Body appreciation around the world: Measurement invariance of the Body Appreciation Scale-2 (BAS-2) across 65 nations, 40 languages, gender identities, and age.

The Body Appreciation Scale-2 (BAS-2) is a widely used measure of a core facet of the positive body image construct. However, extant research concerning measurement invariance of the BAS-2 across a large number of nations remains limited. Here, we utilised the Body Image in Nature (BINS) dataset - with data collected between 2020 and 2022 - to assess measurement invariance of the BAS-2 across 65 nations, 40 languages, gender identities, and age groups. Multi-group confirmatory factor analysis indicated that full scalar invariance was upheld across all nations, languages, gender identities, and age groups, suggesting that the unidimensional BAS-2 model has widespread applicability. There were large differences across nations and languages in latent body appreciation, while differences across gender identities and age groups were negligible-to-small. Additionally, greater body appreciation was significantly associated with higher life satisfaction, being single (versus being married or in a committed relationship), and greater rurality (versus urbanicity). Across a subset of nations where nation-level data were available, greater body appreciation was also significantly associated with greater cultural distance from the United States and greater relative income inequality. These findings suggest that the BAS-2 likely captures a near-universal conceptualisation of the body appreciation construct, which should facilitate further cross-cultural research. [Abstract copyright: Copyright © 2023 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.. All rights reserved.

Future sudden singularities in Palatini cosmology

We show that future singularities which have appeared in the Palatini cosmological models investigated in [1] are of finite size at finite time type [2]

Extended Theories of Gravitation

Extended theories of gravitation are naturally singled out by an analysis inspired by the Ehelers-Pirani-Schild framework. In this framework the structure of spacetime is described by a Weyl geometry which is enforced by dynamics. Standard General Relativity is just one possible theory within the class of extended theories of gravitation. Also all Palatini f(R) theories are shown to be extended theories of gravitation. This more general setting allows a more general interpretation scheme and more general possible couplings between gravity and matter. The definitions and constructions of extended theories will be reviewed. A general interpretation scheme will be considered for extended theories and some examples will be considered

The phylogeny of leaf beetles (Chrysomelidae) inferred from mitochondrial genomes

The high-level classification of Chrysomelidae (leaf beetles) currently recognizes 12 or 13 well-established subfamilies, but the phylogenetic relationships among them remain ambiguous. Full mitochondrial genomes were newly generated for 27 taxa and combined with existing GenBank data to provide a dataset of 108 mitochondrial genomes covering all subfamilies. Phylogenetic analysis under maximum likelihood and Bayesian inference recovered the monophyly of all subfamilies, except that Timarcha was split from Chrysomelinae in some analyses. Three previously recognized major clades of Chrysomelidae were broadly supported: the ‘chrysomeline’ clade consisting of (Chrysomelinae (Galerucinae + Alticinae)); the ‘sagrine’ clade with internal relationships of ((Bruchinae + Sagrinae) + (Criocerinae + Donaciinae)), and the ‘eumolpine’ clade comprising (Spilopyrinae (Cassidinae (Eumolpinae (Cryptocephalinae + Lamprosomatinae)))). Relationships among these clades differed between data treatments and phylogenetic algorithms, and were complicated by two additional deep lineages, Timarcha and Synetinae. Various topological tests favoured the PhyloBayes software as the preferred inference method, resulting in the arrangement of (chrysomelines (eumolpines + sagrines)), with Timarcha placed as sister to the chrysomeline clade and Synetinae as a deep lineage splitting near the base. Whereas mitogenomes provide a solid framework for the phylogeny of Chrysomelidae, the basal relationships do not agree with the topology of existing molecular studies and remain one of the most difficult problems of Chrysomelidae phylogenetics.This research was supported by grants from the National Science Foundation of China (nos 31772496, 31301900 and 3181101902), and the President's International Fellowship Initiative of the Chinese Academy to APV. APV's research on Coleoptera phylogenetics was funded by the Leverhulme Trust (F/00696/P and IAF‐2018‐038) and mitogenome sequencing was supported by the Natural History Museum Biodiversity Initiative.Peer Reviewe