Elaborate Forms Research Articles

Geopolitics and global economic governance

Abstract This article analyses the relationship between geopolitics and global economic governance from an international relations perspective, laying stress on the long-term changes that have taken place in the character and dynamics of modern global international society. First, it unpacks what is involved in talk about the ‘the return of geopolitics’, arguing that the international political system needs to be understood in its own right and according to its distinctive logics and dynamics, separate from those of modern capitalism. The second section shifts the focus from the modern international to the modern global, arguing that the ‘we’ now involved in both geopolitics and global economic governance has changed in fundamental ways and that the diffusion of power and agency and the revolt against Western dominance are far broader than the rise of China. The final section looks at future pathways: the unlikely possibility of the restoration of US hegemony; the case for the primacy of political order over global governance and for refocusing attention on the primary or foundational institutions on which all more elaborate forms of global governance must depend; and the identification of some of the most important institutional pinch-points where geopolitics and global economic governance intersect and need to be managed, including sanctions, security-related trade measures, and industrial strategy.

From Niche Narrative to Audio Blockbusters

From Niche Narrative to Audio Blockbusters

Sex differences in avian parental care patterns vary across the breeding cycle

Parental care in birds consists of elaborate forms across stages, including nest building, incubation, and offspring provision. Despite their evolutionary importance, knowledge gaps exist in the extent to which parents contribute disproportionately to these forms and factors that are associated with variations in care patterns between sexes. Here, we analyzed 1533 bird species and discovered remarkable variability in care patterns. We show that parental care should not be viewed as a unitary trait but rather as a set of integrated features that exhibit considerable temporal and sex-specific variation. Our analyses also reveal moderate consistency in care patterns between breeding stages, pointing towards shared intrinsic factors driving sex-specific care. Notably, we found that species experiencing strong sexual selection on males or species facing paternity uncertainty display a tendency towards female-biased care. This work advances our understanding of the temporal variations in sex-specific contributions to avian parental care and their potential evolutionary drivers.

Simplicity is Complicated: On the Effort of Creating and Maintaining Equality

A key point David Graeber and David Wengrow make in their mammoth work, The Dawn of Everything (2021), is that we humans are not by default redisposed to hierarchy or equality, but are first and foremost a socially creative species. In this essay, I take up Wengrow and Graeber’s notion that humans are ‘by default’ neither authoritarian nor egalitarian, but creative, noting that egalitarian forms of social organisation are complex, complicated, and require much work and effort. They are, in short, social and political achievements in their own right and manifestations of human social creativity. The work and effort that goes into an egalitarian social organisation is easily dismissed, and small-scale egalitarian societies, for example, are often referred to as ‘simple societies’ within popular discourse. In fact, during the launch of the Finnish translation of The Dawn of Everything in Helsinki on 23 March 2023, one of the panelists, a professor of global politics, insisted that societies have grown ‘more complex’ over time. This view has its parallel in the sphere of economics, such that commodity relations are viewed as the most sophisticated, elaborate, and complex forms of exchange, whilst modes such as sharing are viewed as the archaic baseline of exchange and, at worst, ‘simple’.

The evolution of hierarchically structured communication.

Human language sentences are standardly understood as exhibiting considerable hierarchical structure: they can and typically do contain parts that in turn contain parts, etc. In other words, sentences are thought to generally exhibit significant nested part-whole structure. As far as we can tell, this is not a feature of the gestural or vocal communication systems of our great ape relatives. So, one of the many challenges we face in providing a theory of human language evolution is to explain the evolution of hierarchically structured communication in our line. This article takes up that challenge. More specifically, I first present and motivate an account of hierarchical structure in language that departs significantly from the orthodox conception of such structure in linguistics and evolutionary discussions that draw on linguistic theory. On the account I propose, linguistic structure, including hierarchical structure, is treated as a special case of structured action. This account is rooted in the cognitive neuroscience of action, as opposed to (formal) linguistic theory. Among other things, such an account enables us to see how selection for enhanced capacities of act organization and act control in actors, and for act interpretation in observers, might have constructed the brain machinery necessary for the elaborate forms of hierarchically structured communication that we humans engage in. I flesh out this line of thought, emphasizing in particular the role of hominin technique and technology, and the social learning thereof, as evolutionary drivers of this brain machinery.

An anomaly arising in the analysis of processes with more than one source of variability

Summary It is frequently observed in practice that the Wald statistic gives a poor assessment of the statistical significance of a variance component. This paper provides detailed analytic insight into the phenomenon by way of two simple models, which point to an atypical geometry as the source of the aberration. The latter can in principle be checked numerically to cover situations of arbitrary complexity, such as those arising from elaborate forms of blocking in an experimental context, or models for longitudinal or clustered data. The salient point, echoing Dickey (2020), is that a suitable likelihood-ratio test should always be used for the assessment of variance components.

