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This article explores the social evolution of ecological city (ecocity) an important aspect of a sustainable society. Over the last 33 years, ecocity in theory and application has evolved along with broader trends in social thought. The original concept of ecocity emerged from activist movements as an approach to urban development that would respect environmental limits. The early concepts of ecocity interpreted the city as a living system that regards the evolution of the physical, social, and environmental. Unfortunately, although many ecocity projects market themselves as models for sustainable urban development, they lack social consideration. The purpose of the article is to describe social evolution in the research and practice of ecocity. Therefore, we can see the dynamics and gaps between the early concepts and the development of research and practices. This article describes this gap through a critical review of how the concept has been elaborated in theory and application. Social evolution can provide information about the crucial aspects that need to be completed and studied. Therefore, ecocity can play a role in a broader process of social evolution towards a more sustainable society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Article 197(1) of Law no. 8/1996 on copyright and related rights, republished, criminally sanctions the appropriation of a work or part of a work by a person who has not contributed to the creation of that work and who presents it as his/her own creation. The act of appropriating a work or part of a work can be done in various ways, such as: publishing works under one's own name, as if it were made by the author, signing an intellectual creation, as co-author, in the literary, scientific, musical, artistic or fine art field without having any contribution to its creation, etc. Analysis of the legal text shows that the material element of this offense consists of two cumulative actions, namely the act of appropriating, without right, in whole or in part, the work of another author and the act of presenting it as one's own intellectual creation. At the same time, the analysis of the author of this study shows that in order to be able to prove the commission of this offense it is necessary that the appropriation is followed by the presentation of the work as one's own creation. It should be emphasised that in the absence of the action of presentation, it cannot be held that the offense provided for and punished by art. 197(1) of Law 8/1996 on copyright and related rights, republished, has been committed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Intellectual theft is a deeply rooted problem in contemporary society, affecting not only the process of creation and innovation, but also the moral and economic balance of the community as a whole. This paper aims to analyse, on a personal note, the forms of intellectual theft, both from a criminal, and deontological and moral perspective, focusing particularly on the complex manifestations of this phenomenon specific to the academic environment, paying particular attention to data fabrication, data falsification, plagiarism and self-plagiarism, but also on the methods of combating and preventing intellectual „thievery". I wish to explore in depth the concept of intellectual theft, to analyse the complexity of this phenomenon as well as to eloquently convey the depth of its impact on our cultural and intellectual evolution. A deep commitment to respect for intellectual integrity is reflected in a community aware and responsible for excellence and innovation, shaping the direction in which society evolves in accordance with individual and collective needs and aspirations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The development of monumental architecture (oasis towers), organized settlements, and new funerary structures are markers of the emergence of social complexity in the culture of Magan in the Hafit and Umm an-Nar periods. Bisya is one of the largest sites in central Oman where this phenomenon may be observed. The French Archaeological Mission in central Oman (FAMCO) is undertaking a new research programme at al-Dhabi 2 (Bisya, ad-Dakhiliyah, Oman), a site gathering Early Bronze Age (EBA) monumental, settlement, and funerary architecture. In 2022 the complete plan of the structures unveiled the site's organization, with a large tower on a hill, a built settlement area in the foothills, and several Hafit and Umm an-Nar tombs. Excavations were carried out in the settlement area (150 m²) to study the architecture and confirm the domestic nature of the remains. The pottery assemblage is typical of the Umm an-Nar period, although earlier occupation layers may have been reached. Finally, two excavated tombs yielded preliminary results on the funerary landscape at Early Bronze Age Bisya. This project opens up broad perspectives for future research at al-Dhabi to gain a better understanding of the social and cultural evolution of proto-historic communities in south-east Arabia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Translation is a process which has been in a continuous evolution and change of paradigm ever since the Tower of Babel and up to Google translate means. It has made its steps forward in accordance with the evolution of society and culture. Nowadays, European institutions are producing multiple documents: legislation, political speeches, declarations, directives, administration forms. This paper is zooming into the progress of translation and its present state in European documents texts, how challenging or more trouble-free than other types of translation it is and the difficulties encountered by the translator in the process of translating from the source language into the target language. