Richard Bussmann, Professor of Egyptology at the University of Cologne, recently published the book The Archaeology of Pharaonic Egypt: Society and Culture, 2700–1700 BC (2023, Cambridge University Press), which places people at the centre of an analysis of the so-called “Pyramid Age” of Ancient Egypt. The book focusses on life “in the shadow of the pyramids” by exploring aspects of daily life (and death) as well as social interactions beyond the traditional Egyptological focus on royal and elite spheres. Bussmann examines cross-cultural themes such as urbanism, materiality, non-elite culture, political and religious practice, gender roles, and perceptions of the body. As a comparative approach to ancient societies and as a study drawing heavily on anthropological and theoretical concepts, the book raised the interest of the FKA Editorial Board. To allow us and the author to critically reflect on some of the issues raised in our discussion, we took the opportunity to pose a set of questions to Richard Bussmann, which he kindly answered.

User deception in emails is still one of the biggest security risks companies and end-users face alike. Attackers try to mislead their victims when assessing whether emails are dangerous to interact with, e.g., by using techniques based on dangerous links, dangerous attachments, or both. In this work, we present a systematic literature research of deception techniques discussed in the scientific literature of the last decade. We systematize the deception techniques, focusing on techniques that use misleading sender, link, and/or attachment information. We identify 23 deception techniques which we classify as either those that email clients should protect users against (13) and those that email clients cannot protect against and thus should be addressed in security awareness measures (10). We propose a security rating for the susceptibility of email clients to these 13 deception techniques and perform an empirical evaluation to analyze the susceptibility of seven representative email clients (web, mobile apps, desktop apps) to these deception techniques. The results of our evaluation indicate that most email clients are in need of improvement to defend against the deception techniques. Hardening email clients against these deception techniques is necessary to increase the resistance against them — without unnecessarily burdening users.

Adaptive immune responses comprise the activation of T cells by peptide antigens that are presented by proteins of the Major Histocompatibility Complex (MHC) on the surface of an antigen-presenting cell. As a consequence of the T cell receptor interacting productively with a certain peptide-MHC complex, a specialized cell-cell junction known as the immunological synapse forms and is accompanied by changes in the spatiotemporal patterning and function of intracellular signaling molecules. Key modifications occurring at the cytoplasmic leaflet of the plasma and internal membranes in activated T cells comprise lipid switches that affect the binding and distribution of proteins within or near the lipid bilayer. Here, we describe two major classes of lipid switches that act at this critical water/membrane interface. Phosphoinositides are derived from phosphatidylinositol, an amphiphilic molecule that contains two fatty acid chains and a phosphate group that bridges the glycerol backbone to the carbohydrate inositol. The inositol ring can be variably (de-)phosphorylated by dedicated kinases and phosphatases, thereby creating phosphoinositide signatures that define the composition and properties of signaling molecules, molecular complexes, or whole organelles. Palmitoylation refers to the reversible attachment of the fatty acid palmitate to a substrate protein’s cysteine residue. DHHC enzymes, named after the four conserved amino acids in their active site, catalyze this post-translational modification and thereby change the distribution of proteins at, between, and within membranes. T cells utilize these two types of molecular switches to adjust their properties to an activation process that requires changes in motility, transport, secretion, and gene expression.

Mutagenicity testing is a component of the hazard assessment of industrial chemicals, biocides, and pesticides. Mutations induced by test substances can be detected by in vitro and in vivo methods that have been adopted as OECD Test Guidelines. One of these in vivo methods is the Transgenic Rodent Assay (TGRA), OECD test guideline no. 488. An analogous in vitro TGRA has been described, but experience with this test method is limited. In this study, six in vivo TGRA positive mutagens were tested in the in vitro TGRA based on primary MutaMouse hepatocytes. In addition to the functional read-out of the lacZ reporter gene, induced mutations were analysed by next-generation sequencing (NGS). Five of the six in vivo TGRA positive mutagens (N-ethyl-N-nitrosourea (ENU), ethyl methanesulfonate (EMS), mitomycin C (MMC), benzo[a]pyrene (B[a]P), and azathioprine (AZA), but not cyproterone acetate) mutated the lacZ gene in vitro. NGS identified mutations which matched the mutagenic mechanisms described in the literature. The alkylating agent ENU induced a greater proportion of A:T to T:A transversions than did the other alkylating agent, EMS, whereas EMS increased smaller deletions (1–4 bp). G:C to T:A transversions accounted for the majority of mutations identified after treatments with MMC and B[a]P, both of which form monoadducts at the guanine N2 position. AZA induced mainly G:C to A:T transitions, explained by the structural similarity of one of its metabolites to guanine. An increased proportion of mid-size changes (0.3–2.5 kb) was detected only for the crosslinking mutagen MMC. The in vitro TGRA based on primary MutaMouse hepatocytes is a promising in vitro assay for the assessment of mutation induction, reflecting many aspects of the corresponding in vivo TGRA and allowing for mutation spectra analysis to evaluate the induced mutations.

