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Evidence of problem-solving in lizards using a citizen science approach
Get PDFProblem-solving has been widely documented in mammals and birds, but comparatively few studies have investigated it in reptiles. Positive findings have been reported in some species, but the abilities of many others remain unexplored. Citizen science approaches may be particularly useful for the study of reptile problem-solving (and cognition more broadly) as they could allow access to a range of previously untested species without straining resources. Here, we investigated the problem-solving capabilities of 18 pet lizards of five previously untested species via video calls with their owners in their home environment. Six of the lizards (3 bearded dragons, 2 starred agamas and 1 leopard gecko) progressed from training to a problem-solving test wherein they needed to remove a lid from a dish to obtain a food reward. One starred agama and one bearded dragon successfully removed the lid at test, although it was unclear whether the bearded dragon did so to obtain the food reward. The other subjects were unsuccessful: they either did not pass the training or did not make any attempts to solve the test. The clear success of the starred agama calls for further research into this species’ cognitive capabilities. The advantages and limitations of using this novel approach to testing are discussed with the aim of guiding future citizen science-based studies with reptiles.Peer reviewe
'When East meets West' : Emil Orlik, Helen Hyde, Elizabeth Keith, and Western printmakers in East Asia in the early twentieth century
No full textDuring the initial half of the twentieth century, several Western artists created print works influenced by ukiyo-e in East Asia. These artists came from diverse backgrounds and were driven by a variety of motivations. However, they shared a loose connection through their exploration of similar themes and artistic mediums within the same historical period and geographical context. This dissertation aims to examine this artistic trend and collectively explore the emergence and evolution of these artists.
Drawing upon a wealth of archival sources, this thesis reconstructs their artistic journeys and endeavors while firmly situating them within their historical context. Specifically, this study delves into the lives and works of three selected artists: Emil Orlik, Helen Hyde, and Elizabeth Keith. These artists represent distinct phases of emergence, commercial success, and eventual decline. Each chapter is dedicated to one of these artists, focusing on their respective periods of artistic activity. Moreover, the thesis critically evaluates how their work intersected with Western-centric perspectives that romanticized East Asia.
In essence, this dissertation seeks to untangle the intricate interplay between Western artists, East Asian artistic traditions, and the socio-cultural milieu of the early twentieth century. It aspires to offer a comprehensive and critical analysis of these artists' contributions while shedding light on the broader implications of their representations of East Asia within the framework of Orientalism
A further twist to helicity
Get PDFIn fluid dynamics, helicity measures the correlation between velocity and its curl, vorticity, over a spatial volume. Under ‘ideal’ conditions (vanishing viscosity and either homogeneneous density or when pressure may be regarded as a function of density alone), helicity is a topological invariant closely related to the knottedness of vortex lines (Moffatt 1969 J. Fluid Mech. 35 (1), 117–129). Helicity is conserved following a material volume for compact vorticity distributions, i.e. when the vorticity field is tangent to the surface of the volume. There is a related helicity invariant in ideal magnetohydrodynamics involving the correlation between the magnetic potential and its curl, the magnetic field. Helicity is a fragile invariant in the sense that relaxing any one of the ideal conditions results in non-conservation. Unlike energy and enstrophy (mean-square vorticity), helicity is not positive (or sign) definite. Viscous diffusion can create both positive and negative helicity when vortex lines reconnect, something which is topologically forbidden in an ideal fluid where vortex lines move as material curves. Moreover, variable density or more generally compressibility destroys conservation and weakens the association between helicity and vortex-line topology. Furthermore, in compressible flows, the velocity field is not entirely determined from the vorticity field. A recent paper by Boutros & Gibbon (2025) J. Fluid Mech. in this journal explains how one can extend the definition of helicity to control and limit the non-conservation of helicity. This offers a promising way forward in using helicity to characterise flow properties in computational studies of high Reynolds number flows.Peer reviewe
East Asia at war : Mobilization, women, refugees and mobility
