Major Innovations Research Articles

A land clearing index for high-frequency unsupervised monitoring of land development using multi-source optical remote sensing images

Timely information on land development is critical for preventing illegal construction, which is an increasingly serious problem in rapidly urbanizing countries. Although remote sensing has been widely used to observe land cover change, monitoring land development at a high frequency (e.g., weekly or daily) remains a challenge because of the lack of images with sufficient temporal resolution and methods independent of human supervision. This study developed a novel unsupervised method, namely, land clearing index (LCI)-based method, for monitoring land development at high frequencies. The LCI was proposed by examining the characteristics of the spectral change caused by the land clearing in the initial stage of land development. It is calculated with two images acquired at different times and can be used with an appropriate threshold to detect land development areas. Top-of-atmosphere reflectance (TOAR) data were found to be better than surface reflectance (SR) data for the use with the LCI-based method because the atmosphere effect played a positive role in distinguishing developed land from undeveloped land and suppressing the false alarms caused by the season change in vegetation. The major innovations of the LCI-based method are as follows: 1) applicable to the land development detection between images acquired by different optical sensors to allow for high-frequency detection; 2) can detect land development without training data and human supervision; 3) can detect various types of land development, such as converting farmland for building purposes, urban redevelopment, and land reclamation; and 4) simple, straightforward, and easy to implement. The LCI-based method was tested with different satellite images (Landsat-5, Landsat-7, Landsat-8, and Sentinel-2) for land development detection in nine cities selected worldwide. The average detection accuracy (DA), false-alarm rate (FR), and overall accuracy (OA) were 88.62%, 1.68%, and 98.22%, respectively. Compared with the traditional post-classification comparison based on the random forest algorithm, the LCI-based method produced better results and avoided the time-consuming work on sample selection. The LCI was also tested in each of the cities to detect land development at the various time intervals (5 days, 1 month, 3 months, 6 months, and 1 year) in the different seasons (January to March, April to June, July to September, and October to December). Approximately all the DAs were higher than 90.00%, while the FRs were highly related to the detection interval and ranged from 0.00% to 71.60%. The false alarms were mainly caused by the seasonal change in croplands, natural vegetation, shadows of mountains and buildings, and suspended sediment in the water. An approach was developed to calibrate the detection results of the LCI-based method for false alarm suppression. The false alarms were reduced by as much as 99.98% by reinforcing the LCI-based method with this calibration approach. The testing indicated that the LCI-based method is applicable and reliable for monitoring land development at a short time interval; thus, it is capable of preventing illegal construction.

Learning Multi-Scale Heterogeneous Representations and Global Topology for Drug-Target Interaction Prediction

Identification of interactions between drugs and target proteins plays a critical role not only in drug discovery but also in drug repositioning. Deep integration of inter-connections and intra-similarities between heterogeneous multi-source data about drugs and targets, however, is a challenging issue. We propose a drug-target interaction (DTI) prediction model by learning from drug and protein related multi-scale attributes and global topology formed by heterogeneous connections. A drug-protein-disease heterogeneous network (RPD-Net) is firstly constructed to associate diverse similarities, interactions and associations across nodes. Secondly, we propose a multi-scale pairwise deep representation learning module consisting of a new embedding strategy to integrate diverse inter-relations and intra-relations, and dilation convolutions for multi-scale deep representation extraction. A global topology learning module is proposed which is composed of strategy based on non-negative matrix factorization (NMF) to extract topology from RPD-Net, and a new relational-level attention mechanism for discriminative topology embedding. Experimental results using public dataset demonstrate improved performance over state-of-the-art methods and contributions of our major innovations. Evaluation results by top k recall rates and case studies on five drugs further show the effectiveness of our method in retrieving potential target candidates for drugs.

