The Currently Earliest Angiosperm Fruit from the Jurassic of North America

Angiosperms are the single most important plant group in the current ecosystem. However, little is known about the origin and early evolution of angiosperms. Jurassic and earlier traces of angiosperms have been claimed multiple times from Europe and Asia, but reluctance to accept these records remains. To test the truthfulness of these claims, palaeobotanical records from continents other than Europe and Asia constitute a crucial test. Here I document a new angiosperm fruit, Dilcherifructus mexicana gen. et sp. nov, from the Middle Jurassic of Mexico. Its Jurassic age suggests that origin of angiosperms is much earlier than widely accepted, while its occurrence in the North America indicates that angiosperms were already widespread in the Jurassic, although they were still far away from their ecological radiation, which started in the Early Cretaceous.

Un sistema mitico in continua evoluzione: le grandi parodie Disney

ABSTRACT: Il fitto dialogo intertestuale con i classici di ogni tempo è stato inteso dagli autori della Disney Italia come una pratica di cannibalizzazione delle fonti; d’altra parte il confronto con la dimensione letteraria, estendendosi nel tempo ‒ dalla fine degli anni Quaranta a oggi ‒, ha lasciato un’impronta indelebile sulle Grandi Parodie: per un verso esse hanno acquisito uno spessore testuale inedito, riconnettendosi alle grandi matrici narrative in cui affonda le proprie radici il più vasto mondo della finzione; per l’altro hanno costituito un formidabile banco di prova per la variegata compagine Disney: gli eroi del fumetto, da Topolino a Paperino, si sono cimentati nell’impresa di interpretare il ruolo e assumere le fattezze dei più rinomati protagonisti della pagina letteraria mostrando al contempo una grande duttilità e una spiccata personalità. Il complesso dei personaggi Disney funziona in definitiva come un sistema mitico: il corpo delle loro storie costituisce un intero aperto a un continuo accrescimento ed è in effetti costantemente aggiornato da una pluralità di autori che rende il sistema perennemente sincronico col tempo dei lettori.Parole chiave: Fumetto. Disney. Grandi Parodie. Mito. Intertestualità. RESUMO: O estreito diálogo intertextual com os clássicos de várias épocas foi entendido pelos autores da Disney Itália como uma prática de canibalização das fontes, que proporcionou o confronto com a dimensão literária, estendendo-se no tempo ‒ do fim dos anos 40 a hoje ‒, e deixou uma marca indelével nas Grandes Paródias: por um lado, estas adquiriram um peso textual inédito, reconectando-se com as grandes matrizes narrativas nas quais fincam as suas raízes no mais vasto mundo da ficção; por outro ainda constituíram um formidável teste para a multifacetada equipe Disney: os heróis dos quadrinhos, de Mickey a Donald, cimentaram-se na empreitada de interpretar os papéis e assumir os perfis dos mais renomados protagonistas das páginas literárias, demostrando, ao mesmo tempo, uma grande flexibilidade e uma marcada personalidade. O conjunto dos personagens Disney funciona definitivamente como um sistema mítico: o corpo das suas histórias constitui um todo, aberto em uma contínua evolução, e é, de fato, constantemente atualizado por uma pluralidade de autores que torna tal sistema perenemente sincrônico com o tempo dos leitores.Parole chiave: História em quadrinhos. Disney. Grandi Parodie. Mito. Intertextualidade. ABSTRACT: An intense intertextual dialogue with the classics of all time has been intended by Disney Italian authors as a practice of source “cannibalization”. Their long-lasting dialogue with the literary dimension left an indelible mark on the Grandi Parodie: on the one hand they acquired an unprecedented textual depth, connecting them to the major narrative roots of the fictional world; on the other hand, they represented a crucial test for the varied team of Disney characters: the heroes of comics, from Mickey Mouse to Donald Duck, undertook the remarkable feat of interpreting the roles of renowned literary characters, showing a great adaptability as well as a strong personality. Disney characters function fundamentally as a mythical system: their stories constitutes an ever-changing whole, constantly updated to the time of their readers.Keywords: Comics. Grandi Parodie. Disney. Parody. Myth. Intertextuality.

Galaxy lacking dark matter in the standard cosmological paradigm

The standard cold dark matter plus cosmological constant model predicts that galaxies form within dark matter halos and that low-mass galaxies are more dark-matter dominated than massive ones. The unexpected discovery of two low-mass galaxies lacking dark matter immediately provoked concerns about the standard cosmology and ignited explorations of alternatives, including self-interacting dark matter and modified gravity. Apprehension grew after several simulations using the conventional cosmology failed to adequately form numerical analogs. Here we show that the standard paradigm naturally produces galaxies lacking dark matter, with characteristics largely in agreement with observations. Using a state-of-the-art cosmological simulation and a meticulous galaxy-identification technique, we find that extreme close-encounters with massive neighbors can transform regular galaxies into dark-matter deficient ones. We predict that ∼30% of massive central galaxies (with at least 1e11 solar masses in stars) harbor at least one dark-matter deficient satellite (with 1e8−1e9 solar masses in stars). This distinctive class of galaxies opens an additional layer to our understanding of the role of interactions in shaping galactic properties. Future observations surveying galaxies in the aforementioned regime will provide a crucial test of this scenario.

Point and shoot: Police media labor and technologies of surveillance in End of Watch

This article analyzes the 2012 found-footage buddy-cop film End of Watch. The author analyzes the film’s production, plot, para-textual materials, audience reviews, and audience-generated media to examine the film’s rhetorical strategies and cultural impact. The author shows how police media work inspired the film’s creation, influenced the film’s production, and shaped the film’s messages. End of Watch is a crucial test case for understanding how police collaborate with the entertainment industry to respond to public crises of police visuality. Police media labor shaped the creation, production, and performances of the film, helping create a media product branded simultaneously as a realistic look at police life and a positive correction to negative media representations of police officers. End of Watch breathes cinematic life into commonplace hegemonic tropes of police backlash rhetoric. This article argues that End of Watch uses surveillant narration to humanize police and dehumanize the subjects of police violence. It also demonstrates how End of Watch served as a source of rhetorical invention for pro-police publics who drew on images and tropes from the film to defend police in the face of the crises of police visibility that emerged in the years following the film’s release.

Why National Ministries Consider the Policy Advice of International Bureaucracies: Survey Evidence from 106 Countries

Scholars of international relations and public administration widely assume that international bureaucracies, in their role as policy advisors, directly influence countries’ domestic policies. Yet, this is not true across the board. Why do some countries closely consider the advice of international bureaucracies while others do not? This article argues that international bureaucracies’ standing as sources of expertise is crucial. We tested this argument using data from a unique survey that measured prevalent practices of advice utilization in thematically specialized policy units of national ministries in a representative sample of more than a hundred countries. Our findings show that ministries’ perceptions of international bureaucracies’ expertise, that is, specialized and reliable knowledge, are the key factor. International bureaucracies influence national ministries directly and without the support of other actors that may also have an interest in the international bureaucracies’ policy advice. Our analysis also demonstrates that the effects of alternative means of influence, such as third-party pressure and coercion, are themselves partly dependent on international bureaucracies’ reputation as experts. The findings presented in this article reinforce the emphasis on expertise as a source of international bureaucracies’ influence, and provide a crucial test of its importance.

Conflicting messages of electoral protest: The role of systemic and elite discontent in the Italian 2016 constitutional referendum

The vote NO (a defeat for the proponents) of the 2016 Italian referendum has been broadly attributed to a wave of protest politics sweeping Western democracies. Given that the government of Matteo Renzi proposed and supported the referendum, the resulting vote against government interests raises a crucial theoretical question: to what extent does the referendum vote reflect the characteristics of a protest vote? To disentangle the meaning and impact of protest, we distinguish two dimensions: the ‘system discontent’ and the ‘elite discontent’, referring to both general and focalized images: general sentiments towards the representational aspects of political institutions as compared to focused sentiments towards government performances. The circumstances surrounding the referendum provide a crucial test for whether these two forms of protest can be at odds with one another. We expect and find that elite discontented voters tend to reject this referendum. Vice versa, system discontent increased support for the referendum, as it would reform political institutions to which voters had negative sentiments. Findings suggest that analyses of political psychology and behaviour identify the conceptual foundations for protest and ask whether forms of protest work in parallel or at odds. Protest attitudes and their effects should be thought of as multidimensional.

