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This article discusses the demarcation of contemporary ecolinguistics. It takes a starting point in different conceptualisations of the field, including (1) the claim that ecolinguistics is an umbrella term for work that attends to interconnections and dynamics in multiple contexts, (2) the claim that ecolinguistics comprises two traditions, a Haugenian tradition and a Hallidayan tradition, and (3) the claim that ecolinguistics consists of four strands that orient to the symbolic, sociocultural, natural, and cognitive ecology of language, respectively. Using bibliometric methods, the article concludes that there is currently no unity in ecolinguistics that warrants the first claim. Further, it concludes that there is no bibliometric or empirical evidence for the second claim, as there is virtually no connection between the two traditions, and hence they are two separate research areas, rather than two traditions within one field. Finally, it is shown that while there do indeed exist four ecological frameworks in linguistics, they are not subfields within ecolinguistics. It is concluded that contemporary ecolinguistics is defined by its preoccupation with natural ecologies. Based on this conclusion, it is suggested that the ecolinguistic preoccupation with natural ecologies presupposes treating language as integral to living and the ecology.

In this paper, we discuss a particular class of Nash games, where the participants of the game (the players) are divided into two groups (leaders and followers) according to their position or influence on the other players. Moreover, we consider the case, when the leaders’ and/or the followers’ game can be described as a potential game. This is a subclass of Nash games that has been introduced by Monderer and Shapley in 1996 and has beneficial properties to reformulate the bilevel Nash game. We develope necessary and sufficient conditions for Nash equilibria and present existence and uniqueness results. Furthermore, we discuss some Examples to illustrate our results. In this paper, we discussed analytical properties for multi-leader follower potential games, that form a subclass of hierarchical Nash games. The application of these theoretical results to various fields of applications are a future research topic. Moreover, they are meant to serve as a starting point for the developement of efficient numerical solution methods for multi-leader-follower games.

This article applies the model of time scales and temporal ranges presented in Steffensen and Pedersen (2014) on real-life video-data from a medical field. It shows how medical decision-making is determined by local dynamics, socio-cultural patterns, and individual institutional experience. We argue that explanations of human interactivity cannot be confined to only one time scale. We exemplify our approach by investigating a case from emergency medicine where problem finding and problem solving is related to vision. In doing so, we pursue an ecological approach to visual systems, though we extend the approach by emphasizing that vision encompasses and meshes the present with the past and the future: the non-local is in the local. Hence, what a doctor sees, feels and perceives is both socially pre-organized through material-cultural artifacts and the implementation of procedures and narratives, and it is dynamical, anticipative and situated. Fine- grained analysis of the case leads us to conclude that a visual system is situated and sense-saturated, that is, it exploits sociocultural resources of the past. Human interactivity, conversation and vision are not purely situated as pre-supposed by many approaches to interaction, cognition and language. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The precise mechanism of chromosome condensation and decondensation remains a mystery, despite progress over the last 20 years aimed at identifying components essential to the mitotic compaction of the genome. In this study, we analyse the localization and role of the CAP-D2 non-SMC condensin subunit and its effect on the stability of the condensin complex. We demonstrate that a condensin complex exists in Drosophila embryos, containing CAP-D2, the anticipated SMC2 and SMC4 proteins, the CAP-H/Barren and CAP-G (non-SMC) subunits. We show that CAP-D2 is a nuclear protein throughout interphase, increasing in level during S phase, present on chromosome axes in mitosis, and still present on chromosomes as they start to decondense late in mitosis. We analysed the consequences of CAP-D2 loss after dsRNA-mediated interference, and discovered that the protein is essential for chromosome arm and centromere resolution. The loss of CAP-D2 after RNAi has additional downstream consequences on the stability of CAP-H, the localization of DNA topoisomerase II and other condensin subunits, and chromosome segregation. Finally, we discovered that even afar interfering with two components important for chromosome architecture (DNA topoisomerase II and condensin), chromosomes were still able to compact, paving the way for the identification of further components or activities required for this essential process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article is an empirically based theoretical contribution to the investigation of meaningmaking in the ecology of human interaction and interactivity. It presents an ecological perspective on meaning-making that pivots on how agents pick up information directly in their organism-environment-system; i.e. as an activity that does not presuppose inner cognitive operations. We pursue this line of thought by presenting an analysis of how a doctor and a nurse make a decision about a specific medical procedure (catheterisation) based on meaning-making activity. As we do not see meaning as a linguistic (symbolic) or a cognitive (representational) phenomenon external to an agent/user, but as emergent in coordinated interaction, we zoom in on how the practitioners recalibrate the organism-environmentsystem by shift ing between a multi-agentive mode and an individual mode. We use Cognitive Event Analysis to investigate how the agents oscillate between being a multi-agent-system with shared, tightly coordinated agency and a loosely coupled dialogical system where the individuals bring forth an understanding based on their professional backgrounds and expertise. On this view, an ecological approach to meaning-making takes a starting point in how local interaction is constrained by previous events, emergent affordances in the environment, and real-time inter-bodily dynamics. Accordingly, meaning-making is seen as a joint activity emerging from the system’s coordinative actions rather than as a result of individual interpretation of symbolic content.