Hector Berlioz’s Neurophysiological Imagination

Abstract There is, Berlioz writes in his essay “De la musique en général” (1837), “a strange agitation in my blood circulation: my arteries beat violently … a trembling overtakes my limbs and a numbness my hands and feet, while the nerves of sight and hearing are partially paralyzed.” The composer here is not, as one might think, describing the symptoms of an opium overdose, but rather the powerful effect of “good music” on his own body. Challenging our tendency to dismiss Berlioz’s musical writings as merely overheated Romantic effusions, I argue that the remarkable medical detail presented in his arguments reveals a hitherto neglected dimension of nineteenth-century engagement with the embodied effects of music. Contextualizing Berlioz’s claims within the neurophysiology of his age, and in particular the physiological psychology of Cabanis, the anatomy of Bichat, and the acoustic theories of Lamarck, I recover the medical and scientific epistemes that motivated the composer’s assertions about the power of music to effect embodied and emotional transformation—a constellation of ideas that I term his “neurophysiological imagination.” An analysis in these terms of some of Berlioz’s major compositional innovations reveals how both his writings and his music explore an explicitly neurophysiological dimension of early Romantic listening. Specifically, I propose that Berlioz repeatedly attempted both to represent and to induce an experience that was of great interest to the artists and audiences of his day: an overpowering mental and physical response to music experienced as an embodied, neurophysiological form of the sublime.

Effect of Organizational Socialization of New Employees on Team Innovation Performance: A Cross-Level Model.

PurposeBased on the Social Information Processing Theory, a cross-level model was conducted to analyze the influence of new employees’ organizational socialization on team innovation performance via the mediating effect of employee voice behavior and the moderating effect of servant leadership.MethodsSurvey data were collected from 352 new employees and 88 leaders at two stages in major Chinese innovation companies. Samples were involved technology and development, production and operation, marketing and sales, and functional management departments. The software Mplus 7.0 and AMOS 22.0 were used to test the hypotheses.ResultsThe cross-level results indicated that organizational socialization directly enhances new employee voice behavior and, accordingly, promotes team innovation performance. Additionally, servant leadership plays a moderating role between organizational socialization and prohibitive voice behavior but has no moderating effect on the relationship between organizational socialization and promotive voice behavior.ConclusionThe results enrich the research on the influencing mechanism of organizational socialization on team innovation performance and provide a theoretical basis and practical guidance for innovation enterprise leaders on how to promote team innovation performance.

Des nations, des firmes et des montres. Histoire globale de l'industrie horlogére de 1850 à nos jours [Countries, companies, and watches: A global history of the watch industry from 1850 to today] by Pierre-Yves Donzé

