Drosophila melanogaster has given enormous contributions to Space Biology Research. This organism is an important tool to be manipulated in genetic engineering and molecular experiments in order to understand different biological processes homologous to other multicellular systems, including humans. Their milestone contribution in microgravity conditions and radiation, the two most important variables in space, have allowed new knowledge and perspectives on the positive and negative effects on cellular, molecular and genetic levels. In this review, we expose the historical contribution of Drosophila melanogaster in Astrobiology.

Community detection is a set of algorithms developed in network science to find meaningful sub-groups within larger groups. This article (1) outlines and evaluates the method and (2) shows how it can enrich ongoing debates about European integration. To this end, it uses the example of the approximation of laws, an enduring topic in European legal studies.

Does household debt affect the size of the fiscal multiplier? We investigate the effects of household debt on government spending multipliers using a smooth transition vector autoregression model. Through generalized impulse response functions, we measure whether the effect of government spending on GDP is conditioned by different levels of household debt in Australia, Sweden, and Norway, three countries with high levels of household indebtedness, and in the world’s seven largest economies. Our results indicate that the short-term effects of government spending tend to be higher if fiscal expansion takes place during periods of low household debt. On average, the fiscal multiplier (on impact) is 0.70, 0.61, and 0.79 (percent of GDP) larger when the increase in government spending takes place during periods of low household debt for Australia, Norway, and the United States.

Of all the known pillared layered clays (PILC), Al-PILC is the most studied. In spite of that, its use on a commercial scale is not yet possible due to the large amount of water required for its synthesis. The aim of the present work was to take advantage of the beneficial effects of ultrasound radiation for reducing intercalation time, and to optimize the synthesis parameters in order to find a viable industrial means of preparing Al-PILC.

A comprehensive study of the effect of ultrasonic radiation on the parameters which have a direct effect on the amount of water used in the synthesis was conducted, specifically on the effects of: (1) mmol of Al/g of clay ratio (R) by decreasing the volume of A1 solution and keeping the amount of clay constant, (2) the concentration of clay in the initial suspension (or not suspending the clay at all), and (3) the concentration of the A1 precursor solution. The use of ultrasonic radiation produced the expected reduction in exchange time which was attributed to a decrease of the clay-particle size. This decrease of particle size gave rise to an improvement in the diffusion of the A1 precursor towards the core of the clay grain leading to solids with increased surface areas, basal spacing and X-ray diffraction peak definition. By optimizing the synthesis parameters directly involved in the consumption of water, it was possible to decrease the amount used by >60%.

Design representations play a crucial role in facilitating communication between individuals in design. Sketches and physical prototypes are frequently used to communicate design concepts in early-stage design. However, we lack an understanding of the communicative benefits each representation provides and how these benefits relate to the effort and resources required to create each representation. A mixed-methods study was conducted with 44 participants to identify whether sketches and physical prototypes led to different levels of cognitive load perceived by a communicator and listener and the characteristics that shape their cognitive load during communication. Results showed that listeners perceived higher levels of mental and physical demands when understanding ideas as low-fidelity physical prototypes, as compared to sketches. No significant differences were found in the cognitive load levels of communicators between the two conditions. Qualitative analyses of post-task semi-structured interviews identified five themes relating to verbal explanations and visual representations that shape designers’ cognitive load when understanding and communicating ideas through design representations. Results indicate that designers should be aware of the specific objectives they seek to accomplish when selecting the design representation used to communicate. This work contributes to the knowledge base needed for designers to use design representations more effectively as tools for communication.

Mindfulness-based interventions (MBIs) for engineering design are promising for their stress management, cognition and well-being benefits. Prior work concluded that engineering design is stressful and that each engineering design stage has unique stressors. This non-randomized study investigated the effect of an MBI on students’ cognitive stress and final design creativity during a multistage, hands-on design assessment. Data were collected using surveys, project deliverables and follow-up interviews. While no significant increase was found in students’ measured state mindfulness due to the intervention, students in the MBI condition were more likely to perceive the intervention positively compared to students in the control condition (alternative use tasks). Students in both conditions were found to have similar levels of state stress, which indicates that the MBI had no observable effect on students’ measured stress during design. Although students in the MBI condition were found to produce higher-quality final designs, there were no differences in design creativity or novelty. When data were clustered to identify types of student experiences, state mindfulness was found to meaningfully contribute, but state stress was not. Future research should continue to investigate MBIs in engineering design as a potential approach to improve design education and outcomes.

