When droughts and floods struck ancient agrarian societies, complex networks of exchange and interaction channeled resources into affected settlements and migrant flows away from them. Did these ...networks evolve in part to connect populations living in differing climate regimes? Here, I examine this relationship with a long-term archaeological case study in the pre-Hispanic North American Southwest, analyzing 4.3 million artifacts from a 250-year period at nearly 500 archaeological sites. I use these artifacts to estimate how the flow of social information changed over time, and to measure how the intensity of social interaction between sites varied as a function of distance and several regional drought patterns. Social interaction decayed with distance, but ties between sites in differing oceanic and continental climate regimes were often stronger than expected by distance alone. Accounting for these different regional drivers of local climate variability will be crucial for understanding the social impacts of droughts and floods in the past and present.
La récurrence du Lecoq d’Émile Gaboriau et du Sherlock Holmes de Sir Arthur Conan Doyle illustre éloquemment l’importance des constructions transfictionnelles dans le roman judiciaire et le récit ...policier. Si aucun autre exemple véritablement comparable ne s’impose d’emblée durant la seconde moitié du xixe siècle, on constate que quelques auteurs se sont employés à édifier autrement des ensembles romanesques. Parmi eux, Fortuné du Boisgobey (1821-1891) se distingue tout particulièrement. Il publie entre 1875 et 1885 plusieurs récits qui, loin de fonctionner en autarcie, se convoquent mutuellement et mettent en place des univers fictionnels fondés sur des procédés qui invitent le lecteur à s’interroger sur le statut de ce qu’il lit. Ce faisant, Boisgobey propose une conceptualisation singulière et originale du genre judiciaire.
Abstract
Recent decades have seen the rapid expansion of scholarship that identifies societal responses to past climatic fluctuations. This fast-changing scholarship, which was recently synthesized ...as the History of Climate and Society (HCS), is today undertaken primary by archaeologists, economists, geneticists, geographers, historians and paleoclimatologists. This review is the first to consider how scholars in all of these disciplines approach HCS studies. It begins by explaining how climatic changes and anomalies are reconstructed by paleoclimatologists and historical climatologists. It then provides a broad overview of major changes and anomalies over the 300,000-year history of Homo sapiens, explaining both the causes and environmental consequences of these fluctuations. Next, it introduces the sources, methods, and models employed by scholars in major HCS disciplines. It continues by describing the debates, themes, and findings of HCS scholarship in its major disciplines, and then outlines the potential of transdisciplinary, ‘consilient’ approaches to the field. It concludes by explaining how HCS studies can inform policy and activism that confronts anthropogenic global warming.
SARS-CoV-2 is responsible for the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, infecting millions of people and causing hundreds of thousands of deaths. The Spike glycoproteins of SARS-CoV-2 mediate ...viral entry and are the main targets for neutralizing antibodies. Understanding the antibody response directed against SARS-CoV-2 is crucial for the development of vaccine, therapeutic, and public health interventions. Here, we perform a cross-sectional study on 106 SARS-CoV-2-infected individuals to evaluate humoral responses against SARS-CoV-2 Spike. Most infected individuals elicit anti-Spike antibodies within 2 weeks of the onset of symptoms. The levels of receptor binding domain (RBD)-specific immunoglobulin G (IgG) persist over time, and the levels of anti-RBD IgM decrease after symptom resolution. Although most individuals develop neutralizing antibodies within 2 weeks of infection, the level of neutralizing activity is significantly decreased over time. Our results highlight the importance of studying the persistence of neutralizing activity upon natural SARS-CoV-2 infection.
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Antibodies against SARS-CoV-2 Spike correlate with COVID-19 severityRBD-specific IgM and IgA decline more rapidly than IgGSARS-CoV-2 neutralizing antibodies are elicited within 2 weeks of infectionNeutralizing antibodies decline significantly after resolution of the infection
Prévost et al. report a cross-sectional study on a cohort of 106 COVID-19 patients and show that most infected individuals are able to elicit a sustained antibody response over time. However, plasma neutralizing capacity wanes after infection resolution, but its implication on protection from re-infection remains unknown.