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The preliminary results of an ambient-vibration based investigation conducted on a large sample of historic masonry towers in the Marche region (Central Italy) are presented, with a focus on the belfry of Collegiata of Santa Maria in Visso (Italy). The assessment procedure includes full-scale ambient vibration testing, ambient modal identification, finite element modeling and dynamic-based identification of the uncertain structural parameters of the model. As the most doubtful parameters, the modulus of elasticity of the masonry is adjusted to achieve the experimental results with numerical model by simple operations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The contemporary world's changes rhythm has reached an unparalleled level, mostly triggered by the conversion of 'technology advance' into 'technology changeover'. Both the disruptive technologies evolution and the metamorphosis given by globalization to the organizational culture have brought many challenges for the future professions development. The prognoses regarding future have represented a constant concern for different social categories over the mankind history. In the contemporary world the forecast of the future is performed in order to meet the growing needs of both the public and private sector, within the extremely competitive global environment, using techniques ranging from mere assessments to multi-criterion computer-based prognoses. Due to the fact that the present world has the tendency to evolve at least exponential, even a ten-year long prognosis is fairly different than the present layout of the contemporary environment in order to bring about a significant study related to the future global outline. The development of the future jobs takes into account, on the one hand the detailed diversity and specialization of the present occupations, on the other mostly refers to pinpointing those professions that even though do not exist at the present moment, they will be needed for running different organizations, systems and institutions of the future interconnected and highly technical world. In order to accomplish a high level accuracy assessment of the way in which the future occupations will evolve, we have to bring into discussion those variables that mostly influence the development trend of the nowadays world professions. An entire array of the present studies widely recognize that the progress of the new technologies and, especially of the disruptive ones, will pose one of the most meaningful impact over the way in which the present moment jobs will be transformed. At the present moment, different domains of the latest technologies have been regarded to have an impact, sufficient enough to trigger crucial mutations that irrevocably change the way in which the business environment operates, the consumers' behaviors, and the manner in which both goods and services are produced. While in previous - but still not so far - times these technological achievements had been represented by electricity and automobile as well as television, at the present moment the disruptive feature is retrieved mainly within Connectivity, Internet of Things (IoT) and Blockchain Technology. Importantly, all these evolutions from the technology domain will generate paramount and irrevocable mutations within the organizational culture of the whole types of future institutions. For future professions the fundamental shifts will be retrieved within the essential change of the occupations development paradigm, through moving the center of gravity from the institutional area to that of the employees. One of the main mutations regards the fact that not the corporations or institutions will primarily recruit their personnel, but conversely, the employees will be those to hire them. Besides, not the companies will mainly be the creators of the new types of professions, but the employees will do this. Last but not least, the chief dimension where the overarching events, transactions and social-economical phenomena are going to take place will not be that of the companies and institutions but that quite heterogeneous of the employees. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Frontiers in Social Evolution Seminar (FINE) is a remote seminar series that originated during the Covid-19 crisis, when in-person meetings were not possible and a need for exciting talks insatiable. The FINE seminar series is now an established and cost-effective means platform for students and researchers from around the world to discuss social evolution. The FINE meets weekly during two periods - Sept to Dec and March - June. The series has hosted 130 seminars featuring speakers from 20 countries and six continents and spanning taxa from protists to mammals. The FINE format is unique because traditional seminars (45 min) are followed by upwards of an hour of discussion, a method that promotes deep understanding, networking, and a sense of community. We have also produced educational resources including lecture notes for instructors and guidance on how to use FINE seminars in the classroom. Through our Quick-FINE program, students have published short summaries of FINE videos on our YouTube page, increasing their exposure to the scientific community. This poster will highlight the benefits of engagement with the FINE. Information about where to find the FINE seminar will be provided. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How do separate cultures arrive at similar category systems across a wide range of semantic domains? Foundational work in cognitive science argues that cross-cultural coherence in category systems emerges because people independently produce the same categories as a result of universal psychological processes. Category coherence across cultures is thus viewed as incompatible with social theories of categorization, which argue that categories are defined contextually through communication, leading to highly divergent (i.e. path dependent) category systems. Here, we present findings from a novel study of real-time category formation to demonstrate that social processes can give rise to divergence and convergence in category systems among experimental micro-cultures, depending on the size of the social network individuals are communicating in. In this study, we used an online web platform to experimentally control the size of people's social networks as they collaboratively categorized a novel continuum of arbitrary shapes. In dyads (N=2), communication generated highly divergent category systems, but in social networks (N=50), it led independently replicated populations to consistently converge on remarkably similar category systems. In networks, individuals were more likely to produce and adopt labels that were better at coordinating with any random person in the network, leading