Parental care contributes to vertical transmission of microbes in a skin-feeding and direct-developing caecilian

BackgroundOur current understanding of vertebrate skin and gut microbiomes, and their vertical transmission, remains incomplete as major lineages and varied forms of parental care remain unexplored. The diverse and elaborate forms of parental care exhibited by amphibians constitute an ideal system to study microbe transmission, yet investigations of vertical transmission among frogs and salamanders have been inconclusive. In this study, we assess bacteria transmission in Herpele squalostoma, an oviparous direct-developing caecilian in which females obligately attend juveniles that feed on their mother’s skin (dermatophagy).ResultsWe used 16S rRNA amplicon-sequencing of the skin and gut of wild caught H. squalostoma individuals (males, females, including those attending juveniles) as well as environmental samples. Sourcetracker analyses revealed that juveniles obtain an important portion of their skin and gut bacteria communities from their mother. The contribution of a mother’s skin to the skin and gut of her respective juveniles was much larger than that of any other bacteria source. In contrast to males and females not attending juveniles, only the skins of juveniles and their mothers were colonized by bacteria taxa Verrucomicrobiaceae, Nocardioidaceae, and Erysipelotrichaceae. In addition to providing indirect evidence for microbiome transmission linked to parental care among amphibians, our study also points to noticeable differences between the skin and gut communities of H. squalostoma and that of many frogs and salamanders, which warrants further investigation.ConclusionOur study is the first to find strong support for vertical bacteria transmission attributed to parental care in a direct-developing amphibian species. This suggests that obligate parental care may promote microbiome transmission in caecilians.

Cognitive Status and Subject Reference in Spanish Written Discourse

Abstract Speakers make assumptions regarding the informativeness and saliency of referents in discourse and about their addressee’s cognitive status (memory and attention) regarding those referents. These assumptions, in turn, determine the forms (e.g., pronouns, NPs) speakers use when referring to entities. Gundel, Jeanette K., Nancy Hedberg & Ron Zacharski. 1993. Cognitive status and the form of referring expressions in discourse. Language 69(2). 274–307 proposed a set of implicationally related cognitive statuses in the Givenness Hierarchy that predict the forms speakers use to refer to entities in discourse. Greater levels of attention and memory predict the use of phonetically minimal referential forms and lesser levels predict more phonetically elaborate forms. Blackwell, Sarah E. & Margaret Lubbers Quesada. 2012. Third-person subjects in native speakers’ and L2 learners’ narratives: Testing (and revising) the Givenness Hierarchy for Spanish. In Kimberly Geeslin & Manuel Díaz-Campos (eds.), 14th Hispanic linguistics symposium, 142–164. Somerville: Cascadilla tested the predictive power of the Hierarchy for referring expressions in Spanish oral film-retell narratives. Results showed that speakers use the most minimal forms possible (e.g., null pronouns) even when the hierarchy predicts more elaborate forms. Assuming writers make fewer assumptions regarding readers’ level of attention and memory, the present study examines whether the revised Hierarchy proposed by Blackwell, Sarah E. & Margaret Lubbers Quesada. 2012. Third-person subjects in native speakers’ and L2 learners’ narratives: Testing (and revising) the Givenness Hierarchy for Spanish. In Kimberly Geeslin & Manuel Díaz-Campos (eds.), 14th Hispanic linguistics symposium, 142–164. Somerville: Cascadilla is valid for predicting referring forms in Spanish written film retell narrative discourse. The data corroborate that participants select subject forms as predicted, but also reveal an increased use of definite NPs, suggesting that the Hierarchy has a stronger predictive power for oral narratives where attention and memory play a greater role in referent identification.

Live Coding in Music Theater—A Comprehensive Technique? The Case ofDumrul and the Grim Reaper

AbstractThe author analyzes the play Dumrul and the Grim Reaper as a case study to explore the possibilities of live coding in the context of music theater. The live coding method, which focuses on a single main application window, allows one to effectively execute several distributed tasks simultaneously, such as music composition, sound design, sound effects, and musical performance in real-time without losing track of the theatrical text’s flow. In terms of the compositional approach, live coding will be proposed as a holistic sound and music creation technique that centers on using textual systems to depict elaborate forms of artistic expression.

Learning from humans to build social cognition among robots.

