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Language follows a distinct mode of extra-genomic evolution
Get PDFFunding: This research was funded by the NCCR Evolving Language, Swiss National Science Foundation Agreement# 51NF40_180888.As one of the most specific, yet most diverse of human behaviors, language is shaped by both genomic and extra-genomic evolution. Sharing methods and models between these modes of evolution has significantly advanced our understanding of language and inspired generalized theories of its evolution. Progress is hampered, however, by the fact that the extra-genomic evolution of languages, i.e. linguistic evolution, maps only partially to other forms of evolution. Contrasting it with the biological evolution of eukaryotes and the cultural evolution of technology as the best understood models, we show that linguistic evolution is special by yielding a stationary dynamic rather than stable solutions, and that this dynamic allows the use of language change for social differentiation while maintaining its global adaptiveness. Linguistic evolution furthermore differs from technological evolution by requiring vertical transmission, allowing the reconstruction of phylogenies; and it differs from eukaryotic biological evolution by foregoing a genotype vs phenotype distinction, allowing deliberate and biased change. Recognising these differences will improve our empirical tools and open new avenues for analyzing how linguistic, cultural, and biological evolution interacted with each other when language emerged in the hominin lineage. Importantly, our framework will help to cope with unprecedented scientific and ethical challenges that presently arise from how rapid cultural evolution impacts language, most urgently from interventional clinical tools for language disorders, potential epigenetic effects of technology on language, artificial intelligence and linguistic communicators, and global losses of linguistic diversity and identity. Beyond language, the distinctions made here allow identifying variation in other forms of biological and cultural evolution, developing new perspectives for empirical research.Peer reviewe
Travellers to dictatorship : the subjective lived experiences of British travellers to the Spanish Franco dictatorship and the Portuguese Estado Novo, c. 1950-1975
No full textThis project collates and analyses a combination of oral testimony of British travellers from the Iberian Peninsula and primary material drawn from the contemporary travel industries, documents produced by the Spanish and Portuguese governments, and British governmental records on travel and cultural exchange during what would become the late stages of dictatorship in both Portugal and Spain (they ended in 1974 and 1975 respectively). During this time frame, there was a vast expansion in access to foreign leisure travel which became a realistic prospect for a far higher proportion of the population, as opportunities to travel opened up to a wider variety of British people than ever before. People travelled on holiday, or spent longer residing outside of Britain, living and working abroad in some cases for years. Spain and Portugal remodelled themselves into world-leading destinations through the package tourism industry. This project contributes to the growing historiography of tourism to dictatorships, commenting on the relationship between these illiberal regimes and travellers themselves. Simultaneously, it reflects on contemporary British society and its relationship with Europe. Outsider perspectives of travellers who spent time within Spain and Portugal contribute to the study of ‘everyday life’ in illiberal regimes. Travel accounts provide an outsider’s viewpoint on aspects of everyday life, whilst also illustrating travellers’ own experience of life inside Spain and Portugal. The oral testimonies provide a fresh perspective on these societies undergoing social, economic, and democratic transitions
Imagination, mereotopology, and topic expansion
Get PDFFunding: The research and writing of this paper was supported by Cotnoir’s UKRI Frontier Research Grant, Instruments of Unity, Project Number 10004484. Aybuke Ozgun’s contribution received support from the project ‘The Logic of Conceivability’, funded by the European Research Council (ERC CoG), grant number 681404.In the topic-sensitive theory of the logic of imagination due to Berto (2018a), the topic of the imaginative output must be contained within the imaginative input. That is, imaginative episodes can never expand what they are about. We argue, with Badura (2021), that this constraint is implausible from a psychological point of view, and it wrongly predicts the falsehood of true reports of imagination. Thus the constraint should be relaxed; but how? A number of direct approaches to relaxing the controversial content-inclusion constraint are explored in this paper. The core idea is to consider adding an expansion operator to the mereology of topics. The logic that results depends on the formal constraints placed on topic expansion, the choice of which are subject to philosophical dispute. The first semantics we explore is a topological approach using a closure operator, and we show that the resulting logic is the same as Berto’s own system. The second approach uses an inclusive and monotone increasing operator, and we give a sound and complete axiomatisation for its logic. The third approach uses an inclusive and additive operator, and we show that the associated logic is strictly weaker than the previous two systems, and additivity is not definable in the language. The latter result suggests that involved techniques or a more expressive language is required for a complete axiomatization of the system, which is left as an open question. All three systems are simple tweaks on Berto’s system in that the language remains propositional, and the underlying theory of topics is unchanged.Peer reviewe
Some exotic gapless states in insulating and conducting many-body systems
