Restoration of Salinity in the Sivash Bay to Natural Levels after the Closure of the North Crimean Canal

The paper analyzes the salinity dynamics in the Sivash Bay after the closure of the NorthCrimean based on the data from field research carried out by MHI RAS in 2014–2020. Recent field data are compared with the literature data obtained in the period before the commissioning of the North Crimean Canal. Salinity in water samples taken during 18 expeditions to the Eastern and Southern Sivash at over 100 stations was determined using the refractometric method. It was shown that after the closure of the North Crimean Canal in 2014, there was a steep increase in salinity in the Eastern and Southern Sivash. It was determined that in the area of the Sivash Bay, the haline field changes non-uniformly. The data analysis showed that salinity increases from north to south (from the Eastern to Southern Sivash), moreover salinity values in the Southern Sivash can be several times higher than those in the Eastern Sivash. In spring 2014, salinity in the Eastern Sivash varied from 27 to 33 ‰, and in 2020, 6 years after the closure of the Canal, salinity increased significantly at all stations reaching 60–70 ‰. These values are comparable to those obtained before the start of the Canal in the 1950s. The highest salinity values were observed in the South Sivash: in 2013, it was 54 ‰ and in summer 2020, for the first time since the North Crimean Canal became operational, it reached 110 ‰, which almost corresponds to the salinity level observed in 1969.

Increased lung cell entry of B.1.617.2 and evasion of antibodies induced by infection and BNT162b2 vaccination

The delta variant of SARS-CoV-2, B.1.617.2, emerged in India and has subsequently spread to over 80 countries. B.1.617.2 rapidly replaced B.1.1.7 as the dominant virus in the United Kingdom, resulting in a steep increase in new infections, and a similar development is expected for other countries. Effective countermeasures require information on susceptibility of B.1.617.2 to control by antibodies elicited by vaccines and used for COVID-19 therapy. We show, using pseudotyping, that B.1.617.2 evades control by antibodies induced upon infection and BNT162b2 vaccination, although with lower efficiency as compared to B.1.351. Further, we found that B.1.617.2 is resistant against Bamlanivimab, a monoclonal antibody with emergency use authorization for COVID-19 therapy. Finally, we show increased Calu-3 lung cell entry and enhanced cell-to-cell fusion of B.1.617.2, which may contribute to augmented transmissibility and pathogenicity of this variant. These results identify B.1.617.2 as an immune evasion variant with increased capacity to enter and fuse lung cells.

Employment of Barkhausen Noise Technique for Assessment of Prestressing Bars Damage with Respect of Their Over-Stressing

This paper investigates the potential of a non-destructive magnetic technique based on Barkhausen noise emission for the monitoring of prestressing bars with respect to their undesired over-stressing. Barkhausen noise signals are correlated with tensile stress, residual stresses, and microhardness measurements. It was found that prestressing bars exhibit strong magnetic anisotropy which becomes more pronounced along with the increasing degree of the bar’s over-stressing. Barkhausen noise emission becomes strongly attenuated in the direction of the tensile stress at the expense of the perpendicular direction. However, the Barkhausen noise emission in the direction of the tensile stress exhibits a continuous and remarkable decrease, whereas the Barkhausen noise steep increase for lower degrees of over-stressing is followed by early saturation for higher over-stressing. This study demonstrates that the Barkhausen noise technique is capable of distinguishing between the prestressing bars loaded below yielding, and those which are over-stressed.

Guidelines for reporting methods to estimate metabolic rates by aquatic intermittent-flow respirometry

Interest in the measurement of metabolic rates is growing rapidly, due to the relevance of metabolism in understanding organismal physiology, behaviour, evolution, and responses to environmental change. The study of metabolism in aquatic organisms is experiencing an especially pronounced expansion, with more researchers utilizing intermittent-closed respirometry as a research tool than ever before. Despite this, there remain no published guidelines on the reporting of methodological details when using intermittent-closed respirometry. Using a survey of the existing literature, we show that this lack of recommendations has led to incomplete and inconsistent reporting of methods for intermittent-closed respirometry over the last several decades. We also provide the first guidelines for reporting such methods, in the form of a checklist of details that are the minimum required for the interpretation, evaluation, and replication of experiments using intermittent-closed respirometry. This should increase consistency of the reporting of methods for studies that use this research technique. With the steep increase in studies using intermittent-closed respirometry over the last several years, now is the ideal time to standardise the reporting of methods so that data can be properly assessed by other scientists and conservationists.

