The mega-evolution of life with its three memory systems depends on sender-receiver communication and problem-solving. A narrative review.

It should be the ultimate goal of any theory of evolution to delineate the contours of an integrative system to answer the question: How does life (in all its complexity) evolve (which can be called mega-evolution)? But how to plausibly define 'life'? My answer (1994-2023) is: 'life' sounds like a noun, but denotes an activity, and thus is a verb. Life (L) denotes nothing else than the total sum (∑) of all acts of communication (transfer of information) (C) executed by any type of senders-receivers at all their levels (up to at least 15) of compartmental organization: L = ∑C. The 'communicating compartment' is better suited to serve as the universal unit of structure, function and evolution than the cell, the smallest such unit. By paying as much importance to communication activity as to the Central Dogma of molecular biology, a wealth of new insights unfold. The major ones are as follows. (1) Living compartments have not only a genetic memory (DNA), but also a still enigmatic cognitive and an electrical memory system (and thus a triple memory system). (2) Complex compartments can have up to three types of progeny: genetic descendants/children, pupils/learners and electricians. (3) Of particular importance to adaptation, any act of communication is a problem-solving act because all messages need to be decoded. Hence through problem-solving that precedes selection, life itself is the driving force of its own evolution (a very clever but counterintuitive and unexpected logical deduction). Perhaps, this is the 'vital force' philosopher and Nobel laureate (in 1927) Henri Bergson searched for but did not find.

Evolutionary novelty in communication between the sexes.

The diversity of signalling traits within and across taxa is vast and striking, prompting us to consider how novelty evolves in the context of animal communication. Sexual selection contributes to diversification, and here we endeavour to understand the initial conditions that facilitate the maintenance or elimination of new sexual signals and receiver features. New sender and receiver variants can occur through mutation, plasticity, hybridization and cultural innovation, and the initial conditions of the sender, the receiver and the environment then dictate whether a novel cue becomes a signal. New features may arise in the sender, the receiver or both simultaneously. We contend that it may be easier than assumed to evolve new sexual signals because sexual signals may be arbitrary, sexual conflict is common and receivers are capable of perceiving much more of the world than just existing sexual signals. Additionally, changes in the signalling environment can approximate both signal and receiver changes through a change in transmission characteristics of a given environment or the use of new environments. The Anthropocene has led to wide-scale disruption of the environment and may thus generate opportunity to directly observe the evolution of new signals to address questions that are beyond the reach of phylogenetic approaches.

Innate releasing mechanisms and fixed action patterns: basic ethological concepts as drivers for neuroethological studies on acoustic communication in Orthoptera.

This review addresses the history of neuroethological studies on acoustic communication in insects. One objective is to reveal how basic ethological concepts developed in the 1930s, such as innate releasing mechanisms and fixed action patterns, have influenced the experimental and theoretical approaches to studying acoustic communication systems in Orthopteran insects. The idea of innateness of behaviors has directly fostered the search for central pattern generators that govern the stridulation patterns of crickets, katydids or grasshoppers. A central question pervading 50 years of research is how the essential match between signal features and receiver characteristics has evolved and is maintained during evolution. As in other disciplines, the tight interplay between technological developments and experimental and theoretical advances becomes evident throughout this review. While early neuroethological studies focused primarily on proximate questions such as the implementation of feature detectors or central pattern generators, later the interest shifted more towards ultimate questions. Orthoptera offer the advantage that both proximate and ultimate questions can be tackled in the same system. An important advance was the transition from laboratory studies under well-defined acoustic conditions to field studies that allowed to measure costs and benefits of acoustic signaling as well as constraints on song evolution.

Content, cost, and context: A framework for understanding human signaling systems.

Humans frequently perform extravagant and seemingly costly behaviors, such as widely sharing hunted resources, erecting conspicuous monumental structures, and performing dramatic acts of religious devotion. Evolutionary anthropologists and archeologists have used signaling theory to explain the function of such displays, drawing inspiration from behavioral ecology, economics, and the social sciences. While signaling theory is broadly aimed at explaining honest communication, it has come to be strongly associated with the handicap principle, which proposes that such costly extravagance is in fact an adaptation for signal reliability. Most empirical studies of signaling theory have focused on obviously costly acts, and consequently anthropologists have likely overlooked a wide range of signals that also promote reliable communication. Here, we build on recent developments in signaling theory and animal communication, developing an updated framework that highlights the diversity of signal contents, costs, contexts, and reliability mechanisms present within human signaling systems. By broadening the perspective of signaling theory in human systems, we strive to identify promising areas for further empirical and theoretical work.

