Recruitment dynamics, or the distribution of the number of offspring among individuals, is central for understanding ecology and evolution. Sweepstakes reproduction (heavy right-tailed offspring number distribution) is central for understanding the ecology and evolution of highly fecund natural populations. Sweepstakes reproduction can induce jumps in type frequencies and multiple mergers in gene genealogies of sampled gene copies. We take sweepstakes reproduction to be skewed offspring number distribution due to mechanisms not involving natural selection, such as in chance matching of broadcast spawning with favourable environmental conditions. Here, we consider population genetic models of sweepstakes reproduction in a diploid panmictic populations absent selfing and evolving in a random environment. Our main results are {\it (i)} continuous-time Beta and Poisson-Dirichlet coalescents, when combining the results the skewness parameter $α$ of the Beta-coalescent ranges from $0$ to $2$, and the Beta-coalescents may be incomplete due to an upper bound on the number of potential offspring produced by any pair of parents; {\it (ii)} in large populations time is measured in units proportional to either $N/\log N$ or $N$ generations (where $2N$ is the population size when constant); {\it (iii)} it follows that incorporating population size changes leads to time-changed coalescents with the time-change independent of $α$; {\it (iv)} using simulations we show that the ancestral process is not well approximated by the corresponding coalescent (as measured through certain functionals of the processes); {\it (v)} whenever the skewness of the offspring number distribution is increased the conditional (conditioned on the population ancestry) and the unconditional ancestral processes are not in good agreement.
Sweepstakes reproduction may be generated by chance matching of reproduction with favorable environmental conditions. Gene genealogies generated by sweepstakes reproduction are in the domain of attraction of multiple-merger coalescents where a random number of lineages merges at such times. We consider population genetic models of sweepstakes reproduction for haploid panmictic populations of both constant ($N$), and varying population size, and evolving in a random environment. We construct our models so that we can recover the observed number of new mutations in a given sample without requiring strong assumptions regarding the population size or the mutation rate. Our main results are {\it (i)} continuous-time coalescents that are either the Kingman coalescent or specific families of Beta- or Poisson-Dirichlet coalescents; when combining the results the parameter $α$ of the Beta-coalescent ranges from 0 to 2, and the Beta-coalescents may be incomplete due to an upper bound on the number of potential offspring an arbitrary individual may produce; {\it (ii)} in large populations we measure time in units proportional to either $ N/\log N$ or $N$ generations; {\it (iii)} incorporating fluctuations in population size leads to time-changed multiple-merger coalescents where the time-change does not depend on $α$; {\it (iv)} using simulations we show that in some cases approximations of functionals of a given coalescent do not match the ones of the ancestral process in the domain of attraction of the given coalescent; {\it (v)} approximations of functionals obtained by conditioning on the population ancestry (the ancestral relations of all gene copies at all times) are broadly similar (for the models considered here) to the approximations obtained without conditioning on the population ancestry.
This article examines how Soviet and post-Soviet forms of Russian nationalism used ethnic engineering – above all mass deportations and demographic reshuffling – to transform ethno-national diversity into a structural source of conflict. Building on a qualitative, historical-comparative design, the study combines close reading of Soviet constitutional and legal texts with secondary literature on deportations and “frozen conflicts” to trace mechanisms linking Stalin-era policies to contemporary wars in the post-Soviet space. Archival decrees, census data and administrative cartography are analysed through thematic coding (e.g., “collective punishment,” “demographic engineering,” “border manipulation”) and compared across key episodes such as the deportation of Chechens and Ingush, Crimean Tatars and Volga Germans. The article then connects these historical patterns to post-1991 conflicts in the Caucasus, Crimea/Donbas and Central Asia, showing how earlier deportations and territorial rearrangements created asymmetric republics, competing memories of victimhood and territorially embedded grievances. Rather than treating Russian nationalism as a purely ideological phenomenon, the analysis conceptualizes it as a repertoire of state practices that combine coercive removal, selective rehabilitation and later “protection” of co-nationals abroad. The findings challenge accounts that explain post-Soviet conflicts solely through democratization failure or great-power rivalry, arguing instead that ethnic wars in the region are rooted in a long genealogy of state-led population politics. The article concludes by discussing the broader implications for theories of ethnofederalism and for contemporary debates on how authoritarian regimes manage diversity through forced mobility rather than inclusive citizenship.
