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  • Publication . Article . Other literature type . 2023
    Open Access English
    Authors: 
    Schleihauf, Hanna; Zhang, Zhen; Gomez, Alissa; Engelmann, Jan;
    Project: EC | HelpSeeking (841021)

    Someone is rational in their thinking to the extent that they follow a rational procedure when determining what to believe. So whether someone is rational cannot be determined so much by whether they hold true or false beliefs (outcome-based rationality), but by how they arrived at these beliefs (procedure-based rationality). In this study, we want to answer the question to what extent 4-5-year-old children, 6-7-year-old children, and adults from China and the United States consider the procedure and the outcome in evaluating the rationality of an agent? In a picture book story, participants will be introduced to two characters whose pet ran away. They are trying to find the pet by using either rational (e.g. looking for the pet's traces) or irrational (e.g. using a spinning wheel) procedures that lead them to either the right (pointing at the location where the pet is hiding) or the wrong conclusion (pointing at the location where the pet is not hiding). More precisely, the participants will see three conditions: In an outcome matters condition, both characters are using an irrational procedure to find out where their pet is hiding, but one chooses the correct location, the other the wrong location. In a process matters condition, one of the characters is using a rational and the other is using an irrational procedure, while both choose wrong locations. In a process vs. outcome condition, one character is using an irrational procedure and point to the right location, the other character is using a rational procedure and point to the wrong location.

  • Publication . Article . 2023 . Embargo End Date: 02 Mar 2023
    Open Access
    Authors: 
    Cosimo Posth; He Yu; Ayshin Ghalichi; Hélène Rougier; Isabelle Crevecoeur; Yilei Huang; Harald Ringbauer; Adam B. Rohrlach; Kathrin Nägele; Vanessa Villalba-Mouco; +115 more
    Publisher: Apollo - University of Cambridge Repository
    Countries: Finland, Spain, United Kingdom, Italy, Lithuania
    Project: EC | PALEoRIDER (771234), EC | AMI (864358), EC | CROSSROADS (724703), EC | RESOLUTION (803147)

    Acknowledgements: The authors thank G. Marciani and O. Jöris for comments on archaeology; C. Jeong, M. Spyrou and K. Prüfer for comments on genetics; M. O’Reilly for graphical support for Fig. 5 and Extended Data Fig. 9; the entire IT and laboratory teams at the Department of Archaeogenetics of MPI-SHH for technical assistance; M. Meyer and S. Nagel for support with single-stranded library preparation; K. Post, P. van Es, J. Glimmerveen, M. Medendorp, M. Sier, S. Dikstra, M. Dikstra, R. van Eerden, D. Duineveld and A. Hoekman for providing access to human specimens from the North Sea (The Netherlands); M. D. Garralda and A. Estalrrich for providing access to human specimens from La Riera (Spain); J. Górski and M. Zając for providing access to human specimens from Maszycka cave; C. Di Patti for providing access to human specimens from San Teodoro 2 (Italy); P. Blaževičius for providing access to the Donkalnis human remains and the new radiocarbon dates; the Italian Ministry of Culture and Soprintendenza Archeologia Belle Arti e Paesaggio for the Provinces of Verona, Rovigo, and Vicenza for granting access to the human remains of Tagliente 2; F. Fontana, who carries out investigations of the Riparo Tagliente site (Italy); the Friuli Venezia Giulia Superintendency for providing access to the human tooth Pradis 1; and the Soprintendenza Archeologia Belle Arti e Paesaggio for the Provinces of Barletta-Andria-Trani and Foggia for providing access to the Paglicci human remains. This project has received funding by the European Research Council under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreements no. 803147-RESOLUTION (to S.T.), no. 771234-PALEoRIDER (to W.H.), no. 864358 (to K.M.), no. 724703 and no. 101019659 (to K.H.). K.H. is also supported by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG FOR 2237). E.A. has received funding from the Van de Kamp fonds. PACEA co-authors of this research benefited from the scientific framework of the University of Bordeaux’s IdEx Investments for the Future programme/GPR Human Past. A.G.-O. is supported by a Ramón y Cajal fellowship (RYC-2017-22558). L. Sineo, M.L. and D.C. have received funding from the Italian Ministry of University and Research (MUR) PRIN 2017 grants 20177PJ9XF and 20174BTC4R_002. H. Rougier received support from the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences of CSUN and the CSUN Competition for RSCA Awards. C.L.S. and T. Saupe received support from the European Union through the European Regional Development Fund (project no. 2014-2020.4.01.16-0030) and C.L.S. received support from the Estonian Research Council grant PUT (PRG243). S. Shnaider received support from the Russian Science Foundation (no. 19-78-10053). Modern humans have populated Europe for more than 45,000 years1, 2. Our knowledge of the genetic relatedness and structure of ancient hunter-gatherers is however limited, owing to the scarceness and poor molecular preservation of human remains from that period3. Here we analyse 356 ancient hunter-gatherer genomes, including new genomic data for 116 individuals from 14 countries in western and central Eurasia, spanning between 35,000 and 5,000 years ago. We identify a genetic ancestry profile in individuals associated with Upper Palaeolithic Gravettian assemblages from western Europe that is distinct from contemporaneous groups related to this archaeological culture in central and southern Europe4, but resembles that of preceding individuals associated with the Aurignacian culture. This ancestry profile survived during the Last Glacial Maximum (25,000 to 19,000 years ago) in human populations from southwestern Europe associated with the Solutrean culture, and with the following Magdalenian culture that re-expanded northeastward after the Last Glacial Maximum. Conversely, we reveal a genetic turnover in southern Europe suggesting a local replacement of human groups around the time of the Last Glacial Maximum, accompanied by a north-to-south dispersal of populations associated with the Epigravettian culture. From at least 14,000 years ago, an ancestry related to this culture spread from the south across the rest of Europe, largely replacing the Magdalenian-associated gene pool. After a period of limited admixture that spanned the beginning of the Mesolithic, we find genetic interactions between western and eastern European hunter-gatherers, who were also characterized by marked differences in phenotypically relevant variants.