While a significant amount of research has documented the importance of design artefacts in design communication, relatively little work has investigated the effect of design artefact quality on the development of a shared understanding between designers. In the current work we focus specifically on sketch quality and the effect of sketch quality on the shared understanding of design dyads. A controlled study with 22 design dyads (44 designers) was conducted to understand the relationship between sketch quality and shared understanding. Results suggest that design artefact quality, measured by sketch understandability, does not predict the shared understanding of a design concept. Our findings hold implications for the fundamental ways in which we evaluate sketch quality and the importance of artefact fidelity for communicative acts.

Prior work has demonstrated that gender identity affects team psychological safety, which is critical to the development of a shared understanding of the task. Further, we know that a shared understanding can increase team cohesion and team performance. Little work has investigated how gender differences affect communicative acts within the context of design, and more specifically how gender differences may affect the development of a shared understanding of the design concept between designers. As a first step towards filling this gap, the current work presents findings from a controlled study conducted at The Pennsylvania State University with 22 design dyads (44 designers). The findings from this study indicate that gender identity within design dyads does not affect participants’ shared understanding of a design concept.

The Napo River basin, which is situated within the Upper Amazon archaeological region, is one of the most speciose forests in Greater Amazonia. Standard thinking in scholarship and science holds that these forests are essentially pristine because any Indigenous impacts in the past would have been minimal, seedbanks would have been nearby, and natural forests would have reappeared after the humans left, died out, or dispersed. Inventory research in 2019 on three ridgetop forests in Waorani territory inside the Curaray basin (which drains to the right margin of the Napo River) and a comparable inventory on one control site forest along the Nushiño River (also in the Curaray basin) show human impacts from about the late nineteenth century to about 1960; they occurred during the period of wartime among Waorani themselves and between Wao people and outsiders. The human impacts resulted in the high basal-area presence of two long-lived species with important Waorani cultural uses: cacao (Theobroma cacao L.) and ungurahua palm (Oenocarpus bataua Mart.). These species have high frequency and dominance values and do not occur in the control site, which is comparable in terms of elevation above the flood zone of the rivers in the sample. These findings mean that alpha diversity in the right margin sector (or south) of the Napo River basin cannot a priori be explained by reference to traditionally, biologically accepted patterns of ecological succession but may require knowledge of historical patterns of Indigenous land use and secondary landscape transformation over time due to human (specifically Waorani) impacts of the past.

Orders are judicial decisions designed to shore up fair and timely resolution of disputes. As written, detailed, and factual documents, they are reliable markers of procedural steps and a unique source of information about the inner working of an institution. This article examines all published orders of the European Court of Justice, drawing lessons from their use. The analysis demonstrates that the pursuit of efficiency and uniform application blurs the lines between the administration and judging. First, it centralises the institution, expanding the duties of the Registry and amplifying the role of the Cabinet of the President of the Court. Second, it bureaucratises the interpretation and the uniform application of European Union law. These processes are common in judicial institutions with no power over their dockets. But the particular European response, authored by the Court, also suggests its reluctance to forfeit the interpretive monopoly.

Stenoponia tripectinata tripectinata (Tiraboschi, 1902) is the most prevalent subspecies, within the genus Stenoponia, in the Mediterranean area. This rodent flea is widely distributed throughout southwestern Europe and the North of Africa including Mediterranean islands and the Canary Islands. Nevertheless, from a taxonomical and systematic point, this flea group has been neglected over the years. Therefore, the aim of this study was to carry out a comparative morphometric, phylogenetic, and molecular study of two populations of S. t. tripectinata isolated from rodents collected from different islands from the Canary Archipelago and from Corsica to clarify the taxonomic status of these two isolated populations and to assess the morphological and molecular differentiation between them. For this purpose, we have analyzed several morphological traits and sequenced five molecular markers (EF1-α, ITS2, cox1, cox2, and cytb). We observed slight differences in the overall body size between females of both populations, and two well-defined geographical genetic lineages. This suggests the existence of two cryptic subspecies within S. t. tripectinata corresponding to two different island groups. Furthermore, we bring to light the necessity to provide new and updated morphological, molecular, and phylogenetic data to clarify the taxonomic status of S. tripectinata.