Drought stress caused by continuous global warming poses a severe challenge to the growth and development of <i>Nitraria tangutorum</i>. Abscisic acid has an important regulatory function in the process of plants responding to drought stress. This study took the <i>N. tangutorum</i> seedlings of Zhangye provenance 2-17-16 genealogy as the research object to explore the physiological mechanism of how different concentrations of exogenous ABA alleviate drought damage in <i>N. tangutorum</i>. The results showed that exogenous ABA could promote the growth and increase the leaf relative water content of <i>N. tangutorum</i> seedlings under drought stress. It alleviates the photosynthetic inhibition phenomenon of <i>N. tangutorum</i> seedlings under drought stress by regulating the photoprotective mechanism and energy distribution efficiency of photosystem II. It also alleviates the drought damage of <i>N. tangutorum</i> by increasing the content of osmotic-adjustment substance contents such as soluble sugar, soluble protein, proline, and starch, as well as enhancing the activity of antioxidant enzymes such as POD, SOD, and CAT. The comprehensive analysis showed that 20 μM and 30 μM ABA have the best alleviating effects on the drought damage of <i>N. tangutorum</i> seedlings. This study provides a theoretical basis for the restoration, propagation, and protection of <i>N. tangutorum</i>, and it is of great significance for maintaining the balance and stability of desert ecosystems.
Bruno Melo Moura, André Luiz Maranhão de Souza-Leão
Objective: drawing from digital consumer activism and the Foucauldian concept of resistance, the aim of this research is to analyze how cosplayers’ digital activism governs their online interactions. Method: the ethnographic Foucauldian genealogy was carried out over a four-and-a-half-year data collection period. Results: our analysis revealed the Fight for Respect dispositif, when cosplayers’ digital activism represents the exercise of multiple resistances assembled to organize themselves through digital activism to establish care of the self and others. It is described by how consumers encompass several levels when dealing with attacks against themselves or their peers: from a proposal for coexistence — Agenda; to a desire for change — Protests; and reaching a position of rupture — Riot. Conclusion: the study highlights how consumer activism carried out virtually by a specific and engaged audience is capable of continually re-elaborating digital marketing relationships. Such activism opposes a dark-side activism, reiterating the importance of researchers and marketing managers paying attention to the curtailment or manifestation of pride in ontological conditions that are typically attacked in the digital environment.
The field of sociology has largely ignored critical race theory (CRT) as a relevant theoretical and pedagogical framework for the study of white supremacy and Indigenous and Black race relations in Canada. In the United States, CRT has long been a theoretical framework tethered to and contextualizing the underpinnings of systemic racism and white supremacy as the cornerstone of structural oppression in American legal society. The initial focus of this work was to study the operationalization of the myriad ways in which race and racial power were constructed and represented in American law and society and the attendant ways in which Black civil rights under American law could never be achieved through the application of legal jurisprudence. CRT’s theoretical milieu has expanded beyond legal research to examine the sphere of racist structural oppression as systemically embedded in immigration, housing, education, employment, healthcare, and child welfare systems. The writing of this article has been an intentional active disruption to the claims that multiculturalism has the answers to race relations in an ever-changing Canadian society. While there are six main tenets of CRT, this article specifically focuses on three core tenets of CRT which argue that (1) racism is an ever-present dynamic of life in Canada; (2) racial subordination remains endemically tied to the political, cultural, and social milieu of white supremacy impacting the lives of Indigenous and Black peoples in Canada; and (3) racism has contributed to all historical and contemporary manifestations of structural oppression related to land theft and anti-Black racism. As such, CRT has much to contribute to race-radical research, pedagogy, and praxis when it comes to understanding race relations in a Canadian society grappling with an ever-changing multicultural narrative.
Jere Koskela, Paul A. Jenkins, Adam M. Johansen
et al.
We show that genealogical trees arising from a broad class of non-neutral models of population evolution converge to the Kingman coalescent under a suitable rescaling of time. As well as non-neutral biological evolution, our results apply to genetic algorithms encompassing the prominent class of sequential Monte Carlo (SMC) methods. The time rescaling we need differs slightly from that used in classical results for convergence to the Kingman coalescent, which has implications for the performance of different resampling schemes in SMC algorithms. In addition, our work substantially simplifies earlier proofs of convergence to the Kingman coalescent, and corrects an error common to several earlier results.
Recent studies of human migration have focused on modern issues of international economics, politics, urbanization, or commuting. Here we make use of very large anonymized genealogies which offer quantitative metrics and models before census data became available. In European and North American data from 1400 to 1950 we find two distinct patterns of lifetime migration. The steady-state pattern shows a universal power-law distribution of migration distance; by its early appearance it cannot be dependent on post-industrial technology. The frontier pattern, in contrast, is not scale-free with its much longer average distances. All migration distances are well fit by a three parameter model; the temporal and geographic patterns of the fitted parameters give new insight to American internal expansion 1620-1950. Frontier migration is also highly directional and asymmetric; gravity models do not apply. The American frontier pattern arose from the colonial-era steady-state within a generation, plateaued for three generations, then returned to a more mobile steady-state, a sequence paralleled by the Steppe migrations that brought the Bronze Age to Neolithic Europe. The transient frontier pattern is enabled by large-scale technological or numeric imbalance and geographic opportunity; when these forces abate, a new steady-state begins.
This paper traces the emergence, politicisation and spread of healthcare provision tactics by (contentious) collective actors in Greece between 1990 and 2015. Drawing on participant observation, in-depth interviews with relevant field actors (N=40), and documentary analysis, the paper develops a diachronic typology that analyses and compares; (1) the appearance of those tactics in the Greek context in the 1990s, (2) their appropriation by contentious actors after the December 2008 riots, and (3) their diffusion, and eventual modularisation over the course of the 2010 crisis and the cycle of anti-austerity contention. In so doing, the paper helps disentangle the dynamics of repertoire innovation through an understudied set of tactics. This is achieved through the reconstruction of the genealogy of healthcare Direct Social Actions (DSAs) – pace Bosi and Zamponi (2015) – in Greece, their transmutation from “consenting” to contentious tactics after 2008, and their wide diffusion among contentious milieus after 2010. In addition, the paper discusses the interplay between the contextual and strategic dimensions of those tactical preferences across actors and across time. To be sure, early utilisation of those tactics on the side of marginal players can be understood as attempts to tactically differentiate themselves vis-à-vis those traditional and hegemonic players in the arena who relied on indirect, protest tactics. The crisis, however, disturbed the seeming equilibrium of the healthcare arena thus prompting tactical convergence around healthcare DSAs among contentious actors, on the one hand, while reinforcing strategic convergence among some actors and strategic divergence among others.
Rabiat Akande's article, “An Imperial History of Race-Religion in International Law,” draws attention to the gap in frameworks of protection from religious discrimination, on the compelling rationale that much contemporary discrimination continues to work through racialization. And she provides a genealogy to show that this gap is not there by accident—it presupposes a specific set of histories that excluded the racialization of religion from protection, because such protection was devised to respond to some kinds of wrongs (especially those of concern to white Christians) rather than others. In this essay, I would like to draw out much more explicitly than she does Akande's momentous point that Jews—racialized by white Christian Europeans—once experienced and fought this very same protection gap. This story is of great historical interest in its own right, but it also redoubles the familiar lesson that colonialism never just ends. Instead, it endures in complex ways and facilitates ongoing cycles of suffering and unfreedom.