Reviewed by: Des nations, des firmes et des montres. Histoire globale de l'industrie horlogére de 1850 à nos jours [Countries, companies, and watches: A global history of the watch industry from 1850 to today] by Pierre-Yves Donzé Pierre Judet (bio) Des nations, des firmes et des montres. Histoire globale de l'industrie horlogére de 1850 à nos jours [Countries, companies, and watches: A global history of the watch industry from 1850 to today] By Pierre-Yves Donzé. Neuchâtel: Éditions Livreo-Alphil, 2020. Pp. 246. Studies on the history of watchmaking (watches and clocks) are not new. In 1967, Carlo Cipolla showed the link between watchmaking and modernity (Clocks and Culture 1300–1700). His work was continued in 1983 by David S. Landes, who analyzed the emergence of new uses of time as a result of the invention and improvement of the mechanical clock in the West, in Revolution in Time. Pierre-Yves Donzé is a specialist in the global history of industrial companies, and the watch industry in Switzerland and Japan. His book offers a new synthesis of the history of watchmaking from the mid-1800s to the present day. Unlike earlier works by historians in this field, who compared watchmaking in different countries, Donzé focuses on the emergence of globalized firms in the twentieth century. Considered an ornament under the Ancien Régime, the watch has indeed become a universal object meeting consumers' everyday needs, before evolving into a luxury item once again. According to Donzé, while watchmaking activities were organized within a national framework until the mid-1900s, everything changed a century later. As in other major industrial sectors, "globalized firms with much weaker territorial roots […] compete on world markets" (p. 10). Donzé takes a systemic approach at company, national, and global levels to highlight the interactions between technology, marketing, political decisions, and the global economy. Readers of this journal will appreciate the importance the author attributes to technology in this evolution. In Donzé's view, "the changes in the conditions of competition and the transformation of the industrial organization of the watch sector are essentially the result of the evolution of technological and institutional factors" (p. 125). These technological factors concern both the watch and its production processes. Donzé distinguishes four phases in this history. Until 1914, the watch industry centered on the national market. The United States is the best example of this type of operation, based on the model of the large integrated company, which allows both mass production and lower production costs. The Swiss watch industry, which is older and cannot rely on its domestic market, remains globally faithful to the model of the dispersed factory; the importance of this industry's exports is proof of its efficiency. The interwar period saw the spread of protectionism, even in Switzerland, which sometimes went as far as what the author calls "de-globalization." This situation did not prevent innovation or the consolidation of earlier innovations, [End Page 591] particularly in Switzerland. There was a tendency to abandon the pocket watch for the wristwatch, which made it possible to develop the ladies' watch. The Swiss firm Rolex, in Bienne, launched the waterproof watch (1926) and automatic movement (1931). The 1950s and 1960s marked the implementation of standardized mass production, particularly in Japan, where two large companies, Seiko and Citizen, demonstrated their capacity for innovation. They introduced tolerance standards to ensure quality control and the interchangeability of parts. In 1946, Seiko launched the extra-flat pocket watch. In addition, the world's major watchmaking companies began to outsource the assembly and subcontract components with simple technology. From the 1980s onwards, the major technological innovation of the electronic watch led to an explosion in demand and production, supported by the liberalization of trade and the opening up of China. These events challenged the balance of power between the major watchmaking firms and nations. Multinationals, such as the Swiss firm Swatch Group, are asserting themselves by relying on global value chains. Global marketing is becoming more important than reducing costs. Swiss-based companies are making their mark in the luxury sector, while Chinese production, the largest in volume, remains confined to the low-cost sector. The eight...

Familial hypercholesterolemia in China requires greater efforts

Familial hypercholesterolemia in China requires greater efforts

Violent and Agressive Behaviour: Are we Defining the Problem Appropriately?

Violent behaviour has an abundance of negative consequences ranging from the victim’s personal distress to increased economic strain on an entire community. The search for the cause(s) of aggression has been long underway with some major findings and innovations. However, there have also been several overlooked topics pertaining to the increased likelihood of violence. The current review aims to examine one of these oversights: the deeper meaning of trait aggression and the role of emotional self-regulation in violence perpetration. The author reviews current literature on the topic and outlines several correlations between violent behaviour and emotional self-regulation, which appear to be consistent across multiple adult populations. The author argues that this strong link provides due cause for future research aimed at empirically examining the relationship between emotional self-regulation and violent behaviour.

Stereolithography in implant placement

Stereolithography (SLA), the first form of additive manufacturing, creates 3D objects by selectively solidifying liquid resin via a photopolymerization reaction. Stereolithography has gained popularity due to its ability to fabricate objects with high accuracy and in a wide range of materials. SLA has undergone four generations of major technological innovation since its invention in the 1980s. As a result of these advancements, a diverse range of stereolithography systems with dramatically improved resolution, throughput, and material selection for creating complex 3D objects and devices is now available.

