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This paper offers a Deleuzian account of the paradoxical nature of creative surprise in order to explore what this may mean for organisational life. We argue that creativity is capable of yielding temporal surprise, which is as much unsurprising in its emergence through embodied duration, as it is capable of generating surprising new perspectives and experiences. The paper employs two strategies: Firstly, we review the critical literature on creativity to reveal the need to resist certain instrumental approaches, precisely because they cannot meaningfully account for the temporal dimensions of the creative process. Secondly, we reconceptualise what happens in the creative process by offering a Deleuzian analysis of how the temporal-relational dynamic serendipitously, yet (un)surprisingly, generates what seems to be unexpected, un-programmable and unmanageable becomings within and through time. Finally, we suggest that understanding the (un)surprising temporal becomings that are central to creativity, could be helpful in recrafting organisational theories of creativity, as well as informing organisational practice going forward.

Ethics management programs have become a popular first step for organizations to manage ethical risks and employee behaviors. However, such programs may fail to foster moral responsiveness or acknowledge broader societal issues. This paper contributes to this discussion through an analysis of qualitative data from an ethics survey of fifteen South African companies. Results indicate employees experience persistent unethical behaviors in the form of the disrespect, bullying and discrimination. Reflecting on these results, the paper explores the limits of ethical management programs, and whether a compliance approach undermines the transformative ethics that is most needed in organizations struggling with diversity and inclusion. Drawing on Levinas, the paper shows that openness to the face of the Other does not lend itself to instrumental orientations, nor to formalized, standardized responses. Instead, moral responsiveness to particular Others is required, and it is this aspect that may be absent from South African ethics initiatives.

This work investigates Monte-Carlo planning for agents in stochastic environments, with multiple objectives. We propose the Convex Hull Monte-Carlo Tree-Search (CHMCTS) framework, which builds upon Trial Based Heuristic Tree Search and Convex Hull Value Iteration (CHVI), as a solution to multi-objective planning in large environments. Moreover, we consider how to pose the problem of approximating multiobjective planning solutions as a contextual multi-armed bandits problem, giving a principled motivation for how to select actions from the view of contextual regret. This leads us to the use of Contextual Zooming for action selection, yielding Zooming CHMCTS. We evaluate our algorithm using the Generalised Deep Sea Treasure environment, demonstrating that Zooming CHMCTS can achieve a sublinear contextual regret and scales better than CHVI on a given computational budget., Camera-ready version of paper accepted to ICAPS 2020, along with relevant appendices

Synopsis In comparison to birds, magnetoreception in mammals has been understudied. We summarize the paradigms that have been applied in the study of mammalian magnetoreception and provide an overview of mammalian taxa in which magnetoreception has been studied. We discuss putative sensory mechanisms and the biological significance of the magnetic sense with respect to sensory ecology. Few studies have investigated the magnetic field's role in migratory orientation and homing of mammals, yet there is also evidence that magnetic cues are used in the context of “everyday life”. In comparison to birds, magnetoreception in mammals has been understudied. This negligence has historical and methodological causes. Paradigms that have been applied in the study of magnetoreception in mammals (particularly, and among others, spontaneous or conditioned nest-building assay, magnetic alignment, maze studies and direction choice tests, telemetry studies of homing and other aspects of movement ecology) are described and discussed. We also provide an overview of mammalian taxa in which magnetoreception has been studied and indicate potential receptor mechanisms and methods of their testing. We discuss the biological significance of the magnetic sense with respect to sensory ecology and putative sensory mechanisms, and show that magnetic field cues are used not only for navigation (in the context of homing or migration) but also in the context of “everyday life” in many species that are generally considered to be non-migratory. The magnetic field may provide mammals with a heading (direction) indicator to synchronize group movement (e.g., during escape) or to keep the course of digging in subterranean mammals. Assuming that the cognitive map is fixed in alignment with the magnetic field lines, the alignment strategy may help animals to reliably and accurately “read” their cognitive maps and/or extend the range of their maps when exploring unfamiliar environments. Besides that, magnetoreception might be helpful to measure distance or slope. Regular oscillations of the strength of the Earth’s magnetic field could provide a zeitgeber to synchronize biological rhythm in dark ecotopes (underground burrows or caves).

Learning Objects Metadata (LOM) aims at describing educational resources in order to allow better reusability and retrieval. In this article we show how additional inference rules allows us to derive additional metadata from existing ones. Additionally, using these rules as integrity constraints helps us to define the constraints on LOM elements, thus taking an important step toward a complete axiomatization of LOM metadata (with the goal of transforming the LOM definitions from a simple syntactical description into a complete ontology). We will use RDF metadata descriptions and Prolog as an inference language. We show how these rules can be applied for the extensions of course metadata using an existing test bed with several courses. Based on the Edutella peer-to-peer architecture we can easily make RDF metadata accessible to a whole community using Edutella peers that manage RDF metadata. By processing inference rules we can achieve better search results.