The magnitude of facilitation by shelter-building engineers on community structure is expected to be greater when they increase limited resources in the environment. We evaluated the influence of local environmental context on the colonisation of leaf shelters by arthropods in a Mexican evergreen tropical rainforest. We compared the species richness and abundance of arthropods (total and for different guilds) colonising artificially rolled leaves in habitats differing in understory heterogeneity (forest edge > old-growth forests > living fences). Arthropod abundance of the most representative arthropod taxa (i.e., Araneae, Blattodea, Collembola and Psocoptera) colonising the rolled leaves was greater at forest edge, a trend also observed for average arthropod abundance, and for detritivore and predator guilds. In addition, fewer arthropod species and individuals colonised the rolled leaves in the living fence habitat, a trend also observed for most arthropod guilds. As forest edge is expected to have a greater arthropod diversity and stronger density-dependent interactions, a greater limitation of refuges from competitors or predators may have determined the higher colonisation of the rolled leaves in this habitat. Our results demonstrate that local environment context is an important factor that affects the colonisation of arthropods in leaf shelters.

Background: Antimicrobial stewardship programs (ASPs) are useful in improving clinical outcomes in a cost-effective way and in reducing antimicrobial resistance. Objective: We sought to determine the impact of ASP in adult medical-surgical intensive care units (MS-ICUs). Methods: A multicenter study, in 77 MS-ICUs of 9 Latin-American countries, was conducted along 12 months (July 2018–June 2019). A self-assessment survey using a tool based on CDC recommendations (0–100 scale) was performed at the beginning, after 6 months, and at the end of the study. The impact of ASP was evaluated monthly using the following indicators: antimicrobial consumption (defined daily doses [DDD] per 100 patient days), appropriateness of antimicrobial prescriptions (percentage of total prescriptions), crude mortality rate (events per 100 discharges), and hospital-acquired multidrug-resistant microorganisms (MDRs) and Clostridioides difficile infections (CDI events per 1,000 patient days). These indicators were compared between MS-ICUs that reached the 75th percentile and those that maintained the 25th percentile at the final self-assessment. Results: Of all indicators evaluated, only surgical prophylaxis ≤24 hours, vancomycin therapeutic monitoring, and aminoglycosides (1 dose per day) did not show significant differences between MS-ICUs at the 75th percentile and the 25th percentile. CDI events were significantly higher at the 75th percentile MS-ICUs, probably related to better detection of C. difficile (Table 1). Conclusions: This study confirmed that MS-ICUs with more comprehensive ASPs had significantly better indicators.

Funding: Proprietary Organization: MERCK

Disclosures: None

Human-computer hybrid teams can meet challenges in designing complex engineered systems. However, the understanding of interaction in the hybrid teams is lacking. We review the literature and identify four key attributes to construct design research platforms that support multi-phase design, hybrid teams, multiple design scenarios, and data logging. Then, we introduce a platform for unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) design embodying these attributes. With the platform, experiments can be conducted to study how designers and intelligent computational agents interact, support, and impact each other.

The family Ctenophthalmidae (Order Siphonaptera) has been considered as a ‘catchall’ for a wide range of divergent taxa showing a paraphyletic origin. In turn, Ctenophthalmus sp. (Ctenophthalmidae) includes 300 valid described taxa. Within this genus, males are easily distinguishable basing on the size, shape, and chaetotaxy of their genitalia; however, females show slight morphological differences with each other. The main objective of this work was to carry out a comparative morphometric, phylogenetic, and molecular study of two different subspecies: Ctenophthalmus baeticus boisseauorum and Ctenophthalmus apertus allani in order to clarify and discuss its taxonomic status. From a morphological and biometrical point of view, we found clear differences between modified abdominal segments of males of both subspecies and slight differences in the margin of sternum VII of all female specimens which did not correspond with molecular and phylogenetic results based on four different molecular markers (Internal Transcribed Spacer 1 and 2 of ribosomal DNA, and the partial cytochrome c oxidase subunit 1 and cytochrome b of mitochondrial DNA). Thus, we observed a phenotypic plasticity between both subspecies, which did not correspond with a real genotypic variability nor different environmental or ecological conditions. Basing on these results, we could consider that there are no solid arguments to consider these two ‘morphosubspecies’ as two different taxa. We propose that C. b. boisseauorum should be considered as a junior synonym of C. a. allani.