Hasil untuk "Evolution"

E. Sanders, P. Stappers

S. Kauffman

D. Arnon

V. Caselles, R. Kimmel, G. Sapiro

D. Heiss-Czedik

V. Lakshmikantham, D. Bainov, P. Simeonov

E. Fehr, U. Fischbacher

R. Gatenby, R. Gillies

A. Carroll

There is an impressive history associated with the evolution of the concept and definition of corporate social responsibility (CSR). In this article, the author traces the evolution of the CSR construct beginning in the 1950s, which marks the modern era of CSR. Definitions expanded during the 1960s and proliferated during the 1970s. In the 1980s, there were fewer new definitions, more empirical research, and alternative themes began to mature. These alternative themes included corporate social performance (CSP), stakeholder theory, and business ethics theory. In the 1990s, CSR continues to serve as a core construct but yields to or is transformed into alternative thematic frameworks.

D. McKenzie

V. Gorini, A. Kossakowski, E. Sudarshan

L. Cavalli-Sforza, A. Edwards

L. D. Caren, J. Haldane

K. V. Flannery

Sara Pearl, Anand Anbarasu

Abstract Acinetobacter baumannii (A. baumannii) is a major multidrug-resistant pathogen, posing serious threats in the healthcare settings. This study provides a comprehensive genomic analysis of nosocomial A. baumannii whole-genome sequences retrieved from NCBI Genome database. Multilocus sequence typing and capsule typing were performed to investigate the clonal diversity. The genomes were characterized to identify antimicrobial resistance genes (ARGs), virulence factors, and mobile genetic elements. Further, pangenome analysis was conducted to examine the core and accessory genomes of A. baumannii. Our dataset comprised of 609 genomes deposited from diverse geographic regions worldwide between 2004 and 2024. The genomes showed high clonal heterogeneity, with sequence type ST2 being the predominant sequence type. A total of 185 unique ARGs were identified, with majority of them associated with efflux pump and β-lactamase coding genes. Over 25,000 IS elements were detected, with IS4 family being the prevalent type. High abundance of integron-mediated resistance determinants, especially for aminoglycosides and β-lactams, were identified. The open pangenome window due to its larger accessory genome suggested substantial genome plasticity. Our findings highlight A. baumannii’s rapid evolution and resistance potential, emphasizing need for alternative therapeutic strategies. Enhanced surveillance, infection control measures, and antimicrobial stewardship are crucial to combat this persistent threat.

Juan Yu, Jia-Wei Gao, Ke Cao et al.

ABSTRACT Flavobacteriaceae is the major participant in the degradation of algal polysaccharides. With diverse polysaccharide utilization loci (PULs) and specific carbohydrate-active enzymes (CAZymes), Flavobacteriaceae strains appear to have different abilities in algal polysaccharide degradation and therefore change their roles in the bacterial community. Here, we identified two novel isolates as two novel species of genus Flagellimonas with the names Flagellimonas alginolytica sp. nov. and Flagellimonas cixiensis sp. nov. Furthermore, the comprehensive genomic comparison of 41 Flagellimonas genomes revealed that Flagellimonas strains were diverse in the CAZymes and PUL profiles and exhibited a preference for polysaccharides derived from brown algae. The evolutionary analysis of alginate utilization loci (AUL) in this genus illuminated that the function genes in AULs, that is, PL7 and PL17, were more reliant on the stable inheritance from ancestors associated with gene duplication and loss rather than horizontal gene transfer (HGT) from outside, and the AUL structures exhibited a trend of simplification which resulted in the incidental decrease in alginate degradation ability. This study highlights the important role of vertical inheritance in the evolution of AULs and proves that the discrepancy in AUL structure can arouse phenotypic differences, providing a new perspective on the evolution of AUL and the niche adaptation mechanism of Flavobacteriaceae strains.IMPORTANCEFlavobacteriaceae play an important role in the marine carbon cycle with their noteworthy ability in algal polysaccharides degradation, which is primarily reliant on diverse polysaccharide utilization loci (PULs). Our study highlights the crucial role of vertical inheritance in the evolution of alginate utilization loci (AUL) in Flagellimonas strains and reveals the AUL structural simplification found in Flagellimonas strains that will lead to the reduction of alginate degradation ability. These insights advance understanding of niche adaptation strategy and related evolutionary mechanisms of Flavobacteriaceae strains.

