In sub-Saharan Africa, and particularly within Ghana’s savanna ecosystem, scientific studies on the distribution patterns and habitat use of raptors, including vultures, are scarce. Despite global research on vulture abundance and habitat preferences, data from West Africa remain limited. This study examines the abundance of four vulture species, focusing on their seasonal activity, age distribution, and preference for three specific habitats, i.e. woodlands, riparian forests, and grasslands, in the southern part of Mole National Park (MNP), Ghana. We conducted a survey using 39 line transects during both dry and wet seasons to make an inventory of these species. Employing a generalised linear model, we assessed the influence of seasons, age, and habitat types on vulture abundance. Our survey recorded a total of 466 vultures, with Hooded Vulture Necrosyrtes monachus and White-backed Vulture Gyps africanus being the most frequently observed. Vulture numbers were notably higher in riparian and woodland areas than in grasslands, and adults were more prevalent than juveniles across all observed species. The study highlights the need for continuous monitoring and the protection of critical riparian habitats to aid in the conservation of these threatened species within the MNP.

Reduced exposure to sweet taste has been proposed to reduce sweet food preferences and intakes, but the evidence to support these associations is limited. This randomised controlled trial investigated the effects of a whole-diet sweet taste intervention for 6 d, on subsequent pleasantness, desire for and sweet food intakes. Participants (n 104) were randomised to increase (n 40), decrease (n 43) or make no change to (n 21) their consumption of sweet-tasting foods and beverages for 6 consecutive days. Pleasantness, desire to eat, sweet taste intensity and sweet food and beverage intakes were assessed on days 0 and 7. One hundred and two (98 %) participants completed the study, and self-reported adherence with the dietary interventions was moderate to good (M = 66–72/100 mm), with instructions to decrease sweet food consumption reported as more difficult than the other diets (smallest (t(81) = 2·45, P = 0·02, Mdiff = 14/100 mm, se = 2 mm). In intention-to-treat analyses, participants in the decreased sweet food consumption group reported higher sweet taste intensity perceptions at day 7 compared with day 0 (F(2101) = 4·10, P = 0·02, Mdiff = 6/100 mm, se = 2 mm). No effects were found for pleasantness (F(2101) = 2·04, P = 0·14), desire to eat (F(2101) = 1·49, P = 0·23) or any of the measures of sweet food intake (largest F(2101) = 2·53, P = 0·09). These results were confirmed in regression analyses that took self-reported adherence to the diets into account. Our findings suggest that exposure to sweet taste does not affect pleasantness, desire for or intakes of sweet-tasting foods and beverages. Public health recommendations to limit the consumption of sweet-tasting foods and beverages to reduce sweet food preferences may require revision.

Recent years have witnessed growing attention to popular culture’s role in the reproduction, negotiation, and contestation of global political life. This article extends this work by focusing on games targeted at young children as a neglected, yet rich site in which global politics is constituted. Drawing specifically on the Heroes of History card game in the Top Trumps franchise, I offer three original contributions. First, I demonstrate how children’s games contribute to the everyday (re)production of international relations through the contingent storying of global politics. Heroes of History’s narrative, visual organisation, and gameplay mechanics, I argue, construct world politics as an unchanging realm of conflict through their shared reproduction of a valorised, masculinised figure of the warrior hero. This construction, moreover, does important political work in insulating young players from the realities and generative structures of violence. Second, the polysemy of children’s games means they also provide opportunity for counter-hegemonic ‘readings’ of the world even in seemingly straightforward examples of the genre such as this. Third, engaging with such games as meaningful objects of analysis opens important new space for dialogue across International Relations literatures on children, popular culture, gender, the everyday, and heroism in world politics.

