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new This paper discusses a perfect example of recontextualization and transformation: the collection of the Spanish painter Ignacio León y Escosura (1834-1901). The artist had, in fact, started collecting objects not only out of love for certain specimens but also out of the need to have a repertoire of 16th and 17th century artefacts for his historical paintings. This is why only a selection of the collection was kept at his home in Le Pecq (France), while the objects needed for his work as a painter stayed in his Parisian studio, described as 'le plus beau de Paris' for its elegance and richness (L’art moderne, 1875). The collection's fortune underwent an abrupt change with the artist's sudden death in 1901. From this point on, the collection was dismembered, sold and moved to different locations. His widow, Augustine Marcy Escosura (1856-1918), decided to use part of the collection as a source of income by selling some of the objects in her antique shop, the Maison Marcy. The employees at the Maison included Luigi Parmeggiani (1860-1945), from Reggio Emilia (Italy), who finally inherited the collection after the death of Mme. Escosura and later transferred it to his hometown. In Reggio Emilia he created a house museum, the Galleria Parmeggiani, and made it appear, for a long time, as though he were the original owner of the collection. This paper retells the long and troubled history of León y Escosura’s collection and studies the way in which objects gained a new identity in the Galleria Parmeggiani. Emma Puliti received her MA in Arts, Museology, and Curatorship from the University of Bologna and her BA in History of Art from the University of Siena. Her research interests focus on the history of XIX century European Collections. She is currently a Cultrice della materia for the course of Museologia e Storia del Collezionismo and Collections, musées et public at the University of Bologna. Furthermore, she works full time as an archivist for a private collection in Florence. — School of Advanced Study, 19h ago
new My presentation will focus on the story of embroidery and the embroiderers in Azzemoure, a small Moroccan town on the coast of the Atlantic Ocean. In this small town the embroidery helps us uncover many layers of historical trends and influences from around the globe.Elya Assayag is a history PhD candidate at Columbia University. She studies the history of Moroccan women during the 20th century. Due to a lack of written sources by and about women, Elya's research uses diverse methodologies in addition to archival search, such as oral history and material culture analysis. At the center of her study stands Moroccan embroidery as a known "female" craft. This craft is used as a means to understand broader social aspects in women's lives. Besides trying to figure out her academic path, she volunteers with refugees and asylum seekers, and tries to do something useful with the law degree she obtained a few years ago. — School of Advanced Study, 19h ago
new In the meantime, however, owing to the absence of a unifying theory of relationality “differing [if not bickering] about difference” (Trownsell et al. 2021) seems to have become the underlying motif of many relational conversations. Thus, at the basic level of theoretical construction, the glue that binds the fragmented relational research agenda is the assertion that despite its alleged preoccupation with “relations,” the study of world politics has instead tended to prioritize the actors involved. In this respect, the relational claim that the world is shaped by continuous interactions among diverse forms of life and matter calls for the consideration of alternative ontologies that go beyond the limitations of the substantialism dominating the IR mainstream. As such relationality in IR represents a “family of theories united by an emphasis on the theoretical and analytical significance of connections, ties, transactions, and other kinds of relations” (Jackson and Nexon 2019, 2). — E-International Relations, 1d ago
new To conclude, the ability to buy magic mushrooms on the web has opened new possibilities for anyone thinking about discovering the realms of consciousness and unlocking the possible therapeutic benefits of these intriguing fungi. Nevertheless, with this supply comes a duty to method their use with respect, caution, and attention of the appropriate landscape. Whether seeking a recreational experience or even a therapeutic trip, people can find a varied variety of strains and services and products on line, sent discreetly to their doorstep, while they embark on their own distinctive exploration of the magic within mushrooms. — WriteUpCafe.com, 1d ago
new Exploring the creative capability of artificial intelligence, a study recently published in Scientific Reports illuminates the captivating interplay between human ingenuity and computational creativity. Researchers Mika Koivisto and Simone Grassini utilized the Alternate Uses Task (AUT) as a medium to explore divergent thinking, a cognitive process wherein individuals formulate varied ideas or solutions in response to a singular task. Encompassing responses from 256 human participants and three advanced AI chatbots—ChatGPT3, ChatGPT4, and Copy.Ai—the study scrutinized creative alternatives for commonplace objects such as a pencil and a candle. Delving into semantic distance and creativity as measured through computational and human evaluators, respectively, the findings unveiled a nuanced narrative: while chatbots, on average, surpassed human scores in semantic distance and creativity, the peak of human creativity ultimately eclipsed the AI-generated responses in seven of the eight scoring categories. Thus, while AI chatbots demonstrably weave a tapestry of ideas that align with, or even surpass, average human creativity, the best level of human imaginative thought, at least presently, remains unparalleled. This investigative foray invites further exploration into the application and integration of AI within the realm of creative processes, foreshadowing an intriguing symbiosis of human and artificial creative potentials. — Montreal AI Ethics Institute, 1d ago
new Paradoxically, when women meet men's fantasies by being more open about their sexual desires, men can experience women's open expression of desire as a demand rather than an invitation, a command to perform, or to please her. History is full of examples of men viewing women's sexuality as dangerous. Delilah brought down Sampson by seducing him, the Sirens brought Odysseus to near ruin with their seductive cries, and Eve brought about humanity's fall by seducing Adam to eat the apple. Even today, athletes are superstitious about having sex before a big match, believing it drains some of the power they need to perform. Not surprisingly, these dynamics often show up as inhibited sexual desire in men. In one study, 15% of men in long-term partnerships reported they had lost almost all interest in sex for a period of three months or longer in the past year. This is not about aging; the highest rate was in men aged 35 to 44. — Psychology Today, 1d ago

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new In Adoption Fantasies: The Fetishization of Asian Adoptees from Girlhood to Womanhood (Ohio State UP, 2023), Kimberly D. McKee explores the ways adopted Asian women and girls are situated at a nexus of objectifications—as adoptees and as Asian American women—and how they negotiate competing expectations based on sensationalist and fictional portrayals of adoption found in US popular culture. McKee traces the life cycle of the adopted Asian woman, from the rendering of infant adoptee bodies in the white US imaginary, to Asian American fantasies of adoption, to encounters with the hypersexualization of Asian and Asian American women and girls in US popular culture. Drawing on adoption studies, Asian American studies, critical ethnic studies, gender studies, and cultural studies, McKee analyzes the mechanisms informing adoptees’ interactions with consumers of this media—adoptive parents and families and strangers alike—and how those exchanges and that media influence adoptees’ negotiations with the world. From Modern Family to Sex and the City to the notoriety surrounding Soon-Yi Previn and Woody Allen, among many other instances, McKee scrutinizes the fetishization and commodification of women and girls adopted from Asia to understand their racialized experiences. — New Books Network, 1d ago
new Let’s move from the ancient Greeks to a more recent phenomenon, the effects of neuroscience on understanding choice. Some people have suggested that various neuro-scientific experiments undermine this notion that we have free will at all. They are providing empirical evidence that free will is actually an illusion. Something as simple as moving my hand, the neurophysiological impulse that brings about that movement occurs before I have the intention of moving it, even though it feels the other way around. That’s what Benjamin Libet claims, and it’s quite a radical claim. There may be flaws in the experiment, but a lot of neuroscience is piling up to suggest that picture of ourselves as somehow sitting in the driving seat may be wrong. — Five Books, 2d ago
new Thinking across species in the context of slavery in the Caribbean can help to engage the historically embodied reality of being Black in a shared, oppressive world. The talk begins with a summary of my PhD research, which explores how anglophone Caribbean neo-slave narratives rewrite Black humanity and the nonhuman world against controlling anti-Black images. It will examine how this decolonial ecocritical reading has revealed hidden histories of interspecies violence and resistance during slavery in a distinctly Caribbean context. Reflecting on the ways I have sought to deepen and disrupt my own typical methods of engaging with neo-slave narratives, this talk examines how my thesis has evolved into visual and auditory art within my current role as a creative practitioner in residence at ILCS. I will reflect on my process and progress in creating two large-scale visual art pieces and soundscapes as ways of animating my own literary analysis of two Caribbean neo-slave poems. In doing so, I seek to highlight how a multi-sensory experience of Caribbean neo-slave narratives can provide a powerful tool for examining the limitations and possibilities of written literature in re-presenting the intimacies and enigmas of embodied contact with our complicated world. Renée Landell is a Creative Practitioner at ILCS, School of Advanced Study. She has recently finished writing up her PhD thesis which undertakes decolonial ecocritical approaches to Anglophone Caribbean neo-slave narratives. Alongside her research, Renée works as the founding director of Beyond Margins UK, a racial justice and equity movement, and as co-founder of Black in Arts and Humanities, a global online network of Black scholars and practitioners. She is also a writer represented by the leading international literary agency, Andrew Nurnberg Associates, and has appeared on Al Jazeera News, BBC News and CBS (Canada) as a commentator, and more recently in the BBC 2 documentary 'David Harewood on Blackface' as an on-screen historian. — School of Advanced Study, 2d ago
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No experiment I could possibly design today is more valuable than preserving the opportunity to pose a new experiment tomorrow, next year, or in a decade. My cohort of scientists has come up inspired by imagining what it was like for contemporaries of Darwin to encounter and compare global wildlife, or during the modern synthesis, as the invisible internal mechanisms of evolutionary genetics unfurled. Now, we stare down the prospect that, during our turn, we will have to watch the biosphere die. I have peers who set out to study ancient mass extinction events only to find that the conditions that precipitated ancient mass extinction events aptly describe events now. I have contemporaries who set out to discover new species by recording sounds in the rainforest, only to capture an eerie transition toward silence. I've done very little field work and I study hardy, laboratory-tractable species that aren't endangered or picky about where they live, but even I stopped finding butterflies at my best collection site after wildfires. In my 10 years in science, I think I've never been to any research conference, on any topic, without hearing my colleagues interject dire warnings into their presentations – and I've never attended a climate-focused conference. So, the most important research question is ‘will the species I hope to study – and a stable international society that can support research activity as I've known it – survive the next 50 years?' With that in mind, with ‘unlimited’ funding, the best thing I can imagine doing for science is to fight. I think of legal support for climate protesters; cultivating honest communication platforms that bypass corporatized media; criminalizing ecocide; eliminating fossil fuels fast; protecting democracy against regulatory capture; buying out and defending the recommended 30% of Earth's surface as nature reserves; facilitating socially just transitions to safely support humans in the remaining land. — The Company of Biologists, 3d ago
The classic and original text that first explored the telepathic methods of communication of wild animals • Based on years of detailed field observations, first published in 1919 • Written by the famous American naturalist who was the first to study telepathy in the wild • Forewords by biologists Rupert Sheldrake, who has spent 15 years researching the unexplained powers of animals, and Marc Bekoff, the editor of the three-volume Encyclopedia of Animal Behavior Many sources have commented on the silent communication abilities of pets, but never before and not since the first publication of this book in 1919 has the subject of animal telepathy in the wild been so fully researched. How Animals Talk explores the phenomenon of vocal, silent, and even motionless communication among animals. From crow talk to instant herd communication, author William J. Long theorizes that animals are much more intelligent, emotional, and moral than we have traditionally thought and that their ability to sense the presence of other living beings is an innate ability shared by humans as well. Based on many years of field observations, this classic text contains numerous examples of animal behavior that defy conventional explanation. Long believed in the importance and validity of anecdotal evidence. He recognized the dangers of conventional research in reducing animals to mere numbers and how the cold third-person prose of scientific study can objectify animals, distancing "us" from "them." His findings on the impact of our presence on animal life--and the cost that we pay in separating ourselves from animals, who help define our place in the natural world--may be more relevant today than ever before. — innertraditions.com, 14d ago
In order to understand the causes and consequences of climate fluctuations, researchers examine climate archives, such as trees, lakes and marine sediments or even ice. Over the course of centuries and millennia, the climate has continuously varied, leaving behind traces. Understanding natural climate changes enables better assessments of what lies ahead with human-made climate change. Anticipating how humankind can prepare for the consequences of increasing global warming is of paramount importance. “We will feel the effects of climate change primarily regionally,” says physicist Prof. Dr. Thomas Laepple of the Alfred Wegener Institute Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research (AWI) in Potsdam. “In some regions, droughts will become more frequent, potentially leading to crop failures over extended periods. Elsewhere, we will witness more powerful hurricanes.” The problem is that global climate models are often unable to represent regional variations in detail when projecting several centuries into the future. While they are good at accurately simulating the global warming trend, they still lack the ability to accurately simulate local conditions. This makes it difficult to plan and implement concrete measures to adapt to the climate — for example, in agriculture to switch at the right time to crops that can tolerate higher temperatures. Thomas Laepple and his colleagues already pointed out the problem of local predictive power about ten years ago: In an analysis of the climate evolution over the last 7000 years, they had then uncovered a striking discrepancy between global climate simulations on the one hand and local analysis of climate traces from centuries- or even millennia-old marine sediments, tree rings, pollen or corals. These indicators shed light on past temperatures in specific regions of the Earth. On a regional scale, climate simulations and sediment sample analyses differed in their temperature estimations, sometimes by a factor of 50, leading to controversial discussions among experts. “At the time, we were faced with a conundrum,” recalls Thomas Laepple. “We couldn’t say with certainty whether the climate models were incorrect in the selected examples or whether the temperature data derived from the sediment samples were based on faulty assumptions.” Subsequently, Thomas Laepple and climatologist Kira Rehfeld from the University of Tübingen successfully drew attention to this problem. Among other initiatives, workshops brought together experts in climate models and those who evaluate climate traces. Laepple and Rehfeld also collaborated with colleagues to establish the international working group CVAS (Climate Variability Across Scales), which delved into the discrepancy between regional and global scales in greater detail. Now, in collaboration with Kira Rehfeld and other colleagues, a review article has been published in the journal Nature Geoscience, highlighting these discrepancies. Co-authors also include students and workshop participants who contributed to the study through literature research and scientific illustrations. The most significant finding: in a sense, both sides are correct — the climate modeling experts and those who evaluate the climate traces. “We found that climate models are skillful at tracing past global temperature trends,” says Thomas Laepple. “However, the longer the time period you examine, the more regional deviations are averaged out. Trends in regional temperature values become overly smoothed.” One reason might be that global climate models do not account for various regional buffering phenomena — such as regional ocean currents that stabilize the climate in coastal regions for many years or even decades, even as the global average temperature changes. — Watts Up With That? • The world's most viewed site on global warming and climate change, 15d ago
Speaker: Max Silverman (Leeds)In recent years, transnational and transcultural approaches to memory have expanded the scope of memory studies beyond the framework of nation and community. But to what extent is this new phase of ‘interconnected’ memory studies still premised on trauma theory and its accompanying vocabulary of violence, the wound, transmission, belatedness, haunting, victimhood and melancholia? Silverman argues that although this approach has provided a much-needed focus on the ways past violence continues to affect the present in invisible ways, it tends to foreclose a broader intersectional analysis of cultural works in which traumatic memory, loss and mourning – no matter how entangled – are always articulated with other, often contradictory and paradoxical, processes. He applies this approach to the film Memory Box (2021) by the Lebanese filmmakers Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige, in which multiple intersections not only connect ‘disparate’ histories of violence (colonial and postcolonial France, Lebanon and Canada, and the Lebanese civil war) but also tell a knotted story about genealogy, gender and culture. Can theory open up cultural works to ambivalent encounters in a way that readings through the lens of traumatic memory rarely allow?Max Silverman is Professor of Modern French Studies at the University of Leeds. He works on post-Holocaust culture, postcolonial theory and cultures, and questions of memory, trauma, race and violence. His monograph Palimpsestic Memory: the Holocaust and Colonialism in French and Francophone Fiction and Film (Berghahn, 2013) considers the connections between the Holocaust and colonialism in the French and Francophone imaginary. He has published four co-edited books with Griselda Pollock on the theme of the 'concentrationary': Concentrationary Cinema (Berghahn, 2011), Concentrationary Memories (I.B. Tauris, 2014), Concentrationary Imaginaries (I.B. Tauris, 2015) and Concentrationary Art (Berghahn, 2019). His recent work questions traumatic memory studies in relation to contemporary Lebanese film. All are welcome to attend this in-person lecture. Advance online registration is essential as seats are limited.This lecture is sponsored by the University of London John Coffin Trust and is organised in conjunction with the workshop Spatio-Temporal Entanglements of European memory Narratives in Contemporary Literature, for which separate registration is required: https://ilcs.sas.ac.uk/events/spatio-temporal-entanglements-european-memory-narratives-contemporary-literatureImage: © Max Silverman... — School of Advanced Study, 11d ago
At times, the book’s transnationalism and intertextuality threaten to overwhelm its actual object. This may seem the right way to study Qazwini, whose work was so tightly interwoven with his time that it was often made invisible, incorporated into other works without attribution. But as an approach it sacrifices some of the texture of Wonders and Rarities: its physical texture, what it meant to see its images or to hold a book of all creation in one’s hands; but also its rhetorical and emotional texture, what Daston and Park call wonder’s ‘texture as felt experience’. Qazwini’s prose leans into the wondrous: ‘The anatomy of the body is one of the marvels that confounds educated minds from start to finish and that human understanding is unable to fully grasp.’ But how did this prose work its own magic on the reader? What about other aspects of wonder, such as horror and disgust? Did Qazwini try to obviate these potentially destabilising emotions? Amid the sweeping vistas of the Islamic world and the ambitious efforts at contextualisation, some of the character of Qazwini’s book – and some of the reader’s own wonder – is lost. — London Review of Books, 12d ago
Based on the above considerations, future studies should strive to record data on subjective beliefs at different time points: before, during and after the experiment. This will allow mapping the way subjective beliefs might be differentially associated with experimental results depending on the considered study and treatment type. However, we acknowledge two caveats of this suggestion. Firstly, participants may be more prone to pay attention to their treatment allocation and, consequently, figure out their assigned condition. Secondly, recording subjective beliefs at multiple time points might interfere with the effects of the treatment. For instance, patients might suppress their response for the fear that the treatment received is a placebo (Sonawalla & Rosenbaum, 2002). An alternative approach could entail deception, whereby all participants are told they received the active treatment. While this raises an ethical concern, such an approach would 1) allow minimising the effect of subjective beliefs on research outcomes and 2) hold more ecological validity, as it would mimic the way approved treatments are delivered in the clinic, where all patients know to be receiving the active treatment (Burke et al., 2019). — elifesciences.org, 5d ago