Ephemeral But Influential? The Correlation between Facebook Stories Usage, Addiction, Narcissism, and Positive Affect

Despite the steep increase in Facebook Stories users, there is scant research on this topic. This study compared the associations of frequency of Stories update, frequency of news feed updates, time spent reading Stories, and time spent reading news feeds, with regard to social media addiction, narcissism, and positive affect in college students. We recruited a sample of 316 college students from Taiwan. The analytical results show that Facebook Stories are more addictive and provoke more positive affect than conventional news feeds. Moreover, only usage behaviors associated with Stories predict narcissism. This study also found that the prediction of news feeds with regard to addiction, narcissism, and positive affect also seems to be diminishing and is being replaced by those of Stories. Future studies on the psychological consequences and predictors of social media usage should regard Stories as a crucial variable.

The misleading illusion of COVID-19 confirmed case data: alternative estimates and a monitoring tool

Confirmed Case Data have been widely cited during the current COVID-19 pandemic as an estimate of the spread of the SARS-CoV-2 virus. However, their central role in media, official reports and decision-making may be undeserved and misleading. Previously published Infection Fatality Rates were weighted by age structure in the 50 countries with more reported deaths to obtain country-specific rates. For each country, the number of infections up to the Infection Date (23 days ago = Incubation Period + Onset to Death period) and the present percentage of immune population were estimated using Infection Fatality Rate, the number of reported deaths (which is less prone to undersampling), and projecting back to Infection Date. We then estimated a Detection Index for each country as the percentage of estimated infections that confirmed cases represent. Assuming that detection remains constant after Infection Date, we estimated the number of deaths and the estimated percentage of the population of each country expected to be immune up to 23 days into the future. Estimated Infection Fatality Rates are higher in Europe. In most countries, confirmed cases currently represent less than 30% of estimated infections on Infection Date, and this value decreases with time. Countries with flat curves throughout the pandemic show the lowest immunity percentages and these values seem unlikely to change in the near future, suggesting that they remain vulnerable to new outbreaks. Estimates for some countries with low Infection Fatality Rates suggest a still steep increase in the number of casualties in the next three weeks. Countries that did not control initial outbreaks seem to have reached higher immunity percentages, although mostly still under 5%. We provide the code to monitor the trajectories of these estimates in 178 countries throughout the COVID-19 pandemic.

Research Transparency Is on the Rise in Economics

This study provides a first assessment of awareness of, attitudes toward, perceived norms regarding, and adoption of open science practices within a broadly representative sample of active economics researchers. We observe a steep increase in adoption over the last decade, with an accelerating trend: as of 2017, 93 percent of economists had used at least one such practice--including posting data, sharing study materials, and study pre-registration--rising from 33 percent a decade earlier. We document extensive variation in adoption across economics subfields. Notably, most economists appear to underestimate the trend toward research transparency in the discipline.

Limits to the detraditionalization of intimacy: Contraceptive use at first intercourse in Italy, 1950-2006

This paper investigates changes in the stratification of contraceptive use at first intercourse by gender and parental background to understand how young people’s sexual intimate behavior around contraception detraditionalized, and whether this was limited to particular groups. We study Italy 1950-2006, which shows strong regional and class disparities, and slow changes in religion and gender norms. Data from the “Survey on Italians’ Sexual Behavior” (2006) and macro indicators for relevant institutions are used. Findings show a steep increase in contraceptive use at first sexual intercourse over time, which is universal for men throughout, but stratified by parental background for women.

A Cretaceous peak in family-level insect diversity estimated with mark–recapture methodology

The history of insects’ taxonomic diversity is poorly understood. The two most common methods for estimating taxonomic diversity in deep time yield conflicting results: the ‘range through’ method suggests a steady, nearly monotonic increase in family-level diversity, whereas ‘shareholder quorum subsampling’ suggests a highly volatile taxonomic history with family-level mass extinctions occurring repeatedly, even at the midpoints of geological periods. The only feature shared by these two diversity curves is a steep increase in standing diversity during the Early Cretaceous. This apparent diversification event occurs primarily during the Aptian, the pre-Cenozoic interval with the most described insect occurrences, raising the possibility that this feature of the diversity curves reflects preservation and sampling biases rather than insect evolution and extinction. Here, the capture–mark–recapture (CMR) approach is used to estimate insects’ family-level diversity. This method accounts for the incompleteness of the insect fossil record as well as uneven sampling among time intervals. The CMR diversity curve shows extinctions at the Permian/Triassic and Cretaceous/Palaeogene boundaries but does not contain any mass extinctions within geological periods. This curve also includes a steep increase in diversity during the Aptian, which appears not to be an artefact of sampling or preservation bias because this increase still appears when time bins are standardized by the number of occurrences they contain rather than by the amount of time that they span. The Early Cretaceous increase in family-level diversity predates the rise of angiosperms by many millions of years and can be better attributed to the diversification of parasitic and especially parasitoid insect lineages.