Over the course of one year (2021), we monitored the carbon isotope composition of atmospheric CO2 at three locations in Croatia: the Adriatic port city of Rijeka (Cfa climate) and at two rural sites: Gornje Jelenje (Cfb climate) in the vicinity of a main road and clean-air site Parg (Dfb climate). Carbon isotope composition at all sites shows seasonal variation, ranging from –41.3 to 25.2‰ for Δ14C and from –13.1 to –11.3‰ for δ13C. Rijeka systematically has the lowest and Parg the highest Δ14C, and δ13C at the sites are not statistically different one from another. The Δ14C of leaves of deciduous trees reflect the trend of atmospheric Δ14C. Based on the assumption that the investigated area is under the influence of two main sources of CO2: fossil and natural (sea exchange, biosphere, and undisturbed – clean air atmospheric component) the approximate share of fossil CO2 in total atmospheric CO2 has been estimated for Rijeka (2.1 ± 1.3%) and Gornje Jelenje (1.0 ± 0.9%). Comparison of our results with the data from European CO2 sampling stations indicates strong influence of CO2 from sea and biosphere. Backward trajectories indicate a possibility of Δ14CCO2 contribution from distant EU nuclear power plants, but movement of air masses should be considered in more detail to confirm this.

Despite a long settlement history, empirical investigations of the role of path dependency in the long-term evolution of human populations are scarce in Europe, and especially in the Mediterranean countries. Using spatially explicit econometric techniques, our study discusses the empirical evidence stemming from a quantitative analysis of the spatial distribution of population growth rates in 115 districts of metropolitan Athens (Greece) over one century, distinguishing path dependency from the impact of other socio-economic forces on long-term urban expansion. The empirical findings of this study clarify how path-dependent regulation of population growth was heterogeneous over time and space, and depends on the specific stage of the city life cycle. After an initial period when path-independent population expansion reflected the inherent impact of exogenous shocks, path-dependent growth was associated with compact urbanization governed by agglomeration and scale advantages. Path-dependent growth was less intense during suburbanization, when the population spread over larger areas.

In 1913 a set of leg shackles was recovered among skeletal remains during excavations at the east end of the ruinous cathedral of Old Sarum, Wiltshire. A recent examination of the excavation’s photographic record indicates that two further similar examples were recovered at the same time. Since the early twentieth century a body of scholarship has refined our understanding of the arrangement of the east end of the cathedral, and a closer examination of the archive in the light of this work allows for both skeletal remains and shackles to be confidently located in an archaeological context related to the tomb of Bishop Roger. This paper explores the value this evidence has for our understanding of the so-called ‘Arrest of the Bishops’, an event of notable constitutional significance in the tumultuous reign of King Stephen. It goes on to examine the shock with which the event was recalled by contemporary writers to reflect on the power of shaming and incarceration as a device of extortion, political manipulation and the infliction of social death. The integral nature of iron bonds in these strategies lends them a socio-symbolic role and the reception of their use in this well-recorded episode may facilitate the interpretation of such items from early and high medieval contexts when, frequently, primary provenance is lacking.

We previously analyzed five trials on ticagrelor/aspirin versus clopidogrel/aspirin in patients with minor stroke/ TIA in a network meta-analysis. We updated our search and identified 311 new citations with one study for inclusion: CHANCE2 enrolled patients with CYP2C19 loss-of-function alleles and randomized them to ticagrelor/aspirin or clopidogrel/aspirin. Pooling of CHANCE2 with the original studies could not be completed due to violation of NMA assumptions, due to significant inconsistency. This suggests patients with CYP2C19 loss-of-function alleles represent a subpopulation that is inherently different from the general stroke population in their antiplatelet response. Results from CHANCE-2 may not be generalizable without genotype testing.

