The Role of the Organization Structure in the Diffusion of Innovations

Diffusion and adoption of innovations is a topic of increasing interest in economics, market research, and sociology. In this paper we investigate, through an agent based model, the dynamics of adoption of innovative proposals in different kinds of structures. We show that community structure plays an important role on the innovation diffusion, so that proposals are more likely to be accepted in homogeneous organizations. In addition, we show that the learning process of innovative technologies enhances their diffusion, thus resulting in an important ingredient when heterogeneous networks are considered. We also show that social pressure blocks the adoption process whatever the structure of the organization. These results may help to understand how different factors influence the diffusion and acceptance of innovative proposals in different communities and organizations.     

Pills,injections and audiotapes: reaching couples in Pakistan

An innovative social marketing intervention in Pakistan distributes audiocassettes via chemist shops and Lady Health Visitors (LHVs) to reach women in a segregated society with accurate information on hormonal contraceptives. Operations research was done to assess the utility of the cassette in knowledge dissemination and adoption of hormonal use. In total 187 structured questionnaires were completed with couples who had obtained a cassette. Listeners were significantly more knowledgeable than non-listeners about correct use of hormonals (OR = 8.6 for women and OR = 12.7 for men). Hormonal use increased from 12% to 25%. LHVs also organized discussion groups for women, and attending such a chat group was the strongest predictor for adoption of pills and injectables (OR = 4.15). Equivalent male groups are suggested to reach apprehensive men. By providing accurate information to urban couples and by acquiring a knowledgeable critical mass of satisfied users, the cassette could be a powerful catalyst to further contraceptive diffusion.     

Adoption as an offspring strategy to reduce ectoparasite exposure

Adoption occurs frequently in colonial species where both the cost of parasitism and the opportunity for dependent young to find a foster family are typically high. Because ectoparasites show highly aggregated distributions among colony members, we tested two central predictions of the novel hypothesis that adoption is driven by selection on young to reduce ectoparasite load: first, that nest-based ectoparasites cause offspring to seek adoption, and second, that an individual's parasite load will be reduced after it has been adopted. In agreement with these predictions, experimentally infested Alpine swift Apus melba offspring sought adoption significantly more often and at an earlier stage than young kept free of ectoparasitic louse-flies. Second, the parasite load of experimentally infested young was reduced after adoption via a redistribution of ectoparasites among the foster family members. Our findings emphasize what we believe to be a novel role for parasites in the evolution of adoption and, by extension, in the emergence of social interactions.     

Staging Social Structures: Ritual and Social Organisation in an Egalitarian Society. The Pastoral Pokot of Northern Kenya

The pastoral Pokot of northern Kenya represent their society as highly structured by descent and age grading. Descent groups (clans, lineages) and age grades (age sets, generation sets) are depicted as bounded but related units within a complex hierarchical and coherent system, the essence of Pokot society which is staged and visualised in major rituals. This study shows that they are not important in Pokot economic exchange. The formal analysis of livestock exchange networks centred upon individuals shows that emic representations do not match actual exchange behaviour. Complementing the well-established structuralist representation of pastoral social systems, this paper investigates the agency aspect, which has been largely unexplored. It furthermore documents how social exchange is contained in the various institutions of descent and age grading. Contextualising the case historically it is shown that the pastoral Pokot developed from a fragmented clan-based agro-pastoral society in which descent was the main ordering principle for land tenure and conflict management into a more comprehensive social entity with clearly definable borders to the outside, dense internal exchange networks and strong representations of the corporateness of subgroups. The rapid adoption of mobile livestock husbandry was accompanied by the rise of widespread exchange networks and social interaction with a much wider group of unrelated actors marking the foundations of a pastoral society.     