  • Open Access English
    Authors: 
    Hanna Maria Elonheimo; Karoliina Uusitalo; Sonja Moore; Anna-Maria Andersson; Ronny Baber; Kerstin Wirkner; Madlen David; Marike Kolossa-Gehring; Lorraine Stewart; Ovnair Sepai; +5 more
    Country: Germany
    Project: EC | HBM4EU (733032)

    Background: The European Human Biomonitoring Initiative (HBM4EU) is a joint program evaluating humans’ exposure to several environmental substances and their potential health effects. One of the main objectives of HBM4EU is to make use of human biomonitoring (HBM) to assess human exposure to chemicals in Europe to better understand the associated health impacts and to improve chemical risk assessment. In parallel to HBM studies, health examination surveys (HESs), nutrition/dietary surveys, and disease specific health surveys are conducted in many European countries. In HESs, information collected by questionnaire(s) is supplemented with physical examinations and analysis of clinical and biological biomarkers in biological samples. HBM and health examination survey (HES) use similar data collection methods and infrastructures hence the feasibility of combining these two is explored in this paper. Methods: Within HBM4EU, three feasibility studies (in Finland, Germany, and UK/England) were conducted to evaluate opportunities and obstacles of combining HBM and health studies. In this paper we report lessons learned from these feasibility studies. Results: The Finnish feasibility study called KouBio-KUOPIO study was a new initiative without links to existing studies. The German feasibility study added a HBM module to the first follow-up examination of the LIFE-Adult-Study, a population-based cohort study. The UK feasibility integrates a sustainable HBM module into the Health Survey for England (HSfE), an annual health examination survey. Benefits of combining HBM and HESs include the use of shared infrastructures. Furthermore, participants can receive additional health information from HES, and participation rates tend to be higher due to the potential to obtain personal health information. Preparatory phases including obtaining ethical approval can be time-consuming and complicated. Recruitment of participants and low participation rates are common concerns in survey research and therefore designing user-friendly questionnaires with low participant burden is important. Unexpected events such as the COVID-19 pandemic can cause substantial challenges and delays for such studies. Furthermore, experiences from several countries demonstrated that long-term funding for combined studies can be difficult to obtain. Conclusions: In the future, incorporating HBM modules into existing HESs can provide a feasible and cost-effective method to conduct HBM studies and obtain a wide range of relevant data to support public health policies and research.

  • Open Access English
    Authors: 
    Bahareh A. Sadeghi; Christian Wölke; Felix Pfeiffer; Masoud Baghernejad; Martin Winter; Isidora Cekic-Laskovic;
    Country: Germany
    Project: EC | SeNSE (875548)
  • Open Access English
    Authors: 
    Ribeiro, Joana M.; Rodrigues, Frederico J.; Correia, Filipe C.; Pudza, Inga; Kuzmin, Alexei; Kalinko, Aleksandr; Welter, Edmund; Barradas, Nuno P.; Alves, Eduardo; LaGrow, Alec P.; +4 more
    Publisher: Elsevier
    Countries: Germany, Germany, Latvia
    Project: EC | CAMART2 (739508)