Explainable AI has brought transparency to complex ML black boxes, enabling us, in particular, to identify which features these models use to make predictions. So far, the question of how to explain predictive uncertainty, i.e., why a model ‘doubts’, has been scarcely studied. Our investigation reveals that predictive uncertainty is dominated by second-order effects, involving single features or product interactions between them. We contribute a new method for explaining predictive uncertainty based on these second-order effects. Computationally, our method reduces to a simple covariance computation over a collection of first-order explanations. Our method is generally applicable, allowing for turning common attribution techniques (LRP, Gradient x Input, etc.) into powerful second-order uncertainty explainers, which we call CovLRP, CovGI, etc. The accuracy of the explanations our method produces is demonstrated through systematic quantitative evaluations, and the overall usefulness of our method is demonstrated through two practical showcases.

The synthesis, characterization and reactivity of the diferrocenylphosphenium ion [Fc2P]+ was extended to the heavier diferrocenylpnictogenium ions, [Fc2E]+ (E=As, Sb, Bi). The lighter diferrocenylnitrenium ion, [Fc2N]+, was detected by mass spectrometry, but could not be isolated. The molecular structures of [Fc2E]+ (E=P, As, Sb, Bi) reveal intramolecular coordination of the iron atoms, which counterbalance the electron deficiency of the pnictogens without affecting the strong Lewis acidities, which were determined according to the method of Gutmann and Beckett. The (electro−)chemical oxidation and reduction afforded the dications [Fc2E]2+ (E=P (unstable), As) and the neutral dipnictogens Fc2EEFc2 (E=P, As).

1. The accumulation of micro- and nanoplastics (MNPs) poses a significant threat to freshwater ecosystems. Nanoplastics (NPs; < 1000 nm) are particularly concerning due to their ability to penetrate cellular membranes and disturb intracellular functions. While current research has predominantly focused on the toxicological impacts of MNP on individual species, their broader ecological effects, particularly on species interactions, remain poorly understood. 2. Prior studies have indicated that smaller NPs within the nano-size range generally cause more severe effects on individual organisms. However, the impact of varying NP sizes on species interactions has not been thoroughly explored. This study addresses this gap by examining the effects of polystyrene NP beads of two sizes (50 nm and 100 nm) and two concentrations (1 mg/L and 5 mg/L) on the infection dynamics of the fungal parasite Metschnikowia bicuspidata in two genotypes of the freshwater crustacean Daphnia magna. 3. Our results indicated that lower NP concentrations (1 mg/L) had no significant effects on either host or parasite fitness. Exposure to 50 nm NPs at 5 mg/L significantly diminished both the parasite's transmission success and the host's lifespan. Conversely, 100 nm NPs at the same concentration enhanced parasite fitness. Given that M. bicuspidata is a widespread and virulent parasite affecting various Daphnia species globally, alterations in infection dynamics due to NP pollution could have broader implications for Daphnia populations and freshwater food webs. 4. These findings highlight the critical need to incorporate species interactions into plastic pollution research and emphasise the importance of evaluating the effects of different NP sizes on ecological relationships to fully comprehend the ecological impact of MNP pollution.

