Global biodiversity continues along a trajectory of decline despite enormous conservation efforts (Rands et al., 2010). This is also true in China, one of the most biodiversity-rich countries in the world (Liu and Raven, 2010; Ministry of Environmental Protection of China, 2010a). To fundamentally change this trajectory, it is essential to understand complex interactions among various forces af...

A study was conducted to examine the effects of nation-states’ political institutions on state relations. War-fighting and selection-effects explanation were compared to explain why democracies were more likely to win wars. An analysis of all interstate wars between 1816 and 1982 revealed that democracies that initiate wars often win them. Results also suggest that domestic political structure ...

Global fits to precision cosmological data which show that there is a dark energy component comprising about 2/3 of the total cosmological energy also hint that a dark energy with w = P/ρ < −1 is viable, even favored. Here we discuss implications of such a surprising w, including whether it jeopardizes vacuum stability. It appears to be secure in microscopic processes, but why bulk dark energy ...

Investors significantly reduce their future returns by selecting mutual funds with higher fees, allured by higher past returns that do not predict future performance. This suboptimal behavior, which can roughly halve an investor’s retirement savings, is driven by two psychological factors. One factor is difficulty comprehending rate information, which is critical given that mutual fund fees and...

The United States Department of Justice and Microsoft Corporation are engaged in a vigorous legal dispute over the inclusion of Internet technologies in Windows 95. This dispute, however, is merely the most recent antitrust case brought against a hightechnology company in recent times, and it follows a great deal of history regarding competition in high-technology industries. This thesis explor...

We have proposed a new information-theoretic approach to competitive learning [1], [2], [3], [4], [5]. The information-theoretic method is a very flexible type of competitive learning, compared with conventional competitive learning. However, some problems have been pointed out concerning the information-theoretic method, for example, slow convergence. In this paper, we propose a new computatio...

OBJECTIVE To determine streptococcal adhesion forces with composite resins with different surface roughness. METHODS Polishing and grinding were applied to obtain smooth (roughness 20 nm), moderately rough (150 nm) and rough (350 nm) surfaces of two orthodontic, light-cured composites. Adhesion forces between Streptococcus sanguinis and Streptococcus mutans and the composite surfaces were mea...

The purpose of this article is to analyze how competitive forces may in‡uence the way media …rms like TV channels raise revenue. A media …rm can either be …nanced by advertising revenue, by direct payment from the viewers (or the readers, if we consider newspapers), or by both. We show that the scope for raising revenues from consumer payment is constrained by other media …rms o¤ering close sub...

Several conjectures by A. S. Iberall on life and mind are used as a backdrop to sketch a theory of mental activity that respects both the contents of thought and the dynamics of thinking. The dynamics, in this case, refers fundamentally to animated, meaningfully coupled self-organizing processes (coordination dynamics) and exhibit multistability, switching, and, because of symmetry breaking, me...