Structural Characteristics of Two-Sender Index Coding.

This paper studies index coding with two senders. In this setup, source messages are distributed among the senders possibly with common messages. In addition, there are multiple receivers, with each receiver having some messages a priori, known as side-information, and requesting one unique message such that each message is requested by only one receiver. Index coding in this setup is called two-sender unicast index coding (TSUIC). The main goal is to find the shortest aggregate normalized codelength, which is expressed as the optimal broadcast rate. In this work, firstly, for a given TSUIC problem, we form three independent sub-problems each consisting of the only subset of the messages, based on whether the messages are available only in one of the senders or in both senders. Then, we express the optimal broadcast rate of the TSUIC problem as a function of the optimal broadcast rates of those independent sub-problems. In this way, we discover the structural characteristics of TSUIC. For the proofs of our results, we utilize confusion graphs and coding techniques used in single-sender index coding. To adapt the confusion graph technique in TSUIC, we introduce a new graph-coloring approach that is different from the normal graph coloring, which we call two-sender graph coloring, and propose a way of grouping the vertices to analyze the number of colors used. We further determine a class of TSUIC instances where a certain type of side-information can be removed without affecting their optimal broadcast rates. Finally, we generalize the results of a class of TSUIC problems to multiple senders.

[What do our clients want? : Is speed all that matters?] / Was wünschen unsere Einsender : Ist Geschwindigkeit alles?

The pathology department of the University Hospital Bonn conducted a survey among all its clients in order to evaluate their expectations concerning the diagnostics and service from a university department of pathology. A questionnaire including 30 topics was sent by mail to all senders. The questions could be answered using a scale ranging from "0" ("not important at all") to "10" ("very important"). Most important for the clients were "speed of communication of the diagnosis", "personal availability of the responsible pathologist by telephone" and "friendliness of contact". Less important were "autopsy diagnostics", "24 h on-call duty" and "service on Saturdays". A critical analysis of the results made us realize that pathology is threatened to be seen exclusively as a service discipline and that we should convey its methods and possibilities and also its requirements better to clinicians.

Socially induced serotonergic fluctuations in the male auditory midbrain correlate with female behavior during courtship.

Cues from social partners trigger the activation of socially responsive neuromodulatory systems, priming brain regions including sensory systems to process these cues appropriately. The fidelity with which neuromodulators reflect the qualities of ongoing social interactions in sensory regions is unclear. We addressed this issue by using voltammetry to monitor serotonergic fluctuations in an auditory midbrain nucleus, the inferior colliculus (IC), of male mice (Mus musculus) paired with females, and by concurrently measuring behaviors of both social partners. Serotonergic activity strongly increased in male mice as they courted females, relative to serotonergic activity in the same males during trials with no social partners. Across individual males, average changes in serotonergic activity were negatively correlated with behaviors exhibited by female partners, including broadband squeaks, which relate to rejection of males. In contrast, serotonergic activity did not correlate with male behaviors, including ultrasonic vocalizations. These findings suggest that during courtship, the level of serotonergic activity in the IC of males reflects the valence of the social interaction from the perspective of the male (i.e., whether the female rejects the male or not). As a result, our findings are consistent with the hypothesis that neuromodulatory effects on neural responses in the IC may reflect the reception, rather than the production, of vocal signals.

A Hybrid Sender- and Receiver-Initiated Protocol Scheme in Underwater Acoustic Sensor Networks.

In this paper, we propose a method for sharing the handshakes of control packets among multiple nodes, which we call a hybrid sender- and receiver-initiated (HSR) protocol scheme. Handshake-sharing can be achieved by inviting neighbors to join the current handshake and by allowing them to send their data packets without requiring extra handshakes. Thus, HSR can reduce the signaling overhead involved in control packet exchanges during handshakes, as well as resolve the spatial unfairness problem between nodes. From an operational perspective, HSR resembles the well-known handshake-sharing scheme referred to as the medium access control (MAC) protocol using reverse opportunistic packet appending (ROPA). However, in ROPA the waiting time is not controllable for the receiver's neighbors and thus unexpected collisions may occur at the receiver due to hidden neighbors, whereas the proposed scheme allows all nodes to avoid hidden-node-induced collisions according to an elaborately calculated waiting time. Our computer simulations demonstrated that HSR outperforms ROPA with respect to both the throughput and delay by around 9.65% and 11.36%, respectively.

