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Direct radiocarbon (¹⁴C) analysis of methane using positive ion mass spectrometry
Full text linkThe reduction of anthropogenic methane emissions is a priority due to its potent global warming potential. Radiocarbon (¹⁴C) can distinguish between methane from natural biogenic and fossil fuel sources, however, the analysis of methane ¹⁴C by conventional accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) techniques is demanding. At SUERC, a prototype positive ion mass spectrometer (PIMS) is set up to directly analyze ¹⁴C in methane with minimal sample preparation. Methane gas was mixed with a stoichiometric amount of oxygen in an open split and admitted directly into the source. A series of modern, blank and unknown methane samples were clearly distinguishable by their ¹⁴C/1¹³C raw ratios. The collision cell gas flowrate was then increased to lower the limit of detection. We obtained a corrected ¹⁴C/¹³C raw ratio of less than 2 × 10⁻¹³ for blank fossil methane which corresponds to a radiocarbon age greater than 50 kyr. Modern biogenic methane had a measured ¹⁴C/¹³C raw ratio approaching 1 × 10⁻¹⁰ which is consistent with the nominal value of contemporary atmospheric methane. These first results indicate that PIMS has the potential to be a valuable new analytical technique for screening the ¹⁴C content of biogas and in climate research studies
Efficient feature aggregation and scale-aware regression for monocular 3-D object detection
Full text linkMonocular 3D object detection has received considerable attention for its simplicity and low cost. Existing
methods typically follow conventional 2D detection paradigms,
first locating object centers and then predicting 3D attributes
via neighboring features. However, these approaches mainly
focus on local information, which may limit the model’s global
context awareness and result in missed detections, as the global
context provides semantic and spatial dependencies essential for
detecting small objects in cluttered or occluded environments.
In addition, due to large variation in object scales across
different scenes and depths, inaccurate receptive fields often
lead to background noise and degraded feature representation.
To address these issues, we introduce MonoASRH, a novel
monocular 3D detection framework composed of Efficient Hybrid
Feature Aggregation Module (EH-FAM) and Adaptive ScaleAware 3D Regression Head (ASRH). Specifically, EH-FAM
employs multi-head attention with a global receptive field to
extract semantic features and leverages lightweight convolutional
modules to efficiently aggregate visual features across different
scales, enhancing small-scale object detection. The ASRH encodes
2D bounding box dimensions and then fuses scale features with
the semantic features aggregated by EH-FAM through a scalesemantic feature fusion module. The scale-semantic feature fusion
module guides ASRH in learning dynamic receptive field offsets,
incorporating scale information into 3D position prediction for
better scale-awareness. Extensive experiments on the KITTI and
Waymo datasets demonstrate that MonoASRH achieves state of-the-art performance
Consensus about the European Union? Understanding the views of citizens and political parties
Full text linkThis thematic issue provides evidence that reflects some recent developments in the study of consensus toward the EU. It analyses to what extent citizens and political parties share a consensus about the EU and how this consensus is manifested, constituted, and mobilized. The thematic issue makes two contributions to the literature: it maps the contours of consensus and disagreement across EU member states and candidate countries and explains the degree of convergence in people’s attitudes and party positions about key European values, principles, and practices. All these show that consensus on the EU is a dynamic, multi-level process, contingent on institutional contexts, political competition, socio-economic conditions, and identity politics
The implication of DLT and blockchain: legal and financial aspects
No full textAs a representative of distributed ledger technology (DLT), blockchain holds enormous potential to reform cyberspace architecture by revolutionizing information storage, circulation, and exchange through decentralization, transparency, and de-identification. This blockchain-driven information revolution has significant implications for legal and financial frameworks, providing tools for brokerage, finance, leg al enforcement, and regulation. Ordinary participants can become traders, miners, retailers, and customers simultaneously, breaking the market barriers and reducing the information gap within the community, as all records are visible to all participants. This study explores the implications of the blockchain-driven information revolution from legal and financial perspectives. It first investigates the legal implications of blockchain, examining the notion of trust and a new understanding of electronic evidence and the free flow of data. The study then uses blockchain i n finance as a case study to illustrate its practical applications, discussing emerging financial models, corporate governance, sharing mechanisms, and the influence of blockchain on central banks and digital currencies. The research concludes that blockchain is much more than a technology; it represents a community, acting as a source of trust and a new architecture for cyberspace
Optimizing remanent magnetization in magnetorheological elastomers under external permanent magnet actuation
