S. Pena, G. Di Pietro, Mateus Fuchshuber-Moraes
et al.
Based on pre-DNA racial/color methodology, clinical and pharmacological trials have traditionally considered the different geographical regions of Brazil as being very heterogeneous. We wished to ascertain how such diversity of regional color categories correlated with ancestry. Using a panel of 40 validated ancestry-informative insertion-deletion DNA polymorphisms we estimated individually the European, African and Amerindian ancestry components of 934 self-categorized White, Brown or Black Brazilians from the four most populous regions of the Country. We unraveled great ancestral diversity between and within the different regions. Especially, color categories in the northern part of Brazil diverged significantly in their ancestry proportions from their counterparts in the southern part of the Country, indicating that diverse regional semantics were being used in the self-classification as White, Brown or Black. To circumvent these regional subjective differences in color perception, we estimated the general ancestry proportions of each of the four regions in a form independent of color considerations. For that, we multiplied the proportions of a given ancestry in a given color category by the official census information about the proportion of that color category in the specific region, to arrive at a “total ancestry” estimate. Once such a calculation was performed, there emerged a much higher level of uniformity than previously expected. In all regions studied, the European ancestry was predominant, with proportions ranging from 60.6% in the Northeast to 77.7% in the South. We propose that the immigration of six million Europeans to Brazil in the 19th and 20th centuries - a phenomenon described and intended as the “whitening of Brazil” - is in large part responsible for dissipating previous ancestry dissimilarities that reflected region-specific population histories. These findings, of both clinical and sociological importance for Brazil, should also be relevant to other countries with ancestrally admixed populations.
A review of stem volume and biomass equations for tree species growing in Europe is presented. The mathematical forms of the empirical models, the associated statistical parameters and information about the size of the trees and the country of origin were collated from scientific articles and from technical reports. The total number of the compiled equations for biomass estimation was 607 and for stem volume prediction it was 230. The analysis indicated that most of the biomass equations were developed for aboveground tree components. A relatively small number of equations were developed for southern Europe. Most of the biomass equations were based on a few sampled sites with a very limited number of sampled trees. The volume equations were, in general, based on more representative data covering larger geographical regions. The volume equations were available for major tree species in Europe. The collected information provides a basic tool for estimation of carbon stocks and nutrient balance of forest ecosystems across Europe as well as for validation of theoretical models of biomass allocation.
Bacterial strains that inhabit the gastrointestinal tracts of hominids have diversified in parallel (co-diversified) with their host species. The extent to which co-diversification has been mediated by partner fidelity between strains and hosts or by geographical distance between hosts is not clear due to a lack of strain-level data from clades of hosts with unconfounded phylogenetic relationships and geographical distributions. Here, I tested these competing hypotheses through meta-analyses of 7121 gut bacterial genomes assembled from wild-living ape species and subspecies sampled throughout their ranges in equatorial Africa. Across the gut bacterial phylogeny, strain diversification was more strongly associated with host phylogeny than with geography. In total, approximately 14% of the branch length of the gut bacterial phylogeny showed significant evidence of co-diversification independent of geography, whereas only approximately 4% showed significant evidence of diversification associated with geography independent of host phylogeny. Geographically co-occurring heterospecific hosts ( Pan and Gorilla ) universally maintained distinct co-diversified bacterial strains. Strains whose diversification was associated with geography independent of host phylogeny included clades of Proteobacteria known to adopt free-living lifestyles (e.g. Escherichia ). These results show that co-diversification of gut bacterial strains with hominids has been driven primarily by fidelity of strains to host lineages rather than geography.
In this work, standard methods of the mixed thin-shell foramlism are refined using the framework of Colombeau's theory of generalized functions. To this end, systematic use is made of smooth generalized functions, in particular regularizations of the Heaviside step function and the delta distribution, instead of working directly with the corresponding Schwartz distributions. Based on this change of method, the resulting extended thin shell formalism is shown to offer a decisive advantage over traditional approaches to the subject: it avoids dealing with ill-defined products of distributions in the calculation of nonlinear curvature expressions, thereby allowing for the treatment of problems that prove intractable with the 'conventional' thin-shell formalism. This includes, in particular, the problem of matching singular spacetimes with distributional metrics (containing a delta distribution term) across a joint boundary hypersurface in spacetime, the problem of setting up the dominant energy condition for thin shells, and the problem of defining reasonably rigorously nonlinear distribution-valued curvature invariants needed in higher-derivative theories of gravity. Eventually, as a further application, close links to Penrose's cut-and-paste method are established by proving that results of said method can be re-derived using the generalized formalism presented.
