bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Paradigms of Healthcare Systems, Law, and Regulation
Authors: Santuari Alceste , Sage William
Published: March 2021

This chapter assesses how the law creates and sustains healthcare systems. It considers six paradigm concepts which are important in the structures of healthcare systems and how the law seeks to support and encourage the effective provision of healthcare to relevant populations. These concepts are quality/accessibility; health citizenship and a “right to health”; individual liberty; market competition; economic productivity; and “health justice” and integrated social services. The chapter then discusses five structures for health system regulation, starting with the simplest: public provision of health services, publicly funded but privately supplied health services, self-regulating health professions, public–private partnerships, and nonprofit and charitable organizations. Finally, it compares European and American approaches to the geographical dimensions of health system law and regulation, discussing paradigms of federalism and localism.
The Trailer Ear
Authors: Deaville James
Published: March 2021

Film audiences expect aural overplenitude when they experience a trailer soundtrack in the theatre. I call the normalization and (reluctant) acceptance of cinematic sonic excess the “trailer ear,” which this chapter explores in terms of trailer construction, exhibition, and perception. We will investigate how and why trailer loudness is highly valued by producers, the steps taken by the film industry to regulate it, the means mobilized by trailer houses to bypass the regulations, and the real and imagined damage to hearing caused by extreme dynamic levels in the cinema. As we explore these issues, we will more closely consider the TASA (Trailer Audio Standards Association) directives for trailer loudness, trailer playback levels on extra-cinematic devices, and the impact of Dolby Atmos technology on trailer listening.
A Movie for Speakers
Authors: Reinsch Paul N.
Published: March 2021

This chapter offers a case study of the Queen-produced album Flash Gordon as a “unified soundtrack album.” The unified soundtrack album is defined as a release containing music associated with a film that also features dialogue and/or sound effects connected to the film. The album is heterogeneous in including a variety of sounds, autonomous in being able to provide story and mood without recourse to the film or a screen, and multi-authored in containing music, sound effects, and performances not created by Queen. Furthermore, Queen’s adaptation potentially improves on the experience of the film through its emphasis on music, its abridgment of the film, and its sonic presentation of the titular hero, whose film presence is marred by imprecise lip sync.
Sonic Elongation and Sonic Aporia
Authors: Rogers Holly
Published: March 2021

This chapter focuses on two of the most disruptive forms of soundscape composition and theorizes two related modes of audiovisual rupture. The first, sonic elongation, arises when source sounds from within the film’s world are broadened until they become unfamiliar. The process, which often draws these liberated sounds in musical textures, is fluid and can augment and intensify familiar modes of audiovisual engagement without breaking them. The second, sonic aporia, arises when real-world sounds (or sound effects) from beyond the film’s world are used to form a poetic or allegorical soundscape that does not assimilate with the images but sits alongside them. These often recognizable sounds undergo compositional transformation and yet their lack of a visual anchor, or, in some cases, their active opposition to what we see, leads our attention beyond the screen. Here, the different forms of audiovisual attention engendered by these contrasting compositional strategies is investigated in terms of attentive listening and multimodal rupture.
“The Atmosphere Was Entirely Good Humoured”
Authors: Frith Simon
Published: March 2021

This chapter considers the use of cinemas as venues for live performance of pop music in 1950s and 1960s Britain. Following the “rock ‘n’ roll riots” that took place at showings of Blackboard Jungle and Rock Around the Clock, it is often assumed by music historians that cinemas were inappropriate settings for the new kinds of youth music that emerged in this period. In fact, this chapter argues, cinemas played a central role in the development of British popular music in this period. They provided both a space for young people and a space for the live performance of young people’s music; British teen pop music can therefore be understood as an aspect of cinema culture. The emergence of rock in the 1970s led to cinemas losing their central role as live music venues, though rock concert films continued to be significant for the rock economy.
Staging Memorialization
Authors: Heath-Kelly Charlotte
Published: March 2021

This chapter explores the staging of memory in public architecture, emphasizing the spatial and temporal dynamics of commemorative performance. While we are familiar with post-terrorist space being redesigned to perform resilient nationalism, other affected terrain is “off-staged” by recovery planners into the realm of economic regeneration. The chapter reflects upon the spatial staging of 9/11 recovery in Manhattan which splits urban terrain into symbolic and economic zones, ‘off-staging’ the city’s prioritization of business interests during disaster management. Beyond these spatial divisions in the staging of terrorism memory, memorials also conceive of audiences in radically distinct temporal zones. Design teams are presented with briefs that identify their audiences in the contemporary moment but also 100, 150, and even 250 years into the future. The memorial is expected to perform the disaster event, to educate an audience of whom we have no knowledge. The chapter deconstructs this temporal leap, showing that memorializing for the future does not only serve an educational purpose but performatively mitigates anxieties about the erasure of the present from the world stage. By addressing a future audience, the terrorism memorial performatively stages a concern for us from future beings. The chapter analyzes this ritualized address to the future as transferring from burial necrogeography. The terrorism memorial– and its particular staging practices – respond to anxieties about the erasure of traditional foundations for political authority during globalization, which has led to an increased reliance on performative architectural objects.
Urban Sites of the Everyday and the International
Authors: Davies Matt
Published: March 2021

