Abstract Avian influenza viruses (AIVs) present an ongoing threat of human infections. Continuous surveillance is important for detecting new infections and verifying prevention and control measures. Swabs of the external environment and throat swabs of employees were collected from six farmers’ markets in Beijing to detect influenza A virus. Positive samples were sequenced, and their genetic characteristics analyzed. In total, 3251 environmental samples were collected from 2019 to 2023, 11 of which were positive for influenza A virus (positivity rate of 0.34%), including nine for H9N2 and two for H7N9. In a genetic analysis, all H7N9 samples showed low pathogenicity, and no mutations at highly pathogenic sites were detected. All 1135 throat swab samples from staff were negative for influenza A virus. At present, the detection rate of AIVs in farmers’ markets is very low, and no adaptive mutations allowing cross-host transmission were found, indicating a low risk of AIV infection among the people of Beijing.
Physical anthropology. Somatology, Veterinary medicine
D. Cary Woodruff, Paul M. Barrett, Driss Ouarhache
et al.
Readily identifiable based on their large, “spatulate” teeth with diagnostic “heart”-shaped crowns, turiasaurians are non-neosauropodan eusauropods known from varied Jurassic and Cretaceous formations across Laurasia and Gondwana. Recently, three teeth with turiasaurian features were collected from the Middle Jurassic El Mers III Formation in the Middle Atlas Mountains of north-central Morocco. Although these teeth are superficially similar to those of the Late Jurassic Turiasaurus riodevensis from Spain, the absence of rounded denticles presence of a prominently peaked apex and a mesially flared margin, differ from other known turiasaurians. Turiasaurians have not previously been described from the El Mers III Formation, and the only named sauropod from the El Mers Group, which lacks preserved teeth, is the dubious taxon “Cetiosaurus mogrebiensis”. Due to lack of overlapping material and its lack of clear diagnostic characters, we refrain from referring these teeth to the latter, and identify them as Turiasauria indeterminate instead. These teeth represent the first definitive turiasaurian remains from Morocco, as well as the geologically oldest occurrence of Turiasauria from mainland Africa.
Leonardo Della Salda, Amedeo Cuomo, Franco Antonucci
et al.
A remarkably well-preserved skeleton of a male <i>Mammuthus meridionalis</i>, approximately 60 years old, from the Early Pleistocene that is housed at the Castle of L’Aquila (Italy) exhibits a fractured left tusk with severe bone erosion of the alveolus and premaxillary bone, as well as marked spinal deformities. The cranial region underwent ultrasonographic, radiological, and histological examinations, while morphological and biomechanical analyses were conducted on the vertebral column. Microscopic analysis revealed intra vitam lesions, including woven bone fibers indicative of early bone remodeling and lamellar bone with expanded and remodeled Haversian systems. These findings are consistent with osteomyelitis and bone sequestration, likely resulting from chronic pulpitis following the tusk fracture, possibly due to an accident or interspecific combat. The vertebral column shows cervical scoliosis, compensatory curves, fusion between the first cervical vertebrae, and asymmetric articular facets, suggesting postural adaptations. Evidence of altered molar wear and masticatory function also support long-term survival post-trauma. Additionally, lesions compatible with spondyloarthropathy, an inflammatory spinal condition not previously documented in <i>Mammuthus meridionalis</i>, were identified. These findings provide new insights into the pathology and adaptive responses of extinct proboscideans, demonstrating the critical role of (paleo)histological methods in reconstructing trauma, disease, and aspects of life history in fossil vertebrates.