The scientific value of Amazonian protected areas

Protected areas (PAs) are under increasing pressure to demonstrate their broader value and contribution to society. Scientific research and associated knowledge production comprise one such value, which has received relatively little attention in the academic literature. Here, we use the Amazon region as a case study to quantify scientific knowledge production (as measured by scientific publications in peer-reviewed journals) in PAs and identify the main biophysical, geographical and social characteristics that influence such production. We adopt a multi-model inference approach with an innovative hurdle regression model to independently assess the factors influencing the presence of research and the number of studies in PAs. Our results indicate a highly skewed pattern of scientific production, with many PAs with few or no associated scientific articles. Larger, older and more highly protected PAs in Ecuador and Peru were most likely to have scientific production, while time since first publication was most strongly associated with the number of publications from a PA. These findings provide important insights that could be used to support and strengthen policy aimed at increasing the value of Amazonian protected areas for scientific research.     

Economic Incentives in the Socially Optimal Management of Infectious Disease: When $$ R_{0} $$ is Not Enough

Does society benefit from encouraging or discouraging private infectious disease-risk mitigation? Private individuals routinely mitigate infectious disease risks through the adoption of a range of precautions, from vaccination to changes in their contact with others. Such precautions have epidemiological consequences. Private disease-risk mitigation generally reduces both peak prevalence of symptomatic infection and the number of people who fall ill. At the same time, however, it can prolong an epidemic. A reduction in prevalence is socially beneficial. Prolongation of an epidemic is not. We find that for a large class of infectious diseases, private risk mitigation is socially suboptimal—either too low or too high. The social optimum requires either more or less private mitigation. Since private mitigation effort depends on the cost of mitigation and the cost of illness, interventions that change either of these costs may be used to alter mitigation decisions. We model the potential for instruments that affect the cost of illness to yield net social benefits. We find that where a disease is not very infectious or the duration of illness is short, it may be socially optimal to promote private mitigation effort by increasing the cost of illness. By contrast, where a disease is highly infectious or long lasting, it may be optimal to discourage private mitigation by reducing the cost of disease. Society would prefer a shorter, more intense, epidemic to a longer, less intense epidemic. There is, however, a region in parameter space where the relationship is more complicated. For moderately infectious diseases with medium infectious periods, the social optimum depends on interactions between prevalence and duration. Basic reproduction numbers are not sufficient to predict the social optimum.     

IS THE ADOPTION OF MORE EFFICIENT STRATEGIES OF ORGAN PROCUREMENT THE ANSWER TO PERSISTENT ORGAN SHORTAGE IN TRANSPLANTATION?

[I]s persistent organ shortage the major obstacle to the performance of more procedures as often popularly portrayed? Does the answer therefore lie in the adoption of more efficient strategies of organ procurement? While the measures taken to improve the efficiency of organ procurement may be inspired by the laudable motive of saving lives, they may ultimately prove to be myopic if the larger ethical issues raised by organ transplant programs for the allocation of national and organ resources are not given their due consideration. For any society that desires to include organ transplantation in its health delivery system, it must consider the social and ethical issues that transplant programs raise for the macroallocation of available national resources and the manner by which organ resources are procured, and distributed. The failure to resolve these issues in an ethically acceptable manner at any of these levels would render any transplant program ethically indefensible. This essay therefore argues that before a society decides on its policy of organ procurement it ought to make prior assessments of: a) its social priorities; b) the policies for ensuring fair access to organ resources; and c) the extent to which it is willing to support transplants.     

Digital technology adoption in livestock production with a special focus on ruminant farming

Digitalisation is an integral part of modern agriculture. Several digital technologies are available for different animal species and form the basis for precision livestock farming. However, there is a lack of clarity as to which digital technologies are currently used in agricultural practice. Thus, this work aims to present for the first time the status quo in Swiss livestock farming as an example of a highly developed, small-scale and diverse structured agriculture. In this context, the article focuses on the adoption of electronic sensors and measuring devices, electronic controls and electronic data-processing options and the usage of robotics in ruminant farming, namely, for dairy cattle, dairy goats, suckler cows, beef cattle and meat-sheep. Furthermore, the use of electronic ear tags for pigs and the smartphone usage for barn monitoring on poultry farms was assessed. To better understand the adoption process, farm and farmer’s characteristics associated with the adoption of (1) implemented and (2) new digital technologies in ruminant farming were assessed using regression analyses, which is classified at a 10% adoption hurdle. The results showed clear differences in the adoption rates between different agricultural enterprises, with both types of digital technologies tending to be used the most in dairy farming. Easy-to-use sensors and measuring devices such as those integrated in the milking parlour were more widespread than data processing technologies such as those used for disease detection. The husbandry system further determined the use of digital technologies, with the result that farmers with tie stall barns were less likely to use digital technologies than farmers with loose housing systems. Additional studies of farmers’ determinants and prospects of implementation can help identify barriers in the adoption of digital technologies.     