The Other City is a downloadable audio play performed by the listener in an urban setting. Its performance opens an opportunity to explore perceptions of the city through comparisons with urban experiences in Rio de Janeiro. The cities are thus encountered as aesthetic subjects, or subjects who “articulate and mobilize thinking.” This chapter begins with an overview of the field of aesthetic research into cities and how methods that have emerged in the performance-as-research paradigm have helped illuminate urbanism and critique received wisdom about contemporary urbanization. It goes on to explain The Other City and how the play mobilizes and challenges notions of performance as research. By examining how the performance of the everyday became a political gesture in Rio in preparation for the Olympics, it shows how politics can be inaugurated in the everyday. It concludes more cautiously, however, insisting that performance cannot provide political guarantees.
The Politics of Neoliberal Rituals
Authors: Leander Anna
Published: March 2021

Exploring the similarities between the Future of Enterprise Technology trade fairs and the ITU AI for Food Summit, this chapter focuses on trade fairs as spaces of political performance. It explores how trade fairs do politics and what the implications of this are. The chapter begins by showing that trade fairs play a crucial role in generating and enshrining the legitimacy and authority of decentralized, distributed market orders that are in constant change. The trade fairs are rituals where a “tournament of values” is performed through which the hierarchies of this order are negotiated. This helps manage but also enshrine the uncertainties associated with decentralized governance. Second, as ritual performances more generally, trade fairs engage the sacred and magical and the affective and embodied to anchor order not only broadly but deeply and individually. Finally, the chapter discusses the quality of the ordering performed in trade fairs, suggesting that what is performed in the trade fair is a form of institutionalized liminality. However, and contrary to the hopes Victor Turner placed in institutionalized liminality, here it is far from progressive. It builds inegalitarian instability into our societies. Precisely because of this, tending to trade fairs is of fundamental import. The trade fair form has become pervasive in governance, including when it involves public institutions (as epitomized by the AI for Good Summit). Understanding trade fairs as ritual political performance at the core of neoliberalism is therefore a condition intervening politically and for realizing the urgency of imagining alternative forms of governing.
Music
Authors: Franklin M. I.
Published: March 2021

A number of women who made their name as punk musicians and experimental performers have published their memoirs in quick succession. Taken together these books offer a rescripting of the dominant narrative of punk and related independent—indie—music scenes. The memoirs considered here—by Viv Albertine, Carrie Brownstein, Kim Gordon, Chrissie Hynde, Patti Smith, Brix Smith Start, and Cosey Fanni Tutti—go some way in challenging androcentric stereotypes in the “story of punk,” its politics and furious male icons. These memoirs provide rich insights into the complex, underground sexual politics of making it in a male-dominated industry. In so doing they rewrite the official record of punk registers of musical and political protest as groundbreaking experimental artists who also excel at playing fast, loudly, and with the libidinous energy usually attributed to masculine performance.
Nativism
Authors: Lewis Desiree
Published: March 2021

Although the focus of this chapter is a particular recent photographer, its broader concern is with how performative African identities have been and continue to be imagined as anatomically and culturally generalized bodies. Several writers have identified the simultaneous growth of photography, ethnography, and colonizing projects from the nineteenth century. The photographed subject was frozen as an object for others’ scrutiny, with photography reinforcing the huge divide between the meanings attached to the surfaces of the bodies of African people and ideas about whiteness and the West. The chapter focuses on how anthropological constructs and codes perist in ostensibly postcolonial and counterhegemonic representations. It analyzes the contemporary photographs of the internationally acclaimed South African photographer Zanele Muholi, especially images from her “Faces and Phases” photographs of black lesbians and transmen. On one hand, the portraits are powerful political statements: they portray the dignity and courage of certain lesbians and transmen, make a marginalized community visible in a heterosexist and racist public sphere, and gesture toward meanings of African identities that are radically at odds with both colonial and (patriarchal) nationalist identities. On the other hand, viewers are invited to recognize the agency and public visibility of the subject in ways similar to how viewers of colonial and nationalist performances have been encouraged to recognize and categorize the bodies of authentic African women and men.
Theatricality, Sovereignty, and Resistance
Authors: Parameswaran Ameet
Published: March 2021