Bentonites are proposed to be used as buffers in high-level radioactive waste repositories. The elevated temperatures in repositories may, however, affect bentonites’ desired properties. For instance, heating under dry conditions can cause cation fixation, potentially affecting swelling properties. The kinetics of mineral dissolution and precipitation reactions will equally be influenced by temperature. Redistributions of Ca-sulphates and -carbonates have been observed, as well as illitization of smectite. Illitization, however, has only been observed in laboratory experiments at large solution/solid ratios, whereas it has not yet been unambiguously identified in large-scale experiments. In many large-scale tests, cation exchange is the first observable geochemical reaction. In addition, an enrichment of Mg close to the heater is found in many such tests. The thermal gradient and (incongruent) smectite dissolution are suspected to play a role with respect to the Mg enrichment, but the underlying mechanism has not been unravelled so far. To predict the long-term performance of a bentonite buffer, numerical modelling is required in order to be able to simulate the reactions of all accompanying mineral phases. Smectites, which dominate the bentonite composition, are therefore particularly difficult to characterise, as their dissolution is often observed to be non-stoichiometric. Various model approaches exist to simulate smectite reactions, mostly based on kinetic rate reactions, ideally considering the effect of pH (congruent or incongruent dissolution), temperature and the degree of saturation of the solution. Reassessing and improving the thermodynamic/kinetic data of smectites are prerequisites for improving long-term buffer performance assessment.

Jujube is both consumed as a food source and medicinal plant in local markets. It is expected that different geographical populations of Ziziphus jujuba, differ in their genetic content as they grow in different ecological conditions. It is important to have detailed information on population genetic structure and the available genetic variability to make a proper germplasm collection of jujube. We have no data on jujube populations of Iran based on SCoT and REMAP molecular markers, and therefore we planned a population genetic study of these trees in 10 geographical areas. We used SCoT and REMAP molecular markers for our genetic investigation. We found the loci with a high value of Gst (1.00) in SCoT and REMAP markers that can be used in fingerprinting of jujube.

We study a retirement savings plan with a default contribution rate of 12 percent of income, which is much higher than previously studied defaults. Twenty-five percent of employees had not opted out of this default 12 months after hire; a literature review finds that the corresponding fraction in plans with lower defaults is approximately one-half. Because only contributions above 12 percent were matched by the employer, 12 percent was likely to be a suboptimal contribution rate for employees. Employees who remained at the 12 percent default contribution rate had average income that was approximately one-third lower than would be predicted from the relationship between salaries and contribution rates among employees who were not at 12 percent. Defaults may influence low-income employees more strongly in part because these employees face higher psychological barriers to active decision making.

This article explores the early history of two American peanut companies: Planters and Tom’s. Both food manufacturers developed major commercial brands through the ownership of intellectual property. In this case, the sourcing of different peanut types figured into the marketing of salted peanuts. Through a legal dispute involving Tom’s patented retail bag, I examine how food packaging changed the way that peanuts were advertised, distributed, and consumed in the United States. The argument is made for an historical analysis of food brands that considers how intellectual property domains interacted with one another and with the material properties of food itself.

This article develops a framework to test how surface-level and deep-level faultlines impact team performance through subgroup formation and team interaction quality. We test it with 96 empirical articles on team faultlines from 2002 to 2022, using meta-analytic techniques. Firstly, results suggest that subgroup formation and team interaction quality act as serial mediums through which surface-level and deep-level faultlines exert negative indirect effects on team performance. Secondly, moderator analyses reveal that increasing interaction time will mitigate the effects of surface-level faultlines but enhance the effects of deep-level faultlines. Finally, surface- and deep-level social faultlines and deep-level task faultlines are detrimental to team interaction quality, and these negative effects are mediated by subgroup formation. Surface-level task faultlines are beneficial to team interaction, and this positive effect does not work through subgroup formation.