Adiba Amira Siddiqa, Sayed Shafaat Mahmud, Rafael Martinez-Galarza
We introduce a Variational Autoencoder (VAE)--Normalizing Flow (NF) framework for rapid probabilistic inference of galaxy properties and emission line fluxes at $z \leq 0.3$ from SDSS \textit{gri} imaging and photometry. Our model probabilistically infers stellar mass, star formation rate (SFR), redshift, gas-phase metallicity, and central black hole mass for a given galaxy. The model accruacy matches current non-spectroscopic methods for stellar mass and redshift, surpasses them for SFR and metallicity, and introduces the first probabilistic central black hole mass estimates from imaging + photometry. It also delivers probabilistic estimates of H$α$, H$β$, [N~\textsc{ii}], and [O~\textsc{iii}] emission line fluxes directly from imaging, enabling SFR, metallicity, dust, and AGN/shock diagnostics without spectroscopy. This approach opens new pathways for scalable, physics-informed inference in upcoming surveys such as Roman and Rubin LSST.
Exactly solvable models are interesting for science and education, since they help in scientific search and in understanding of phenomena. Some exact solutions for simple quantum-mechanical models are considered. The models include two barriers, combinations of barrier pairs, three barriers, three wells etc. The model of two barriers can predict some interesting phenomena in the one-dimensional case. Clearing of wave and quantum-mechanical barriers (including reflection-free passage) is an important problem of physics. The rigorous equations for the transmission and reflection coefficients are derived. Barriers in substances are combined into associations, where the bond within each association is stronger than bonds between associations. Some properties of disordered media (the transparency of glasses, the conductivity of alloys or melts, the brittleness, or ductility, etc.) can be qualitatively understood from this viewpoint. The same material can exhibit various properties: transparent and opaque, metallic and non-metallic, ordered and disordered, and so on. Such transitions can occur under pressure. A model of the three-well potential can be applied to the phenomena under consideration. Some remarks on 3-D cases are made.
Favour Nerrise, Andrew Sosa Sosanya, Patrick Neary
Magnetic navigation (MagNav) is a rising alternative to the Global Positioning System (GPS) and has proven useful for aircraft navigation. Traditional aircraft navigation systems, while effective, face limitations in precision and reliability in certain environments and against attacks. Airborne MagNav leverages the Earth's magnetic field to provide accurate positional information. However, external magnetic fields induced by aircraft electronics and Earth's large-scale magnetic fields disrupt the weaker signal of interest. We introduce a physics-informed approach using Tolles-Lawson coefficients for compensation and Liquid Time-Constant Networks (LTCs) to remove complex, noisy signals derived from the aircraft's magnetic sources. Using real flight data with magnetometer measurements and aircraft measurements, we observe up to a 64% reduction in aeromagnetic compensation error (RMSE nT), outperforming conventional models. This significant improvement underscores the potential of a physics-informed, machine learning approach for extracting clean, reliable, and accurate magnetic signals for MagNav positional estimation.
Abstract Background Hope and love are popular themes of literature and art in many human societies. The human physiology of love and hope is less well understood. This review presents evidence that the lack of love and/or hope delays growth disturbs development and maturation and even kills. Main body Love and hope intersect in promoting healthy human development. Love provides a sense of security and attachment, which are necessary for healthy physical, cognitive, and emotional development. Hope provides a sense of optimism and resilience in the face of adversity. Loving relationships can foster a sense of hope in individuals and in society by providing support systems during difficult times. Similarly, having a sense of hope can make it easier to form loving relationships by providing individuals with the confidence to connect with others. Hope and love are the fundamental basis of human biocultural reproduction, which is the human style of cooperation in the production, feeding, and care of offspring. Examples are given of the association between human growth in height with love and hope, including (1) the global “Long Depression” of 1873–1896, (2) “hospitalism” and the abuse/neglect of infants and children, (3) adoption, (4) international migration, (5) colonial conquest, and (6) social, economic, and political change in Japan between 1970 and 1990. Conclusion Overall, this review suggests that love and hope are both critical factors in promoting healthy human development and that they intersect in complex ways to support emotional well-being.
Heliolitines are a major tabulate coral group, which experienced their early diversification in the Katian (Late Ordovician).
