Climate change profoundly affects plant phenology. An important parameter in research on plant dynamics is the plastochrone interval (PI), which is define as the time interval between the formation of successive leaves. The PI has been used to evaluate seagrass demography and as a direct measure of shoot growth and age. Variations in PI determine the growth rates, maintenance, and success of seagrass beds. Global warming could affect the PI dynamics of Zostera marina and, consequently, alter the dynamics of seagrass beds. Using Bayesian linear regression with a time series composed of 316 biweekly sampling dates from 1998 to 2018, we evaluated PI dynamics in the Punta Banda Estuary in Baja California, Mexico. We found that the tendency of the series was linear with parameter values of β0 = 1.65 (SD ±0.19) and β1 = −0.012 (SD ±0. 001). The Bayesian analysis of variance showed strong evidence of differences in the PI among years, given probabilities from 3.2 to 1.88 × 106 times higher of differences than no differences. The largest differences were detected between cold and hot years. The climatology of the time series PI values showed changes in seasonality over time. Summer and autumn were found to be the most perturbed seasons. Finally, by linking the PI estimates with the sea surface temperature anomalies for the complete series, a good inverse correspondence was observed between hot years and high PI, as well as cold years and low PI values, suggesting that climate change has affected PI among years and seasons.

Between 2022 and 2024, Somalia’s ongoing drought claimed more than 70 000 lives, with nearly 40% of these deaths among children under 5. This tragic loss highlights the urgent need for action to address the disproportionate impact of the drought on Somalia’s most vulnerable populations. The 2022 drought, which affected nearly half of the country’s population, brought Somalia to the brink of famine, leaving many families without essential resources and health care, particularly in the southern-central regions like Banadir, Bay, and Lower Shabelle. Despite narrowly avoiding famine through the efforts of the Somali government and international partners, the consequences of the drought continue to devastate communities. The study “From Insight to Action: An Update on Mortality Patterns in Somalia” reveals that most excess deaths were children, presenting not only a tragedy for families but also a long-term social and economic setback for the nation. WHO and UNICEF stress the need for a long-term approach to address Somalia’s vulnerabilities, emphasizing the importance of building resilient health systems, investing in climate-resilient agriculture, and empowering communities. The international community must also commit to supporting Somalia’s development to break the cycle of disaster and ensure a brighter future for the nation’s children.

This article examines the distribution of medieval English churches and chapels dedicated to St Gregory, arguing that this distribution reflects Gregory’s symbolic significance in the pre-Conquest church as a figure who could connect centres and margins. Early dedications in ecclesiastical and royal centres recall the Gregorian mission and the connection it forged between Britain, on the margins of Christian Europe, and Rome at the centre. Concentrations of later dedications in East Anglia and the South-West asserted the connection of these more peripheral regions with the newly formed English nation, through veneration of its patron saint. The decline in numbers of Gregory dedications after the Conquest reflects the transfer of Gregory’s status as founder of the English church and patron of the English nation to other saints.

In this paper, we analyze a polling system on a circle. Random batches of customers arrive at a circle, where each customer, independently, obtains a location that is uniformly distributed on the circle. A single server cyclically traverses the circle to serve all customers. Using mean value analysis, we derive the expected number of waiting customers within a given distance of the server. We exploit this to obtain closed-form expressions for both the mean batch sojourn time and the mean time to delivery.

Racial justice is widely seen as a central moral and political ideal of our time, especially on the liberal-egalitarian left. And racial justice goes hand in hand with racial equality. The centrality of these ideals would be hard to justify if they had no bearing on material or economic inequality, or applied solely to semiotic and cultural issues. But we argue that, at present, the only plausible basis for understanding racial equality as a distinctive aim for the economic domain—rather than a mere implication of more general egalitarian or progressive principles—rests on minimal state, right-libertarian foundations. As such, racial equality is a strange focus for the left.