    Thermoelectric transparent ZnO:Sb thin films were deposited by magnetron sputtering, with Sb content varying between 2 and 14 at%. As evidenced by X-ray diffraction analysis, the films crystallize in the ZnO wurtzite structure for lower levels of Sb-doping, developing a degree of amorphization for higher levels of Sb-doping. Temperature-dependent (10–300 K) X-ray absorption spectroscopy studies of the produced thin films were performed at the Zn and Sb K-edges to shed light on the influence of Sb doping on the local atomic structure and disorder in the ZnO:Sb thin films. The analysis of the Zn K-edge EXAFS spectra by the reverse Monte Carlo method allowed to extract detailed and accurate structural information in terms of the radial and bond angle distribution functions. The obtained results suggest that the introduction of antimony to the ZnO matrix promotes static disorder, which leads to partial amorphization with very small crystallites (∼3 nm) for large (12–14 at%) Sb content. Rutherford backscattering spectrometry (RBS) experiments enabled the determination of the in-depth atomic composition profiles of the films. The film composition at the surfaces determined by X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) matches that of the bulk determined by RBS, except for higher Sb-doping in ZnO films, where the concentration of oxygen determined by XPS is smaller near the surface, possibly due to the formation of oxygen vacancies that lead to an increase in electrical conductivity. Traces of Sb–Sb metal bonds were found by XPS for the sample with the highest level of Sb-doping. Time-of-flight secondary ion mass spectrometry obtained an Sb/Zn ratio that follows that of the film bulk determined by RBS, although Sb is not always homogeneous, with samples with smaller Sb content (2 and 4 at% of Sb) showing a larger Sb content closer to the film/substrate interface. From the optical transmittance and reflectance curves, it was determined that the films with the lower amount of Sb doping have larger optical band-gaps, in the range of 2.9–3.2 eV, while the partially amorphous films with higher Sb content have smaller band-gaps in the range of 1.6–2.1 eV. Albeit the short-range crystalline order (∼3 nm), the film with 12 at% of Sb has the highest absolute Seebeck coefficient (∼56 μV/K) and a corresponding thermoelectric power factor of ∼0.2 μW·K−2·m−1. --//-- This is an open access article Joana M. Ribeiro, Frederico J. Rodrigues, Filipe C. Correia, Inga Pudza, Alexei Kuzmin, Aleksandr Kalinko, Edmund Welter, Nuno P. Barradas, Eduardo Alves, Alec P. LaGrow, Oleksandr Bondarchuk, Alexander Welle, Ahmad Telfah, Carlos J. Tavares, "The influence of Sb doping on the local structure and disorder in thermoelectric ZnO:Sb thin films", Journal of Alloys and Compounds, Volume 939, 2023, 168751, ISSN 0925-8388, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jallcom.2023.168751 published under the CC BY licence. The experiment at HASYLAB/DESY was performed within the project I-20200161 EC. The research leading to this result has been supported by the project CALIPSOplus under the Grant Agreement 730872 from the EU Framework Programme for Research and Innovation HORIZON 2020. Institute of Solid State Physics, University of Latvia as the Center of Excellence has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 Framework Programme H2020-WIDESPREAD-01–2016-2017-TeamingPhase2 under grant agreement No. 739508, project CAMART2. This work was carried out in part through the use of the INL Advanced Electron Microscopy, Imaging and Spectroscopy Facility. This work (proposal ID 2018–020-022469) was carried out with the support of the Karlsruhe Nano Micro Facility (KNMFi, www.knmf.kit.edu), a Helmholtz Research Infrastructure at Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT, www.kit.edu). Joana Ribeiro is grateful to the Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia (FCT, Portugal) for the Ph.D grant SFRH/BD/147221/2019. Filipe Correia is grateful to the FCT, Portugal, for the Ph.D. grant SFRH/BD/111720/2015. The authors also acknowledge the funding from FCT/PIDDAC through the Strategic Funds project reference UIDB/04650/2020–2023. Project I-20200161 EC; CALIPSOplus under the Grant Agreement 730872 from the EU Horizon 2020; FCT/PIDDAC through the Strategic Funds project reference UIDB/04650/2020–2023; institute of Solid State Physics, University of Latvia as the Center of Excellence has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 Framework Programme H2020-WIDESPREAD-01–2016-2017-TeamingPhase2 under grant agreement No. 739508, project CAMART2.

  • Open Access
    Authors: 
    Acerbi, A; Snyder, W; Tennie, C;
    Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC
    Countries: Italy, United Kingdom
    Project: EC | STONECULT (714658)

    The method of exclusion identifies patterns of distributions of behaviours and/or artefact forms among different groups, where these patterns are deemed unlikely to arise from purely genetic and/or ecological factors. The presence of such patterns is often used to establish whether a species is cultural or not—i.e. whether a species uses social learning or not. Researchers using or describing this method have often pointed out that the method cannot pinpoint which specific type(s) of social learning resulted in the observed patterns. However, the literature continues to contain such inferences. In a new attempt to warn against these logically unwarranted conclusions, we illustrate this error using a novel approach. We use an individual-based model, focused on wild ape cultural patterns—as these patterns are the best-known cases of animal culture and as they also contain the most frequent usage of the unwarranted inference for specific social learning mechanisms. We built a model that contained agents unable to copy specifics of behavioural or artefact forms beyond their individual reach (which we define as “copying”). We did so, as some of the previous inference claims related to social learning mechanisms revolve around copying defined in this way. The results of our model however show that non-copying social learning can already reproduce the defining—even iconic—features of observed ape cultural patterns detected by the method of exclusion. This shows, using a novel model approach, that copying processes are not necessary to produce the cultural patterns that are sometimes still used in an attempt to identify copying processes. Additionally, our model could fully control for both environmental and genetic factors (impossible in real life) and thus offers a new validity check for the method of exclusion as related to general cultural claims—a check that the method passed. Our model also led to new and additional findings, which we likewise discuss. European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (Grant Agreement No 714658; STONECULT project).

  • Open Access English
    Authors: 
    Wen Y. Wu; Prarthana Mohanraju; Chunyu Liao; Belén Adiego-Pérez; Sjoerd C.A. Creutzburg; Kira S. Makarova; Karlijn Keessen; Timon A. Lindeboom; Tahseen S. Khan; Stijn Prinsen; +9 more
    Country: Netherlands
    Project: EC | CRISPRcombo (865973), EC | ARGO (834279)

    CRISPR-Cas are prokaryotic adaptive immune systems. Cas nucleases generally use CRISPR-derived RNA guides to specifically bind and cleave DNA or RNA targets. Here, we describe the experimental characterization of a bacterial CRISPR effector protein Cas12m representing subtype V-M. Despite being less than half the size of Cas12a, Cas12m catalyzes auto-processing of a crRNA guide, recognizes a 5′-TTN′ protospacer-adjacent motif (PAM), and stably binds a guide-complementary double-stranded DNA (dsDNA). Cas12m has a RuvC domain with a non-canonical catalytic site and accordingly is incapable of guide-dependent cleavage of target nucleic acids. Despite lacking target cleavage activity, the high binding affinity of Cas12m to dsDNA targets allows for interference as demonstrated by its ability to protect bacteria against invading plasmids through silencing invader transcription and/or replication. Based on these molecular features, we repurposed Cas12m by fusing it to a cytidine deaminase that resulted in base editing within a distinct window.