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new My research interests are varied and I tend not to espouse a specific research agenda because of the diverse nature of our doctoral programs relative to the size of our college. Examples of doctoral research studies I have guided include the following: MATHEMATICS EDUCATION: (1) Examining the effect on student achievement and attitudes of graphing utilities in college algebra courses taught at two-year colleges; (2) Exploring the influence instructional use of calculators in elementary grades has on student performance on the mathematics component of the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test (FCAT); (3) Applying a conceptual change model, commonly used to assess students' misconceptions of key science concepts to community college mathematics teachers misconceptions of how students learn mathematics; (4) Examining the spacing effect theory (i.e., how variations in the frequency and timing of instruction affect student learning) with respect to 3-, 2-, and 1-day per week schedules in college algebra. SCIENCE EDUCATION: (1) Examining the effect of biology-based virtual and physical field trips relative to students' science achievement and attitudes; (2) Examining the effect of conceptually-based instructional strategies on science achievement and attitudes of community college students in first-semester general biology, microbiology, and human anatomy and physiology courses; (3) Investigating the direct and indirect effects of teacher attributes, classroom attributes, and instructional strategies on Namibian junior secondary school teachers' locus of control, self-efficacy, and attitudes toward desertification; (4) Investigating the effect of student- and teacher-centered instructional strategies with and without conceptual advocacy on ninth-grade biology students' misconceptions, biology achievement, attitudes toward science, and cognitive retention of scientific method and measurement, spontaneous generation, and characteristics of living things. COMPUTER SCIENCE EDUCATION: (1) Examining the effects of a computer-based feedback and assessment environment on Taiwanese students' English language acquisition; (2) Examining the effect of a classroom restructuring involving the introductory course in computer science (CS 1); (3) Examining the perception of control relative to Taiwanese students’ affective domain (locus of control, self-efficacy, test anxiety) in three different types of testing environments: computer-based (CBT), pseudo computerized-adaptive (pseudo-CAT), and pseudo self-adaptive (pseudo-SAT). AVIATION SCIENCE EDUCATION: (1) Developing a causal model to help explain and predict the relationships among various attributes of airport executives that lead to a career in airport management. AVIATION SCIENCES: (1) Identifying factors that contributed to certified flight instructors (CFIs) becoming complacent, which could then be manifested as a lack of or reduced vigilance. (2) Identifying factors related to hazardous events that were precursors to runway incursions classified as pilot deviations. (3) Examining the relationship between factors affecting the aviation profession and the concept of aviation professionalism. (4) Examining the safety climate at targeted U.S. based aviation maintenance, repair, and overhaul (MRO) facilities. (5) Examining the survival strategies of U.S. domestic airlines relative to their route exit/entry decision patterns and air fare competition dynamics. — fit.edu, 2d ago
new Dr. Durrance has an interdisciplinary research and education program in long-term human space exploration. The hazards associated with long-term exposure to the space environment, such as radiation damage and the loss of bone mass, are not sufficiently understood to determine whether they pose acceptable risks or not. Research focused on these hazards is critical to sustained human presence outside the protective environment of the Earth ’s atmosphere and magnetosphere. This program uses the Space Life Sciences Laboratory (SLS Lab) at Kennedy Space Center (KSC); as well as labs at Florida Tech.Lunar dust physics: Enabling technologies must be developed, including systems to mitigate the damaging effects of dust contamination; technologies that use the local planetary resources to produce consumables such as oxygen, water and rocket propellant; food production systems; innovative range technologies and many more. We are currently studying the induction charging characteristics of lunar dust.Bone Loss: The objectives of the bone project are (1) to provide a dynamic model of the structure and function of bone in response to loading with sufficient precision to predict the effect of any arbitrary loading history and (2) to develop and refine new countermeasures against bone loss.Radiation damage: Solar and galactic radiation is a major hazard to space crews during long-duration flights and planetary bases beyond the Earth ’s magnetic field. Intense solar flares can induce acute radiation sickness, galactic cosmic rays can kill brain cells that the body cannot replace, and all forms of radiation can induce cancer. The only known safety measure is shielding to prevent the high-speed particles from reaching the crew.Dr. Durrance is has an interdisciplinary research and education program in astrobiology addressing three fundamental questions: How does life begin and evolve? Does life exist elsewhere in the Universe? What is the future of life on Earth and beyond? Research addressing these questions is highly interdisciplinary involving fields such as physics, biology, chemistry, geology, and planetary science.Extrasolar Planets: Most of the newly discovered planets have been found using indirect techniques, where the planet ’s effect on light emitted from the parent star is detected, not the light emitted by the planet itself. The most likely technique for detecting life on these planets is a detailed analysis of their spectra; therefore, we are developing a system that may be able to detect IR emissions from exoplanets using large, ground-based telescopes along with Very Long Baseline Interferometry (VLBI) techniques developed for radio astronomy.Amyloid Fiber Formation: We are pursuing research that may shed light on a fundamental question regarding the origin of life: how did the transition from non-living to living matter occur? We are investigating the spontaneous formation of long linear fibers from a weak solution of proteins using dielectric spectroscopy. This phenomenon may be important in neurodegenerative diseases and it may help to understand the emergence of ordered biological structures that are far from thermodynamic equilibrium.Dr. Durrance Director of the Sub-Orbital Research and Training Center that utilizes flights of high performance F-104 jets from the Shuttle Landing Facility (SLF) at KSC. In addition to the testing of prototype spaceflight hardware for NASA and commercial companies, we are developing an imaging system designed specifically for imaging Earth ’s coastal regions. The coastal zone is not only the most significant ocean area in terms of productivity, economics, recreation, and natural resources but it is also the most difficult to image. — fit.edu, 2d ago
new Exhibit A is Amara’s law, named for scientist, researcher and former President of the Institute for the Future Roy Amara. He is best known for saying, “We tend to overestimate the effect of a technology in the short run and underestimate the effect in the long run.” Boy howdy, does that ever apply to digital technologies in general and artificial intelligence specifically. AI may change the world — curing cancer, reversing climate change or taking all our jobs while creating a bunch more new ones — but mostly in the outbound years and decades. In the near term, it creates shadows for us to worry about, plan around and get distracted by even as we experiment and put it to work.In many respects, GenAI represents a victory lap for Moore’s law, based on Intel co-founder Gordon Moore’s formulation about the exponential growth of computational prowess. Originally coined in 1965 around the doubling of transistors on microchips every couple of years, it bumped up against the physical limits of silicon-based technologies. As AI models grow massively in size, from millions to billions and even trillions of parameters, the underlying hardware continues to keep pace even as margins narrow. Chip maker Nvidia, with its combination of advanced graphics processing units (GPUs) and tensor processing units (TPUs) that are optimized for AI tasks, reaches beyond transistor density in pushing the upward limits in the exponential increase in computational power.Not far behind, but perhaps in a supporting role, is Metcalfe’s law. Named for Ethernet inventor Robert Metcalfe, it suggests that the value of a network is proportional to the square of the number of its users. When the campaign for digital government was young, broadband penetration reached 51 percent — giving advocates the opportunity to claim that government could then serve a “digital majority.” As of last year, that number has reached 90 percent. The stakes are high for the remaining 10 percent, often characterized as underserved communities including low-income and racialized populations along with people who have chosen not to engage in a connected world. By extension of Metcalfe’s law, more user interactions contribute to AI’s knowledge, which relies on iterative feedback for fine-tuning and improvement. The absence of marginalized voices is deafening to generative models. They cannot be trained with what isn’t there, increasing the risk of unconscious bias and the skewing of results. — GovTech, 2d ago
new Performances will begin Tuesday, December 19, 2023, with opening night set for Tuesday, January 9, 2024. The Prayer for the French Republic creative team includes Takeshi Kata (scenic design), Sarah Laux (costume design), Amith Chandrashaker (lighting design), Daniel Kluger (original music & sound design), J. Jared Janas (hair and makeup design), Gigi Buffington (vocal coach), Caparelliotis Casting, Kelly Gillespie (casting), and Richard Hodge (production stage manager). Winner of the 2022 Drama Desk and Outer Critics Circle Awards for Best Play, Joshua Harmon’s Prayer for the French Republic bursts onto Broadway after MTC’s highly acclaimed extended, sold-out Off-Broadway run. In 1944, a Jewish couple in Paris desperately awaits news of their missing family. More than 70 years later, the couple’s great-grandchildren find themselves facing the same question as their ancestors: "Are we safe?" This celebrated work by the author of Bad Jews and Significant Other is about history, home and the effects of an ancient hatred. The New York Times calls it "thought-provoking, heart-wrenching and wickedly funny." Directing is David Cromer, a Tony Award® winner for The Band's Visit. Prayer for the French Republic is made possible in part by a generous grant from The Roy Cockrum Foundation. The mission of the Foundation is to award grants to support world-class performing arts projects in not-for-profit professional theaters throughout the United States. Prayer for the French Republic was commissioned by MTC through the Bank of America New Play Program. The 2022-23 season marked Lynne Meadow’s 50th Anniversary as Artistic Director of Manhattan Theatre Club. Meadow was joined in summer 2023 by Chris Jennings, MTC’s new Executive Director. MTC’s mission, which Meadow created in 1972 and has implemented over five decades of award-winning theatrical productions, is to develop and present new work in a dynamic, supportive environment; to identify and collaborate with the most promising new as well as seasoned, accomplished artists; and to produce a diverse repertoire of innovative, entertaining, and thought-provoking plays and musicals by American and international playwrights. Since 1989, MTC Education, which uses the power of live theatre and playwriting to awaken minds, ignite imaginations, open hearts, and change lives, has also been an important corollary to MTC’s work, reaching thousands of students and educators worldwide each season. Since its beginnings on East 73rd Street in New York City, MTC has grown from a small off-off-Broadway showcase theatre into one of the country’s most prestigious and award-winning producing companies, creating over 600 world, American, New York and Broadway premieres. MTC productions have earned 7 Pulitzer Prizes, 28 Tony Awards, 50 Drama Desk Awards and 49 Obie Awards amongst many other honors. MTC has homes on Broadway at its Samuel J. Friedman Theatre (261 West 47th Street) and Off-Broadway at New York City Center (131 West 55th Street). MTC is an anti-racist organization that respects and honors all voices, and upholds the values of community and equity. — BroadwayWorld.com, 2d ago
new The 28th session of the Conference of the Parties (COP28) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) gave the world a surprise on its first day, Thursday. Delegates from more than 160 countries unanimously agreed to formally establish the Loss and Damage Fund, pledging more than $400 million to support the world's particularly vulnerable countries in their efforts to cope with the loss and damage caused by climate change. This groundbreaking progress has brought much-needed good news to the world, raising confidence and expectations for the outcomes of this conference.The issue of funding has been a focal point in recent UN climate conferences, with prolonged and intense debates surrounding the amount of aid and compensation developed countries should offer for their historical emissions, as well as the ways of raising and distributing the funds. However, the urgency of the severe climate change situation has led to significant achievements. Developed countries have committed to mobilizing $100 billion a year to support climate finance. The establishment of the Loss and Damage Fund was a decision made at COP27 in Egypt in 2022, but its implementation has not been easy. Nonetheless, this time, several developed countries have made pledges toward the fund. The United Arab Emirates (UAE), host country of COP28, committed $100 million, Germany, $100 million, the UK, 40 million pounds (about $50.6 million) and 20 million pounds for other arrangements, Japan, $10 million, and the US, known for its grandstanding on climate issues, only $17.5 million. When it comes to paying, some countries revealed their true face. The amount pledged by the US is meager in comparison with its status as the world's largest economy and the responsibility in addressing climate change it should bear given its highest historical cumulative carbon emissions, leading to criticism from attending delegates and experts who deemed it "disappointing," "shocking," and "embarrassing."However, amid this disappointment, there were heartening developments. When the US once again let the world down at the critical moment, other countries stepped up. On the second day of the climate conference, Friday, the UAE announced $30 billion for a new climate finance fund, aiming to mobilize $250 billion by the end of the decade. It also aims to improve the flow of money into projects to reduce emissions, especially in the Global South.Washington should really feel ashamed of this scene. The New York Times bluntly questioned in a September article: How Long Can America's Climate Hypocrisy Last? "It's nothing new for climate ambition and climate hypocrisy to flicker back and forth like the two faces of a lenticular hologram," said the article. Even the American media itself says so, showing how bad the US' performance is on climate issues.Another typical example is the deliberate effort by the US to woo Pacific island nations, establishing new embassies and claiming to help them maintain "maritime security." However, when it comes to the climate issues that these countries genuinely care about, Washington exhibits conspicuous stinginess and parsimony. The true focus of Washington in its diplomacy is becoming increasingly evident to people.At any rate, the US cannot be absent when addressing the issue of climate. Even if other countries are proactive, they cannot fill the irresponsible void left by the US. Conversely, if the US fails to set an example on climate issues, it completely loses its qualification to pursue global leadership. In any case, the US must shoulder its due obligations and responsibilities. The Democratic Party shows a more positive attitude toward climate issues than the Republican Party. The Biden administration should take advantage of its time in office to push for substantive progress on climate issues with greater determination and force.This current climate conference's crucial agenda is the "Global Stocktake," where each contracting party will review progress and gaps in implementing key provisions of the Paris Agreement. The focus will also be on "four paradigm shifts": fast-tracking energy transition and slashing emissions before 2030; transforming climate finance, by delivering on old promises and setting the framework for a new deal on finance; putting nature, people, lives and livelihoods at the heart of climate action; mobilizing for the most inclusive COP ever. These are ambitious goals indeed.In the realm of climate, every step forward is incredibly challenging. It is precisely because of this difficulty that each achievement is so valuable. Regardless, we observe that human society is moving forward step by step, even though the pace is still too slow and lags behind the rate of environmental degradation. How to ensure that this collective effort of all humanity involves less short-term selfish calculations and more long-term vision of shared future, and stronger climate actions, is crucial for the future and fate of humanity. No one can escape or evade this duty, especially for countries with significant responsibilities and obligations. — globaltimes.cn, 2d ago
new The success of ChatGPT speaks foremost to the power of a good interface. AI has already been part of countless everyday products for well over a decade, from Spotify and Netflix to Facebook and Google Maps. The first version of GPT, the AI model that powers ChatGPT, dates back to 2018. And even OpenAI’s other products, such as DALL-E, did not make the waves that ChatGPT did immediately upon its release. It was the chat-based interface that set off AI’s breakout year.There is something uniquely beguiling about chat. Humans are endowed with language, and conversation is a primary way people interact with each other and infer intelligence. A chat-based interface is a natural mode for interaction and a way for people to experience the “intelligence” of an AI system. The phenomenal success of ChatGPT shows again that user interfaces drive widespread adoption of technology, from the Macintosh to web browsers and the iPhone. Design makes the difference.At the same time, one of the technology’s principal strengths – generating convincing language – makes it well suited for producing false or misleading information. ChatGPT and other generative AI systems make it easier for criminals and propagandists to prey on human vulnerabilities. The potential of the technology to boost fraud and misinformation is one of the key rationales for regulating AI.Amid the real promises and perils of generative AI, the technology has also provided another case study in the power of hype. This year has brought no shortage of articles on how AI is going to transform every aspect of society and how the proliferation of the technology is inevitable.ChatGPT is not the first technology to be hyped as “the next big thing,” but it is perhaps unique in simultaneously being hyped as an existential risk. Numerous tech titans and even some AI researchers have warned about the risk of superintelligent AI systems emerging and wiping out humanity, though I believe that these fears are far-fetched.The media environment favors hype, and the current venture funding climate further fuels AI hype in particular. Playing to people’s hopes and fears is a recipe for anxiety with none of the ingredients for wise decision making. — GovTech, 2d ago

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Birds reproduce and feed in a wide diversity of social and ecological contexts, and ornithology offers numerous opportunities to study the sensory ecology of relevant behaviours. Species across the avian family of swallows (Hirundinidae) breed either solitarily or in groups up to thousands of pairs, building their nests in cavities or on hard substrates with overhanging ledges. When foraging in groups, swallows often recruit others to dense food aggregations, serving as information centres. Such food recruitment signals include both specific vocalisations (specific calls) and visual signals (contrasting rump bands potentially visible from a distance and enhanced by the movement of the individual) (Brown et al., 1991). Specifically, contrasting rump bands on the backs of birds have evolved predominantly in colonially nesting and group foraging swallows, whereas the lack of rump bands occurs mostly in solitary lineages (CR Brown, pers. comm.). Such phenotypic adaptations for signalling to conspecifics may also be widespread in other group living and foraging lineages. Turning to another promising context, many seabirds nest in large colonies (across multiple avian orders from pelicans through albatrosses), yet in many lineages indirect cues about the physical locality of the nest provide sufficient sensory identification where dependent offspring predictably occur. In other colonially breeding seabirds, including some penguins and murres, individuals do not build nests and have no permanently identifiable physical structure for where their offspring can be located. Evolutionary theory predicts different acoustic recognition systems and sensitivities in these two ecological contexts: in the latter, for example, paired individual recognition of adult-chick vocalisations is essential for kin-directed behaviours, whereas indirect visual cues suffice for parent–offspring recognition in the former (Lefevre et al., 1998). — eLife, 5d ago
The origins of modern-day Europe date back to a period known as the Migration Period. During this time, which dates between Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, the Western Roman Empire came to an end and profound cultural and political changes began. Many towns, villages and settlements have their origins during this period. In southern Bavaria, the Bavarian duchy emerged from the former Roman province of Raetia secunda in the sixth century. The role migration played in this process remains a point of discourse. Stable strontium isotopes from over 150 early medieval human skeletal remains reveal: At the end of the 5th century, an above-average number of people of non-Bavarian origin migrated to the region of present-day southern Bavaria. These treks involved men as well as women. “Although we cannot narrow down the exact areas of origin for many individuals, we can show that they came from various non-local regions,” says Harbeck, lead author of the study.Certain dietary patterns atypical for Bavaria further suggest a foreign origin of some of the buried individuals. Several women who were shown to have genetic markers characteristic for south-eastern Europe and who also exhibit artificially modified skulls, consumed a diet comprised mainly of millet during their formative years. Millet farming is common in Eastern Europe and even Asia, yet seldom grown in Bavaria at this time. Harbeck states, “These women obviously grew up in other cultures outside of Bavaria. For some women, we were even able to narrow down the approximate time of their diet change and thus when they immigrated to Bavaria. Many of the women from south-eastern Europe, for example, did not immigrate as teenagers – as one might expect in the context of marriage migration at that time – but were already well over 20 years of age when they arrived in Bavaria”. — Technology Networks, 11d ago
Between July 2021 and August 2022, evidence of undisclosed ingredients in the COVID-19 “vaccines” was published by at least 26 researchers/research teams in 16 different countries across five continents using spectroscopic and microscopic analysis. Despite operating largely independently of one another, their findings are remarkably similar and highlight the clear and present danger that the world’s population has been lied to regarding the contents of the COVID-19 “vaccines.” This raises grave questions about the true purpose of the dangerous experimental injections that have so far been shot into 5.33 billion people (over two-thirds of the human race), including children, apparently without their informed consent regarding the contents. Surprise findings include sharp-edged geometric structures, fibrous or tube-like structures, crystalline formations, “microbubbles,” and possible self-assembling nanotechnology. The blood of people who have received one or more COVID-19 “vaccines” appears, in case after case, to contain foreign bodies and to be seriously degraded, with red blood cells typically in Rouleaux formation. Taken together, these 26 studies make a powerful case for the full force of scientific investigation to be brought to bear on the COVID-19 vaccine contents. If the findings of these 26 studies are confirmed, then the political implications are nothing short of revolutionary: a global crime against humanity has been committed, in which every government, every regulator, every establishment media organization, and all the professions have been complicit. — substack.com, 14d ago
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new Yes, this is the way the view starts moving in James’s hands. What’s really important to understanding what motivates James to say that kind of thing is that he is biographically deeply torn. There is his scientific training: he is still regarded as the father of modern experimental psychology, he knows how to run a lab and do experiments. When one reads his The Principles of Psychology it’s very sophisticated measurement of difficult things to measure. He’s really good at the science. But temperamentally he is drawn to various kinds of spiritualism. He’s a religious guy. He believes, in parts of his life, in ghosts and spirits. In fact, towards the end of his life, he started trying to investigate, in scientific ways, parapsychological and paranormal things. So he’s got an almost spooky side to him, and he sees pragmatism as a kind of empiricism which — unlike the logical empiricism of the logical positivists — is going to be more hospitable to religion, spirituality, and values, in a very broad sense of that term. James is constantly talking about “feeling at home in the universe.” Part of what motivates his pragmatism is the attempt to reconcile a scientific, hard-nosed view of the world with a spiritualistic, religious conception of our place in it, these two drives that he personally felt quite strongly. — Five Books, 2d ago
A genetic study involving almost 800,000 participants has uncovered genetic factors that contribute to the use of sleep medications, shedding new light on the intricate relationship between sleep problems and psychiatric conditions.The study, led by researchers from the University of Helsinki and published in Sleep, identified 27 genetic areas significantly associated with sleep medication purchases. Many of these regions contain genes related to sleep and psychiatric traits.Prolonged sleep problems, often referred to as chronic insomnia or long-term sleep disorders, affect approximately 10% to 15% of the adult population. Chronic sleep problems are associated with numerous physical health issues and can significantly diminish quality of life. However, the biological mechanisms leading to insomnia are not well understood.To get to grips with the genetic basis of sleep problems, FIMM-EMBL Group leader Hanna Ollila, PhD, and her team analyzed data from more than 300,000 Finnish individuals from the FinnGen study and almost 500,000 individuals from the UK Biobank.Diagnosing and studying sleep problems based on electronic health registry data can, however, be challenging. To overcome this issue, the research team used information on sleep medication purchases to capture people with insomnia.By comparing the genome variation of individuals who had purchased sleep medication one or several times with those individuals who had never purchased sleep medication, the researchers were able to highlight genetic areas associated with medication use.Not surprisingly, some of the identified genomic areas contain genes that are connected to sleep. In addition, the results highlighted several genes that, based on earlier studies, are connected to psychiatric and personality traits.Further analyses conducted suggest that conditions such as anxiety, depression, and schizophrenia are risk factors for increased sleep medication purchases.“Our results illustrate that the relationship between sleep medication purchases and psychiatric traits is causal so that sleep problems captured by sleep medication purchases increase the risk of psychiatric traits,” says the first author of the study, Martin Broberg, PhD, from the Institute for Molecular Medicine Finland, University of Helsinki, in a release.The identification of specific genetic markers associated with sleep problems can lead to more personalized and effective treatment strategies for individuals suffering from both sleep and psychiatric disorders.“Our finding underscores the importance of addressing sleep issues as part of the overall management of psychiatric diseases,” says Ollila, who led the study, in a release. — Sleep Review, 3d ago
As the audience queued for coffee, they debated Smajdor’s proposal. Some women in the group commented that they had enjoyed being pregnant, that carrying a child had been a profoundly challenging but rewarding experience. Others described relentless morning sickness, hemorrhoids, “feeling like an elephant,” and being treated as public property—suddenly every stranger had an opinion on their bodies and behaviour. In weighing their experiences of pregnancy and birth, the perspectives of each of these women had been shaped by the sense that there was simply no other way. What makes Firestone and Smajdor’s argument so provocative is their invitation to think beyond this assumption, to ask how our attitudes toward pregnancy might change if, in fact, there was another way. Considered in the context of the scientific research of the past several years, Smajdor’s prediction about the end of sexual reproduction is not so hard to imagine after all. — The Walrus, 3d ago
Newswise — Ana Mateos and Jesús Rodríguez, scientists at the Centro Nacional de Investigación sobre la Evolución Humana (CENIEH), have published a paper in the journal Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology which shows that large herbivore carrion, a resource that had formerly been abundant and accessible to hominins, became scarcer at the end of the Early Pleistocene due to changes in the Iberian fauna.Hominins arrived in the Iberian Peninsula about 1.4 million years ago, where they found a wide variety of food resources including a great abundance of carcasses of large herbivores partially consumed by a diversity of predators, important among which were two species of sabre-tooth cats (Homotherium latidens and Megantereon whitei).They also encountered a powerful competitor in these ecosystems, the giant hyena (Pachycrocuta brevirostris). However, as the same authors showed in earlier work, the wealth of food and diversity of the ecosystems at this period made the coexistence of hominins and giant hyenas competing for carrion possible.That being said, around one million years ago there were major climatic changes which restructured the ecosystems of the whole of Europe. In the Iberian Peninsula, the large mammal fauna suffered the extinction of several species, including the giant hyena and one of the sabre-tooth cats (M. whitei), leading to lower availability of carrion.Virtual simulationsThe researchers employed a computational model which enables experiments in a virtual environment that simulate the behavior of hyenas and hominins competing for carrion. Each experiment represents a different ecological scenario, defined by the predator species present, the productivity of the ecosystem, and the competition for carrion with other species like vultures or small carnivores.“The giant hyenas and hominins could coexist in competition for carrion prior to the extinction of the sabre-tooth Megantereon and other predators, like the lycaons (canids) and pumas. However, after those predators disappeared carrion became scantier. This coincides with the extinction of the giant hyena”, explains Mateos.According to the results of these experiments, among the key factors that determined these changes were the low productivity of the ecosystems during the very cold intervals of the period, strong competition with scavengers other than the giant hyena, and the likely social behavior of the other great sabre-tooth (H. latidens).Unlike hyenas, which would have depended exclusively on large herbivore carcasses for food, hominin behavior would have been much more flexible as they could also exploit plant resources like fruit, berries or roots, hunt small animals and even kill larger ones.“This greater flexibility in procuring food would have allowed them to survive and adapt to the new prevailing ecological conditions following the changes in the climate and fauna one million years ago”, adds Rodríguez.The only participant in this paper from outside the CENIEH was Ericson Hoelzchen, a scientist at the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI), at Trier University (Cognitive Social Simulation Lab). This work forms part of the project TROPHIc (PID2019-105101GB-I00, MCIN/AEI/ 10.13039/501100011033). — newswise.com, 3d ago
Nuclear deterrence and disarmament discussions often center on potential future use and threats of use of nuclear weapons. Attention is growing, however, on the harm that nuclear weapons have already done, mostly focused on the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings and on nuclear testing impacts. This seminar offers a nuclear justice lens derived from concepts of transitional justice (TJ). Traditionally applied in the context of human rights violations the analytical and normative framework can be used to study the nuclear past and present efforts to address it. We propose to understand nuclear harm as a form of “systemic wrongdoing”. Specifically, recent work by TJ scholars on colonial crimes and post-colonial injustice bears direct relevance for discussions on nuclear justice. We use the different “pillars” of TJ – criminal liability, redress, truth-telling, and reform – to analyze the progress made since the start of the nuclear age in addressing nuclear injustice and to identify gaps and potentials for political and legal action. The seminar builds on the 2021 Peace Research Institute Frankfurt report Beyond the Ban: A Global Agenda for Nuclear Justice. — Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, 3d ago
Newswise — In today's medical landscape, antibiotics are pivotal in combatting bacterial infections. These potent compounds, produced by bacteria and fungi, act as natural defenses against microbial attacks. A team of researchers delved into the intricate world of glycopeptide antibiotics – a vital resource in countering drug-resistant pathogens – to uncover their evolutionary origins. Dr. Demi Iftime and Dr. Martina Adamek headed this interdisciplinary project, guided by Professors Evi Stegmann and Nadine Ziemert from the “Controlling Microbes to Fight Infections” Cluster of Excellence at the University of Tübingen, with support from Professor Max Cryle and Dr. Mathias Hansen from Monash University in Australia.Using advanced bioinformatics, the team sought to decipher the chemical blueprint of ancient glycopeptide antibiotics. By understanding their evolutionary trajectory, the researchers were looking for insights that could steer the development of future antibiotics for medical applications. The team’s study has been published in the latest edition of Nature Communications.Tracing an Evolutionary Path“Antibiotics emerge from an ongoing evolutionary tug-of-war between different organisms, each striving to outmaneuver or curtail the spread of their adversaries,” explains Evi Stegmann. To explore this, the researchers utilized the glycopeptide antibiotics teicoplanin and vancomycin, along with related compounds sourced from specific bacterial strains. These compounds, built from amino acids and sugars, disrupt bacterial cell wall construction, ultimately leading to bacterial death. Notably, teicoplanin and vancomycin exhibit this potency against numerous human pathogens.In simplified terms, scientists often organize species into an evolutionary tree structure to illustrate their relationships. Similarly, the research team constructed a family tree of known glycopeptide antibiotics, linking their chemical structures via gene clusters that encode their blueprints. Employing bioinformatics algorithms, they deduced a putative ancestral form of these antibiotics – which they dubbed “paleomycin.” By reconstructing the genetic pathways they believed to produce paleomycin, the team successfully synthesized the compound, which displayed antibiotic properties in tests. “Recreating such an ancient molecule was exhilarating, akin to bringing dinosaurs or wooly mammoths back to life,” remarks Ziemert.Connecting Evolution to Practicality“One intriguing finding is that all glycopeptide antibiotics stem from a common precursor,” Stegmann says. “Moreover, the core structure of paleomycin mirrors the complexity seen in teicoplanin, while vancomycin exhibits a simpler core. We speculate that recent evolution streamlined the latter’s structure, yet its antibiotic function remained unchanged,” Ziemert adds. This family of antibiotics – though beneficial for bacteria producing them – demand substantial energy due to their complex chemical composition. Streamlining this complexity while retaining efficacy could confer an evolutionary advantage.The researchers meticulously traced the evolution of these antibiotics and their underlying genetic sequences, investigating pivotal steps required for creating functional molecules. In collaboration with Australian scientists, some of these steps were replicated in laboratory settings. “This journey through time revealed profound insights into the evolution of bacterial antibiotic pathways and nature's optimization strategies, leading to modern glycopeptide antibiotics,” says Ziemert. “This provides us with a solid foundation for advancing this crucial antibiotic group using biotechnology.”... — newswise.com, 3d ago

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Our study is thus relevant to understanding of constraints on the evolutionary refinement of physiology and life history of metazoans. Complex multicellularity crucially depends on the ability of the genome to express its genes differently in different cell types and life stages. The existence of specialized cells and organs that express greatly different yet highly coordinated and functional metabolic phenotypes from the same genome testifies to the power of regulatory evolution. On the other hand, there has been increased recognition that the ability of evolution to independently shape phenotypes of different life stages and sexes may be significantly constrained. Such constraints are expected to emerge from the complexity of gene regulatory and metabolic networks (Wagner, 2011; Sorrells et al., 2015; Schaerli et al., 2018). One manifestation of such constraints is ‘intralocus sexual conflict’ (sexually antagonistic pleiotropy), whereby simultaneous optimization of female and male phenotypes is hindered by constraints on independent evolution of gene expression in the two sexes (Rice, 1984; Pischedda and Chippindale, 2006; Hollis et al., 2014; Veltsos et al., 2017). Similarly, the developmental theory of aging postulates that gene expression and metabolism are optimized for maximizing performance at a young age and fail to adjust in later age in ways that could improve reproductive lifespan or healthspan (de Magalhães, 2012; Gems and Partridge, 2013), an idea increasingly supported by experimental data (Carlsson et al., 2021). This apparent metabolic inertia of aging individuals might be explained by selection at old age being weak (Medawar, 1952; Hamilton, 1966; Partridge and Barton, 1993). However, our results suggest similar evolutionary constraints linking the metabolism of juveniles and young adults in their reproductive prime, before the age-related decline in the strength of natural selection sets in Hamilton, 1966. Such constraints would hinder evolutionary optimization of juvenile and adult gene expression and metabolism if optima differ between the stages (Collet and Fellous, 2019). — eLife, 24d ago
With an understanding that a priori just war theory has some explanatory power, albeit limited in the cases of non-westernized worldview countries, relationality can assist in filling in the postulated gaps in the theory when applied as a heuristic. Within the Aquinas basis of the just war theory model, there are several places within which these proposed ‘relational devices or qualifiers’ might be inserted to assist in the fine-tuning of the heuristic. The Ivorian and Mali example serves as a useful backdrop to highlight these potential qualifiers. Within the characteristic of lawful authority, one should not just view the conflict through constitutional or international authority to wage war, but also include the relationship that the government has with its own populace and with the countries surrounding it. The concept of community being a widespread ideal in SSWA provides a limiting aspect to the authority one country has to wage war on another. The particular interpretations of sovereignty must also be taken into account. Just cause analysis may be assisted by including historical rationalization for warfare versus merely looking at Westernized views and philosophies of morality. Right intention and right means also benefit from caveats such as the community aspect, good human relations, sense of the sacred, and several other SSWA worldview tropes mentioned above. These final two have more explanatory power within conflict (Jus in Bello), and as such cannot really be identified within the case study of the paper. However, adding this region and even country-specific qualifiers will greatly assist in the explanatory power of the model when utilizing it outside of Western states (such as Russia and Ukraine). Further, as a nod towards implications for future research on the utilization of these qualifiers, the impact of colonization on how the states formed and how they function in SSWA should not be discounted. Although a cogent discussion within the complex sovereignty variables mentioned at the onset, the potential impacts of colonization are better applied within these country-specific qualifiers. As is widely known, colonization disrupted the paths socio-political path of SSWA by establishing the states themselves as they are now seen. Without these borders being established at the Berlin Conference of 1884, the issues of sovereignty might not have arisen as the states could have potentially taken different forms. Cursory impacts on socio-political worldviews might be identified as push and pull factors between attempts by the states to develop and maintain their own definitions of statehood that are tied to past narratives and impact contemporary forms of sovereignty concepts as well as their need to work within the westernized state system. For the latter, the impacts of colonization provide for some familiar mechanisms of state, albeit not without conflict with contemporary identity and sovereignty efforts. Indeed, intertwining aspects of the westernization of the SSWA states into the generalized model of state interactions proposed above certainly assists in the application of a relational mode of thinking within the utilization of just war theory in sub-Saharan West Africa. — E-International Relations, 28d ago
Temporal binding has been understood as an illusion in timing judgement. When an action triggers an outcome (e.g. a sound) after a brief delay, the action is reported to occur later than if the outcome does not occur, and the outcome is reported to occur earlier than a similar outcome not caused by an action. We show here that an attention mechanism underlies the seeming illusion of timing judgement. In one method, participants watch a rotating clock hand and report event times by noting the clock hand position when the event occurs. We find that visual attention is critically involved in shaping event time reports made in this way. This occurs because action and outcome events result in shifts of attention around the clock rim, thereby biasing the perceived location of the clock hand. Using a probe detection task to measure attention, we show a difference in attention distribution between a single-event condition (sound only or action only) and a two-event agency condition (action plus sound). Participants accordingly report the timing of the same event (the sound or the action) differently in the two conditions: spatial attentional shifts masquerading as temporal binding. Furthermore, computational modelling based on the attention measure can reproduce temporal binding. Studies that use time judgement as an implicit marker of voluntary agency should first discount the artefactual changes in event timing reports that actually reflect differences in spatial attention. The study also has important implications for related results in mental chronometry obtained with the clock-like method since Wundt, as attention may well be a critical confounding factor in the interpretation of these studies. — elifesciences.org, 17d ago
An increasing body of evidence highlights the significance of urban green spaces, emphasizing their potential to boost psychological and physiological well-being, coupled with broader ecosystem service benefits. Consequently, ensuring universal access to public and green spaces is vital for achieving sustainable and healthy development goals. The evolution of cities has left a profound impact on green space exposure. In initial urban development stages, extensive built-up areas supplanted green spaces. The subsequent rapid urban expansion led to the construction of significant artificial green landscapes, reshaping the nature of greenspace exposure in cities. However, the extent to which urbanization has affected human exposure to green space and related inequalities over time remains unclear. Recent research conducted by researchers from The University of Hong Kong (HKU) in collaboration with colleagues from Tsinghua University has unveiled an improved human greenspace exposure equality among global large cities. This discovery underscores the positive impact of urbanization on the accessibility and benefits of greenspaces. This research represents the first global exploration of human exposure to greenspace exposure and its associated equality shifts, focusing on the first two decades of the 21st century urbanization. The findings have been published in Nature Communications (link), providing valuable insights that can help inform future city greening efforts. The research team developed a methodology incorporating 30-meter-resolution Landsat satellite time-series greenspace mapping and a population-weighted exposure framework to quantify the changes in human exposure to greenspace and associated equality from 2000 to 2018. The team examined 1028 cities in the world and divided their sample into two main segments: Global South (developing countries) and Global North (developed countries) cities. Global findings indicated a substantial increase in physical greenspace coverage and an improvement in human exposure to urban greenspace. This progress led to a marked reduction in greenspace exposure inequality over the past two decades. Nevertheless, there is a contrast in the rate of reduction in greenspace exposure inequality between cities in the Global South and North, with a much faster rate of reduction in the Global South, nearly four times that of the Global North. Delving deeper into the underlying drivers, the researchers found that greenspace coverage, as a measurement of greenspace supply, has dominantly promoted the improvement in the temporal change of greenspace exposure inequality. Dr. Bin Chen, the project's principal investigator and Assistant Professor of Division of Landscape Architecture at HKU said： "This study is a timely thrust on our earlier work published in Nature Communications, which highlighted contrasting green space exposure inequalities between cities of the Global North and Global South (link). The current research offers a comprehensive, longitudinal view of how this exposure and its associated inequalities have evolved over time". Dr. Chen emphasized two important contributions from this study. The research findings reveal a trend toward equality in human exposure to greenspace, as reflected by a decline in inequality indices such as Gini, Atkinson, and Theil coefficients. Another key insight is that this study observes prominent spatial differences in urban greenspace trends in the contrast between Global North and Global South cities. Dr. Chen remarked: "These findings provide encouraging evidence, showcasing that cities globally are making positive progress in realizing the 11th sustainable development goal". "The study tells a broadly positive story of the opening decades of the urban century, and our analysis of trends, and subsequent studies of positive outliers in those trends, will help cities achieve better net outcomes when planning for balanced changes in urban greenspace loss and construction by incorporating multidimensional contexts of greening history, greenspace supply status quo, prioritized vulnerable hotspots and the underlying socio-economic factors", said Professor Chris Webster, Chair Professor of Urban Planning and Development Economics, Dean of Faculty of Architecture, HKU. Adding to the discourse, Professor Peng Gong, Chair Professor of Global Sustainability at Department of Geography and Department of Earth Sciences, Vice-President and Pro-Vice-Chancellor (Academic Development) of HKU, commented: "This research is timely and offers invaluable insights, serving as a beacon for government bodies, urban planners, and private sector developers. It emphasizes the adoption of comprehensive urban strategies to not only increase but also enhance the quality of green spaces, all in pursuit of the sustainable development goals." Professor Gong further stressed HKU's unwavering commitment to forwarding scientific research that aligns with the UN's Sustainable Development Goals. As a testament to this commitment, he highlighted HKU's recent launch of two pioneering research hubs: the Urban Systems Institute (USI) and the Institute for Climate and Carbon Neutrality (ICCN). The full paper can be accessed here: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-023-41620-z Hashtag: #HKU... — SME Business Daily Media, 18d ago
Complex microbial communities play a vital role across many domains of life, from the female reproductive tract, through the oceans, to the plant rhizosphere. The study of these communities offers great opportunities for biological discovery, due to the ease of their measurement, the ability to perturb them, and their rapidly evolving nature. Yet, their complex composition, dynamic nature, and intricate interactions with multiple other systems, make it difficult to extract robust and reproducible patterns from these ecosystems. To uncover their latent properties, I develop models that combine longitudinal data analysis and statistical learning, and which draw from principles of community ecology, complexity theory and evolution. I will briefly present methods for decomposition of microbial dynamics at an ecological scale (Shenhav et al., Nature Methods; Martino & Shenhav et al., Nature Biotechnology). Using these methods we found significant differences in the trajectories of the infant microbiome in the first years of life as a function of early life exposures, namely mode of delivery and breastfeeding. I will then show how incorporating eco-evolutionary considerations allowed us to detect signals of purifying selection across ecosystems. I will demonstrate how interactions between evolution and ecology played a vital role in shaping microbial communities and the standard genetics code (Shenhav & Zeevi, Science, Liao & Shenhav Nature Comm.). Inspired by these discoveries, I am expanding the scope beyond the microbiome, modeling multi-layered data on human milk composition. I will present results from an ongoing study in which I am building integrative models of nasal, gut and milk microbiota, combined with human milk components, to predict infant respiratory health. I found that the temporal dynamics of microbiota in the first year of life, mediated by milk composition, predict the development of chronic respiratory disease later in childhood. These models, designed to identify robust spatiotemporal patterns, would help us better understand the nature and impact of complex ecosystems like the microbiome and human milk from the time of formation and throughout life. — Events & Lectures, 13d ago
Consider this description of America's discontent:"...a Hamlet-like loss of self-confidence, with an apocalyptic sense of doom for the civilization. On the Right it embodies a conviction that the sensate culture is pushing the society down the Gaderene slope of drugs-and-fornication to destruction. On the Left there is the vague sense that America is imperialist, fascist-oriented, caught in inner contradictions of class and ethnic struggles which will end in self-destructive wars or civil chaos....the fragmenting and polarizing of institutions (family, neighborhood, university, church, nation)--in short, the overloading of the social nervous system by sudden accelerations of change."Is that a reasonably fair description of America in 2023? Interestingly, it was written in January 1974, describing the America of 50 years ago. (America Agonistes (Max Lerner, Foreign Affairs, January 1974). I have often referred to Peter Turchin's evidence-based cyclical mapping of the structural sources of social disorder which he has updated in his latest work, End Times: Elites, Counter-Elites, and the Path of Political Disintegration.Turchin identified 50-year cycles of integration--in which people find reasons to cooperate--and disintegration, in which people find reasons to devolve cooperation. From this perspective, that an article from 50 years ago sounds current is not only no surprise, it was easily predictable.This Salon article summarizes many of the conclusions in Turchin's new book: Hope in "End Times": Peter Turchin's analysis of our coming collapse could help us avoid it:For all its breadth and depth, there's a simple message at the core of "End Times": At the heart of our problems, Turchin writes, is "a perverse 'wealth pump' ... taking from the poor and giving to the rich," and we have to find a way to turn it off.This reflects "one of the most fundamental principles in sociology, the 'iron law of oligarchy,'" he writes, "which states that when an interest group acquires a lot of power, it inevitably starts using that power in self-interested ways." For example, while wages fell far behind the growth of economic productivity from 1979 onward, Turchin cites analysis from the Economic Policy Institute indicating that three-fourths of that gap was due to elite-driven policy shifts: weakened labor standards, the erosion of collective bargaining, corporate globalization and so-called fiscal austerity.Diminished economic conditions for the less educated were accompanied by a decline in the social institutions that nurtured their social life and cooperation. These institutions include the family, the church, the labor union, the public schools and their parent-teacher associations, and various voluntary neighborhood associations."Back in America's previous cyclical crisis, Lerner identified the sources of decline in this way: "Civilizations die not only of rigidity, failure to meet challenges, constitutional breakdown. They may also die of deep alienations and the erosion of crucial institutions."He concluded that America's cult of change precluded a decline due to rigidity:"My own stress is on studying the crucial factors in the death of past civilizations, and using them to put questions concerning American directions. To start with, the rigidity which marked a number of declines and falls is only minimally present in America, with her cult of change and her experience of social and cultural revolution."I will consider the issue of rigidity in upcoming posts, but for now, let's consider the decay of America's social and economic foundations, starting with Turchin's perverse wealth pump that has stripmined the bottom 90% to enrich the top 1%, as shown in this chart:... — substack.com, 21d ago

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In recent years, Geospatial Data Science – the use of geographic knowledge and AI approaches to extract meaningful insights from large-scale geographic data – has achieved remarkable success in spatial knowledge discovery and reasoning, and geographic phenomena modeling. However, two challenges remain in geospatial data science: (1) geographic phenomena are always treated as functions of a set of physical settings, but human experience has received insufficient attention; (2) there are limited strategies to focus on and address geoethical issues. In this talk, Dr. Kang will present a series of works that utilized geospatial data science to understand human experience and sense of place. In particular, using large-scale street view images, social media data, human mobility data, and advanced GeoAI approaches, he measured and analyzed human subjective safety perceptions (e.g., whether a neighborhood is perceived as a safe place), and emotions (e.g., happiness) at places, as well as human-environment relationships. Also, his work paid attention on geoethical issues such as monitoring perception bias and model bias and protecting geoprivacy. — nyu.edu, 3d ago
Newswise — For many decades, the rock mechanics community has tacitly assumed that a rock mass can be equated to the sum of fractures and intact rocks. Accordingly, it is believed that the behaviour of a rock mass can be understood by decomposing it into smaller pieces and characterising these pieces completely. However, from the statistical physics point of view, this commonly assumed equation, i.e. rock mass = fractures + intact rocks, is incorrect, or at least incomplete.“Rock mass is a complex system formed by numerous fractures and rocks that interact with each other across spatiotemporal scales,” explains Qinghua Lei, the sole author of a new study published in Rocks Mechanics Bulletin. “In such a complex system, entirely new properties could emerge at a higher level arising from the collective behaviour of constituent components at the lower level, such that the system exhibits properties that its parts do not have on their own, for which reductionism breaks down. So, more is different!”Dr. Lei, an Associate Professor at Uppsala University and a former Senior Researcher & Lecturer at ETH Zurich, further explains, “Consequently, the large-scale behaviour of a rock mass cannot be predicted by simple applications of the knowledge of small-scale core samples, due to the hierarchy of scales, heterogeneities, and physical mechanisms as well as the possible emergence of qualitatively different macroscopic phenomena.”Based on a combined statistical physics and rock mechanics perspective, Dr. Lei presented a thorough discussion on the mechanisms of emergence in fractured rocks. Additionally, he proposed a multiscale conceptual framework to link microscopic responses of individual fractures/rocks to the macroscopic behaviour of rock masses, which consist of a large number of fractures and rocks.“This multiscale framework can serve as a useful tool to bridge experimentally established constitutive relationships of fracture/rock samples at the laboratory scale to phenomenologically observed macroscopic properties of fractured rock masses at the site scale,” Dr. Lei concludes. — newswise.com, 3d ago
Commitment to volunteer work by HSG students is uniqueA long partnership: Eastern Switzerland's textile industry and its universityChoix Goncourt de la Suisse: HSG students take part in France's most important literary competitionHSG work researcher Hans Rusinek combines sustainability and New WorkThe first cohort of the joint Executive MBA ETH HSG (emba X) successfully graduates20th SME Day in St.Gallen: Turning negative momentum into an opportunityPersonality in Residence Thomas Zurbuchen: "The universe is full of surprises"HSG presents photo exhibition: "100 Years Akris – 125 Years University of St.Gallen"Miriam Meckel on the use of artificial intelligence in scienceHSG Community Festival draws 1,000 alumni back to their alma materHSG Master's Celebration: Ambition as Inner DriveHSG Bachelor Celebration: The "Beat of Life"Success in entrepreneurship lies in the balance between intuition and rationalityTEDxHSG: Ideas for exploring the future of learningInternational Symposium: Many questions and a few answers about the future of universities55 New Doctors at HSG44 Propositions on the Future of UniversitiesTwo HSG spin-offs in the top 3 of the 100 best Swiss start-upsStudent theses: HSG authors want to tap into unused potentialEuropean Student Orienteering Championships"DreamTeam": HSG Mentoring Programme that inspiresPlayfully Healthy: HSG Short Film "Healthification" receives Gold AwardCrux of Capitalism InitiativeIs sustainable investing a dangerous placeboJourney to Odessa – Professor James Davis travels to UkraineSQUARE ist komplett mit nachhaltiger Energie versorgtSurvey among Generation Z: Does hybrid working boost careers?15 years of diversity & inclusion research at the HSGHSG research on Nigerian oil spills: Commission report recommends 12Billion US dollars for clean-upDies academicus, the highlight of 125 years HSG celebrationsThree research projects honoured with the "HSG Impact Award 2023"“Swiss Mobility Monitor 2023”: Mobility behaviour from baby boomers to Gen Z52nd St.Gallen Symposium: Elliot Gunn wins this year´s Global Essay CompetitionHöhepunkt des Jubiläumsjahres: «Dies academicus 2023»“St. Gallen Helps Ukraine” initiative organises fund-raising event"Swiss Youth in Science" at SQUARE – when young people pursue their scientific dreamsElite Quality Index 2023 sees new global leaderMaster Graduation Day: 498 graduates received their diplomasBachelor Graduation Day: 370 graduates received their diplomasFood Security: wheat exports as a weaponHoher Besuch im SQUARE: Bundespräsident Alain Berset spricht über den Krieg in der Ukraine und die Haltung der SchweizSQUARE celebrates its first birthday with an open day52 doctorates awarded at HSGOpen House: HSG invites you to a voyage of discovery at Open SQUAREThe working world: Offices that makes people work together, optimize hybrid work well... — HSG - Uni SG, 3d ago
Internet Policy Review, 10d ago
Dis/Trust and data-driven technologies
eLife, 11d ago
Cross-movie prediction of individualized functional topography
The New York Review of Books, 12d ago
Cries and Whispers | Adam Shatz
London Review of Books, 12d ago
David Trotter · Go for it, losers: Werner Herzog’s Visions
elifesciences.org, 13d ago
Not so local: the population genetics of convergent adaptation in maize and teosinte

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Exhibition on view: December 7–17, 2023, CCS Bard GalleriesOpening Reception: Thursday, December 7, 2023, 5:00–7:00From the Collection: First Year Curatorial Practice 2023 comprises three exhibitions curated in groups by the MA candidates of the Class of 2025. Works drawn from the Marieluise Hessel Collection make up each of these shows, which unfold side by side in the inner CCS Bard Galleries, converted this year into one unifying space.The first show, titled [ ], brings together artworks that explore artistic responses to the notion of containment: the various limits that shape material and emotional states. Next, Kin to these tremors focuses on the precariousness of human life, asking how agency, resistance, and dignity might look when bodies undergo strain or sickness, decay or even death. Exploring the various methods of representation that artists employ to navigate ongoing histories of marginalization, Hold the Applause investigates the artistic strategy of staging—and considers its capacity to resist societal narratives built around power and visibility.Featured artists include Vito Acconci, Diedrick Brackens, Martin Creed, Lucky DeBellevue, Donna Dennis, VALIE EXPORT, Samuel Fosso, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Vlatka Horvat, Maria Lassnig, Deana Lawson, An-My Lê, Rodney McMillian, Bruce Nauman, Sondra Perry, Adam Putnam, Robert Ryman, Lise Sarfati, Kiki Smith, Jo Spence, Salman Toor, Rosemarie Trockel, and Kara Walker. — bard.edu, 3d ago
The Gender Equality and the Economy Program of the Levy Economics Institute hosts a speaker series with practitioners and scholars across disciplines from around the globe to address the ever-relevant topic of “Gender Equality and the Economy.” Speakers will present their research and discuss differing approaches to economic analyses through a gender lens. The series highlights the importance of taking an interdisciplinary approach to understanding the implications of how gender and economic inequalities intersect in history, policy, and the everyday.Join us for our third session with Allison McKim, Associate Professor of Sociology, Bard College, on Wednesday, December 6, from 5pm to 6pm in the Blithewood Conference Room, or on Zoom. Professor McKim's presentation will be followed by an open Q&A session with audience members—both those in person and on Zoom are welcome to ask questions. Light refreshments will be served. Register to attend via Zoom here.Abstract:Addiction treatment is central to criminal justice reform and increasingly important to policies aimed at poverty, child welfare, and social marginalization. Women are a particular focus of such policies. A larger portion of criminalized women face drug charges compared to men, and women are more likely to be investigated by child protection authorities and receive means-tested welfare benefits. This talk draws on ethnographic research in treatment programs specifically designed for women to examine how the rehabs understand and regulate women’s relationship to work, including both paid employment and unpaid care work in the family. I leverage a comparison between one rehab in the criminal justice system and one in the healthcare system to examine how race, class, and institutional context shape the gendered logics underlying their approaches to work. My research revealed that the carceral rehab de-emphasized the importance of paid work, even though both it and criminal justice authorities had work requirements. Moreover, it also discouraged gendered care work like mothering. Instead, the penal rehab demanded that women “work” on their selves. This was not the case at the healthcare rehab, which remained more supportive of and beholden to women’s ties with employers and families. The carceral rehab’s focus on changing selves rested on the idea that women’s disordered selves are the cause of their poverty, crime, drug use, and victimization. This resembles many other facets of social and penal policy that assume poor and racially marginalized groups need behavior modification rather than employment, education, or economic support. — bard.edu, 3d ago
Literary scandals form a thriving field of research, and their prerequisites and dramaturgy have been well explored by now. However, cross-border and cross-language literary scandals have been scarcely investigated so far. One reason for this is their infrequency, and over time, they have become even rarer. Goethe’s "The Sorrows of Young Werther" provides an ideal example for examination, not only because the book caused scandals in its German reception but also later in its English, French, and American receptions. Its publication during the early stages of the formation of a literary public sphere allows Dr Büttner to trace the mechanisms that later evolved to defuse the perception of literature as offensive and subsequently prevented future literary scandals. — durham.ac.uk, 3d ago
The exhibition in the Architekturmuseum der TUM deals first and foremost with the scientific foundations of so-called "healing architecture", with visibility of its successes, i.e. its effectiveness, and with the paths and hurdles of its feasibility in a critical way. It is both a status report of current efforts to move from the "sick" house to a healthy environment, and an attempt to open new perspectives into a more radical, visionary future. Not the illness, but the sick, is to be given space. Together with TUM Visiting Professor Dr. Tanja C. Vollmer, the Architekturmuseum der TUM will use an international selection of outstanding examples to trace the productive interplay between medical, technical and economic requirements and architectural construction. The goal and intention of the exhibition is both to demonstrate the influence of architecture on the healing process and to stimulate a broader public debate about the future of the building type and its social relevance. — Bustler, 3d ago
Newswise — School students experience a wide range of achievement emotions during the years they spend attending school. Some of those emotions, such as joy and pride, are positive. Yet students also experience boredom and anger when they find achievement activities too difficult or too easy. These differing emotions are important for adolescents’ development trajectories. Researchers from the University of Tübingen therefore asked – how do achievement emotions develop during adolescence? The research team, led by Professor Michiko Sakaki and Professor Kou Murayama from the Hector Research Institute of Education Sciences and Psychology, focused on the achievement domain of mathematics, where previous research indicates that students experience fewer positive emotions and more negative ones.For the study, the researchers analyzed data from 3,425 students in grades five to nine at vocational and academic high schools in Bavaria. The adolescents were surveyed annually from 2002 to 2006 about their emotions in relation to math.The team analyzed the potential link between adolescents’ achievement emotions with regard to mathematics and their performance in the subject. The researchers found that with increasing age, students overall experience a decrease in pride. Also, even though girls generally felt fewer positive emotions about mathematics, the difference between girls and boys did not increase over time. Furthermore, the team found that adolescents with lower initial grades experienced a smaller increase in most negative emotions and a smaller decrease in the positive emotions. These findings suggest that the widespread expectation that initial inequalities will be magnified over time does not always hold true.This study also provides evidence for the co-development of achievement emotions and academic performance. “The results of our study emphasize the significance of emotions for learning and suggest that it is important to promote positive emotions and prevent negative emotions in order to support high school students’ academic performance,” explains Michiko Sakaki.She also emphasizes the importance of students’ interest in the material. The findings indicate that high school pupils who maintain high levels of interest are more likely to maintain positive emotions and less likely to develop negative emotions over time. — newswise.com, 3d ago
Dr. Suhas Mondhe emphasizes the importance of individualizing patient treatment, considering multiple aspects to personalize interventions. A distinguishing feature of his practice is the meticulous time invested in understanding each patient’s problem, allocating approximately 45 minutes to an hour for consultations a practice uncommon among many nephrologists in the subcontinent. Dr. Mondhe practices a personalized approach in the treatment in his current practice. In addition, his relentless focus on enhancing the quality of life for his patients becomes a guiding principle in every treatment decision he makes. Illustrated through his work in a dialysis unit, where he has conducted around 500 sessions since returning to India, Dr. Mondhe proudly reports a zero-infection rate and minimal multiple hospitalizations among patients. Even minor issues like blood pressure changes are carefully managed, ensuring no major complication arises. — siliconindia.com, 3d ago

