The distinction between reality and models or methodological assumptions is necessary for an understanding of the use of data--economic, technical or biological--in decision-making. The traditional modes of analysis used in decisions are discussed historically and analytically. Utilitarian-based concepts such as cost-benefit analysis and cannibalistic concepts such as "acceptable risk" are reje...

In this article the psychodynamic link between loneliness and sadism is examined on basis of a case report of the sadistic and cannibalistic serial killer Jeffery Dahmer. Envy, shame/rage mechanism, a disturbed oral-sadistic development, castration fear and severe feelings of inferiority, the conviction of being unlovable and unacceptable, need to diminish tension, powerful and sadistic fantasi...

Plagues of mass migrating insects such as locusts are estimated to affect the livelihood of one in ten people on the planet [1]. Identification of generalities in the mechanisms underlying these mass movements will enhance our understanding of animal migration and collective behavior while potentially contributing to pest-management efforts. We provide evidence that coordinated mass migration i...

Several hypotheses have been proposed to explain the evolution of sexual cannibalism. The foraging strategy hypothesis states that sexual cannibalism may arise as an adaptive foraging strategy, providing females with the nutrients to increase future fecundity. Yet, very few studies have found that nourishment through cannibalism translates into increased fecundity. One explanation for this may ...

Cannibalism is ubiquitous in natural communities and has the potential to alter the functional relationship of predator–prey interactions. Although cannibalistic species are frequently subject to predation, the consequences of cannibalism in the prey for predator–prey interactions are poorly understood. Using a dragonfly larvae system, I provide the first experimental evidence that cannibalism ...

Cannibalism has been shown to be important to the collective motion of mass migratory bands of insects, such as locusts and Mormon crickets. These mobile groups consist of millions of individuals and are highly destructive to vegetation. Individuals move in response to attacks from approaching conspecifics and bite those ahead, resulting in further movement and encounters with others. Despite t...

Although cannibalism is ubiquitous in food webs and frequent in systems where a predator and its prey also share a common resource (intraguild predation, IGP), its impacts on species interactions and the dynamics and structure of communities are still poorly understood. In addition, the few existing studies on cannibalism have generally focused on cannibalism in the top-predator, ignoring that ...

Sexual cannibalism is often set apart from other forms of cannibalism; however, no studies have directly compared the fitness consequences of these 2 types of cannibalism. Here, we compared the consequences of cannibalism of a male by a female outside the context of mating (referred to as nonsexual cannibalism) and within the context of mating (referred to as sexual cannibalism) for the propens...

Efficient indexing is at the heart of many data mining algorithms. A simple and extremely effective algorithm for indexing under any metric space was introduced in 1991 by Orchard. Orchard’s algorithm has not received much attention in the data mining and database community because of a fatal flaw; it requires quadratic space. In this work we show that we can produce a reduced version of Orchar...

Cut-marked and broken human bones are a recurrent feature of Magdalenian (~17-12,000 years BP, uncalibrated dates) European sites. Human remains at Gough's Cave (UK) have been modified as part of a Magdalenian mortuary ritual that combined the intensive processing of entire corpses to extract edible tissues and the modification of skulls to produce skull-cups. A human radius from Gough's Cave s...