Two centuries of masting data for European beech and Norway spruce across the European continent

Tree masting is one of the most intensively studied ecological processes. It affects nutrient fluxes of trees, regeneration dynamics in forests, animal population densities, and ultimately influences ecosystem services. Despite a large volume of research focused on masting, its evolutionary ecology, spatial and temporal variability and environmental drivers are still matter of debate. Understanding the proximate and ultimate causes of masting at broad spatial and temporal scales will enable us to predict tree reproductive strategies and their response to changing environment. Here we provide broad spatial (distribution range-wide) and temporal (century) masting data for the two main masting tree species in Europe, European beech (Fagus sylvatica L.) and Norway spruce (Picea abies (L.) H. Karst.). We collected masting data from a total of 359 sources through an extensive literature review and from unpublished surveys. The dataset has a total of 1747 series and 18348 yearly observations from 28 countries and covering a time span of years 1677-2016 and 1791-2016 for beech and spruce, respectively. For each record, the following information is available: identification code; species; year of observation; proxy of masting (flower, pollen, fruit, seed, dendrochronological reconstructions); statistical data type (ordinal, continuous); data value; unit of measurement (only in case of continuous data); geographical location (country, Nomenclature of Units for Territorial Statistics NUTS-1 level, municipality, coordinates); first and last record year and related length; type of data source (field survey, peer reviewed scientific literature, grey literature, personal observation); source identification code; date when data were added to the database; comments. To provide a ready-to-use masting index we harmonized ordinal data into five classes. Furthermore, we computed an additional field where continuous series with length >4 years where converted into a five classes ordinal index. To our knowledge, this is the most comprehensive published database on species-specific masting behaviour. It is useful to study spatial and temporal patterns of masting and its proximate and ultimate causes, to refine studies based on tree-ring chronologies, to understand dynamics of animal species and pests vectored by these animals affecting human health, and it may serve as calibration-validation data for dynamic forest models.The paper was partly funded by the “Fondo di Ricerca Locale 2015-2016” of the University of Torino and by the Stiftelsen Stina Werners fond (grant SSWF 10-1/29-3 to I.D.)

Social and moral psychology of COVID-19 across 69 countries

The COVID-19 pandemic has afected all domains of human life, including the economic and social fabric of societies. One of the central strategies for managing public health throughout the pandemic has been through persuasive messaging and collective behaviour change. To help scholars better understand the social and moral psychology behind public health behaviour, we present a dataset comprising of 51,404 individuals from 69 countries. This dataset was collected for the International Collaboration on Social & Moral Psychology of COVID-19 project (ICSMP COVID-19). This social science survey invited participants around the world to complete a series of moral and psychological measures and public health attitudes about COVID-19 during an early phase of the COVID-19 pandemic (between April and June 2020). The survey included seven broad categories of questions: COVID-19 beliefs and compliance behaviours; identity and social attitudes; ideology; health and well-being; moral beliefs and motivation; personality traits; and demographic variables. We report both raw and cleaned data, along with all survey materials, data visualisations, and psychometric evaluations of key variables.publishedVersio

Wait Up!: Attachment and Sovereign Power.

Sociologists and feminist scholars have, over many decades, characterised attachment as a social construction that functions to support political and gender conservatism. We accept that attachment theory has seen use to these ends and consider recent deployments of attachment theory as justification for a minimal State within conservative political discourse in the UK since 2009. However, we contest that attachment is reducible to its discursive construction. We consider Judith Butler's depiction of the infant attached to an abusive caregiver as a foundation and parallel to the position of the adult citizen subjected to punitive cultural norms and political institutions. We develop and qualify Butler's account, drawing on the insights offered by the work of Lauren Berlant. We also return to Foucault's Psychiatric Power lectures, in which familial relations are situated as an island of sovereign power within the sea of modern disciplinary institutions. These reflections help advance analysis of three important issues: the social and political implications of attachment research; the relationship between disciplinary and sovereign power in the affective dynamic of subjection; and the political and ethical status of professional activity within the psy disciplines.This is the final version of the article. It first appeared from Springer via http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10767-014-9192-

