Christopher X J. Jensen
Associate Professor, Pratt Institute

Do cancer cells play cooperate in the Prisoner’s Dilemma?

Posted 26 Jul 2014 / 0

PLoS One “Prisoner’s Dilemma in Cancer Metabolism” What is interesting here is that cancer cells must cooperate with each other in order to out-compete somatic cells against a staggering cost-to-benefit ratio. Generated by the extreme inefficiency of anaerobic metabolism, this ratio presents a supreme challenge to a developing tumor, which might be one factor explaining Read More

A Minor Post, Articles, Cooperation, Game Theory, Health & Medicine, Quantifying Costs and Benefits

My Evolution 2014 talk is on YouTube

Posted 17 Jul 2014 / 0

One nice thing that organizers of the Evolution 2014 conference did was to offer the opportunity for presenters to have their talk recorded and archived. These recorded talks now have their own Evolution 2014 YouTube Channel, and my talk is included in this collection: This was an experiment for this conference, and I think that it came Read More

A Major Post, Conferences, Cooperation, Easy Iterated Prisoner's Dilemma, Evolution Education, Evolutionary Games Infographics, Game Theory, Information Design, My publications, Science in Art & Design, Society for the Study of Evolution, Talks & Seminars, Teaching Tools

Evolution 2014: Day 2

Posted 22 Jun 2014 / 0

About five years ago I developed my Evolution course, which is aimed at my non-majors art and design students. I have not taught this course in more than two years, and as it has sat on the shelf I have been able to get that critical distance necessary to make the course better. So coming Read More

A Major Post, Assessment Methods, Competition, Conferences, Cooperation, Cooperative Breeding, EvoDevo, Evolution Education, Higher Education, Mutualism, Niche Partitioning, Parasitism, Society for the Study of Evolution

Evolution 2014: Are island mutualist communities more likely to be nested because they are inherently more unstable?

Posted 21 Jun 2014 / 0

The interactions in ecological communities can be structured in a variety of ways, and recently there has been a push to categorize these networks along the spectrum between modular (smaller clusters of more specialized interactions) and nested (unclustered networks with more generalist species). Theoretically it is understood that the nested communities are more stable, so Read More

A Minor Post, Coevolution, Conferences, Mutualism, Mutualistic Networks, Society for the Study of Evolution

Evolution 2014: Day 0

Posted 20 Jun 2014 / 0

I started off this year’s Evolution meeting early. The conference is — at its core —  a four-day affair. But the days leading into the “official” start on Friday evening feature larger workshops aimed at building skills. I chose to attend the Experiencing Evolution workshop. Here’s what this session promised: Evolution is a key biological concept, Read More

A Major Post, Adaptation, Assessment Methods, Behavior, Coevolution, Competition, Conferences, Cooperation, Evolution, Evolution Education, Evolutionary Modeling, Genetics, Grants & Funding, Higher Education, Individual-based Models, Lesson Ideas, Multilevel Selection, Natural Selection, Phylogenetics, Population Genetics, Population Growth, Predation, Reproductive Fitness, Science in Art & Design, Sex and Reproduction, Society for the Study of Evolution, Talks & Seminars, Teaching, Teaching Tools

Evolution 2014: Evolution of cooperation in the high school classroom? You bet!

Posted 20 Jun 2014 / 0

Will Ratcliff presented an absolutely amazing set of laboratories that explore the evolution of multicellularity (http://www.snowflakeyeastlab.com/). They can be done with high school or college students, and allow students to see the benefits of cooperation and the action of multilevel selection in a few weeks’ worth of laboratory work. Really impressive classroom activity design!

A Minor Post, Competition, Conferences, Cooperation, Group Selection, Multilevel Selection, Predation, Society for the Study of Evolution

Cath Dennis publishes non-computerized classroom adaptation of Axelrod’s iPD Tournament

Posted 30 May 2014 / 0

I have corresponded with Cath Dennis of the University of Aberdeen, as we both share an interest in how to bring some of the foundational work exploring cooperation into our classrooms. She has just published one of her classroom activities — an “analog” version of Robert Axelrod’s iPD tournaments — in the Journal of Biological Education.

A Minor Post, Articles, Cooperation, Evolution Education, Evolutionary Modeling, Game Theory, Reciprocity, Teaching Tools

Donald Trump saves CitiBike, proving that selfishness and cooperation are no longer opposed

Posted 01 Apr 2014 / 0

WNYC The Brian Lehrer Show “A New Citi Bike Savior: Donald Trump?” Although this story is disheartening, it truly is inspiring that so many enlightened and savvy New Yorkers called in to decry Donald Trump’s role in commercializing the previous-unsullied CitiBike Program.

A Minor Post, Altruism, Cooperation, Economics, Political Science, Public Policy, Radio & Podcasts, Sustainable Transportation

Model evidence that third party punishment only makes sense in tight-knit groups

Posted 29 Jan 2014 / 0

Proceedings of the Royal Society B “High strength-of-ties and low mobility enable the evolution of third-party punishment“

A Minor Post, Altruism, Articles, Behavior, Evolutionary Modeling, Punishment, Reputation, Social Networks

How understanding social evolution might help treat cancer

Posted 29 Jan 2014 / 0

The information sharing issue is really interesting here: in some sense, the medical field has the most detailed organismal knowledge available for any species, and evolutionary biologists are generally not that aware of the depth of what is known about the functions of the human body. Although I think that evolutionists have a lot to Read More

A Minor Post, Cooperation, Evolutionary Modeling, Health & Medicine, Individual-based Models, Talks & Seminars