scholarly journals Synchronised brood transport by ants occurs without communication

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Danielle P. Mersch ◽  
Jean-Pierre Eckmann ◽  
Alessandro Crespi ◽  
Laurent Keller

AbstractCollective behaviours in societies such as those formed by ants are thought to be the result of distributed mechanisms of information processing and direct decision-making by well-informed individuals, but their relative importance remains unclear. Here we tracked all ants and brood movements to investigate the decision strategy underlying brood transport in nests of the ant Camponotus fellah. Changes in environmental conditions induced workers to quickly transport the brood to a preferred location. Only a minority of the workers, mainly nurses, participated in this task. Using a large number of statistical tests we could further show that these transporters omitted to recruit help, and relied only on private information rather than information obtained from other workers. This reveals that synchronised group behaviour, often suggestive of coordinated actions among workers, can also occur in the complete absence of communication.

2019 ◽  
Vol 28 (4) ◽  
pp. 261-271
Author(s):  
Gašper Štukelj

Recent evidence suggests that the take-the-best heuristic—flagship of “fast and frugal heuristics” research program—might in fact not be as frugal as tallying, which is considered to be a more complex strategy. Characterizing a simple decision strategy has always seemed straightforward, and the debate around the simplicity of the take-the-best heuristic is mostly concerned with a proper specification of the heuristic. I argue that the predominate conceptions of “simplicity” and “frugality” need to be revised. To this end, a number of recent behavioral and neuroscientific results are discussed. The example of take-the-best heuristic serves as an entry point to a foundational debate on bounded agency. I argue that the fast and frugal heuristics needs to question some of its legacy from the classical AI research. For example, the assumption that the bottleneck of decision-making process is information processing due to its serial nature. These commitments are hard to reconcile with the modern neuroscientific view of a human decision-maker. In addition, I discuss an overlooked source of uncertainty, namely neural noise, and compare a generic heuristic model to a similar neural algorithm.


Liquidity ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 100-109
Author(s):  
Ellya Sestri

An increasingly rapid technological progress in the era of globalization in the business world, so do not rule out the possibility that a decision-making is something that is very vital in determining the decisions to be taken in the face of competitive business world. Decision making can be influenced by several aspects, this can affect the speed of decision making by the decision maker in which decisions must be quick and accurate. Lecturer Performance Assessment Using the Analytical Hierarchy Process is a decision support system that aims to assess faculty performance according to certain criteria. This system of faculty performance appraisal criteria to map a hierarchy, where each hierarchy will be performed pairwise comparison, the pairwise comparisons between criteria, so to get a comparison of the relative importance of criteria with each other. The results of this comparison is then analyzed to obtain the priority of each criterion. Once completed and performed an assessment of alternative options to be compared and calculated to obtain the best alternatives according to established criteria.


Author(s):  
Rasol Murtadha Najah

This article discusses the application of methods to enhance the knowledge of experts to build a decision-making model based on the processing of physical data on the real state of the environment. Environmental parameters determine its ecological state. To carry out research in the field of expert assessment of environmental conditions, the analysis of known works in this field is carried out. The results of the analysis made it possible to justify the relevance of the application of analytical, stochastic models and models based on methods of enhancing the knowledge of experts — experts. It is concluded that the results of using analytical and stochastic objects are inaccurate, due to the complexity and poor mathematical description of the objects. The relevance of developing information support for an expert assessment of environmental conditions is substantiated. The difference of this article is that based on the analysis of the application of expert methods for assessing the state of the environment, a fuzzy logic adoption model and information support for assessing the environmental state of the environment are proposed. The formalization of the parameters of decision-making models using linguistic and fuzzy variables is considered. The formalization of parameters of decision-making models using linguistic and fuzzy variables was considered. The model’s description of fuzzy inference is given. The use of information support for environment state assessment is shown on the example of experts assessing of the land desertification stage.


Prospects ◽  
1988 ◽  
Vol 13 ◽  
pp. 181-223 ◽  
Author(s):  
Howard P. Segal

“Technology Spurs Decentralization Across the Country.” So reads a 1984 New York Times article on real-estate trends in the United States. The contemporary revolution in information processing and transmittal now allows large businesses and other institutions to disperse their offices and other facilities across the country, even across the world, without loss of the policy- and decision-making abilities formerly requiring regular physical proximity. Thanks to computers, word processors, and the like, decentralization has become a fact of life in America and other highly technological societies.


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