  • Open Access English
    Authors: 
    Markel Gómez-Letona; Marta Sebastián; Isabel Baños; María Fernanda Montero; Clàudia Pérez Barrancos; Moritz Baumann; Ulf Riebesell; Javier Arístegui;
    Publisher: Frontiers Media
    Countries: Spain, Germany
    Project: EC | Ocean artUp (695094), EC | TRIATLAS (817578)

    In the face of climate change there is a need to reduce atmospheric CO2 concentrations. Artificial upwelling of nutrient-rich deep waters has been proposed as a method to enhance the biological carbon pump in oligotrophic oceanic regions in order to increase carbon sequestration. Here we examine the effect of different artificial upwelling intensities and modes (single pulse versus recurring pulses) on the dynamics of the dissolved organic matter pool (DOM). We introduced nutrient-rich deep water to large scale mesocosms (~44 m3) in the oligotrophic subtropical North Atlantic and found that artificial upwelling strongly increased DOM concentrations and changed its characteristics. The magnitude of the observed changes was related to the upwelling intensity: more intense treatments led to higher accumulation of dissolved organic carbon (>70 μM of excess DOC over ambient waters for the most intense) and to comparatively stronger changes in DOM characteristics (increased proportions of chromophoric DOM (CDOM) and humic-like fluorescent DOM), suggesting a transformation of the DOM pool at the molecular level. Moreover, the single upwelling pulse resulted in higher CDOM quantities with higher molecular weight than the recurring upwelling mode. Together, our results indicate that under artificial upwelling, large DOM pools may accumulate in the surface ocean without being remineralized in the short-term. Possible reasons for this persistence could be a combination of the molecular diversification of DOM due to microbial reworking, nutrient limitation and reduced metabolic capabilities of the prokaryotic communities within the mesocosms. Our study demonstrates the importance of the DOC pool when assessing the carbon sequestration potential of artificial upwelling This study is a contribution to the Ocean Artificial Upwelling project (Ocean artUp), funded by an Advanced Grant of the European Research Council (No. 695094). Additional support was provided through projects TRIATLAS (AMD-817578-5) from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 and e-IMPACT (PID2019-109084RB-C21) funded by the Spanish National Science Plan. MG-L is supported by the Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovación y Universidades, Gobierno de España (FPU17-01435) during his PhD. MS is supported by the Project MIAU (RTI2018-101025-B-I00) and the ‘Severo Ochoa Centre of Excellence’ accreditation (CEX2019-000928-S). JA is supported by a Helmholtz International Fellow Award, 2015 (Helmholtz Association, Germany). JA is supported by the United States National Science Foundation grant OCE-1840868 to the Scientific Committee on Oceanic Research (SCOR, United States) WG 155 17 pages, 8 figures, 1 table, supplementary material https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fmars.2022.969714/full#supplementary-material.-- Data availability statement: The data presented in the study are deposited in the PANGAEA repository, DOI https://doi.pangaea.de/10.1594/PANGAEA.946776 (Gómez-Letona et al., 2022) Peer reviewed

  • Open Access English
    Authors: 
    Sablin, Ivan;
    Publisher: Ruhr-Universität Bochum
    Project: EC | ENTPAR (755504)

    The article discusses various meanings which were ascribed to religion in the parliamentary debates of the perestroika period, which included Christian, Muslim, Buddhist, and other religious and lay deputies. Understood in a general sense, religion was supposed to become the foundation or an element of a new ideology and stimulate Soviet or post-Soviet transformations, either creating a new Soviet universalism or connecting the Soviet Union to the global universalism of human rights. The particularistic interpretations of religion viewed it as a marker of difference, dependent on or independent of ethnicity, and connected to collective rights. Despite the extensive contacts between the religious figures of different denominations, Orthodox Christianity enjoyed the most prominent presence in perestroika politics, which evoked criticisms of new power asymmetries in the transformation of the Soviet Union and contributed to the emergence of the Russian Federation as a new imperial, hierarchical polity rather than a decolonized one.

  • Open Access English
    Authors: 
    Seyed Saeed Madani; Erik Schaltz; Søren Knudsen Kær; Carlos Ziebert;
    Publisher: Institute of Physics Publishing Ltd
    Country: Germany
    Project: EC | HELIOS (963646)

    A precise interpretation of lithium-ion battery (LIB) heat generation is indispensable to the advancement and accomplishment of thermal management systems for different applications of LIB, including electric vehicles. The internal resistance of a lithium titanate oxide (LTO)-based LIB was determined at different state of charge (SOC) levels and current rates to understand the relationship between internal resistance and heat generation. Random and different pulse discharge current step durations were applied to consider the effect of different SOC interval levels on heat generation. The total generated heat was measured for different discharge rates and operating temperatures in a Netzsch IBC 284 calorimeter. It was seen that a 6.7% SOC decrease at high SOC levels corresponds to 0.377 Wh, 0.728 Wh, and 1.002 Wh heat generation for 26A, 52A, and 78A step discharge, both at 20 °C and 30 °C. However, a 1.85% SOC decrease at medium SOC levels corresponds already to 0.57 Wh, 0.76 Wh, and 0.62 Wh heat generation. It can be inferred that the impact of SOC level on heat generation for this cell is more prominent at a lower than at a higher SOC.