the same subset of categories to diffuse in separate populations. These results challenge the longstanding view that processes of social construction lead to path dependency, by showing that category coherence across cultures may be attributable to processes of social coordination and diffusion in communication networks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the role of community mechanisms in shaping memory, specifically cultural trauma, and identity in post-conflict settings. It extends research that endeavors to open the black box between interventions by formal institutions (like peace treaties, trials, or truth commissions) and cultural outcomes to the realm of community groups and practices. This study focuses on one specific cross-community initiative, the 2012 Transitional Justice Grassroots Toolkit, in Belfast, Northern Ireland. Document analysis and interviews reveal a set of traits that facilitate cultural transformation through group interactions. These traits include the context of a peace agreement and prior, complementary peace making initiatives, as well as cohort effects and benefits of specific pedagogical tools. Our interest is in the development and transformation of social ties within post-conflict community settings and in the cultural consequences of such transformations. This paper shows how community processes can change collective memories and cultural trauma of the conflict, as well as identities, away from their polarized forms, and it explores implications for future peace. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The end of the Second World War generated major changes that profoundly marked our country's political, territorial, economic and social evolution. Within the activities aimed at the restoration and development of the post-war economy there are found the partnership forms expressed through Romania's cooperation relations with other countries, the modalities of achievement being different, over time, in relation to the purpose pursued and the circumstances characteristic of the stages in which they were accomplished. The study focuses on the presentation of the Romanian-Soviet cooperation, in the form of the joint ventures - of SOVROM-type and highlights the ways of establishing the collaboration, the fields and the period in which they functioned, accompanied by concrete examples. The research methodology was the study of the speciality literature and the selection of examples with practical data in the field. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The need to protect has deep roots in the history of law. Paradoxically, the more humanity has endeavored to legislate, the abuse and the lack of real support from those responsible for ensuring security and peace have increased. That is how society felt that, besides the internal regulation of privacy, it had to appeal to international organisations whose purpose was to persuade states that they alone could be able to resist any abusive interference in the individual's privacy. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights established in 1948 that no man would be the object of arbitrary interference in his private life, as long as there is legal protection against these intrusions. Article The Right to Privacy written by Samuel Warren and Louis Brandeis, appeared in the Harvard Law Review, volume IV, issue 5 of December 15, 1890, is considered to be one of the most influential essays in the history of American law, and the right to private life is defined by the authors as the right to be left alone or the right to loneliness. The social evolution and the transformations of law have gradually led to an increasing distance between the initial desideratum - that of loneliness - and the real need to ensure a safety and protection environment for each individual. Even if at the theoretical level any individual has the right to be left alone, in reality this right is not necessarily illusory, but rather impossible to be respected in the way we would probably want each one of us. Complex threats, from wars, civil movements, terrorism, to cyber attacks, and the need for strong nations to dominate, have transformed the right to private life into a promising slogan whenever interest calls for it, or, worse, have reduced to noticeable dimensions invoking the need for over-protection of the individual by the state. But what are governments doing in the name of protecting their own citizens? They violate private life, but they do it under the protection of the law, they do not respect fundamental rights, but their action appears justified, they restrict liberties and even suppress any intimacy in the name of the protection of the general good. What does ultimately mean private life and how much should the state be interested in protecting it? Of course, the notion itself is all-encompassing, with unspeakable valences and hidden ramifications throughout our existence. We have a private life from the moment we are born, but others are responsible for it, private is the home with all its dependencies, private information about the state of health, or personal data, at work we have the right to intimacy, even a detainee has the right to ensure and respect his private life in designated spaces and the list can continue. By making a parallel between private life in the American model and the way it is protected in European law, a fundamental difference emerges. If in American law individual autonomy is the expression of absolutism, being the core of the existence of social rights, Europeans did not think this notion as an independent, stand alone, supreme relation to the other rights recognized by the individual but as an important, but not exclusive component or outside any limitations or restrictions. In European law, the balance between the protection of the general interest and the need to guarantee, within reasonable limits, respect for the right to privacy was maintained. Although Romania signed the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948, the constitutional right to privacy did not find a distinct regulation either in the 1848 constitution or in 1952 or in 1965. At present, the Romanian Constitution protects and regulates the right to private life and the authorities have the obligation to respect it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Modern