Human welfare and its connection to nature: What have we learned from crop pollination studies?

Human welfare depends on the function of natural systems. This idea is paradigmatic to ecologists and has been the theme of a growing branch of applied ecology. I examine the narrative of human dependence on nature by considering the literature on crop pollination by animals and its importance for food production. Making the connections between human welfare and natural systems is seen as a way to better motivate society to make better decisions, but the debate around crop pollination has been surprisingly contentious. There have been confusing messages, disagreements on the facts, an unfortunate focus on dire projections for the future and a lesser focus on solutions. Most of these problems arise not from poor science but instead from poor communication of complex ideas and differences in perspective, such as the deep disciplinary gap between agricultural scientists and ecologists. By understanding these problems, we can improve the way we do our science and communicate our ideas. I argue that ecologists should continue to communicate the principle that human welfare depends on the function of natural systems and discuss how we can do so in a way that is more genuinely connected to society's needs, such as growing food. If we succeed, we will be changing an intellectually interesting conversation into a dialogue that influences how society interacts with nature.     

‘They Have Our Culture’: Negotiating Migration in Belgian–Ethiopian Transnational Adoption

Migration studies have so far largely failed to include transnational adoption and left the study of this phenomenon to other disciplines, such as kinship and family studies. This article aims at bridging this disciplinary divide. By looking through the lens of transnational adoption, it explores the ideological values that bolster the discourse on immigrants. Furthermore, it investigates how the migratory movement of adoptees is being negotiated in the intimate realm of the family and how the conceptualization of adoptees as immigrants/non-immigrants can be empowering or rather constraining. By doing so, the article aims both to further our understanding and theorization of the experiences and dynamics of transnational adoption and advance our insight in questions of migration and belonging in society more generally.     

A general diffusion model for analyzing the efficacy of synaptic input to threshold neurons

We describe a general diffusion model for analyzing the efficacy of individual synaptic inputs to threshold neurons. A formal expression is obtained for the system propagator which, when given an arbitrary initial state for the cell, yields the conditional probability distribution for the state at all later times. The propagator for a cell with a finite threshold is written as a series expansion, such that each term in the series depends only on the infinite threshold propagator, which in the diffusion limit reduces to a Gaussian form. This procedure admits a graphical representation in terms of an infinite sequence of diagrams. To connect the theory to experiment, we construct an analytical expression for the primary correlation kernel (PCK) which profiles the change in the instantaneous firing rate produced by a single postsynaptic potential (PSP). Explicit solutions are obtained in the diffusion limit to first order in perturbation theory. Our approximate expression resembles the PCK obtained by computer simulation, with the accuracy depending strongly on the mode of firing. The theory is most accurate when the synaptic input drives the membrane potential to a mean level more than one standard deviation below the firing threshold, making such cells highly sensitive to synchronous synaptic input.     

One-Way Ticket: A Story of an Innovative Teacher in Mainland China

This article is based on a true story about a Chinese teacher who applied an innovative pedagogy in her rural hometown in mainland China. It unfolds the highly complex and often dangerous remaking of ideologies and power relations inherent in pedagogical reform as a microcosm of other concomitant changes in the society at large. It also reflects the inadequacy of teacher education in preparing teachers to survive the micropolitics of the seemingly neutral or beneficial-to-all education reform.     

‘Inscribing’ Freud: A Critical Review of Celia Brickman's Aboriginal Populations in the Mind

Working through the particular book under review, this essay seeks to demonstrate how certain entrenched positions in postcolonial feminist writings on psychoanalysis are unproductive. Instead of advancing knowledge and understanding of the human psyche, of society or of therapeutic technique, ideas in the human sciences and psychoanalysis are shown to be appropriated and distorted in order to sustain an academic self‐referential circuitry. The central argument of Brickman's book is that current psychoanalytic practice is inherently racist because Freud's metapsychology was informed by evolutionist ideas. The present discussion attempts to uncover the techniques of bias with which the author tries to substantiate her claim.     