Get PDFThis thesis investigates two distinct classes of gapless, strongly correlated quantum systems. In the first part of this thesis, we examine quantum spin-1 systems, which allow for non-geometric frustration between bilinear and biquadratic interactions. For these systems, frustration leads to a rich phase diagram hosting exotic spin nematic phases with highly entangled ground states near SU(3)-symmetric points. We use tensor network renormalisation group methods to study the phase diagram of the spin-1 bilinear biquadrati cHeisenberg model with focus on the phase transitions nearSU(3)-symmetric points. Tensor network renormalisation methods are helpful in the study of both non-critical and critical phases and give insight to new mechanisms of spin-nematic phases and exotic ground states. In the second part of this thesis, we study non-Fermi liquids, characterised by the absence of quasiparticles and unusual symmetries. Based on the recent conjecture that non-Fermi liquids have an emergent loop-U(1) group at the IR, we show the essential tools to quantise a loop-U(1)group. Using coadjoint orbits and their quantisation as the technology of choice, we propose a modest approach that might be helpful in the more profound problem of understanding the phenomenology of
non-Fermi liquids
Counter-radicalisation case management interventions : findings from a Campbell systematic review
Get PDFFunding: This review was supported by Public Safety Canada grant awarded to Sarah Marsden via Campbell collaboration.This article sets out the findings of a Campbell systematic review examining the effectiveness and implementation of case management tools and approaches used to counter radicalisation to violence. This review found that the effectiveness of these tools and approaches remains poorly understood owing to the continued absence of robust impact evaluations. However, by breaking the case management process down into its constituent parts, from client identification to client assessment; case planning, implementation and delivery; monitoring and evaluation; through to exit and transition, this review was able to uncover a robust body of evidence relating to the implementation of different stages of the case management process, and programmes as-a-whole. Based on an analysis of 47 studies, the systematic review identified a range of factors that support the effective implementation of case management interventions. These include the availability of relevant tools; strong multi-agency working arrangements; intervention teams holding relevant knowledge and expertise; and adequate resourcing. In contrast, the absence of these factors can inhibit implementation, as can reliance on overly risk-oriented logics; public and political pressure; and the features of the legislative context within which programmes are delivered. The paper concludes by outlining the implications of the review, and discusses avenues for future research.Peer reviewe
Strontium isoscape of sub-Saharan Africa allows tracing origins of victims of the transatlantic slave trade
Get PDFFunding: Financial support for this research was provided by the Webster Foundation (to V.M.O.) and the University of California Santa Cruz (to V.M.O.). Further funding for sample collection was provided by the Max Planck Society (to C.B. and H.S.K.), the Max Planck Society Innovation Fund (to C.B. and H.S.K.), and the Heinz L. Krekeler Foundation (to C.B., H.S.K., M.A. and V.M.O.).Strontium isotope (87Sr/86Sr) analysis with reference to strontium isotope landscapes (Sr isoscapes) allows reconstructing mobility and migration in archaeology, ecology, and forensics. However, despite the vast potential of research involving 87Sr/86Sr analysis particularly in Africa, Sr isoscapes remain unavailable for the largest parts of the continent. Here, we measure the 87Sr/86Sr ratios in 778 environmental samples from 24 African countries and combine this data with published data to model a bioavailable Sr isoscape for sub-Saharan Africa using random forest regression. We demonstrate the efficacy of this Sr isoscape, in combination with other lines of evidence, to trace the African roots of individuals from historic slavery contexts, particularly those with highly radiogenic 87Sr/86Sr ratios uncommon in the African Diaspora. Our study provides an extensive African 87Sr/86Sr dataset which includes scientifically marginalized regions of Africa, with significant implications for the archaeology of the transatlantic slave trade, wildlife ecology, conservation, and forensics.Peer reviewe
The effects of seawater temperature-induced coral bleaching on the aragonite structure and material properties of massive Porites lutea coral skeletons
Get PDFFunding: This work was supported by the UK Natural Environment Research Council (NE/S001417/1).The coral skeletons that contribute to tropical reef structures are biominerals, composed of inorganic aragonite and organic biomolecules. The biomolecules influence the aragonite structure and material properties of the skeleton. We collected massive Porites lutea skeletons from Phuket, Thailand, in 1991, approximately one month into a temperature-induced bleaching event. Some specimens had expelled their Symbiodiniaceae in response to the increased water temperatures (bleached), while other corals appeared unaffected (unbleached). We investigate the effect of Symbiodiniaceae loss on the amino acid composition, aragonite structure, and Vickers hardness of the coral skeletons. We observe no significant difference in the amino acid content or composition of the outermost 1 mm of skeleton (representing 0.5 to 2 months growth) between bleached and unbleached specimens. The full width half maximum of the Raman spectrum ʋ1 band, an indicator of disorder around the CO3 group in the aragonite lattice, varies significantly between some corals in the outermost 200 µm of skeleton, but these differences are not attributable to the bleaching status of the coral colonies. Similarly, Vickers hardness varies significantly between some colonies, but this is not related to coral bleaching. This is a positive finding, suggesting that bleaching, from which corals recover, does not adversely affect the coral skeletal structure.Peer reviewe
The cyclic open-closed map, u-connections and R-matrices