culture demonstrates increasing complexity. Today, complexity is beginning to be envisioned as a modernity's immanent quality, a source both of uncertainty and of hidden opportunities for cultural development. This article outlines the sociocultural features of increasing complexity. Modern culture does not promote stability, but, on the contrary, multiplies differences and becomes a kind of differentiation flow. From being a system of sustainable, vitally important forms of human activity, culture is transformed into a kaleidoscope of individual experiences against the background of network structures and technosocial systems that exist according to their own logic. Permeating all cultural forms, complexity becomes sometimes a source for the emergent new cultural practices, sometimes a source of chronic anxiety caused by the inability to 'master' socio-cultural transformation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the modern world, cultural transformations have acquired a global dimension. However, social changes always lag behind, failing to keep up with the changing culture. This compels us to turn to studying what is lying at the base of the transformation process, what it generates, directs, and organizes. The article shows that culture in a turbulent world should be a strategy of social change. In the transition process, one cannot do without the cultural basis of transformation, that is, without a culture of transition or, in the context of modernity, a culture of globalization. Otherwise, globalization as an integration process will catalyze endless provocations, manipulations, and conflicts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The future digital Society 5.0 transformation, targeting a new smart cyberphysical reality establishment with embodied IoTs, will give a more creative and innovative role, senses, knowledge & skills for the humans and intelligent technologies (real robots & softbot services with relevant AI, aiming singularity) in the new mixed hyperreality. The paper gives and exploration framework to this future digital society transformational adversaries & opportunities, combining crowdsourcing landscape definition, followed by analytical effectiveness modelling of future human-machine advanced interactions. The obtained discoveries are finally experimentally assessed via both short- and long-term experiments. A concluding discussion on the progressive future outlook of the upcoming Society 5.0 is also provided. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the role of art in the city, particularly its transformative role in merging the processes of public participation and the regeneration of public spaces. It discusses the practical aspects of citizen engagement in the artistic projects in public city space. The process of promoting social participation in creating public space and public art, involving a variety of artists and forms of expression leads to experimentation in the public sphere. This experimentation results in an improved quality of space. Such a unique practice of involving citizens in creating public art generates unexpected manifestations of creativity. This process of public participation could be encouraged, designed and stimulated by onsite workshops related to the actual art experiments. The analysis is based on examples of the artistic experiments of inhabitants of one of Gdansk's neighbourhoods, developed during a series of experimental workshops held for the project "Inspiration Bank", which was organized by Gdansk University of Technology, the City Initiative Association and Gdansk City Gallery. The workshops were designed with a special emphasis on direct work with different artists, employing different mediums in a variety of fields. How the results of such an approach influence the perception of art, space, and the city are key findings of this project. Creative Workshops were a series of workshops held by specially invited artists. Coordinated by architects and academic teachers, they were designed to introduce image and sound to the process of public art creation. The purpose for organizing the workshops was to create a series of simple artistic statements constituting the inspiration for further artistic actions in Gdansk. Artists used simple techniques and educational activities in the course of the project to get inhabitants to participate in the experience of art in a variety of forms. Inspiration for the project came from research concerning the cultural evolution of the European City and also the activities organized within the EU project: People's Smart Sculpture. This article aims to understand how people's involvement in public art expands consciousness about public space and plays a critical role in protecting and shaping the city landscape. In this case, direct contact with artists plays a vital role, particularly as artistic engagement leads to discovering and portraying synergies between humans and space. Engagement can reflect the interplay between artistic projects and city landscapes and develop strategies for protecting and improving cultural heritage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The research focuses on the study and the identification of significant relationships between the observed peaks of the creative activity in such fields as art, music, literature, philosophy, science and technology. To establish the relationship between the development of cultural fields and development of society the structural-demographic theory was used, according to which a state goes through integration and disintegration phases during its existence. According to this, we propose the hypothesis that a phase of disintegration can be characterized by larger ratings of cultural figures. To test the hypothesis we used the empirical data processing thirteen secular cycles, which includes the described ones in the works by P.Turchin and S.A.Nefedov and by us. The research demonstrated, what phases of the selected secular cycles are accounted for the largest cultural achievements. The relationships between the research results and the specification of secular cycles and cultural fields were studied. The t-test for means for dependent samples showed that the supposed hypothesis got a confirmation at the significant statistical level in six cultural fields (literature, art, science, technology, music and philosophy). In frame of the study mathematical model of the dynamics of culture was also elaborated and tested. The model testing showed statistically reliable results. Historical interpretation of the results was also given. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