After infection, many factors coordinate the population expansion and differentiation of CD8+effector and memory T cells. Using data of unparalleled breadth from the Immunological Genome Project, we analyzed the CD8+T cell transcriptome throughout infection to establish gene-expression signatures and identify putative transcriptional regulators. Notably, we found that the expression of key gene signatures can be used to predict the memory-precursor potential of CD8+effector cells. Long-lived memory CD8+cells ultimately expressed a small subset of genes shared by natural killer T and γδ T cells. Although distinct inflammatory milieu and T cell precursor frequencies influenced the differentiation of CD8+effector and memory populations, core transcriptional signatures were regulated similarly, whether polyclonal or transgenic, and whether responding to bacterial or viral model pathogens. Our results provide insights into the transcriptional regulation that influence memory formation and CD8+T cell immunity. © 2013 Nature America, Inc. All rights reserved.

Invariant natural killer T cells (iNKT cells) are innate-like T lymphocytes that act as critical regulators of the immune response. To better characterize this population, we profiled gene expression in iNKT cells during ontogeny and in peripheral subsets as part of the Immunological Genome Project. High-resolution comparative transcriptional analyses defined developmental and subset-specific programs of gene expression by iNKT cells. In addition, we found that iNKT cells shared an extensive transcriptional program with NK cells, similar in magnitude to that shared with major histocompatibility complex (MHC)-restricted T cells. Notably, the program shared by NK cells and iNKT cells also operated constitutively in γδ T cells and in adaptive T cells after activation. Together our findings highlight a core effector program regulated distinctly in innate and adaptive lymphocytes. © 2013 Nature America, Inc. All rights reserved.

We assessed gene expression in tissue macrophages from various mouse organs. The diversity in gene expression among different populations of macrophages was considerable. Only a few hundred mRNA transcripts were selectively expressed by macrophages rather than dendritic cells, and many of these were not present in all macrophages. Nonetheless, well-characterized surface markers, including MerTK and FcγR1 (CD64), along with a cluster of previously unidentified transcripts, were distinctly and universally associated with mature tissue macrophages. TCEF3, C/EBP-α, Bach1 and CREG-1 were among the transcriptional regulators predicted to regulate these core macrophage-associated genes. The mRNA encoding other transcription factors, such as Gata6, was associated with single macrophage populations. We further identified how these transcripts and the proteins they encode facilitated distinguishing macrophages from dendritic cells. © 2012 Nature America, Inc. All rights reserved.

Although the field has a long collaborative tradition, immunology has made less use than genetics of 'consortium biology', wherein groups of investigators together tackle large integrated questions or problems. However, immunology is naturally suited to large-scale integrative and systems-level approaches, owing to the multicellular and adaptive nature of the cells it encompasses. Here, we discuss the value and drawbacks of this organization of research, in the context of the long-running 'big science' debate, and consider the opportunities that may exist for the immunology community. We position this analysis in light of our own experience, both positive and negative, as participants of the Immunological Genome Project. © 2012 Macmillan Publishers Limited. All rights reserved.

Using whole-genome microarray data sets of the Immunological Genome Project, we demonstrate a closer transcriptional relationship between NK cells and T cells than between any other leukocytes, distinguished by their shared expression of genes encoding molecules with similar signaling functions. Whereas resting NK cells are known to share expression of a few genes with cytotoxic CD8 + T cells, our transcriptome-wide analysis demonstrates that the commonalities extend to hundreds of genes, many encoding molecules with unknown functions. Resting NK cells demonstrate a 'preprimed' state compared with naive T cells, which allows NK cells to respond more rapidly to viral infection. Collectively, our data provide a global context for known and previously unknown molecular aspects of NK cell identity and function by delineating the genome-wide repertoire of gene expression of NK cells in various states. © 2012 Nature America, Inc. All rights reserved.

Although much progress has been made in the understanding of the ontogeny and function of dendritic cells (DCs), the transcriptional regulation of the lineage commitment and functional specialization of DCs in vivo remains poorly understood. We made a comprehensive comparative analysis of CD8 +, CD103 +, CD11b + and plasmacytoid DC subsets, as well as macrophage DC precursors and common DC precursors, across the entire immune system. Here we characterized candidate transcriptional activators involved in the commitment of myeloid progenitor cells to the DC lineage and predicted regulators of DC functional diversity in tissues. We identified a molecular signature that distinguished tissue DCs from macrophages. We also identified a transcriptional program expressed specifically during the steady-state migration of tissue DCs to the draining lymph nodes that may control tolerance to self tissue antigens. © 2012 Nature America, Inc. All rights reserved.