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Not recognizing the political:analysing Franco’s long dictatorship through a genealogy of its prisoners
Get PDFAnimal-mediated seed dispersal and the demo-genetic configuration across plant colonization gradients
Get PDF1.Ecologists have long recognized that seed dispersal mutualisms trigger natural regeneration and range expansion of animal-dispersed trees. Yet we lack empirical studies addressing whether frugivore activity counteracts influences founder effects, which reduce genetic diversity at the colonization front of expanding populations. 2.Here we evaluate the contribution, from both demographic and genetic perspectives, of animal frugivores dispersing seeds across an expansion gradient. We used DNA barcoding for frugivores identification and highly polymorphic genetic markers (SSRs) for maternal analysis of juniper seeds to investigate how (1) stand maturity, (2) microhabitat types, and (3) foraging patterns shape the distribution of the maternal progenies along this gradient. 3.We expect a reduced seed rain density and low numbers of source trees contributing to the seed rain at the colonization front, with limited availability of local fruiting trees. We also anticipated that larger frugivore species would promote maternally rich seed rain due to their capability to mix progenies in their stomachs and move further distances across the landscape. 4.Contrary to our expectations, we found that all identified frugivores produced dense and genetically diverse seed rains across the expansion gradient, even at the colonization front characterized by the scarcity of local fruiting trees.Contrary to our expectations, we found that frugivores generated dense, genetically diverse seed rains across the entire expansion gradient, even at the colonization front with a scarcity of local fruiting trees. 5.Our findings shed light on the fundamental and applied implications of plant-frugivore interactions in shaping highly diverse second-growth forests. These results emphasize the necessity of preserving plant-animal mutualistic interactions to ensure the persistence and expansion of natural tree populations, particularly in formerly fragmented landscapes
Unity in Diversity:Exploring the effect of oneness with humanity on the willingness to donate to Syrian and Ukrainian refugees
Get PDFA sense of oneness with another person or group implies a sense of interconnectedness and overlap with that other, and perceived oneness has been found to foster willingness to help others in need. Despite its potential importance, little empirical research has explored the influence of sense of oneness on attitudes and behaviours toward refugees. This work addresses the question of whether encouraging a sense of oneness with all humanity can increase people’s perceived oneness with specific refugee outgroups and, through this, willingness to donate to refugees to help them. People might often be reluctant to see overlap between themselves and outgroups, but perceived oneness with outgroups should increase if perceived oneness with all of humanity is salient. This means that increasing perceived oneness with all of humanity could potentially be a powerful lever to increase perceived oneness with refugees, and willingness to help them. In one exploratory (N = 165) and one preregistered confirmatory experimental study (N = 180), we show that individuals primed with the idea of oneness with all humanity reported heightened oneness with refugees, and this in turn predicted higher willingness to donate to both Syrian and Ukrainian refugees
Efficient Premature Ventricular Contraction Detection Based on Network Dynamics Features
Get PDFAutomatic detection of premature ventricular contractions (PVCs) is essential for early identification of cardiovascular abnormalities and reduction of clinical workload. As the most prevalent arrhythmia, PVCs can cause cardiac failure or sudden death. The difficulty resides in extracting features that effectively reflect the electrocardiogram (ECG) signals. Transition networks (TN), which represent the transition relationships between various phases of a time series, are advantageous for capturing temporal dynamics. Therefore, in order to recognize PVCs, each heartbeat was firstly split into serval segments; then their statistical properties were calculated for the sequence construction; finally, network topology related features were extracted from TN constructed by these sequences of statistical properties, and input into decision trees-based Gentleboost for PVC recognition. The algorithm was trained on MIT-BIH arrhythmia database (MIT-BIH-AR), and tested on St. Petersburg Institute of Cardiological Technics 12-lead arrhythmia database (INCART), wearable ECG database (WECG), and noise stress test database by four evaluation metrics: sensitivity, positive predictivity, F1-score (F1) and area under the curve (AUC). The proposed algorithm achieved an average F1 of 0.9784 and AUC of 0.9975 on MIT-BIH-AR, and proved good generalization ability on INCART and WECG with F1=0.9633 and 0.9467, AUC=0.9887 and 0.9755, respectively. The algorithm also exhibited robustness and noise immunity as evidenced by tests on sensitivity of R-wave peak offset and noise, and real-world daily life conditions. Overall, the proposed PVC detection algorithm based on TN theory offered high classification accuracy, strong robustness, and good generalization ability, with great potential for wearable mobile applications
Does urbanisation lead to parallel demographic shifts across the world in a cosmopolitan plant?