Get PDFMany of today’s conflicts and tensions can be rooted in history. Similarly, how these conflicts and tensions can be resolved or sustained is rooted in how history is taught and learnt at schools and universities, perceived in public spaces and addressed in political discourses. This is the case in many parts of the world, such as Northeast Asia, where history is central in political and civil agendas to address territorial disputes, contested memorializations and agonistic historical narratives and interpretations. At the same time, history education has changed considerably in the last few years, especially with the advancement of digital tools. In this context, the use of textual, visual, and oral sources in school classrooms in many parts of the world has already become an essential part of teaching history. By critically engaging with historical sources, students learn about the facts while improving their understanding of the complexity of causes and effects, how perspectives change over time, and how history is “made.” In turn, they enhance their skills to critically engage with disinformation on traditional news sources and social media. However, reading a source for evidence demands a different approach than reading a source for information. To use them well, they should be set within their historical contexts, and students should make inferences from them to help them understand what was happening when they were created. For this, throughout the sourcebook, sources are interrelated with brief explanations of when they were created, by whom and possible motivations behind them. The sourcebook is the result of an ongoing collaboration between EuroClio and the Northeast Asian Foundation. The collaboration started in 2016 to sustain a comprehensive knowledge-sharing between experts in Europe and Northeast Asia on the needs, approach, impact and sustainability of cross-border history education initiatives, such as joint history textbooks and research. Such cross-border initiatives aim to reduce tensions over history and deepen mutual understanding and awareness of issues related to common history
Progress in historical geography II : desperately seeking connections (again) – the mendacious, the micrological, and the mercurial
Get PDFHistorical geography’s core concern with connections between the past and present is currently expressed in an age marked by a desperate search for connections. The report considers how historical geography is linked to this scene through various ‘return of history’ ripostes and via the travails of what is described as its ‘pluriverse’. Three problematics are then identified: ‘the mendacious’ (about the truth of history); ‘the micrological’ (concern with biography and ‘small things’); and ‘the mercurial’ (regarding structural problems of violence and hope). Much for the subdiscipline now hinges on how the words freedom, truth, violence, and hope are treated.Peer reviewe
Atenas ProgramPioneer Brazilian service of outpatient care by telemedicine for women with miscarriage or incomplete abortion
Get PDFThe criminalization of abortion and restricted access to misoprostol in Brazil force women to seek unsafe methods to terminate a pregnancy. Hospital care for miscarriage or abortion is standard. In contrast, telemedicine for the medical management of miscarriage and abortion is the gold standard of care internationally. This article presents the Atenas Program ‒ an unprecedented initiative for first trimester abortion/miscarriage care, aiming at a humanized out-of-hospital service based on telephone monitoring by nurses, allowing women to choose the method of uterine evacuation (expectant, medical or surgical). For this purpose, an ethnographic research was carried out in a northeastern public maternity hospital, between 2014 and 2021. In the context of structural and conjunctural difficulties, among the 723 Atenas participants, 73,6% dispensed with hospital admission for miscarriage and abortion resolution: 58,4% occurred spontaneously and 15,2% through hospital misoprostol. No complications were registered. Telephone monitoring by nurses provided the basis for continuity of individualized care for this invisibilized public. Atenas Program, initiative of a SUS institution run without external financial support, represents an advance in humanized care for women with miscarriage and abortion. It should be extended to the entire public health network, to expand access to rounded and humanized care for abortion and miscarriage.Peer reviewe
Maternal gregariousness and female audience effects mediate mother–infant proximity in wild chimpanzees
Get PDFFunding: The study was funded by the European Research Council project grant (grant agreement number: 679787).In animal species with parental care, maintaining offspring–carer proximity is an important adaptation protecting offspring from threats such as predation and conspecific aggression, but doing so may limit other social opportunities. Investigating factors impacting mother–infant proximity can, therefore, provide insights into the evolution of maternal responses towards multidimensional threats. Here, we examine the social factors impacting mother–offspring proximity in two populations of wild chimpanzees with differing levels of infanticidal threats, eastern chimpanzees, Pan troglodytes schweinfurthii, in Budongo Forest, Uganda and western chimpanzees, P. t. verus, in Taï Forest, Ivory Coast. We assessed whether (1) the number of males and females in fission–fusion subgroups predicts proximity levels between mothers and their youngest infants, (2) whether it is mediated by maternal gregariousness and (3) whether this relationship differs in the two populations. In both populations and independent of maternal gregariousness, we found no clear relationship between mother–infant proximity and the number of males in the party. However, in Budongo, where an infanticidal threat is high, mother–infant proximity was mediated by both maternal gregariousness and the number of other females present. Less gregarious mothers were closer to their youngest offspring in parties with large numbers of females, while the opposite pattern applied to highly gregarious mothers. In Taï, more gregarious females were more often in proximity with their offspring. Our results demonstrate that the immediate social environment, maternal social phenotype and overall community-specific threats can all influence maternal response to varying exposure to threats. The consequences of exposure to this environment on offspring's social development merit further investigation.Peer reviewe
