We introduce a filtration-based framework for studying when and why adding taxa improves phylodynamic inference, by constructing a natural ordering of observed tips and applying sequential Bayesian analysis to the resulting filtration. We decompose the expected variance reduction on taxa addition into learning, mismatch, and covariance components, classify estimands into learning classes based on the pathwise behaviour of the mismatch, and show that for absorbing estimands an oracle who knows the latent absorption status obtains event-wise learning guarantees unavailable to the analyst. The gap between oracle and analyst is irreducible assumptions that are likely to hold for many real phylodynamic estimands, establishing a fundamental limit on what sequence data alone can reveal about the latent genealogy.
Intergenerational memories, migration histories, and the lasting influence of colonial linguistic systems profoundly shape heritage language maintenance in Afro-descendant communities of Central America. This study examines how genealogy functions as a pedagogical tool for sustaining English-based Creole languages among Afro-descendant populations in Costa Rica, Panama, and Belize, three nations linked by Afro-Caribbean migration yet shaped by distinct colonial and educational systems. Drawing on scholarship documenting oral histories, family narratives, and community-based linguistic practices, the study advances a genealogy-as-pedagogy framework to explain how families transmit language, identity, and belonging across generations through ancestral memory, positioning family-based knowledge transmission as curriculum. In Costa Rica and Panama, where Spanish colonial and post-independence language ideologies marginalize English-based Creole varieties, genealogical practices operate as primary mechanisms of linguistic continuity in the absence of sustained institutional support. In Belize, by contrast, British colonial legacies and the national recognition of Belizean Kriol create a distinct sociolinguistic environment in which state institutions, the media, and educational policy reinforce genealogical memory. Through comparative analysis, the study argues for integrating genealogical knowledge into multilingual education, community revitalization initiatives, and heritage language policy to strengthen Afro-descendant linguistic continuity in Costa Rica, Panama, and Belize.
We derive the asymptotic behaviour of the genealogy of a logistic branching process in the setting where the equilibrium population size is large. In three regimes on the tail of the offspring distribution we recover the Kingman, $\text{Beta}(2-α, α)$ and Bolthausen-Sznitman coalescents as a scaling parameter governing the population size is taken to infinity, the deduction going via the convergence in distribution of a modified lookdown construction. This resolves a question asked in arxiv:2501.16837 who studied the same population process forwards in time and showed convergence of the type frequency process to the corresponding $Λ$-Fleming-Viot process in each regime.
The study of vernacular architecture involves recording, ordering, and analysing buildings to probe their physical, social, and cultural explanations. Traditionally, this process is conducted manually and intuitively by researchers. Because human perception is selective and often partial, the resulting interpretations of architecture are invariably broad and loose, often lingering on form descriptions that adhere to a preset linear historical progression or crude regional demarcations. This study proposes a research framework by which intelligent technologies can be systematically assembled to augment researchers' intuition in mapping or uncovering the genealogy of vernacular architecture and its connotative socio-cultural system. We employ this framework to examine the stylistic classification of 1,277 historical shophouses in Singapore's Chinatown. Findings extend beyond the chronological classification established by the Urban Redevelopment Authority of Singapore in the 1980s and 1990s, presenting instead a phylogenetic network to capture the formal evolution of shophouses across time and space. The network organises the shophouse types into nine distinct clusters, revealing concurrent evidences of cultural evolution and diffusion. Moreover, it provides a critical perspective on the multi-ethnic character of Singapore shophouses by suggesting that the distinct cultural influences of different ethnic groups led to a pattern of parallel evolution rather than direct convergence. Our work advances a quantitative genealogy of vernacular architecture, which not only assists in formal description but also reveals the underlying forces of development and change. It also exemplified the potential of collaboration between studies in vernacular architecture and computer science, demonstrating how leveraging the strengths of both fields can yield remarkable insights.
Migration between Haiti and the Dominican Republic has long reflected Hispaniola’s intertwined histories of grievances, distrust, inequality, and interdependence. Under President Luis Abinader (2020–2025), this relationship gained renewed political significance as regional instability and Haiti’s institutional collapse made migration a central concern of governance. This study examines the Dominican state’s discourse on Haitian migration through a combination of historiographical interpretation and discourse-historical frame analysis. Using the diagnostic–prognostic–motivational triad, this analysis examines 26 official statements, legal documents, and media articles to trace how notions of order, security, and humanitarian responsibility have structured migration policy during this period. The findings identify four interrelated logics—securitisation, nativism, racialisation, and statelessness—that shape how migration is problematised and managed. While overtly xenophobic or racist language has largely disappeared from official discourse, older anti-Haitian hierarchies persist beneath a technocratic and humanitarian surface. Deportations, biometric border management, mass detentions, violence, and preferential bureaucratic practices are presented as neutral governance, even as they disproportionately and unlawfully affect darker-skinned citizens and migrants of Haitian descent. The analysis suggests that Dominican migration governance represents neither rupture nor continuity, but rather a rearticulation of narratives of security, sovereignty, and national identity in a context of contemporary securitising issues in Haiti.
Victoria Ibezim, Mick McKeown, John Peter Wainwright
et al.
