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Homo sapiens have adapted to an incredible diversity of habitats around the globe. This capacity to adapt to different landscapes is clearly expressed within Africa, with Late Pleistocene Homo sapiens populations occupying savannahs, woodlands, coastlines and mountainous terrain. As the only area of the world where Homo sapiens have clearly persisted through multiple glacial-interglacial cycles, Africa is the only continent where classic refugia models can be formulated and tested to examine and describe changing patterns of past distributions and human phylogeographies. The potential role of refugia has frequently been acknowledged in the Late Pleistocene palaeoanthropological literature, yet explicit identification of potential refugia has been limited by the patchy nature of palaeoenvironmental and archaeological records, and the low temporal resolution of climate or ecological models. Here, we apply potential climatic thresholds on human habitation, rooted in ethnographic studies, in combination with high-resolution model datasets for precipitation and biome distributions to identify persistent refugia spanning the Late Pleistocene (130–10 ka). We present two alternate models suggesting that between 27% and 66% of Africa may have provided refugia to Late Pleistocene human populations, and examine variability in precipitation, biome and ecotone distributions within these refugial zones. 1. Introduction 2. The role of refugia in African palaeoanthropology 3. Exploring potential human refugia in Late Pleistocene African landscapes (a) Identifying precipitation refugia (b) Biome changes within precipitation refugia (c) Open and forested landscapes within precipitation refugia (d) A case study of Late Pleistocene human occupation of eastern African refugia 4. Discussion

Review of: Politics as Sound: The Washington, DC, Hardcore Scene, 1978–1983, Shanya L. Maskell (2021) Champaign, IL: Illinois University Press, 265 pp., ISBN 978-0-25208-622-9, p/bk, £16

AbstractThis paper examines the reasoning lines in PM Alexis Tsipras’ political discourse in critical moments of SYRIZA’s tenure as the ruling party in Greece. Adopting a CDS perspective, we zoom in on the patterns that underlie the (de)legitimization of the crisis-ridden EU in three seminal speeches by PM Tsipras during the Greek/EU financial crisis. To this end, we integrate systemic-functional and cognitive linguistic tools with a view to scrutinizing representational meaning, before turning to employ the notions ofendoxonandtopos/locusas a means of studying the particularargumentative inferences, triggered by the respective discursive representations. Through this lens, we show how the overall argumentation can be seen as supporting the (de-)legitimation of dominant EU austerity perspectives while transforming SYRIZA into a pro-austerity voice.

An exclusive connection between Homo sapiens and Nubian Levallois technology has been posited, but remains to be demonstrated1 . Our re-evaluation of the fossil and lithic material from Shukbah Cave confounds such assumptions due to the identification of a Neanderthal molar tooth alongside Nubian Levallois cores and points at the site2 . Hallinan and colleagues3 question this fnding, instead supporting the use of Nubian Levallois technology as a fossile directeur to track expansions of Homo sapiens. We tackle these critiques, highlighting the problematic foundations in the assertion that Nubian Levallois technology is a unique, discrete entity, resulting in its misuse to support simplistic culture-historical narratives. peer-reviewed

Mafia firms introduce distortions in the markets in which they operate, increasing the cost of doing business for peer firms. We investigate whether peers respond by increasing their tax avoidance and thus increasing funds available to compete with the Mafia firms. Using a sample of Italian anti-Mafia police actions that resulted in the removal of Mafia firms and a difference-in-differences approach, we find that peers reduce their tax avoidance following these actions. We further show that, following anti-Mafia police actions, peer firms improve their performance and increase capital investment while enjoying a reduction in the cost of raw materials. Overall, our results highlight the microlevel channels through which Mafia can affect firm outcomes and local economies. peer-reviewed

In this work, we test the robustness of the constancy of the Supernova absolute magnitude $M_B$ using Non-parametric Reconstruction Techniques (NRT). We isolate the luminosity distance parameter $d_L(z)$ from the Baryon Acoustic Oscillations (BAO) data set and cancel the expansion part from the observed distance modulus $\mu(z)$. Consequently, the degeneracy between the absolute magnitude and the Hubble constant $H_0$, is replaced by a degeneracy between $M_B$ and the sound horizon at drag epoch $r_d$. When imposing the $r_d$ value, this yields the $M_B(z) = M_B + \delta M_B(z)$ value from NRT. We perform the respective reconstructions using the model independent Artificial Neural Network (ANN) technique and Gaussian processes (GP) regression. For the ANN we infer $M_B = -19.22\pm0.20$, and for the GP we get $M_B = -19.25\pm0.39$ as a mean for the full distribution when using the sound horizon from late time measurements. These estimations provide a $1\,\sigma$ possibility of a nuisance parameter presence $\delta M_B(z)$ at higher redshifts. We also tested different known nuisance models with the Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) technique which showed a strong preference for the constant model, but it was not possible not single out a best fit nuisance model. Comment: 10 pages; 3 figures; 4 tables; accepted in Physics of the Dark Universe