The practices brought under the term theater of the roots in postindependent India are often framed as articulating postcolonial resistance as they use ritual and traditional forms in opposition to the practices of realism, naturalism, and tragedy that are deemed to be Western and colonial. The canonical Malayalam and Sanskrit productions of the significant playwright-director from the southern Indian state of Kerala, K. N. Panikkar, has been conceived as a productive site for such a framing of postcolonial resistance. The chapter analyzes how assumptions about theatricality and in certain cases absence of the cleft in the mundane effected by theatricality of both modern theater practices as well as what are categorized as indigenous or traditional practices are at the heart of these claims. Analyzing existing scholarly writings as well as theater discussions centered on the early productions of Panikkar in the vernacular language, the chapter foregrounds the need to historicize theatricality as an object and as discourse in India in the 1960s through 1980s. The chapter shows how it is precisely by the elision of the force of discourses of theatricality and how it opens out the sociopolitical—especially sovereignty and countersovereignty—in the region that an imagined national is instituted. The chapter ends by looking at P. K. Balakrishnan’s analysis of the trilogy of Ramayana plays by Srikanthan Nair foregrounding the potentiality of a specific sonic theatricality—wherein tragic can be felt as a critical tone—that registers a newness troubling the existing worlds of sovereignty and power.
Representation
Authors: Daloz Jean-Pascal
Published: March 2021

The polysemic nature of the term representation is widely recognized, and we know that in English it may refer to (1) perceptions and conceptions, (2) mechanisms of delegation, and (3) performances, in the sense of something “staged.” This is often viewed as a problem by scholars dealing with political representation who fear that a seemingly solid notion might disappear behind uncontrolled shifts in meaning. However, it can be held to the contrary that the very nature of this type of relationship depends on how it is perceived by both the representatives and the represented. It is also the outcome of the way in which representatives defend the interest of the represented, as well as how they present themselves and those they claim to embody. Most representatives are expected to fulfill a function of expression of the represented group. As its visible face, they are a kind of living symbol. It is in this regard that the complementarity of the theatrical dimension becomes clearly apparent. The chapter offers some preliminary reflections about the theatricality of politics and on the parallels that can be established between dramatic art and the staging of representation. It then turns to the issue of performativity, that is, to the efficacy of the process and its ability to achieve certain results. Finally, with a view to show concretely how a theatrical approach of representation (combined with the two other aspects) can yield rich findings, developments are proposed on the ways in which political actors deal with the opposing imperatives of eminence and nearness.
The Spanish Conquest?
Authors: Matthew Laura E.
Published: March 2021

The Spanish conquest is a highly mythologized historical moment of profound consequence. For some, it represents the launching of a global Catholic empire—perhaps with lamentable violence, but ultimately as part of an inevitable, proud march of Euro-Christian progress. For Indigenous populations, the meaning of Spanish conquest is decidedly more somber: the invasion of their lands, the criminalization of their customs, the loss of sovereignty, and, indeed, the closest they have ever come to total extermination. In between these two poles of interpretation, scholars have sought not only new sources and information beyond published Spanish works but also new perspectives from less famous actors. Central America features prominently in this recent scholarship, which has ended up questioning all three parts of the phrase “the Spanish conquest.” Indigenous Central America’s sixteenth-century experience of military invasion and colonization—made worse by a brief but intense period of legalized Indigenous slavery—was brutal, and more complex than the mythology usually admits. It was not a single sweeping event, it was not militarily won only by Spaniards or even Europeans, and ultimately, it was incomplete.
A Southeast Asian Perspective on the Role for the Sociology of Generations in Building a Global Youth Studies
Authors: Woodman Dan , Batan Clarence M. , Sutopo Oki Rahadianto
Published: March 2021

This chapter interrogates and develops one of the major conceptual traditions for thinking about social change as it intersects with youth and the life course: the sociology of generations. Grounded in an overview of how the notion of generations is used in two Southeast Asian contexts, Indonesia and the Philippines, it develops an alternative concept of generation, emphasizing intergenerational relationships, the impact of youth on the life course, the continuing impact of history and the refiguring of long-standing inequalities in the context of rapid change. An orientation to generations is limited if it is only used to illustrate change across groups within countries, but not new connections across borders. However, the opposite is also a limitation, too easily slipping into claims of a homogenous global generation. A global sociology of generations needs simultaneously to be aware of these differences and similarities that are in a constant state of flux.
Researching the South on Its Own Terms as a Matter of Justice
Authors: Breakey Jessica , Nyamnjoh Anye-Nkwenti , Swartz Sharlene
Published: March 2021

This essay draws on the collective learnings from the research study published as Moral Eyes: Youth and justice in Cameroon, Nigeria, Sierra Leone and South Africa in order to explore both the principles and possibilities of producing theory from the South by the South. By describing the journey of the study and highlighting its struggles and challenges, as well as innovative steps taken along the way, it offers insights into how existing geopolitical inequalities in knowledge production between the Global North and the Global South may be disrupted. Central to these disruptions include the role of Southern theory, the relationships between researchers, methods of data collection, and the ways in which participants are engaged in the study. The task of producing knowledge from the South by the South entails speaking out and insisting on the space to produce knowledge; speaking back while remaining geographically, ethically, and theoretically grounded; speaking up and rooting research in emancipatory methodologies and ontologies; and never being spoken for especially by only accepting funding that supports principles of justice and emancipation in Southern knowledge production.
Western Christianity and Meditation
Authors: Laird Martin
Published: March 2021