“Is voting even effective?” : examining voting and protest as an expression of dissent and their efficacy in risky contexts
Get PDFIn the current contribution, we aim to examine how the political efficacy of different actions is understood in authoritarian contexts and, in particular, whether protest and voting are viewed as an efficacious way to engage in the political process among opposition members. We used an online survey (N = 152), asked open-ended questions about (1) motivators for voting, (2) reasons for not voting/indecisiveness, opinions on (3) voting, (4) offline protests, and (5) online protests to make voices heard and analyzed the data using qualitative content analysis. Results highlighted the motivators behind voting, such as opposing the current government, hope for change, and seeing it as a civic duty, while hopelessness/lack of faith in change and lack of representative candidates were barriers to civic participation. While some saw voting as ineffective in competitive authoritarian contexts like Turkey, others perceived it as a way for people to make their voices heard. Last, the difference between offline and online protests regarding making one's voice heard was stark: Offline protests were described as necessary yet very dangerous, whereas online protests were seen as mostly effective. We discuss these different actions’ political efficacy and civic participation challenges in authoritarian contexts, especially among opposition members.Peer reviewe
Fighting the far enemy : making sense of al-Qaeda and Islamic State's violence in the West post-9/11
Get PDFDespite the large amount of literature published on al-Qaeda and Islamic State post-9/11, a surprisingly neglected topic has been the question of their violence’s strategic logic, particularly in the context of the West. In response, this thesis offers an exploratory study into this question by systematically analysing a sample of what were identified to be some of the groups’ key statements and publications.
Conceptually, this research applies an instrumental approach to studying al-Qaeda and Islamic State’s terrorism where their actions are understood to be strategic violence deployed in the furtherance of politico-religious objectives. Applying a simple understanding of strategy, where strategy is seen to be the attempt to align available means with desired ends, this research focuses on four key questions. How have al-Qaeda and Islamic State framed the West in its current form as a problem? Why is terrorist violence seen to be necessary to respond to this problem? What is claimed to be this violence’s underlying strategic logic? And what means of violence (weapons) are propagated, and how are these intended to support the identified strategies? Additionally this research analyses if, and if so how, the response to these questions has changed over time. Although notable differences are identified between al-Qaeda and Islamic State, what emerges is that internally, both al-Qaeda and Islamic State have remained surprisingly consistent when it comes to their objectives, logics and justifications for violence.
This research also applies what Juergensmeyer and Sheikh refer to as the sociotheological approach to analysing religious violence. Here, religious violence is understood to follow a “rational” logic, but only when placed within the normative-epistemological worldviews within which the actor operates. In the conclusion, this research also identifies opportunities for future research stemming from this initial exploratory study
Orthopaedic management of selected conditions in children
Get PDFOrthopaedic conditions and trauma in children are important health problems and constitute a global burden. The influences of normal or abnormal musculoskeletal growth are unique to this age group and can affect the outcome of these conditions. Knowledge of the natural history of musculoskeletal development and gait is essential to anticipate such potential problems.
This collection of work is primarily based on clinical studies in the management of children with orthopaedic conditions and trauma seen over a period of 30 years. I was appointed a Consultant Orthopaedic Surgeon in Edinburgh in 1987 and worked with children as a Consultant for 25 years. Not long after my appointment I established a gait analysis laboratory in Edinburgh, in collaboration with bioengineering colleagues. This stimulated further my lifelong interest in neuromuscular conditions and gait in children, particularly those with cerebral palsy which is the commonest chronic handicap in childhood.
Advances in anaesthesia and pain management have greatly extended the surgical possibilities in managing children who have orthopaedic conditions as the result of chronic handicap. Several themes appear in the papers: firstly, the need for an understanding of the natural history of musculoskeletal development and orthopaedic conditions and trauma; secondly, the early detection and prevention of severe deformity, if possible; and thirdly, knowing when to intervene to improve the natural history of a condition
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