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London Review of Books, 17d ago
Tom Crewe · Here was a plague
elifesciences.org, 17d ago
A spatial-attentional mechanism underlies action-related distortions of time judgement
eLife, 20d ago
Homeostatic control of deep sleep and molecular correlates of sleep pressure in Drosophila
Aeon, 17d ago
What can psychedelic science teach psychiatry about psychosis? | Aeon Essays
E-International Relations, 28d ago
The Westphalian Normalization Conundrum in Sub-Saharan West Africa: The Curious Case of Ivorian Soldiers
lesswrong.com, 18d ago
Life on the Grid (Part 2) — LessWrong
eLife, 24d ago
Evolutionary adaptation to juvenile malnutrition impacts adult metabolism and impairs adult fitness in Drosophila
elifesciences.org, 24d ago
Cyclic muscle contractions reinforce the acto-myosin motors and mediate the full elongation of C. elegans embryo

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With a strong and established reputation for excellence in academic publishing, Journal of Experimental Biology (JEB) is recognised around the world as a champion of exceptional research. Among our authors, we can count Nobel Laureates and titans in the field, including Hermann Muller, who discovered X-ray damage of DNA (Muller and Dippel, 1926); Archibald Hill – of muscle physiology fame – looking at colour changes in mummichogs (Hill et al., 1935); neurobiologist Andrew Huxley, who investigated the physics underpinning structural colours (Huxley, 1968); Alan Hodgkin and Bernard Katz working on nerve structure and conduction (Hodgkin and Katz, 1949); and, of course, August Krogh, who published his first paper with the journal on the permeability of trout eggs to D2O and H2O in 1937 (Krogh and Ussing, 1937). In the accompanying timeline (Fig. 1), I highlight some of the key papers from the journal's past, many of which were featured in our JEB Classics series, where modern experts revisited the research and discussed its long-term impact. Although some of the ground-breaking discoveries featured in the journal's earlier issues are now ensconced in modern textbooks, others, such as Gray and Hancock's 1955 publication on the propulsion of sea urchin spermatozoa (Gray and Hancock, 1955) and Weiss-Fogh's, 1973 paper on lift production mechanisms (Weis-Fogh, 1973), are still being cited today, contributing intellectually more than 50 years later. This Perspective aims to revisit some of the classic papers that have been published in the journal over the past 100 years to provide a snapshot of key journal breakthroughs and a sense of the fields they inspired. — The Company of Biologists, 3d ago
While there is emphasis and acknowledgement of the role of the family in health, the absence of family perspectives is most perplexing in the realm of family nursing. This prompted me to examine the following questions in this doctoral research: What are the family members’ perceptions of the extent of family support (i.e., cognitive, and emotional support)? What are the nurses’ perceived extent of nursing practice with families? While answering these questions, the extent of nurses and family members´ perspectives on family nursing framed opportunities for exploration of nurse-led interventions for supporting families in the trajectory of acute care.What are the key findings or observations of your doctoral research?Among the main findings of my doctoral research, I illustrated the application of polychoric correlations and polychoric confirmatory factor analysis as a valid alternative statistical approach using data on family members’ perceived support from nurses as an exemplar. We showed that polychoric correlation gives stronger associations, and consequently, the approach can be more credible for ordinal Likert scales commonly used in nursing research. We identified that there was controversial evidence on the impact of diaries in improving family outcomes in critical care settings. Due to the few studies identified, there was very little ability to make strong recommendations on the effectiveness of nurse-led FN interventions to support families in critical care settings. A single-group before-and-after quasi-experimental design of a family strength-based nursing intervention showed positive differences in family outcomes (cognitive and emotional support) and nurses’ skills in working with families in critical care settings but not nurse–family relationships.How can the results of your doctoral research be utilised in practice?This study provided insights into the specific perspectives of healthcare service users, that is, family members and healthcare service providers (nurses), on the family. Together, these perspectives enrich three central concepts of the nursing metaparadigm: the person/family receiving nursing care, health, and nursing, particularly in the field of family nursing. The results also highlight and emphasize the potential of considering polychoric CFA as an alternative statistical approach that can be used to examine Likert measurement tools in nursing science. In addition, a new perspective on family support interventions was explored – the family strengths-based nursing intervention was examined. The intervention leverages structural and functional family-system components, specifically family strengths, to promote nursing actions for supporting families in acute care settings. This intervention can be developed further as a guiding framework that nurses can utilize to support family members in acute care settings.What are the key research methods and materials used in your doctoral research?The study was conducted in two phases each with distinct research methods. In the first phase, a cross-sectional design was used. This was conducted among a sample of family members (n=800) and nurses (n=460) from two Uganda tertiary hospitals. The Icelandic Family Perceived Support Questionnaire (ICE-FPSQ) was utilised for collecting data from patients’ family members while the Family Nursing Practice Scale was used to collect data from the nurses. The two questionnaires were being used in the setting for the first time thus, before their use, assessment of their validity for use in the setting was conducted. The data from the cross-sectional was mainly quantitative given the nature of the instruments. — University of Eastern Finland, 3d ago
One of the most intriguing mysteries in science is the origin of life. Despite extensive research in this area, we are still far from understanding how life has emerged on Earth. One promising hypothesis is the RNA world theory [1–6], inspired by the discovery of ribozymes [7], i.e. RNA molecules capable of enzymatic activity. According to this hypothesis, all processes in early life were carried out by the RNA, which was used both to store information and to catalyze biochemical reactions. In particular, specific ribozymes could have catalyzed the selfreplication of arbitrary RNA sequences, a function currently performed by specialized protein-based enzymes. However, based on the results of the existing experiments [8, 9], such a catalytic function requires rather long and carefully designed RNA sequences, which are highly unlikely to arise spontaneously. In contrast, one of the simplest catalytic activities of ribozymes is their ability to cleave an RNA sequence at a specific site. Indeed, such ribozymes independently evolved in multiple branches of life [10] and have been shown to emerge rapidly and repeatedly from artificial selection [11, 12]. DNA molecules have also been shown to be capable of site-specific cleavage targeting either RNA [13] or DNA sequences [14, 15]. — elifesciences.org, 3d ago
More than a century of research, of which JEB has published a substantial selection, has highlighted the rich diversity of animal eyes. From these studies have emerged numerous examples of visual systems that depart from our own familiar blueprint, a single pair of lateral cephalic eyes. It is now clear that such departures are common, widespread and highly diverse, reflecting a variety of different eye types, visual abilities and architectures. Many of these examples have been described as ‘distributed’ visual systems, but this includes several fundamentally different systems. Here, I re-examine this term, suggest a new framework within which to evaluate visual system distribution in both spatial and functional senses, and propose a roadmap for future work. The various architectures covered by this term reflect three broad strategies that offer different opportunities and require different approaches for study: the duplication of functionally identical eyes, the expression of multiple, functionally distinct eye types in parallel and the use of dispersed photoreceptors to mediate visual behaviour without eyes. Within this context, I explore some of the possible implications of visual system architecture for how visual information is collected and integrated, which has remained conceptually challenging in systems with a large degree of spatial and/or functional distribution. I highlight two areas that should be prioritised in future investigations: the whole-organism approach to behaviour and signal integration, and the evolution of visual system architecture across Metazoa. Recent advances have been made in both areas, through well-designed ethological experiments and the deployment of molecular tools. — The Company of Biologists, 3d ago
Currently, we understand elements of the function of individual organs and systems, but one of the biggest challenges is understanding the integration across systems and organizational scales: linking laboratory-based studies of form, function and biomechanics to how animals behave in much more complex real-world environments. For example, how does muscle–tendon stiffness determine economy of movement, which then determines how an animal evaluates risks and rewards in its environment and then decides to navigate that environment. We have a big gap in our understanding at the organism/environment scale. There are people who study animal behaviour in their environment and the environmental factors that influence behaviour, but we don't have many approaches that directly link, in a mechanistic way, how the physiological systems in the body and the biomechanics of those systems influence the capacity to move in the environment and how animals choose to move depending on their own individual capacity. I think there's a rich opportunity to integrate between comparative biomechanics and animal behaviour, and between comparative biomechanics and wildlife ecology. New sensor and data logging technologies are now allowing scientists to do this, but this integration remains in the early stages. We now have miniaturized accelerometers with relatively long battery lives that can track animal movements, but we need physiological measures as well – measurements of heart rate, heat production and other physiological variables as animals move. Data storage and battery life are often limiting factors. It's really exciting to see how far the technology has come in the past 10 years, so I'm hopeful that we will get to the point where we have rich datasets from animals moving in natural environments that will inform our laboratory studies. We need to know what behaviours are most relevant to animals in the real world so we can investigate them in more mechanistic detail in the lab. — The Company of Biologists, 3d ago
The Mill Hill institute was a small satellite institute of the then Imperial Cancer Research Fund (ICRF; now part of Cancer Research UK). It had recently acquired a new director, John Cairns, of DNA replication fame. At the time (1976) he believed that almost nothing useful was known about cancer and that developmental biology might offer a way in. He took a gamble by appointing several rather young developmental biologists, including me. In those days there was much less competition than today. You could do a few grafts, accompany the results with a bit of theoretical speculation and publish it in Nature! I continued working on the axolotl limb, focusing on the regeneration of duplicated limbs. I also started up a project on early development. This had arisen from my study of the pre-second world war German embryological literature. I was particularly interested by papers of Yamada, which seemed to show that there was a gradient of something controlling the dorsoventral patterning of the mesoderm in the embryo at the gastrula/early neurula stage. — The Company of Biologists, 3d ago

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In seasonal environments, many animals, including insects, enter dormancy, where they are limited to a fixed energy budget. The inability to replenish energetic stores during these periods suggests insects should be constrained by pre-dormancy energy stores. Over the last century, the community of researchers working on survival during dormancy has operated under the strong assumption that energy limitation is a key fitness trait driving the evolution of seasonal strategies. That is, energy use has to be minimized during dormancy because insects otherwise run out of energy and die during dormancy, or are left with too little energy to complete development, reproductive maturation or other costly post-dormancy processes such as dispersal or nest building. But if energy is so strongly constrained during dormancy, how can some insects – even within the same species and population – be dormant in very warm environments or show prolonged dormancy for many successive years? In this Commentary, we discuss major assumptions regarding dormancy energetics and outline cases where insects appear to align with our assumptions and where they do not. We then highlight several research directions that could help link organismal energy use with landscape-level changes. Overall, the optimal energetic strategy during dormancy might not be to simply minimize metabolic rate, but instead to maintain a level that matches the demands of the specific life-history strategy. Given the influence of temperature on energy use rates of insects in winter, understanding dormancy energetic strategies is critical in order to determine the potential impacts of climate change on insects in seasonal environments. — The Company of Biologists, 3d ago
I studied electronic engineering for 7 years at a college of technology (‘Kosen’, a unique Japanese institution of higher education). During my studies at Kobe City College of Technology, I conducted research on the technology for simulating acoustic space and how humans perceive three-dimensional sounds with Associate Professor Yoshiki Nagatani. While there, I learned about the ability of bats to understand space through ultrasonic echoes, and I developed a deep interest in this field. Therefore, I decided to continue my research as a graduate student under Professor Shizuko Hiryu in Doshisha University, who is an expert in bat echolocation in Japan. This is a complete change from the engineering research I had done before, such as numerical calculations, programming and circuit design. Instead, I was able to spend much more time interacting with animals. As I was observing bats for experiments, I was also fascinated by their communication. Within their communication, the bats seemed to have different expressions such as anger, fear and being unmotivated sometimes. Based on these observations, I'm focusing on their vocal communication and reactions as my PhD research with Shizuko and Professor Kohta I. Kobayasi. I'm also currently doing research as part of a fellowship at the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science. I would like to study how the emotions and individuality of bats affect their vocal communication. — The Company of Biologists, 3d ago
I have just finished my PhD thesis on the determination of thermoregulatory strategies in extant and fossil marine vertebrates using oxygen isotopes. My thesis work focused on two issues related to marine vertebrate physiology: thermoregulation and water balance. Using oxygen isotopes, we demonstrated that intra-skeletal variability in δ18Op (the oxygen isotope composition of the phosphate from vertebrate bones and teeth) could be used to locate regional heterothermies in marine vertebrates, based on their skeletons. This main result paves the way to infer thermoregulatory strategies of extinct marine vertebrates. Then, to study the maintenance of water balance, we used an approach combining experimental data and modelling to define how Cetacea, and more specifically killer whales and common bottlenose dolphins, maintain their balance and determine the contribution of the environmental water, the food and the metabolic water produced by the organism. This work on modern marine vertebrates has enabled me to develop hypotheses concerning thermoregulation and the maintenance of water balance in marine reptiles living in the time of the dinosaurs. I will soon be starting a post-doc in South Africa on the intra- and inter-individual variability of the diet of Ross's seals in the Weddell Sea. — The Company of Biologists, 3d ago
elifesciences.org, 10d ago
Wide Transition-State Ensemble as Key Component for Enzyme Catalysis
SAGES, 5d ago
Peritoneal Dialysis Access Guideline Update 2023 - A SAGES Publication
Five Books, 2d ago
new Pragmatism
Popular Science, 10d ago
A brief 200-year history of synesthesia
alignmentforum.org, 6d ago
How to Control an LLM's Behavior (why my P(DOOM) went down) — AI Alignment Forum

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Key Takeaways The social cost of carbon (SCC) is an important accounting exercise to estimate of the future costs to society caused by anthropogenic climate change driven by carbon emissions. There is significant variation in published studies on the SCC and experts expect that the true SCC is likely a lot higher than what is currently reported in the literature. Accounting for this variation and for recent modeling and parametric improvements yields a higher expected SCC. A recently updated EPA study raised previous estimates from $50/ton to closer to $210/ton, but may still be underestimating the true SCC. On November 13, Harvard Kennedy School hosted the environmental economist Frances Moore, whose recent work has focused on forecasting future damages and costs associated with anthropogenic climate change, something known as the “social cost of carbon” (SCC). While it is difficult to put a price on the disruption to lives, homes, and livelihoods by climate change, incorporating SCC into policymaking and corporate decision-making can be crucial to inform the cost-benefit analyses used to evaluate policies and investments that would reduce society's carbon emissions. And current studies in the literature may be significantly underestimating the true cost, according to Moore. As damages from climate disasters mount around the world, the cost of carbon emissions is becoming more and more evident. Last year, the 10 largest extreme weather events (including record floods in Pakistan, Hurricane Ian in the United States, and more) resulted in an estimated $169 billion in damages. While the idea that there is a social cost associated with carbon emissions is broadly catching on, it is difficult to establish how much. In 2007, U.S. federal agencies were ordered by the courts to consider the SCC in rulemaking processes, with a U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals remanding a DOT fuel economy rule for failing to assign a dollar value to CO2 emissions, stating that “while the record shows that there is a range of values, the value of carbon emissions reduction is certainly not zero.” “It’s essentially an accounting problem,” according to Moore, Associate Professor and the Hurlstone Presidential Chair in the Department of Environmental Science and Policy at the University of California Davis. She pointed to three primary models used today: the DICE model, FUND, and PAGE. Each attempts to convert the socio-economic impact of a changing climate into common units (discounted dollars) and add them up. These models are currently used within the United States, Canada, Germany, and several other countries to inform policymaking and carbon pricing. The large majority of SCC estimates, including current U.S. federal values (~$50/ton on average), come from these three models. However, growing critiques in the literature on SCC focus on these models’ dated representation of the climate system and expected damages as well as other limitations arising from significant uncertainties and model structure. Moore walked through several recent innovations in SCC model assumptions related to: the earth system and carbon cycles, the inclusion of climactic tipping points, the limited substitutability of certain goods, allowing transient changes in temperature to have persistent effects, accounting for the greater welfare loss of damages in poor regions, distinguishing risk and time preferences, allowing for learning over time, and accounting for model uncertainty. Numerous adjustments to these factors within the baseline modeling has resulted in a proliferation of different estimates. To make sense of the variation, Moore and her team compiled 147 studies from the published literature into one dataset to form a single SCC distribution. Their goal was to identify the structural model assumptions and parametric variation driving the variation in results, so that they could account for these differences and craft a “comprehensive” estimate closer to the “true social cost of carbon.” They then paired this literature survey with a qualitative survey sent to the authors of the papers they compiled, asking each one what they thought was the central value reported in the literature and what they think is the “true” central value. The consensus response was that authors expected a central value of $50 per ton of CO2 in the literature, versus a “true” value of $120/ton in reality, indicating a perceived discrepancy between published papers (many of them outdated) and what the experts would expect based on new methodologies or advancements. This suggests a downward publication bias, leading studies to report lower SCCs than might otherwise be expected. Although the distribution of 2020 SCC values the team constructed “does not have a clear statistical interpretation,” according to Moore, they identified several main sources of variation, including different damage function parameters, tipping points, limited substitutability, pure time preference, growth damage, distributional weights, endogenous adaptation, etc. As a result, they were able to train a predictive “Random Forest Model”—a machine learning algorithm that can flexibly handle nonlinear variation—to produce “synthetic” SCC distributions that match the structural and normative assessments from the surveyed experts. Far from the current consensus in the literature of a SCC of $50/ton (as reported in the expert surveys), Moore’s team’s model produced distributions with a much higher mean of $330/ton and a median of $298/ton. While this may seem like a shocking difference, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency recently proposed an updated SCC of their own in 2022, with a mean of around $210/ton and median of around $160/ton, which is also significantly higher than the central tendency in the extant literature. The EPA notes this is due to “incorporating recent scientific advances” and updated methodology. Overall, Moore noted that while significant variation remains due to parametric and climate uncertainties, combining multiple elements of recent SCC improvements yields a much higher SCC than previously supposed. This is an important finding not only for updating the existing academic literature, but also with important implications for policymaking around the world as we seek to properly understand the future cost to society associated with continued carbon emissions, informing cost-benefit analyses of reducing emissions in the near-term or even the formation of a price on carbon. — Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, 7d ago
French sociologist Jacob Ellul (who in many ways anticipated the Grid with his concept of “Technique”) wrote this in 1954 (The Technological Society). Needless to say, our horizons have become substantially more bounded in the intervening years and, with the advent of personal computing, our gaze has shrunk to a degree that would have been difficult for Ellul to imagine. In part 1, I discussed how metaphors often reveal the underlying structure of our cognition and used this as one piece of evidence for the deep connection between our physical and mental navigational abilities: “a field of knowledge”, “broadening your horizons”, “a train of thought”, “a flight of fancy”, and so on. Here again our metaphors point to a profound connection: with most of us inhabiting such a small visual world, is it surprising that we’ve become so small-minded, so close-minded, so short-sighted?Is it surprising that we can’t see the bigger picture, that we have no visionaries, no seers?... — lesswrong.com, 18d ago
Newswise — FRANKFURT. Venoms have developed in many animal groups independently of each other. One group that has many venomous species is Hymenoptera, an insect order that also includes aculeates (stinging insects) such as bees, wasps and ants. Hymenoptera is very species-rich, with over 6,000 species of bees alone. And yet, despite the great ecological and economic importance of hymenopterans, very little is known about the evolutionary development of their venoms.By means of comparative genomics, researchers led by Dr. Björn von Reumont, who is currently a visiting scientist in the Applied Bioinformatics Working Group at the Institute for Cell Biology & Neuroscience of Goethe University Frankfurt, have now examined systematically and for the first time how the most important components of the venom of bees and other hymenopteran taxa developed in the course of evolution. The toxins are complex mixtures composed of small proteins (peptides) and a few large proteins and enzymes. Stinging insects actively inject this poisonous cocktail into their prey or attackers with the help of a special sting apparatus.In the first step, the researchers identified which of the peptides and proteins in the venom were most prevalent in hymenopterans. To do this, they drew on information from protein databases, although this was sparse. In addition, they analyzed the proteins in the venoms of two wild bee species – the violet carpenter bee (Xylocopa violacea) and the great-banded furrow-bee (Halictus scabiosae) – as well as of the honeybee (Apis mellifera). They found the same 12 “families” of peptides and proteins in all the hymenopteran venoms analyzed. These are evidently a “common ingredient” in these venom cocktails.In collaboration with colleagues from the Leibniz Institute for the Analysis of Biodiversity Change (LIB), the Technical University of Munich (TUM) and the LOEWE Center for Translational Biodiversity Genomics (LOEWE TBG), the research team then searched for the genes of these 12 peptide and protein families in the genome of 32 hymenopteran taxa, including sweat bees and stingless bees, but also wasps and ants such as the notorious fire ant (Solenopsis invicta). The differences in these genes, in some cases only the exchange of single letters of the genetic code, helped the scientists to determine the relationship between the genes of different species and later – with the help of artificial intelligence and machine learning – to compile a lineage of the venom genes.The surprising result was that many of the venom genes analyzed are present in all hymenopterans. Evidently the common ancestor of all hymenopteran taxa already possessed these genes. “This makes it highly probable that hymenopterans are venomous as an entire group,” concludes von Reumont. “For other groups, such as Toxicofera, which includes snakes, anguids (lizards) and iguania, science is still debating whether the venoms can be traced back to a common ancestor or whether they evolved separately.”Within Hymenoptera, only the stinging insects – bees, wasps and ants – have an actual stinger to administer the venom. The evolutionary old parasitic sawflies, by contrast, use their ovipositor along with their eggs to inject substances that alter their host plant’s physiology: The sirex wood wasp (Sirex noctilio), for example, not only introduces a fungus into the plant, which facilitates the colonization of the wood by its larvae, but also its own poisonous cocktail with the venom proteins examined in the study. The purpose of these proteins is to create suitable conditions in the plant for the larvae. “This means that the sirex wood wasp can also be classified as venomous,” says von Reumont.New venom components in bees are the gene for the peptide melittin and genes for representatives of the newly described protein family anthophilin-1. The fact that melittin is encoded by just one single gene came as a surprise to the researchers, as von Reumont explains: “Not only are there many different variants of melittin, but the peptide also accounts for up to 60 percent of the dry weight of bee venom. That is why science previously assumed that there must be many gene copies. We were able to disprove this quite clearly.” Because they found the melittin gene only in bees, the researchers also invalidated the hypothesis that it belongs to a group of venom genes postulated for stinging insects called aculeatoxins. Von Reumont is convinced: “This shows us once again that genome data are the only way to draw meaningful conclusions about the evolution of venom genes.”The Frankfurt study is the first one to show for an entire insect group with around one million species where venom genes originated and how they have developed. It provides a starting point for tracing the evolution of venom genes in the ancestors of Hymenoptera as well as specializations within the group. However, to be able to perform comparative genomics on a large scale, analysis methods for the partly very large protein families must first be automated. — newswise.com, 4d ago
The sex difference in dormancy phenology observed in endotherms and ectotherms may be a widespread consequence of the trade-off between the benefits of being active for reproduction and the benefits of dormancy for survival (viz., the life-history hypothesis). Other non-exclusive hypotheses have also been proposed (Morbey and Ydenberg 2001) and further studies are needed to test them. Energy constraints explain a part of dormancy phenology in both endotherms and ectotherms (Wilsterman et al. 2021), but a large body of evidence from our study shows some independence of energy balance at the specific times of emergence and immergence into hibernation. Thus, we expect that dormancy phenology will exhibit multiple evolutionary causes, especially when many species are studied and compared. The occurance of dormancy at high altitude and latitude where few or no energy resources are available over part of the year appears to be a support for the energy limitation hypothesis (Ruf et al. 2012), although this hypothesis could yet be of limited importance in explaining the phenology of the transition from dormancy to activity and vice-versa. Dormancy in energetically benign periods, but unfavorable for reproduction, may be more widespread than previously thought. Such research highlights the opportunities of studying dormancy across a broad spectrum of species (Wilsterman et al. 2021). — elifesciences.org, 5d ago
Professor Avraham A. Levy, a leading expert on wheat evolution and genetics at the Plant and Environmental Sciences Department of the Weizmann Institute of Science, has focused on the genetic diversity of wild wheat for over 40 years. In particular, his research explores wild emmer wheat, known in Hebrew as Em Ha’hita, “the mother of all wheats.” His ultimate goal is to develop technologies that would enable a precise transfer of genes from wild species to modern wheat varieties, for traits such as reduced reliance on fertilizers and resistance to heat, drought, and disease. These traits can help wheat adapt to adverse environmental changes affecting our planet, to ensure a secure supply of this vital food staple.This year, as they did over the past decade, Levy and his team planned field experiments at the Gilat experimental station near Ofakim – in the wheat-growing region known as Israel’s granary. This area was turned into a war zone during the October 7 attacks; it was subjected to the mass atrocities committed by Hamas and shelled by hundreds of rockets from Gaza. Nevertheless, Levy, together with Dr. David Bonfil from the Gilat station, decided to proceed with the wheat sowing experiments as a symbol of renewal, emphasizing resilience in the face of adversity. “This is our way of showing that we never give up,” Levy explains. — weizmann.ac.il, 11d ago
Climate change is expected to have significant impacts on human population dynamics around the world, including on migration systems. The empirical evidence on climate-induced migration has expanded rapidly over the past decade, and it demonstrates significant but complex associations between temperature and precipitation variability and migration. Such environmental changes lead to shifts in migration behavior, but the direction and magnitude of such effects varies by context and across different sub-populations. The literature also remains characterized by important limitations, including a lack of generalizable evidence about whether and how climatic changes influence migration between rural and urban areas. Climatic changes are often believed to have disproportionate effects on rural-urban migration, but this assumption has been rarely tested empirically. This paper addresses this gap by measuring the effects of temperature and precipitation variability on inter-province migration to rural and urban areas in the developing world and developing statistical profiles of climate-affected migrants to urban areas. Drawing on integrated census and survey microdata from 23 countries, combined with high-resolution climate records, a series of multinomial logistic regression models are fit to measure the effects of climate exposures on internal migration to urban destinations and to test for heterogeneity in these effects across social and demographic groups. Subsequent analyses identify a population of climate-affected migrants in cities and develop statistical profiles of this group and comparison populations. Results show that climate exposures affect migration to urban but not rural provinces, with precipitation deficits strongly reducing the odds of urban-bound moves. Precipitation effects do not vary in a meaningful manner across many social and demographic groups or between rural and urban origins, but both temperature and precipitation effects vary significantly by world region. Statistical profiles of climate-affected migrants to cities suggest this population is remarkably similar to other streams of urban-bound migrants. The results should reduce concerns that climate change will disproportionately push the most disadvantaged populations to cities. — knomad.org, 11d ago