Comparative law. International uniform law, Private international law. Conflict of laws
Heloise F. Stevance, Jan J. Eldridge, Elizabeth R. Stanway
et al.
Binary neutron star mergers are one of the ultimate events of massive binary star evolution, and our understanding of their parent system is still in its infancy. Upcoming gravitational wave detections, coupled with multi-wavelength follow-up observations, will allow us to study an increasing number of these events by characterising their neighbouring stellar populations and searching for their progenitors. Stellar evolution simulations are essential to this work but they are also based on numerous assumptions. Additionally, the models used to study the host galaxies differ from those used to characterise the progenitors and are typically based on single star populations. Here we introduce a framework to perform an end-to-end analysis and deploy it to the first binary neutron star merger - GW170817. With the Binary Population And Spectral Synthesis (BPASS) codes we are able to retrieve the physical properties of the host galaxy NGC 4993 as well as infer progenitor candidates. In our simulations there is a >98% chance that GW170817 originated from a stellar population with Z=0.010 born between 5 and 12.5 Gyrs ago. By carefully weighing the stellar genealogies we find that GW170817 most likely came from a binary system born with a 13-24 Msol primary and 10-12 Msol secondary which underwent two or three common envelope events over their lifetime.
Alison M. Etheridge, Thomas G. Kurtz, Ian Letter
et al.
We introduce a broad class of spatial models to describe how spatially heterogeneous populations live, die, and reproduce. Individuals are represented by points of a point measure, whose birth and death rates can depend both on spatial position and local population density, defined via the convolution of the point measure with a nonnegative kernel. We pass to three different scaling limits: an interacting superprocess, a nonlocal partial differential equation (PDE), and a classical PDE. The classical PDE is obtained both by first scaling time and population size to pass to the nonlocal PDE, and then scaling the kernel that determines local population density; and also (when the limit is a reaction-diffusion equation) by simultaneously scaling the kernel width, timescale and population size in our individual based model. A novelty of our model is that we explicitly model a juvenile phase: offspring are thrown off in a Gaussian distribution around the location of the parent, and reach (instant) maturity with a probability that can depend on the population density at the location at which they land. Although we only record mature individuals, a trace of this two-step description remains in our population models, resulting in novel limits governed by a nonlinear diffusion. Using a lookdown representation, we retain information about genealogies and, in the case of deterministic limiting models, use this to deduce the backwards in time motion of the ancestral lineage of a sampled individual. We observe that knowing the history of the population density is not enough to determine the motion of ancestral lineages in our model. We also investigate the behaviour of lineages for three different deterministic models of a population expanding its range as a travelling wave: the Fisher-KPP equation, the Allen-Cahn equation, and a porous medium equation with logistic growth.
The meteorite sample Erg Chech (EC) 002 is the oldest felsic igneous rock from the Solar System analysed to date and provides a unique opportunity to study the formation of felsic crusts on differentiated protoplanets immediately after metal-silicate equilibration or core formation. The extinct 53Mn-53Cr chronometer provides chronological constraints on the formation of EC 002 by applying the isochron approach using chromite, metal-silicate-sulphide and whole-rock fractions as well as "leachates" obtained by sequential digestion of a bulk sample. Assuming a chondritic evolution of its parent body, a 53Cr/52Cr model age is also obtained from the chromite fraction. The 53Mn-53Cr isochron age of 1.73 (+/-) 0.96 Ma (anchored to D'Orbigny angirte) and the chromite model age constrained between 1.46 (-0.68/+0.78) and 2.18 (-1.06/+1.32) Ma after the formation of calcium-aluminium-rich inclusions (CAIs) agree with the 26Al-26Mg ages (anchored to CAIs) reported in previous studies. This indicates rapid cooling of EC 002 that allowed near-contemporaneous closure of multiple isotope systems. Additionally, excess in the neutron-rich 54Cr (nucleosynthetic anomalies) combined with mass-independent isotope variations of 17O provide genealogical constraints on the accretion region of the EC 002 parent body. The 54Cr and 17O isotope compositions of EC 002 confirm its origin in the "non-carbonaceous" reservoir and overlap with the vestoid material NWA 12217 and anomalous eucrite EET 92023. This indicates a common feeding zone during accretion in the protoplanetary disk between the source of EC 002 and vestoids. The enigmatic origin of iron meteorites remains still unresolved as EC 002, which is more like a differentiated crust, has an isotope composition that does not match known irons meteorite groups that were once planetesimal cores.
Traditional interpretations of Nietzsche’s <i>The Genealogy of Morals</i> (GM) argue that the work is a treatise on, or a straightforward account of, Nietzsche’s moral thinking. This is typically contrasted with what has become known as the postmodern reading, which holds that the core of GM is an attack on the very notion of the truth itself. These two interpretations are often taken to be non-coextensive and mutually exclusive. However, I argue, using a genetic form of argumentation that tracks the development of the text through archival evidence, that both are partially correct, since Nietzsche sees all fundamental problems hitherto as moral questions in service of the ascetic ideal and the will to truth. According to Nietzsche, all the hitherto fundamental questions of philosophy are not value-free but are deeply value-laden. To put this more precisely, Nietzsche rejects the fact-value distinction itself. Questions of morality are not separable from epistemology, questions of epistemology are not separable from morality, and both subjects have worked in service of the ascetic ideal. Further, I provide new evidence on the debate about the counter-ideal to the ascetic ideal. I claim that <i>Amor Fati</i> embodies that ideal. I argue for this using a section from the preface that was added but then removed. This section was removed because it gave away the conclusion of the work, that all fundamental problems, including questions of truth, are based on moral prejudices.
Based on a research on the habitability of underground space, this article initiates a discussion on the concept of the “uninhabitable habitat”. If underground space is fundamentally uninhabitable and cannot be programmed as an habitat even in so-called temporary forms, our analysis questions the thresholds of acceptability. By describing three inhabited underground spaces – the shelters of the Civil Protection in Geneva in 1999 and from 2004 to 2018, the underground of the Gare du Nord in Brussels from 2016 to 2019 and the heating tunnels in Bucharest from 1990 to 2015 – the article sheds light on the living conditions of these spaces with regard to the status of their occupants, the genealogy of their occupations, their management modalities and the resulting ambiances. The uninhabitable character of the underground space is constituted around its own ambiances and symbolism: it calls upon themes such as atrophy, illness, prison, (in)visibility, dissuasion, violence or death. In this sense, the unbreathable character of underground space is not only qualified in its materiality, but also in the injunctions that guide it and in the place it provides or deprives. Finally, the concept of uninhabitable habitat aims at exploring the extraordinarily common of our built environment and to establish levers for action in the situations of undesirability that it implies.
Geography. Anthropology. Recreation, Social Sciences
This paper explores the composite of elderly immigrants, self-appointed helpers (<i>selvudpegede hjælpere</i>) and care managers (<i>visitatorer</i>) in Danish municipalities. Free elderly care is a common good in the Danish welfare state. Instead of using the homecare service provided by the municipality, many elderly citizens with a Muslim immigrant background prefer to have a family member contracted as their self-appointed helper. The self-appointed helper is often a spouse, daughter or daughter-in-law, who ends up having the dual role as both a caring, loving family member and a professional care worker. Due to the special setup with self-appointed helpers working in their private homes, it is difficult for the care managers to follow standard rules and procedures. Instead, it seems to be a public secret that there is a gap between <i>what we are supposed to do</i> (according to the law) and <i>what we actually do</i>. We suggest seeing this gap as a silence agreement, where care managers, self-appointed helpers and elderly citizens refrain from asking all the critical questions (regarding the provision of care, the quality of care, working conditions, etc.) that no one wants to know the answers to. However, when the silence agreement from time to time breaks down, the relationship between the self-appointed helper and the care manager is haunted by a widespread phantasm where Muslim immigrants are cast as welfare scroungers. Basically, we argue that care managers and self-appointed helpers share a silent agreement but when it is neglected or violated, the latter end up in a vulnerable and marginalized position. The dynamic highlights the ambiguous intimate belonging of Muslim immigrant families and questions to what extent they were seen as legitimate subjects under the state in the first place.
Cláudia Gomes, Sara Palomo-Díez, Ana María López-Parra
et al.
Although biological relationships are a universal reality for all human beings, the concepts of “family” and “family bond” depend on both the geographic region and the historical moment to which they refer. However, the concept of “family” can be determinant in a large variety of societies, since it can influence the lines of succession, inheritances and social relationships, as well as where and with whom an individual is buried. The relation between a deceased person and other members of a community, other individuals of the same necropolis, or even with those who are buried in the same tomb can be analysed from the genetic point of view, considering different perspectives: archaeological, historical, and forensic. In the present work, the concepts of “family” and “kinship” are discussed, explaining the relevance of genetic analysis, such as nuclear and lineage markers, and their contribution to genealogical research, for example in the heritage of surnames and Y-chromosome, as well as those cases where some discrepancies with historical record are detected, such as cases of adoption. Finally, we explain how genetic genealogical analyses can help to solve some cold cases, through the analysis of biologically related relatives.
Spatial models where growth is limited to the edge of the expansions have been instrumental to understand the population dynamics and the clone size distribution in growing cellular populations, such as microbial colonies and avascular tumours. A complete characterization of the coalescence process generated by spatial growth is still lacking, limiting our ability to apply classic population genetics inference to spatially growing populations. Here, we start filling this gap by investigating the statistical properties of the cell lineages generated by the two dimensional Eden model, leveraging their physical analogy with directed polymers. Our analysis provides quantitative estimates for population measurements that can easily be assessed via sequencing, such as the average number of segregating sites and the clone size distribution of a subsample of the population. Our results not only reveal remarkable features of the genealogies generated during growth, but also highlight new properties that can be misinterpreted as signs of selection if non-spatial models are inappropriately applied.
Liberating Information: From Big Brother to Big Data. In the early 1980s, the first personal computers went on sale, ushering in the second era of computing. By analysing Apple and IBM adverts of the era, this article proposes a reading of the imaginary of "digital capitalism". At first, I trace a brief genealogy of the concept of information in cybernetic science and neoliberalism; I then approach how these giant tech corporations present themselves as the standard bearers of emancipation from the socio-political structures of modernity, and in turn, the architects of the new space of contemporary capitalism.
This article explores how international discourses on gender and climate change currently unfold for the Global South, and compares this with earlier gender discourses that traveled to Maasailand (Tanzania). By tracing the genealogy of older gender imaginaries, striking similarities emerge between the traveling discourses which position (African) women as vulnerable. This article argues against the feminization of climate change: the simplistic and historical reproduction of vulnerability along gender binaries. Gender and climate change discourses repeat historical productions of vulnerability and development that lead to a tendency to speak for rather than listen to the very women the discourses seek to support. I argue that more research is needed to understand what women do to live with climate change and its emergent discourses instead of focusing merely on what “climate change does to women.” Discourses on gender and climate change need critical insight from de- and post-colonial critiques of development and (eco)feminist scholarship that foregrounds gender’s intersectional, productive dimensions and agentive qualities. Essentializing categories like the “feminization of poverty” and women as “victims of culture” should serve as cautionary tales for climate change, which can be used by those in power to obscure more urgent problems, such as increasing land dispossession.