If a university teacher of technical subjects is to effectively perform their pedagogical activities, they cannot be left without knowledge from the field of didactics and androdidactics. In reality it means that the teacher understands the relations between the individual items of the didactic system, can select suitable didactic devices based on the character of the technical subject and individual specifics of their students, and respects the psychological, social and causal aspects of teaching and realize the psychological elements of evaluation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Researchers are frequently unable to capture the organic, manufactured process that leads to the sustainability of these narratives. Social media data allow social psychologists to capture the process of manufacturing and sustaining collective identities and collective action in social movements as they capture a growing segment of the U.S. population. Recent events related to police brutality and the evolution of #BlackLivesMatter provides an empirical case by which to explore the vitality of social media data. Following the death of Trayvon Martin in 2012, #BlackLivesMatter exploded into the social media sphere. As evidence by protests and unrest in Ferguson, MO and Baltimore, MD, the hashtag social movement to curtail racial profiling and police brutality is still progressing three years later. Social scientists, public health scholars, and activists have documented the severity of police brutality, particularly for Blacks and Latinos. Missing, however, is a social psychological analysis that simultaneously combines the utility of sociological and humanist methodologies grounded in content analysis and quantitative analysis. This article takes up this challenge by analyzing data from a Twitter archive of tweets related to Ferguson. Drawing upon literatures on collective identities, collective action, and which links to social movements and collectivist action, we analyze 31.65 million tweets about Ferguson across four meaningful time periods: the death of Michael Brown, the non-indictment of police officer Darren Wilson, the Department of Justice report on Ferguson, and the one year aftermath of Brown's death. Our analysis of the most popular Twitter hashtags, tweeted images, and narratives show that social media activism is linked to boots on the ground, conflates with mainstream news coverage, and primarily comes from identified leading activists of the #BlackLivesMatter movement. We also show that a concerted counter narrative hashtagged #TCOT (Top Conservatives on Twitter) has operated as the primary anti-thesis to #BlackLivesMatter tweets. In doing so, we demonstrate the vitality of social media and establish a methodological agenda for scholars aiming to conduct rigorous, cutting edge, contextual, and timely research with social media data to focus on a host of outcomes including identity formation, race relations, protests, and politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates neighbourhood social dynamics with the help of two attitude dimensions discovered in earlier qualitative research: intervention and adaptation. The data come from a nationally representative Finnish Neighbourhood Survey (N=760) gathered in 2012. Our results show that adaptation and intervention characterize neighbourhood interaction in our survey dataset as well. The threshold of intervention is higher among the residents of detached houses and those without strong ties in the neighbourhood. Adaptation is associated with low income and living in a detached house. However, the four types of neighbours - yard police, fence builder, park warden and environmental caretaker - created on the basis of adaptation and intervention, provide a richer picture of the phenomenon and more powerful explanations. For example, yard policing is associated with economic resources and environmental caretaking with strong ties in the neighbourhood. The suggestions for future research and theoretical implications of the results are discussed in the conclusion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the main criteria of effectively managing emergency and crisis situations is good preparedness. Simulation and serious games (SSG) are often advocated as promising technologies supporting training and increasing the skills necessary to deal with new, complex and often unexpected situations. This paper is based on an investigation of why a seemingly appropriate SSG technology was not used long after procurement. We identified potential obstacles and challenges of SSG implementation in organizations responsible for societal safety. The focus is on fire fighter training and is based on 33 interviews with major stakeholders from seven countries, from organizations with successful as well as unsuccessful experiences of SSG use. By contrasting the different incentives and views regarding the technology use, this paper contributes to a better understanding of challenges related to SSG implementation and use. The results confirm the possible benefits of SSGs, but also highlight an urgent need for new approaches to integr ate these new technologies into organizational practices. Only by formulating local, organizational strategies with the SSG use can the technology be implemented successfully. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The global economic and social evolution highlights the need to increase the amount of resources required to meet the population's ever-growing demands. Nevertheless, agricultural lands are limited, which means that the amount of agri-food produces can be increased by modern production tehnology supported by irrigation. The current irrigation situation worldwide shows the low performance of the irrigation systems due to their defective management. The solution to this problem is the transference of irrigation management to its users. Romania holds an irrigation-planned area of 3,046,341 ha (2012) and has developed a new irrigation system aiming to maximize the areas where irrigation has economic viability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Creating cultural route serve to support specific cultural, industrial or other kind of excellence, its protection and assistance for its development. Culture, used technology, or change in environmental conditions through the human intervention is a process of transformation in timeline. In a case of emerging subculture: eco-village, we can follow birth of new community units across the planet on the same natural and pro-ecological principles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to investigate the relations between art and social evolution, referring in particular to Japanese experience of the tragic events of March 11th 2011, which had a direct impact on a huge piece of territory along the north eastern coast and indirectly affected the whole society. My focus here is on how, in one form or another, many Japanese artists, designers, architects and filmmakers shifted to a collective and social form of creativity after the Great Earthquake. Several representative examples will be considered in each field to show how this event marked the divide between "before and after 2011". Indeed, the reaction of the artistic community to the natural disaster was immediate and has shown a general demand for a new way of "making art" which evidently responds to a new awareness. The common ground of the proposed projects is the effort to recover local identity through memory, and at the same time also the shared desire to work together as a team to create something useful for the community. In this sense art and creativity have found new ways of expression, responding to the necessities of the population more quickly than politics and sometimes activating new ways of "making" and a network that have functioned as a driving force spreading all over Japan and also to the world's most representative spaces. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents the study on institutional theory with regards to micro-level processes that construct institutional field structures and how these structures influence micro-level processes. It discusses how the study was conducted which focuses on the concept of framing and how stakeholders can shape and be shaped by field structures. It defines institutional field which refers to the community of organizations that pursue a common meaning system. The author argues that various issue frames may conduce to different settlement types in field structures.

In this conceptual paper, we argue that civic action potentially constitutes a new frontier for the management research field. In particular, we notice among the contemporaneous social evolutions, the increasing legitimation of not-for-profit entrepreneurial phenomena. Our proposition is based on the axiomatic theory of action proposed by Hatchuel (2005), in particular, the ternary combination of any rational myth, as coextensive to any action model. We will demonstrate the importance of three substitutions determining the possible advent of a contemporaneous « civitas » (Benveniste - 1974), including the phenomenon of civic entrepreneurship. Firstly, facing the citizen the "fellow citizen" must be seen as less concerned by the unity of any General Interest than by the preservation of several common goods. In the same way, if in the Greek model, the relation is formally descendant from the community (polis) to the citizens (polîtes); it becomes ascendant in the Latin model, from the fellow citizens (civis) to the community (civitas) they are actually building. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the last three decades, many algorithms have been introduced for solving optimization problems of various complexity. Previous work in the optimization field on practical problems, using Cultural Algorithms, had shown that cultural learning emerged as the result of meta-level swarming of knowledge sources. This paper explores the use of meaningful neighbors in Cultural Algorithms for the constructed social metaphor. The algorithm uses an enhanced multi-layer tactical restructuring to dynamically change the topology of agents in the formed networks, periodically during an algorithm run as a diversity preserving-measure. The approach has been applied to solve the set of real world problems proposed for the IEEE-CEC2011 evolutionary algorithm competition. Our results suggest that under appropriate parameter settings, the use of modified graphs of neighborhoods with a probabilistic disruptive re-structuring of the topology produces better results on the considered test functions compared to the best known scores of other algorithms from the literature. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Natural languages and Wikipedia may both be evolving through the Iterated Learning Model, a cultural evolution mechanism that relies on iterated learning, a transmission bottleneck, and a structured meaning space, but does not require a competitive advantage for individual speakers or Wikipedia articles exhibiting more structure than others. This paper examines evidence that the evolution of structure on Wikipedia meets the same criteria as have been established for the ILM in the domain of language, and provides indications that Wikipedia is actually evolving through this mechanism. As a more readily studied example of cultural evolution, Wikipedia may provide answers to the evolution of structure that languages cannot address. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Evolution has been a non-linear process throughout the history of world-systems. Since the Pleistocene, systems of interacting societies have been marked by upward sweeps in size and complexity and also by sharp declines and collapses. An important, yet underdeveloped, part of the stories of world-systemic change is energy flow - its capture, transformation, and the processing of waste. In this research project, I aim to award energy flow the attention it deserves as a fundamental evolutionary process, particularly as a driver of rise and demise. I will do so by generating a theory of the role of energy flow in select upward sweeps and collapses in world-systems over the last 12,000 years, and testing that theory against case studies chosen as a representative of the dominant energy regime in the particular period. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social evolutionary theory is dominated by a Spencerian model of social development. In this essay I present a discussion of both Spencerian and Darwinian models of social change. Spencerian models are Lamarckian, idealist, and allow for deliberate social evolution; they assume there is a direction of progress. Darwinian models do not allow deliberate social evolution and do not have a direction of progress; but they face philosophical issues in being applied to social life. I will argue for a Darwinian model and present modern theorists that can be used to support it. I will apply a Darwinian model in an analysis of racial categories from 18th century Hispanolia; arguing for racial relations/categories as a cohesive cultural 'phenotype'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper attempts to formalize a theory of ecological rent applicable to human social evolution. Ecological rent, here defined as gain achieved through the importation of "clean" goods and resources produced using ecologically-degrading processes in distant locations ecologically. Ecological rent-seeking, undertaken by a more powerful society against a weaker one, has been taking place throughout much of human history, but the opportunities and effects have expanded for rent-seeking by states with the globalization of trade and the intensity of capitalist accumulation in the modern world system. Building on the work of Andre Gunder Frank, Christopher Chase-Dunn, and others, I formalize a theory that explains ecological degradation within human social evolution in general and ecological rent in particular. The theory suggests, agreeing with Marxist ecology, that the global ecological depletion and pollution that is an outcome of capitalist accumulation is a contradiction creating selection pressures for reaching a sustainable level; the failure to do so will lead to conflict and ultimately a major collapse of human society. The formal theory, then, can be useful for understanding the past with an eye toward predicting the future ramifications of paths taken in the present. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Some neo-Darwinian theories of religion contend that the brain generates religious concepts as counterintuitive beliefs in supernatural entities, which often function as substitute attachment figures. Other neo-Darwinian theories explain religious rituals as "costly signals" designed to function as indicators of religious commitment. This paper develops and applies insights from these theories, along with elements of Weberian and rational choice theory, to explain the long-term evolution of religion. It seeks to identify the social conditions that have interacted with the religious architecture of the brain to produce widespread religious variation. Early shamanic and communal religions focused heavily on the practical concerns of acquiring subsistence, curing illness, and avoiding danger. Ecclesiastical religions emerged in more economically and politically complex societies. The first ecclesiastical religions, which evolved in chiefdoms and archaic states, were polytheistic; here people worshiped an array of human-like gods given great reverence and legitimating state rule. Monotheistic religions, which evolved mostly in complex states with literacy, began to replace polytheistic religions during the first millennium BCE (the Axial Age) largely as the result of massive increases in warfare and urbanization. These changes disrupted people's lives and led to heightened levels of ontological insecurity. A transcendent God capable of saving people's souls and releasing them from suffering replaced the human-like gods. The paper concludes by sketching a long-term process of religious "abstractification" that has been driven by the religious architecture of the brain in close interaction with a range of social, economic, and political conditions. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Family websites represent one of the more interesting areas of research into cultural change and reproduction. They also compellingly demonstrate the complex role of technology in both cultural processes. As the most contemporary exponent of the long-established practice of family photography, these hybrid multimedia products have followed the path of the analogue photograph, framed and displayed at the home, kept in wallets or presented as series of pictures or photo albums, with a marked move to the digital world and a much less noticed shift to the sophisticated multimedia context of the Web. This article examines how this fairly recent shift from private photography to the semi-public space of the Internet, which is unfolding in dialogue with technology, has reinforced, expanded or radically changed the nature of family communications and the very significant social and cultural functions this highly codified practice has fulfilled from the onset. It also addresses the possible cultural-propagandistic as well as emancipatory effects of this evolution. Subsequently, the focus shifts to the methodological aspects and implications of decoding these new and very vivid exponents of culture, whereby the emphasis is on the key issues of access and decoding. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aspects of stratification systems are located on a structural-ideological dimension from structural characteristics closely related to the material infrastructure (such as social complexity) to most ideological (such as religious beliefs). More structural characteristics are more likely to be the outcome of a process of internal adjustment (intra-societal selection); more ideological characteristics are more likely to be inherited or result from cultural diffusion. We compare the extent to which aspects of stratification are predicted by subsistence technology across two cross-cultural data sets differentially selected for independence of cases. We find that model fit for the less selected set exceeds model fit for the more selected set only for the highly ideological aspect of religious beliefs, a result suggesting that more ideological dimensions of stratification are more likely to be inherited or diffused, and hence subject to --Galton's problem''. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]