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The following results are related to Digital Humanities and Cultural Heritage. Are you interested to view more results? Visit OpenAIRE - Explore.
569 Research products, page 1 of 57
  • Publication . Article . Other literature type . 2023
    Open Access English
    Authors: 
    Schleihauf, Hanna; Zhang, Zhen; Gomez, Alissa; Engelmann, Jan;
    Project: EC | HelpSeeking (841021)

    Someone is rational in their thinking to the extent that they follow a rational procedure when determining what to believe. So whether someone is rational cannot be determined so much by whether they hold true or false beliefs (outcome-based rationality), but by how they arrived at these beliefs (procedure-based rationality). In this study, we want to answer the question to what extent 4-5-year-old children, 6-7-year-old children, and adults from China and the United States consider the procedure and the outcome in evaluating the rationality of an agent? In a picture book story, participants will be introduced to two characters whose pet ran away. They are trying to find the pet by using either rational (e.g. looking for the pet's traces) or irrational (e.g. using a spinning wheel) procedures that lead them to either the right (pointing at the location where the pet is hiding) or the wrong conclusion (pointing at the location where the pet is not hiding). More precisely, the participants will see three conditions: In an outcome matters condition, both characters are using an irrational procedure to find out where their pet is hiding, but one chooses the correct location, the other the wrong location. In a process matters condition, one of the characters is using a rational and the other is using an irrational procedure, while both choose wrong locations. In a process vs. outcome condition, one character is using an irrational procedure and point to the right location, the other character is using a rational procedure and point to the wrong location.

  • Publication . Article . 2023 . Embargo End Date: 02 Mar 2023
    Open Access
    Authors: 
    Cosimo Posth; He Yu; Ayshin Ghalichi; Hélène Rougier; Isabelle Crevecoeur; Yilei Huang; Harald Ringbauer; Adam B. Rohrlach; Kathrin Nägele; Vanessa Villalba-Mouco; +115 more
    Publisher: Apollo - University of Cambridge Repository
    Countries: Finland, Spain, United Kingdom, Italy, Lithuania
    Project: EC | PALEoRIDER (771234), EC | AMI (864358), EC | CROSSROADS (724703), EC | RESOLUTION (803147)

    Acknowledgements: The authors thank G. Marciani and O. Jöris for comments on archaeology; C. Jeong, M. Spyrou and K. Prüfer for comments on genetics; M. O’Reilly for graphical support for Fig. 5 and Extended Data Fig. 9; the entire IT and laboratory teams at the Department of Archaeogenetics of MPI-SHH for technical assistance; M. Meyer and S. Nagel for support with single-stranded library preparation; K. Post, P. van Es, J. Glimmerveen, M. Medendorp, M. Sier, S. Dikstra, M. Dikstra, R. van Eerden, D. Duineveld and A. Hoekman for providing access to human specimens from the North Sea (The Netherlands); M. D. Garralda and A. Estalrrich for providing access to human specimens from La Riera (Spain); J. Górski and M. Zając for providing access to human specimens from Maszycka cave; C. Di Patti for providing access to human specimens from San Teodoro 2 (Italy); P. Blaževičius for providing access to the Donkalnis human remains and the new radiocarbon dates; the Italian Ministry of Culture and Soprintendenza Archeologia Belle Arti e Paesaggio for the Provinces of Verona, Rovigo, and Vicenza for granting access to the human remains of Tagliente 2; F. Fontana, who carries out investigations of the Riparo Tagliente site (Italy); the Friuli Venezia Giulia Superintendency for providing access to the human tooth Pradis 1; and the Soprintendenza Archeologia Belle Arti e Paesaggio for the Provinces of Barletta-Andria-Trani and Foggia for providing access to the Paglicci human remains. This project has received funding by the European Research Council under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreements no. 803147-RESOLUTION (to S.T.), no. 771234-PALEoRIDER (to W.H.), no. 864358 (to K.M.), no. 724703 and no. 101019659 (to K.H.). K.H. is also supported by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG FOR 2237). E.A. has received funding from the Van de Kamp fonds. PACEA co-authors of this research benefited from the scientific framework of the University of Bordeaux’s IdEx Investments for the Future programme/GPR Human Past. A.G.-O. is supported by a Ramón y Cajal fellowship (RYC-2017-22558). L. Sineo, M.L. and D.C. have received funding from the Italian Ministry of University and Research (MUR) PRIN 2017 grants 20177PJ9XF and 20174BTC4R_002. H. Rougier received support from the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences of CSUN and the CSUN Competition for RSCA Awards. C.L.S. and T. Saupe received support from the European Union through the European Regional Development Fund (project no. 2014-2020.4.01.16-0030) and C.L.S. received support from the Estonian Research Council grant PUT (PRG243). S. Shnaider received support from the Russian Science Foundation (no. 19-78-10053). Modern humans have populated Europe for more than 45,000 years1, 2. Our knowledge of the genetic relatedness and structure of ancient hunter-gatherers is however limited, owing to the scarceness and poor molecular preservation of human remains from that period3. Here we analyse 356 ancient hunter-gatherer genomes, including new genomic data for 116 individuals from 14 countries in western and central Eurasia, spanning between 35,000 and 5,000 years ago. We identify a genetic ancestry profile in individuals associated with Upper Palaeolithic Gravettian assemblages from western Europe that is distinct from contemporaneous groups related to this archaeological culture in central and southern Europe4, but resembles that of preceding individuals associated with the Aurignacian culture. This ancestry profile survived during the Last Glacial Maximum (25,000 to 19,000 years ago) in human populations from southwestern Europe associated with the Solutrean culture, and with the following Magdalenian culture that re-expanded northeastward after the Last Glacial Maximum. Conversely, we reveal a genetic turnover in southern Europe suggesting a local replacement of human groups around the time of the Last Glacial Maximum, accompanied by a north-to-south dispersal of populations associated with the Epigravettian culture. From at least 14,000 years ago, an ancestry related to this culture spread from the south across the rest of Europe, largely replacing the Magdalenian-associated gene pool. After a period of limited admixture that spanned the beginning of the Mesolithic, we find genetic interactions between western and eastern European hunter-gatherers, who were also characterized by marked differences in phenotypically relevant variants.

