Contact calls of island Brown-throated Parakeets exhibit both character and variance shifts compared to calls of their mainland relatives

The Auk ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 139 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jessica R Eberhard ◽  
Irene Zager ◽  
José R Ferrer-Paris ◽  
Kathryn Rodríguez-Clark
Keyword(s):  
Social Dynamics ◽  
Signal Transmission ◽  
Experimental Tests ◽  
Call Duration ◽  
Caribbean Islands ◽  
Body Sizes ◽  
Contact Calls ◽  
Parrot Species ◽  
Different Levels

Abstract Learned vocalizations play a key role in parrot social dynamics and vocal dialects have been documented for several mainland species, but to date no studies of geographically structured call variation in parrot species have examined the role of isolation on islands. In a study of the Brown-throated Parakeet (Eupsittula pertinax), which inhabits 5 small Caribbean islands as well as the adjacent mainland, we found that the contact calls of island and mainland parakeets show divergence in vocal characters as well as in call variability. We assessed call variation using 3 approaches: frequency measurements, spectrogram cross-correlation (SPCC) analyses, and call duration measurements. Island parakeets’ calls were longer and had lower mean frequencies, and calls from different islands were distinguishable from each other as well as from mainland calls using measures derived from the SPCCs. In addition, we measured call variability at 2 different levels—within-location and within-individual. We found calls to be more variable for island parakeets for SPCC and duration measures, but less variable for frequency measures. The observed call differentiation among locations may be due to drift, whereas the lower frequency of island calls could either be a response to the windy environment on the islands or a consequence of the island subspecies’ larger body sizes. We also hypothesize that the isolation of parakeet populations on small islands may have resulted in reduced selection for local call convergence, allowing island parakeets to produce more variable calls. We suggest that due to poor signal transmission in the windy island environment, selective pressures may favor variability in more easily perceived call features (like call duration) rather than more subtle features, like frequency shifts. Experimental tests are required to determine whether observed call patterns translate into similarly structured patterns in the responses to vocal variants.

At the final stage of the global crisis: Economic tasksin 2017-2019

2018 ◽  
pp. 5-29 ◽  
Author(s):  
V. A. Mau
Keyword(s):  
Economic Growth ◽  
Final Stage ◽  
Government Regulation ◽  
Inflation Targeting ◽  
Social Dynamics ◽  
Growth Stimulation ◽  
Central Banks ◽  
Economic Area ◽  
National Trends

The paper deals with the global and national trends of economic and social development at the final stage of the global structural crisis. Special attention is paid to intellectual challenges economists will face with in the post-crisis world: prospects of growth without inflation, new global currencies and the role of cryptocurrencies, central banks independence and their role in economic growth stimulation, new tasks and patterns of government regulation, inequality and growth. Special features of Russian post-crisis development are also under consideration. Among them: prospects of macroeconomic support of growth, inflation targeting, new fiscal rule, social dynamics and new challenges to welfare state. The paper concludes that the main obstacles for economic growth in Russia are concentrated in the non-economic area.

Value-driven issues throughout the development of sociological theory

2020 ◽  
pp. 147-160
Author(s):  
Gulbarshyn Chepurko ◽  
Valerii Pylypenko
Keyword(s):  
Social Interactions ◽  
Social System ◽  
Sociological Theory ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
Social Sphere ◽  
Technological Advances ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Different Levels

The paper examines and compares how the major sociological theories treat axiological issues. Value-driven topics are analysed in view of their relevance to society in times of crisis, when both societal life and the very structure of society undergo dramatic change. Nowadays, social scientists around the world are also witnessing such a change due to the emergence of alternative schools of sociological thought (non-classical, interpretive, postmodern, etc.) and, subsequently, the necessity to revise the paradigms that have been existed in sociology so far. Since the above-mentioned approaches are often used to address value-related issues, building a solid theoretical framework for these studies takes on considerable significance. Furthermore, the paradigm revision has been prompted by technological advances changing all areas of people’s lives, especially social interactions. The global human community, integral in nature, is being formed, and production of human values now matters more than production of things; hence the “expansion” of value-focused perspectives in contemporary sociology. The authors give special attention to collectivities which are higher-order units of the social system. These units are described as well-organised action systems where each individual performs his/her specific role. Just as the role of an individual is distinct from that of the collectivity (because the individual and the collectivity are different as units), so too a distinction is drawn between the value and the norm — because they represent different levels of social relationships. Values are the main connecting element between the society’s cultural system and the social sphere while norms, for the most part, belong to the social system. Values serve primarily to maintain the pattern according to which the society is functioning at a given time; norms are essential to social integration. Apart from being the means of regulating social processes and relationships, norms embody the “principles” that can be applied beyond a particular social system. The authors underline that it is important for Ukrainian sociology to keep abreast of the latest developments in the field of axiology and make good use of those ideas because this is a prerequisite for its successful integration into the global sociological community.