We consider a quantum system driven out of equilibrium via a small Hamiltonian perturbation. Building on the paradigmatic framework of linear response theory (LRT), we derive an expression for the full generating function of the dissipated work. Remarkably, we find that all information about the distribution can be encoded in a single quantity, the standard relaxation function in LRT, thus opening up new ways to use phenomenological models to study nonequilibrium fluctuations in complex quantum systems. Our results establish a number of refined quantum thermodynamic constraints on the work statistics that apply to regimes of perturbative but arbitrarily fast protocols, and do not rely on assumptions such as slow driving or weak coupling. Finally, our approach uncovers a distinctly quantum signature in the work statistics that originates from underlying zero-point energy fluctuations. This causes an increased dispersion of the probability distribution at short driving times, a feature that can be probed in efforts to witness nonclassical effects in quantum thermodynamics.

Background

Experimental studies reveal that deficits in food-related inhibitory control, rather than general impulsiveness, are closely linked to overweight and obesity. To date, the real-world implications remain unknown, and it is unclear whether these results are supported in the clinical field.

Objective

To examine the effectiveness of a mobile health (mHealth) intervention with cognitive and behavioral therapeutic elements in altering impulsiveness and food-related inhibitory control.

Methods

Prespecified secondary outcome analysis of a randomized controlled trial. Participants with overweight/obesity (BMI: M = 33.35 kg/m2, SD = 3.79 kg/m2, N = 213) were randomly assigned to either a 12-week mHealth intervention (n = 116) or wait-list control group (n = 97). The Barratt-Impulsiveness-Scale (BIS-15) and the Food-Related Inhibitory Control Scale (FRIS) were administered at baseline (T0) following the intervention (T1), at 9 and 15 month post baseline (T2, T3). Multi-level analyses were calculated.

Results

Compared to the control group, the intervention group reported higher food-related inhibitory control on several subscales of the FRIS: In Withholding in Social Situations at T1 (95% CI: 0.06–0.46) and T2 (95%CI: 0.09–0.50), Action Cancellation at T1 (95%CI: 0.05–0.45), Resisting despite Craving at T1 (95% CI: 0.07–0.49), Withstanding Rewarding Food at T2 (95%CI: 0.08–0.55) and Action Withholding at T3 (95% CI: 0.01–0.55). No differences were found for trait impulsiveness (T1: 95%CI: −1.91–0.47; T2: 95%CI: −1.65–0.84; T3: 95%CI: −0.88–1.67).

Conclusions

Food-related inhibitory control, rather than global measures of impulsiveness, addresses the critical association between inhibitory control and health-conscious dietary choices and can be improved by mHealth intervention.

Trial Registration

ClinicalTrials.gov identifier: NCT04080193

Carbon disclosures are essential for investors to evaluate firms’ efforts to combat climate change. In this study, we focus on a specific type of carbon disclosures—namely, emission allowance disclosures—that capture how firms implement emission reductions under the European Union emission trading system (EU ETS). Given the continuously changing institutional features of the EU ETS and the lack of authoritative guidance on how firms should account for emission allowances in their financial statements, it is exceedingly difficult for investors to understand numerical emission allowance disclosures and to compare them across—and even within—firms. Motivated by this criticism, we hypothesize and find that textual disclosures complementing numerical emission allowance disclosures are associated with lower information asymmetries between firms and their investors. Further analyses show that textual disclosures that: (i) describe the accounting approach, and (ii) contain institutional information on the EU ETS, respectively, are particularly important for improving the information environment of numerical emission allowance disclosures. Overall, our findings suggest that text can improve the understanding of numbers in a carbon disclosure context. Therefore, our study not only contributes to the (industrial ecology) literature but also has important implications for regulators, policymakers, investors, financial analysts, and firms.

Context. Demixing properties of major planetary constituents influence the interior structure and evolution of planets. Comparing experimental and computational data on the miscibility of hydrogen and water to adiabatic profiles suggests that phase separation between these two components occurs in the ice giants Uranus and Neptune.

Aims. We aim to predict the atmospheric water abundance and transition pressure between the water-poor outer envelope and the water-rich deep interior in Uranus and Neptune.

Methods. We constructed seven H2–H2O phase diagrams from the available experimental and computational data. We computed interior adiabatic structure models and compared these to the phase diagrams to infer whether demixing occurred.

Results. We obtain a strong water depletion in the top layer due to the rain-out of water and find upper limits on the atmospheric water-mass fraction Zatm of 0.21 for Uranus and 0.16 for Neptune. The transition from the water-poor to the water-rich layer is sharp and occurs at pressures PZ between 4 and 11 GPa. Using these constraints on Zatm and PZ, we find that the observed gravitational harmonics J2 and J4 can be reproduced if PZ ≳ 10 GPa in Uranus and ≳5 GPa in Neptune, and if the deep interior has a high primordial water-mass fraction of 0.8, unless rocks are also present. The agreement with J4 is improved if rocks are confined deeper than PZ, for instance, below a rock cloud level at 2000 K (20–30 GPa).

Conclusions. These findings confirm classical few-layer models and suggest that a layered structure may result from a combination of primordial mass accretion and subsequent phase separation. Reduced observational uncertainty in J4 and its dynamic contribution, atmospheric water abundance measurements from the Uranus Orbiter and Probe (UOP) or a Neptune mission, and better understanding of the mixing behaviour of constituents are needed to constrain the interiors of ice giants.

Schooling is widely acknowledged as an apparatus to legitimate and reproduce social inequality. However, its internal mechanisms through which it perpetuates social segregation remain under explored. Drawing on Bernstein's concept of recontextualization, this study takes various forms of communication in classroom practices as the indicator to recover their underlying regulative principle. Thirty-four classroom videotapes from three stream schools in China were coded and analyzed. The results show class disparities in the duration of peer interactions, the quality of classroom interaction, and the teachers’ instructional support across three streams of schools. Teachers from higher-stream schools allocate more time to peer interaction, which correlates with enhanced classroom interactional quality and teachers’ instructional support. In addition, the duration of peer interaction acts as a mediator, influencing the quality of interaction and teachers’ instruction, which are the direct predictors of students’ school achievements. These findings suggest that social class differences are transformed and legitimized into differential durations of peer interaction, which mediate classroom quality and then stratify students’ school achievements, ultimately reproducing social stratification.

More and more, edge devices embark Artificial Neuron Networks. In this context, a trend is to simultaneously decentralize their training as much as possible while shrinking their resource requirements, both for inference and training—tasks that are typically intensive in terms of data, memory, and computation. At the edge’s extremity, a specific challenge arises concerning the inclusion of microcontroller-based devices typically deployed in the IoT. So far, no general framework has been provided for that. Such devices not only have extremely challenging resource constraints (weak CPUs, slow network connections, memory budgets measured in kilobytes) but also exhibit high polymorphism, leading to large variability in computational performance among these devices. In this paper, we design and implement TDMiL, a versatile framework for distributed training, and transfer learning. TDMiL interconnects and combines logical components including CoAPerator (a central aggregator) and various tiny embedded software runtimes that are specifically tailored for networks comprising heterogeneous, resource-constrained devices built on diverse types of microcontrollers. We report on experiments conducted with the TDMiL framework, which we use to comparatively evaluate several schemes devised to address computational variability among distributed learning microcontroller-based devices, i.e., stragglers. Additionally, we release the code of our implementation of TDMiL as an open-source project, which is compatible with common commercial off-the-shelf IoT hardware and a well-known open-access IoT testbed.

This scoping review draws together the existing literature on the gender dimensions of water vending. Although research on this topic remains limited, available studies indicate that gender significantly influences the dynamics of water vending and its implications for gender equality. The expression of gender through water vending is context-specific, shaped by cultural, social, economic, and environmental factors, and it evolves over time. The findings show that gender norms, roles, and relations play a crucial role in shaping local water vending systems. Key factors that affect the relationship between water vending and gender include different types of labor—particularly the intersection of productive and reproductive work—and the broader economic, social, and environmental conditions in which water vending occurs. These findings highlight the need to recognize the gendered nature of water supply systems in order to ensure equitable water access and promote gender equality. This review emphasizes that, despite the heterogeneity of local water vending practices, the gendered nature of these activities remains a critical factor influencing broader issues of inequality.

This paper investigates whether differential exposure to a labor market shock by gender contributed to the rise of far-right populism in Brazil. Using a shift-share approach, we find that gender heterogeneity in shock exposure predicts electoral outcomes. Male-specific labor demand shocks increase support for Jair Bolsonaro in the 2018 presidential election, but female-specific shocks have the reverse effect. These opposing effects are accompanied by an unprecedented gender gap in political preferences, with men becoming relatively more conservative. Our preferred interpretation is that Bolsonaro’s conservative rhetoric – shared by several other right-wing populists – generates appeal among men who experience a relative loss in economic status.