Like other religions, Christianity has its own tradition of meditation, the practice of contemplation, that has evolved over two millennia. This tradition has a core celebration and a core problem. The core celebration is that by grace we are all one in the ineffable mystery of God in Christ. The core problem is that we live most of our lives in ignorance of this. The practice of contemplation aims to heal this ignorance and the inner noise it generates by training the mind to abide in silence. The silent mind is a loving mind that sees through the illusion of separation from God. This chapter examines the teachings of five key authors or traditions from the fourth to fourteenth century so as to learn how to bring the mind home to itself, a self hidden in the mystery of God in Christ (Col 3:3).
Behavioral Modernity, Evolutionary Synergies, and the Symbolic Species
Authors: Majkić Ana
Published: March 2021

Many of the hallmarks of “what makes us human”—complex cognition and language, self-consciousness, and symbolic and artistic behaviors—are commonly subsumed under the term “behavioral modernity.” Several models have been proposed to account for its emergence and different ways of understanding the term itself exist. However, the concept of behavioral modernity remains elusive and difficult to define in a consistent manner. It is vulnerable to critique from a number of perspectives, both theoretically and methodologically, especially on how to recognize its expression in the archaeological record. Overview of the proposed behavioral traits and archaeological features indicate: (1) that highlighting assumptions implicit in those traits and features may allow us to avoid inconsistencies when identifying behaviorally modern populations in the archaeological record; and (2) that elaborating methods for recognizing archaeological indicators of “symbolically mediated behavior” might represent the most reliable pathway to define what constitutes “modern behavior” and identify surviving tangible expression of it in past material culture.
The Evolution of Writing Systems
Authors: de Voogt Alex
Published: March 2021

The evolution of writing systems has occurred in multiple regions of the world starting in the third millennium bce. The first writing systems were largely logographic in nature, but often included syllabic or even consonantal signs. Alphabets and alpha-syllabaries with their small sign inventories developed in the fifteenth century and fourth century bce, respectively. History has shown that logographic, syllabic, and (alpha)syllabic systems all continue to function until today and are even newly developed, especially in sub-Saharan Africa. The administrative function of scripts is neither mandatory nor inevitable and no discernable development of scripts towards smaller sign inventories, less ambiguity or less variation can be generalized.
Artificial Intelligence and Administrative Evil
Authors: Young Matthew M , Himmelreich Johannes , Bullock Justin B , Kim Kyoung-Cheol
Published: March 2021

Artificial intelligence (AI) offers challenges and benefits to the public sector. We present an ethical framework to analyze the effects of AI in public organizations, guide empirical and theoretical research in public administration, and inform practitioner deliberation and decision making on AI adoption. We put forward six propositions on how the use of AI by public organizations may facilitate or prevent unnecessary harm. The framework builds on the theory of administrative evil and contributes to it in two ways. First, we interpret the theory of administrative evil through the lens of agency theory. We examine how the mechanisms stipulated by the former relate to the underlying mechanisms of the latter. Specifically, we highlight how mechanisms of administrative evil can be analyzed as information problems in the form of adverse selection and moral hazard. Second, we describe possible causal pathways of the theory of administrative evil and associate each with a level of analysis: individual (micro), organizational (meso), and cultural (macro). We then develop both descriptive and normative propositions on AI’s potential to increase or decrease the risk of administrative evil. The article hence contributes an institutional and public administration lens to the growing literature on AI safety and value alignment.
In-Group Bias or Out-Group Reluctance? The Interplay of Gender and Religion in Creating Religious Friendship Segregation among Muslim Youth
Authors: Kretschmer David , Leszczensky Lars
Published: March 2021

Even in diverse schools that provide opportunities for interreligious friendships, Muslim youth disproportionally tend to be friends with Muslims rather than non-Muslims. Echoing broader debates about minorities’ self-segregation versus exclusion by majority group members, a key question is whether religious friendship segregation arises because of Muslims’ in-group bias or because of non-Muslims’ reluctance to befriend them. We suggest that the answer differs for Muslim boys and girls. Building on research on interreligious romantic relations and accounts of the lives of young Muslims and other ethno-religious minorities in Western societies, we propose that religious in-group bias is stronger for Muslim girls than for Muslim boys. Conversely, we expect non-Muslim youth to be more open to befriend Muslim girls than Muslim boys. Applying stochastic actor-oriented models of network dynamics to large-scale longitudinal data of friendship networks in German schools, we find that Muslim girls indeed have a strong in-group bias, whereas non-Muslim youth are not reluctant to be friends with them. Muslim boys, by contrast, have a much weaker in-group bias, but non-Muslim youth are less willing to be friends with them rather than with non-Muslims. A simulation analysis demonstrates that these gendered individual-level processes result in comparable aggregate patterns of friendship segregation among Muslim boys and girls. Religious friendship segregation thus arises because Muslim girls tend to self-segregate and non-Muslim youth are less willing to befriend Muslim boys although the latter are open to interreligious friendships. This gendered friendship-making behavior has implications for the larger question of minority social integration.
Osteonecrosis in Adults With Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia: An Unmet Clinical Need
Authors: Kuhlen Michaela , Kunstreich Marina , Gökbuget Nicola
Published: March 2021

Osteonecrosis is a serious complication of antileukemic therapy associated with severe pain and reduced mobility, ultimately leading to joint destruction and significant long-term morbidity. The 5-year cumulative incidence of osteonecrosis ranges from 11% to 20% in adolescents and young adults to 3% to 8% in patients aged 30 years and older. Most symptomatic patients have multiple joints affected, which in turn poses a risk factor for developing severe osteonecrosis. Osteonecrosis has a multifactorial genesis. Treatment-associated risk factors for developing osteonecrosis depend on the therapeutic context including the use of glucocorticosteroids and the simultaneous and/or intensified use of asparaginase (ASP) which may, among others, exert its effect on blood supply to the bone through hypertriglyceridemia, hypercholesterolemia, and hypertension. Allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplantation, bloodstream infections, and genetic factors may additionally impact the risk of osteonecrosis. In this article, the authors used the best available evidence in the literature to develop management recommendations for the use in the context of steroid and asparaginase containing regimens. These considerations may be helpful for similar treatment approaches.
Charles Porter Ellington. 31 December 1952—30 July 2019
Authors: Wootton Robin
Published: March 2021

Charles Ellington graduated at Duke University, North Carolina, and came to Cambridge in 1973 to work for a PhD on insect flight dynamics. He developed novel methodology and software for the kinematic analysis of freely hovering insects and applied them to his own high-speed films of a range of species. He identified five new non-steady-state mechanisms for lift generation, was the first to develop a vortex theory for flapping flight and developed and extended the use of morphometric parameters in calculating the forces and power requirements of flight. He remained in Cambridge, married a colleague, joined the staff of the Department of Zoology, became a fellow of Downing College and continued to work on insect aerodynamics and energetics, publishing on flight muscle efficiency, the factors limiting flight performance and the aerodynamic implications of the origin of insect flight. Building a closed-circuit wind tunnel connected with a sensitive oxygen analyser, he studied with colleagues how the aerodynamics and metabolic power input of bumblebees vary with flight speed, challenging the orthodox theory that this should follow a U-shaped curve. Outstanding among later research was the discovery that hawkmoths, and by implication many other insects, gain high levels of lift by generating a vortex above the leading edge, stabilized by spiralling out along the span—a major focus of animal flight research ever since. His many administrative roles included editorship of theJournal of Experimental Biology. He became a British citizen in 1995, was elected FRS in 1998 and to a chair of animal mechanics in 1999. Awards include the Scientific Medal of the Zoological Society and the University of Cambridge Pilkington Prize for teaching excellence. He was diabetic throughout his adult life, and suffered progressive ill health following a heart attack in 1996. He took early retirement in 2010, lived quietly with his wife and two sons at home near Newmarket, and died in July 2019.
Anne Elizabeth Warner. 25 August 1940—16 May 2012
Authors: Guthrie Sarah
Published: March 2021

Anne Warner applied physiological techniques to developmental biology, elucidating the mechanisms of cell interaction and communication that pattern the early embryo. Through her determination and passion for science, she contributed crucial discoveries in the fields of muscle physiology, cellular differentiation and gap junction communication. She spent the majority of her career at University College London, which became her intellectual home and where she acquired a Royal Society Foulerton Research Professorship, becoming a highly respected and influential figure. In her work on gap junctions, Anne was the first to show that embryonic development and patterning required gap junctions, and that the restriction of junctional communication between cells played a key role in tissue differentiation. Anne excelled in her breadth of vision across research and its interdisciplinary possibilities. In 1998 she established the CoMPLEX Centre for systems biology at UCL, bringing her own group together with scientists from across the STEM subjects to build testable mathematical models of biological systems across multiple scales. Indefatigable in her capacity for leadership and committee work, she assumed an eclectic set of roles across a large span of research organizations and professional societies, and had a lifelong association with the Physiological Society. In 1984 she founded the Microelectrodes course at the Plymouth Marine Biology Laboratory, which has trained generations in the art of electrophysiology and still continues today. With uncompromisingly high standards, she inspired her mentees to be ambitious and fearless, and established postdoctoral fellowships to help the young scientists who followed after her.
m6A methylation potentiates cytosolic dsDNA recognition in a sequence-specific manner
Authors: Balzarolo Melania , Engels Sander , de Jong Anja J. , Franke Katka , van den Berg Timo K. , Gulen Muhammet F. , Ablasser Andrea , Janssen Edith M. , van Steensel Bas , Wolkers Monika C.
Published: March 2021

Nucleic acid sensing through pattern recognition receptors is critical for immune
recognition of microbial infections. Microbial DNA is frequently methylated at
the N
6
position of adenines (m6A), a modification that is rare in
mammalian host DNA. We show here how that m6A methylation of
5′-GATC-3′ motifs augments the immunogenicity of synthetic
double-stranded (ds)DNA in murine macrophages and dendritic cells. Transfection
with m6A-methylated DNA increased the expression of the activation markers CD69
and CD86, and of
Ifnβ
,
iNos
and
Cxcl10
mRNA. Similar to unmethylated cytosolic dsDNA,
recognition of m6A DNA occurs independently of TLR and RIG-I signalling, but
requires the two key mediators of cytosolic DNA sensing, STING and cGAS.
Intriguingly, the response to m6A DNA is sequence-specific. m6A is
immunostimulatory in some motifs, but immunosuppressive in others, a feature
that is conserved between mouse and human macrophages. In conclusion, epigenetic
alterations of DNA depend on the context of the sequence and are differentially
perceived by innate cells, a feature that could potentially be used for the
design of immune-modulating therapeutics.
Targeted helping and cooperation in zoo-living chimpanzees and bonobos
Authors: Nolte Suska , Call Josep
Published: March 2021

Directly comparing the prosocial behaviour of our two closest living relatives, bonobos and chimpanzees, is essential to deepening our understanding of the evolution of human prosociality. We examined whether helpers of six dyads of chimpanzees and bonobos transferred tools to a conspecific. In the experiment ‘Helping’, transferring a tool did not benefit the helper, while in the experiment ‘Cooperation’, the helper only obtained a reward by transferring the correct tool. Chimpanzees did not share tools with conspecifics in either experiment, except for a mother–daughter pair, where the mother shared a tool twice in the experiment ‘Helping’. By contrast, all female–female bonobo dyads sometimes transferred a tool even without benefit. When helpers received an incentive, we found consistent transfers in all female–female bonobo dyads but none in male–female dyads. Even though reaching by the bonobo receivers increased the likelihood that a transfer occurred, we found no significant species difference in whether receivers reached to obtain tools. Thus, receivers' behaviour did not explain the lack of transfers from chimpanzee helpers. This study supports the notion that bonobos might have a greater ability to understand social problems and the collaborative nature of such tasks.
Low sperm to egg ratio required for successfulin vitrofertilization in a pair-spawning teleost, Senegalese sole (Solea senegalensis)
Authors: Ramos-Júdez Sandra , González-López Wendy Ángela , Huayanay Ostos Jhons , Cota Mamani Noemí , Marrero Alemán Carlos , Beirão José , Duncan Neil
Published: March 2021

Cultured Senegalese sole (Solea senegalensis) breeders fail to spawn fertilized eggs. The implantation of large-scalein vitrofertilization protocols, to solve this problem, has been frustrated by low production of poor quality sperm. Cultured females were induced to ovulate with a 5 µg kg−1single injection of gonadotropin-releasing hormone agonist (GnRHa) and viable eggs (82.6 ± 9.2% fertilization) were stripped 41:57 ± 1:46 h after the injection. Sperm was collected from cultured males, diluted in modified Leibovitz and used fresh to fertilize the eggs. Males were not treated with hormones. A nonlinear regression, an exponential rise to a maximum (R= 0.93,p< 0.0001) described the number of motile spermatozoa required to fertilize a viable egg and 1617 motile spermatozoa were sufficient to fertilize 99 ± 12% (±95% CI) of viable eggs. Similar, spermatozoa egg−1ratios of 592 ± 611 motile spermatozoa egg−1were used in large-scalein vitrofertilizations (190 512 ± 38 471 eggs). The sperm from a single male (145 ± 50 µl or 8.0 ± 6.8 × 108spermatozoa) was used to fertilize the eggs. The mean hatching rate was 70 ± 14% to provide 131 540 ± 34 448 larvae per fertilization. The viability of unfertilized eggs stored at room temperature decreased gradually, and the sooner eggs were fertilized after stripping, the higher the viability of the eggs. The collection of sperm directly into a syringe containing modified Leibovitz significantly increased the percentage of motile spermatozoa (33.4 ± 12.2%) compared with other collection methods. The spz egg−1ratios for Senegalese sole were at the lower end of ratios required for fish. Senegalese sole have a pair-spawning reproductive behaviour characterized by gamete fertilization in close proximity with no sperm competition. The provision of a large-scalein vitrofertilization protocol (200 µl of sperm per 100 ml of eggs) will enable the industry to operate sustainably and implement breeding programmes to improve production.
The pre-exponential voltage-exponent as a sensitive test parameter for field emission theories
Authors: Forbes R. G. , Popov E. O. , Kolosko A. G. , Filippov S. V.
Published: March 2021