Feeding whole prey to felids has shown to benefit their gastrointestinal health. Whether this effect is caused by the chemical or physical nature of whole prey is unknown. Fifteen domestic cats, as a model for strict carnivores, were either fed minced mice (MM) or whole mice (WM), to determine the effect of food structure on digestibility, mean urinary excretion time (MUET) of 15N, intestinal microbial activity and fermentation products. Faeces samples were collected after feeding all cats a commercially available extruded diet (EXT) for 10 d before feeding for 19 d the MM and WM diets with faeces and urine collected from day 11 to 15. Samples for microbiota composition and determination of MUET were obtained from day 16 to 19. The physical structure of the mice diet (minced or not) did not affect large intestinal fermentation as total SCFA and branched-chain fatty acid (BCFA), and most biogenic amine (BA) concentrations were not different (P > 0·10). When changing from EXT to the mice diets, the microbial community composition shifted from a carbolytic (Prevotellaceae) to proteolytic (Fusobacteriaceae) profile and led to a reduced faecal acetic to propionic acid ratio, SCFA, total BCFA (P < 0·001), NH3 (P = 0·04), total BA (P < 0·001) and para-cresol (P = 0·08). The results of this study indicate that food structure within a whole-prey diet is less important than the overall diet type, with major shifts in microbiome and decrease in potentially harmful fermentation products when diet changes from extruded to mice. This urges for careful consideration of the consequences of prey-based diets for gut health in cats.

Results of stabilization for the higher order of the Kadomtsev-Petviashvili equation are presented in this manuscript. Precisely, we prove with two different approaches that under the presence of a damping mechanism and an internal delay term (anti-damping) the solutions of the Kawahara–Kadomtsev–Petviashvili equation are locally and globally exponentially stable. The main novelty of this work is that we present the optimal constant, as well as the minimal time, that ensures that the energy associated with this system goes to zero exponentially.

It is consistent relative to an inaccessible cardinal that ZF+DC holds, and the hypergraph of isosceles triangles on $\mathbb {R}^2$ has countable chromatic number while the hypergraph of isosceles triangles on $\mathbb {R}^3$ has uncountable chromatic number.

Infrastructures are central to processes of state formation. The revival of materialism in International Relations has made an important contribution to our understanding of states through careful analysis of the politics of infrastructure and state building. Yet, to date, engagement with the state-theoretical tradition associated with the work of Antonio Gramsci, Nicos Poulantzas, and Bob Jessop has been absent. Through comparison with the external-relational ontology of Bruno Latour and actor-network theory (ANT), this article argues that state theory and its internal-relational ontology avoids reifying the state while providing an analysis of infrastructure and state formation sensitive to the historical reproduction of social orders over time. Developing Gramsci’s concept of the ‘integral state’, it emphasises the necessary interpenetration between civil society, the state apparatus, and the creation of infrastructure. These conceptual arguments are illustrated through an analysis of the United States’ development of nuclear infrastructures during the early Cold War period, in the internal relations between infrastructure and the integral state are explored through Civil Defense Education programmes. Clarifying the internal relations of past, present, and potential future forms of socio-technical order is an important task for rethinking the politics of technological design in International Relations.

The whitefly, Bemisia tabaci (Gennadius) is documented as a major pest on soybean. It was reported that whitefly response towards its hosts and their cultivars varies, and is mediated through various host-related factors. Considering the significance of leaf morphological characteristics in influencing the host–whitefly responses, the present investigation was conducted in screen-house conditions to study the prevailing variations in leaf morphological characteristics of soybean genotypes and their role in governing the adult whitefly attractiveness and oviposition preference. In the multiple-choice test, the whitefly population (eggs, nymphs and adults) was found to be lowest in moderately resistant genotypes (SL 1028 and SL 1074) compared to highly susceptible (DS 3105) and susceptible genotypes (SL 688, SL 958 and SL 1113). The foliar trichomes were characterized using scanning electron microscopy and leaf area, leaf lamina thickness and leaf shape data were acquired using standard procedures. To determine the factors involved in the resistance/susceptible responses towards whitefly, Pearson correlation was applied between the morphological characteristics and the whitefly population. The results show that the leaf area, trichome density, trichome length and trichome angle showed a significant positive correlation with the whitefly population, whereas leaf lamina thickness was negatively correlated. Thus, for developing whitefly-resistant germplasm, breeders should choose genotypes having narrow and thick leaves with sparse, short and flat trichomes.