РЕГІОНАЛЬНИЙ МИТЕЦЬ В ІНОКУЛЬТУРНОМУ СЕРЕДОВИЩІ: ПРОБЛЕМА ФУНКЦІОНУВАННЯ

2020 ◽  
pp. 152-158
Author(s):  
Admink Admink ◽  
Сергій Виткалов ◽  
Валентина Вігула
Keyword(s):  
Local Government ◽  
Cultural Practices ◽  
Local Population ◽  
Government Reform ◽  
Different Levels

Розглядається організаційно-культурна діяльність одного з помітних у регіональному просторі Західного Полісся фотомитця – Олександра Купчинського, а саме виставковий її вектор, втілений в презентації артефактів світового фотомистецтва; видавничий, розглянутий у  контексті  друку  різноманітних  фотоальбомів  із  творів експонентів, організація творчих зустрічей художньої інтелігенції міста з питань обговорення актуальних питань культурного розвитку, заснування фотоклубу тощо. Доводиться, що втрата зв’язку з Батьківщиною, у якій би формі це не відбувалося, не дозволяє митцю творчо самореалізуватися повною мірою. The importance and problematic range of local government reform in the regions of the country and ways of its solution in the field of culture are analyzed. The most effective steps are proposed for management structures at different levels to change attitudes of both the management and the local population regarding different cultural practices. Emphasis is placed on the role of sectoral methodological services in the implementation of this reform. The experience of other countries in activating the local population in this process is emphasized. An attempt has been made to offer effective, in the authors' opinion, solutions to the reform. Emphasis is placed on the educational factor.

The Synod of Pistoia and Vatican II

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shaun Blanchard
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Vatican Ii ◽  
High Water ◽  
Church Reform ◽  
Second Vatican Council ◽  
Vatican Council ◽  
Bible Reading ◽  
Different Levels ◽  
Continuity And Discontinuity

This book sheds further light on the nature of church reform and the roots of the Second Vatican Council (1962–65) through a study of eighteenth-century Catholic reformers who anticipated the Council. The most striking of these examples is the Synod of Pistoia (1786), the high-water mark of late Jansenism. Most of the reforms of the Synod were harshly condemned by Pope Pius VI in the bull Auctorem fidei (1794), and late Jansenism was totally discredited in the ultramontane nineteenth-century Church. Nevertheless, much of the Pistoian agenda—such as an exaltation of the role of bishops, an emphasis on infallibility as a gift to the entire Church, religious liberty, a simpler and more comprehensible liturgy that incorporates the vernacular, and the encouragement of lay Bible reading and Christocentric devotions—was officially promulgated at Vatican II. The career of Bishop Scipione de’ Ricci (1741–1810) and the famous Synod he convened are investigated in detail. The international reception (and rejection) of the Synod sheds light on why these reforms failed, and the criteria of Yves Congar are used to judge the Pistoian Synod as “true or false reform.” This book proves that the Synod was a “ghost” present at Vatican II. The council fathers struggled with, and ultimately enacted, many of the same ideas. This study complexifies the story of the roots of the Council and Pope Benedict XVI’s “hermeneutic of reform,” which seeks to interpret Vatican II as in “continuity and discontinuity on different levels” with past teaching and practice.

scholarly journals Psychosocial Obstacles in Young Children Argumentative Interactions

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (5) ◽  
pp. 224
Author(s):  
Josephine Convertini
Keyword(s):  
Preschool Children ◽  
Young Children ◽  
Social Dynamics ◽  
Learning Processes ◽  
Self Perception ◽  
Complex Activity ◽  
Group I