For field electron emission (FE), an empirical equation for measured current
I
m
as a function of measured voltage
V
m
has the form
I
m
=
CV
m

k

exp[–
B
/
V
m
], where
B
is a constant and
C
and
k
are constants or vary weakly with
V
m
. Values for
k
can be extracted (i) from simulations based on some specific FE theory, and in principle (ii) from current–voltage measurements of sufficiently high quality. This paper shows that a comparison of theoretically derived and experimentally derived
k-
values could provide a sensitive and useful tool for comparing FE theory and experiment, and for choosing between alternative theories. Existing methods of extracting
k
-values from experimental or simulated current–voltage data are discussed, including a modernized ‘least residual’ method, and existing knowledge concerning
k
-values is summarized. Exploratory simulations are reported. Where an analytical result for
k
is independently known, this value is reliably extracted. More generally, extracted
k
-values are sensitive to details of the emission theory used, but also depend on assumed emitter shape; these two influences will need to be disentangled by future research, and a range of emitter shapes will need examination. Other procedural conclusions are reported. Some scientific issues that this new tool may eventually be able to help investigate are indicated.
A novel sodium-fluorescent crystal
Authors: Ma Yunsu , Liu Yongjie , Wang Yuan , Zhang Fan , Yang Dongzhi
Published: March 2021

In this work, a novel sodium-fluorescent crystal (Na-FS) was synthesized from 4-dimethylaminobenzoic acid and sodium hydroxide by one-pot hydrothermal method. The structure and conformation of Na-FS were confirmed by single-crystal X-ray diffraction and scanning electron microscope, and the optical properties were studied by fluorescence spectrometer. The results showed that: Na-FS was a triclinic crystal, space group was P-1, cell parametersa,bandcwere 10.5113(3), 15.9198(5) and 15.9560(5) Å, respectively, and the number of independent atomsZin a structure cell was two. Additionally, Na-FS has a blue fluorescence emission (around 360 nm under excited at the range of 230–300 nm) with great photostability and photobleaching resistance, and the quantum yield of Na-FS is 30.58%.
Girding the loins? Direct evidence of the use of a medieval English parchment birthing girdle from biomolecular analysis
Authors: Fiddyment Sarah , Goodison Natalie J. , Brenner Elma , Signorello Stefania , Price Kierri , Collins Matthew J.
Published: March 2021

In this paper, we describe palaeoproteomic evidence obtained from a stained medieval birth girdle using a previously developed dry non-invasive sampling technique. The parchment birth girdle studied (Wellcome Collection Western MS. 632) was made in England in the late fifteenth century and was thought to be used by pregnant women while giving birth. We were able to extract both human and non-human peptides from the manuscript, including evidence for the use of honey, cereals, ovicaprine milk and legumes. In addition, a large number of human peptides were detected on the birth roll, many of which are found in cervico-vaginal fluid. This suggests that the birth roll was actively used during childbirth. This study is, to our knowledge, the first to extract and analyse non-collagenous peptides from a birth girdle using this sampling method and demonstrates the potential of this type of analysis for stained manuscripts, providing direct biomolecular evidence for active use.
Harvest strategies for the elimination of low prevalence wildlife diseases
Authors: Mysterud Atle , Viljugrein Hildegunn , Rolandsen Christer M. , Belsare Aniruddha V.
Published: March 2021

The intensive harvesting of hosts is often the only practicable strategy for controlling emerging wildlife diseases. Several harvesting approaches have been explored theoretically with the objective of lowering transmission rates, decreasing the transmission period or specifically targeting spatial disease clusters or high-risk demographic groups. Here, we present a novel model-based approach to evaluate alternative harvest regimes, in terms of demographic composition and rates, intended to increase the probability to remove all infected individuals in the population during the early phase of an outbreak. We tested the utility of the method for the elimination of chronic wasting disease based on empirical data for reindeer (Rangifer tarandus) in Norway, in populations with (Nordfjella) and without (Hardangervidda) knowledge about exact disease prevalence and population abundance. Low and medium harvest intensities were unsuccessful in eliminating the disease, even at low prevalence. High-intensity harvesting had a high likelihood of eliminating the disease, but probability was strongly influenced by the disease prevalence. We suggest that the uncertainty about disease prevalence can be mitigated by using an adaptive management approach: forecast from models after each harvest season with updated data, derive prevalence estimates and forecast further harvesting. We identified the problems arising from disease surveillance with large fluctuations in harvesting pressure and hence sample sizes. The elimination method may be suitable for pathogens that cause long-lasting infections and with slow epidemic growth, but the method should only be attempted if there is a low risk of reinfection, either by a new disease introduction event (e.g. dispersing hosts) or due to environmental reservoirs. Our simulations highlighted the short time window when such a strategy is likely to be successful before approaching near complete eradication of the population.
Mesocarnivore community structuring in the presence of Africa's apex predator
Authors: Curveira-Santos Gonçalo , Sutherland Chris , Tenan Simone , Fernández-Chacón Albert , Mann Gareth K. H. , Pitman Ross T. , Swanepoel Lourens H.
Published: March 2021