The claim from adoption

In this article several justifications of what I call 'the claim from adoption' are examined. The claim from adoption is that, instead of expending resources on bringing new children into the world using reproductive technology and then caring for these children, we ought to devote these resources to the adoption and care of existing destitute children.
Arguments trading on the idea that resources should be directed to adoption instead of assisted reproduction because already existing people can benefit from such a use of resources whereas we cannot benefit individuals by bringing them into existence are rejected. It is then argued that a utilitarian argument proposed by Christian Munthe that supports the claim from adoption in some situations should be rejected because the support it offers does not extend to certain situations in which it seems morally obvious that resources should be expended on adoption rather than assisted reproduction. A version of the Priority View improves upon Munthe's utilitarianism by supporting the claim from adoption in the cases in which Munthe's argument failed. Some allegedly counterintuitive implications of the Priority View are then discussed, and it is concluded that the Priority View is more plausible than utilitarianism.
n a concluding section on policy issues it is argued that, even though the claim from adoption can be justified in a variety of situations, it does not follow that, in these situations, governments should direct resources away from assisted reproduction and towards adoption.     

Transferring Research to Endangered Species Management

ABSTRACT In the natural resource and wildlife profession, we face difficulties in the production, diffusion, and transfer of rigorously tested science, especially when facing entrenched management paradigms. We present 3 case studies to illustrate the challenges in changing entrenched management paradigms for endangered species. Here we examine specifically what factors helped or hindered the adoption of management practices through the theoretical framework developed for the dissemination of technologies. An examination of 3 case studies suggests that active communication and advocacy of scientific findings, along with simple, visible results, will aid researchers in the acceptance and adoption of their research. Management agencies that increase openness and communication with outside experts, reduce bureaucratic procedures, and localize decision making increase the likelihood that new scientific ideas will be adopted by the agency. We also suggest adaptive resource management as a strategy for endangered species management may foster many of the characteristics that aid in the adoption of scientific ideas into management activities.     

Managing pluvial resources and improving soil hydrology: Survival questions for cotton farming systems. The case study of the Mouhoun (Burkina Faso)

Cotton cropping has been developing for more than 40 years in the western part of Burkina Faso. It has made a definite modernization of the traditional farming system. Modernization is illustrated by adoption of specific agricultural practices like monoculture, tillage, straight sowing and slope ridge planting. Misuse and non-adaptable local pedologic and climatic context of these new practices perturb soil hydrological processes. Outcomes are water loss by runoff, erosion and changes in the soils physical and physiochemical properties.Besides, we can notice in this area for more than 30 years climatic changes which require us to ask ourselves what are the resulting consequences. In fact, these climatic changes generate an extension of the rainy season, an increase in the frequency of high intensity spells but also recurrence of dry spells during the rainy season. Do these new climatic conditions exacerbate the consequences of cotton practices on hydrological processes and induce an aggravation of flow and erosion processes?These evolutions have direct consequences on crop production whereas needs are highly increasing. The improvement of the prevailing agricultural practices and innovative practices might provide improved pluvial resources in critical moments such as rainfall excess at the beginning and the end of the rainy season and short drought conditions after sowing or germination and during flowering. However two questions arise. In the rainfed agriculture, which cultural practices (to reduce runoff and to favour infiltration) are, in regard to pedologic, climatic or socio-economic context, able to allow improved water efficiency and, as a result, an increase of the food grains production? Might selected practices and production addition satisfy requirements of the coming population?     