Development and validation of a feature extraction-based logical anthropomorphic diagnostic system for early gastric cancer: A case-control study

SummaryBackgroundPrompt diagnosis of early gastric cancer (EGC) is crucial for improving patient survival. However, most previous computer-aided-diagnosis (CAD) systems did not concretize or explain diagnostic theories. We aimed to develop a logical anthropomorphic artificial intelligence (AI) diagnostic system named ENDOANGEL-LA (logical anthropomorphic) for EGCs under magnifying image enhanced endoscopy (M-IEE).MethodsWe retrospectively collected data for 692 patients and 1897 images from Renmin Hospital of Wuhan University, Wuhan, China between Nov 15, 2016 and May 7, 2019. The images were randomly assigned to the training set and test set by patient with a ratio of about 4:1. ENDOANGEL-LA was developed based on feature extraction combining quantitative analysis, deep learning (DL), and machine learning (ML). 11 diagnostic feature indexes were integrated into seven ML models, and an optimal model was selected. The performance of ENDOANGEL-LA was evaluated and compared with endoscopists and sole DL models. The satisfaction of endoscopists on ENDOANGEL-LA and sole DL model was also compared.FindingsRandom forest showed the best performance, and demarcation line and microstructures density were the most important feature indexes. The accuracy of ENDOANGEL-LA in images (88.76%) was significantly higher than that of sole DL model (82.77%, p = 0.034) and the novices (71.63%, p<0.001), and comparable to that of the experts (88.95%). The accuracy of ENDOANGEL-LA in videos (87.00%) was significantly higher than that of the sole DL model (68.00%, p<0.001), and comparable to that of the endoscopists (89.00%). The accuracy (87.45%, p<0.001) of novices with the assistance of ENDOANGEL-LA was significantly improved. The satisfaction of endoscopists on ENDOANGEL-LA was significantly higher than that of sole DL model.InterpretationWe established a logical anthropomorphic system (ENDOANGEL-LA) that can diagnose EGC under M-IEE with diagnostic theory concretization, high accuracy, and good explainability. It has the potential to increase interactivity between endoscopists and CADs, and improve trust and acceptability of endoscopists for CADs.FundingThis work was partly supported by a grant from the Hubei Province Major Science and Technology Innovation Project (2018-916-000-008) and the 10.13039/501100012226Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (2042021kf0084).

Cost-effectiveness and cost-utility of traditional and telemedicine combined population-based age-related macular degeneration and diabetic retinopathy screening in rural and urban China

SummaryBackgroundTo assess the cost-effectiveness and cost-utility of a population-level traditional and telemedicine combined age-related macular degeneration (AMD) and diabetic retinopathy (DR) screening program in rural and urban China.MethodsDecision-analytic Markov models were conducted to evaluate the costs and benefits of traditional and telemedicine combined AMD and DR screening from a societal perspective. A cohort of all participants aged 50 years old and above was followed through a total of 30 1-year Markov cycles. Separate analyses were performed for rural and urban settings. Relevant parameters such as the prevalence of AMD and DR, transition probability, compliance with screening and treatment, screening sensitivity, specificity, utility, and mortality were collected from published studies specific to China, other Asian counties' studies, or unpublished data sources such as the National Committee for the Prevention of Blindness. Costs of screening, full examination, and treatment come from the real medical environments and unified pricing of Beijing Municipal Medical Insurance Bureau. Primary outcomes were incremental cost-utility ratios (ICURs) using quality-adjusted life-years (QALYs) and incremental cost-effectiveness ratios (ICERs) using years of blindness avoided. One-way deterministic and simulated probabilistic sensitivity analyses were conducted to reflect uncertainty.FindingsUnder the status quo, the total expected medical costs for a 50-year-old patient with AMD or DR were $869·59 and $1,514·18 in rural and urban settings, respectively. Both traditional and telemedicine screening were highly cost-effective. In rural settings, ICURs were $191 (95% confidence interval [CI]: $66 to $239) and $199 (95% CI: $-12 to $217), and ICERs were $2,436 (95% CI: $1,089 to $3,254) and $2,441 (95% CI: $1,452 to $3,900) for traditional and telemedicine screening separately. Even more surprising, both screening strategies dominated no screening in urban settings. Our results were insensitive and robust to extensive sensitivity analyses. Among all acceptable screening intervals (from 1 to 5 years), annual screening could not only produce biggest benefits but also keep ICERs less than three times and one time the per capita gross domestic product (GDP) in rural and urban settings separately. When compared with traditional screening, ICERs of telescreening were less than three times the per capita GDP in rural settings ($2,559 to $8,809) and less than one time the per capita GDP in urban settings (less than $5,564), annual telescreening produced the biggest benefits, it could avert 119 and 270 years of blindness in rural and urban areas separately when 100,000 people were screened.InterpretationWe performed decision-analytic Markov models for combined AMD and DR screening in rural and urban China, and the results showed that population-level combined screening for AMD and DR is likely to be highly cost-effective in both rural and urban China for people over 50 years old. Optimal screening may have an interval of every year based on teleophthalmology platforms. In the future, China should pay more attention to chronic eye diseases and the government should establish a sound chronic disease management system and make every patient enjoy equal medical services.FundingNational Natural Science Foundation of China, NSFC (82171051); the Major Innovation Platform of Public Health & Disease Control and Prevention, Renmin University of China and Beijing Nova program (Z191100001119072).

Methodology to Optimize Quality Costs in Manufacturing Based on Multi-Criteria Analysis and Lean Strategies

Manufacturing quality cost optimization is a priority in any manufacturing sector due to quality issues impacting companies’ reputations and has financial consequences. Quality costs are composed of tangible and intangible costs, however, only tangible costs used to be analyzed because there is no suitable methodology for measuring intangible costs. In this context, an innovative decision support system is developed with an empirical base, applying Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP), Analytical Network Process (ANP), and Lean methodology to reduce all quality costs in an efficient way. In quality departments, perceptions, thoughts, and judgments (intangible costs) are not measured and controlled. This study develops an innovative methodology that allows to address this issue in an effective way. Another major innovation is the application of both multi-criteria methodologies to obtain the best combined result for decision making and the optimization of this result, developing an effort–impact matrix based on Lean manufacturing methodology. This system speeds up the decision-making process and assures its efficiency for quality department applications. Moreover, this decision support system may be applicable to any manufacturing sector.

Human occupation of the semi-arid grasslands of South Africa during MIS 4: New archaeological and paleoecological evidence from Lovedale, Free State

Marine Isotope Stage (MIS) 5 and 4 are periods of major cultural innovations in the Middle Stone Age (MSA) of southern Africa. While extensive data is available for the coast, far less is known about the interior, in particular its central plateau. This is likely due to the large geographic extent of this area and a general paucity of caves and rock shelters that can provide long stratigraphic sequences and environmental records. The lack of information and systematic research has hindered our understanding of regional variation and patterns of human dispersal within the subcontinent. Our research at the open-air MSA site of Lovedale situated on the Modder River addresses this issue. Using sediment micromorphology, infrared spectroscopy of bones and sediments, phytolith and faunal analyses, as well as luminescence dating, we have reconstructed the evolution of paleoenvironments in this region at specific points over the last ∼80,000 years. Our results help contextualize human occupation and hunting strategies associated with a pre-Howiesons Poort technology that occurred in a wetland environment during a short-lived warm, dry period dated to ∼70 ka. These results show that humans settled the grasslands of the central interior at the onset of MIS 4 and confirm the importance of wetlands in human subsistence strategies, especially in times of climatic stress.