Psicología social y moral de COVID-19 en 69 países

La pandemia de COVID-19 ha afectado a todos los ámbitos de la vida humana, incluido el tejido económico y social de las sociedades. Una de las estrategias centrales para gestionar la salud pública a lo largo de la pandemia ha sido el envío de mensajes persuasivos y el cambio de comportamiento colectivo. Para ayudar a los estudiosos a comprender mejor la psicología social y moral que subyace al comportamiento en materia de salud pública, presentamos un conjunto de datos compuesto por 51.404 individuos de 69 países. Este conjunto de datos se recopiló para el proyecto de la Colaboración Internacional en Psicología Social y Moral de COVID-19 (ICSMP COVID-19). Esta encuesta de ciencias sociales invitó a participantes de todo el mundo a completar una serie de medidas morales y psicológicas y actitudes de salud pública sobre COVID-19 durante una fase temprana de la pandemia de COVID-19 (entre abril y junio de 2020). La encuesta incluía siete grandes categorías de preguntas: Creencias sobre COVID-19 y conductas de cumplimiento; identidad y actitudes sociales; ideología; salud y bienestar; creencias morales y motivación; rasgos de personalidad; y variables demográficas. Presentamos los datos brutos y depurados, junto con todos los materiales de la encuesta, las visualizaciones de los datos y las evaluaciones psicométricas de las variables clave.The COVID-19 pandemic has affected all domains of human life, including the economic and social fabric of societies. One of the central strategies for managing public health throughout the pandemic has been through persuasive messaging and collective behaviour change. To help scholars better understand the social and moral psychology behind public health behaviour, we present a dataset comprising of 51,404 individuals from 69 countries. This dataset was collected for the International Collaboration on Social & Moral Psychology of COVID-19 project (ICSMP COVID-19). This social science survey invited participants around the world to complete a series of moral and psychological measures and public health attitudes about COVID-19 during an early phase of the COVID-19 pandemic (between April and June 2020). The survey included seven broad categories of questions: COVID-19 beliefs and compliance behaviours; identity and social attitudes; ideology; health and well-being; moral beliefs and motivation; personality traits; and demographic variables. We report both raw and cleaned data, along with all survey materials, data visualisations, and psychometric evaluations of key variables

MASTREE+ : time-series of plant reproductive effort from six continents

Significant gaps remain in understanding the response of plant reproduction to environmental change. This is partly because measuring reproduction in long-lived plants requires direct observation over many years and such datasets have rarely been made publicly available. Here we introduce MASTREE+, a data set that collates reproductive time-series data from across the globe and makes these data freely available to the community. MASTREE+ includes 73,828 georeferenced observations of annual reproduction (e.g. seed and fruit counts) in perennial plant populations worldwide. These observations consist of 5971 population-level time-series from 974 species in 66 countries. The mean and median time-series length is 12.4 and 10 years respectively, and the data set includes 1122 series that extend over at least two decades (≥20 years of observations). For a subset of well-studied species, MASTREE+ includes extensive replication of time-series across geographical and climatic gradients. Here we describe the open-access data set, available as a.csv file, and we introduce an associated web-based app for data exploration. MASTREE+ will provide the basis for improved understanding of the response of long-lived plant reproduction to environmental change. Additionally, MASTREE+ will enable investigation of the ecology and evolution of reproductive strategies in perennial plants, and the role of plant reproduction as a driver of ecosystem dynamics

Philosophy as political technē: The tradition of invention in Simondon’s political thought

Gilbert Simondon has recently attracted the interest of political philosophers and theorists, despite he is rather renowned as a philosopher of technics – as the author of Of the Mode of Existence of Technical Objects – who also elaborated a general theory of complex systems in Individuation in the Light of the Notions of Form and Information. A group of scholars has developed Gilles Deleuze’s early suggestion that Simondon’s social ontology might offer the basis for a re-theorisation of radical democracy. Others, following Herbert Marcuse, have instead focused on Simondon’s analysis of the relationship between technology and society. However, only a joint study of Simondon’s two major works can reveal their implicit political stakes. As I will argue, Simondon’s anti-Aristotelianism and his anti-Heideggerian understanding of the Greek origins of philosophy, allow us to conceive philosophical thought as a ‘tradition of invention’, that is, a pedagogical technē endowed with the political task of maintaining the openness of the social system and allowing normative invention to emerge from within

Predicting attitudinal and behavioral responses to COVID-19 pandemic using machine learning

At the beginning of 2020, COVID-19 became a global problem. Despite all the efforts to emphasize the relevance of preventive measures, not everyone adhered to them. Thus, learning more about the characteristics determining attitudinal and behavioral responses to the pandemic is crucial to improving future interventions. In this study, we applied machine learning on the multi-national data collected by the International Collaboration on the Social and Moral Psychology of COVID-19 (N = 51,404) to test the predictive efficacy of constructs from social, moral, cognitive, and personality psychology, as well as socio-demographic factors, in the attitudinal and behavioral responses to the pandemic. The results point to several valuable insights. Internalized moral identity provided the most consistent predictive contribution—individuals perceiving moral traits as central to their self-concept reported higher adherence to preventive measures. Similar was found for morality as cooperation, symbolized moral identity, self-control, open-mindedness, collective narcissism, while the inverse relationship was evident for the endorsement of conspiracy theories. However, we also found a non-negligible variability in the explained variance and predictive contributions with respect to macro-level factors such as the pandemic stage or cultural region. Overall, the results underscore the importance of morality-related and contextual factors in understanding adherence to public health recommendations during the pandemic

Author Correction: National identity predicts public health support during a global pandemic

Correction to: Nature Communications https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-021-27668-9, published online 26 January 2022