Argumentation is an important aspect in the field of education because of its impact on learning processes. At the same time, argumentation is a complex activity in terms of cognitive, relational, emotional and social dynamics. In this paper, I investigate and I describe possible difficulties encountered by children during the argumentative process. The study involves 25 preschool children at a kindergarten engaged in three building tasks. The tasks were video-recorded and the argumentative discussions transcribed. For the aim of this paper, I analyze how argumentation are distributed among participants. I select interactions in which participants apparently do not argue or there are differences in the degree of argumentative participation between participants of the same group. I analyze these interactions and moments of impasse in the argumentative steps. The findings show how the simplicity of solving the task (e.g., when children do not encounter any problem in completing the activity) and the children’s self-perception of their competences in solving the task may have an impact on argumentation activities. Moreover, this perception is co-constructed by children within the interaction. The study contributes to the line of research on designing argumentation and highlights the role of the adult in managing children’s interactions.

scholarly journals A Large-Scale COVID-19 Twitter Chatter Dataset for Open Scientific Research—An International Collaboration

Epidemiologia ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (3) ◽  
pp. 315-324
Author(s):  
Juan M. Banda ◽  
Ramya Tekumalla ◽  
Guanyu Wang ◽  
Jingyuan Yu ◽  
Tuo Liu ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Large Scale ◽  
Social Dynamics ◽  
Additional Data ◽  
Open Data ◽  
Data Sources ◽  
Research Projects ◽  
Research Groups ◽  
The World ◽  
Data Source

As the COVID-19 pandemic continues to spread worldwide, an unprecedented amount of open data is being generated for medical, genetics, and epidemiological research. The unparalleled rate at which many research groups around the world are releasing data and publications on the ongoing pandemic is allowing other scientists to learn from local experiences and data generated on the front lines of the COVID-19 pandemic. However, there is a need to integrate additional data sources that map and measure the role of social dynamics of such a unique worldwide event in biomedical, biological, and epidemiological analyses. For this purpose, we present a large-scale curated dataset of over 1.12 billion tweets, growing daily, related to COVID-19 chatter generated from 1 January 2020 to 27 June 2021 at the time of writing. This data source provides a freely available additional data source for researchers worldwide to conduct a wide and diverse number of research projects, such as epidemiological analyses, emotional and mental responses to social distancing measures, the identification of sources of misinformation, stratified measurement of sentiment towards the pandemic in near real time, among many others.

scholarly journals The Hierarchy of Walking Needs and the COVID-19 Pandemic

2021 ◽  
Vol 18 (14) ◽  
pp. 7461
Author(s):  
Mohammad Paydar ◽  
Asal Kamani Fard
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health ◽  
Urban Design ◽  
Public Spaces ◽  
Empirical Literature ◽  
The World ◽  
The Face ◽  
Current Context ◽  
Mode Of Transport ◽  
Different Levels

More than 150 cities around the world have expanded emergency cycling and walking infrastructure to increase their resilience in the face of the COVID 19 pandemic. This tendency toward walking has led it to becoming the predominant daily mode of transport that also contributes to significant changes in the relationships between the hierarchy of walking needs and walking behaviour. These changes need to be addressed in order to increase the resilience of walking environments in the face of such a pandemic. This study was designed as a theoretical and empirical literature review seeking to improve the walking behaviour in relation to the hierarchy of walking needs within the current context of COVID-19. Accordingly, the interrelationship between the main aspects relating to walking-in the context of the pandemic- and the different levels in the hierarchy of walking needs were discussed. Results are presented in five sections of “density, crowding and stress during walking”, “sense of comfort/discomfort and stress in regard to crowded spaces during walking experiences”, “crowded spaces as insecure public spaces and the contribution of the type of urban configuration”, “role of motivational/restorative factors during walking trips to reduce the overload of stress and improve mental health”, and “urban design interventions on arrangement of visual sequences during walking”.