Structural health monitoring by a novel probabilistic machine learning method based on extreme value theory and mixture quantile modeling

This article proposes a novel probabilistic machine learning method based on unsupervised novelty detection for health monitoring of civil structures. The core of this method is based on extreme value theory (EVT) and mixture quantile modeling. Accordingly, a mixture quantile value by combining non-parametric and parametric quantile estimators is proposed as a new decision-making or novelty score. The non-parametric estimator relies on an empirical quantile function, while the parametric estimator stems from modeling a generalized extreme value distribution. Generally, the proposed method is composed of some main steps; that is, calculating distances between feature samples, sorting the distances in ascending order, changing their signs for providing negated quantities, selecting some negated maximum distances or extreme values in an iterative algorithm by using a goodness-of-fit test based on Kullback-Leibler information, and computing a mixture quantile. Furthermore, an EVT-based approach is proposed to estimate an alarming threshold. The major innovation in this article is to develop a novel probabilistic novelty detector with a new score for decision-making. The advantages of the proposed method contain preparing discriminative novelty scores for damage detection, dealing with the major challenge of environmental and/or operational variability, estimating a reliable threshold, and implementing both the procedures of decision-making and threshold estimation within a single framework. Dynamic and statistical features of two full-scale bridge structures are utilized to validate the proposed method along with comparative studies. Results demonstrate that the method is a reliable and influential tool for health monitoring of civil structures under varying various environmental and/or operational conditions.

A STUDY ON FARMER’S SATISFACTION TOWARDS KISAN CREDIT CARD SCHEME – A REFERENCE TO ERODE CITY

The major innovations in the field of rural credit delivery in the nineties are the Kisan Credit Card scheme and Bank Linkage Programme. As a pioneering credit delivery innovation,Kisan Credit Card scheme aims at provision of adequate and timely support from the banking system to the farmers for their cultivation needs including purchase of inputs in a flexible and cost effective manner. Thus Kisan Credit Card scheme aids the farmers to carry out their agricultural activities very smoothly and effectively. Hence in this context, it is important to study the farmers’ satisfaction and the benefits they derived while using Kisan Credit Cards. Keywords: Credit,Scheme, Cost.

Review on Quantum Computers in Machine Learning

The product development, process optimization and chemical discovery are also among the actual manufacturing areas for witnessing the major innovations for quantum computing. The quantum simulations can also be capable of replacing the laboratory experiments that reduces the research cost and also even minimize the requirement of animal and human testing. Apart from that, quantum computers can bring the huge potential advantages within the financial sectors that are from deeper analytics to the latest and faster trading possibilities. In the current scenario, the existing computers struggle in calculating big data and are unable to solve several complex problems. Therefore, these problems are much more expected to be resolved within a few seconds by the help and power of the quantum computers. Apart from that, it is also predicted that the AI applications within the particular ML can also benefit from the advanced technology of quantum computing. Keyword :Machine learning, Artificial Intelligence, Quantum computing, Cyber security.

Asymmetric effect of financial globalization on carbon emissions in G7 countries: Fresh insight from quantile-on-quantile regression

Being among the highest emitters of greenhouse gases globally, the G7 countries have pledged to halve their carbon emissions by 2030, relative to 2010. This is in clear recognition of the need to transit from carbon energy to more sustainable solutions that are climate-friendly. In view of this, understanding how financial globalization contributes to the realization of those pledges becomes necessary. In this paper, we introduce two major innovations to the literature on financial globalization and environmental degradation. First, in terms of methodology, we apply the quantile-on-quantile regression (QQR) approach with a nonparametric technique over the period 1970Q1–2018Q4. The combination of these techniques has so far received limited attention in the literature. Second, we test for an asymmetric nexus between financial globalization and carbon emission in the G7 economies—Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States—as they present an interesting area of research focus. Empirical results from the QQ regression show an emission-increasing effect of financial globalization on environmental degradation in the G7 nations. Furthermore, in order to assess the causal effect of financial globalization on environmental degradation, we apply the nonparametric causality technique. Overall, results from the nonparametric estimations show that financial globalization significantly predicts variation in environmental degradation across quantiles. From a policy standpoint, economic and political frameworks in these nations should be directed towards enhancing higher financial inflows that are in line with the stated economic and environmental policies, among other policy suggestions.

Fisher's historic 1922 paper On the dominance ratio.

