Upper Middle Devonian to lowermost Upper Devonian brachiopods from Mount Józefka near Górno (Holy Cross Mountains, Poland) are described from the Laskowa Góra Beds (mostly top-Givetian dengleri Conodont Biozone) and Szydłówek Beds (Givetian–Frasnian transition). Twenty species are present, whereof two new ones. Glosshypothyridina theophili new species is larger and has a less angular hinge margin than G. procuboides (Kayser, 1871). Data on internal features of Hypothyridina Buckman, 1906, Glosshypothyridina Rzhonsnitskaya, 1978, and Tullhypothyridina Sartenaer, 2003 are summarized on the basis of published and unpublished sources, allowing rectification of previous incorrect interpretations of these genera. Kyrtatrypa stanislai new species resembles middle Givetian K. pauli Halamski and Baliński in Halamski et al., 2024, but possesses rudimentary dental nuclei. Similar (previously unnoticed) minute dental nuclei occur in the type species K. culminigera (Struve, 1966), so the diagnosis of Kyrtatrypa Struve, 1966 is emended. The moderately diverse fauna thrived in biogenic and muddy niches within and around perireefal coral thickets in the protected ramp-slope of the northern Kielce carbonate platform. The at-most modest replacement of brachiopod faunas between the middle Givetian and the early Frasnian times during the post-Taghanic ecosystem recovery is confirmed for the Euramerican shelf. However, a different response to global stresses is evident for the sessile benthos across the Middle–Upper Devonian boundary in the intrashelf basin and the stromatoporoid-coral bank settings. Off-reef communities were more resilient, affected by extinction probably half as much as the more sensitive reef-related faunas. The ecological-evolutionary stasis among bottom-level shelly benthos contrasts with the extinction of the Hamilton/upper Tully fauna in the Appalachian Basin, the type area of the Taghanic Crisis.

UUID: http://zoobank.org/6a3a18da-d56d-4d98-a548-ebd37c58f832

This study offers a framework-based analysis of climate change education (CCE) in both national school and university curricula of the United Arab Emirates (UAE). It aims to assess the extent to which climate-related topics are embedded across disciplines and to explore the methods used to deliver them using Education for Sustainable Development and climate literacy frameworks. Through an analytical coding framework, a qualitative content analysis of course descriptions, syllabi, academic programmes, lab activities and course projects and/or research components is performed to assess climate change-related initiatives of UAE’s national school and major universities in terms of presence, depth, pedagogy, interdisciplinary integration and competency development climate content. The findings reveal that while several UAE institutions have begun incorporating sustainability and environmental themes, comprehensive coverage of CCE remains inconsistent and is often confined to some grades and STEM subjects, such as environmental science or engineering, only. Moreover, pedagogical approaches vary significantly, with limited application of contextual, interdisciplinary, experiential and action-oriented learning models in both school and university levels. In addition, the research identifies challenges to integrating climate change content within higher education and the national school curricula, leading to find a structural gap between national policy ambitions and curriculum implementation and highlighting the need for a uniform, competency-based national framework for climate education. This study provides a foundational insight of how UAE universities and the national school curriculum currently address CCE and offers a basis for future recommendations to policymakers, curriculum developers and educators aiming at enhancing curriculum design and teaching practices, transitioning from awareness to action.

Interoception refers to the ability to perceive and integrate physiological signals originating from within the body, such as heartbeat and respiration. This process involves both bottom-up and top-down. As a key neurophysiological marker of interoception, the heartbeat-evoked potential (HEP) reflects the cortical processing of cardiac signals in the brain. In this review, we first outline the neural mechanisms underlying interoception and HEP, followed by a comprehensive overview of the methodologies commonly employed in HEP research. Based on the directionality of interoceptive information flow, we categorize HEP-related experimental designs into three types: bottom-up bodily sensory input, top-down predictive perception, and top-down regulation. Additionally, we explore the clinical relevance of HEP in areas such as psychiatric disorders and cardiac-related conditions. Finally, we recommend expanding research on top-down predictive perception and top-down regulation in clinical contexts.

The legal appraisal of civilian mental harm amounting to trauma is something that has been discussed by international scholars when it comes to warfare and its aftermath, but no discussion has taken place on how such civilian war trauma can be compensated for. The question becomes even starker in cases of cumulative war trauma, where the trauma incurred appears as an externality of warfare and as a natural repercussion stemming from the latter. Along these lines and drawing from climate change litigation that has taken place before international courts and tribunals over the last few years, this article details how arguments derived from that litigation scheme can present prospects as well as limitations with regard to how cumulative war trauma, caused by States as well as by non-State actors, can be subject to compensation.

This paper examines how disparities in market-based and non-market-based environmental policy instruments affect gross exports and domestic value added in exports, distinguishing between intermediate and final goods and services at the industry level. We estimate a theory-based gravity model with country-industry-time fixed effects using Poisson Pseudo Maximum Likelihood for 32 countries, 56 industries and the period 2000–2014. The results show that the widening gap in market-based instruments between countries is associated with competitiveness losses for high-polluting industries – especially producers of intermediate goods – while low-polluting industries experience short-run gains in comparative advantage, with effects concentrated in the manufacturing sector and driven largely by OECD–non-OECD trade. By contrast, the effects of non-market-based regulatory gaps depend on the time period and the institutional quality of the destination country and are associated, in some cases, with export growth in low-polluting industries and with industrial technology upgrading.