Full text linkThe magneto-mechanical coupling governing the response of magnetorheological elastomers (MREs) requires computational tools for their design and optimization. The existing frameworks are customarily based on ideal boundary value problems that optimize MREs under ideal, non-realistic homogeneous magnetic sources. We present an approach that addresses these limitations by solving strongly coupled magneto-mechanical partial differential equations within the optimization loop, explicitly accounting for external permanent magnets and their interaction with the deformable elastomer. The approach combines a coupled magneto-elastic boundary value problem with an auxiliary mesh-motion problem, which allows the free-space to deform consistently with the MRE geometry. The direction of the remanent magnetization in the MRE is represented by continuous design fields, updated through a gradient-based optimizer with adjoint sensitivities and filtering. A series of benchmark problems demonstrate the framework: robustness with respect to the initial guess; symmetry of the solution under reversed polarity; influence of magnet placement; transition between external-field and self-interaction dominated actuation; and adaptation to opposite objectives in a pull-push actuator. The results highlight how the explicit modeling of the free-space and the magnetic source leads to robust and physically consistent designs, providing a foundation for advanced MRE-based actuators
ExAMPLER Community Report
Full text linkPandemic, war, cost of living crisis, climate emergency, increased pressures on key services, improving public health. These are just a few of the societal issues that have arisen in the past few years. Governments, national agencies etc do not currently have the tools to formulate evidence-driven policy on the fly (as shown by the UK response to Covid). This is despite there being an
abundance in data, theory, methodological innovations and advances in
computational processing power to facilitate large complex models being run at scale in real time. If all these essential materials are in place, what other barriers need to be overcome within computational social science to translate robust small scale ‘desktop’ models onto large scale computing for real-time rapid response modelling?
The ExAMPLER (Exascale agent-based modelling for policy evaluation in real-time) project was an 18 month project (funded by UKRI) that has worked within the agent-based social simulation (ABSS) community to:
i) ii) identify community visions of the opportunities and barriers (in the
form of potential new modelling capabilities, novel use cases,
capacity requirements and potential threats) associated with
implementing exascale ABSS (Hare et al., 2024); and
draft a roadmap (Milton et al., 2025), based on these visions, that
further examines the (a) barriers, opportunities and (b) steps that
need to be realised for the ABSS community to reap the benefits of
exascale computing
From Minneapolis to Toronto and Bogotá, cities showcase new ways to address crises
Full text linkNo abstract available
Unveiling filariid infections in dogs living in the Western Amazon, Brazil
No full textDirofilaria immitis and Dirofilaria repens, zoonotic vector-borne helminths of the family Onchocercidae, primarily cause cardiopulmonary and subcutaneous dirofilariosis in dogs, respectively. In the Western Amazon region of Brazil, information on the prevalence of Dirofilaria spp. remains limited, despite environmental conditions such as deforestation, high humidity, and a growing population of stray dogs and cats that may favor vector expansion and parasite transmission. However, the underuse of molecular tools may contribute to both low detection and misidentification of filariid species. Thus, this study investigated the prevalence of filariids in dogs from Rio Branco, Acre, Western Amazon, using a multi-testing diagnostic approach, including a mean of microscopic and molecular tools. A total of 444 owned dogs were screened for microfilariae (mff) using modified Knott’s and Woo tests. A total of 59 (13.29%) dogs were positive for mff at the microscopic examination, with 47 and 23 dogs positive by the modified Knott’s test and the Woo test, respectively. All microfilaremia-positive samples were subsequently analysed by duplex qPCR for the simultaneous detection of D. immitis and D. repens. Samples negative by qPCR were further examined by conventional PCR targeting the 12S rRNA gene, followed by Sanger sequencing. Molecular analyses confirmed Acanthocheilonema reconditum in 44.10% of microfilaremic dogs and D. immitis in 8.50%. These findings demonstrate the circulation of filarial species with zoonotic potential in the Western Amazon and underscore the need for strengthened epidemiological surveillance. Improved monitoring may support early detection and the implementation of preventive strategies in areas previously considered non-endemic
Thriving on poor soil? People’s attitudes towards deliberation in transition countries
Full text linkDemand for and participation in deliberative practices have often been studied in democratic settings where they were available or took place. However, there is limited information about what shapes people’s attitudes towards deliberative practices in countries that struggle with representative democracy and where deliberation is not available. This article addresses these gaps in the literature and aims to explain why people in the Republic of Moldova support deliberative practices and would engage with them should they happen in their country. We draw on individual data from a survey conducted in November 2024 on a national representative sample. We isolate baseline orientations towards deliberation and find that most Moldovans have positive views about deliberation, but many support deliberation strongly without striving to engage. Support for deliberation is influenced by area of residence and gender, while the willingness to engage is the result of people’s attitudes towards politics and decision-making
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