Space-time mapping relationships in sensorimotor communication during asymmetric joint action.

Background: Sensorimotor communication is frequently observed in complex joint actions and social interactions. However, it remains challenging to explore the cognitive foundations behind sensorimotor communication. Methods: The present study extends previous research by introducing a single-person baseline condition and formulates two distinct categories of asymmetric joint action tasks: distance tasks and orientation tasks. This research investigates the action performance of 65 participants under various experimental conditions utilizing a 2 (cooperative intention: Coop, No-coop) × 2 (task characteristic: distance, orientation) × 4 (target: T1, T2, T3, T4) repeated-measures experimental design to investigate the cognitive mechanisms underlying sensorimotor communication between individuals. Results: The results showed that (1) target key dwell time, motion time, total motion time, and maximum motion height in the Coop condition are more than in the No-coop condition. (2) In the distance task without cooperative intention, the dwell time of T4 is smaller than T1, T2, T3, and its variability of T1, T2, T3, and T4 were no different. In the distance task with cooperative intention, the dwell time and its variability of T1, T2, T3, and T4 displayed an increasing trend. (3) In the orientation task without cooperative intention, the dwell time of T1 is smaller than T2, T3, T4, and variability of the target keys T1, T2, T3, and T4 had no difference. In the orientation task with cooperative intention, the dwell time and variability of the target keys T1, T2, T3, and T4 had increasing trends. Conclusions: Those findings underscore the importance of cooperative intention for sensorimotor communication. In the distance task with cooperative intention, message senders establish a mapping relationship characterized by "near-small, far-large" between the task distance and the individual's action characteristics through sensorimotor experience. In the orientation task with cooperative intention, message senders combined sensorimotor experience and verbal metaphors to establish a mapping relationship between task orientation and action characteristics, following the sequence of "left-up, right-up, left-down, right-down" to transmit the message to others.

Judging emoji by occupation: A case of emoji-based sarcasm interpretation.

The smiling emoji has been claimed to be a marker of sarcastic intention among young Chinese users in computer-mediated communication. However, it is not well understood whether people interpret the emoji differently based on the characteristics or traits of the sender, as conveyed by occupation stereotypes. We investigated the effect of sender occupation on emoji-based sarcasm interpretation in both unambiguous (Experiment 1) and ambiguous (Experiment 2) contexts. The results showed that contextual incongruity was privileged over sender occupation in cueing sarcastic intention. In unambiguous contexts, sender occupation exerted no significant influence on the interpretation of emoji-based sarcastic statements. In contrast, sender occupation played an important role in the interpretation of emoji-based statements in ambiguous contexts. Specifically, emoji-based ambiguous statements delivered by senders in high­irony occupations were more likely to be perceived as sarcastic than by those in low-irony occupations. However, sender occupation did not affect the interpretation of the emoji; instead, it biased the judgment of emoji in sarcasm interpretation. In a follow-up experiment (Experiment 3), we investigated the perceived characteristics of both high- and low-irony occupations. The results demonstrated that individuals in high-irony occupations were stereotyped with characteristics, including being humorous, insincere, easy to setting up close relationships, and of a lower social status. Taken together, our study suggests that stereotypical information about the sender could drive the interpretation of potentially sarcastic statements, and the contextual information modulates the effect of sender occupation on sarcasm interpretation.

Health communication needs for COVID-19 prevention and control among college students.

Objectives: During the early COVID-19 pandemic, college students had to switch to an online learning and online communication environment facing the chances of information overload, misinformation or conflicting information about COVID-19. This study aims to assess the communication needs that have arisen among college students to shed light on the development of a health communication campaign tailored toward college students. Methods: A series of 10 focus group discussions were conducted with 38 total participants. Each group has 2-6 undergraduate or graduate student participants. Nvivo was used to analyze the transcripts. Results: The students reported that they received conflicting information or misinformation. They requested messages with language that was easy to understand with infographics while being culturally appropriate. They advocated for regular and concise email updates from campus leadership. Most participants also preferred COVID-19 control and prevention information on social media. Conclusion: This study revealed the current status and the needs for health information about COVID-19 prevention and control among college students.

Functional Interactions Between Neural Substrates of Socio-cognitive Mechanisms Involved in Simple Deception and Manipulative Truth.