Apex predator reintroductions have proliferated across southern Africa, yet their ecological effects and proposed umbrella benefits of associated management lack empirical evaluations. Despite a rich theory on top-down ecosystem regulation via mesopredator suppression, a knowledge gap exists relating to the influence of lions (
Panthera leo
) over Africa's diverse mesocarnivore (less than 20 kg) communities. We investigate how geographical variation in mesocarnivore community richness and occupancy across South African reserves is associated with the presence of lions. An interesting duality emerged: lion reserves held more mesocarnivore-rich communities, yet mesocarnivore occupancy rates and evenness-weighted diversity were lower in the presence of lions. Human population density in the reserve surroundings had a similarly ubiquitous negative effect on mesocarnivore occupancy. The positive association between species richness and lion presence corroborated the umbrella species concept but translated into small differences in community size. Distributional contractions of mesocarnivore species within lion reserves, and potentially corresponding numerical reductions, suggest within-community mesopredator suppression by lions, probably as a result of lethal encounters and responses to a landscape of fear. Our findings offer empirical support for the theoretical understanding of processes underpinning carnivore community assembly and are of conservation relevance under current large-predator orientated management and conservation paradigms.
Scaling up biodiversity–ecosystem functioning relationships: the role of environmental heterogeneity in space and time
Authors: Thompson Patrick L. , Kéfi Sonia , Zelnik Yuval R. , Dee Laura E. , Wang Shaopeng , de Mazancourt Claire , Loreau Michel , Gonzalez Andrew
Published: March 2021

The biodiversity and ecosystem functioning (BEF) relationship is expected to be scale-dependent. The autocorrelation of environmental heterogeneity is hypothesized to explain this scale dependence because it influences how quickly biodiversity accumulates over space or time. However, this link has yet to be demonstrated in a formal model. Here, we use a Lotka–Volterra competition model to simulate community dynamics when environmental conditions vary across either space or time. Species differ in their optimal environmental conditions, which results in turnover in community composition. We vary biodiversity by modelling communities with different sized regional species pools and ask how the amount of biomass per unit area depends on the number of species present, and the spatial or temporal scale at which it is measured. We find that more biodiversity is required to maintain functioning at larger temporal and spatial scales. The number of species required increases quickly when environmental autocorrelation is low, and slowly when autocorrelation is high. Both spatial and temporal environmental heterogeneity lead to scale dependence in BEF, but autocorrelation has larger impacts when environmental change is temporal. These findings show how the biodiversity required to maintain functioning is expected to increase over space and time.
Epidemiological and evolutionary consequences of periodicity in treatment coverage
Authors: Walter Alicia , Lion Sébastien
Published: March 2021

Host heterogeneity is a key driver of host–pathogen dynamics. In particular, the use of treatments against infectious diseases creates variation in quality among hosts, which can have both epidemiological and evolutionary consequences. We present a general theoretical model to highlight the consequences of different imperfect treatments on pathogen prevalence and evolution. These treatments differ in their action on host and pathogen traits. In contrast with previous studies, we assume that treatment coverage can vary in time, as in seasonal or pulsed treatment strategies. We show that periodic treatment strategies can limit both disease spread and virulence evolution, depending on the type of treatment. We also introduce a new method to analytically calculate the selection gradient in periodic environments, which allows our predictions to be interpreted using the concept of reproductive value, and can be applied more generally to analyse eco-evolutionary dynamics in class-structured populations and fluctuating environments.
Hard to catch: experimental evidence supports evasive mimicry
Authors: Páez Erika , Valkonen Janne K. , Willmott Keith R. , Matos-Maraví Pável , Elias Marianne , Mappes Johanna
Published: March 2021

Most research on aposematism has focused on chemically defended prey, but the signalling difficulty of capture remains poorly explored. Similar to classical Batesian and Müllerian mimicry related to distastefulness, such ‘evasive aposematism' may also lead to convergence in warning colours, known as evasive mimicry. A prime candidate group for evasive mimicry areAdelphabutterflies, which are agile insects and show remarkable colour pattern convergence. We tested the ability of naive blue tits to learn to avoid and generalizeAdelphawing patterns associated with the difficulty of capture and compared their response to that of birds that learned to associate the same wing patterns with distastefulness. Birds learned to avoid all wing patterns tested and generalized their aversion to other prey to some extent, but learning was faster with evasive prey compared to distasteful prey. Our results on generalization agree with longstanding observations of striking convergence in wing colour patterns amongAdelphaspecies, since, in our experiments, perfect mimics of evasive and distasteful models were always protected during generalization and suffered the lowest attack rate. Moreover, generalization on evasive prey was broader compared to that on distasteful prey. Our results suggest that being hard to catch may deter predators at least as effectively as distastefulness. This study provides empirical evidence for evasive mimicry, a potentially widespread but poorly understood form of morphological convergence driven by predator selection.