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Epistemology: Beyond psychological dynamics, some have identified epistemological deficiencies as a root cause for misinformation: issues with how users find and assess information especially online. Some have focused on online search or 'research' (Tripodi, 2018), behaviours, or looked more broadly at verification strategies (Schwarzenegger, 2019; Flintham et al., 2018). Expanding this focus on epistemology to the social level, others have ascribed the problems of misinformation to a broad national shift in the treatment of evidence and facts. Much of this work has drawn implicitly or explicitly on Foucauldian 'regimes of truth' (1980) or Jasanoff's 'civic epistemologies' (2004). The implication is that in recent years, the US has seen a broad shift both in the discourse around and mechanisms of how truth/falsehood is established in society. At the same time, this aligns with the long-recognised tactic by authoritarians to undermine the public's ability to sort truth from falsehoods (Arendt, 1951). Relatedly, many have ascribed the spread of misinformation, at least in part, to a broad reduction in trust in institutions. Public opinion surveys have tracked such a decline in trust across institutions for decades, and now, truth in most institutions is at historic lows (Pew, 2022). This work recognises that trust plays an essential role in public knowledge production: whether that is trusting the government to provide accurate information, trusting scientists to accurately describe their unique access to and understanding of the natural world, or trusting media to accurately and objectively describe the world. — Internet Policy Review, 3d ago
As part of our centenary celebrations this year, Movie 1 (Fig. 2) highlights some of the incredible stories that we have promoted through our press releases and how authors have benefitted from this experience. We feature Christofer Clemente (University of the Sunshine Coast, Australia), Christine Cooper (Curtin University, Australia) and colleagues’ study revealing how the behaviour of the short beaked echidna changes through the seasons and their extraordinary impact on the environment of Australia, as each animal is capable of excavating 200 m3 each year (Clemente et al., 2016). Recalling her experience of dealing with journalists’ enquiries, Cooper says, ‘The demand for interviews was rather intense at the time, but it was fantastic to have the opportunity to talk about Australia's unique wildlife’, adding that the contacts she made led to work on documentaries with several international film crews, which resulted in another publication and supported fieldwork in Madagascar and South Africa. Jeremy Niven (University of Sussex, UK) and colleagues’ recent paper investigating the impact of artificial light at night on the ability of male glow-worms to locate females (Moubarak et al., 2023) was picked up by over 200 news outlets (Fig. 1). ‘I think the coverage says a lot about how effective JEB is in reaching the different aspects of the press. I don't recall ever having had so much coverage for any of my work before for papers published’, says Niven. — The Company of Biologists, 3d ago
Laboratory-based research dominates the fields of comparative physiology and biomechanics. The power of lab work has long been recognized by experimental biologists. For example, in 1932, Georgy Gause published an influential paper in Journal of Experimental Biology describing a series of clever lab experiments that provided the first empirical test of competitive exclusion theory, laying the foundation for a field that remains active today. At the time, Gause wrestled with the dilemma of conducting experiments in the lab or the field, ultimately deciding that progress could be best achieved by taking advantage of the high level of control offered by lab experiments. However, physiological experiments often yield different, and even contradictory, results when conducted in lab versus field settings. This is especially concerning in the Anthropocene, as standard laboratory techniques are increasingly relied upon to predict how wild animals will respond to environmental disturbances to inform decisions in conservation and management. In this Commentary, we discuss several hypothesized mechanisms that could explain disparities between experimental biology in the lab and in the field. We propose strategies for understanding why these differences occur and how we can use these results to improve our understanding of the physiology of wild animals. Nearly a century beyond Gause's work, we still know remarkably little about what makes captive animals different from wild ones. Discovering these mechanisms should be an important goal for experimental biologists in the future. — The Company of Biologists, 3d ago
DCs in Japanese pipistrelle bats, P. abramus, had lower TF and/or longer duration than ECs (Fig. 1C), a trend similar to those of other bat species, including Pipistrellus pipistrellus, Molossus molossus and Carollia perspicillata (Carter et al., 2015; Fenton et al., 1976; Gadziola et al., 2012; Hechavarría et al., 2016; Ma et al., 2006; Pfalzer and Kusch, 2003; Russ et al., 1998, 2004). The DCNB was categorized as a high-aggression type according to the categorization of the social calls in previous studies based on the acoustic structure patterns (Gadziola et al., 2012, 2016). In particular, the DCNB had the highest vocalization rate in our experiment. Therefore, our experimental design generally provided a high-distress situation for the subject bats in experiments I and II. In contrast, the DCFM was categorized as a low-aggression type, but this evoked greater fH increases than high-aggression calls, such as the DCNB in the receiver bats (Gadziola et al., 2016). In our study, the DCFM, which had the second-largest vocalization ratio in the distress stimulations, increased the relative fH by a maximum of 40% in the DB condition, the same as in a previous study (Gadziola et al., 2016). Although we did not compare the fH increase with DCNB in our present experiments, the distress context of the DCFM could evoke fH increases in P. abramus. The difference in fH increases between the DCNB and the DCFM may be related to whether the respective vocalizations of social calls are directed toward predators or conspecifics. The DCNB might include mainly aggressive meanings to the predator, despite the DCFM vocalizing with fear escape behavior in our preliminary experiment (Y.N. and K.Y.-H., unpublished data). Therefore, further investigation is needed to determine the possibility of differential effects on physiology and behavior between the DCNB and the DCFM, but it is clear that changes in fH are a good indicator for reading changes in internal states induced by the social calls of bats. — The Company of Biologists, 3d ago
The behavioral responses of monarchs to magnetic cues in our study provides further evidence that monarchs are capable of magnetosensation. Our results also demonstrate that monarchs can derive directional information from the magnetic field, as they respond to the inclination angle of the magnetic field to guide oriented movement and body positioning (Guerra et al., 2014; Wan et al., 2021). In addition, as we showed that monarchs are capable of gravisensation and respond to both gravity and magnetic field cues when together, we now have evidence for a mechanism (as suggested in Wiltschko and Wiltschko, 1972) for how animals can sense up and down to properly interpret the inclination angle of the Earth's magnetic field in 3D space when using inclination angle for directionality during movement. Such a mechanism of using gravity for sensing up and down might also be used by other species that similarly use the inclination angle of the geomagnetic field for oriented movement, such as birds, sea turtles and fish (reviewed in Lohmann et al., 2007). The ability of monarchs to sense and move with respect to gravity provides them with this key piece of information during magnetic compass use; that is, the use of gravity and the direction of the gravitational vector as a key reference point for interpreting inclination angle (Wiltschko and Wiltschko, 1972). — The Company of Biologists, 3d ago
The electric organ discharges (EODs) produced by weakly electric fish have long been a source of scientific intrigue and inspiration. The study of these species has contributed to our understanding of the organization of fixed action patterns, as well as enriching general imaging theory by unveiling the dual impact of an agent's actions on the environment and its own sensory system during the imaging process. This Centenary Review firstly compares how weakly electric fish generate species- and sex-specific stereotyped electric fields by considering: (1) peripheral mechanisms, including the geometry, channel repertoire and innervation of the electrogenic units; (2) the organization of the electric organs (EOs); and (3) neural coordination mechanisms. Secondly, the Review discusses the threefold function of the fish-centered electric fields: (1) to generate electric signals that encode the material, geometry and distance of nearby objects, serving as a short-range sensory modality or ‘electric touch’; (2) to mark emitter identity and location; and (3) to convey social messages encoded in stereotypical modulations of the electric field that might be considered as species-specific communication symbols. Finally, this Review considers a range of potential research directions that are likely to be productive in the future. — The Company of Biologists, 3d ago

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Suspensions are mixtures of particles in a solvent in which the particles do not dissolve. Many suspensions, such as cement slurries or ooblek, exhibit shear thickening – their viscosity grows dramatically upon increasing an applied shear rate. Understanding the origins of thickening in suspensions has important applications to industry where damage can occur to equipment if the viscosity of a material unexpectedly increases. Novel uses, such as for protective fabrics and body armor, have also been proposed. Understanding the microscopic origins of shear thickening in suspensions and predicting their macroscopic behavior from the microscopic physics is a tremendous challenge. Over the last couple of decades a picture has emerged of shear thickening that emphasizes the role of frictional contacts between the particles. This thesis builds on this new understanding and insight by investigating how the microstructure of frictional particles evolves with shear rate in a simulated 2D suspension of soft disks. The softness of the particles is key, since it produces a thinning regime (where the viscosity decreases with increasing shear rate) that follows the Newtonian (constant viscosity) and thickening flow at lower rates, enabling the comparison of microstructure across all three regimes. I first show how the thickening regime corresponds to the rapid growth in the number of contacts, three disk chains, and triangles. During the thinning, the rate of contact growth decreases and there is a buckling of the chains and triangles. The behavior of these local structures confirms the growth of force networks during the thickening. I find that strong force networks of over-constrained particles (those in which each particle has at least 3 contacts with a force above the peak of the force distribution) show evidence of a percolation transition during the thickening. These networks subsequently de-percolate during the thinning. To conclude the analysis, I study the evolution of microscopic dynamics during the different flow regimes, finding that thickening coincides with an increase in non-affine motion of the particles. Localized clusters of disks with large non-affine speeds are also found to increase during high stress events. — Georgetown University, 20d ago
Discussant: Shiho Satsuka is interested in the politics of knowledge, environment, nature, science, and capitalism. She examines how divergent understandings of nature are produced, circulated, encountered, contested, and transformed in relation to the global expansion of capitalism. She is currently working on her second book project, tentatively entitled The Charisma of Mushrooms: Undoing the Long Twentieth Century.The project explores the possibilities of mushroom science to realize interspecies entanglements, dissolve the twentieth-century style state-science-industrial complex, and explore the possibility of co-habitation of various human and nonhuman beings on the earth. In particular, the project traces interspecies encounters in satoyama forest revitalization movements inspired by the charisma of matsutake, the politics of translation between various scientific and other forms of knowledge, as well as the emergence of “new commons.” This research is funded by a SSHRC Insight Grant and is a part of the collaborative, multi-sited ethnographic project, “Matsutake Worlds.” Satsuka was a Carson Fellow at the Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society in Germany in 2012. — utoronto.ca, 17d ago
Zooarchaeological analyses of the skeletal remains of 52 animals unearthed in the courtyard of an Iron Age Tartessian building known as Casas del Turuñuelo (Badajoz, Spain) shed light on a massive sacrifice forming part of a series of rituals linked to the site's last period of activity and final abandonment. The rites took place towards the end of the 5th century BCE when both the building (intentionally destroyed) and the sacrificed animals were intentionally buried under a tumulus 90 m in diameter and 6 m high. The main objective of the zooarchaeological and microstratigraphic analyses was to determine the phasing of the sacrificial depositions. Evidence gathered from taphonomic assessments and a series of radiocarbon datings indicate that the sacrifices fall into three consecutive phases spanning several years. The findings of the zooarchaeological analyses clearly point to a selection of equid and cattle males. Adult equids predominate (MNI = 41) followed by adult and sub-adult cattle (MNI = 6). Pigs, in turn, are only represented by a few adults and sub-adult females (MNI = 4). Among the animals is a single dog of undetermined sex between 3 and 4 years of age. The fact that the animals are mostly adults discards the likelihood that they died from natural causes or an epidemic. In addition, the scenographic deposition of certain equids in pairs, as well as evidence of the burning of plant offerings, suggest an intentional ritualistic sacrifice. Nine of the initial depositions of Phase 1 in the SE quadrant were scattered and certain of their bones bear marks characteristic of both prolonged open air exposure and scavengers. Another 31 animals from Phases 1 and 2 are represented by almost complete, articulated skeletons, indicating they were promptly covered. Phase 3, by contrast, reveals both almost complete and partial animals bearing clear signs of processing for human consumption. This study thus sheds light on both the sequence of the animal sacrifices and the protocols linked to rites accompanied by the celebration of banquets. Certain features associated with the sealing of this building under a tumulus offer evidence of the decline of the Tartessian Culture. This study thus advances notions serving to contextualize ritual animal sacrifices in the framework of practice observed at other Iron Age sites in the Iberian Peninsula and elsewhere throughout Europe. — interestingengineering.com, 10d ago
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Migration is an energetically taxing phenomenon as animals move across vast, heterogeneous landscapes where the cost of transport is impacted by permissible ambient conditions. In this study, we assessed the energetic demands of long-distance migration in a multigenerational ectothermic migrant, the monarch butterfly (Danaus plexippus). We tested the hypotheses that temperature-dependent physiological processes reduce energy reserves faster during migration than previously estimated, and that increasing climatic temperatures resulting from the climate crisis will intensify baseline daily energy expenditure. First, we reared monarchs under laboratory conditions to assess energy and mass conversion from fifth instar to adult stages, as a baseline for migratory adult mass and ontogenetic shifts in metabolic rate from larvae to adult. Then, using historical tag–recapture data, we estimated the movement propensity and migratory pace of autumn migrants using computer simulations and subsequently calculated energy expenditure. Finally, we estimated the energy use of monarchs based on these tag–recapture data and used this information to estimate daily energy expenditure over a 57 year period. We found support for our two hypotheses, noting that incorporating standard metabolic rate into estimates of migratory energy expenditure shows higher energy demand and that daily energy expenditure has been gradually increasing over time since 1961. Our study shows the deleterious energetic consequences under current climate change trajectories and highlights the importance of incorporating energetic estimates for understanding migration by small, ectothermic migrants. — The Company of Biologists, 3d ago
In parallel to the studies of rodent thermogenic adipose tissue, efforts to understand the importance of BAT in humans have continued. Notably, Becher et al. determined that the presence of BAT in adult humans is linked to the incidence of cardiometabolic disease (9). Individuals with detectable BAT had lower prevalence of type 2 diabetes, dyslipidemia, congestive heart failure, and hypertension, across different ranges of BMI. This observation is exciting as it supports the hypothesis that BAT can regulate cardiometabolic health, even independent of its potential effect on body weight. Nevertheless, correlation, of course, does not equal causation. As such, the physiological importance of BAT in adult humans and the potential contribution of BAT dysfunction to the development of metabolic disease has remained a topic of great discussion. In June of 2023, organizers of the annual meeting of the Endocrine Society (ENDO 2023) staged a live debate, where leading investigators in the study of human BAT offered their perspectives on the burning question of whether human BAT is a viable target for treatment of cardiometabolic disease. In this issue of the JCI, these same investigators expand on the discussion, highlighting the challenges (Carpentier and Blondin) and promise (Cypess) of human BAT as a therapeutic target (10, 11). — jci.org, 3d ago
To explore the associations between number of nestlings and the measured traits (focusing on the ecological aspect of the brood size rather than the experimental), we used another set of models including the actual number of nestlings (on the day of data collection) as a continuous variable (see Table 2B). These analyses are referred to as ‘correlative approach’ in the text. As the number of nestlings per nest varied substantially across and within treatment groups (e.g. at day 14 brood size ranged from 2 to 11 nestlings), this analysis reflects the associations between a given brood size and trait of interest. However, given that the dataset using brood size as a continuous variable includes both experimentally manipulated (E, R) and non-manipulated nests (C), we also analysed the associations between the number of nestlings and target variables using only the non-manipulated nests (C) to check whether patterns might have been confounded by including experimental nests (Table S3). As the results were similar, we report results of the full dataset in the main text. In these analyses, we also included hatching date as a continuous variable and the IDs of both the original and the rearing nest boxes as random intercepts. qPCR plate ID could not be included in the model only including the control group because of convergence issues (Table 2B). — The Company of Biologists, 3d ago
BD: The first course I would point to is actually in the core curriculum, so I suppose it’s popular in the sense that everyone MBA student takes it! But it is very highly regarded and it is a uniquely SOM course in my mind. It’s called Modeling Managerial Decisions, and it’s co-taught by Anjani Jain, who leads the MBA program and approaches the course from an operations perspective, and Nathan Novemsky, who’s an expert in the psychology of judgment and decision-making. They teach the course from these dual perspectives – how to use algorithms and mathematical modeling to optimize decision-making on one hand, and the psychological aspects of decision-making on the other. Melding these two diverse perspectives into a single course is emblematic of the integrated way management is taught here at Yale. The other course I would highlight is Global Financial Crises, co-taught by Andrew Metrick, Director of the Yale Program on Financial Stability (“YPFS”), and Timothy Geithner, former U.S. Treasury Secretary. The course aims to shed light on the causes of financial crises and how they’re addressed and managed. It’s one of a number of offerings emanating from the YPFS, and it highlights the way in which Yale SOM aims to educate its students to be leaders who have broad, positive impact not just in their communities and organizations but in the world more generally. — Clear Admit, 4d ago
It was actually my research around animated fiction for adult audiences that served as a gateway to the topic of animated non-fiction, which became central to my book (if you have not seen Arrugas/Wrinkles by Spanish director Ignacio Ferreras, run. And maybe grab a box of tissues on the way). Ferreras’s tale of old age and Alzheimer’s, based on the comic of the same title by Paco Roca, opened my eyes to animation’s tremendous storytelling capabilities, and the reality that an animated film’s awesomeness stems partly from the story it tells, no doubt, but largely from the way that it tells a particular story; that is, decisions related to form that are made at the (often literal) drawing board. Working with Wrinkles led to a deep dive into the ways that filmmakers from the Spanish-speaking world have been using animation, with its vast array of styles and techniques, as a storytelling device for narratives of fiction as well as non-fiction. In this context, this has been taking place for well over one hundred years now! (More about this below.)... — University of Toronto Press, 4d ago
The focus of this paper is on efforts to stretch the bready supply in Germany during the First World War through adulteration and government mandates requiring the milling of whole grain flour. This was a progressive process which saw higher extraction rates and increased levels of adulteration throughout the course of the war, eventually resulting in war bread which was baked using a combination of wheat, rye, and potato flour. Extraction rates for the grain flour used in this bread increased from prewar extraction rates of between 50 and 70 percent of the bread grain, to a wartime high of 94 percent. This darker, denser bread sparked anxiety amongst nutritionists, physicians, and physiologists who had limited understanding of the role played by dietary fibre, fearing that the undigested fibre would not only impede the body’s ability to absorb nutrients during digestion, but also that it may cause injury or damage to the digestive organs themselves. This outdated belief was reflective of the limited contemporary understanding of human nutrition, which had only just begun developing as a field of study in the later decades of the 20th Century. Despite this, historians of the First World War have been slow to account for advances in nutritional science which would cast doubt on the arguments of these contemporary experts, often uncritically reproducing their arguments concerning the “indigestibility” of war bread. This paper takes an interdisciplinary approach, using current understandings of nutrition to interrogate the sources and draw new conclusions about the nutritional viability of war bread. Marieke M.A. Hendriksen (NL Lab, Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences): The Dutch and their love for liquorice: a post-WWII tale of food technology and identity building... — School of Advanced Study, 4d ago

