Recent publications
We investigate whether internationalisation is significantly associated with waste management. Secondly, by focusing on two critical board attributes, we investigate whether female and tenured directors help enable internationalised firms' better waste management. We find that more internationalised firms produce more waste; this result is robust to various waste proxies such as total waste, hazardous and nonhazardous waste and waste scaled by turnover. Although they tend to engage with less recycling, the result is insignificant. Furthermore, we find that both female and tenured directors significantly moderate between inter-nationalisation and waste management; they help reduce waste in internationalised firms. However, they cannot significantly moderate between internationalisation and waste recycling, which seems a missing link in better waste management of inter-nationalised firms. The results imply that multinationals pollute the environment by producing more waste and not engaging in waste recycling. Given the cross-border scale of their manufacturing, sales and/or logistics operations, the findings are of critical importance for multinationals, their governance structure and stakeholders. We posit that international firms are more exposed to visibility and hence are under the scrutiny of stakeholders such as regulatory bodies, the press and environmentalists. Waste production and lack of waste recycling might trigger legitimacy concerns and incompatibility sanctions.
Motivation: SNAPSHOT USA is an annual, multicontributor camera trap survey of mammals across the United States. The
growing SNAPSHOT USA dataset is intended for tracking the spatial and temporal responses of mammal populations to changes
in land use, land cover and climate. These data will be useful for exploring the drivers of spatial and temporal changes in relative
abundance and distribution, as well as the impacts of species interactions on daily activity patterns.
Main Types of Variables Contained: SNAPSHOT USA 2019–2023 contains 987,979 records of camera trap image sequence
data and 9694 records of camera trap deployment metadata.
Spatial Location and Grain: Data were collected across the United States of America in all 50 states, 12 ecoregions and many
ecosystems.
Time Period and Grain: Data were collected between 1st August and 29th December each year from 2019 to 2023.
Major Taxa and Level of Measurement: The dataset includes a wide range of taxa but is primarily focused on medium to
large mammals.
Software Format: SNAPSHOT USA 2019–2023 comprises two .csv files. The original data can be found within the SNAPSHOT
USA Initiative in the Wildlife Insights platform.
This study explores college students’ emotional experiences in an English as a medium of instruction (EMI) course at a Korean university. The data include interviews and classroom observations conducted over a semester. The analysis reveals that students’ emotional experiences and management—referred to as emotion labor—are intricately connected with language ideologies that prioritize English within multilingual classrooms and beyond. The findings indicate that the hegemony of English and native speakerism positions native speakers in a superior role, leading to varied emotional experiences among students and differing levels of engagement in emotion labor. Specifically, these language ideologies prioritize native speakers’ emotional experiences, enabling them to express their frustration more freely. In contrast, non‐native English speakers often suppress their frustration, disappointment, and resentment related to perceived unfairness, instead of channeling these emotions into a desire for the symbolic and imaginative capital associated with English and the positive opportunities that EMI courses might offer. The study highlights how power dynamics and language hierarchies differentially influence students’ perceived “right to express” emotions and underscores the need for consistent language policies and more inclusive EMI environments to support students’ emotional well‐being and academic success.
Parameterisation of fully coupled integrated hydrological models is challenging. The state‐of‐the‐art hydrogeology models rely on solutions of coupled surface and subsurface partial differential equations. Calibration of these models with traditional optimisation methods are not yet viable due to the high computational costs. Prior knowledge of the range of the parameters can be helpful as a starting point, however, due to natural variations, abstractions and conceptualizations used in modelling, a systematic exploration of the variable space is needed. In this study, we utilise the natural clustering of the soils based on their saturated and unsaturated hydraulic behaviour derived from soil texture maps in conjunction with two level Latin hypercube sampling to effectively explore model parameter spaces. Soil texture maps are similar to USDA soil classifications; however, the objective is to classify the soil based on their unsaturated behaviour, rather than soil texture. The method has never been utilised in the modelling and the results show that it can be applied to larger watersheds. The area of study is Hubbard Brook Experimental Forest, a northern hardwood forest in the White Mountains of New Hampshire, USA. An average Nash–Sutcliffe value of 0.80 is achieved for hourly discharge for the eight streams in the catchment. The Nash–Sutcliffe measure shows a 7% improvement with the addition of the snow melt and evapotranspiration parameters in the second stage. Exchange flux patterns vary seasonally in the catchment with largest infiltration occurring in spring.
Background
Chronic spinal (back/neck) pain is common and costly. Psychosocial treatments are available but have modest effects. Knowledge of treatment mechanisms (mediators and moderators) can be used to enhance efficacy. