursued in this article. First, from a methodological perspective, we explore the relationships among the constructs of complex adaptive systems, systems of systems, and industrial ecology. Through examination of central traits of each, we find that industrial ecology and system of systems present complementary frameworks for posing systemic problems in the context of sociotechnical applications. Furthermore, we contend that complexity science (the basis for the study of complex adaptive systems) provides a natural and necessary foundation and set of tools to analyze mechanisms such as evolution, emergence, and regulation in these applications. The second objective of the article is to illustrate the use of two tools from complexity sciences to address a network transition problem in air transportation framed from the system-of-systems viewpoint and shaped by an industrial ecology perspective. A stochastic simulation consisting of network theory analysis combined with agent-based modeling to study the evolution of an air transport network is presented. Patterns in agent behavior that lead to preferred outcomes across two scenarios are observed, and the implications of these results for decision makers are described. Furthermore, we highlight the necessity for future efforts to combine the merits of both system of systems and industrial ecology in tackling the issues of complexity in such large-scale, sociotechnical problems.     

Addressing Parental Vaccine Concerns: Engagement,Balance, and Timing

The recent United States measles epidemic has sparked another contentious national discussion about childhood vaccination. A growing number of parents are expressing concerns about the safety of vaccines, often fueled by misinformation from the internet, books, and other nonmedical sources. Many of these concerned parents are choosing to refuse or delay childhood vaccines, placing their children and surrounding communities at risk for serious diseases that are nearly 100% preventable with vaccination. Between 10% and 15% of parents are asking physicians to space out the timing of vaccines, which often poses an ethical dilemma for physicians. This trend reflects a tension between personal liberty and public health, as parents fight to control the decisions that affect the health of their children and public health officials strive to maintain high immunization rates to prevent outbreaks of vaccine-preventable diseases. Interventions to address this emerging public health issue are needed. We describe a framework by which web-based interventions can be used to help parents make evidence-based decisions about childhood vaccinations.

About the Author

Jason Glanz, PhD, is an epidemiologist and senior research investigator at Kaiser Permanente Colorado, Institute for Health Research. He is also an assistant professor in the Department of Epidemiology, Colorado School of Public Health. Dr. Glanz’s research focuses on vaccine safety and vaccine hesitancy. Dr. Glanz is currently a principal investigator with the Vaccine Safety Datalink, a national Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)-funded project that examines the safety of vaccines. Dr. Glanz also leads research efforts to develop risk communication strategies to help reduce parental vaccination concerns.     

Myxomycetes:Biology,Systematics,Biogeography,and Ecology

正黏菌是丰富多彩的生物多样性世界提供给人类的一个独特类群。Myxomycetes:Biology,Systematics,Biogeography,and Ecology是迄今为止全方位、多视角展示黏菌生物学的第一本巨著。由美国阿肯色大学Steven L.Stephenson教授等活跃在当今黏菌各研究领域的,以及来自全球11个国家的29位国际知名黏菌学者共同完成。全书按照领域和专题分为13章,由不同作者分别编写,中国工程院院士、《菌物研究》主编、吉林农业大学李玉教授及其团队成员工琦教授和刘朴教授是"第六章黏菌生理学和生物化学"的作者。     

Redefining Nature: Ecology, Culture and Domestication

Redefining Nature: Ecology, Culture and Domestication. Roy Ellen and Katsuyoshi Fukui. eds. Oxford: Oxford International Publishers Ltd., 1996.664 pp.     

Human Ecology: The Subversive, Conservative Science

Paul Sears identified ecology as a subversive science; WilliamOphuls, referring primarily to its human applications, calledit a conservative science. Both characterizations are correct.Human ecologists aim to conserve natural resources, therebymaking it possible for our posterity to enjoy a quality of lifeat least equal to ours. Frequently this kind of conservatismis at odds with the conservation of traditional religious beliefs,political practices, and social privileges: hence the aptnessof the adjective "subversive." The essence of human ecologyis found in a few propositions of the sort that mathematicianE. T. Whittaker called "postulates of impotence." These leadto simplebut profound generalizations, of which a dozen areoffered here.