  • Open Access English
    Authors: 
    Hanna Maria Elonheimo; Karoliina Uusitalo; Sonja Moore; Anna-Maria Andersson; Ronny Baber; Kerstin Wirkner; Madlen David; Marike Kolossa-Gehring; Lorraine Stewart; Ovnair Sepai; +5 more
    Country: Germany
    Project: EC | HBM4EU (733032)

    Background: The European Human Biomonitoring Initiative (HBM4EU) is a joint program evaluating humans’ exposure to several environmental substances and their potential health effects. One of the main objectives of HBM4EU is to make use of human biomonitoring (HBM) to assess human exposure to chemicals in Europe to better understand the associated health impacts and to improve chemical risk assessment. In parallel to HBM studies, health examination surveys (HESs), nutrition/dietary surveys, and disease specific health surveys are conducted in many European countries. In HESs, information collected by questionnaire(s) is supplemented with physical examinations and analysis of clinical and biological biomarkers in biological samples. HBM and health examination survey (HES) use similar data collection methods and infrastructures hence the feasibility of combining these two is explored in this paper. Methods: Within HBM4EU, three feasibility studies (in Finland, Germany, and UK/England) were conducted to evaluate opportunities and obstacles of combining HBM and health studies. In this paper we report lessons learned from these feasibility studies. Results: The Finnish feasibility study called KouBio-KUOPIO study was a new initiative without links to existing studies. The German feasibility study added a HBM module to the first follow-up examination of the LIFE-Adult-Study, a population-based cohort study. The UK feasibility integrates a sustainable HBM module into the Health Survey for England (HSfE), an annual health examination survey. Benefits of combining HBM and HESs include the use of shared infrastructures. Furthermore, participants can receive additional health information from HES, and participation rates tend to be higher due to the potential to obtain personal health information. Preparatory phases including obtaining ethical approval can be time-consuming and complicated. Recruitment of participants and low participation rates are common concerns in survey research and therefore designing user-friendly questionnaires with low participant burden is important. Unexpected events such as the COVID-19 pandemic can cause substantial challenges and delays for such studies. Furthermore, experiences from several countries demonstrated that long-term funding for combined studies can be difficult to obtain. Conclusions: In the future, incorporating HBM modules into existing HESs can provide a feasible and cost-effective method to conduct HBM studies and obtain a wide range of relevant data to support public health policies and research.

  • Open Access English
    Authors: 
    Bahareh A. Sadeghi; Christian Wölke; Felix Pfeiffer; Masoud Baghernejad; Martin Winter; Isidora Cekic-Laskovic;
    Country: Germany
    Project: EC | SeNSE (875548)
  • Open Access English
    Authors: 
    Ribeiro, Joana M.; Rodrigues, Frederico J.; Correia, Filipe C.; Pudza, Inga; Kuzmin, Alexei; Kalinko, Aleksandr; Welter, Edmund; Barradas, Nuno P.; Alves, Eduardo; LaGrow, Alec P.; +4 more
    Publisher: Elsevier
    Countries: Germany, Germany, Latvia
    Project: EC | CAMART2 (739508)