R.A. Fisher’s 1922 paper On the dominance ratio has a strong claim to be the foundation paper for modern population genetics. It greatly influenced subsequent work by Haldane and Wright, and contributed 3 major innovations to the study of evolution at the genetic level. First, the introduction of a general model of selection at a single locus, which showed how variability could be maintained by heterozygote advantage. Second, the use of the branching process approach to show that a beneficial mutation has a substantial chance of loss from the population, even when the population size is extremely large. Third, the invention of the concept of a probability distribution of allele frequency, caused by random sampling of allele frequencies due to finite population size, and the first use of a diffusion equation to investigate the properties of such a distribution. Although Fisher was motivated by an inference that later turned out to lack strong empirical support (a substantial contribution of dominance to quantitative trait variability), and his use of a diffusion equation was marred by a technical mistake, the paper introduced concepts and methods that pervade much subsequent work in population genetics.

Microbes before microbiology: Christian Gottfried Ehrenberg and Berlin’s infusoria

Naturalist Christian Gottfried Ehrenberg pioneered research on living and fossil infusoria (including protists and bacteria) since the 1830s by collecting samples from all over the world, thus describing numerous microbes and discussing their effects for the planet and for humankind. This article introduces Ehrenberg as a natural historian of microbes and situates his work in the nineteenth century life sciences with respect to debates about cell theory, evolution, and concepts of disease. I argue that in spite of occurring before these major conceptual innovations of the life sciences, Ehrenberg’s work on the diversity of microbes found in earth or air is more exciting than historiography has made it appear so far, especially in light of today’s ecological microbiology.

Climate, competition, and the rise of mosasauroid ecomorphological disparity

AbstractMosasauroidea, prominent marine lizards (Squamata, Toxicofera) of the final 30 million years of the Cretaceous, have been extensively studied for their morphology, ecology and systematics in the past two centuries. However, the relative roles of biological and physical processes as drivers of their morphological diversification remain uncertain. Here we investigate the macroevolution of mosasauroid feeding and locomotory disparity using continuous characters measured from the mandible and forelimb as proxies. Patterns of morphospace occupation demonstrate important roles for innovation and niche partitioning in driving morphological disparity. The early evolution of Mosasauroidea is characterized by large shifts in morphology, especially elongation of the mandibular biting area and hydropedality. The later diversification of derived Mosasaurinae and Plioplatecarpinae is associated with a great expansion of morphospace, attributed to the acquisition of novel feeding and locomotory strategies. Temporally, disparity follows a top‐heavy profile, possibly reflecting opportunism in the wake of the Cenomanian–Turonian anoxic event. The highest levels of disparity are found in the latest Cretaceous, associated with the radiation of derived mosasaurids alongside the persistence of more basal forms. Major morphological innovations are not associated with evolutionary rate shifts, which differentiates them from earlier marine reptiles, and may reflect constant and greater niche occupation in Late Cretaceous oceans. Linear modelling of potential physical drivers indicates a minor role for these processes, suggesting that biological drivers were the primary sculptors of mosasauroid morphological disparity.

Psychological Inoculation against Misinformation: Current Evidence and Future Directions

Much like a viral contagion, misinformation can spread rapidly from one individual to another. Inoculation theory offers a logical basis for developing a psychological “vaccine” against misinformation. We discuss the origins of inoculation theory, starting with its roots in the 1960s as a “vaccine for brainwash,” and detail the major theoretical and practical innovations that inoculation research has witnessed over the years. Specifically, we review a series of randomized lab and field studies that show that it is possible to preemptively “immunize” people against misinformation by preexposing them to severely weakened doses of the techniques that underlie its production along with ways on how to spot and refute them. We review evidence from interventions that we developed with governments and social media companies to help citizens around the world recognize and resist unwanted attempts to influence and mislead. We conclude with a discussion of important open questions about the effectiveness of inoculation interventions.