<b>Background:</b> This systematic review examines the lived experiences of Black students in UK higher education (HE), focusing on their encounters with racism and racial disadvantage, and how institutional and social factors contribute to these experiences. Methods: We conducted a systematic search across seven databases (Academic Search Complete, Education Abstracts, PsycINFO, Race Relations Abstracts, Scopus, Web of Science, and SocINDEX) in April 2023, with periodic updates. The grey literature, which refers to research and information produced outside of traditional academic publishing and distribution channels, was reviewed. This includes reports, policy briefs, theses, conference proceedings, government documents, and materials from organisations, think tanks, or professional bodies that are not commercially published or peer-reviewed but can still offer valuable insights relevant to the topic. Hand searches were also included. Studies were included if they were peer-reviewed, published between 2012 and 2024, written in English, and focused on the experiences of Black students in UK higher education. Both qualitative and quantitative studies with a clear research design were eligible. Studies were excluded if they lacked methodological rigour, did not focus on the UK HE context, or did not disaggregate Black student experiences. Risk of bias was assessed using standard qualitative appraisal tools. Thematic analysis was used to synthesise findings. Results: Nineteen studies were included in the review. Two main themes emerged: (1) diverse challenges including academic barriers and difficulties with social integration, and (2) the impact of racism and institutional factors, such as microaggressions and biased assessments. These issues contributed to mental fatigue and reduced academic performance. Support systems and a sense of belonging helped mitigate some of the negative effects. Discussion: The evidence was limited by potential bias in reporting and variability in study quality. Findings reveal persistent racial inequalities in UK HE that affect Black students’ well-being and outcomes. Institutional reforms, increased representation, and equity-focused policies are needed. Future research should explore effective interventions to reduce the awarding gap and support Black student success
Summary: Single-cell lineage tracing based on CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing enables the simultaneous linkage of cell states and lineage history at a high resolution. Despite its immense potential in resolving the cell fate determination and genealogy within an organism, existing implementations of this technology suffer from limitations in recording capabilities and considerable barcode dropout. Here, we introduce DuTracer, a versatile tool that utilizes two orthogonal gene editing systems to record cell lineage history at single-cell resolution in an inducible manner. DuTracer shows the ability to enhance lineage recording with minimized target dropouts and potentially deeper tree depths. Applying DuTracer in mouse embryoid bodies and neuromesodermal organoids illustrates the lineage relationship of different cell types and proposes potential lineage-biased molecular drivers, showcased by identifying transcription factor Foxb1 as a modulator in the cell fate determination of neuromesodermal progenitors. Collectively, DuTracer facilitates the precise and regulatory interrogation of cellular lineages of complex biological processes.
Most of the common ways of thinking about genealogical reproduction are influenced by colonialism and capitalism, which emphasize the importance of the nuclear family, heterosexuality and reproducing future citizens. Under colonialism and capitalism, Samoan women are disciplined into good reproductive laborers who reproduce the moral family and also wider society. This paper looks to Indigenous feminist discourse of regeneration to place Samoan reproductive labor outside of capitalism and within Indigenous feminist genealogies of world-building, asking what other promiscuous possibilities there are for Samoan regeneration. Here, we present a theoretical exploration: thinking with Indigenous feminism offers a decolonial intervention into Samoan reproduction, placing Samoan women’s labor into an alternative genealogy of Indigenous feminist world-building and outside of colonially imposed genealogies.
We consider inhomogeneous branching diffusions on an infinite domain of $\mathbb{R}^d$. The first aim of this article is to derive a general criterium under which the size process (number of particles) and the genealogy of the particle system become undistinguishable from the ones of an $α$-stable CSBP, with $α\in(1,2)$. The branching diffusion is encoded as a random metric space capturing all the information about the positions and the genealogical structure of the population. Our convergence criterium is based on the convergence of the moments for random metric spaces, which in turn can be efficiently computed through many-to-few formulas. It requires an extension of the method of moments to general CSBPs (with or without finite second moment). In a recent work, Tourniaire introduced a branching Brownian motion which can be thought of as a toy model for fluctuating pushed fronts. The size process was shown to converge to an $α$-stable CSBP and it was conjectured that a genealogical convergence should occur jointly. We prove this result as an application of our general methodology.
We consider the range $R^{(n)}$, the tree made up of visited vertices by a diffusive null-recurrent randomly biased walk $\mathbb{X}$ on a Galton-Watson tree $\mathbb{T}$ up to the $n$-th return time to its root and we consider the following genealogy problem: pick two vertices uniformly at random in a generation of order $n$ in the tree $R^{(n)}$. Where does the coalescence occur? it turns out that the coalescence happens either in the recent past or in the remote past.