Get PDFUrbanisation is occurring globally, leading to dramatic environmental changes that are altering the ecology and evolution of species. In particular, the expansion of human infrastructure and the loss and fragmentation of natural habitats in cities is predicted to increase genetic drift and reduce gene flow by reducing the size and connectivity of populations. Alternatively, the ‘urban facilitation model’ suggests that some species will have greater gene flow into and within cities leading to higher diversity and lower differentiation in urban populations. These alternative hypotheses have not been contrasted across multiple cities. Here, we used the genomic data from the GLobal Urban Evolution project (GLUE), to study the effects of urbanisation on non-adaptive evolutionary processes of white clover (Trifolium repens) at a global scale. We found that white clover populations presented high genetic diversity and no evidence of reduced Ne linked to urbanisation. On the contrary, we found that urban populations were less likely to experience a recent decrease in effective population size than rural ones. In addition, we found little genetic structure among populations both globally and between urban and rural populations, which showed extensive gene flow between habitats. Interestingly, white clover displayed overall higher gene flow within urban areas than within rural habitats. Our study provides the largest comprehensive test of the demographic effects of urbanisation. Our results contrast with the common perception that heavily altered and fragmented urban environments will reduce the effective population size and genetic diversity of populations and contribute to their isolation
Using Social Media to Develop the Capacity and Diversity of the Runnymede Neighbourhood Watch Scheme
Get PDFA Central Limit Framework for Ring-LWE Decryption
Get PDFThis paper develops Central Limit arguments for analysing the noise in ciphertexts in two homomorphic encryption schemes that are based on Ring-LWE. The first main contribution of this paper is to present and evaluate an average-case noise analysis for the BGV scheme. Our approach relies on the recent work of Costache et al. (SAC 2023) that gives the approximation of a polynomial product as a multivariate Normal distribution. We show how this result can be applied in the BGV context and evaluate its efficacy. We find this average-case approach can much more closely model the noise growth in BGV implementations than prior approaches, but in some cases it can also underestimate the practical noise growth. Our second main contribution is to develop a Central Limit framework to analyse the noise growth in the homomorphic Ring-LWE cryptosystem of Lyubashevsky, Peikert and Regev (Eurocrypt 2013, full version). Our approach is very general: apart from finite variance, no assumption on the distribution of the noise is required (in particular, the noise need not be subgaussian). We show that our approach leads to tighter bounds for the probability of decryption failure than those of prior work
The Decolonial Turn in Kurdish Studies:An Introduction
Get PDFThis special‐issue introduction highlights the burgeoning movement toward decolonizing Kurdish studies, outlining its challenges and opportunities within the academic landscape. Central to the authors’ discussion is the concept of the coloniality of power, which offers a framework for understanding the enduring oppression faced by Kurds within the context of ongoing colonial domination in the Middle East. The introduction delves into themes of historical erasure and academic marginalization, shedding light on the struggle for recognition within not only national and regional variants of area studies such as Turkish, Arab, Iranian, and Middle East studies but also the Euro‐American academy more broadly. Furthermore, the introduction underlines the potential of decolonial methodologies in reshaping the study of Kurds and Kurdistan, emphasizing the significance of amplifying voices from the ground, including those of Kurdish intellectuals, activists, and politicians. Through critical reflexivity and engagement with diverse perspectives, the editors of this special issue call for a reimagining of Kurdish studies that prioritizes epistemic decolonization, centering the experiences and agency of Kurdish communities
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