Securing the future of statistics in Africa through National Strategies for the Development of Statistic

2020 ◽  
Vol 36 ◽  
pp. 15-25
Author(s):  
Ben Kiregyera
Keyword(s):  
Ad Hoc ◽  
Lessons Learned ◽  
Global Level ◽  
African Countries ◽  
Implementation Challenges ◽  
Statistical Systems ◽  
Development Agendas ◽  
Different Levels ◽  
Statistical Development

Adoption of development agendas at different levels – national, regional, continental, and global level – has led to an unprecedented increase in demand for official statistics. This increase has not only brought to the fore a litany of challenges facing National Statistical Systems (NSSs) in Africa but also it has created opportunities for strengthening statistical production and development. This paper underscores the need for countries to take full advantage of these opportunities and increase investments in statistics, undertake data innovation, and expand and diversify data ecosystems, leveraging on the foundations of the data revolution for sustainable development and in line with current international statistical frameworks. The paper posits that these improvements will not happen coincidentally nor through ad hoc, piecemeal and uncoordinated approaches. Rather they will happen through more systematic, coordinated and multi-sectoral approaches to statistical development. The National Strategy for the Development of Statistics (NSDS) is presented as a comprehensive and robust framework for building statistical capacity and turning around NSSs in African countries. The paper unpacks the NSDS; elaborates the NSDS processes including; mainstreaming sectors into the NSDS, the stages of the NSDS lifecycle and the role of leadership in the NSDS proces; highlights NSDS extension; presents the design and implementation challenges, and the key lessons learned from the NSDS processes in Africa in the last 15 years or so.

scholarly journals Exploring the effectiveness of a COVID-19 contact tracing app using an agent-based model

2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonatan Almagor ◽  
Stefano Picascia
Keyword(s):  
High Rate ◽  
Contact Tracing ◽  
Agent Based Model ◽  
Agent Based ◽  
The Social ◽  
Behavioural Factors ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Different Levels ◽  
User Rate

AbstractA contact-tracing strategy has been deemed necessary to contain the spread of COVID-19 following the relaxation of lockdown measures. Using an agent-based model, we explore one of the technology-based strategies proposed, a contact-tracing smartphone app. The model simulates the spread of COVID-19 in a population of agents on an urban scale. Agents are heterogeneous in their characteristics and are linked in a multi-layered network representing the social structure—including households, friendships, employment and schools. We explore the interplay of various adoption rates of the contact-tracing app, different levels of testing capacity, and behavioural factors to assess the impact on the epidemic. Results suggest that a contact tracing app can contribute substantially to reducing infection rates in the population when accompanied by a sufficient testing capacity or when the testing policy prioritises symptomatic cases. As user rate increases, prevalence of infection decreases. With that, when symptomatic cases are not prioritised for testing, a high rate of app users can generate an extensive increase in the demand for testing, which, if not met with adequate supply, may render the app counterproductive. This points to the crucial role of an efficient testing policy and the necessity to upscale testing capacity.

scholarly journals Terminal uridyltransferase 7 regulates TLR4-triggered inflammation by controlling Regnase-1 mRNA uridylation and degradation

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Chia-Ching Lin ◽  
Yi-Ru Shen ◽  
Chi-Chih Chang ◽  
Xiang-Yi Guo ◽  
Yun-Yun Young ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Posttranscriptional Regulation ◽  
Inflammatory Responses ◽  
Rna Stability ◽  
Innate Immune ◽  
Stem Loop ◽  
Stem Loop Structure ◽  
Tlr4 Activation ◽  
Harmful Effects ◽  
Different Levels

AbstractDifferent levels of regulatory mechanisms, including posttranscriptional regulation, are needed to elaborately regulate inflammatory responses to prevent harmful effects. Terminal uridyltransferase 7 (TUT7) controls RNA stability by adding uridines to its 3′ ends, but its function in innate immune response remains obscure. Here we reveal that TLR4 activation induces TUT7, which in turn selectively regulates the production of a subset of cytokines, including Interleukin 6 (IL-6). TUT7 regulates IL-6 expression by controlling ribonuclease Regnase-1 mRNA (encoded by Zc3h12a gene) stability. Mechanistically, TLR4 activation causes TUT7 to bind directly to the stem-loop structure on Zc3h12a 3′-UTR, thereby promotes Zc3h12a uridylation and degradation. Zc3h12a from LPS-treated TUT7-sufficient macrophages possesses increased oligo-uridylated ends with shorter poly(A) tails, whereas oligo-uridylated Zc3h12a is significantly reduced in Tut7-/- cells after TLR4 activation. Together, our findings reveal the functional role of TUT7 in sculpting TLR4-driven responses by modulating mRNA stability of a selected set of inflammatory mediators.

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