Fungus-growing ants display symbiont preference in behavioral assays, both towards the fungus they cultivate for food and Actinobacteria they maintain on their cuticle for antibiotic production against parasites. These Actinobacteria, genus Pseudonocardia Henssen (Pseudonocardiacea: Actinomycetales), help defend the ants' fungal mutualist from specialized parasites. In Acromyrmex Mayr (Hymenopt...

We present a system that integrates robot task execution with user input and feedback at multiple abstraction levels in order to achieve greater adaptability in new environments. The user can specify a hierarchical task, with the system interactively proposing logical action groupings within the task. During execution, if tasks fail because objects specified in the initial task description are ...

Designing and maintaining systems in a dynamic contemporary environment requires a rethinking of how systems provide value to stakeholders over time. Classically, two different approaches to promoting value sustainment may include developing either alterable or robust systems. The first accomplishes value delivery through altering the system to meet new needs, while the second accomplishes valu...

OBJECTIVE To test the hypothesis that participants with stroke will exhibit appropriate increase in muscle activation of the paretic leg when taking a long step with the nonparetic leg compared to during steady-state walking, with a consequent increase in biomechanical output and symmetry during the stance phase of the modified gait cycle. DESIGN Single-session observational study. SETTING ...

In a downsizing, employees have to cope with major changes. Their coping strategy influences their level of adaptability. Coping proceeds through sensemaking, and may be either reactive or proactive. This paper reports a study on employees’ sensemaking of critical incidents in a multiple downsizing context. The organization studied, experienced two downsizings in one year. Its culture was based...

Learning from reward feedback in a changing environment requires a high degree of adaptability, yet the precise estimation of reward information demands slow updates. In the framework of estimating reward probability, here we investigated how this tradeoff between adaptability and precision can be mitigated via metaplasticity, i.e. synaptic changes that do not always alter synaptic efficacy. Us...

With the increasing size and complexity, adaptabihty is among the most badly needed properties in today's Grid systems. Adaptabihty refers to the degree to which adjustments in practices, processes, or structures of systems are possible to projected or actual changes of their environment. In this paper, we review concepts, methods, algorithms, and implementations that are deemed useful for desi...

Design for Adaptability and Deconstruction (DfAD) is an emerging trend in the construction industry that focuses on the end-of-life aspect of buildings. It is based on the concept that the life of a building or building component ends because it is unable to adapt to change. With proper implementation, DfAD is an important tool to achieve sustainable design for buildings, as it ideally may form...

Real time impact in such applications is the subject of a recent field of studies in a information systems. Web services are a solution for the integration of distributed information systems, autonomous, heterogeneous and auto adaptable to the context. Thos impact can resolve many problems in different system based on SOA and web services. In this paper, we are interested in defining an approac...

While we rely on the continuous functioning of infrastructures such as water, electricity and Internet, 100% uptime is not possible. Infrastructure systems must therefore be resilient – they must be capable of flexing in response to disruptions and recovering quickly. In this paper we explore options for supporting infrastructure resilience from a complex adaptive systems perspective. Building ...