Introduction: Deceptive intentions may be realized by imparting false (simple deception) or true (manipulative truth) information. Both forms of deception require inferring others' thoughts and are underpinned by the theory of mind (TOM) neural system. Manipulative truth is thought to more strongly recruit these processes. However, the organization of functional interactions underlying simple deception and manipulative truth remains unclear. Materials and Methods: We performed psychophysiological interaction analysis for a key node in the TOM system, the right temporoparietal junction (rTPJ), using functional MRI data obtained from 23 volunteers (14 men and 9 women, age range 18-45 years) during the sender-receiver game. During the game, participants sent true, simple deceptive, or manipulative truthful messages to another player according to their own choice. A Bayesian approach to statistics was employed to perform statistical inference and define voxels with significant changes in functional interactions. Results: We observed functional interactions between nodes of the TOM system (bilateral TPJ, left precuneus, left dorsomedial prefrontal cortex, and right superior temporal sulcus) characterizing both forms of deception. We identified an increment in functional interactions of the rTPJ with the left TPJ (lTPJ) and right precuneus associated with manipulative truth. Furthermore, we demonstrated that a higher rate of manipulative truthful actions was associated with weaker functional interactions between the rTPJ and lTPJ, left precuneus, and left dorsomedial prefrontal cortex. Discussion: Compared with simple deception, manipulative truth is associated with a higher demand for socio-cognitive processes that contributes to the cognitive load of this form of deception. Impact statement This study contributes significantly to our understanding of the fundamental characteristics of socio-cognitive brain mechanisms. Analysis of psychophysiological interactions is highly relevant to the neurophysiology field to promote a shift from studying local activity changes in brain structures to elucidating the activity-related characteristics of functionally connected regions. The presented research for the first time demonstrates functional interactions between nodes of the theory of mind system underpinning deception through communication of false information and telling the truth to deceive (manipulative truth). Understanding the neural substrates of deception may be applied in the forensic field to develop techniques for detecting deception.

On Lies and Hard Truths.

We run an experimental study using sender-receiver games to evaluate how senders' willingness to lie to others compares to their willingness to tell hard truths, i.e., promote an outcome that the sender knows is unfair to the receiver without explicitly lying. Unlike in previous work on lying when it has consequences, we do not find that antisocial behavior is less frequent when it involves lying than when it does not. In fact, we find the opposite result in the setting where there is social contact between senders and receivers, and receivers have enough information to judge whether they have been treated unfairly. In this setting, we find that senders prefer to hide behind a lie and implement the antisocial outcome by being dishonest rather than by telling the truth. These results are consistent with social image costs depending on the social proximity between senders and receivers, especially when receivers can judge the kindness of the senders' actions.

Foreign Language Effect on Dishonesty.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether the use of foreign languages affects individuals' dishonesty. We recruited native Chinese speakers who can speak English as a foreign language at universities in China, and they were randomly assigned to a native language (NL) or foreign language (FL) condition. Participants in each condition were required to finish the same tasks, in which they would benefit more from lying; the tasks were administered in either Chinese or English. We conducted one die-roll game in Study 1 and one cheap-talk sender-receiver game in Study 2. In both Study 1 and Study 2, we found that the proportion of lying was significantly lower in the FL condition than in the NL condition. Our results imply that the FL effect on dishonesty may be due to the cognitive load of communicating in a FL.

A dataset for buffering delays due to the interaction between the Nagle algorithm and the delayed acknowledgement algorithm in cyber-physical systems communication.

In this article, we provide the research community with a dataset for the buffering delays that data packets experience at the TCP sending side in the realm of Cyber-Physical Systems (CPSs) and IoT. We focus on the buffering that occurs at the sender side due to the the adverse interaction between the Nagle algorithm and the delayed acknowledgement algorithm, which both were originally introduced into TCP to prevent sending out many small-sized packets over the network. These two algorithms are turned on (enabled) by default in most operating systems. The dataset is collected using four real-life operating systems: Windows, Linux, FreeBSD, and QNX (a real-time operating system). In each scenario, there are three separate different (virtual) machines running various operating systems. One machine, or an end-host, acts a data source, another acts as a data sink, and a third acts a network emulator that introduces artificial propagation delays between the source and the destination. To measure buffering delay at the sender side, we record for each sent packet the two time instants: when the packet is first generated at the application layer, and when it is actually sent on the physical network. In each case, 10 different independent experiment replications/runs are executed. Here, we provide the full distribution of all delay samples represented by the cumulative distribution function (CDF), which is expressed mathematically by F X ( x ) = P ( X ≤ x ) , where x is the delay measured in milliseconds, and P is the probability operator. The data exhibited here gives an impression of the amount and scale of the delay occurring at sender-side in TCP. More importantly, the data can be used to investigate the degree these delays affect the performance of cyber-physical systems and IoT or other real-time applications employing TCP.