Self-organized groups of robots have generally coordinated their behaviors using quite simple social interactions. Although simple interactions are sufficient for some group behaviors, future research needs to investigate more elaborate forms of coordination, such as social cognition, to progress towards real deployments. In this perspective, we define social cognition among robots as the combination of social inference, social learning, social influence, and knowledge transfer, and propose that these abilities can be established in robots by building underlying mechanisms based on behaviors observed in humans. We review key social processes observed in humans that could inspire valuable capabilities in robots and propose that relevant insights from human social cognition can be obtained by studying human-controlled avatars in virtual environments that have the correct balance of embodiment and constraints. Such environments need to allow participants to engage in embodied social behaviors, for instance through situatedness and bodily involvement, but, at the same time, need to artificially constrain humans to the operational conditions of robots, for instance in terms of perception and communication. We illustrate our proposed experimental method with example setups in a multi-user virtual environment.

From private phones to public screens: Cross-media recontextualization of chat discourse in the case of the Austrian ÖVP corruption affair

The profound establishment of text-based interaction via mobile messenger services has not only changed interpersonal communication, but also reshaped its quotability. Drawing on the notion of recontextualization, this paper investigates the cross-media transfer-and-transformation of text messages from their former confidential contexts into public media environments. The data are drawn from the media discourse on the corruption affair of the Austrian People's Party (ÖVP), which was triggered by the publication of confidential chat messages in the fall of 2021. Comparing the presentation of text messages in the journalistic media with their intertextual antecedents (in investigative files and related documents), the analysis highlights several linguistic and visual transformations. The findings demonstrate how formerly private chat interactions have been represented in media discourse and reveal different multimodal forms of cross-media quotation, ranging from linguistic replay and visual restaging to elaborate forms in which text messaging is audio-visually re-enacted. These modes of cross-media recontextualization differ in the degree to which the mediality of the digital chat discourse is conveyed or imitated. Through this media linguistic lens, the study contributes to the theory of recontextualization and raises the question what concept of quotation and re-enactment is appropriate and linguistically due in the age of a deep digitalization of everyday communication.

A new warm-cloud collection and breakup parameterization scheme for weather and climate models

Microphysical process rates in bulk microphysics schemes have been parameterized in simple forms which may inadequately represent their complicated dependencies on hydrometeor quantities. In this study, we develop a bulk warm rain microphysics scheme that includes physically based parameterizations of collection and breakup. The parameterizations are derived from the stochastic collection and breakup equations by approximating the collection and breakup kernels in elaborate forms and analytically evaluating the integrals in those equations. Although the new scheme performs relatively complicated calculations, it is computationally not too expensive to be used in weather and climate models. We first evaluate the raindrop self-collection and collisional breakup (RSCB) parameterizations developed in this study using a box model. Under the intrinsic limitation of bulk schemes, they generally yield the equilibrium raindrop size distributions closest to those from a bin-based solver. We then evaluate the new scheme through the simulations of shallow cumuli field and a single warm convective cloud. In the simulation of shallow cumuli field, the new scheme quite well reproduces the observed cloud properties. Compared to two other bulk schemes, the new scheme yields somewhat different rainwater mass and raindrop number concentration, which is largely attributable to the differences in autoconversion parameterizations. In the simulation of a single warm convective cloud where RSCB plays a major role, the rate of raindrop number depletion by RSCB and the time of precipitation onset predicted by the new scheme are close to those predicted by a bin scheme used as the reference.

A neural network-informed self-aware deployable structure with application to phased array antennas

State of the art radio frequency (RF) arrays are growing larger in pursuit of increased signal-to-noise ratio. In support of this goal, elaborate forms of metrology are being developed to support the increased footprints. This work provides a unique solution to fulfill the metrology requirements of large-scale deployable RF antennas through the implementation of neural network demodulation of fiber optic strain sensors. The fiber optics are patterned with fiber Bragg gratings (FBGs) to encode strain on to back-reflected shifts in the wavelength of incident light. Experiments show the neural network can predict the deformation of a test structure within single millimeters for small amplitude motions. Therefore, the current technique meets the required precision needed for large scale deployable RF arrays operating at S-band or longer wavelengths.

Properties of the ionisation glitch

Context. Determining the properties of solar-like oscillating stars can be subject to many biases. A particularly important example is the helium-mass degeneracy, where the uncertainties regarding the internal physics can cause a poor determination of both the mass and surface helium content. Accordingly, an independent helium estimate is needed to overcome this degeneracy. A promising way to obtain such an estimate is to exploit the so-called ionisation glitch, that is, the deviation from the asymptotic oscillation frequency pattern caused by the rapid structural variation in the He ionisation zones. Aims. Although it is progressively becoming more sophisticated, the glitch-based approach faces problems inherent to its current modelling such as the need for calibration using realistic stellar models. This requires a physical model of the ionisation region that explicitly involves the parameters of interest, such as the surface helium abundance, Ys. Methods. Through a thermodynamic treatment of the ionisation region, an analytical approximation for the first adiabatic exponent Γ1 is presented. Results. The induced stellar structure is found to depend on only three parameters, including the surface helium abundance Ys and the electron degeneracy ψCZ in the convective region. The model thus defined allows a wide variety of structures to be described, and it is in particular able to approximate a realistic model in the ionisation region. The modelling work we conducted enables us to study the structural perturbations causing the glitch. More elaborate forms of perturbations than those that are usually assumed are found. It is also suggested that there might be a stronger dependence of the structure on the electron degeneracy in the convection zone and on the position of the ionisation region rather than on the amount of helium itself. Conclusions. When analysing the ionisation glitch signature, we emphasise the importance of having a relation that can take these additional dependences into account.

Capitalism and the Sea: The Maritime Factor in the Making of the Modern World, LiamCamplingAlejandroColásLondon & New York: Verso. 2021. pp. xiv + 418. £20/$29.95 (hardcover). ISBN: 9781784785239

Capitalism and the Sea: The Maritime Factor in the Making of the Modern World, LiamCamplingAlejandroColásLondon & New York: Verso. 2021. pp. xiv + 418. £20/$29.95 (hardcover). ISBN: 9781784785239

In Prototypical Autism, the Genetic Ability to Learn Language Is Triggered by Structured Information, Not Only by Exposure to Oral Language.

What does the way that autistic individuals bypass, learn, and eventually master language tell us about humans’ genetically encoded linguistic ability? In this theoretical review, we argue that autistic non-social acquisition of language and autistic savant abilities provide a strong argument for an innate, human-specific orientation towards (and mastery of) complex embedded structures. Autistic non-social language learning may represent a widening of the material processed during development beyond oral language. The structure detection and manipulation and generative production of non-linguistic embedded and chained material (savant abilities in calendar calculation, musical composition, musical interpretation, and three-dimensional drawing) may thus represent an application of such innate mechanisms to non-standard materials. Typical language learning through exposure to the child’s mother tongue may represent but one of many possible achievements of the same capacity. The deviation from typical language development in autism may ultimately allow access to oral language, sometimes in its most elaborate forms, and also explain the possibility of the absence of its development when applied exclusively to non-linguistic structured material. Such an extension of human capacities beyond or in parallel to their usual limits call into question what we consider to be specific or expected in humans and therefore does not necessarily represent a genetic “error”. Regardless of the adaptive success or failure of non-social language learning, it is the duty of science and ethical principles to strive to maintain autism as a human potentiality to further foster our vision of a plural society.

Chemsex, identity processes and coping among gay and bisexual men

Purpose Chemsex constitutes a significant public health concern among gay and bisexual men (GBM). Using the identity process theory, this study focuses on GBM’s motivations for engaging in chemsex and the functions that the practice performs for constructing a positive sense of self and for coping with psychological stress. Design/methodology/approach Sixteen GBM were interviewed, and the qualitative data were analyzed using thematic analysis. Findings Individuals reported facing various stressors, such as homonegativity, rejection and HIV stigma, which were threatening for self-esteem and distinctiveness. There was habitual use of deflection (e.g. denial and self-concealment) for coping with these stressors. Chemsex enabled some interviewees to engage in more elaborate forms of deflection, such as transient depersonalization, compartmentalization and fantasy. Originality/value In contrast to the risk-focused analyses of chemsex, this study provides a novel identity-based approach to understanding GBM’s motivations for engaging in chemsex and focuses on the functions that chemsex may perform for identity processes.

Средневековые надгробные памятники степного Крыма

There are late eighteenth-century maps of the town of Eski-Krym (Solkhat, Krym, Staryi Krym) which Muslim commune shaped by the last third of the thirteenth century showing a number of significant architectural objects and gravestones with stone-carved decorations. The system of Muslim gravestones developed by O.-N. A. Akchokrakly and A. S. Bashkirov is based on the study of forms and the location of ornamental and epigraphic parts of monuments from the cemeteries of Staryi Krym. Carved decorations of medieval grave monuments of Solkhat show by the high artistic level of carving, the quality of technical execution, and original ornamentation. Their connection of stone carving of the Crimea in the Golden Horde Period with the Asia Minor appeared simultaneously with the development of Muslim architecture. Photographs and drawings made by an academic expedition in 1925 that surveyed ancient Tatar settlements and cemeteries in the Crimean steppe (its western areas close to Yevpatoria, as well as the north of the Crimean Peninsula and its east close to the town of Staryi Krym) show a wide range of gravestones, mostly of geometrical forms like pillars topped with turbans. There is a small group of grave monuments, or the so-called two-horned gravestones, representing a rough form of similar tombstones originating from the Muslim cemeteries of Solkhat as the capital of the Crimea in the Golden Horde Period and other large settlements, such as Eski-Iurt. The two-horned gravestones from the cemeteries of large settlements present elaborate forms and inscriptions; they are covered with ornaments featuring the Seljuk style of the Asia Minor. The two-horned gravestones from the cemeteries in the steppe have a high base, with their pillars following the shape of vertical