Butyrate‐producing bacteria are found in many outdoor ecosystems and host organisms, including humans, and are vital to ecosystem functionality and human health. These bacteria ferment organic ...matter, producing the short‐chain fatty acid butyrate. However, the macroecological influences on their biogeographical distribution remain poorly resolved. Here we aimed to characterise their global distribution together with key explanatory climatic, geographical and physicochemical variables. We developed new normalised butyrate production capacity (BPC) indices derived from global metagenomic (n = 13,078) and Australia‐wide soil 16S rRNA (n = 1331) data, using Geographic Information System (GIS) and modelling techniques to detail their ecological and biogeographical associations. The highest median BPC scores were found in anoxic and fermentative environments, including the human (BPC = 2.99) and non‐human animal gut (BPC = 2.91), and in some plant–soil systems (BPC = 2.33). Within plant–soil systems, roots (BPC = 2.50) and rhizospheres (BPC = 2.34) had the highest median BPC scores. Among soil samples, geographical and climatic variables had the strongest overall effects on BPC scores (variable importance score range = 0.30–0.03), with human population density also making a notable contribution (variable importance score = 0.20). Higher BPC scores were in soils from seasonally productive sandy rangelands, temperate rural residential areas and sites with moderate‐to‐high soil iron concentrations. Abundances of butyrate‐producing bacteria in outdoor soils followed complex ecological patterns influenced by geography, climate, soil chemistry and hydrological fluctuations. These new macroecological insights further our understanding of the ecological patterns of outdoor butyrate‐producing bacteria, with implications for emerging microbially focused ecological and human health policies.
Butyrate‐producing bacteria produce the short‐chain fatty acid butyrate and are vital to ecosystem functionality and human health, but the macroecological influences on their biogeographical distribution remain poorly resolved. Here we developed new normalised butyrate production capacity (BPC) indices derived from global metagenomic (n = 13,078) and Australia‐wide soil 16S rRNA (n = 1331) to characterise their global distribution together with key explanatory climatic, geographical and physicochemical variables. Abundances of butyrate‐producing bacteria in outdoor soils followed complex ecological patterns influenced by geography, climate, soil chemistry and hydrological fluctuations, and our findings lend new macroecological insights for emerging microbially focused ecological and human health policies.
Background: While low back pain (LBP) is the leading cause of disability worldwide, its clinical objective assessment is currently limited. Part of this syndrome arises from the abnormal sensorimotor ...control of back muscles, involving increased muscle fatigability (i.e., assessed with the Biering–Sorensen test) and abnormal muscle activation patterns (i.e., the flexion–extension test). Surface electromyography (sEMG) provides objective measures of muscle fatigue development (median frequency drop, MDF) and activation patterns (RMS amplitude change). This study therefore assessed the sensitivity and validity of a novel and flexible sEMG system (NSS) based on PEVA electrodes and potentially embeddable in textiles, as a tool for objective clinical LBP assessment. Methods: Twelve participants wearing NSS and a commercial laboratory sEMG system (CSS) performed two clinical tests used in LBP assessment (Biering–Sorensen and flexion–extension). Erector spinae muscle activity was recorded at T12-L1 and L4-L5. Results: NSS showed sensitivity to sEMG changes associated with fatigue development and muscle activations during flexion–extension movements (p < 0.05) that were similar to CSS (p > 0.05). Raw signals showed moderate cross-correlations (MDF: 0.60–0.68; RMS: 0.53–0.62). Adding conductive gel to the PEVA electrodes did not influence sEMG signal interpretation (p > 0.05). Conclusions: This novel sEMG system is promising for assessing electrophysiological indicators of LBP during clinical tests.
There is a clear need to refocus the way we prioritize conservation actions at a global scale to incorporate human systems. Anthromes have been suggested as one tool for integrating anthropogenic ...effects on ecosystems, but spatially explicit comparisons of biodiversity patterns are limited at a global extent. To address this gap, we used global data sets of anthromes and terrestrial vertebrate richness. We ranked anthromes by richness to all and threatened species at a global scale, temperate and tropical extents, and within major geographic regions. We tested for correlations between overall richness and count of threatened species, between taxonomic groups (birds, mammals, amphibians), and between taxa and conservation actions. At the global scale, there is high variation in vertebrate species richness by anthrome with low species richness in wildlands and higher richness in villages, rangelands, and woodlands. Threatened species distribution follows a similar pattern with high numbers of threatened species in village and remote seminatural woodland anthromes. Analyzes at temperate and tropical extents suggests unique opportunities in different regions, for example when considering the value of land sparing or sharing. There is clear heterogeneity across geographic regions. Richness in anthromes and hotspots are spatially aligned across all taxa but not for threatened taxa. Protection was negatively correlated with threatened bird richness. Human modified ecosystems provide opportunities for conservation and global and regional ranking of anthromes helps identify priorities that can complement biome and ecoregion-based prioritization. Currently, much of conservation research and prioritization is in wildlands or perceived natural landscapes, however this data shows a clear need to focus conservation efforts on seminatural, managed, and residential lands. These data would be helpful for global conservation organizations as an updated framework that can be used to prioritize global resource allocation while considering both ecological and social systems.
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