Warp-speed adaptation to novel hosts after 300 generations of enforced dietary specialisation in the seed beetle Callosobruchus maculatus (Coleoptera: Chrysomelidae: Bruchinae)

Thank you to Paul Eady for providing C. maculatus to initiate our laboratory population and advice on rearing them. The study was funded by the University of Aberdeen core teaching funds (honours project budget to TP), and by a doctoral training grant to AL from the BBSRC-EastBio doctoral training partnershipPeer reviewedPublisher PD

Long-run Patterns of Labour Market Polarisation: Evidence from German Micro Data

The past four decades have witnessed dramatic changes in the structure of employment. In particular, the rapid increase in computational power has led to large-scale reductions in employment in jobs that can be described as intensive in routine tasks. These jobs have been shown to be concentrated in middle skill occupations. A large literature on labour market polarisation characterises and measures these processes at an aggregate level. How- ever to date there is little information regarding the individual worker adjustment processes related to routine- biased technological change. Using an administrative panel data set for Germany, we follow workers over an ex- tended period of time and provide evidence of both the short-term adjustment process and medium-run effects of routine task intensive job loss at an individual level. We initially demonstrate a marked, and steady, shift in em- ployment away from routine, middle-skill, occupations. In subsequent analysis, we demonstrate how exposure to jobs with higher routine task content is associated with a reduced likelihood of being in employment in both the short term (after one year) and medium term (five years). This employment penalty to routineness of work has increased over the past four decades. More generally, we demonstrate that routine task work is associated with reduced job stability and more likelihood of experiencing periods of unemployment. However, these negative ef- fects of routine work appear to be concentrated in increased employment to employment, and employment to unemployment transitions rather than longer periods of unemployment

Quantum spin liquids

A glance at recent research on magnetism turns up a curious set of articles discussing, or claiming evidence for, a state of matter called a quantum spin liquid (QSL). These articles are notable in their invocation of exotic notions of topological physics, quantum entanglement, fractional quantum numbers, anyon statistics and gauge field theories. So what is a QSL and why do we need this complicated technical vocabulary to describe it? Our aim in this article is to introduce some of these concepts and provide a discussion of what a QSL is, where it might occur in Nature and why it is of interest. As we'll see, this is a rich subject which is still in development, and unambiguous evidence for the realisation of the QSL state in a magnetic material remains hotly debated. However, the payoff in terms of the special nature of quantum entanglement in the QSL, and its diverse spectrum of unusual excitations and topological status will (at least to some extent) justify the need to engage with some powerful, occasionally abstract, technical material

Host use diversification during range shifts shapes global variation in Lepidopteran dietary breadth

Acknowledgements I thank M. C. Singer for helpful discussions and comments. I thank I. Kitching for permissions to use the Lepidopteran host plant database curated by the Natural History Museum London. I also thank the authors of refs. 19,20 for making their range shift data publicly available, and to all contributors to and curators of the open access databases used in this study. Data availability: All data used in this study is freely publicly available from the cited sources17,19,20. Reuse of the HOSTS dataset is conditional upon permission from the curators.Peer reviewedPostprin

Molecular evolutionary rates predict both extinction and speciation in temperate angiosperm lineages

Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Effective Church Leadership Through Emotional Intelligence

In On Leadership, John Gardner wrote, “Most of what leaders have that enables them to lead is learned.” Effective leadership skills can be learned and become habits. In Primal Leadership, Daniel Goleman wrote, “Not only can emotional intelligence be learned, but it also can be retained over the long term.” Southern Baptist congregants expect their pastors to be theologians, but also effective leaders. The emotional quotient barrier suggests that pastoral leadership is less effective because of behaviors such as inconsistent management of emotions, inability to genuinely connect with people, or leading without inspiration. This has led to stagnated or declining ministries, shorter tenures in a single ministry, leader burnout, and premature resignations. Utilizing case studies, church leader interviews, and surveys, this project will evaluate the leadership style and emotional intelligence of traditional, attractional, organic, and hybrid church leaders. It will detail the emergence of emotional intelligence in church leadership, determine reasons for and the risks of underdeveloped emotional intelligence, and introduce a model for developing and cultivating healthy habits for effective church leadership through emotional intelligence

Frequency-dependent and correlational selection pressures have conflicting consequences for assortative mating in a color-polymorphic lizard, Uta stansburiana

Acknowledgments We would like to thank the numerous undergraduate researchers involved with this project for their invaluable assistance in lizard rearing and data collection. We also thank D. Haisten, A. Runemark, Y. Takahashi, and M. Verzijden for insightful comments on the manuscript. This project was funded by National Science Foundation DEBOS-15973 to A.G.M. and B.R.S.Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Etching of Silicon Wafer in Preparation of Graphene Transfer

Following the research done on graphene looking at its unique properties it has been found that graphene can be used as a varying capacitor. What has been observed is that graphene acts almost like a torrential ocean constantly fluctuating. What we use is a silicon wafer with multiple etched layers to create a stable platform on which to capture this energy. In this paper we will discuss the general setup and step-by-step procedures required to create a functioning variable capacitor out of graphene, gold, and Silicon dioxide (SiO2) substrate. Electron Beam Lithography (EBL) is used to create the initial design after which the sample undergoes an etching process in order to adjust the tips to the proper height so that the graphene does not make contact while also balancing the etch time so that the trenches, which will carry the current, aren\u27t destroyed during the process