Swarming Microdroplets to a Dexterous Micromanipulator

Many astonishing biological collective behaviors exist in nature, and artificial microrobotic swarms have been developed by emulating these scenarios. However, these microswarms typically have single structures and lack the adaptability that many biological swarms exhibit to thrive in complex environments. Inspired by viscoelastic fire ant aggregations and using a combination of experiment and simulation, a strategy to trigger ferrofluid droplets into forming microswarms exhibiting both liquid-like and solid-like behaviors is reported. By spatiotemporally programming an applied magnetic field, microswarms can be liquefied to implement reversible elongation with a high aspect ratio and solidified into entireties to perform overturning and bending behaviors. It is demonstrated that reconfigurability enables the microswarm to be a mobile dexterous micromanipulator, acting not only as a soft “octopus arm” to explore a confined environment and grasp a targeted object but also adaptively navigate multiple terrains, such as uneven surfaces, curved grooves, complex mazes, high steps, narrow channels, and even wide gaps. This microrobotic swarm can reconfigure both shapes and tasks based on the demands of the environment, presenting novel solutions for a variety of applications.     

“Laboratorio Q”, Seville: creative production of collective spaces before and after austerity

The creative city approach is going through a redefinition after the 2008 global financial crisis. In the specific case of South-European cities, in the context of austerity and cuts in public investment, creativity is becoming a strategy for achieving maximum social benefit and improvement of the built environment with minimum economic expenditure. This paper looks at this redefinition of creativity through the case study of Seville, in southern Spain. Through research methods that include video-recorded testimonies of the actors involved, mapping at the online platform “Laboratorio Q”, and public engagement activities, this paper explores how the civic society, professional, and public authorities have reinvented how to produce collective spaces. The paper concludes that bottom-up creative processes for producing collective spaces have become more visible since the 2008 crisis, when architects, planners, public authorities and policy-makers have been “learning” from them.     

Social information use and the evolution of unresponsiveness in collective systems

Animal groups in nature often display an enhanced collective information-processing capacity. It has been speculated that natural selection will tune this response to be optimal, ensuring that the group is reactive while also being robust to noise. Here, we show that this is unlikely to be the case. By using a simple model of decision-making in a dynamic environment, we find that when individuals behave rationally and are subject to selection based on their accuracy, optimality of collective decision-making is not attained. Instead, individuals overly rely on social information and evolve to be too readily influenced by their neighbours. This is due to a classic evolutionary conflict between individual and collective interest. The result is a sub-optimal system that is poised on the cusp of total unresponsiveness. Individuals in the evolved group exhibit delayed reactions to changes in the environment, before responding with rapid, socially reinforced transitions, reminiscent of familiar human and animal social systems (markets, stampedes, fashions, etc.). Our results demonstrate that behaviour of this type may not be pathological, but instead could represent an evolutionary attractor for such collective systems.     

Emergence of collective changes in travel direction of starling flocks from individual birds' fluctuations

One of the most impressive features of moving animal groups is their ability to perform sudden coherent changes in travel direction. While this collective decision can be a response to an external alarm cue, directional switching can also emerge from the intrinsic fluctuations in individual behaviour. However, the cause and the mechanism by which such collective changes of direction occur are not fully understood yet. Here, we present an experimental study of spontaneous collective turns in natural flocks of starlings. We employ a recently developed tracking algorithm to reconstruct three-dimensional trajectories of each individual bird in the flock for the whole duration of a turning event. Our approach enables us to analyse changes in the individual behaviour of every group member and reveal the emergent dynamics of turning. We show that spontaneous turns start from individuals located at the elongated tips of the flocks, and then propagate through the group. We find that birds on the tips deviate from the mean direction of motion much more frequently than other individuals, indicating that persistent localized fluctuations are the crucial ingredient for triggering a collective directional change. Finally, we quantitatively verify that birds follow equal-radius paths during turning, the effects of which are a change of the flock''s orientation and a redistribution of individual locations in the group.     

在线用户打分行为长记忆效应与信任关系研究

对在线打分行为的动态研究能够帮助深入理解社交网络用户集群行为和信任关系的演化机制,当前许多在线系统用户能够通过对物品进行打分传达自己的观点。通过去趋势波动分析法研究了用户打分行为在信任关系建立前后的长记忆效应,并通过随机化打分时间和信任时间建立零模型,最后进行用户打分行为异质性分析。采用Epinions数据集进行实证研究,结果表明用户打分的长记忆效应在信任关系建立前出现下降趋势（8.06%）,并于之后逐步回升（8.43%）,而在两个零模型中赫斯特指数分别稳定在0.5和0.6左右,且用户长记忆效应变动与用户度呈正相关,Pearson相关系数分别为0.9358和0.9278。该工作有助于深入理解用户集群行为和信任关系的动态演化机制。     

Reverse channel selection decisions with a joint third-party recycler

In recent years, Internet-based firms have been increasingly engaged in recycling used products, taking advantage of economies of scale by serving a number of manufacturers. However, most studies on the recycling channel of remanufacturing to date only consider the case of a single manufacturer in a closed-loop supply chain. To address this gap, we develop a Stackelberg game model and show that the joint third-party (J3P) collection mode serving multiple manufacturers may outperform individual retailer- and manufacturer-managed modes, as opposed to existing findings considering a single manufacturer. It is optimal for manufacturers to authorise a large-scale J3P to collect used products. In addition, we show that the J3P can design a two-part tariff contract for the manufacturers to overcome the double marginalisation and collective action problems in decentralised supply chains. Our results provide guidance for enterprises and the government on recycling decisions in the era of a network economy.     

Combining social media affordances for organising collective action

Social media provide new opportunities for supporting the dynamics of collective action (CA), allowing for the mobilisation of people into debates and involving them in new forms of collective decision making. Although current studies focus on opportunities offered by social media for collective action, there is still a need to deepen the understanding of how social media support the organisation of CA and to study the effects of individual actions performed on social media in complex organisational settings. We here explore how social media are used to manage CA by the Italian political movement Movimento Cinque Stelle, using the concept of affordances as the conceptual framing. Based on the qualitative case analyses, our study contributes to the knowledge base by identifying a typology of nine affordances supporting CA and exploring how the combined actualisations of some affordances of the typology create antecedents of the fundamental processes of CA. On the basis of the study analysis, we suggest a model to describe how social media support CA through affordances, their combinations, and the creation of antecedents and then formulate implications for research and practice.     

Guiding the use of collective feedback displayed on heatmaps to reduce group conformity and improve learning in Peer Instruction

Peer Instruction is an active learning method widely used in higher education, whereby students answer a series of questions twice, once before and once after peer discussion. There is an ongoing debate as to whether a collective feedback should be given after the students' initial answer, and if so, how the frequently observed group conformity can be avoided. This study examined whether guiding on the use of this feedback can reduce group conformity and improve learning using an interactive learning environment to administer a new type of quiz using graphics, and delivering collective feedback to the whole class in a novel heatmap format. In the experimental group, the teacher told the students that the answer indicated by the heatmap was not necessarily the correct one; this information was not given to students in the control group. Results revealed that guided students were less likely to adopt the (incorrect) majority answer than the non-guided students, and consequently, they were more likely to improve their learning by reaching an agreement about the correct answer through discussion with their peers. These findings suggest that guiding students in their use of collective feedback may have a crucial role in Peer Instruction.     

基于互联网群体智能的知识图谱构造方法

知识图谱是一种基于图的结构化知识表示方式.如何构造大规模高质量的知识图谱,是研究和实践面临的一个重要问题.提出了一种基于互联网群体智能的协同式知识图谱构造方法.该方法的核心是一个持续运行的回路,其中包含自由探索、自动融合、主动反馈3个活动.在自由探索活动中,每一参与者独立进行知识图谱的构造活动.在自动融合活动中,所有参与者的个体知识图谱被实时融合在一起,形成群体知识图谱.在主动反馈活动中,支撑环境根据每一参与者的个体知识图谱和当前时刻的群体知识图谱,向该参与者推荐特定的知识图谱片段信息,以提高其构造知识图谱的效率.针对这3个活动,建立了一种层次式的个体知识图谱表示机制,提出了一种以最小化广义熵为目标的个体知识图谱融合算法,设计了情境无关和情境相关两种类型的信息反馈方式.为了验证所提方法及关键技术的可行性,设计并实施了3种类型的实验:仅包含结构信息的仿真图融合实验、大规模真实知识图谱的融合实验,以及真实知识图谱的协同式构造实验.实验结果表明,该知识图谱融合算法能够有效利用知识图谱的结构信息以及节点的语义信息,形成高质量的知识图谱融合方案;基于“探索-融合-反馈”回路的协同方法能够提升群体...     

论著作权集体管理组织的侵权责任

著作权集体管理组织的侵权责任以其存在注意义务为基础。著作权集体管理组织在进行其业务活动时违反注意义务,会导致侵权行为的发生。著作权集体管理组织侵权行为的表现形式与著作权集体管理组织注意义务的表现形式相对应。确定著作权集体管理组织的侵权责任要首先认定其是否违反了注意义务。著作权集体管理组织应承担何种侵权责任应根据个案具体情况予以确定。