5,073 research outputs found

    Evolutionary ecology of obligate fungal and microsporidian invertebrate pathogens

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    The interactions between hosts and their parasites and pathogens are omnipresent in the natural world. These symbioses are not only key players in ecosystem functioning, but also drive genetic diversity through co-evolutionary adaptations. Within the speciose invertebrates, a plethora of interactions with obligate fungal and microsporidian pathogens exist, however the known interactions is likely only a fraction of the true diversity. Obligate invertebrate fungal and microsporidian pathogen require a host to continue their life cycle, some of which have specialised in certain host species and require host death to transmit to new hosts. Due to their requirement to kill a host to spread to a new one, obligate fungal and microsporidian pathogens regulate invertebrate host populations. Pathogen specialisation to a single or very few hosts has led to some fungi evolving the ability to manipulate their host’s behaviour to maximise transmission. The entomopathogenic fungus, Entomophthora muscae, infects houseflies (Musca domestica) over a week-long proliferation cycle, resulting in flies climbing to elevated positions, gluing their mouthparts to the substrate surface, and raising their wings to allow for a clear exit from fungal conidia through the host abdomen. These sequential behaviours are all timed to occur within a few hours of sunset. The E. muscae mechanisms used in controlling the mind of the fly remain relatively unknown, and whether other fitness costs ensue from an infection are understudied.European Commissio

    FARC musicians' musical identities and political identities through their music: analysis of their narratives, musical practices and songs in the Colombian peace post-agreement

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    The Colombia Revolutionary Army Forces (FARC) was the largest and most important guerrilla movement in the long and persistent Colombian internal armed conflict. In November 2016, after overcoming significant difficulties, the Colombian government and FARC signed and ratified a Final Peace Agreement; nowadays, FARC has become a lawful political party: Los Comunes. For over fifty years, the movement stimulated cultural and musical activities; FARC's musicians created, composed, arranged, recorded, performed and distributed thousands of songs, initially as part of a guerrilla and now as political party members. This research studies the musical identities of FARC musicians and their political identities as constructed through their music, based on social and cultural perspectives from the field of musical identities, the music and social movements theoretical framework and the transformation of conflict approach. This study observes how musical identities are negotiated as a force for transformative political and cultural changes at the personal and collective levels. The FARC musicians' narratives are a primary source for analysing the sociocultural transformation of identities and how they negotiate their musical and political identities. Based on a phenomenological perspective and qualitative methods, this research applied an ethnographic approach and narrative analysis based on the Listening Guide Method (LGM) to undertake a qualitative study of two narratives: life histories and songs-as-narratives. The life histories and the songs-as-narratives can be understood as sociocultural performances with multiple and continuous constructions of selfhood. The analysis of (5) FARC musicians' musical biographies (life histories), obtained through three in-depth semi-structured interviews each, and four (4) songs-as-narratives, based on music video material, allows us to observe the relationship between their music and the social movement and the role of their music in the conflict transformation process. The analysis reveals how the negotiation of musical and political identities interacts mutually and intertwined during conflict transformation experiences involving personal and collective changes. The life histories and song-as-narratives analysis provide evidence about the relationship between Identities in Music (IIM) and their Music in Identities (MII). The IIM and MII are inseparable dimensions of the self. The former is narrated through ex-combatant musicians' experiences as songwriters, singers, instrumentalists, producers, and music teachers committed to their political ideas. The latter emerges in ideological terms, but mainly through personal and collective experiences, emotionally significant, expressing their belonging to the peasantry, indigenous and popular musical cultures. At individual and collective levels, their musical knowledge, interactions and experiences construct new social roles, particularly in transitioning from guerrilla combatants to political party members. The results reveal that music is a sociocultural resource developed by musicians and the entire movement throughout the decades. The ex-combatant musicians' narratives reveal how they employ their musical experiences to explore the possibilities of the moral imagination, changing lyrics, musical production and distribution processes. Exploring new musical genres or affirming their belonging to some of them, they build different social (political) and cultural (musical) realities in their contexts. The transformation of the conflict is a profound identity negotiation process. During the transformation of the conflict, musical and political identities support each other based on ex-combatant musicians' emotional competence or emotional capital, their different uses of "I" and "we", their personal and collective relationships and connections with broader socioeconomic, political and cultural structures

    Evaluating localized conceptions and embedded applications of the Food waste hierarchy in luxury hotels