This article examines the effects of the militarization of public security and the conflicts it triggers on a central democratic institution: press freedom. We focus on Mexico, which experienced multiple waves of assassinations of local journalists after the federal government declared a War on Drugs against the country’s main cartels and deployed the military to the country’s most conflictive regions. We argue that violence against journalists is tied to the outbreak of criminal wars—the multiple localized turf wars and power struggles unleashed by the federal military intervention. Subnational politicians and their security forces and drug lords are at the center of these conflicts because they jointly enable local operations of the transnational drug-trafficking industry. To defend their interests, they have individual and shared incentives to prevent city- and town-level journalists from (or punish them for) publishing fine-grained information that may compromise their criminal and political survival and their quest for local control. We compiled the most comprehensive dataset available on lethal attacks on journalists from 1994 to 2019 to test our claims. Using a difference-in-differences design, we show that violence against local journalists substantially increased in militarized regions, where the military decapitated the cartels and fragmented the criminal underworld, triggering violent competition for criminal governance—de facto rule over territories, people, and illicit economies. Evidence from original focus groups and interviews with at-risk reporters suggests that governors, mayors, and their police forces possibly joined cartels in murdering journalists to mitigate the risks of unwanted information and to minimize the costs of criminal governance by silencing the press and society. Our study offers a sobering lesson of how the militarization of anti-crime policy and the onset of criminal wars can undermine local journalism, press freedom, and democracy.

Owing to habitat loss, the entire breeding population of the globally threatened Aquatic Warbler Acrocephalus paludicola, a flagship bird species of fen mires, is now limited to scattered areas in east-central Europe. The breeding biology of the Aquatic Warbler was studied between 2012 and 2015 in calcareous fens dominated by the Cladietum marisci sedge community at the south-western range limit of the species, near Chełm, in south-east Poland. Two nesting peaks were observed during the breeding season, corresponding to first and second breeding attempts. Nest densities were greater during the first- rather than the second-brood period but singing male densities did not differ between the brood periods. Clutch size and post-hatching fledging success were significantly lower during the second-brood period. Total nest fledging success (whether or not a nest fledged at least one young) was 76.6% in 124 nests with known outcomes with an average of 2.7 (± SE 0.2) fledglings per nest. Mayfield probability of nest survival was 56.9% with losses mainly due to predation (55%), nest desertion or female predation (28%), and changes in water level (14%). Nest survival to fledging increased along the gradient of increasing levels of litter layer thickness, stagnating water, and vegetation height at the nest, and increasing height of the nest above the soil. Fledgling production tended to be lower than in the Biebrza Marshes (north-east Poland) habitats, assumed to be optimal for breeding. Otherwise, the reproductive success estimates did not deviate from nests found in the core breeding areas in north-east Poland or Belarus. Brood feeding frequency (15.5 ± 1.0/hour) was similar to that observed in the Biebrza Marshes. Our results suggest that the calcareous fens at the margins of the current species’ range provide a suitable breeding habitat. However, as the nesting area has contracted, management programmes tailored to the ecological requirements of the Aquatic Warbler are required.

Let G be a finite group and r be a prime divisor of the order of G. An irreducible character of G is said to be quasi r-Steinberg if it is non-zero on every r-regular element of G. A quasi r-Steinberg character of degree $\displaystyle |Syl_r(G)|$ is said to be weak r-Steinberg if it vanishes on the r-singular elements of $G.$ In this article, we classify the quasi r-Steinberg cuspidal characters of the general linear group $GL(n,q).$ Then we characterize the quasi r-Steinberg characters of $GL(2,q)$ and $GL(3,q).$ Finally, we obtain a classification of the weak r-Steinberg characters of $GL(n,q).$

A daily prompt to offer vaccination to inpatients awaiting transfer to rehabilitation resulted in increased SARS-CoV-2 (OR 5.64, 95% CI 3.3–10.15; P < 0.001) and influenza (OR 3.80, 95% CI 2.45–6.06; P < 0.001) vaccination. Compared to baseline, this intervention was associated with reduced incidence of viral respiratory infection during subsequent admission to rehabilitation.

Open science is good for both epistemic and social reasons, but in nonobvious ways, it can have detrimental epistemic side effects. Drawing on case studies and the social epistemology of science, I show how practices intended to increase transparency, communication, and information sharing in science can backfire. We should not reject Open Science, just implement it carefully. I argue that we can do so by treating openness as a governing value in science, and thus, that our pursuit of openness needs to be balanced against our pursuit of the whole scheme of values that govern science.