Landscape matters: Insights from the impact of mega-droughts on Colombia's energy transition

Mega-droughts can cause disruption to the affected society sparking a transition. We explore the causes and effects of the 2015−2016 mega-drought in Colombia. Using the multi-level perspective as a framework, we found that the mega-drought sparked an energy transition in Colombia whose dynamics were impacted both by the institutionalization of niches as well as the ability to predict the next drought. We were able to trace, using the current understanding of anthropogenic forces, the cause of the mega-drought to socio-technical landscape development influenced by human-induced warming and land use change. We found that the regimes in Bolivia and Brazil were able to influence the landscape through deforestation, and hence contribute to the intensity of a mega-drought in Colombia. The knowledge that a regime can cause disruption in regimes in other geographies and sectors has implications for transition research as well as decision-making for coping with droughts and other disasters. © 202

AN ENZYMATIC FUNCTION ASSOCIATED WITH TRANSFORMATION OF FIBROBLASTS BY ONCOGENIC VIRUSES : I. CHICK EMBRYO FIBROBLAST CULTURES TRANSFORMED BY AVIAN RNA TUMOR VIRUSES

Chick embryo fibroblast cultures develop fibrinolytic activity after transformation by Rous sarcoma virus (RSV). This fibrinolytic activity is not present in normal cultures, and it does not appear after infection with either nontransforming strains of avian leukosis viruses or cytocidal RNA and DNA viruses. In cultures infected with a temperature sensitive mutant of RSV the onset of fibrinolysis appears after exposure to permissive temperatures and precedes by a short interval the appearance of morphological evidence of transformation. See PDF for Structure The rate of fibrinolysis in transformed cultures depends on the nature of the serum that is present in the growth medium: some sera (e.g., monkey or chicken serum) promote high enzymatic activity, while others (calf, fetal bovine) do not. Some sera contain inhibitors of the fibrinolysin. Based on the effect of a small number of known inhibitors, at least one step of the fibrinolytic process shows specificity resembling that of trypsin. The sera of sarcoma-bearing chickens contain an inhibitor of the fibrinolysin, whereas normal chicken sera do not. For general discussion, conclusions, and summary see the accompanying paper, part II, (J. Exp. Med. 137:112)

Are There Cross-Cultural Legal Principles? Modal Reasoning Uncovers Procedural Constraints on Law

Despite pervasive variation in the content of laws, legal theorists and anthropologists have argued that laws share certain abstract features and even speculated that law may be a human universal. In the present report, we evaluate this thesis through an experiment administered in 11 different countries. Are there cross-cultural principles of law? In a between-subjects design, participants (N = 3,054) were asked whether there could be laws that violate certain procedural principles (e.g., laws applied retrospectively or unintelligible laws), and also whether there are any such laws. Confirming our preregistered prediction, people reported that such laws cannot exist, but also (paradoxically) that there are such laws. These results document cross-culturally and –linguistically robust beliefs about the concept of law which defy people's grasp of how legal systems function in practice

Coordination and expertise foster legal textualism

Funding Information: ACKNOWLEDGMENTS. This research was supported by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation (PID2020-119791RA-I00; RTI2018-098882-B-I00), the Polish National Science Centre (2020/36/C/HS5/00111; 2017/25/N/HS5/00944), the Swiss National Science Foundation (PZ00P1_179912), and the European Research Council (805498). Publisher Copyright: Copyright © 2022 the Author(s).A cross-cultural survey experiment revealed a dominant tendency to rely on a rule’s letter over its spirit when deciding which behaviors violate the rule. This tendency varied markedly across (k = 15) countries, owing to variation in the impact of moral appraisals on judgments of rule violation. Compared with laypeople, legal experts were more inclined to disregard their moral evaluations of the acts altogether and consequently exhibited stronger textualist tendencies. Finally, we evaluated a plausible mechanism for the emergence of textualism: in a two-player coordination game, incentives to coordinate in the absence of communication reinforced participants’ adherence to rules’ literal meaning. Together, these studies (total n = 5,794) help clarify the origins and allure of textualism, especially in the law. Within heterogeneous communities in which members diverge in their moral appraisals involving a rule’s purpose, the rule’s literal meaning provides a clear focal point—an identifiable point of agreement enabling coordinated interpretation among citizens, lawmakers, and judges.Peer reviewe

The LOFAR Tied-Array All-Sky Survey: Timing of 35 radio pulsars and an overview of the properties of the LOFAR pulsar discoveries

The LOFAR Tied-Array All-Sky Survey (LOTAAS) is the most sensitive untargeted radio pulsar survey performed at low radio frequencies (119-151 MHz) to date and has discovered 76 new radio pulsars, including the 23.5-s pulsar J0250+5854, which up until recently was the slowest spinning radio pulsar known. In this paper, we report on the timing solutions of 35 pulsars discovered by LOTAAS, which include a nulling pulsar and a mildly recycled pulsar, and thereby complete the full timing analysis of the LOTAAS pulsar discoveries. We give an overview of the findings from the full LOTAAS sample of 76 pulsars, discussing their pulse profiles, radio spectra, and timing parameters. We found that the pulse profiles of some of the pulsars show profile variations in time or frequency, and while some pulsars show signs of scattering, a large majority display no pulse broadening. The LOTAAS discoveries have on average steeper radio spectra and longer spin periods (1.4 7), as well as lower spin-down rates (3.1 7) compared to the known pulsar population. We discuss the cause of these differences and attribute them to a combination of selection effects of the LOTAAS survey as well as previous pulsar surveys, though we cannot rule out that older pulsars tend to have steeper radio spectra

Cosmopolitan distribution of Endozoicomonas-like organisms and other intracellular microcolonies of bacteria causing infection in marine molluscs

Intracellular microcolonies of bacteria, in some cases developing large extracellular cysts, have been historically reported infecting a wide diversity of economically important mollusc species worldwide, sometimes associated with severe lesions and mass mortality events. As an effort to characterise those organisms, traditionally named as Rickettsia or Chlamydia -like organisms (RLO/CLO), via international collaboration, 98 samples comprising 20 mollusc species were collected over 10 countries and examined using histology and phylogenetic analysis. A 16S rRNA gene amplicon library-based sequencing showed the presence of different species of Endozoicomonas-like organisms (ELO) in all the mollusc species analysed, infecting primarily gill and digestive glands. Co-infections of ELOs with other intracellular bacteria were also observed. Subsequent phylogenetic analysis of Operational Taxonomic Units (OTU) revealed a novel microbial diversity associated with molluscan RLO/CLOs infection distributed along different taxa, including Spirochaetes phyla, Rickettsiales order, Simkaniaceae family, Mycoplasma and Francisella genera, and sulfur-oxidizing endosymbionts. Sequences like Francisella halioticida/philomiragia and Candidatus Brownia rhizoecola were also obtained. The presence of ELO sequences in the RLO/CLO infection was confirmed by standard PCR, Sanger sequencing, and by in situ hybridisation in a selection of samples. The phylogenetic analysis conducted in this study will allow for further characterization of the microbial community associated with Rickettsia and Chlamydia-like infection in marine molluscs and their correlation with severity of the lesions in order to reveal their role as endosymbionts, commensals or true pathogens.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio