Kin Recognition in Plants: Did We Learn Anything From Roots?

Kin recognition, manifesting through various traits such as changes in root or shoot growth, has been documented in several species of plants. Identifying this phenomenon in plants has intrinsic value itself, understanding why plants recognize kin and how it might benefit them evolutionarily has been of recent interest. Here we explore studies regarding nutrient and resource allocation in regard to kin recognition as well as discuss how kin recognition is involved in multispecies interactions with an emphasis on how plant roots are involved in these processes. Future directions of this research are also discussed.

Multi-Level Inverters Interfacing Electric Vehicle Charging Stations With Microgrid for Vehicle-to-Grid (V2G) Applications

Multi-level inverters (MLI) are power electronic converters that convert DC power to AC power with high power-quality of output voltage waveforms. These MLI are the main streamline converters for integrating dc power of EV with microgrids. Thus, the recent interest of researchers is to investigate the MLI with a lower number of active and passive switch counts which could integrate the DC power of EV to the microgrid with the boosting ability. This chapter discusses various topologies of MLI for the integration of the DC power of EV to the grid for vehicle-to-grid (V2G) applications. MLI converts DC power to AC power with high quality of output voltage waveform. Thus, the recent interest of researchers is to investigate the MLI with a lower number of active and passive switch counts which could integrate the DC power of EV to the microgrid. Also, MLI must be capable of boosting the voltage level to meet the grid requirements. The aim of this chapter is to discuss the various topologies of MLI for the integration of DC power of EV to the grid for vehicle-to-grid (V2G) applications.

A Lavagem de Dinheiro e o Financiamento do Terrorismo no Mercado de Seguros, Capitalização e Previdência Privada Aberta

This article focus on the emergence of the criminalization of money laundering and the financing of terrorism, as well as the conventions and bodies that promote the prevention of these crimes. It also approaches how the current transnational crime – and evolution of how they are commited – as well as the need for fast and constant legislative adaptation and the creation of specialized bodies to combat these crimes. It further discusses the recent interest of criminals in the insurance, capitalization and open private pension market, and thus, it analyzes SUSEP;s Circular nº 612/2020. The methodology used was historical research, addressing the evolution of conventions and legislation on the subject. The objective is to answer the following questions: How did the laws evolve so that they adapt and effectively prevent crime? Which international and national bodies are responsible for this prevention? How do terrorists operate in the insurance market, and what does the program to prevent money laundering and combat the financing of terrorism have in place? It is concludes that the union of countries is essential for the fight against terrorism, as well as the evolution of legislation on the subject, in order to cover all phases of the process, including the raising of resources. We can also conclude that Circular SUSEP nº 612/2020 is in line with the policies on the prevention of money laundering and terrorism financing, as it is aligned with the risk-based approach model.

Analyses of MADS-box Genes Suggest HvMADS56 to Regulate Lateral Spikelet Development in Barley

MADS-box transcription factors are crucial regulators of inflorescence and flower development in plants. Therefore, the recent interest in this family has received much attention in plant breeding programs due to their impact on plant development and inflorescence architecture. The aim of this study was to investigate the role of HvMADS-box genes in lateral spikelet development in barley (Hordeum vulgare L.). A set of 30 spike-contrasting barley lines were phenotypically and genotypically investigated under controlled conditions. We detected clear variations in the spike and spikelet development during the developmental stages among the tested lines. The lateral florets in the deficiens and semi-deficiens lines were more reduced than in two-rowed cultivars except cv. Kristina. Interestingly, cv. Kristina, int-h.43 and int-i.39 exhibited the same behavior as def.5, def.6, semi-def.1, semi-def.8 regarding development and showed reduced lateral florets size. In HOR1555, HOR7191 and HOR7041, the lateral florets continued their development, eventually setting seeds. In contrast, lateral florets in two-rowed barley stopped differentiating after the awn primordia stage giving rise to lateral floret sterility. At harvest, the lines tested showed large variation for all central and lateral spikelet-related traits. Phylogenetic analysis showed that more than half of the 108 MADS-box genes identified are highly conserved and are expressed in different barley tissues. Re-sequence analysis of a subset of these genes showed clear polymorphism in either SNPs or in/del. Variation in HvMADS56 correlated with altered lateral spikelet morphology. This suggests that HvMADS56 plays an important role in lateral spikelet development in barley.

Reflections on Bharatanatyam and Neuroscience. A Dance Studies Perspective

Building on recent interest in the convergence of arts and sciences, we propose specific areas of intersection between the disciplines of Bharatanatyam, a classical Indian dance, and neuroscience. We present personal reflections by practitioners of both disciplines and propose that Bharatanatyam can be used to understand and explain brain functioning and that neuroscience can help analyze the dancing Bharatanatyam brain. We explore conceptual areas of convergence between the two fields as well as specific points of connection using language acquisition, rhythm, music, and cognition as examples. We conjecture that Bharatanatyam training and practice support long-term neuronal plasticity in various parts of the brain, including but not limited to the hippocampus, motor, premotor cortex, and the cerebellum. The beginning of the study of the intersection between these disciplines will pave the way for additional allied fields of rich thinking, exploration and potentially, therapy.

What is Happiness? Why is Happiness Important?

The (net) happiness (or welfare) of an individual is the excess of her positive affective feelings over negative ones. This subjective definition of happiness is more consistent with common usage and analytically more useful. Over the past century or so, both psychology and economics has gone through the anti-subjectivism revolution (behaviorism in psychology and ordinalism in economics) but has come back to largely accept subjectivism (cognitive psychology and recent interest of economists on happiness issues).

Negative Shocks and Political Parties’ Territorial Demands: The Institutional Roots of Party Competition

Why do political parties set an extreme or a more moderate position on the territorial dimension? Despite previous works have paid recent interest on the dynamics of the political competition on the territorial dimension, we know much less about the factors that lead to a centrifugal or a centripetal party competition on the same dimension. In this article, we offer a new way of understanding it: we argue that parties’ policy position on the decentralization continuum not only depends on the level of territorial decentralization, but also on the credibility of the institutional agreement established through the country’s constitutional rigidity. If the original territorial pact does not guarantee that the majority group will have its “hands tied” so that it does not reverse the territorial agreement, political parties will have incentives to adopt more extreme positions on the territorial dimension. We test this argument with a dataset covering around 460 political parties clustered in 28 European countries from 1999 to 2019 and by exploiting the fact that the 2008 economic crisis unleashed a shock on the territorial design. Our results confirm our expectations. We show that both the federal deal and the credibility of the institutional arrangement through constitutional rigidity are necessary conditions to appease parties’ demands on the territorial dimension. Our results have important implications for our understanding of how institutions shape political competition along the territorial dimension.

Note on theoretical and practical solvability of a class of discrete equations generalizing the hyperbolic-cotangent class

There has been some recent interest in investigating the hyperbolic-cotangent types of difference equations and systems of difference equations. Among other things their solvability has been studied. We show that there is a class of theoretically solvable difference equations generalizing the hyperbolic-cotangent one. Our analysis shows a bit unexpected fact, namely that the solvability of the class is based on some algebraic relations, not closely related to some trigonometric ones, which enable us to solve them in an elegant way. Some examples of the difference equations belonging to the class which are practically solvable are presented, as well as some interesting comments on connections of the equations with some iteration processes.

Fast threshold ECDSA with honest majority

ECDSA is a widely adopted digital signature standard. A number of threshold protocols for ECDSA have been developed that let a set of parties jointly generate the secret signing key and compute signatures, without ever revealing the signing key. Threshold protocols for ECDSA have seen recent interest, in particular due to the need for additional security in cryptocurrency wallets where leakage of the signing key is equivalent to an immediate loss of money. We propose a threshold ECDSA protocol secure against an active adversary in the honest majority model with abort. Our protocol is efficient in terms of both computation and bandwidth usage, and it allows the parties to pre-process parts of the signature, such that once the message to sign becomes known, they can compute a secret sharing of the signature very efficiently, using only local operations. We also show how to obtain guaranteed output delivery (and hence also fairness) in the online phase at the cost of some additional pre-processing work, i.e., such that it either aborts during the pre-processing phase, in which case nothing is revealed, or the signature is guaranteed to be delivered to all honest parties online.