Fossils of this group are well represented in the Kuruktag area of northeastern Tarim Basin, Northwest China, but detailed
studies of corals from this area are still lacking. Here, we systematically describe early Katian heliolitines of the
Tarim Block based on new material from the lower Katian Yuanbaoshan Formation of southern Kuruktag, which include
the plasmoporellids Plasmoporella xinjiangensis and Plasmoporella grandis, the sibiriolitids Mongoliolites obliterans
and Mongoliolites sp., the protoheliolitid Wormsipora sp., the proporid Acdalopora sokolovi, the pseudoplasmoporid
Navoites irregularis, and the heliolitid Apekinella zeravshanica. A faunal comparison indicates that the biogeographic
connections of Tarim Block are closest to Chu-Ili and South Tienshan, but relatively weaker with Qilian and North China.
Students' self-efficacy, interest, and perceived recognition from others have been shown to be very important for the development of their identity in a given field, which is a critical predictor of students' career decisions. Prior research suggests that students' self-efficacy and interest play an important role in their performance and persistence in STEM fields. However, very little has been investigated about the role of perceived recognition and validation by instructors on students' self-efficacy and interest. Moreover, prior quantitative studies show that women often report a lower level of physics perceived recognition, self-efficacy and interest. In this study, we analyzed data from individual interviews with 38 female students to investigate their learning experiences in physics courses in order to obtain a qualitative understanding of the factors that shape their self-efficacy and interest. We find that female students' negative and positive perceived recognition from instructors and teaching assistants (TAs) greatly influenced their self-efficacy and interest and even impacted their desire to persist in STEM majors. We categorize different types of perceived recognition that women reported in our interviews and how they influenced them. For example, many women reported that they felt belittled for their questions or efforts in physics courses, which often negatively influenced their self-efficacy. These findings can help physics educators develop better ways to interact with students in order to provide positive recognition and validation, such as acknowledging students' efforts and questions, expressing faith in students' ability to excel, and being careful not to give unintended messages to students. Our research also suggests that it is important for instructors/TAs to note that it is not their intentions that matter but the impact they are having on their students.
Structural equation modeling (SEM) is a statistical method widely used in educational research to investigate relationships between variables. SEM models are typically constructed based on theoretical foundations and assessed through fit indices. However, a well-fitting SEM model alone is not sufficient to verify the causal inferences underlying the proposed model, as there are statistically equivalent models with distinct causal structures that equally well fit the data. Therefore, it is crucial for researchers using SEM to consider statistically equivalent models and to clarify why the proposed model is more accurate than the equivalent ones. However, many SEM studies did not explicitly address this important step, and no prior study in physics education research has delved into potential methods for distinguishing statistically equivalent models with differing causal structures. In this study, we use physics identity model as an example to discuss the importance of considering statistically equivalent models and how other data can help to distinguish them. Previous research has identified three dimensions of physics identity: perceived recognition, self-efficacy, and interest. However, the relationships between these dimensions have not been thoroughly understood. In this paper, we specify a model with perceived recognition predicting self-efficacy and interest, which is inspired by individual interviews with students in physics courses to make physics learning environments equitable and inclusive. We test our model with fit indices and discuss its statistically equivalent models with different causal inferences among perceived recognition, self-efficacy, and interest. We then discuss potential experiments that could further empirically test the causal inferences underlying the models, aiding the refinement to a more accurate causal model for guiding educational improvements.
Online ethnography is often criticized for being less immersive than traditional ethnography. However, this article argues that the digital medium offers a distinctive way to connect researchers with their interlocutors. Online ethnography can help balance being intimate while respecting research participants by maintaining appropriate distance in anthropological fieldwork. The article presents a case study of bathrooms during the Covid‐19 pandemic. It shows that online ethnography, which only allows access to what is seen and heard on the screen, creates a more limited, transient, flexible and ambiguous relationship with the research participants. This unique form of relatedness makes them more open to sharing their stories, images and videos about their bodily practices in bathrooms. The article emphasizes the potential of digital research methods to reveal the details of embodied practices. It invites anthropologists to explore the different ways of relating to digital and physical spaces in research.