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The Justification of War and International Order provides a polyphonic analysis of the historical, socio-political and ethical considerations brought into play for rationalisation of war in the international realm. It underscores the constitutive nature of international order, inflections through use of force – past and present and their manifestations across political, economic, cultural and intellectual domains. The epistemic robustness of the volume lies in its inter-disciplinary approach amalgamating diverse perspectives approaching justification of war as a theoretical endeavour as well as political practice. One of the biggest strengths of this edited volume is its resilience in consistently challenging the procrustean understanding of use of force in IR and opening a world of investigatory possibilities by virtue of probing into connections between norms, force and international order within global politics. By combining theoretical lineages with historical case studies, it captures the intellectual diversity and dynamism of world politics and furthers an accessible overview of the diverse research themes at the heart of the field. With the rise of artificial intelligence, cyber warfare, asymmetric war with nonstate actors particularly terrorist organizations seeking prominence and technological advancements, the means of carrying out war are rapidly changing leading to newer justifications for war being sought. The rise of populist regimes across the globe also presents a formidable challenge to the normative structures predicating the current justifications of war. Lastly, social media has played a significant role in framing narratives surrounding wars and interventions and shaping public opinion and it would have been useful to engage with the justifications provided by these platforms, the spread of misinformation and spread of fake news all feeding into war mongering and justification. The volume though analytically rich would benefit from an explicit engagement with these emerging challenges along with feminist discourses to illuminate the heteronormative dimensions of justification of war. — E-International Relations, 17d ago
The old train station of Ireneo Portela, a small town in the Baradero district, in the province of Buenos Aires, was the first headquarters of the CEPT rural alternation school n°17Fernando Alé is the director of CEPT n°!/. The new school built a few years ago. The students spend a full week at school (living together and spending the night) and two weeks at home, where they are visited by teachers to monitor educational work but also family needs, customs, productive practices and projects. of extracurricular activity, directors and teachers of Ireneo Portela’s CEPT n°17 invited Infobae to give a talk on journalism to students in their final year of secondary school. The alternation system in rural education is a method created in France in the 1990s. 1930, as a solution to the difficulties that the environment imposes on rural families to send their children to school. Final year students of CEPT 17In the province of Buenos Aires, alternation schools are called Total Production Educational Centers. The talk with Infobae in the School dining roomFamily photo at the end of the day on the School campus, which is available. In turn, and in teams, the school students collaborate in cooking and cleaning tasks. Standing, on the right, Professor Oscar Dinova, a teacher for several years in Portela, now retired, but always present, organizing visits, talks and donations for the CEPTThe organizational chart of distribution of tasks by groups to comply with cleaning, care of the dining room and the care of farm animalsResponding to the students’ questions. On the left, María Inés Kajihara, the English teacher. The teachers also take turns staying at the school at night, accompanying the students, in turn. Together with Professor Oscar Dinova and one of the two cooks who take turns throughout the weekThe kitchen, where in addition to preparing the four meals, Homemade jams are made. Every week, students from a different year stay at the establishment; while the others return homeEach student spends a third of the time in the educational setting, which limits the necessary logistics and operational costs. It is not necessary to commute to school daily; You only have to do it once every 21 days, without detracting from the quality of learning. “The idea of the Alternation Schools was to provide, for families in rural regions, an environment where their children could continue post-primary studies, train for new challenges productive, but also have a place where they can train as people and leaders of their community. Coexistence in that face-to-face week contributes to the maturation of the young person, both in decision-making and responsibilities,” explains Professor Dinova. In this system, the student is always accompanied by his teachers, both while he is at school and when he returns to his home. home, where it is visited by the teachers. A particular feature of the CEPT is that they have a Board of Directors of Parents who have a voice and vote, even in the appointment of the school authorities, explained teacher Laura Ramírez (right, arms crusades), host of the visit “In the CEPT the theoretical contents are articulated with total naturalness with the practical ones that are exercised in the places where they live with their families,” explains Oscar Dinova, author of the book “Schools of Alternance, a project of life” (Geema-1997 Teacher’s Library), The schools have facilities where students carry out rural tasks. At the School, intensive production of self-consumption, vegetables and animals, is carried out. They serve to supply the CEPT but also so that students can practice rural tasks and be able to apply what they have learned in their homes. The CEPT articulate their activity with the primary schools in the area with which they work from 6th grade, before the students enter. to secondary school All CEPT students belong to a family that works in rural areas, so there is a constant interaction between home and school The students’ parents are building new bathrooms for the school An incubator made by the students The radius of influence of CEPT 17 covers several towns and rural areas of Baradero -Alsina, Sta. Coloma, Ireneo Portela, La Tortuga, La Media Vela, El Torito, El Triángulo, La Paloma-; from San Antonio de Areco -Villa Lía y Duggan-, from San Pedro -Ingeniero Monetta, Pueblo Doyle, Santa Lucía, Govt. Castro, Tabla, El Descanso, Río Tala, El Espinillo, La Buena Moza, Parajes Beladrich and Basso-, Arrecifes -Cañada Marta, La Delia, Arroyo de Luna-, Capitán Sarmiento and Ramallo -rural area El Paraíso En su area of influence, the CEPT is linked to more than 27 rural primary schools from which its enrollment arises, and with them they also develop local development projects, cultural and community-recreational projects. On the property around the school, the students raise sheep , rabbits, chickens and other animalsTwo specimens of Japanese chickenThe families of the students who attend these schools live in rural contexts, which are accessed by dirt roads, and almost always at a great distance from the nearest town or city The week in The one who remains in school is one of total coexistence: in addition to classes, they have recreational and other productive activities. The alternation pedagogy uses the rural environment as a learning setting, with a close link between theory and practice, and a great integration of the families in making decisions regarding the future of their childrenIn the 15 days they spend in their homes, learning continues in the family environment of each student, with the visit and supervision of a pair of teachers Oscar Dinova’s thesis on education of alternation, given by him and published by the Ministry of Education and Culture of the Nation, is one of the guides for these establishments and continues to be a reference for teachers who enter the alternation programsThis incredible system of rural education, soon centenary, Devised by a French priest, Pierre-Joseph Granereau, it was adopted in many South American countries, such as Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay, among others. Argentina was one of the first countries to promote it. In Argentina, there are a hundred Rural Alternation Schools, with different names depending on the province. They allow schooling in the countryside, overcoming the challenge of distances, and avoiding family uprooting and rupture with the socioeconomic reality of origin. In 1969, Moussy, a community near Reconquista, province of Santa Fe, “copied” the model and opened the first Agrarian Family School (EFA). This is how the expansion of this system in our country began. It was a success: in a few years more than 10 EFAS would be opened. When it was created, in 1999, CEPT 17 operated in the old Ireneo Portela train station (Baradero district). In the 1980s the system experienced a resurgence, with the creation of establishments of this type in Misiones, Buenos Aires, Córdoba, Santiago del Estero, Salta, Formosa, Chaco, Corrientes and Jujuy. Today, there are more than 100 Alternation Schools throughout the Argentine Republic, with different names and sizes. In the province of Buenos Aires there are 37 CEPT. In the photo: the students on the platform of the old Portela station. Since the school operates in the new building built in the center of the town, the railway station has been converted into a Rural Historical Museum. In France, these schools are called Family Houses, name that alludes to the intention to train young people on a technical level but never to the detriment of the human and family profile, and to promote a democratic environment where rural communities feel respected and active protagonists of their destiny. Professor Laura Ramírez is in charge of the Museum project, which is under construction at the train station Family photo at the end of the visit, with all the students present at the school and the teachers “Chino” Panzero (physical education), María Inés Kajihara (English) and Laura Ramirez... — Archyde, 16d ago
I hope everyone enjoyed the long weekend and short break! It is hard to believe that the semester is coming to a close. Each year, I rent a house on the Outer Banks of North Carolina to spend the break with my two sons. Sometimes, it’s just us. Other times, friends come along and fill the house. This year, it was just us. On one of the days, it rained – not in the way it rains in Colorado, but a 14-hour soaking rain. The day opened space to contemplate the future of public health how we make strides toward improving the health of our society.The COVID-19 pandemic was, and may continue as, one of the most substantial infectious disease threats in modern times that required an immediate public health response. However, the United States alongside other nations, was slow to provide widespread and convenient testing, distribute masks, and effectively communicate about safe practices and the changing scientific landscape. Nonetheless, the United States invested in new technology and developed an efficacious vaccine in record time. While its distribution, deployment, and uptake could have been improved, the scientific community achieved remarkable breakthroughs by sharing data and tissue samples at a pace not previously seen. Researchers openly collaborated at an international level. Meanwhile, the COVID-19 pandemic laid bare an inadequate public health infrastructure especially around inconsistent communication between federal, state, and local policies that prevented a cohesive response to the pandemic.What can we learn from the public-private partnerships that brought us exciting new treatments but also highlighted some of the shortcomings of public health? How can we use these lessons to reimagine the public health infrastructure? As the new dean of the Colorado School of Public Health, I’ve reflected at length as to why and how our nation rapidly responded to developing a new treatment, but large scale, transformational public health investments such as access to health care, new models of care delivery, and data integration across systems for policy development have been slower to come. In my first State of the School address, I suggested that public health, as a field and practice, is plagued by three myths that must be overcome. These myths are: public health isn’t sexy; public health isn’t a science; and public health is invisible until it fails.Myth #1: Public health isn’t sexy.As a society, we are drawn to new treatments and promises for a cure. The technology is exciting; the breakthroughs are breathtaking. What government or individual donor does not want to invest in an early-stage treatment that may cure or slow the progress of a disease that affects millions of people? The motivation for financial support is higher if this disease affects them or their loved ones. This enthusiasm remains high, almost without regard to a treatment’s chances of success, costs, and possible risk. How do we make the case for public health to be as equally exciting and breathtaking? Public health breakthroughs (e.g., clean water, sanitation practices, food inspection) have changed the course of history for civilization and have prevented countless deaths. Yet, the achievements of public health are not widely promoted as life-saving interventions. Public health interventions have a high chance of success, often come at low costs relative to the development of pharmaceutical interventions, and are generally associated with few downside risks. Tobacco companies made smoking sexy, a habit that is deadly, stinky, costly, and turns its users’ teeth yellow. Surely the case for public health’s ‘sex appeal’ is easier to make than the case made for tobacco products. We must be creative in how we change the narrative for public health.Myth #2: Public health isn’t a science.A quick google search defines science as “the pursuit and application of knowledge and understanding of the natural and social world following a systematic methodology based on evidence.” Public health professionals produce research that is grounded in theory, data driven, and evidence-based. Our papers are subject to rigorous review and our researchers compete for incredibly scarce resources—it is public health after all. Yet, the message of “science” often gets lost in the work we do and has even come under attack in recent years. “Science” is sometimes lost when we disseminate our evidence to colleagues in basic, translational, and clinical science who may not appreciate the complexity of our work. The average person understands that microbiology is a science but is unaware that public health research and practice is also a science and is guided by economic, social, and behavioral theories, among others.As a public health community, we must take responsibility for this perception and communicate more effectively about the thought and rigor that goes into what we do. Public health science uses data from complex tracking systems assembled for public health purposes, and often enhances those data with additional data that were assembled for other purposes but can inform our models and subsequent decisions. These data are stress tested with varying assumptions and sensitivity analyses and then frequently updated with new data. Furthermore, our scientists develop new methods to handle the ensuing complex analyses. Public health science exists at the intersections of human behavior, environmental forces, policy, society at large, and health. Therefore, our landscape is continually changing, and our scientists have to be nimble in response. A good example is how well our faculty worked together to produce evidence for Colorado’s governor to make data-driven and evidence-based decisions. We must do much more to educate everyone within and outside of our field about the science of public health and that our process is no different than basic, translational, and clinical science.Myth #3: Public health is invisible until it fails.Despite public health’s struggles with sex appeal and perceptions about its science, much of public health is “invisible” because it works so well. We take for granted that our food and drinking water are safe and that smoking is prohibited on airplanes. Most of us instinctively reach for the seatbelt when we settle into a car – all because of public health. However, when these measures were first introduced, they were met with resistance. We owe it to our field to point out the areas where public health continues to save lives. It is in these examples where we regain trust and convince the population, including policymakers, to adopt new measures that make our world a safer place where we can all thrive.How is public health not sexy when it saves so many lives? How is it not science when public health is theory grounded, data driven, and evidence-based? And how is public health invisible when there are so many examples of public health in action all around us, every day? Public health is visible, but it needs to be clearly understood.There are not enough resources in our society to treat each individual who has a health need. Because of this, societal level interventions are needed to make us safer, saner, and stronger. It is public health where such interventions are developed – and it is worthy of repeating that they are grounded in theory, data driven, and evidence-based, or simply put, science. — cuanschutz.edu, 4d ago
The rise of knowledge and the flow of innovation have long been recognized as an important factor for economic development. How do increased spatial connections affect the generation and diffusion of ideas? Intuitively, a denser network should increase the number of novel ideas and augment their diffusion. I study knowledge production in Germany in the 19th century, relying on the universe of bibliographic records and novel railway statistics, among other original data, as well as cutting-edge machine learning and topology to measure ideas. I show that the railroad network increased the creation of new ideas, contributing to 11% of the increase in knowledge production. Scholars' mobility led to the formation of specialized clusters, and thus to cities' specialization. New ideas are formed by combining ideas coming from cities connected by the railroad. However, with a denser network, new ideas diffused less on average. This was a by-product of specialization: with the railroad, groups of scholars could focus on narrower topics and co-locate with similar professionals; they learnt more from similar groups, but became disconnected from dissimilar ones. The findings shed light on the causes for specialization in knowledge production, on the organization of modern science, and on the diffusion of information in dense networks. — nationalaffairs.com, 19d ago
Although avoidance is a prevalent feature of anxiety-related psychopathology, differences in the measurement of avoidance between humans and non-human animals hinder our progress in its theoretical understanding and treatment. To address this, we developed a novel translational measure of anxiety-related avoidance in the form of an approach-avoidance reinforcement learning task, by adapting a paradigm from the non-human animal literature to study the same cognitive processes in human participants. We used computational modelling to probe the putative cognitive mechanisms underlying approach-avoidance behaviour in this task and investigated how they relate to subjective task-induced anxiety. In a large online study (n = 372), participants who experienced greater task-induced anxiety avoided choices associated with punishment, even when this resulted in lower overall reward. Computational modelling revealed that this effect was explained by greater individual sensitivities to punishment relative to rewards. We replicated these findings in an independent sample (n = 627) and we also found fair-to-excellent reliability of measures of task performance in a sub-sample retested 1 week later (n = 57). Our findings demonstrate the potential of approach-avoidance reinforcement learning tasks as translational and computational models of anxiety-related avoidance. Future studies should assess the predictive validity of this approach in clinical samples and experimental manipulations of anxiety. — eLife, 19d ago
OSUN Academic Certificates are micro-credentials awarded for clusters of courses that students complete in order to earn official recognition from OSUN and from their home institution. Six different interdisciplinary Academic Certificate programs provide a means for both degree and non-degree students, including refugee and displaced learners, to obtain credits and formal evidence of sustained university study. All of the programs – in Civic Engagement, Public Policy and Economic Analysis, Global Educational Development, Human Rights, Sustainability and Social Enterprise, and Food Studies – are useful for signaling students’ commitment and experience as they apply to potential employers and graduate programs. A Structured Path for Civic EngagementLaunched in 2021, the Certificate in Civic Engagement Program has awarded credentials to 12 students and has 70 students currently enrolled. The certificate provides a structured path for students to merge curricular and co-curricular civic pursuits and to deepen their understanding of publicly focused higher education. The certificate is offered in an online global classroom format across nine different OSUN partner institutions. Brian Mateo, Associate Dean of Civic Engagement at Bard Annandale and head of the certificate program, says it “allows students to understand the theories of civic and community engagement as well as engage them in practice through working in their communities.” Core coursework informs students on the fundamentals of civic engagement and demonstrates how to develop a project proposal. Students gain hands-on experience and complete 100 hours of volunteer work before graduating, cementing their exposure to experiential learning.Megumi Kivuva, who received the Certificate in Civic Engagement while earning a BA in Computer Science and Spanish Studies from Bard College Annandale, is now pursuing a Ph.D. in Information Science at the University of Washington. Their research “centers on understanding how family dynamics, school systems, and community organizations collectively influence the computer science learning experiences of refugee youth residing in Seattle.” Kivuva says the certificate program was “instrumental in bridging the gap between civic engagement and academic research” and that their current scholarly work is deeply rooted in the principles of civic engagement they learned about in the program. “(The program) equipped me with the methodologies and perspectives necessary to conduct research that is not only academically rigorous but also directly relevant and beneficial to the communities I am passionate about serving. In essence, the certificate program has been the catalyst for my growth as a scholar, a citizen, and a change-maker, enabling me to make meaningful contributions to both academia and the betterment of society.”A Foundation in Alternative Economic TraditionsThe Certificate in Public Policy and Economic Analysis, launched in 2022, has 6 graduates and a total of 40 students currently enrolled. Students are based at network institutions in Asia, Europe, North and South America.Pavlina Tcherneva, Director of the OSUN-Economic Democracy Initiative and head of the certificate program, says program courses allow students to study the diverse theoretical approaches, methodologies, and policy debates of global economics so they can learn “how to build a fairer economy that works for all.” “The certificate offers a one-of-a-kind rigorous course of study that expands students’ intellectual horizons and provides a hands-on opportunity to apply those alternative economic traditions to the understanding of real-world economic problems, such as economic insecurity, climate crisis, inequality and others,” adds Tcherneva.Jasmine Ahmed, who earned the certificate as she received a bachelor's degree in Ethics and Politics at Bard College Berlin, says “I am currently applying to graduate school programs in international relations, and having the certificate listed on my transcripts and resume has been a useful and distinctive talking point…to help demonstrate my interest and experience.”She says certificate coursework compelled her to refine her research and writing skills, both of which are academically and professionally transferable. Her cohort also exposed her to many different opinions on global economics, which forced her to support and defend her own arguments more vigorously.Eli Shapiro, who majored in Economics at Bard Annandale, says the knowledge he obtained from the certificate courses has been essential to his current success in the MRes program in Economics at Sciences Po, Paris, where he is learning the latest and most important models in modern economics. “The certificate program’s interdisciplinary and pluralistic courses encouraged me to explore economic problems from as many perspectives as possible, both technically and philosophically. The diverse range of perspectives I inherited from the OSUN EDI program provide me with a foundation to put the models into historical context, understand where they came from, and critique them,” he says.Innovative Tools to Address Educational InequalitiesTamo Chattopadhay, Founding Director of the Institute of Education at the American University of Central Asia and head of the OSUN Certificate in Global Educational Development Program (GLOBALED), says the program, launched in 2021, equips students with the innovative tools they need to improve educational outcomes for youth across the globe.Chattopadhay says the program offers an opportunity to acquire critical knowledge, skills, and comparative perspectives on education policy and practice, “so students can challenge the status quo of structural inequalities in education at all levels.” In 2023, 60 students from 8 OSUN institutions are participating in GLOBALED courses examining the social, political, economic, and cultural forces that keep children excluded from adequate education. An online colloquium puts students in a global classroom where they learn from a diverse group of international practitioners and advocates of educational development, in addition to faculty from institutions based in four continents. Milton Trujillo, who received a PhD in Education from the Universidad de los Andes as he participated in the GLOBALED certification program, says he gained valuable insights about policy design and implementation that enriched his pedagogical perspective and practice. The program stands out because it “integrates policy analysis with practical realities in classrooms around the world,” giving him “a global and comparative perspective, essential for understanding the complexities of international education in the 21st century and the challenges of educational development,” he says.As it links research, policy, and practice, the GLOBALED program has a strong focus on experiential learning and community engagement opportunities in global education projects. “Understanding these experiences and the people who developed them…provided me with practical tools to address real challenges in education and contribute to the development of research-informed and experience-based policies,” says Trujillo. Importantly, the program also cultivates a “deep understanding of cultural and power complexities in an unequal world, essential skills to address educational challenges from an informed and equitable perspective,” says Trujillo.Applications are now open for undergraduate students to apply for OSUN Academic Certificates in Civic Engagement, Public Policy and Economic Analysis, Global Educational Development, Human Rights, Sustainability and Social Enterprise, and Food Studies. The deadline to apply for the current round is Sunday, December 31. Learn more and apply here. — opensocietyuniversitynetwork.org, 12d ago

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Academic progress was evident, as 36% of students demonstrated advancement of over 13 months in their reading age. This aligns with the belief that narratives have the power to shape thoughts and emotions, fostering self-driven behavioural changes.Additionally, the study revealed that two-thirds of students experienced improved wellbeing, emphasising the therapeutic effects of storytelling. The positive impact extended to the staff as well, with 37% reporting increased calmness in the classroom. This underscores the shared emotional experience created through storytelling, benefiting both students and educators.Twinkl, a key education resources provider, has played a significant role in supporting bibliotherapeutic initiatives. By offering a wide range of fiction and non-fiction books - such as Twinkl Originals and Rhino Readers - via a mobile app and online, Twinkl contributes to creating a rich literary environment that enhances the effectiveness of bibliotherapy. Their commitment to providing resources that align with educators' evolving needs fortifies the success of initiatives like the Spring 2023 story time programme. Twinkl continues to develop their book offering to support reading for pleasure. The Reading Framework reinforces the emotional benefits of reading, enabling pupils to express ideas and feelings. Stories serve as a tool for navigating difficult conversations, allowing individuals, especially children, to see themselves in a broader context. Teachers play a crucial role in modelling healthy emotional responses through shared stories."Bibliotherapy is a safe, non-confrontational method of exploring and developing emotions, and can be used to develop an understanding of difficult topics with learners. Children build empathy through their interaction with literature, which in turn has the power to change thoughts and feelings," explained Katie Rose, Subject Leads Segment Manager at Twinkl.Beyond academics, the incorporation of storytelling into daily routines proves to be a potent tool for nurturing well-being, fostering empathy, and creating a positive educational environment. As schools recognize the impact of bibliotherapy, it's clear that the narrative of education is being rewritten, one story at a time.To learn more visit TwinklTwinkl... — openPR.com, 4d ago
Abstract: Recent advances in sequencing technology allow us to completely assemble genomes of many organisms, leading to the first telomere-to-telomere assembly of any human genome. Building on these techniques, the Human Pangenome Reference Consortium (HPRC) has put forward a draft human pangenome reference based on haplotype-resolved assemblies of 47 humans. Existing approaches to understanding genomic variation are based on comparisons to a single reference genome, an approach which breaks down in the multi-reference context of the pan genome. We thus develop new computational pangenomic methods that allow us to understand genome variation from many frames of reference. Applying these in the context of the Human Pangenome Project yields the most complete picture of human sequence evolution available to date. And we are able to understand the last unexplored frontier of human genomes, the short arms of the acrocentric chromosomes. We show that in these regions, standard chromosome relationships break down, and the chromosomes form a community in which recombination occurs between heterologous chromosome pairs, a phenomenon not seen elsewhere in the human genome and never before characterized. Our work solves the sequence basis for the most common kind of chromosomal abnormality in humans: Robertsonian translocation between acrocentric chromosomes, and paves the way to studies that consider the entire human pangenome in biology and biomedicine. — BSC-CNS, 4d ago
This introductory talk aims to explore the connection between spintronics and the emerging field of orbitronics. Spintronics, known for its use of electron spin for information manipulation, has made significant contributions to electronic devices. However, spintronics depends on the conversion of charge into spin currents and vice versa, driven by spin-orbit coupling. However, this mechanism's effectiveness is constrained by the limited availability and high cost of materials.Orbitronics, on the other hand, offers an alternative approach. It harnesses the orbital angular momentum of electrons in solids, eliminating the need for materials with strong spin–orbit coupling.The presentation will begin with an overview of the fundamental principles and key effects in spintronics, such as giant magnetoresistance (GMR) and spin-transfer torque (STT). We will then introduce orbitronics and the motivations to study its phenomena, emphasizing its potential in connection with spintronics. Throughout the discussion, we will draw parallels between spintronics and orbitronics, highlighting similarities and differences between their main effects. Join us in this exploration of spintronics and orbitronics for their potential in shaping the future of information processing. — icmab.es, 4d ago
The Company of Biologists, 3d ago
ECR Spotlight – Kazuki Yoshino-Hashizawa
The Company of Biologists, 3d ago
JEB@100: an interview with Monitoring Editor Monica Daley
jci.org, 3d ago
JCI - Human brown fat and metabolic disease: a heated debate
E-International Relations, 17d ago
Review – The Justification of War and International Order
The Company of Biologists, 3d ago
Early-life environmental effects on mitochondrial aerobic metabolism: a brood size manipulation in wild great tits