THE LIMITS OF INTIMATE CITIZENSHIP: REPRODUCTION OF DIFFERENCE IN FLEMISH‐ETHIOPIAN ‘ADOPTION CULTURES’

The concept of ‘intimate citizenship’ stresses the right of people to choose how they organize their personal lives and claim identities. Support and interest groups are seen as playing an important role in the pursuit of recognition for these intimate choices, by elaborating visible and positive cultures that invade broader public spheres. Most studies on intimate citizenship take into consideration the exclusions these groups encounter when negotiating their differences with society at large. However, much less attention is paid to the ways in which these groups internalize the surrounding ideologies, identity categories and hierarchies that pervade society and constrain their recognition as full citizens. In contrast, this paper aims to emphasize the reproduction of otherness within alternative spheres of life, and to reveal the ambiguities and complexities involved in their dialectic relationship with society at large. To address this issue, the paper focuses on the role that ‘adoption cultures’ of Flemish adoptive parents with children from Ethiopia play in the pursuit of being recognized as ‘proper’ families and full citizens. The ethnographic research among adoptive parents and adoption professionals shows a defensive discourse and action that aims at empowering against potential problems, as well as a tendency to other the adoptive child by pathologizing its non‐normativity. By showing the strong embeddedness of adoptive families' practices of familial and cultural construction in larger cultural frames of selfing and othering, characterized by biologism and nativism, one begins to understand the limits of their capacity to realize full citizenship.     

A multi-dimensional coalescent process applied to multi-allelic selection models and migration models

For a sample of two genes from a population divided into an arbitrary number of allele classes, a general mathematical framework is developed to address the expectation and variance of the time of the most recent common ancestor. Depending on the meaning of allele classes and the manner in which genes can change among them, this framework can be applied to a diversity of population genetic models. By adoption of the infinite sites model, the effect on heterozygosity is modelled for balancing selection among allele classes, mutation between allele classes, migration among populations, and gene conversion between loci. Most results are described for a continuous time approximation to a discrete generation model. It is also shown how the discrete generation model can be used to study the hitch-hiking effect of favorable mutations.     

Tracking Changing Environments: Innovators Are Fast,but Not Flexible Learners

Behavioural innovations are increasingly thought to provide a rich source of phenotypic plasticity and evolutionary change. Innovation propensity shows substantial variation across avian taxa and provides an adaptive mechanism by which behaviour is flexibly adjusted to changing environmental conditions. Here, we tested for the first time the prediction that inter-individual variation in innovation propensity is equally a measure of behavioural flexibility. We used Indian mynas, Sturnus tristis, a highly successful worldwide invader. Results revealed that mynas that solved an extractive foraging task more quickly learnt to discriminate between a cue that predicted food, and one that did not more quickly. However, fast innovators were slower to change their behaviour when the significance of the food cues changed. This unexpected finding appears at odds with the well-established view that avian taxa with larger brains relative to their body size, and therefore greater neural processing power, are both faster, and more flexible learners. We speculate that the existence of this relationship across taxa can be reconciled with its absence within species by assuming that fast, innovative learners and non innovative, slow, flexible learners constitute two separate individual strategies, which are both underpinned by enhanced neural processing power. This idea is consistent with the recent proposal that individuals may differ consistently in ‘cognitive style’, differentially trading off speed against accuracy in cognitive tasks.     

The revolution in psychiatric diagnosis: problems at the foundations

The third edition of the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM-III; 1974) not only revolutionized psychiatric diagnosis, it transformed and dominated American psychiatry. The nosology of psychiatry had been conceptually confusing, difficult to apply, and bound to widely questioned theories. Psychiatry and clinical psychology had been struggling with their scientific status. DSM attempted to solve psychiatry's problems by making psychiatry more like its authors' perception of general medicine. It tried to avoid theory, especially psychoanalytic theories, by discussing only observable manifestations of disorders. But DSM is actually highly theory-bound. It implicitly and powerfully includes an exclusively "medical" model of psychological disturbance, while excluding other psychiatric ideas. Its authors tried to meet what they saw as "scientific standards." To a surprising extent, DSM reflects its creators' personal distaste for psychoanalysis. The result is that DSM rests on a narrow philosophical perspective. The consequences of its adoption are widespread: it has profoundly affected drug development and other therapeutic studies, psychiatric education, attitudes toward patients, the public perception of psychiatry, and administrative and legal decisions. This article explores how DSM's most problematic features arise from its history in psychiatric controversies of the 1960s and its underlying positivistic philosophy.