The article summarizes archaeological and anthropological information regarding the children’s group of the settled population of the Middle Don. Sources are materials from barrowless burials and household sites of the 6 th—3 rd centuries BC. The basic conditions of everyday life and the features of the funerary rites of the named demographic group are considered. Based on the results of the anthropological research on bone residues, the state of health and the nutrition system of younger individuals were assessed. The available data indicate unfavorable living conditions in general, primarily about the imperfection of the diet, heavy physical activity. In the clothing complex of sedentary sites, children’s household items (jewelry, amulets, toys) are distinguished. The few children’s ditch graves and the widespread practice of exhibiting corpses are characterized. According to the group burials identified at the Semiluksky hillfort and containing mainly the remains of children, the ritual of extraordinary funerary-sacrificial complexes is traced.
Drawing upon the empirical scholarship and research expertise of contributors from all settled continents and from diverse life settings and economies, Viral Loads illustrates how the COVID-19 pandemic, and responses to it, lay bare and load onto people’s lived realities in countries around the world. A crosscutting theme pertains to how social unevenness and gross economic disparities are shaping global and local responses to the pandemic, and illustrate the effects of both the virus and efforts to contain it in ways that amplify these inequalities. At the same time, the contributions highlight the nature of contemporary social life, including virtual communication, the nature of communities, neoliberalism and contemporary political economies, and the shifting nature of nation states and the role of government. Over half of the world’s population has been affected by restrictions of movement, with physical distancing requirements and self-isolation recommendations impacting profoundly on everyday life but also on the economy, resulting also, in turn, with dramatic shifts in the economy and in mass unemployment. By reflecting on how the pandemic has interrupted daily lives, state infrastructures and healthcare systems, the contributing authors in this volume mobilise anthropological theories and concepts to locate the pandemic in a highly connected and exceedingly unequal world. The book is ambitious in its scope – spanning the entire globe – and daring in its insistence that medical anthropology must be a part of the growing calls to build a new world.
Investigations into zoonotic disease outbreaks have been largely epidemiological and microbiological, with the primary focus being one of disease control and management. Increasingly though, the human-animal interface has proven to be an important driver for the acquisition and transmission of pathogens in humans, and this requires syncretic bio-socio-cultural enquiries into the origins of disease emergence, for more efficacious interventions. A biocultural lens is imperative for the examination of primate-related zoonoses, for the human-primate interface is broad and multitudinous, involving both physical and indirect interactions that occur due to shared spaces and ecologies. I use the case example of a viral zoonotic epidemic that is currently endemic to India, the Kysanaur Forest Disease, to show how biocultural anthropology provides a broad and integrative perspective into infectious disease ecology and presents new insights into the determinants of disease outbreaks. Drawing on insights from epidemiology, political ecology, primate behavioral ecology and ethnoprimatology, this paper demonstrates how human-primate interactions and shared ecologies impact infectious disease spread between human and nonhuman primate groups.
This paper will summarise evidence for Late Neolithic and Early Bronze Age flint extraction at the Southern English mines, beginning with a brief synopsis of their chronology and followed by a summary of mine lithics. It is argued that understanding later mining is equally important as examining its beginning, because the Neolithic is framed by the pursuit of flint from deep mines with significant episodes of extraction at its beginning and end. A focus is maintained on the flint mines located in the county of Sussex because these are the best researched of the English mines. This research represents a limited study of the Late Neolithic/Early Bronze Age activity at the Early Neolithic mines, because it is far from exhaustive. Nonetheless, this paper will attempt to define the Late Neolithic and Bronze Age flint working activity at the mines and will question if this activity is associated with new episodes of shaft-mining or informal methods of extraction, such as quarrying or surface collection of earlier mine waste.