Individual distinctiveness across call types of the southern white rhinoceros (Ceratotherium simum simum).

Individual distinctiveness in the acoustic structure of vocalizations provides a basis for individual recognition in mammals and plays an important role in social behavior. Within a species, call types can differ in individual distinctiveness, which can be explained by three factors, namely differences in the social function, the distance of the caller to the receiver, and the acoustic structure of the call. We explored the variation in individual distinctiveness across three call types (Grunt, Hiss, Snort) of the southern white rhinoceros (Ceratotherium simum simum) and investigated to what extent the abovementioned factors account for individual distinctiveness. Calls were recorded from 25 adult southern white rhinoceroses in six different zoos. We used three methods to compare the level of individual distinctiveness across call types, namely discriminant function analysis (DFA), potential for individual identity coding (PIC), and the information criterion (Hs). The three call types possessed an acoustic structure capable of showing individual variation to different extents. Individual distinctiveness was lowest for Snorts, intermediate for Hisses, and highest for Grunts. The level of individual distinctiveness of all three call types was lower than that previously reported for Pant calls of this species. Calls functioning to mediate intragroup social interactions had the highest individual distinctiveness. This highlights that a given communicative function and the need for individual discrimination during a social interaction have a major influence on the degree of individual distinctiveness.

A study on the embarrassment of senders who missend emojis with opposite meanings on social apps: taking WeChat as an example.

With the increasing popularity of social apps, sending emojis has become a very common way of expressing one's emotions. However, situations often arise when people send the wrong emoji by mistake, or sometimes even an emoji with an opposite meaning, which can cause embarrassment to the sender. Taking WeChat as an example, which is widely used in Chinese communities, this study summarizes 10 types of dialogue situations in which the meaning of an emoji is wrongly sent and 12 types of emotional components that are related to embarrassment. The purpose of this study was to analyze the extent to which the 12 emotional components that are associated with embarrassment actually explain what embarrassment is, as well as the different degrees of embarrassment among the different genders and age groups. The results showed that (1) among the emotional components of embarrassment, shame has the highest explanation degree for embarrassment; (2) males are more likely to be affected by embarrassment than females; and (3) users aged 18-25 and 26-30 years are more likely to be affected by embarrassment than those aged between 31 and 40 when they mistakenly send WeChat emojis. This study provides a reference value for their sustainable psychological impact on social app users.

Dissecting intercellular signaling with mass spectrometry-based proteomics.

Physiological functions depend on a coordinated interplay of numerous different cell types. Proteins serve as major signaling molecules between cells; however, their comprehensive investigation in physiologically relevant settings has remained challenging. Mass spectrometry (MS)-based shotgun proteomics is emerging as a powerful technology for the systematic analysis of protein-mediated intercellular signaling and regulated post-translational modifications. Here, we discuss recent advancements in cell biological, chemical, and biochemical MS-based approaches for the profiling of cellular messengers released by sending cells, receptors expressed on the cell surface, and their interactions. We highlight methods tailored toward the mapping of dynamic signal transduction mechanisms at cellular interfaces and approaches to dissect communication cell specifically in heterocellular systems. Thereby, MS-based proteomics contributes a unique systems biology perspective for the identification of intercellular signaling pathways deregulated in disease.

A Natural History of the Drag Queen Phenomenon.

The drag queen cultural phenomenon has been described at length. However, the depiction of outlandish and hyperbolic womanhood and taunting and formidable behavior at the core of drag queens' public persona has still to be fully accounted for. We argue that these aspects of the drag queen's public appearance could best be understood in a signaling framework. Publicly donning extravagant woman's costumes attracts harassment and brings financial, mating, and opportunity costs, generating the conditions for the transmission of honest signals. By successfully withstanding those odds, drag queen impersonators signal strategic qualities to members of the gay community. Data collected among gay and straight participants support a costly signaling reading of the drag queen cultural phenomenon. Participants generally agree that successful drag queens typically incur costs, while gaining specific social benefits.