Environmental enrichment can have complex, contradictory effects on aggression and animal welfare. Although increasing enrichment may reduce aggression by limiting the visibility of competitors, it may also intensify territorial defence and harm the welfare of subordinates who are the target of territorial aggression. However, it remains unclear how variation in the complexity of an enrichment structure defended by a single dominant individual influences welfare outcomes for subordinates. In the cichlid fish Astatotilapia burtoni, dominant males defend structures as mating territories, whereas subordinate males do not. To establish social hierarchies, we housed two differently sized males (larger become dominant) and six females in one compartment containing one defendable structure. We manipulated structure complexity by placing 1, 2, or 3 halves of terracotta pots clumped together. Increasing cave number did not enhance territoriality: dominant males showed similar aggression rates, relative gonad sizes, and testosterone levels across treatments. Cave number did not significantly affect mortality, body condition, growth rate, or fin damage in subordinate males. Status-specific behaviours were also not affected by cave number. Although relative gonad size and testosterone levels were generally higher in dominants, these differences were not always significant in the 2- and/or 3-cave treatments, suggesting weaker physiological differentiation between social states. Overall, increasing environmental enrichment had little effect on welfare, but might result in reduced physiological distinctions between dominant and subordinate males. Therefore, careful consideration of enrichment strategies is essential for accurately interpreting status-specific outcomes in laboratory settings.

The generation of renewable power from ocean waves at a commercial scale requires arrays of wave energy converters (WECs) to be designed for efficient power capture over broad frequency bands and a wide range of incident wave directions. Here, array designs are developed in a three-dimensional model based on linear potential-flow theory, by arranging heaving-buoy-type WECs into rows, and spatially grading the resonant properties of successive rows via linear spring–damper power take-off (PTO) mechanisms. The grading leverages theories for rainbow reflection and rainbow absorption, and involves analyses of Bloch waves and pole–zero pairs in complex frequency space to inform the array layout and choice of PTO parameters. The spacing within an array alters the resonant properties of the rows and the behaviour of higher-order passbands, which has implications for the efficiency of an array. Strategies are developed to grade arrays composed of rows with infinitely many WECs, for efficient, broadband absorption over a broad target frequency range, and average absorptions exceeding $90\,\%$ are achieved over a wide range of wave directions. The strategies are applied to finite arrays, which demonstrate broadband absorption in directionally spread irregular sea states, and are shown to outperform the absorption of uniform arrays across a wide range of peak periods.

A widely cited experimental dataset (Cleve et al., J. Fluid Mech., 2019, vol. 875, pp. 597–621) on non-spherical acoustic cavitation dynamics provides a valuable benchmark for model validation, yet its use is hindered by large uncertainties in the two key parameters: the equilibrium bubble radius and the acoustic pressure amplitude. This study introduces a robust parameter-identification framework to resolve these discrepancies and enable meaningful comparison with models. Using an in-house graphics processing unit-accelerated solver for solving the second-order perturbation model developed by Shaw (Phys. Fluids, 2006, vol. 18, issue 7, p. 072104), the dataset is systematically re-examined. A Fourier coefficient-based error metric is developed to quantify the pronounced mismatch between simulations and measurements. The proposed method reliably corrects the vast majority of the experimental parameters, yielding excellent agreement between numerical predictions and observations. The outcome is a validated dataset with accurately identified parameters that can serve as a reliable benchmark for validating advanced computational fluid dynamics simulations and theoretical models. In addition, the approach offers a general tool for future experiments where direct measurements of local acoustic pressure remain difficult.

We use economic experiments to study a fundamental question in political economy: Do voters understand the benefits of taxes? Participants play an economic game as members of a virtual society composed of computer players. In each round, the players earn low or high income, see the distribution of income, and then vote for low or high taxes. We test whether participants vote rationally for high taxes when poor and low taxes when rich, following a classic model in political economy, or whether they focus on the burden of taxes more than the benefits. Across three experiments, poor players voted against high taxes 30% to 50% of the time, and they were more opposed when the same policy was labeled “taxes” than when it was labeled “sharing.” In Experiment 2, Singaporean participants opposed taxes at about the same rate as those of Americans in Experiment 1. In Experiment 3, participants’ opposition to taxes persisted when they received low income every round. These results support the burden hypothesis: voters focus more on the burden of paying taxes than on the benefits they provide. We reflect on what the results imply for the politics of taxes.

Measurements of peculiar velocities in the local Universe are a powerful tool to study the nature of dark energy at low ($z \lt 0.1$) redshifts. Here we present the largest single set of $z\lt 0.1$ peculiar velocity measurements to date, obtained using the Fundamental Plane (FP) of galaxies in the first data release (DR1) of the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI). We describe the photometric and spectroscopic selection criteria used to define the sample, as well as extensive quality control checks on the photometry and velocity dispersion measurements. Additionally, we perform detailed systematics checks for the many analysis parameters in our pipeline. Our DESI DR1 catalogue contains FP-based distances and peculiar velocities for $98\,292$ unique early-type galaxies, increasing the total number of $z \lt 0.1$ FP distances ever measured by a factor of $\sim$2. We achieve a precision of 26% random error in our distance measurements which is comparable to previous surveys. A series of companion DESI papers use the distances and peculiar velocities presented in this paper to measure cosmological parameters.