The examined material (207 bones and bone fragments) of 53 avian taxa from two human cave dwellings is dated between 24,000 ± 1000 BP and 9400 ± 100 BP. It reveals that 49.0% of the bird species/taxa disappeared from the recent bird fauna of the Thanh Hoa Province; 39.6% disappeared from the recent bird fauna of North Vietnam (except Thanh Hoa Province); 33.9% disappeared from the recent bird fauna of Vietnam (except North Vietnam); 28.3% are not extant in the recent bird fauna of Indochina (except Vietnam); and 52.8% disappeared from the recent bird fauna of Southeast Asia (except Indochina). This suggests more considerable influence of the Late Pleistocene climatic events on the environment and bird fauna than previously accepted in the Eastern part of the Indochinese peninsula in the last 24–millenia. The gallinaceous birds are best represented. Of the 39 Southeast-Asian species, 18 species/taxa (46.2 percent) are Galliforms. They consist of 34 percent of all bird taxa recorded in both caves. Four categories of the IUCN Red List have been represented among the established birds in the sites: LC—28, NT—7, VU—2 (<i>Buceros bicornis</i> and <i>Rhyticeors undulates</i>), and CR—2 (<i>Lophura edwardsi</i> and <i>Rhinoplax vigil</i>).
María Fernanda Torres, Barbara Navazo, Mariela Garraza
et al.
El ancho bicondíleo humeral en relación con la talla se reconoce como un adecuado índice de la robustez esquelética (IRE). El objetivo del presente trabajo es estimar y describir valores percentilares de referencia del índice de robustez esquelética de niñas y niños de 4 a 14 años, residentes en tres provincias argentinas. La muestra incluyó 7883 escolares (3913 varones y 3970 mujeres) de las provincias de Buenos Aires, Chubut y Mendoza. Las mediciones antropométricas del ancho bicondíleo humeral (mm) y la talla (cm) se realizaron entre los años 2014 y 2018 siguiendo protocolos estandarizados. A partir de estas variables se estimó el IRE [(ancho bicondíleo humeral/talla)*100] y se calcularon los percentiles por edad y sexo usando el método LMS. Los valores del IRE fueron mayores a la edad de 4 años, en tanto que luego de esa edad los valores percentilares mostraron un comportamiento descendente, hasta alcanzar, a los 14 años, el menor valor. La comparación entre sexos indicó valores mayores en varones que en mujeres en todas las edades y en las diferentes curvas percentilares. Los valores tabulados y graficados del IRE pueden considerarse una referencia local y ser empleados en estudios epidemiológicos y antropológicos que requieran inferir la contextura ósea de niñas y niños y en el monitoreo de la obesidad oculta en individuos con índice de masa corporal normal.
Yuichi I. Naito, Miriam Belmaker, Francisco J. Jiménez-Espejo
et al.
During the Last Glacial Maximum and deglaciation, the Iberian Peninsula served as a faunal and human population refugium. Human foodways have always played a pivotal role in understanding social and cultural practices in prehistory. Nonetheless, the limited number of archaeological sites and human remains in this region hinders the complete understanding of these critical communities’ diet. To increase our knowledge about human consumption patterns, we selected three Magdalenian levels from the site of El Pirulejo (Southern Iberia Peninsula, Spain). These levels are characterized by a high abundance of rabbit (Oryctolagus cuniculus) remains (76–97% MNI), initially suggesting that rabbits were the primary source of protein for site inhabitants. Stable isotope analysis was conducted on two human teeth in tandem with stable isotope analysis of the rabbit teeth. Contrary to the expectations derived from the zooarchaeological analysis, rabbits were not a significant source of dietary protein. Carbon and nitrogen bulk isotopic values are the most enriched found in sampled human remains for this area and context. Our data supports aquatic food resource inclusion and increased resource diversity among Iberian hunter-gatherers during the Magdalenian. This study is consistent with previous studies that suggested a socio-economic network among human groups between inland and coastal regions in the terminal Pleistocene Southern Iberia.