A long-standing debate in oral history centres on the researcher’s positionality as either an ‘insider’ or ‘outsider’ to the research participants. This comment argues that insider status is not a stable but a relational category, one that must be critically interrogated to avoid privileging insider perspectives. Reflecting on thirteen life-history interviews with South Asian scientists who undertook postgraduate training at post-war British universities, I examine how the normative assumption of a shared ‘South Asianness’ shaped my negotiation of the insider/outsider positionality continuum. My positionality as a South Asian researcher in the UK studying previous generations of South Asian students certainly reduced intersubjective distance with interviewees. However, the presumption of insider status also exposes the instability of identity-based claims to authority. The immense heterogeneity of nationality, language, age, class, gender, occupation, educational and migration trajectories of the interviewees complicated any straightforward claim to insider status on my part. By examining how shared identity both enabled and complicated the research encounter, this comment destabilises the insider/outsider dialectic underpinning research positionality, arguing instead that positionality is a shifting intersubjective condition, constituted through an iterative process of reflexive praxis within historical research and analysis.

Agroecological practices rely on organic inputs to achieve sustainable food systems, often resulting in changes in soil environments. Yet, we have limited understanding on how soil changes impact crop physiology, including crop nutrient acquisition strategies, especially throughout the entire course of an agroecological transition. In this study, we applied a functional trait ecology lens to understand the effects of agroecological practices on crop physiology at various phases of transitioning from conventional agriculture to agroecological systems. To achieve this, we studied 44 maize growing farms in three regions of central India to measure crop leaf and root trait expression shifts over five identified phases of transitioning to natural farming systems. Our results reveal significantly higher variability in maize root traits compared to leaf traits, with specific root length, specific root area, and specific root length density exhibiting the widest variation. Root traits exhibited strong sensitivity to the phase of agroecological transition and farm region. In contrast, most leaf traits, including specific leaf area, leaf nitrogen concentration, and leaf C:N ratios, were more conserved. Principal component analysis showed a clear pattern in root functional traits, and crop trait hypervolume space changed detectably along the transition gradient. Our findings suggest that root traits are more responsive than leaf traits as indicators of agroecological change, which can inform the monitoring of agroecological transitions. By providing quantitative evidence of trait change, this study contributes a novel understanding of the temporal dynamics of crop strategies when farms transition towards sustainable agricultural systems.

Vlasov–Poisson–Fokker–Planck (VPFP) simulations of large-amplitude electron plasma waves, where the bounce frequency is much larger than the collision frequency, $\omega _B \gg \nu _{\textit{ee}}$, show that the evolution of these waves exhibits three phases: (i) a short-lived trapping phase during which collisional effects are minimal; (ii) a long-lived detrapping phase during which collisional effects are most influential; (iii) a short-lived Landau damping phase where the effect of collisions becomes minimal again. While the dispersion relation during the trapping and Landau damping phase is well known, the wave behaviour during the detrapping phase is not as well understood. The simulations show that during the detrapping phase, the interplay between weak electron–electron collisions and strong wave–electron interactions results in an increasing frequency shift further from the linear root, $\omega _{\text{EPW}}$. At the conclusion of the detrapping phase, the distribution function is nearly Maxwellian, the frequency shift rapidly diminishes and the wave damps at a larger rate than the Landau damping rate. Empirical fits to the damping rates, frequency shift enhancement rate and the lifetime of the plasma waves are provided as functions of collision frequency, wavenumber and wave amplitude.

The presence of the vilica or female supervisor at a Roman villa is attested across five centuries in varied texts, and her duties are detailed in an entire book of Columella’s On Agriculture. This paper challenges assumptions by modern scholars that her managerial functions were confined to those of a housekeeper, focused on food supplies for the household and the supervision of domestic labor inside the house. Through closer examination of textual, iconographic, and archaeological evidence, we can see that the vilica’s principal role was to oversee not the domestic sphere, but rather a range of vital productive activities on the farm. In particular, she seems to have been responsible for wine and oil making and for important rituals linked to production. This has implications for our understanding of the roles of women within Roman farming and the Roman economy.

Shifts in life-history traits may accompany other evolutionary changes in mammals during climate oscillations or long-term isolation or in response to predator pressure among other factors. Here, we studied two extinct endemic ruminant species from Java (Indonesia), the deer Axis lydekkeri and the antelope Duboisia santeng. These two species are part of the Middle Pleistocene Stegodon-Homo erectus fauna. Mortality profiles based on their fossil remains were reconstructed to address the life-history strategies of these two species. Individual age was estimated from mandibular and isolated teeth using the Quadratic Crown Height Method. We found that the mortality profiles for both species are L-shaped with both a high juvenile mortality but also a substantial survival after senescence. These results correspond with what is known thus far about life-history traits of medium-sized continental ungulates with perhaps an indication of a shift toward a slower life, with maximum survivability around 70–80% of potential ecological longevity. We further discuss differences in the shapes of the profiles of the two ruminants in light of the presence of Homo erectus hunter-gatherers.