Beginning in the 1980s, the mediatization of soccer also manifested itself through the phenomenon of fanzines, instruments of information, but even more so of counter-information, dissonant and free voices. In this panorama, an original case study is that of the fanzine “Brigata Ultrà,” a folio of the eponymous group of supporters from Perugia’s north curve between 1994 and 2008. The “Brigata” has a strong territorial identity tied to a specific area of the city and with a political orientation dissonant with that of the Perugia curve: it is a “black” (i. e. right wing) group in a “red” curve (i. e. left wing). This composite identity takes on visible forms and manners that attract national attention. The group travels for years on away trips with a black bus recognizable by an eagle, a tricolor and a Grifo (the symbol of the city). Added to this is the frequent practice of physically following the Italian national team’s matches as well. The fanzine becomes the “voice” of the “Brigata” by proposing and nurturing, around soccer, multiple identities: that of the home neighborhoods, the one of the city, the one of the national, and the one of the politically right-wing oriented.
We investigate the geographic concentration of patenting in large cities using a sample of 14 developed countries. There is wide dispersion of the share of patented inventions in large metropolitan areas. South Korea and the US are two extreme outliers where patenting is highly concentrated in large cities. We do not find any general trend that there is a geographic concentration of patents for the period 2000-2014. There is also no general trend that inventors in large cities have more patents than in rural areas (scaling). Hence, while agglomeration economies of large cities may offer advantages for innovation activities, the extent of these advantages is not very large. We conclude that popular theories over-emphasize the importance of large cities for innovation activities.
How are new technologies like generative AI quickly adopted and used by executive and managerial leaders to create value in organizations? A survey of INSEAD's global alumni base revealed several intriguing insights into perceptions and engagements with generative AI across a broad spectrum of demographics, industries, and geographies. Notably, there's a prevailing optimism about the role of generative AI in enhancing productivity and innovation, as evidenced by the 90% of respondents being excited about its time-saving and efficiency benefits. Analysis revealed different attitudes about adoption and use across demographic variables. Younger respondents are significantly more excited about generative AI and more likely to be using it at work and in personal life than older participants. Those in Europe have a somewhat more distant view of generative AI than those in North America in Asia, in that they see the gains more likely to be captured by organizations than individuals, and are less likely to be using it in professional and personal contexts than those in North America and Asia. This may also be related to the fact that those in Europe are more likely to be working in Financial Services and less likely to be working in Information Technology industries than those in North America and Asia. Despite this, those in Europe are more likely to see AGI happening faster than those in North America, although this may reflect less interaction with generative AI in personal and professional contexts. These findings collectively underscore the complex and multifaceted perceptions of generative AI's role in society, pointing to both its promising potential and the challenges it presents.
El concepto de Lebenswelt requiere una metodología capaz de comprender las posibles orientaciones de la acción humana y, al mismo tiempo, entender las tomas de decisiones en un horizonte comunicativo. Por tanto, los sujetos echan mano de una epistemología que permite ampliar el horizonte de las ciencias objetivas. De ahí que el proyecto de una mathesis universalis se queda corto. El pensamiento contemporáneo cambia la metodología fi sicalista e introduce nuevos ideales para las ciencias. En este sentido, la fenomenología abre las prerrogativas para entender incluso las historias de vida y rehacer el sentido de los hechos y coyunturas históricas relativas a la multiplicidad de saberes de los distintos mundos de la vida.
Human health is dependent upon environmental exposures, yet the diversity and variation in exposures are poorly understood. We developed a sensitive method to monitor personal airborne biological and chemical exposures and followed the personal exposomes of 15 individuals for up to 890 days and over 66 distinct geographical locations. We found that individuals are potentially exposed to thousands of pan-domain species and chemical compounds, including insecticides and carcinogens. Personal biological and chemical exposomes are highly dynamic and vary spatiotemporally, even for individuals located in the same general geographical region. Integrated analysis of biological and chemical exposomes revealed strong location-dependent relationships. Finally, construction of an exposome interaction network demonstrated the presence of distinct yet interconnected human- and environment-centric clouds, comprised of interacting ecosystems such as human, flora, pets, and arthropods. Overall, we demonstrate that human exposomes are diverse, dynamic, spatiotemporally-driven interaction networks with the potential to impact human health.
Let $R$ be a ring and $\mathsf S$ be a class of strongly finitely presented (FP${}_\infty$) $R$-modules closed under extensions, direct summands, and syzygies. Let $(\mathsf A,\mathsf B)$ be the (hereditary complete) cotorsion pair generated by $\mathsf S$ in $\textsf{Mod-}R$, and let $(\mathsf C,\mathsf D)$ be the (also hereditary complete) cotorsion pair in which $\mathsf C=\varinjlim\mathsf A=\varinjlim\mathsf S$. We show that any $\mathsf A$-periodic module in $\mathsf C$ belongs to $\mathsf A$, and any $\mathsf D$-periodic module in $\mathsf B$ belongs to $\mathsf D$. Further generalizations of both results are obtained, so that we get a common generalization of the flat/projective and fp-projective periodicity theorems, as well as a common generalization of the fp-injective/injective and cotorsion periodicity theorems. Both are applicable to modules over an arbitrary ring, and in fact, to Grothendieck categories.