Production and utilization of crop residues as mulch and effective weed management are two central elements in the successful implementation of Conservation Agriculture (CA) systems in southern Africa. Yet, the challenges of crop residue availability for mulch or the difficulties in managing weed proliferation in CA systems are bigger than a micro-level focus on weeds and crop residues themselves. The bottlenecks are symptoms of broader systemic complications that cannot be resolved without appreciating the interactions between the current scientific understanding of CA and its application in smallholder systems, private incentives, social norms, institutions, and government policy. In this paper, we elucidate a series of areas that represent some unquestioned answers about chemical weed control and unanswered questions about how to maintain groundcover demanding more research along the natural and social sciences continuum. In some communities, traditional rules that allow free-range grazing of livestock after harvesting present a barrier in surface crop residue management. On the other hand, many of the communities either burn, remove, or incorporate the residues into the soil thus hindering the near-permanent soil cover required in CA systems. The lack of soil cover also means that weed management through soil mulch is unachievable. Herbicides are often a successful stopgap solution to weed control, but they are costly, and most farmers do not use them as recommended, which reduces efficacy. Besides, the use of herbicides can cause environmental hazards and may affect human health. Here, we suggest further assessment of the manipulation of crop competition, the use of vigorously growing cover crops, exploration of allelopathy, and use of microorganisms in managing weeds and reducing seed production to deplete the soil weed seed bank. We also suggest in situ production of plant biomass, use of unpalatable species for mulch generation and change of grazing by-laws towards a holistic management of pastures to reduce the competition for crop residues. However, these depend on the socio-economic status dynamics at farmer and community level.

Somalia has a long history of famine and humanitarian crisis. This article focuses on the years 2008–2020, during which governance and aid practices changed substantially and which include three crisis periods. The article examines whether and how governance analysed as a political marketplace can help explain Somalia's repeated humanitarian crises and the manipulation of response. We argue that between 2008 and 2011 the political marketplace was a violent competitive oligopoly which contributed to famine, but that from 2012 a more collusive, informal political compact resulted in a status quo which avoided violent conflict or famine in 2017 and which functioned to keep external resources coming in. At the same time, this political arrangement benefits from the maintenance of a large group of displaced people in permanent precarity as a source of aid and labour.

The Fueter-Sce theorem provides a procedure to obtain axially monogenic functions, which are in the kernel of generalized Cauchy–Riemann operator in ${\mathbb{R}}^{n+1}$. This result is obtained by using two operators. The first one is the slice operator, which extends holomorphic functions of one complex variable to slice monogenic functions in $ \mathbb{R}^{n+1}$. The second one is a suitable power of the Laplace operator in n + 1 variables. Another way to get axially monogenic functions is the generalized Cauchy–Kovalevskaya (CK) extension. This characterizes axial monogenic functions by their restriction to the real line. In this paper, using the connection between the Fueter-Sce map and the generalized CK-extension, we explicitly compute the actions $\Delta_{\mathbb{R}^{n+1}}^{\frac{n-1}{2}} x^k$, where $x \in \mathbb{R}^{n+1}$. The expressions obtained is related to a well-known class of Clifford–Appell polynomials. These are the building blocks to write a Taylor series for axially monogenic functions. By using the connections between the Fueter-Sce map and the generalized CK extension, we characterize the range and the kernel of the Fueter-Sce map. Furthermore, we focus on studying the Clifford–Appell–Fock space and the Clifford–Appell–Hardy space. Finally, using the polyanalytic Fueter-Sce theorems, we obtain a new family of polyanalytic monogenic polynomials, which extends to higher dimensions the Clifford–Appell polynomials.

Se presentan los primeros resultados del análisis de pieles procesadas recuperadas en el sitio Puerto Tranquilo 1, ubicado en el extremo norte de la Isla Victoria, en el Parque Nacional Nahuel Huapi, Provincia de Neuquén, Argentina. El material estudiado proviene de un nivel tardío, por encima de un fogón fechado en 640 ± 60 años aP (1288–1431 cal dC). El conjunto incluye tanto fragmentos de piel con pelo como depilados, con costuras de tendón y pelo, pintados y con reparaciones. Se aplicó una metodología específica para el análisis de las pieles y las fibras, con una descripción técnico-morfológica detallada a partir del análisis macro- y microscópico (SEM/óptico). Las características de la médula y de la cutícula de las fibras permitieron la identificación de Lama guanicoe y Mustelidae (cf. Galictis). Se aplicaron estrategias analíticas y metodológicas novedosas y se generaron datos acerca de las diferentes dimensiones del uso humano de los recursos faunísticos y de la producción de tecnologías en el área boscoso-lacustre norpatagónica. La comparación con otras evidencias arqueológicas, etnográficas y etnohistóricas permitió reconocer rasgos tecnológicos recurrentes en la preparación de las pieles y en la manufactura de artefactos, como parte del proceso productivo del cuero en Norpatagonia.