Cell growth and gene expression are heterogeneous processes at the single-cell level, leading to the emergence of multiple physiological states within bacterial populations. Aging is a known deterministic driver of growth asymmetry; however, its role in gene expression heterogeneity remains elusive. Here, we show that aging mother cells undergo a progressive decline in old pole activity, generating asymmetry in protein partitioning, gene expression, and cell morphology. We demonstrate that mother cells, when compared to their daughters, exhibit lower product inheritance and gene expression rates independently of promoter dynamics. The declining activity of maternal old poles generates gene expression gradients that manifest as mother-daughter asymmetry upon division, showing that asymmetry is progressively built over time within the maternal intracellular environment. Moreover, old pole aging correlates with a gradual increase in cell length, leading to morphological asymmetry. These findings provide further evidence for aging as a mechanism to enhance phenotypic heterogeneity in bacterial populations, with possible consequences for stress response and survival.

This research empirically examined a central claim of the social identity approach to leadership in the context of organizational change, namely that group prototypical leaders possess a ‘special credit’ in leadership performance and consequent follower support. We investigated leader prototypicality in comparison to and combined with change leadership and explored its boundaries focusing on organizational identity strength. Furthermore, we situated our analysis in two countries, Austria and Germany, that differ along cultural dimensions known to influence the effectiveness of leader group prototypicality. In our study of 207 Austrian and 206 German employees, we found that leader prototypicality, change leadership, and organizational identity strength each uniquely predicted perceived leader support, both in the combined sample and within each country. Furthermore, we observed the hypothesized two-way interaction between leader prototypicality and change leadership across these samples, as well as a three-way interaction with organizational identity strength in the combined and Austrian samples. Change leadership was less predictive with increasing leader group prototypicality, particularly in organizations with strong organizational identity. We interpret this as evidence of a ‘change credit’ for prototypical leaders, allowing them to compensate for a deficit in change-specific leadership behaviours, especially in contexts where organizational and leader identities are salient.

MAD statement

Our study investigates how leaders who embody their group's identity can more effectively drive organizational change, requiring fewer change management efforts to secure follower support. By exploring the idea of ‘change credit’ among Austrian and German employees, we highlight the critical role of social identity leadership, alongside a strong team and organizational identity, in achieving successful organizational transformations. This research contributes to Sustainable Development Goals 8 (Decent Work and Economic Growth) and 9 (Industry, Innovation, and Infrastructure) by offering scientifically-backed insights into more effective leadership strategies during challenging transitions in companies and economies.

Rosa persica J.F. Gmel. (Rosaceae) stands out in the genus Rosa L. because of its simple undivided leaves lacking stipules and the intensely yellow petals carrying a dark-brownish to blackish blotch at their base. This rose was first collected by André Michaux in 1784 when he travelled in Persia [now Iran] in 1783–1784. Johann August Carl Sievers who explored for the first time the Tarbagatai Mountains in the Russian Empire (now Kazakhstan) in 1793 recollected this odd little plant and subsequently named it R. berberifolia Siev. This paper clarifies the taxonomy and nomenclature of this rose setting it into the context of its discovery and adds to our understanding of how R. persica was introduced into cultivation in western gardens. A neotype is designated for that name.

The traditional Mori–Zwanzig formalism yields equations of motion, so-called generalized Langevin equations (GLEs), for phase-space observables of interest from the microscopic dynamics of a many-body system governed by a time-independent Hamiltonian using projection techniques. By using time-ordered propagators and time-independent projection operators, we derive the GLE for a scalar observable from a generic time-dependent Hamiltonian. The only restriction in our derivation is that the time-dependent part of the Hamiltonian and the observable of interest depend on spatial phase-space variables only. If the observable obeys Gaussian statistics and the time-dependent part of the Hamiltonian can be expressed as an odd power of the observable, the friction memory kernel in the GLE becomes proportional to the second moment of the complementary force, as is the case for a time-independent Hamiltonian in the Mori–Zwanzig formalism.