Evolution by variation and natural selection is often viewed as an optimization process that favors those organisms which are best adapted to their environment. This leaves open the issue of how to measure adaptation and what criterion is implied for optimization. This problem has been framed and analysed mathematically under the assumption that individuals compete to minimize expected losses across a series of decisions (e.g. choice of behavior), where each decision offers a stochastic payoff. But the fact that a particular analysis is tractable for a specified criterion does not imply the fidelity of that criterion. Computer simulations involving a version of the k -armed bandit problem can address the veracity of the hypothesis that individuals are selected to minimize expected losses. The results offered here do not support this hypothesis.
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http://dx.doi.org/10.1006/jtbi.2000.2166 | DOI Listing |
JMIR Res Protoc
January 2025
School of Human Nutrition, McGill University, Sainte-Anne-de-Bellevue, QC, Canada.
Background: The 2019 Canada's Food Guide provides universal recommendations to individuals aged ≥2 years. However, the extent to which these recommendations are appropriate for older adults is unknown. Although ideal, conducting a large randomized controlled trial is unrealistic in the short term.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFJ Chem Theory Comput
January 2025
Qingdao Institute for Theoretical and Computational Sciences, School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Shandong University, Qingdao, Shandong 266237, P.R. China.
Milestoning is an efficient method for calculating rare event kinetics by constructing a continuous-time kinetic network that connects the reactant and product states. Its accuracy depends on both the quality of the underlying force fields and the trajectory sampling. The sampling error can be effectively controlled through various methods.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAfr J Prim Health Care Fam Med
December 2024
Department of Anaesthesiology, Pharmacology and Therapeutics, Faculty of Medicine, University of British Columbia, Vancouver.
In older adults with type 2 diabetes (T2DM), tight glycaemic control (HbA1c 7%) can result in more harm than benefit, especially when using insulin or sulfonylureas. Older adults are at higher risk for adverse drug events, especially hypoglycaemia, which may cause falls, confusion and hospitalisations. This Therapeutic Letter evaluates the risks of tight glycaemic control in older adults with T2DM, focusing on deprescribing diabetes medications in those over 65, especially those with multimorbidity and polypharmacy.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFCurrently in wheat breeding, genome wide association studies (GWAS) have successfully revealed the genetic basis of complex traits such as nitrogen use efficiency (NUE) and its biological processes. In the GWAS model, thresholding is common strategy to indicate deviation of expected range of -(s), and it can be used to find the distribution of true positive associations under or over of test statistics. Therefore, the threshold plays a critical role to identify reliable and significant associations in wide genome, while the proportion of false positive results is relatively low.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFACS Biomater Sci Eng
January 2025
Institute of Translational Medicine, Medical College, Yangzhou University, Yangzhou 225001, P. R. China.
Photothermal therapy (PTT) has shown promise in the ablation of small, unresectable tumors by boosting the tumor's temperature above 50 °C. However, the high local temperature-induced cancer cell necrosis could create severe local inflammation, which may deteriorate normal tissues and increase tumor spreading. Although mild photothermal therapy (MPTT) at 42-45 °C could avoid the undesired side effect to some extent with minimal nonspecific heat diffusion, the self-protective behavior of tumors during MPTT results in an unsatisfactory therapeutic effect.
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