Clinical trials are constantly evolving in the context of increasingly complex research questions and potentially limited resources. In this review article, we discuss the emergence of “adaptive” clinical trials that allow for the preplanned modification of an ongoing clinical trial based on the accumulating evidence with application across translational research. These modifications may include terminating a trial before completion due to futility or efficacy, re-estimating the needed sample size to ensure adequate power, enriching the target population enrolled in the study, selecting across multiple treatment arms, revising allocation ratios used for randomization, or selecting the most appropriate endpoint. Emerging topics related to borrowing information from historic or supplemental data sources, sequential multiple assignment randomized trials (SMART), master protocol and seamless designs, and phase I dose-finding studies are also presented. Each design element includes a brief overview with an accompanying case study to illustrate the design method in practice. We close with brief discussions relating to the statistical considerations for these contemporary designs.

In this study, a non-linear deterministic model for the transmission dynamics of skin sores (impetigo) disease is developed and analysed by the help of stability of differential equations. Some basic properties of the model including existence and positivity as well as boundedness of the solutions of the model are investigated. The disease-free and endemic equilibrium were investigated, as well as the basic reproduction number, R0, also calculated using the next-generation matrix approach. When R0 < 1, the model's stability analysis reveals that the system is asymptotically stable at disease-free critical point globally as well as locally. If R0 > 1, the system is asymptotically stable at disease-endemic equilibrium both locally and globally. The long-term behaviour of the skin sores model's steady-state solution in a population is investigated using numerical simulations of the model.

As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, whether and when the world can reach herd immunity and return to normal life and a strategy for accelerating vaccination programmes constitute major concerns. We employed Metropolis–Hastings sampling and an epidemic model to design experiments based on the current vaccinations administered and a more equitable vaccine allocation scenario. The results show that most high-income countries can reach herd immunity in less than 1 year, whereas low-income countries should reach this state after more than 3 years. With a more equitable vaccine allocation strategy, global herd immunity can be reached in 2021. However, the spread of SARS-CoV-2 variants means that an additional 83 days will be needed to reach global herd immunity and that the number of cumulative cases will increase by 113.37% in 2021. With the more equitable vaccine allocation scenario, the number of cumulative cases will increase by only 5.70% without additional vaccine doses. As SARS-CoV-2 variants arise, herd immunity could be delayed to the point that a return to normal life is theoretically impossible in 2021. Nevertheless, a more equitable global vaccine allocation strategy, such as providing rapid vaccine assistance to low-income countries/regions, can improve the prevention of COVID-19 infection even though the virus could mutate.

Anorexia nervosa (AN) is one of the most common chronic disorders in adolescence with still high mortality rates. Knowledge on gut-brain interaction might help to develop new treatments, as severe starvation-induced changes of the microbiome in AN-patients have been demonstrated, which do not alleviate with weight gain. In our own pilot study alpha-diversity was increased in patients with AN after short-term weight recovery, while beta diversity showed clear group differences with healthy controls before and after weight gain. A reduction of taxa belonging to Enterobacteriaceae at admission and discharge and an increase in taxa belonging to Lachnospiraceae at discharge were typically found in patients with AN. The work plan of our European project comprises an observational study and two phase II RCTs with the application of omega-3-PUFA and a multistrain psychobiotic to both, humans and rodents. With the help of a well-established animal model for AN (activity-based anorexia, ABA), the effect of stool transplants from patients to rodents will be analysed. Longitudinal MRI will be conducted in rodents together with cellular and molecular brain analyses. In addition, immune response and circulating antibodies associated with the presence of certain bacterial strains and interaction with hunger and satiety hormones will be explored. We hope that by this translational research we may systematically investigate the role of an altered microbiome for the course of AN and to identify new therapeutic tools.