Abundance of dwarf galaxies around low-mass spiral galaxies in the Local Volume

The abundance of satellite dwarf galaxies has long been considered a crucial test for the current model of cosmology leading to the well-known missing satellite problem. Recent advances in simulations and observations have allowed the study of dwarf galaxies around host galaxies in more detail. Using the Dark Energy Camera we surveyed a 72 deg2 area of the nearby Sculptor group, also encompassing the two low-mass Local Volume galaxies NGC 24 and NGC 45 residing behind the group, to search for as yet undetected dwarf galaxies. Apart from the previously known dwarf galaxies we found only two new candidates down to a 3σ surface brightness detection limit of 27.4 r mag arcsec−2. Both systems are in projection close to NGC 24. However, one of these candidates could be an ultra-diffuse galaxy associated with a background galaxy. We compared the number of known dwarf galaxy candidates around NGC 24, NGC 45, and five other well-studied low-mass spiral galaxies (NGC 1156, NGC 2403, NGC 5023, M 33, and the LMC) with predictions from cosmological simulations, and found that for the stellar-to-halo mass models considered, the observed satellite numbers tend to be on the lower end of the expected range. This could mean either that there is an overprediction of luminous subhalos in ΛCDM or that we are missing some of the satellite members due to observational biases.

The Use of a Novel Term Helps Preschoolers Learn the Concept of Angle: An Intervention Study With Chinese Preschool Children

Angle is an important concept in geometry. Young children have difficulty separating angle size from other dimensions such as the length of angle sides, perhaps due to whole-object bias in word learning. The present study used the pre-test–training–post-test design to investigate the effectiveness of two ways of separating angle from angle size in 3–6-year-old Chinese preschoolers. A total of 228 children were given a pre-test and 219 of them failed the crucial test. 168 of the 219 children were present at school during the training phase and were randomly assigned to three groups: the “toma” group (n = 57), which received training to call the whole angle figure as “toma” and angle size as angle size; the “angle/angle size” group (n = 56), which received the training of separating “angle” from “angle size”; and the control group (n = 55), which used “angle size” alone to represent both the overall angle figure and angle size. Results showed that the “toma” group improved significantly more than the other two groups, the latter of which did not differ from each other. These results suggest that it is insufficient to have two separate words/phrases (angle and angle size) for children to learn to differentiate angle from angle size, perhaps due to their shared usage of the word angle. Instead, the use of a novel term is necessary and sufficient to improve learning. Implications for preschool education are discussed.

The Election Commission of India: Guardian of Democracy

This chapter tells the story of how the Election Commission of India (ECI) became one of the most awe-inspiring electoral regulatory bodies in the world. One of the most widely celebrated and trusted public institutions in India, it has ensured the integrity—free and fair—of 17 national and more than 370 state elections since 1947, in what is not only the most populous but also one of the most potentially fractious democracies in the world. Ever under pressure from the executive branch and governing parties to bow to demands fed by their desire for electoral windfalls, the ECI managed to strengthen its autonomy through assertive leadership by a series of Chief Electoral Commissioners following the decline of the Congress Party’s political dominance. The rise of the Hindu Nationalist BJP as the new dominant force in Indian politics provides a crucial test for the endurance of the ECI’s role as India’s guardian of electoral integrity.

A crucial test of the phantom closed cosmological model

ABSTRACT We suggest a crucial direct-observational test for measuring distinction between the standard ΛCDM model and recently proposed phantom dark energy positive curvature cosmological model. The test is based on the fundamental distance–flux–redshift relation for general Friedmann models. It does not depend on the CMBR data, on the large-scale structure growth models, and also on the value of the Hubble constant H0. Our crucial test can be performed by future gamma-ray burst observations with THESEUS space mission and by using gravitational-wave standard siren observations with modern advanced LIGO–Virgo and also forthcoming LISA detectors.