Alexander Whitehead, Anthony Sinclair, Christopher Scott

The pathogenic environment has been a constant shaping presence in human evolution. Despite its importance, this factor has been given little consideration and research. Here, we use experimental archaeology and microscopic analysis to present and support a novel hypothesis on the pathogenic properties of bifacial butchery tools during the Middle Pleistocene. Use-wear evidence from the Acheulean site of Boxgrove, Sussex suggests that a sample of flint bifaces were used for butchery tasks for a remarkably limited duration. Circumstantial evidence from other Acheulean sites, such as the apparent discard of bifaces at single-episode butchery sites, and biface caching sites, also suggest limited-use, and extend this interpretation beyond Boxgrove. There is no current utilitarian explanation for why such an apparently over-engineered tool would be discarded after such a limited duration of use. This pilot study demonstrates, via experimental investigation, that residual animal tissue from performing butchery tasks cannot be completely removed from the flake scars of flint bifaces using prehistorically available cleaning methods. It is argued that the animal tissue is likely to begin spoiling within hours of butchery, which poses a significant risk of introducing pathogens into foodstuffs if the biface is reused, resulting in foodborne illness. Subsequently, hominins likely learned to minimise this risk by discarding each flint bifacial tool after a single episode of butchery.

Jie Gao, Ikuma Adachi

Abstract Humans categorize body parts, reflecting our knowledge about bodies, and this could be useful in higher-level activities involving bodies. We tested whether humans’ closest living relatives—chimpanzees—have the same ability using touchscreen tasks, focusing on the major parts: heads, torsos, arms, and legs. Six chimpanzees were trained to perform a body part matching-to-sample task using sets of pictures of chimpanzee bodies, where in each trial, the sample and choice pictures were the same. Five passed the training and received the test sessions, where three trial types were mixed: trained same-individual picture pairs; novel same-individual picture pairs; and novel different-individual picture pairs. All participants performed better than the chance level in all conditions and for all body parts. Further analyses showed differences in performance when the samples were different body parts. For example, the results revealed better performances for heads and torsos than arms and legs in “novel different-individual pairs”. The study showed that chimpanzees can visually match and categorize body parts in this experiment setting, even across different chimpanzees’ bodies, suggesting potential biological understanding. Different performances for body parts suggested a deviated categorization from humans. We hope this study will inspire future research on the evolution of body perception.

Tianqi WANG, Yingzhou ZHANG, Yunlong DI, Dingwen LI, Linlin ZHU

A surge in the amount of information comes with the rapid development of the technology industry.Across all industries, there is a need to collect and utilize vast amounts of data.While this big data holds immense value, it also poses unprecedented challenges to the field of data security.As relational databases serve as a fundamental storage medium for data, they often contain large-scale data rich in content and privacy.In the event of a data leak, significant losses may occur, highlighting the pressing need to safeguard database ownership and verify data ownership.However, existing database watermarking technologies face an inherent tradeoff between improving watermark embedding capacity and reducing data distortion.To address this issue and enhance watermark robustness, a novel robust database watermarking algorithm based on dynamic difference expansion was introduced.The QR code was employed as the watermark, the SVD decomposition of the low frequency part of the image was utilized after Haar wavelet transform.By extracting specific feature values and using residual feature values as the watermark sequence, it was ensured that the same-length watermark sequence contains more information and the embedded watermark length can be reduced.Furthermore, by combining the adaptive differential evolution algorithm and the minimum difference algorithm, the optimal embedding attribute bits were selected to alleviate the problems of low computational efficiency, high data distortion and poor robustness of traditional difference expansion techniques in embedding watermarks, and to improve the embedding capacity of watermarks while reducing the distortion of data.Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed algorithm achieves a high watermark embedding rate with low data distortion.It is resilient against multiple attacks, exhibiting excellent robustness and strong traceability.Compared to existing algorithms, it offers distinct advantages and holds great potential for broad application in the field of data security.

F. Casati, S. Ceri, Barbara Pernici et al.