    Thermoelectric transparent ZnO:Sb thin films were deposited by magnetron sputtering, with Sb content varying between 2 and 14 at%. As evidenced by X-ray diffraction analysis, the films crystallize in the ZnO wurtzite structure for lower levels of Sb-doping, developing a degree of amorphization for higher levels of Sb-doping. Temperature-dependent (10–300 K) X-ray absorption spectroscopy studies of the produced thin films were performed at the Zn and Sb K-edges to shed light on the influence of Sb doping on the local atomic structure and disorder in the ZnO:Sb thin films. The analysis of the Zn K-edge EXAFS spectra by the reverse Monte Carlo method allowed to extract detailed and accurate structural information in terms of the radial and bond angle distribution functions. The obtained results suggest that the introduction of antimony to the ZnO matrix promotes static disorder, which leads to partial amorphization with very small crystallites (∼3 nm) for large (12–14 at%) Sb content. Rutherford backscattering spectrometry (RBS) experiments enabled the determination of the in-depth atomic composition profiles of the films. The film composition at the surfaces determined by X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) matches that of the bulk determined by RBS, except for higher Sb-doping in ZnO films, where the concentration of oxygen determined by XPS is smaller near the surface, possibly due to the formation of oxygen vacancies that lead to an increase in electrical conductivity. Traces of Sb–Sb metal bonds were found by XPS for the sample with the highest level of Sb-doping. Time-of-flight secondary ion mass spectrometry obtained an Sb/Zn ratio that follows that of the film bulk determined by RBS, although Sb is not always homogeneous, with samples with smaller Sb content (2 and 4 at% of Sb) showing a larger Sb content closer to the film/substrate interface. From the optical transmittance and reflectance curves, it was determined that the films with the lower amount of Sb doping have larger optical band-gaps, in the range of 2.9–3.2 eV, while the partially amorphous films with higher Sb content have smaller band-gaps in the range of 1.6–2.1 eV. Albeit the short-range crystalline order (∼3 nm), the film with 12 at% of Sb has the highest absolute Seebeck coefficient (∼56 μV/K) and a corresponding thermoelectric power factor of ∼0.2 μW·K−2·m−1. --//-- This is an open access article Joana M. Ribeiro, Frederico J. Rodrigues, Filipe C. Correia, Inga Pudza, Alexei Kuzmin, Aleksandr Kalinko, Edmund Welter, Nuno P. Barradas, Eduardo Alves, Alec P. LaGrow, Oleksandr Bondarchuk, Alexander Welle, Ahmad Telfah, Carlos J. Tavares, "The influence of Sb doping on the local structure and disorder in thermoelectric ZnO:Sb thin films", Journal of Alloys and Compounds, Volume 939, 2023, 168751, ISSN 0925-8388, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jallcom.2023.168751 published under the CC BY licence. The experiment at HASYLAB/DESY was performed within the project I-20200161 EC. The research leading to this result has been supported by the project CALIPSOplus under the Grant Agreement 730872 from the EU Framework Programme for Research and Innovation HORIZON 2020. Institute of Solid State Physics, University of Latvia as the Center of Excellence has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 Framework Programme H2020-WIDESPREAD-01–2016-2017-TeamingPhase2 under grant agreement No. 739508, project CAMART2. This work was carried out in part through the use of the INL Advanced Electron Microscopy, Imaging and Spectroscopy Facility. This work (proposal ID 2018–020-022469) was carried out with the support of the Karlsruhe Nano Micro Facility (KNMFi, www.knmf.kit.edu), a Helmholtz Research Infrastructure at Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT, www.kit.edu). Joana Ribeiro is grateful to the Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia (FCT, Portugal) for the Ph.D grant SFRH/BD/147221/2019. Filipe Correia is grateful to the FCT, Portugal, for the Ph.D. grant SFRH/BD/111720/2015. The authors also acknowledge the funding from FCT/PIDDAC through the Strategic Funds project reference UIDB/04650/2020–2023. Project I-20200161 EC; CALIPSOplus under the Grant Agreement 730872 from the EU Horizon 2020; FCT/PIDDAC through the Strategic Funds project reference UIDB/04650/2020–2023; institute of Solid State Physics, University of Latvia as the Center of Excellence has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 Framework Programme H2020-WIDESPREAD-01–2016-2017-TeamingPhase2 under grant agreement No. 739508, project CAMART2.

  • Open Access
    Authors: 
    Acerbi, A; Snyder, W; Tennie, C;
    Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC
    Countries: Italy, United Kingdom
    Project: EC | STONECULT (714658)

    The method of exclusion identifies patterns of distributions of behaviours and/or artefact forms among different groups, where these patterns are deemed unlikely to arise from purely genetic and/or ecological factors. The presence of such patterns is often used to establish whether a species is cultural or not—i.e. whether a species uses social learning or not. Researchers using or describing this method have often pointed out that the method cannot pinpoint which specific type(s) of social learning resulted in the observed patterns. However, the literature continues to contain such inferences. In a new attempt to warn against these logically unwarranted conclusions, we illustrate this error using a novel approach. We use an individual-based model, focused on wild ape cultural patterns—as these patterns are the best-known cases of animal culture and as they also contain the most frequent usage of the unwarranted inference for specific social learning mechanisms. We built a model that contained agents unable to copy specifics of behavioural or artefact forms beyond their individual reach (which we define as “copying”). We did so, as some of the previous inference claims related to social learning mechanisms revolve around copying defined in this way. The results of our model however show that non-copying social learning can already reproduce the defining—even iconic—features of observed ape cultural patterns detected by the method of exclusion. This shows, using a novel model approach, that copying processes are not necessary to produce the cultural patterns that are sometimes still used in an attempt to identify copying processes. Additionally, our model could fully control for both environmental and genetic factors (impossible in real life) and thus offers a new validity check for the method of exclusion as related to general cultural claims—a check that the method passed. Our model also led to new and additional findings, which we likewise discuss. European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (Grant Agreement No 714658; STONECULT project).

  • Open Access English
    Authors: 
    Wen Y. Wu; Prarthana Mohanraju; Chunyu Liao; Belén Adiego-Pérez; Sjoerd C.A. Creutzburg; Kira S. Makarova; Karlijn Keessen; Timon A. Lindeboom; Tahseen S. Khan; Stijn Prinsen; +9 more
    Country: Netherlands
    Project: EC | CRISPRcombo (865973), EC | ARGO (834279)

    CRISPR-Cas are prokaryotic adaptive immune systems. Cas nucleases generally use CRISPR-derived RNA guides to specifically bind and cleave DNA or RNA targets. Here, we describe the experimental characterization of a bacterial CRISPR effector protein Cas12m representing subtype V-M. Despite being less than half the size of Cas12a, Cas12m catalyzes auto-processing of a crRNA guide, recognizes a 5′-TTN′ protospacer-adjacent motif (PAM), and stably binds a guide-complementary double-stranded DNA (dsDNA). Cas12m has a RuvC domain with a non-canonical catalytic site and accordingly is incapable of guide-dependent cleavage of target nucleic acids. Despite lacking target cleavage activity, the high binding affinity of Cas12m to dsDNA targets allows for interference as demonstrated by its ability to protect bacteria against invading plasmids through silencing invader transcription and/or replication. Based on these molecular features, we repurposed Cas12m by fusing it to a cytidine deaminase that resulted in base editing within a distinct window.