Over the last decade, the Australian Dark Energy (OzDES) collaboration has used Reverberation Mapping to measure the masses of high redshift supermassive black holes. Here we present the final review and analysis of this OzDES reverberation mapping campaign. These observations use $6-7$ years of photometric and spectroscopic observations of 735 Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN) in the redshift range $z\in [0.13, 3.85]$ and bolometric luminosity range $\log_{10}(L_{\mathrm{bol}})\in [44.3, 47.5] \; \mathrm{erg/s}$. Both photometry and spectra are observed in visible wavelengths, allowing for the physical scale of the AGN broad line region to be estimated from reverberations of the H$\beta$, MgII and CIV emission lines. We successfully use reverberation mapping to constrain the masses of 62 super-massive black holes, and combine with existing data to fit a power law to the lag-luminosity relation for the H$\beta$ and MgII lines with a scatter of $\sim0.25$ dex, the tightest yet identified, fit specifically for consistency with high redshift AGN. We fit a similarly constrained relation for CIV, resolving a tension with the low luminosity literature AGN by accounting for selection effects arising from finite survey length. We also examine the impact of emission line width and luminosity (related to accretion rate) in reducing the scatter of these scaling relationships and find no significant improvement over the lag-only approach for any of the three lines. Using these relations, we further estimate the masses and accretion rates of 246 AGN with single epoch methods. We also use these relations to estimate the relative sizes of the H$\beta$, MgII and CIV emitting regions, and find evidence that the MgII emission may occur further out than H$\beta$. In short, we provide a comprehensive benchmark of high redshift AGN reverberation mapping at the close of this most recent generation of surveys, including light curves, time-delays, and a set of significantly improved radius-luminosity relations for use with high-redshift populations.

This article introduces “nullary writing”—or writing whose function is to operate rather than to represent—as a salute to Simon Franklin’s graphospheric analysis of bureaucratic power. With a wave of the proverbial (digital) hand, it argues that contemporary digital systems fulfill operational capacities long embedded in Slavic manuscript traditions. Through handy examples from early tsarist stamps to early computer programming innovations, it demonstrates how handwritten inscriptions and digital writing alike enable modern surveillance continuous with, rather than distinct from, earlier bureaucratic graphospheres.

The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) hosts a non-redundant Aperture Masking Interferometer (AMI) in its Near Infrared Imager and Slitless Spectrograph (NIRISS) instrument, providing the only dedicated interferometric facility aboard – magnitudes more precise than any interferometric experiment previously flown. However, the performance of AMI (and other high resolution approaches such as kernel phase) in recovery of structure at high contrasts has not met design expectations. A major contributing factor has been the presence of uncorrected detector systematics, notably charge migration effects in the H2RG sensor, and insufficiently accurate mask metrology. Here we present Amigo, a data-driven calibration framework and analysis pipeline that forward-models the full JWST AMI system – including its optics, detector physics, and readout electronics – using an end-to-end differentiable architecture implemented in the Jax framework and in particular exploiting the $\partial$Lux optical modelling package. Amigo directly models the generation of up-the-ramp detector reads, using an embedded neural sub-module to capture non-linear charge redistribution effects, enabling the optimal extraction of robust observables, for example kernel amplitudes and phases, while mitigating systematics such as the brighter-fatter effect. We demonstrate Amigo’s capabilities by recovering the AB Dor AC binary from commissioning data with high-precision astrometry, and detecting both HD 206893 B and the inner substellar companion HD 206893 c: a benchmark requiring contrasts approaching 10 mag at separations of only 100 mas. These results exceed outcomes from all published pipelines and re-establish AMI as a viable competitor for imaging at high contrast at the diffraction limit. Amigo is publicly available as open-source software community resource .

Flying on board the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) above Earth’s turbulent atmosphere, the Aperture Masking Interferometer (AMI) on the NIRISS instrument is the highest-resolution infrared interferometer ever placed in space. However, its performance was found to be limited by non-linear detector systematics, particularly charge migration – or the Brighter-Fatter Effect. Conventional interferometric Fourier observables are degraded by non-linear transformations in the image plane, with the consequence that the inner working angle and contrast limits of AMI were seriously compromised. Building on the end-to-end differentiable model & calibration code , we here present a regularised maximum-likelihood image reconstruction framework , which can deconvolve AMI images either in the image plane or from calibrated Fourier observables, achieving high angular resolution and contrast over a wider field of view than conventional interferometric limits. This modular code by default includes regularisation by maximum entropy, and total variation defined with $l_1$ or $l_2$ metrics. We present imaging results from dorito for three benchmark imaging datasets: the volcanoes of Jupiter’s moon Io, the colliding-wind binary dust nebula WR 137 and the archetypal Seyfert 2 active galactic nucleus NGC 1068. In all three cases, we recover images consistent with the literature at diffraction-limited resolutions. The performance, limitations, and future opportunities enabled by amigo for AMI imaging (and beyond) are discussed.

