Dataset Information

Professional diversity and the productivity of cities.

ABSTRACT: Attempts to understand the relationship between diversity, productivity and scale have remained limited due to the scheme-dependent nature of the taxonomies describing complex systems. We analyze the diversity of US metropolitan areas in terms of profession diversity and employment to show how this frequency distribution takes a universal scale-invariant form, common to all cities, in the limit of infinite resolution of occupational taxonomies. We show that this limit is obtained under general conditions that follow from the analysis of the variation of the occupational frequency across taxonomies at different resolutions in a way analogous to finite-size scaling in statistical physical systems. We propose a theoretical framework that derives the form and parameters of the limiting distribution of professions based on the appearance, in urban social networks, of new occupations as the result of specialization and coordination of labor. By deriving classification scheme-independent measures of functional diversity and modeling cities as social networks embedded in infrastructural space, these results show how standard economic arguments of division and coordination of labor can be articulated in detail in cities and provide a microscopic basis for explaining increasing returns to population scale observed at the level of entire metropolitan areas.

SUBMITTER: Bettencourt LM

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4066264 | biostudies-literature | 2014 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Professional diversity and the productivity of cities.

Bettencourt Luís M A LM Samaniego Horacio H Youn Hyejin H

Scientific reports 20140623

Attempts to understand the relationship between diversity, productivity and scale have remained limited due to the scheme-dependent nature of the taxonomies describing complex systems. We analyze the diversity of US metropolitan areas in terms of profession diversity and employment to show how this frequency distribution takes a universal scale-invariant form, common to all cities, in the limit of infinite resolution of occupational taxonomies. We show that this limit is obtained under general c ...[more]

PMID: 24953448

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Project description:One of the most intriguing environmental gradients connected with variation in diversity is ecosystem productivity. The role of diversity in ecosystems is pivotal, because species richness can be both a cause and a consequence of primary production. However, the mechanisms behind the varying productivity-diversity relationships (PDR) remain poorly understood. Moreover, large-scale studies on PDR across taxa are urgently needed. Here, we examined the relationships between resource supply and phyto-, bacterio-, and zooplankton richness in 100 small boreal lakes. We studied the PDR locally within the drainage systems and regionally across the systems. Second, we studied the relationships between resource availability, species richness, biomass and resource ratio (N:P) in phytoplankton communities using Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) for testing the multivariate hypothesis of PDR. At the local scale, the PDR showed variable patterns ranging from positive linear and unimodal to negative linear relationships for all planktonic groups. At the regional scale, PDRs were significantly linear and positive for phyto- and zooplankton. Phytoplankton richness and the amount of chlorophyll a showed a positive linear relationship indicating that communities consisting of higher number of species were able to produce higher levels of biomass. According to the SEM, phytoplankton biomass was largely related to resource availability, yet there was a pathway via community richness. Finally, we found that species richness at all trophic levels was correlated with several environmental factors, and was also related to richness at the other trophic levels. This study showed that the PDRs in freshwaters show scale-dependency. We also documented that the PDR complies with the multivariate model showing that plant biomass is not mirroring merely the resource availability, but is also influenced by richness. This highlights the need for conserving diversity in order to maintain ecosystem processes in freshwaters.

Project description:Purpose While disparities in the inclusion and advancement of women and minorities in science, technology, engineering, mathematics, and medical fields have been well documented, less work has focused on medical physics specifically. In this study, we evaluate historical and current diversity within the medical physics workforce, in cohorts representative of professional advancement (PA) in the field, and within National Institutes of Health (NIH)–funded medical physics research activities. Methods and Materials The 2020 American Association of Physicists in Medicine (AAPM) membership was queried as surrogate for the medical physics workforce. Select subsets of the AAPM membership were queried as surrogate for PA and early career professional advancement (ECPA) in medical physics. Self-reported AAPM-member demographics data representative of study analysis groups were identified and analyzed. Demographic characteristics of the 2020 AAPM membership were compared with those of the PA and ECPA cohorts and United States (US) population. The AAPM-NIH Research Database was appended with principal investigator (PI) demographics data and analyzed to evaluate trends in grant allocation by PI demographic characteristics. Results Women, Hispanic/Latinx/Spanish individuals, and individuals reporting a race other than White or Asian alone comprised 50.8%, 18.7%, and 32.4% of the US population, respectively, but only 23.9%, 9.1%, and 7.9% of the 2020 AAPM membership, respectively. In general, representation of women and minorities was further decreased in the PA cohort; however, significantly higher proportions of women (P < .001) and Hispanic/Latinx/Spanish members (P < .05) were observed in the ECPA cohort than the 2020 AAPM membership. Analysis of historical data revealed modest increases in diversity within the AAPM membership since 2002. Across NIH grants awarded to AAPM members between 1985 and 2020, only 9.4%, 5.3%, and 1.7% were awarded to women, Hispanic/Latinx/Spanish, and non-White, non-Asian PIs, respectively. Conclusions Diversity within medical physics is limited. Proactive policy should be implemented to ensure diverse, equitable, and inclusive representation within research activities, roles representative of PA, and the profession at large.

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Professional diversity and the productivity of cities.

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Professional diversity and the productivity of cities.

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