  • Open Access English
    Authors: 
    Markel Gómez-Letona; Marta Sebastián; Isabel Baños; María Fernanda Montero; Clàudia Pérez Barrancos; Moritz Baumann; Ulf Riebesell; Javier Arístegui;
    Publisher: Frontiers Media
    Countries: Spain, Germany
    Project: EC | Ocean artUp (695094), EC | TRIATLAS (817578)

    In the face of climate change there is a need to reduce atmospheric CO2 concentrations. Artificial upwelling of nutrient-rich deep waters has been proposed as a method to enhance the biological carbon pump in oligotrophic oceanic regions in order to increase carbon sequestration. Here we examine the effect of different artificial upwelling intensities and modes (single pulse versus recurring pulses) on the dynamics of the dissolved organic matter pool (DOM). We introduced nutrient-rich deep water to large scale mesocosms (~44 m3) in the oligotrophic subtropical North Atlantic and found that artificial upwelling strongly increased DOM concentrations and changed its characteristics. The magnitude of the observed changes was related to the upwelling intensity: more intense treatments led to higher accumulation of dissolved organic carbon (>70 μM of excess DOC over ambient waters for the most intense) and to comparatively stronger changes in DOM characteristics (increased proportions of chromophoric DOM (CDOM) and humic-like fluorescent DOM), suggesting a transformation of the DOM pool at the molecular level. Moreover, the single upwelling pulse resulted in higher CDOM quantities with higher molecular weight than the recurring upwelling mode. Together, our results indicate that under artificial upwelling, large DOM pools may accumulate in the surface ocean without being remineralized in the short-term. Possible reasons for this persistence could be a combination of the molecular diversification of DOM due to microbial reworking, nutrient limitation and reduced metabolic capabilities of the prokaryotic communities within the mesocosms. Our study demonstrates the importance of the DOC pool when assessing the carbon sequestration potential of artificial upwelling This study is a contribution to the Ocean Artificial Upwelling project (Ocean artUp), funded by an Advanced Grant of the European Research Council (No. 695094). Additional support was provided through projects TRIATLAS (AMD-817578-5) from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 and e-IMPACT (PID2019-109084RB-C21) funded by the Spanish National Science Plan. MG-L is supported by the Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovación y Universidades, Gobierno de España (FPU17-01435) during his PhD. MS is supported by the Project MIAU (RTI2018-101025-B-I00) and the ‘Severo Ochoa Centre of Excellence’ accreditation (CEX2019-000928-S). JA is supported by a Helmholtz International Fellow Award, 2015 (Helmholtz Association, Germany). JA is supported by the United States National Science Foundation grant OCE-1840868 to the Scientific Committee on Oceanic Research (SCOR, United States) WG 155 17 pages, 8 figures, 1 table, supplementary material https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fmars.2022.969714/full#supplementary-material.-- Data availability statement: The data presented in the study are deposited in the PANGAEA repository, DOI https://doi.pangaea.de/10.1594/PANGAEA.946776 (Gómez-Letona et al., 2022) Peer reviewed

  • Open Access English
    Authors: 
    Sablin, Ivan;
    Publisher: Ruhr-Universität Bochum
    Project: EC | ENTPAR (755504)

    The article discusses various meanings which were ascribed to religion in the parliamentary debates of the perestroika period, which included Christian, Muslim, Buddhist, and other religious and lay deputies. Understood in a general sense, religion was supposed to become the foundation or an element of a new ideology and stimulate Soviet or post-Soviet transformations, either creating a new Soviet universalism or connecting the Soviet Union to the global universalism of human rights. The particularistic interpretations of religion viewed it as a marker of difference, dependent on or independent of ethnicity, and connected to collective rights. Despite the extensive contacts between the religious figures of different denominations, Orthodox Christianity enjoyed the most prominent presence in perestroika politics, which evoked criticisms of new power asymmetries in the transformation of the Soviet Union and contributed to the emergence of the Russian Federation as a new imperial, hierarchical polity rather than a decolonized one.

  • Open Access English
    Authors: 
    Seyed Saeed Madani; Erik Schaltz; Søren Knudsen Kær; Carlos Ziebert;
    Publisher: Institute of Physics Publishing Ltd
    Country: Germany
    Project: EC | HELIOS (963646)

    A precise interpretation of lithium-ion battery (LIB) heat generation is indispensable to the advancement and accomplishment of thermal management systems for different applications of LIB, including electric vehicles. The internal resistance of a lithium titanate oxide (LTO)-based LIB was determined at different state of charge (SOC) levels and current rates to understand the relationship between internal resistance and heat generation. Random and different pulse discharge current step durations were applied to consider the effect of different SOC interval levels on heat generation. The total generated heat was measured for different discharge rates and operating temperatures in a Netzsch IBC 284 calorimeter. It was seen that a 6.7% SOC decrease at high SOC levels corresponds to 0.377 Wh, 0.728 Wh, and 1.002 Wh heat generation for 26A, 52A, and 78A step discharge, both at 20 °C and 30 °C. However, a 1.85% SOC decrease at medium SOC levels corresponds already to 0.57 Wh, 0.76 Wh, and 0.62 Wh heat generation. It can be inferred that the impact of SOC level on heat generation for this cell is more prominent at a lower than at a higher SOC.