Get PDFFunding: The author was partly supported by the Royal Society Research Grant for Research Fellows: RGFnR1n181009ERC, the ERC Starting Grant 850713—HMS and EPSRC Grant EP/W015749/1.This paper considers the (negative) cyclic open–closed map −, which maps the cyclic homology of the Fukaya category of a symplectic manifold to its S1-equivariant quantum cohomology. We prove (under simplifying technical hypotheses) that this map respects the respective natural connections in the direction of the equivariant parameter. In the monotone setting this allows us to conclude that − intertwines the decomposition of the Fukaya category by eigenvalues of quantum cup product with the first Chern class, with the Hukuhara–Levelt–Turrittin decomposition of the quantum cohomology. We also explain how our results relate to the Givental–Teleman classification of semisimple cohomological field theories: in particular, how the Rmatrix is related to − in the semisimple case; we also consider the non-semisimple case.Peer reviewe
Theory and modeling of large scale plasmapause surface waves
No full textFunding: This research was supported by the International Space Science Institute (ISSI) in Bern, through ISSI International Team project #546 “Magnetohydrodynamic Surface Waves at Earth's Magnetosphere (and Beyond).” MOA was supported by UKRI (STFC/EPSRC) Stephen Hawking Fellowship EP/T01735X/1 and UKRI Future Leaders Fellowship MR/X034704/1. MDH was supported by NASA Grant 80NSSC21K1677. OA would like to acknowledge financial support from the University of Birmingham, the University of Exeter, and also from the United Kingdom Research and Innovation (UKRI) Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) Independent Research Fellowship NE/V013963/1 and NE/V013963/2. ANW was partially funded by the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) Grant (ST/N000609/1).The plasmapause in Earth's magnetosphere represents the boundary between the plasma which co-rotates with the Earth (plasmasphere), and the more tenuous plasmatrough outside. The density change across the plasmapause can be large, changing by approximately 1–2 orders of magnitude depending on the prevailing conditions. This would suggest it to be a location where magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) surface waves can form, and indeed, this has been proposed in previous works to explain ultra-low frequency (ULF) wave observations around the plasmapause location. The main question is how such a large scale surface wave on the plasmapause would be excited. In this paper, we propose a model whereby surface waves at the plasmapause are driven by energy input from the magnetopause through solar wind driving. We derive an analytical form for the amplitude of these surface waves with this new driven boundary condition at the magnetopause. The excitation of these waves is then tested in several MHD simulations, where the model geometry, wavenumbers and temporal dependence of the magnetopause driver are varied. We establish that surface waves on the plasmapause can be excited by driving from the magnetopause, and that this still occurs with impulsive and continuous broadband driving. The azimuthal scale of the wave is a critical factor for this excitation, with longer azimuthal scales more favorable for driving larger amplitude surface waves. This mechanism provides new insight for how large scale and large amplitude ULF waves can access the inner magnetosphere, with potential implications for their interaction with radiation belt particles.Peer reviewe
Linking ringed seal foraging behaviour to environmental variability
Get PDFFunding: Milaja Nykänen was funded by the Finnish Cultural Foundation. Matt Carter was supported by the INSITE EcoSTAR project (Natural Environment Research Council; NE/T010614/1). This study was supported by the ‘Our Saimaa Seal LIFE’ project funded by the LIFE Programme of the European Commission (LIFE12NAT/FI/000367 and LIFE19NAT/FI/000832), Raija and Ossi Tuuliainen Foundation (#2485/02.07.02/2010) and WWF Finland (#2421/02.07.02/2010).Background Foraging rates directly influence animals’ energetic intake and expenditure and are thus linked to body condition and the ability to survive and reproduce. Further, understanding the underlying processes driving a species’ behaviour and habitat use is important as changes in behaviour could result from changes in environmental conditions. Methods In this study, the dives of Saimaa ringed seals (Pusa hispida saimensis) were classified for the first time using hidden Markov models and telemetry data collected on individual dives, and the behavioural states of the diving seals were estimated. In addition, we used generalized additive mixed models on the foraging probability of the seals to identify environmental and temporal drivers of foraging behaviour. Results We inferred three (in winter) or four (in summer) different dive types: sleeping/resting dives, shallow inactive dives, transiting dives and foraging dives, based on differences in dive metrics logged by or derived from data from telemetry tags. Long and relatively deep sleeping/resting dives were missing entirely in the winter, compensated by an increased proportion of time used for haul-out. We found profound differences in the behaviour of Saimaa ringed seals during the open water season compared to the ice-covered winter, with the greatest proportion of time allocated to foraging during the summer months (36%) and the lowest proportion in the winter (21%). The seals’ foraging probability peaked in summer (July) and was highest during the daytime during both summer and winter months. Moreover, foraging probability was highest at lake depths of 7–30 m in the winter and at depths > 15 m in the summer. We also found some evidence of sex-specific foraging strategies that are adapted seasonally, with females preferring more sheltered water areas during winter. Conclusions We suggest that the foraging behaviour of Saimaa ringed seals is largely influenced by diel vertical movements and availability of fish, and that the seals optimize their energy acquisition while conserving energy, especially during the cold winter months. Further, the seals display some flexibility in foraging strategies, a feature that may help this endangered subspecies to cope with the ongoing climate change.Peer reviewe
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