В статье представлены результаты первого экспериментально-трасологического исследования центральной группы мыса Бесов нос петроглифов Онежского озера. Объектом настоящего исследования являются выбивки центральной группы петроглифов, выявленной на мысе Бесов нос и включающей в себя 171 фигуру. Для изучения наскального искусства выбранного региона данная методика применена впервые. Для создания эталонной базы были проведены все предполагаемые виды экспериментов с применением как наиболее характерных для данного региона материалов, так и некоторых «неклассических». Всего было использовано 11 видов сырья для создания орудий выбивки. В ходе экспериментов моделировались три способа создания петроглифов – прямой и опосредованный пикетаж, а также шлифование. Исследование было направлено на все информативные выбивки с разными вариациями их видов. В итоге сделан вывод о действительном наличии следов применения как минимум двух техник нанесения изображений на скальную поверхность. В первом случае выделены изображения, которые могли быть выполнены только металлическими орудиями без применения каменных орудий. К данному типу относится большинство изображений, расположенных на мысе Бесов нос Онежского озера. Во втором случае выделены изображения, которые могли быть выполнены только с использованием каменных орудий без применения металлических. К данному типу относится меньший процент изображений, в основном это изображения лебедей.
According to primary sources in various languages, the Sp. term criollo and its counterparts Fr. créole and Pt. crioulo (Cape Vert) referred to all persons born in America, except the Indigenous, without being confined to particular characteristics. There exists, however, a widespread belief among scholars that in its original meaning, the word concerned exclusively the white population, especially in the French Caribbean. To resolve this incongruency, the contribution explores particularly the meaning of the term as applied to descendants of white settlers in Spanish America, the French Antilles and Cape Vert during the period between the 16th and the 19th century. What is striking in all these contexts is the discrepancy between the use of so-called racial terms within local communities, on the one hand, and among representatives of European culture, on the other. In all these contexts, the word creole plays a key role in political discourses. It is from a Eurocentric perspective that the term acquired the association with the phenotype (white) and the genealogy (European descent). Drawing on primary sources, we have, however, found out that neither Cape Verdean crioulo, nor Spanish criollo, español and mestizo or Antillean créole were related to physiological features only, they served primarily for cultural identification.
We consider an extension of the noisy $N$-Branching Random Walk that models the evolution of a population subject to natural selection. We show the existence of a critical value for the noise which separates the limiting genealogical structure into two regimes, which we respectively call the semi-pulled and the fully-pulled regimes. In the fully-pulled regime, the genealogy converges to a discrete time Poisson-Dirichlet coalescent. In the semi-pulled regime, the genealogy converges to the Bolthausen-Sznitman coalescent. We discuss some interesting biological consequences of this result. In particular, our model predicts a non-monotone relation between the selection strength and the effective population size.
Zachary M. Boyd, Nick Callor, Taylor Gledhill
et al.
Genealogical networks (i.e. family trees) are of growing interest, with the largest known data sets now including well over one billion individuals. Interest in family history also supports an 8.5 billion dollar industry whose size is projected to double within 7 years (FutureWise report HC1137). Yet little mathematical attention has been paid to the complex network properties of genealogical networks, especially at large scales. The structure of genealogical networks is of particular interest due to the practice of forming unions, e.g. marriages, that are typically well outside one's immediate family. In most other networks, including other social networks, no equivalent restriction exists on the distance at which relationships form. To study the effect this has on genealogical networks we use persistent homology to identify and compare the structure of 101 genealogical and 31 other social networks. Specifically, we introduce the notion of a network's persistence curve, which encodes the network's set of persistence intervals. We find that the persistence curves of genealogical networks have a distinct structure when compared to other social networks. This difference in structure also extends to subnetworks of genealogical and social networks suggesting that, even with incomplete data, persistent homology can be used to meaningfully analyze genealogical networks. Here we also describe how concepts from genealogical networks, such as common ancestor cycles, are represented using persistent homology. We expect that persistent homology tools will become increasingly important in genealogical exploration as popular interest in ancestry research continues to expand.
Bringing together a genealogy of authors, concepts, and aesthetic case studies, this article aims to contribute to the discussion on ordinary aesthetics by focusing on the tensions that are intrinsic to walking as a fundamental embodied action in everyday urban life. These tensions concern the movement of walking itself and its relation to one’s surroundings, but it also concerns a certain complementarity between home (familiarity) and wandering. Experiencing space and thresholds that disrupt one’s relationship with home and the everyday can be understood as part of a modern “anti-home” tendency that lies at the core of several artistic and aesthetic practices. On the other hand, the study of walking and its relationship with the ordinary has also been enhanced and complexified by the mediation of images and technologies of reproduction. Approaching the paradoxes and ambiguities of everydayness from the perspective of walking allows us to better understand the ordinary as an in-between concept composed of evidence and mystery, familiarity and strangeness. Walking itself, as an ordinary element of life, is an unstable stabilisation, an unconsciousness that may become awareness, an immersive action that knows interruptions, a way of repeating paths that can also lead to detours and discoveries.
The medieval respect towards progenitors induced not only sentimental feelings but also practical steps, such as sponsoring works of art. In the present study, the family connections of Landgrave Hermann I of Thuringia to the Carolingians and to (Saint) Guillaume/Guilhem d’Orange, from the family of the Counts of Autun, have been explored. The possibility of the role of these kinships as a “driving force” behind initiating and sponsoring the epos <i>Willehalm</i> of <i>Wolfram von Eschenbach</i> has been analyzed.