Epistemological Consequences of Frege Puzzles

Frege puzzles exploit cognitive differences between co-referential terms (such as ‘Hesperus’ and ‘Phosphorus’). Traditionally, they were handled by some version of Frege’s distinction between sense and reference, which avoided disruptive consequences for epistemology. However, the Fregean programme did not live up to its original promise, and was undermined by the development of theories of direct reference; for semantic purposes, its prospects now look dim. In particular, well-known analogues of Frege puzzles concern pairs of uncontentious synonyms; attempts to deal with them by distinguishing idiolects or postulating ‘narrow contents’ or elaborate forms of context-sensitivity are inadequate or semantically implausible. Although ascriptions of knowledge, belief, and other attitudes are ubiquitous in epistemology, epistemologists have not properly come to terms with the surprising consequences of anti-Fregean semantic accounts of attitude ascriptions. In ‘A Puzzle about Belief ’, Saul Kripke shows that natural-seeming disquotational principles for ascribing belief lead to apparently unacceptable consequences, including outright contradictions, in problem cases. Such disquotation principles, I argue, are best regarded not as conceptual connections but just as heuristics in the psychological sense, quick and easy ways of assessing belief ascriptions, usually accurate under normal conditions but far from 100% reliable. I discuss similar heuristics for ascribing knowledge and other attitudes. That the principles have a merely heuristic status need not be pre-theoretically manifest to their users. This view vindicates Kripke’s conclusion that it would be wrong-headed to draw semantic conclusions from Frege puzzles. I discuss the epistemological consequences of an anti-Fregean approach to Frege puzzles, including for Kripke’s cases of the contingent a priori and the necessary a posteriori, but also for evidence, for epistemic modalities, and for epistemic and subjective conceptions of probability. Anna Mahtani’s recent identification of Frege puzzles for the ex ante Pareto Principle as used in welfare economics provides an interesting example. I suggest a model-building methodology as the most promising way of handling at least some of the difficulties. A final issue is the choice between different anti-Fregean approaches to semantics, from very coarse-grained intensional approaches on which sentences express functions from (metaphysically) possible worlds to truth-values to more fine-grained hyperintensional approaches on which sentences express functions from possible or impossible worlds to truth-values or else Russellian structured propositions. Some of the hyperintensional theories violate semantic compositionality. More generally, since our attitude ascriptions rely on heuristics, they should be expected to exhibit some level of error; although hyperintensional approaches may be able slightly to reduce the level of postulated error, they do so at the cost of vastly increased theoretical complexity, and so have weak explanatory power. Methodologically, a simple intensional approach does better.

Similarities in dance follower behaviour across honey bee species suggest a conserved mechanism of dance communication

Social communication systems are predominantly multimodal and can combine modulatory and information-bearing signals. The honey bee waggle dance, one of the most elaborate forms of social communication in animals, activates nestmates to search for food and communicates symbolic information about the location of the food source. Previous studies on the dance behaviour in diverse honey bee species demonstrated distinct differences in the concurrence of visual, auditory, olfactory and tactile signals produced by the dancer. We studied the behaviour of dance signal receivers, the dance followers, to explore the potential significance of different signals in the communication process. In particular, we asked whether the behaviour of dance followers differs between the three major Asian honey bee species, Apis florea, Apis dorsata and Apis cerana, and whether this might correlate with the differences in the signals produced by the dancing foragers. Our comparison demonstrated that the behaviour of the dance followers is highly similar across all three species. The mean body orientation of the dance followers with respect to the waggle dancer was close to 90° throughout the run, with the majority positioning themselves lateral to the dancer. These findings suggest that the communication of spatial information might be more conserved than implied by the differences in the signals produced by the dancer. Along with studies in Apis mellifera, our results suggest that all honey bee species rely on tactile contacts between the dancer and follower to communicate spatial information. The cues and signals that differ between the species may be involved in attracting the followers towards the dancer or increasing their motivation to start foraging in the different nest environments.