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    tle:6569c4f6-3a9f-4253-bc22-094465255c8a:afee126f-04b2-41a9-a6dd-b29b7c6c20ab:1The Food Waste Hierarchy is a prescriptive framework advocating the use of waste prevention and reuse strategies above less sustainable ones such as recycling, recovery, and disposal. However, its adoption and effective deployment in the tourism and hospitality sector remain questionable. This paper examines hospitality workers’ conceptions and applications of waste hierarchy principles within the context of routine operations to assess the implications of embedded organizational practices for the adoption of optimal approaches. Primary data were collected through documentary analysis, participant observation, and semi-structured interviews at luxury hotels. The data suggest that the Food Waste Hierarchy is not fully understood. Consequently, choices that do not help to maximize environmental benefits are often adopted. Furthermore, various levels of the hierarchy potentially conflict and undermine the implementation of other options. The findings stress that, although the general principles of the waste hierarchy clearly have merits, the application of this framework within tourism and hospitality is likely to be limited by several contextual factors. These factors shape employees’ behaviours and guide organizational routines in hotels that shape the prevention and effective management of food waste

    On the locality of indistinguishable quantum systems

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    This thesis investigates local realism in quantum indistinguishable particle systems, focusing on bosonic, fermionic, and 2D non-abelian anyonic systems. The local realism of quantum indistinguishable particle systems is asserted. It proves annihilation operators represent the local ontic states in these systems. It closes the literature gap on obtaining Deutsch-Hayden descriptors in indistinguishable particle systems. The prima facie paradox of action at a distance using fermionic annihilation operators as descriptors is resolved. The work provides examples of using and interpreting the annihilation operators as local ontic states. It contains the novel construction and characterisation of the annihilation operators for 2 D non-abelian anyonic systems. The explicit form of Fibonacci anyon annihilation operators is provided, and their usefulness is shown in expressing the anyonic Hubbard model Hamiltonian algebraically. By studying the indistinguishable particle systems’ local realistic structure, the thesis showcases the relevance of the choice of subsystem lattice and exotic possible compositions of subsystems

    A Simple and Effective Method of Cross-Lingual Plagiarism Detection

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    We present a simple cross-lingual plagiarism detection method applicable to a large number of languages. The presented approach leverages open multilingual thesauri for candidate retrieval task and pre-trained multilingual BERT-based language models for detailed analysis. The method does not rely on machine translation and word sense disambiguation when in use, and therefore is suitable for a large number of languages, including under-resourced languages. The effectiveness of the proposed approach is demonstrated for several existing and new benchmarks, achieving state-of-the-art results for French, Russian, and Armenian languages

    Topological Quantum Teleportation and Superdense Coding Without Braiding

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    We present the quantum teleportation and superdense coding protocols in the context of topological qudits, as realised by anyons. The simplicity of our proposed realisation hinges on the monoidal structure of Tambara-Yamagami categories, which readily allows for the generation of maximally entangled qudits. In particular, we show that both protocols can be performed without any braiding of anyons. Our exposition makes use of the graphical calculus for braided fusion categories, a medium in which the protocols find a natural interpretation. We also find a braid-free realisation of the Pauli gates using Ising anyons

    On Reconstructing Finite Gauge Group from Fusion Rules

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    Gauging a finite group 0-form symmetry GG of a quantum field theory (QFT) results in a QFT with a Rep(G)(G) symmetry implemented by Wilson lines. The group GG determines the fusion of Wilson lines. However, in general, the fusion rules of Wilson lines do not determine GG. In this paper, we study the properties of GG that can be determined from the fusion rules of Wilson lines and surface operators obtained from higher-gauging Wilson lines. This is in the spirit of Richard Brauer who asked what information in addition to the character table of a finite group needs to be known to determine the group. We show that fusion rules of surface operators obtained from higher-gauging Wilson lines can be used to distinguish infinite pairs of groups which cannot be distinguished using the fusion of Wilson lines. We derive necessary conditions for two non-isomorphic groups to have the same surface operator fusion and find a pair of such groups.Comment: 45 pages, 7 figure

    Developing mHealth interventions:Using dual process theories to reduce cardiovascular disease risk

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    Derrida’s Black Accent: Decolonial Deconstruction

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    Bulk Operator Reconstruction in Topological Tensor Network and Generalized Free Fields

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    In this paper, we would like to study operator reconstruction in a class of holographic tensor networks describing renormalization group flows studied in arXiv:2210.12127. We study examples of 2d bulk holographic tensor networks constructed from Dijkgraaf-Witten theories and found that for both Zn\mathbb{Z}_n group and S3S_3 group the number of bulk operators behaving like a generalized free field in the bulk scales as the order of the group. We also generalize our study to 3d bulks and found the same scaling for Zn\mathbb{Z}_n theories. However, there is no generalized free field when the bulk comes from more generic fusion categories such as the Fibonacci model.Comment: 11 pages, 3 figure
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