It is crucial to properly evaluate the traits that directly impact agricultural productivity. Some of these traits, such as soil erosion or crop diseases, are quantified with scoring systems. The resulting data are strictly ordinal and often have an underlying percentage scale. Deciding which model to use for this type of data is not straightforward. Ordinal scores do not meet the assumptions required for analysis of variance. Although multinomial ordinal models, particularly the threshold model, can be applied, they do not account for the underlying percentage scale of the data. To address this limitation, a hurdle model tailored for interval-censored percentage data is proposed. It is a two-part model that models the data according to their nature: In its first part, it models presence or absence of a disease (incidence), and in the second part it models severity or abundance. Individually modelling presence and absence in the first part allows to account for zero inflation. The second part implements theory from the threshold model and the Johnson SB system of distributions that involves a transformation of the percentage scale to a normal distribution. The model result also reflects the two components. They individually describe the degree of disease infestation, and the degree of disease spread. This improves interpretability and enables concrete, insightful conclusions. To illustrate the model, mildew scorings from an on-farm trial in grapevines were used. The model was found highly suitable for this dataset and superior to the threshold model.

Late-season escapes of Palmer amaranth and waterhemp (both are Amaranthus species) pose a significant challenge in cotton production due to their high fecundity, herbicide resistance, and ability to replenish the weed seedbank at harvest. While harvest weed seed control (HWSC) has been adopted in grain systems, its feasibility in cotton remains unknown due to differences in cotton harvesting equipment design. Therefore, this study aimed to determine the fate of Amaranthus spp. seeds during harvest with cotton pickers and stripper harvesters, and evaluated the efficacy of an impact mill to destroy a range of weed seeds present in different types of cotton debris. Along with the seed cotton, cotton strippers removed 52% of the Amaranthus seeds, compared with just 7% with pickers, which are then cleaned at the cotton gin. About 85% of the seeds were retained on the plant after harvest by the pickers, and about 15% by the strippers. Seeds shattered to the ground accounted for 8% with pickers and 18% with strippers. Additionally, the cotton stripper’s field cleaner mechanism removed 15% of the weed seeds. Together, seeds collected in seed cotton, retained on the plant, or separated by field cleaners (in strippers) represent points for HWSC implementation. Different types of cotton debris were then run through a stationary weed-seed impact mill with a known number of seeds for seven weed species to determine seed destruction efficacy. The stem debris had a 29% moisture content, which is too high for the impact mill and caused mill clogging; however, seed kill levels of 98% were achieved in bur debris and gin debris types, values similar to those reported in grain systems. Together, these findings provide a framework for incorporating HWSC practices into cotton, offering growers and processors a way to reduce weed seedbank inputs.

Despite an early surge in copper-ore mining during the sixth and fifth millennia BC (the ‘boom’), evidence for metal production in the Balkans dwindles in the fourth millennium (the ‘bust’). Here, the authors present new evidence for copper mining at Curak in south-west Serbia, c. 3800 cal BC, during this apparent downturn. By integrating field surveys, excavations and provenance analyses, they explore activity at the site, challenging the visibility bias in the archaeological record of this region for this key period. Rather than a societal collapse, the authors argue, fewer artefacts may instead reflect a widening Balkan sphere of influence.

Female genital schistosomiasis (FGS) is a chronic disease manifestation of the waterborne parasitic infection Schistosoma haematobium that affects up to 56 million women and girls, predominantly in sub-Saharan Africa. Starting from early childhood, this stigmatizing gynaecological condition is caused by the presence of Schistosoma eggs and associated toxins within the genital tract. Schistosoma haematobium typically causes debilitating urogenital symptoms, mostly as a consequence of inflammation, which includes bleeding, discharge and lower abdominal pelvic pain. Chronic complications of FGS include adverse sexual and reproductive health and rights outcomes such as infertility, ectopic pregnancy and miscarriage. FGS is associated with prevalent human immunodeficiency virus and may increase the susceptibility of women to high-risk human papillomavirus infection. Across SSA, and even in clinics outside endemic areas, the lack of awareness and available resources among both healthcare professionals and the public means FGS is underreported, misdiagnosed and inadequately treated. Several studies have highlighted research needs and priorities in FGS, including better training, accessible and accurate diagnostic tools, and treatment guidelines. On 6 September, 2024, LifeArc, the Global Schistosomiasis Alliance and partners from the BILGENSA Research Network (Genital Bilharzia in Southern Africa) convened a consultative, collaborative and translational workshop: ‘Female Genital Schistosomiasis: Translational Challenges and Opportunities’. Its ambition was to identify practical solutions that could address these research needs and drive appropriate actions towards progress in tackling FGS. Here, we present the outcomes of that workshop – a series of discrete translational actions to better galvanize the community and research funders.