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How individuals cope with adversity or find jobs, among other things, depends on the strength of their relationships within communities and across geographic areas. Research in many disciplines such as economics, sociology, computer science, and statistics therefore rely heavily on social network data. Collecting detailed network data on populations is very costly and, consequently, research often includes only a small part of populations in their analysis. This research project will develop innovative methods to inexpensively collect network data, use the method to create two large datasets on the socio-economic relationships among vulnerable populations. The researchers will match these network data with information on economic and labor market outcomes as well as physical and mental health status. In addition, the researchers will build statistical tools to facilitate the use of these data sets and make these datasets and the toolkit freely available to other researchers. The results of this research project will improve research on several topics such as social learning, risk sharing, and therefore improve policy making. The results will also increase the effectiveness of government and business policies. — NBER, 4d ago
Abstract: Synthetic chemistry has aroused the curiosity of chemists, propelling them to explore innovative molecules and materials. This exploration not only transforms the way researchers think and design previously inaccessible structures but also lays the foundation for significant progress in addressing global social, economic, and industrial challenges. In this thesis, I will introduce a new synthetic methodology, which we have named "Clip-off Chemistry", for facilitating the discovery and synthesis of new structures in reticular materials. Apart from the conventional bottom-up approach, Clip-off Chemistry aims to selectively break bonds within existing reticular materials. Based on this concept, I will show the first examples of Clip-off Chemistry in three-dimensional metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) through a specific alkene-based cleavage reaction, ozonolysis. — icn2.cat, 4d ago
Newswise — Sharks, rays and skates are the ocean’s most threatened vertebrate group. Research led by the University of Zurich into their functional diversity has now revealed previously overlooked, critical conservation priorities, thereby underscoring the urgent need for targeted action to safeguard the threatened species.Biodiversity – the total variation of life – is multidimensional. Its study encompasses multiple facets, such as taxonomy (the variety of species), phylogenetics (their evolutionary history) and functionality (the ecological roles that species play in ecosystems). Protecting biodiversity implies safeguarding all of these dimensions.Now, an international team of researchers led by Professor Catalina Pimiento of the University of Zurich have unraveled the complex dimensions of elasmobranch biodiversity – the ocean’s most threatened vertebrate group, which includes sharks and rays. By contrasting functional diversity against other previously studied biodiversity facets – taxonomic and phylogenetic –, a new hierarchy of species and spatial conservation priorities emerged.Functional diversity changes the perspectiveThe researchers used an unprecedented global trait dataset to quantify global elasmobranch functional diversity, revealing a rich tapestry of varied ecological roles played by threatened species. “We identified the top endangered species crucial for maintaining the architecture of elasmobranch functional diversity, including the longfin mako shark, Ganges shark, daggernose shark, shortfin mako shark, and scalloped hammerhead shark,” explains Catalina Pimiento.Spatial analyses further showed that elasmobranch functional richness is concentrated along continental shelves and around oceanic islands, revealing 18 unique functional diversity hotspots that only marginally overlap with those of other biodiversity facets. “Many of the hotspots vital for elasmobranch biodiversity converge with fishing pressure along the coast of China, others fall around oceanic islands and high seas,” says Dr John Griffin of Swansea University, co-author of the study.Previously, two different biodiversity facets were used to identify conservation priorities – taxonomic and phylogenetic: the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s (IUCN) Red List of Threatened Species evaluates the urgency of a species’ extinction risk, and the EDGE of Existence program expanded this approach by also taking into account phylogenetic distinctiveness – whether or not species have long and unique evolutionary histories.Call to actionAlarmingly, the study finds that the multiple facets of elasmobranch biodiversity remain inadequately protected within the global Marine Protected Area network, leaving these species vulnerable to various threats. “Several global regions, including the coasts of China and Europe, that host hotspots of elasmobranch biodiversity face extreme threats from industrial fishing,” says Fabien Leprieur of the University of Montpellier, co-author of the study, further emphasizing the urgency of conservation efforts.The research underscores the need to integrate functional diversity into conservation strategies for elasmobranchs and other highly threatened species. As crucial components of marine ecosystems for millions of years, the preservation of elasmobranch biodiversity is paramount to ensuring the continued health of our oceans. — newswise.com, 4d ago
Apple officially announced the winners of this year’s 2023 App Store Awards, honoring 14 outstanding apps and games that inspire users to be creative and explore adventure. Created by teams of developers from around the world, these award-winning works bring unique and meaningful experiences to users while promoting cultural change, earning high praise from the App Store editorial team. This year’s App Store Award winners were selected from nearly 40 shortlisted works in recognition of their excellence in technological innovation, user experience and design. This year’s winning entries showcase the endless possibilities of creativity, technological innovation and design in the App Store and Apple ecosystem. Among them, “AllTrails” nourishes the community by providing comprehensive hiking trail guides and outdoor exploration suggestions; “Prêt-à-Makeup” provides realistic makeup drawing boards on iPad for professional makeup professionals and ordinary users, while promoting inclusion and self-expression . The machine learning-driven tools of “Photomator” can streamline advanced editing processes and bring a simpler experience. In addition, MUBI carefully curates outstanding independent and international documentaries with a humanistic focus; while SmartGym shines on Apple Watch with its comprehensive workouts, daily training courses and powerful fitness report library. In the games category, Honkai Impact delivers an unforgettable story on iPhone with its complex characters and tactically rich battlefields; while Lost in Play invites players to participate in an epic point-and-click adventure. An adventure game with a captivating and imaginative narrative. In addition, “Lies of P” presents players with an elaborate dark fantasy world; Apple Arcade’s “Hello Kitty Island Adventure” brings an immersive gaming experience where the main goal of the game is sweet friendship. 👇List of winners of the 2023 App Store Awards👇iPhone App of the Year in the App Category: “AllTrails”, developed by AllTrails, Inc. iPad App of the Year: “Prêt-à-Makeup”, developed by Prêt-à-Template. Mac App of the Year: “Photomator”, developed by UAB Pixelmator Team. Apple TV App of the Year: “MUBI”, developed by MUBI, Inc. Apple Watch App of the Year: “SmartGym”, developed by Mateus Abras. Game Category iPhone Game of the Year: “Honkai Impact”, developed by COGNOSPHERE PTE. LTD. iPad Game of the Year: Lost in Play, developed by Snapbreak Games. Mac Game of the Year: Lies of P, developed by NEOWIZ. Apple Arcade Game of the Year: Hello Kitty Island Adventure, developed by Sunblink. Hello Kitty Island Adventure “Cultural Impact” winners In addition to recognizing the best apps and games, Apple App Store editors also selected five “Cultural Impact” winners whose works have driven positive change through apps and games. “Pok Pok”, developed by Pok Pok. This children’s digital toy room provides an inclusive space for play, exploration and visual worlds for preschoolers of all backgrounds and abilities. “Proloquo”, developed by AssistiveWare. It has been a pioneer in accessibility for more than a decade, creating assistive communication (AAC) tools to help the world communicate in new ways. “Too Good To Go”, developed by Too Good To Go. This app helps reduce food waste by connecting users with restaurants and stores that have unsold food at affordable prices. “Unpacking”, developed by Humble Bundle. The app brings users soothing achievements through a variety of meditation puzzles, themed around experiences of transformation and connection. — Archyde, 4d ago
Women experience chronically inferior returns in organizations. One common recommendation is to form instrumental network ties with high-status others in groups. We integrate research on social status, social perceptions, and gender issues in social networks to suggest that, despite the theoretical and empirical appeal of this approach, instrumental ties to high-status network contacts (versus ties to lower-status network contacts) in groups may incur hidden social status costs for women in intragroup status-conferral processes. Instrumental ties to high-status network contacts may be perceived as a sign of agency of the focal person, which violates feminine gender norms. Women with these high-status network contacts in groups may therefore be perceived as less communal, thus subsequently lowering their status in the eyes of other group members compared with women with lower-status network contacts. Studies 1–4, across cross-sectional, longitudinal, and experimental designs, support our model. Study 5 suggests that signaling a group-oriented goal may mitigate the interpersonal, social perceptual costs of instrumental ties to high-status network contacts for women. The effect of ties with high-status network contacts for men is relatively inconsistent. This research reveals a potential social-network dilemma for women: Instrumental ties to high-status network contacts in groups and organizations are necessary for success and should be encouraged, yet they may also create an extra social perceptual hurdle for women. Organizations need to investigate social and structural solutions that harness the benefits of high-status network contacts for women, while minimizing any potential social perceptual costs. — nationalaffairs.com, 4d ago
Sonya Palafox was a freshman at North High School in Denver 25 years ago when she got a message kids don’t want to hear: come to the principal’s office. She had no way of knowing it at the time, but the call would represent a turning point in her life.In the office with a group of other students, Palafox met Dr. Norman Watt, a professor of psychology at the University of Denver (DU). Watt had conducted a “resiliency study” that identified children from low socioeconomic backgrounds who had scored in the top quartile of the reading portion of the Iowa Test of Basic Skills.Watt wanted to know why had some students achieved academically despite poverty and other barriers. He focused his investigations on students who got early education in the Head Start program, then moved on to the Denver Public Schools (DPS) system. He identified 31 of these students with traits and influences that made them resilient and decided that these “ambassadors,” as he called them, might be called upon to go back into Head Start sites and, in turn, help a new generation of young kids learn the reading and social skills that would be keys to building their resiliency in the face of adversity.The aim: break the stubborn cycle of poverty with a new cycle of support, strength and success.In the vanguard of the Ambassadors programPalafox was one of the program’s 31 original “Ambassadors for Literacy.” They went on to mentor more than 500 preschool-age children. In return for devoting time to their Head Start work, she and the other ambassadors received a powerful incentive. Dollars from the program would go into a college savings account to assist them if they decided to continue their education after high school.“We rewarded the students for being ambassadors and positive role models so that they could go on to higher education,” said Jini Puma, PhD, associate director of the Rocky Mountain Prevention Research Center (RMPRC) at the Colorado School of Public Health. Puma, a mentee of Watts as a student at DU, joined the Ambassadors for Literacy program in 2002.Watt’s original initiative was successful in spurring the young ambassadors to attend college, Puma said. Eighty-seven percent of those enrolled in the program went on to enroll in a four-year school. That compared with 22% of seniors graduating from DPS, she added.Taking a successful idea forwardPuma will now direct a new phase of Watt’s original idea, dubbed “Ambassadors for Literacy and Resilience.” A nearly $1 million donation gives a considerable boost to the effort. It includes training ColoradoSPH students to mentor the new generation of ambassadors, just as the ambassadors guide early childhood students at Head Start centers.“It’s a three-prong approach” to positive mentoring that proved successful in Watt’s original conception, Puma said. The new phase of the program includes hiring a program director, Joanna Coleman, who is bilingual in English and Spanish and has previous teaching experience. Among other responsibilities, Coleman will help to make connections with the school counselors and teachers who spot students with promise to be ambassadors, Puma said.“Joanna is doing all of our community engagement and outreach, recruiting families and leading training efforts” for ambassadors in literacy and social-emotional skill development, Puma said. Coleman will also work with graduate student mentors, track ambassadors’ hours and other tasks needed to keep the program on track, she added.Coleman will also have help from Palafox, who has come full circle from that first meeting with Watt. She worked as an ambassador through high school and continued her involvement while earning her undergraduate degree from DU in international business. She didn’t find that field fulfilling and decided her career path was in education. She went on to receive a master’s degree in counseling from Regis University and now is counselor to some 200 students at the Denver Center for 21st Century Learning, not far from her high school alma mater.Palafox now serves as an advisor to the new Ambassadors for Literacy and Resiliency program. In that role, she is working to identify students from her school who are promising candidates to help Head Start students, as she once did.The initial goal is to recruit five students from the Denver area to serve as ambassadors, Puma said. Further on the horizon, Puma hopes to expand the program to Weld County and the San Luis Valley.“Ultimately we aim to recruit the majority of students from rural areas because there are so fewer resources there,” she said.Long-term benefits of the Ambassadors programPalafox admits that as a ninth grader, she “wasn’t quite sure what the [Ambassadors] program was.” But years after the initially puzzling call to the principal’s office, she is clear about the benefits of the initiative.“It establishes a connection between early positive experiences with education for both Head Start students and the ambassadors,” Palafox said. “For the kids, it connects them to someone positive in a way that carries through their later years in schools. For the ambassadors, it builds self-efficacy and self-confidence that they are contributing to others in a meaningful way.”Puma said the results of Watt’s foundational work in resiliency bear out Palafox’s insights.“The number one factor was [resilient students] had a mentor or a trusted, caring adult in their lives,” Puma said. “It could be a coach, a teacher, a neighbor, but someone who took a real interest in a child’s success and was stable and loving and secure. That finding has been foundational in [the Ambassadors] program.”The strengthening of those type of bonds also has broad benefits for society, Puma believes.“The Ambassadors program addresses one of the social determinants of health, namely education access and quality,” she said. “It takes a multi-generational approach in doing so and [it also] addresses health equity…We know that for every year a person goes further with their education, their health outcomes are better.”On a personal level, Palafox recalls the first days of her ambassador training as an early glimpse at the possibility of a new life. Carrying a book bag of materials she would use with the Head Start kids, she strolled around the leafy DU campus. She was the first in her family to have the experience and opportunity.“It was the first time someone had talked to me in a way that [going to college] was a possibility,” Palafox recalled. “It was the first time it became tangible – because I saw it.”... — cuanschutz.edu, 4d ago

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lesswrong.com, 26d ago
Nuclear war is unlikely to cause human extinction — LessWrong
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Personal Rating
elifesciences.org, 28d ago
Some mechanistic underpinnings of molecular adaptations of SARS-COV-2 spike protein by integrating candidate adaptive polymorphisms with protein dynamics
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Scientific Thinking and the Inner Journey
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The Past, Present, and Future of Public Choice: Part II - Econlib
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Helen Pfeifer · Searching for the Bee: Rarities and Marvels
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Wild History
London Review of Books, 12d ago
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Even apart from its punning subtitle, Porn seems to have the makings of one of those dubious inquiries into sexual experience whose high-minded claims to sociological or scientific interest will be undermined on every page by the hot, pervy details of people’s sex lives. But Polly Barton’s oral history turns out to be something different. A British translator of Japanese fiction, Barton interviews nineteen friends and acquaintances of different ages, genders, and sexual identities about the place of pornography in their lives. There isn’t really any history, and none of the participants is involved in making pornography—the interviews are all about its consumption. Barton’s interviewees describe their first, sometimes accidental, discovery of porn. Or finding something alarming in a partner’s search history. Or watching porn with partners. These are the kinds of scenes that would seem inevitably to acquire a pornographic energy of their own in the telling. Interestingly, they don’t. — The New York Review of Books, 4d ago
SINGAPORE - Media OutReach - 30 November 2023 - Discovery, in partnership with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Republic of China (Taiwan), presents Food Masters: Taste of Taiwan, which premieres on Discovery on December 7 at 7:10 pm on Asian Food Network, December 11 at 8 pm. On a quest to discover Taiwan's culinary identity, Food Masters: Taste of Taiwan explores a revolutionary journey led by food experts, farmers, and Michelin-starred chefs. From the high-end kitchens to the bustling night markets, the show captures the essence of Taiwanese cuisine, redefining traditional flavours and presenting them to the world. In collaboration with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, ROC (Taiwan), Food Masters: Taste of Taiwan shares the stories that make Taiwanese cuisine a vibrant experience for audiences worldwide. To uncover the uniqueness of Taiwan's cuisine, chefs present traditional flavours with innovative twists, marrying the island's abundant ingredients and diverse culture. The show unfolds the stories of culinary pioneers like Chef Leo Tsai, whose Mountain & Sea restaurant seamlessly combines tradition with modern awareness. The forgotten opulence of Taiwanese fine dining in the 1930s is resurrected and passed down through the ages. Achieving a Michelin Green star, the restaurant's exclusive use of sustainable ingredients shows its dedication to promoting organic cuisine. On top of capturing the human connection and emotion found in Taiwanese cuisine, Mountain & Sea masterfully blends organics, sustainability, and delectability, setting an exceptional standard in the culinary world. Din Tai Fung, born in 1958 and globally renowned for its labour-intensive, meticulously crafted Xiao Long Bao, embodies simplicity and authenticity while mentoring artisans worldwide. According to Shawn Yang, Chief Strategy Officer: "Customers come to restaurants looking for that familiar taste. How do you satisfy them and put out the same Xiao Long Bao every day, every year, every decade?" Maintaining precision to the thousandth of a gram is crucial to upholding quality standards, with the Xiao Long Bao weighing 21 grams and allowing only a tolerance of ± 0.4 grams. Din Tai Fung's kitchen also enforces the "golden 18 folds" requirement. The mentorship system is the foundation to ensure consistent quality across the brand's 177 global branches. Through selfless knowledge transfer, Din Tai Fung establishes a constant culinary taste and warm service, capturing the hearts and palates of gourmets worldwide. RAW, led by Chef Andre Chiang, champions sourcing local ingredients and infusing Taiwanese flavours with Western techniques for sustainable and inclusive cuisine. Chef Chiang's original intention was for everything that customers eat to have a connection to the culture, sparking a trend in the local fine dining industry to value local ingredients. Guiding a team of young Taiwanese chefs, Chef Chiang actively seeks and utilizes lesser-known local ingredients, presenting to the world the essence of New Taiwan Flavor. Nestled in the mountains, Chef Alex Peng's high-end restaurant AKAME changes its menu daily based on local produce and offers livelihood opportunities for indigenous communities. From the Rukai tribe with a vision in mind, Chef Peng established this restaurant to provide young indigenous individuals a chance to reconnect with their roots while inviting others to explore the culture up in the mountains. The name "AKAME," meaning "to grill," pays homage to Chef Peng's indigenous cooking techniques, showcasing these flavours globally through his delectable dishes. He continuously seeks local ingredients, exploring their diverse possibilities—examples are using locally produced milk to craft millet wine cheese and Mapo cheese and sourcing cocoa from neighbouring tribes to concoct an indulgent chocolate sauce for churros. The show also explores Taiwan's vibrant street food scene, from the bustling night markets to traditional breakfast eateries. Huaxi Street, situated in the central area of Wanhua in Taipei, preserves tradition with consistent flavours that firmly hold onto the island's culinary identity. Wang's Broth adds a contemporary twist to the renowned braised pork rice, exemplifying Taiwan's street food spirit. Soft Power, under Avon Hsu, connects young customers to the traditional Taiwanese breakfast with an innovative crispy layered egg pancake. Taiwanese cuisine is defined by friendliness, warmth, and a dynamic blend of cultures and flavours. Food Masters: Taste of Taiwan captures the heart and soul of Taiwan, where every bite holds a story of tradition, ingenuity and cultural richness. Food Masters: Taste of Taiwan was produced by Volos Films Ltd. for Warner Bros. Discovery. Note to Editors Food Masters: Taste of Taiwan - Sizzle Food Masters: Taste of Taiwan - PhotosHashtag: #Discovery... — SME Business Daily Media, 4d ago
Vietnam forever altered his relationship to sound. “One of the main ways that war transforms you has to do with your sense of hearing,” he writes. It’s not just the “sounds of helicopters and distant howitzer fire,” but “the voices of the Montagnards, or the unfamiliar pattern of rain on a triple-canopy jungle.” Unlike the late violinist Billy Bang, who made a pair of moving albums about his experiences in the war (performed by fellow veterans including Threadgill), he has never written a piece about Vietnam. But his music has always been marked by a bewildering simultaneity of expression, unexpected eruptions and collisions, moods that shift between wariness and aggression, and forms of counterpoint that demand intensified focus from the listener. Threadgill says that he’s found inspiration in studies of trench warfare that focus on “multiple levels of engagement: some things going on above ground and other things happening in tunnels. As I saw firsthand in Vietnam, tunnels can be hidden mazes.” He designed the hubkaphone to recreate the sound of the gongs he heard in Montagnard villages. Motifs evocative of military music, often distorted by dissonance, recur in his work. To lift a phrase from the philosopher Louis Althusser, the war is an “absent cause” of Threadgill’s sound—present not as content, but as form. — The New York Review of Books, 4d ago
PennWharton: “Earlier this year, the employment rate of prime working age women reached an all-time high, passing 75 percent for the first time in U.S. history. Defying widespread expectations that the COVID-19 pandemic would disproportionately harm the economic prospects of women, they have recovered faster than men and played a dominant role in the overall labor market recovery. In a forthcoming working paper, we review the evolution of prime age women’s employment over the last few decades and explain its recent rise. This brief summarizes and previews some of the findings from that ongoing work. We show that the current employment highs are a product of two long-term trends that predate the pandemic: 1) the rising share of women who are college graduates, and 2) a shrinking child penalty for college-educated mothers, who are increasingly likely to remain in the workforce after having a child. Despite the severe disruptions to labor markets, schooling, and childcare caused by the pandemic, these trends continued and even accelerated after 2020. In the full working paper, we link their resilience to the grand gender convergence in labor market outcomes, drawing on the work of Claudia Goldin, who was recently awarded the 2023 Nobel Prize in economics. We present additional evidence from changes in the occupational mix of women’s employment, discuss the impact of parental leave, and study the dynamics of child penalties in detail.”... — bespacific.com, 4d ago
The reason for this personal taboo against self-scrutiny has to do, in one sense, with a belief that were he to analyze himself too thoroughly, he might eradicate (rather than deepen) the mystery that lies at the source of art. Herzog is not interested in psychology as such; he is concerned with the soul—and maybe even with the Soul of Man. “Psychoanalysis,” as he put it in one interview, “is no more scientific than the cranial surgery practiced under the middle-period pharaohs, and by jerking the deepest secrets out into the open, it denies and destroys the great mysteries of our souls.” (You don’t have to be a Freudian, or even a pharaonic cranial surgeon, to feel compelled to point out the strangeness of a criticism that condemns a practice as both completely unscientific and disastrously, paradoxically effective.)... — The New York Review of Books, 4d ago
For the human race, having children has historically been a duty and a biological imperative, with family at the heart of every culture. But now, demographic changes are having significant effects on how we live, in the three quarters of the globe where fertility rates have fallen to below replacement level. In Europe, almost half of all children are growing up without siblings. In China, primary schools and kindergartens are closing. In America, more households now contain pets than kids. Over the past century, the majority of households in Britain and America have been headed by a married couple, and the majority of children under 5 have been looked after by a mother staying at home. But now we are seeing the end of the “nuclear family” and the rise of new kinds of support structures: including ‘chosen’ families pioneered by LGBTQ communities, platonic parents, and non-biological friendship groups. How might the psychology of nations be affected by aging, shrinking, and increasing racial diversity from immigration? What can historical downturns in population, caused by plagues and wars, teach us about how our societies may react to the baby bust? And how should governments balance the rights of a dwindling number of parents, against those of the childfree? Join us to look at recent analysis of these powerful forces affecting the social fabric, and to debate possible policy solutions.This study group / discussion is open to all. Registration is not necessary.M-RCBG welcomes individuals with disabilities to participate in its programs. To request accommodations or ask questions about access provided, please email: mrcbg@hks.harvard.edu... — harvard.edu, 4d ago

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The reviewer’s insinuations, here and elsewhere in their remarks, that we have selectively reported “what looks best” is not well documented by the granular detail of their comments and is, frankly, unjustified and disrespectful. We have reported the results of an unusually comprehensive analysis, including multiple sensitivity analyses and statistical controls to ensure the robustness of our findings. The reviewer may find it “hard to believe” the presence or absence of certain results they expected in the occipital or frontal lobes but, as stated, this is no more than their personal opinion. We would be happy to include further discussion of expected and unexpected results if the reviewer could kindly point us to the prior evidence on which their expectations are based. It is not clear to us why “comparisons by binned age groups would be better” – it would certainly dramatically increase the number of statistical tests and increase the risk of type 1 error, so we have therefore not elected to adopt this suggestion. — eLife, 4d ago
Members of the National Caucus of Native American State Legislators visited the Centers for American Indian and Alaska Native Health (CAIANH) in November to learn about the CAIANH’s work to better understand the health of Native peoples across the United States, to advance culturally oriented and community-driven solutions, and how this work has helped shape public policy.The National Caucus of Native American State Legislators (NCNASL) is a bi-partisan group of 89 state legislators from 20 states, and they were eager to learn more about CAIANH, which in located the Colorado School of Public Health (ColoradoSPH) on campus, its projects and research, and to tour the Center in an effort to consider ways they can support similar work in their states. The visit was organized by Jenn Russell, MHA (Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma), a research instructor in CAIANH, and Nicole Reed, MPH (Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma), senior professional research assistant and DrPH candidate in ColoradoSPH. The visit coincided with the group’s attendance at their annual meeting in Denver.“This meeting was a welcomed opportunity,” Reed said. “For so many of us, we came into this field because we want to help and give back to tribal communities, and we understand the data we collect has real life implications and represents real people. The connections built during this meeting were grounded within this foundation.”More than 10 American Indian, Alaska Native, and Native Hawaiian state representatives and senators attended from states including Alaska, Arizona, Hawai'i, Oklahoma, Oregon, Maine, Minnesota, New Mexico, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Washington. One of the state legislators who attended, Benny Shendo Jr. (Jemez Pueblo Tribe), already had a connection with the University of Colorado. In October, Shendo was appointed Associate Vice Chancellor for Native American Affairs at CU Boulder, a newly created role where he will act as a liaison between the CU Boulder campus and tribal communities across Colorado.Attendees of the event gathered in the Nighthorse Campbell Native Health Building (NCNHB) on the CU Anschutz Medical Campus, named for Ben Nighthorse Campbell (Northern Cheyenne), a former Native American state legislator himself who went on to become a U.S. House Representative and U.S. Senator.In his welcome address, Manson highlighted formative research conducted at CAIANH that has positively impacted the health of Native people and that drove policies of continued investment and expansion of programs across Indian Country. This included CAIANH’s role in the success of the Special Diabetes Program for Indians, an Indian Health Service program that addresses the epidemic of diabetes among Native peoples. Because of its proven effectiveness in reducing rates of diabetes among American Indians and Alaska Natives, the U.S. Congress has continuously funded the program since its inception in 1997.CAIANH faculty emphasized the role of research in affecting policy as they presented current research with American Indians and Alaska Natives. CU Anschutz and ColoradoSPH faculty including Angela Brega, PhD, Jerreed Ivanich, PhD (Tsimshian, Metlakatla Indian Community), Joan O’Connell, PhD, Michelle Sarche, PhD (Lac Courte Oreilles Ojibwe), Jay Shore, MD, and Nancy Whitesell, PhD participated in a panel and shared examples of their important research with Native communities on maternal and child health, diabetes prevention and treatment, telehealth, Medicaid reimbursement, suicide prevention in tribal communities, and more.During the panel discussion, the NCNASL group was particularly interested in how research outcomes, including the work at CAIANH, can be disseminated in order to positively impact their constituents. They asked questions around how we can collectively create a positive narrative on how data collected from Native communities can help influence policy and create funding mechanisms to meet tribal and Native community needs, despite historical misuse and mistrust. The group also asked about efforts to encourage future Indigenous investigators, researchers, and clinicians.The open dialogue between panelists and attendees created a great opportunity for learning, sharing, and connection about the collective effort to support the health and well-being of Indigenous people.At the completion of the event, Sarche, ColoradoSPH professor of community and behavioral health and at CAIANH, commented, “Seeing all those smiling faces is a testament to the love we all share for the work that we do, from our respective positions, to support the health, well-being, and thriving of Native communities.” She also noted that the event was fruitful. “I think seeds were planted for future connections and collaboration.”Jenn Russell also noted the enjoyment of having the legislators visit. “I am excited we had the opportunity to share the beauty of the Nighthorse Campbell Native Health Building and the Anschutz Medical Campus with them, as well as the wonderful work our faculty and staff do at CAIANH. It was an honor to host this esteemed group who have a shared interest in the health and well-being of our Native people.”... — cuanschutz.edu, 4d ago
Jason Christoff runs an international self sabotage coaching school where students are educated on the subjects of mind control, brainwashing, behavior modification and psychological manipulation. Jason's students then use their knowledge in these areas to help reprogram their clients into better versions of themselves on all levels. Jason believes that the social decay we openly see in our world today has only come about because key players in our society are using this manipulative psychology against most of humanity. If we are to survive and thrive in the upcoming years Jason believes that each citizen must understand these processes, as to protect themselves from future psychological operations. — Sott.net, 4d ago
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Is it possible to interact with the dead? Belief in such encounters is more widespread than we might think. Yet sociologists, unlike other disciplines, have not fully engaged the question. Here, I review both long-standing theoretical objections to such research and recent theories that encourage attention to the issue. Leaning on the latter, I use closed- and open-ended survey data collected from 535 Americans to explore what I call "living-deceased perceived interaction." My data show that nearly half of my study participants report meaningful and regular interactions with deceased relatives and friends who were important in their lives. I examine the characteristics of such interactions -- how and when they are performed and what these experiences mean to respondents. I also investigate the role of one's social location in initiating interactions with the dead. Finally, I explore the social benefits, if any, these interactions provide for individuals who engage in them. — nationalaffairs.com, 23d ago
At first glance, the Navigator pipeline had something for everyone.For environmentalists, there was the chance to capture tens of millions of metric tons of planet-warming CO2 and bury it deep underground at what would have been — if built immediately — the largest storage facility of its kind in the world.For farmers, who grow the corn that’s used to make the ethanol — a component of today’s car fuels — the pipeline offered a way to help ensure continuing demand in an era when states are taking steps to reduce transportation-related greenhouse gas emissions.And for the region as a whole, there was the promise of jobs. The project would employ an average of 3,900 construction workers a year for a period of four years, according to a consultant’s 2022 economic impact study.But even in the early days, some had doubts.In the rare cases when carbon dioxide pipelines leak or rupture, the gas that is released can cause breathing problems, confusion, loss of consciousness and even death. When a pipeline ruptured near the tiny village of Satartia, Mississippi, in 2020, no one died, but 45 people sought medical care at local hospitals.Citing that incident, critics say it’s important to keep CO2 pipelines away from homes, schools and hospitals.But that would be hard to do in rural Illinois, where homes are often spaced about a quarter-mile from each other, according to Pam Richart, co-director of the Champaign-based environmental group Eco-Justice Collaborative and lead organizer of the Coalition to Stop CO2 Pipelines.“I don’t know how they would have achieved it. I’ve questioned that from day one,” said Richart.As the fight went on, opponents in Illinois called for a moratorium on all new carbon pipelines, including two other major projects in the Midwest: the Wolf pipeline in Illinois and Iowa, and the Summit pipeline in Iowa, North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska and Minnesota.Opponents argued that construction should be blocked while federal regulators hammer out new CO2 pipeline safety rules in the wake of the Mississippi pipeline rupture. The new rules are expected in 2024.“Did (Navigator) finally realize that they had a problem with respect to safety?” Richart mused, as she contemplated the company’s decision to cancel the pipeline. “I don’t know, but it was certainly the mantra all across the Midwest.”Navigator has said that the proposed pipeline could be built safely, and the company pointed to thousands of miles of CO2 pipeline already in use in the United States, mostly by the oil industry.Farmers rallied around the safety issue, as well as concerns that pipelines, which run underground, can damage soil and reduce crop yields.A 2022 review of academic studies in the journal Agrosystems, Geosciences & Environment found that in 15 out of 25 studies, crop yields declined after pipeline installation — by 6 percent to 46 percent — and a 2022 study in the Soil Science Society of America Journal found that even four or five years after natural gas pipeline installation, corn yields remained 20 percent to 24 percent lower than in comparable fields with no pipelines.Farmers also worried about damage to expensive underground drainage systems.And then there were the intangibles: strong ties to land that had been in families for generations and deep resistance to the threat of eminent domain, in which private land can be seized for the public good.Hess, a leader of the Navigator opposition group Citizens Against Heartland Greenway Pipeline, lives on a farm near Bushnell that his wife Phyllis’ family homesteaded in 1869. He farms alongside his only son, who he says is “G6,” or a sixth-generation farmer.Hess also has 12 living grandchildren, including at least one who has shown signs of interest in farming.“I personally don’t want to sell a strip of my farm — across the middle of it — to someone else forever,” Hess said. “And once I do that I can’t build on that. I can’t plant a tree on that. I can’t do any kind of improvement on that land without their permission. That’s not why I own property — to have someone else take control of it.”Hess doesn’t want future generations to have to deal with such limits, he said, and he doesn’t want them to face the risk of carbon dioxide exposure.“I’m in this fight for my grandchildren,” he said. — Governing, 24d ago
I came to veterinary medicine somewhat late in life, after a career in the arts. Having to study physics in preparation for vet school, I was strongly struck by the beauty and inevitability of simple Newtonian mechanics. In my first semester of vet anatomy, one of my teachers was Dr. John Bertram, a scientist specializing in comparative biomechanics. Comparative biomechanics looks at how the laws of physics influence the structure and function of different organisms. After completing my DVM degree, I undertook graduate studies in locomotion biomechanics with Dr. Bertram, focussing on the effects of body size (scaling) on the degree of passive mechanisms necessary for life on earth. To put it simply, the large and faster an animal is, the less metabolic energy per unit of body weight it has to devote to living. So large, fast animals like horses have a significant physical pressure to develop body structures that can operate with the minimum of energetic cost. — Eventbrite, 10d ago
Cerino of North Andover, Massachusetts said she's contributing to a host of children's causes during November and December to promote kindness and acceptance. She's donating a basket of books written by her nonprofit organization's team of authors to the Book Buddies program of Haverhill, Massachusetts that pairs adults with elementary school students in a pen pal relationship. The partners correspond through writing letters about shared books, helping to create bonds and hone the literacy skills of young participants. In addition, Cerino said Ella's Way is donating books to the Holliston Youth and Family Services in Holliston, Massachusetts, helping the nonprofit organization provide mental health support to individuals in need. Cerino is also offering a free interactive children's book reading at The Village Studio in North Andover, Massachusetts on Nov.14. Author and musician Ralph Tufo of Winthrop, Massachusetts plans to donate copies of his books "Seemore the Seagull" and "Brotherly Love" in support of Cerino's multiple events. His two stories include lessons about the benefits of sharing and cooperating with others and finding individual purpose and confidence despite obstacles. Tufo, a retired professor, believes these universal themes can empower children.The creative team behind the King's Day Out children's books is excited about participating in the 28th Annual Family Trees: A Celebration of Children's Literature event being held at the Concord Museum, in Concord, Massachusetts from Nov.22 through Jan.1. The event will include an Authors & Illustrators Day on Dec.10, allowing visitors to meet the creators behind the stories and pictures. Invited exhibitors include authors and illustrators of children's books charged with the mission of festooning the museum with wreaths and trees that pay tribute to children's literacy. "King Takes a Bath," the second book in the King's Day Out series by coauthors Maggie van Galen of Georgetown, Massachusetts and Dr. Amy Wheadon of Rowley, Massachusetts, will serve as the festive focal point for the team's tree. The book's illustrator, Leslie Beauregard of Amesbury, Massachusetts, will take the decorating lead, using sensory friendly colors coupled with themes and characters from the "King Takes a Bath" book that include rubber duckies, paw prints, and gnomes. The King's Day Out children's books are designed to empower children with the use of sensory strategies as they navigate life's everyday adventures. The Concord Museum's 28th Annual Family Trees event is open to the public and raises funds for the museum's educational programs. Stenetta Anthony, a Chicago, Illinois author, plans to take a virtual trip to Norristown, Pennsylvania in December to read to kindergarten and first grade students at the Commonwealth Charter Academy. Anthony plans to read her book "A Home for Sally" to the children. Anthony, a writer with more than 20 years of experience as an educator, said she enjoys interacting with teachers and students across the country. Her book "A Home for Sally" tells the story of a puppy with a missing paw as she awaits adoption from a shelter and wonders if her disability is rendering her unlovable. Anthony said she's looking forward to exploring the concepts of self-acceptance and confidence with her young audience.As a retired elementary school teacher with over 30 years of experience educating children, author Melodie Tegay of Long Island, New York said she's thinking about ways to cheer up the children of Lahaina, Maui as they continue to heal from the losses due to the area's August wildfires. Tegay plans to send copies of her book "Hannah's Two Homes" to a Folsom, California author managing an international book drive to benefit the displaced children of Lahaina and help restock the Lahaina Public Library once it's rebuilt. Tegay originally wrote "Hannah's Two Homes" to help children with the complexities and challenges of being raised in a blended family. Also, Tegay learned many law enforcement officers keep their vehicles stocked with stuffed animals to give to children at trauma scenes. Tegay plans to collect new and used stuffed animals to share with an organization assisting police precincts in Lahaina. Tegay said she's hopeful the donations comfort the children who lost their toys and other belongings in the raging wildfire flames.The mother and son duo John and Lauren Miller of Methuen, Massachusetts said they're busy preparing for participation in the 23rd Annual New England Holiday Craft Spectacular being held at the Starland Sportsplex in Hanover, Massachusetts on Dec.2 and 3. As an author and illustrator diagnosed with autism at age 5, John enjoys spreading the message that a person can make dreams become realities through passion, perseverance, creativity, and compassion. Lauren said she's proud to have taught this mindset to John and see him share it with others through his books "Adventures in Handom" and "The Magical Heart of Handom". In addition, John designed giftware, including shirts and tote bags with kindness messages. Lauren said although John often finds one-on-one interactions with other people challenging, he continues to make progress with this difficulty and enjoys meeting children who feel inspired by him to follow their own pursuits. Lauren said visitors to their booth will be eligible for raffle items from John's collection.Click https://ellasway.com to access the individual author pages, schedule an author visit, or donate. ###Colleen Lent... — openPR.com, 27d ago
But this interview between a middle-aged anthropologist and a young philosopher does not deal with a bygone moment of anthropology— far from it. On the contrary, its intention is to show anthropology in the making, and especially that anthropology to which I have contributed during the past few decades. Under the paradoxical rubric “anthropology of nature”—paradoxical because it has resulted in the provincialization of the concept of nature itself—it seeks to incorporate nonhumans into the analysis of social life: not as productive forces, ecological constraints, foundations of symbolic systems, or backdrops to human action but as autonomous agents that provide greater depth and diversity to the kinds of relations that develop between humans and the various elements that compose their worlds. Countless non-European civilizations have invited us to perform such a decentering, and yet it took a long time for anthropology, and for the social sciences as a whole, to draw the full conclusions. This book seeks to highlight the circumstances that gave rise to the intuitions that allowed nonhumans to be brought back into the study of human praxis. Those intuitions were born of the intellectual and political tumult of 1970s and 1980s France, further kindled by ethnographic fieldwork—which was every bit as stimulating—in native Amazonia, whose enigmatic character our generation of anthropologists was just discovering, even while trying to give it intelligible form. — resilience, 19d ago
Contemporary discussions of the gastrointestinal tract often return to an ideal of balance. Concerns about dysbiosis—the putative misalignment between so-called good and bad bacteria—echo the perennial seductions of “humoralism,” a theory of health derived from the ancient concept of harmony among a few core elements like blood and phlegm, versions of which appear in both Eastern and Western medical traditions. Nuanced research suggests that balance is not an especially useful way of thinking about the human microbiome, since certain species are far more important than others and individual health can coexist with a wide range of microbial variation. But even in the scientific literature, a charmingly uncomplicated rhetoric persists. In a 2017 analysis of peer-reviewed publications, the scientist Katarzyna B. Hooks and the philosopher Maureen A. O’Malley found that about half the time, definitions of dysbiosis don’t get much further than vaguely negative ideas of microbial imbalance, which is itself poorly defined. — The New York Review of Books, 18d ago

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Meet Gillian Sandstrom. (If you live in a certain area in England, her wholesome and entertaining Twitter account leads me to believe you may already have.) She's a personality and social psychologist at the University of Sussex who has been studying the impact of weak ties—both in the lab and out in the world—for a while. A weak tie is a transient social connection with someone who is not particularly important in your life, as opposed to strong ties, which are deeper, closer connections. My contact described above turned out to be a weak tie—we actually worked at the same place—and eventually resulted in a strong tie. But perhaps counterintuitively, weak ties don’t have to become strong in order to positively impact well-being. That’s what Sandstrom and Dunn (2014) found when they asked people to report on their happiness along with the frequency of their weak and strong tie interactions over a period of time. People who engaged in more interactions with the periphery of their social networks tended to report greater happiness on those days. This can’t be explained away by the fact that extraverts are both more inclined to talk to strangers and more prone to positive emotionality (both true) because people tended to show greater happiness on days where they had more weak-tie interactions compared to their own personal average number of such interactions. Simply engaging with others—even relatively unimportant others—seemed helpful to well-being. — Psychology Today, 4d ago
The adult watcher of Prehistoric Planet might also find herself nostalgic for a time before the climate change “debates,” when science seemed to have greater authority and the projection of the world it offered suffered less from bargaining and predatory skepticism. A short presentation (Prehistoric Planet: Uncovered) appears as a coda to each episode, scrutinizing an aspect of the preceding show: “Was Pachycephalosaur Really a Headbutter?” “How Fast Was a Mosasaur?” But when Alex rejoined me for one of these, he was less curious about the factual plunges into paleontological research than about the show’s digitally enhanced Cretaceous. As was I. If there was ambiguity about the feats of world-building I’d been drawn into, I didn’t want to hear about it. Let paleontology be an uncontentious science. Let these visions of the planet be uniting, not divisive. — The New York Review of Books, 4d ago
This collaborative effort aims to build a robust investor network and foster investment in Thai startups, preparing them to play a significant role in advancing the country's economic and social landscape through the power of innovation. Ms. Supamas Isarabhakdi, Minister of Higher Education, Science, Research and Innovation, emphasized the ministry's commitment to propelling the nation's economy and society through an innovation-driven approach, with a particular focus on startups and young entrepreneurs. The ministry actively plays a supportive role in integrating new generations into the Thai startup ecosystem and facilitating the expansion of business operations for startups, fostering their growth. This is achieved through the Alpha Program within the Startup Thailand League, in collaboration with over 50 educational institutes across Thailand. The initiative has resulted in the registration of more than 61 companies from participating student teams, representing an economic value exceeding 100,000,000 baht. She also said that, presently, numerous universities have established funds dedicated to investing in student startup ventures. Examples include CU Enterprise at Chulalongkorn University, M Venturer at Mahidol University, and Angkaew Holding at Chiang Mai University. These initiatives actively encourage the incorporation of innovation and cutting-edge technology in business operations, with a steadfast commitment to ongoing expansion and development. Therefore, organizing today's "NIA x depa VC NIGHT" event serves as a commendable starting point, with NIA and depa as the primary hosts, along with partner agencies such as the Thai Venture Capital Association (TVCA) and Beacon Venture Capital. The event aims to fortify the investor network and stimulate investment in Thai startups. This initiative underscores the collaboration between government agencies and the private sector, demonstrating their shared commitment to propelling the country's economic and social systems forward through the capabilities of innovation and technology entrepreneurs, commonly referred to as startups. Recognizing that a crucial element in building a robust and globally competitive Thai startup ecosystem is the alignment of goals and concerted efforts across all relevant sectors. It is vital for stakeholders to consistently communicate, support one another, and work together seamlessly. The guidelines for public-private cooperation in future market development, presented today, constitute important and intriguing proposals that the Ministry is committed to advancing and translating into tangible actions in the future. Dr. Krithpaka Boonfueng, the Executive Director of the National Innovation Agency (Public Organization) or NIA, highlighted that NIA aspires to serve as the guiding force and facilitator in innovative finance. The goal is to foster the development and support of innovative businesses within specific industries, generating economic and social impacts, promoting environmental sustainability, and enhancing the overall quality of life for citizens. This is to be achieved through the implementation of unconventional financial support mechanisms and by establishing connections with partners in innovative finance, investment, and the innovation market, ultimately driving the growth of innovative business entrepreneurs. This year, there has been a comprehensive overhaul of the mechanisms aimed at promoting and supporting SMEs and startups across various dimensions. A notable enhancement pertains to financial support for market expansion and investment opportunities. This includes the introduction of a new subsidy funding mechanism known as "Corporate Co-funding," developed through collaboration with the Technology and Innovation-based Enterprise Development Fund (TED Fund). Additionally, there is an emphasis on activities like Invest Startup Thailand, strategically designed to stimulate increased investment in startups within the country. For instance, there is a dedicated effort to cultivate knowledge about investing in startup enterprises, commonly referred to as the "Angel Investor" initiative, the development of investor networks, encompassing both Venture Capital (VC) and Corporate Venture Capital (CVC), as well as business matching activities and the provision of a platform for startups to present their business plans to potential investors. NIA envisions these strategic operations as crucial tools that will propel startups towards sustainable growth in the global market. Assist. Prof. Dr. Nuttapon Nimmanphatcharin, President and CEO of the Digital Economy Promotion Agency, has outlined depa's commitment to fostering industrial development and digital innovation. The agency is dedicated to promoting digital startups through a variety of mechanisms. The strategic plan includes enhancing the competitiveness of digital startups, with a particular focus on creating innovative funding promotion mechanisms, especially co-investment initiatives. Additionally, depa aims to facilitate the establishment of a fund dedicated to elevating digital startups to a global level. Additionally, there is a collaborative effort with relevant agencies to attract highly skilled individuals to work in Thailand, facilitated by the Global Digital Talent Visa mechanism. Additionally, a concerted initiative with the Board of Investment (BOI) has been established to create a market for digital startups. This includes implementing measures to grant a complete exemption from corporate income tax, up to 100% of the investment, with no set limit on the amount when purchasing products or services from digital startups registered in the digital service account. These strategic measures are designed to foster the growth of digital startups, positioning Thailand as a key hub for the development of the digital startup sector and investment within the region. Mr. Sarun Sutuntivorakoon, President of the Thai Venture Capital Association (TVCA), commented on the current landscape of investment in Thailand. Presently, there is a limited number of unicorns in Thailand, leading to a shortage of business experts and a lack of supporting infrastructure. This contributes to startups lack strong reputation and limited VC participants. This situation underscores the issue of having a low level of emerging unicorns. 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This approach ensures that graduates are equipped to establish their own startups immediately. Hashtag: #NationalInnovationAgency #NIA... — SME Business Daily Media, 4d ago
Sufjan Stevens is a singer, songwriter, and composer living in New York. His preoccupation with epic concepts has motivated two state records (Michigan and Illinois), a collection of sacred and biblical songs (Seven Swans), an electronic album for the animals of the Chinese zodiac (Enjoy Your Rabbit), a full length partly inspired by the outsider artist Royal Robertson (The Age of Adz), a masterwork memorializing and investigating his relationship with his late mother (Carrie & Lowell), and two Christmas box sets (Songs for Christmas, vol. 1–5 and Silver & Gold, vol. 6–10). BAM has commissioned two works from Stevens, a programmatic tone poem for the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway (The BQE) and an instrumental accompaniment to slow-motion rodeo footage (Round-Up). He has collaborated extensively with the New York City Ballet choreographer Justin Peck (Year of the Rabbit, Everywhere We Go, Countenance of Kings, Principia, The Decalogue, and Reflections). Stevens’ Planetarium, a collaborative album with Nico Muhly, Bryce Dessner, and James McAlister imbued with themes of the cosmos, was released in 2017 to widespread critical praise. Stevens also contributed three much-lauded songs to Luca Guadagnino’s critically acclaimed film Call Me By Your Name, including the Oscar and Grammy-nominated song “Mystery of Love.” In 2020, he shared Aporia, a collaborative new age album made with his stepfather Lowell Brams, and his eighth studio album, The Ascension, a reflection on the state of humanity in freefall and a call for a total transformation of consciousness. In early 2021, he released Convocations, a five-volume, two-and-a-half-hour requiem mass for present times. The most recent studio album by Stevens—A Beginner’s Mind—features songs inspired in part by popular films. It was released in the fall of 2021 and is a collaboration with singer-songwriter Angelo DeAugustine. In October 2023, Stevens’ tenth solo studio album, Javelin, was released. — BroadwayWorld.com, 4d ago
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The globalization of agricultural commodities poses challenges for scholars who may underplay the critical role of human agency and practice in transforming local food systems. In central western Mexico, avocados historically represented a reliable, semi-domesticated fruit-producing tree, found in rural and urban backyards. Known as muy noble, or the noble fruit, avocados could be grown with little attention yet hearty enough to produce fruit. In the 1950s, the pioneros (pioneers) of Uruapan, Michoacán, imported California Hass avocados, replaced local varieties, and dominated Mexico’s domestic market. In the 1970s, a new generation of entrepreneurs established contacts with US avocado companies and mounted a statewide phytosanitary campaign to eliminate pest problems. By the 1990s, Michoacán was poised to enter the US market. In this endeavor, Michoacán avocado growers maintained total control over “their” export market and limited US exports to Michoacán avocados. The region produces over 80% of Mexico’s avocados, with an annual export value of an estimated $2.4 billion; the boom of oro verde, or green gold, had arrived. In so doing, these same entrepreneurs constructed a monopoly that attracted narco cartels, and the multimillion-dollar avocado industry became one of the primary targets for cartels. Initially, local cartel leaders primarily extorted avocado producers and export packing houses. Now, groups have expanded tactics to include daily theft of avocado trucks, kidnappings, assassinations, and armed takeover of orchards, among other practices. This presentation examines the historical journey of the avocado during the period of 1950-2023, from muy noble to oro verde to “blood diamonds,” drawing on historical research and testimonios (testimonials) of local growers. In unpacking this global transformation, the analysis analyzes the critical role of human agency, contradictions between the state and local producers, and unforeseen consequences in globalization. — School of Advanced Study, 4d ago

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Solving today's most challenging problems requires innovative, integrated breakthroughs and novel solutions that transcend individual disciplines, reaching a deeper level of knowledge integration. However, achieving such integration through teamwork is challenging due to cognitive and collaborative dynamics that can arise when interacting on complex problems. To address this, theory and methods from varied disciplines need to be adapted and integrated to study their efficacy in learning and performance when doing transdisciplinary research. In this presentation I describe an NSF funded field study of transdisciplinary teamwork focused on coastal resilience in the Chesapeake Bay region of the USA. First, to promote collaborative learning, a team of faculty coaches guided a diverse set of graduate students from the natural and physical coastal, marine and environmental sciences, engineering, design, and social and economic sciences. Second, transdisciplinary pedagogies were adapted to enhance student understanding on collaborative knowledge building for complex problems. Here, we emphasized the development of conceptual models capable of capturing system level problems as well as integrating diverse disciplinary perspectives. Third, to foster individual and team learning, an intervention focusing on reflection in teamwork processes was used to ensure students monitor both task of transdisciplinary problem solving, as well as the teamwork processes engaged while collaborating. Findings are discussed in the context of changes in perceptions in teamwork as well as in the nature of reflections on teamwork offered. The implications for scalability for understanding and improving team problem solving when interdisciplinary collaborators come from different fields and professions will also be discussed. — UCF Events, 18d ago
What are the strengths and weaknesses of the most common mind-brain theories? On today’s episode, neurosurgeon Michael Egnor concludes his conversation with Dr. Angus Menuge about the mind-brain relationship and the popular dualistic theories of Cartesian dualism and Thomistic dualism. Cartesian dualism posits that the mind and body are fundamentally different substances, with the mind being immaterial and the body being material. Thomistic dualism, on the other hand, sees the mind and body as one substance, with the mind being the form of a human being. Dr. Menuge presents some of the strengths and weaknesses of both theories. The conversation also touches on topics such as the unity of consciousness, near-death experiences, information realism, and the limitations of reductionist approaches in neuroscience. The interview emphasizes the importance of considering different perspectives and being open-minded in understanding the mind-brain relationship. This is Part 3 of 3. — Discovery Institute, 5d ago
Newswise — Ithaca, N.Y.—Many songbirds are nesting earlier in spring because of warmer temperatures brought about by climate change. But the shift brings another danger that is especially deadly for nestlings: greater exposure to temperature variability in the form of cold snaps and heat waves. Such extremes result in more nest failures. These findings come from a Cornell Lab of Ornithology study just published in the journal Nature Communications. "When we talk about temperature changes, the focus is mostly on averages," said co-lead author Conor Taff, a researcher in Cornell University's Ecology and Evolutionary Biology Department. "But all creatures, including humans, interact with weather conditions right in the moment, not with long-term averages. Even a one or two-day period when it’s really cold or really hot can be incredibly challenging even if the average temperature hasn't changed. Changing temperature averages and temperature variability are two different components of climate change." To understand how temperature variability might affect nesting success, the researchers analyzed 300,000 breeding bird records submitted to the Cornell Lab's NestWatch project between 1995 and 2020. They pinpointed the coldest three-day day period and the hottest three-day period for each one of the nests and then looked at whether those values predicted lower nesting success. Success was measured by how many nestlings survived to fledge. "We found that 16 of the 24 species we studied had reduced reproductive success when a cold snap occurred during the incubation or nestling stages," Taff said. "Eleven of 24 had reduced success when a heat wave occurred during the breeding season. Aerial insectivores were the most sensitive to temperature extremes, especially cold."The vast majority of birds feed insects to their young, regardless of their final diet, and cold snaps reduce insect availability. If these episodes occur when nestlings are most vulnerable, they can trigger a mass die-off. During a cold snap, adult birds may move away to find survivable conditions which leaves eggs and nestlings exposed to cold and lack of food."It's the nestlings that really get hit hard because they can't regulate their own body temperature yet," said co-author Ryan Shipley, a Cornell University Ph.D. student at the time of the research. "Nestlings also grow at an exponential rate during the first week or two of life and if insect activity drops because of a cold snap, the young birds likely won’t survive." Taff and Shipley also examined 100 years of weather data to see if there have been changes in the timing of cold snaps and heat waves during the March through August breeding season in the United States and Canada. Although they found no clear pattern in the timing of temperature extremes, they do note that it's getting warmer everywhere. "Even if nestlings somehow manage to survive a cold snap or heat wave, there may still be long-term consequences affecting the overall health of the birds," notes Shipley. "We're only looking at a brief snapshot during early life and cannot measure long-term health in an unbanded wild population." Previous Tree Swallow studies by these authors have shown that temperature during development is important because it's directly linked to the rate of nestling growth and their body mass when they fledge. That, in turn, influences how likely they are to survive, make it through migration, and return to breed the following year. Therefore, changes in the variability and timing of temperature extremes and shifts in the breeding season can combine to bring about life-changing consequences for individuals and for bird populations. — newswise.com, 17d ago
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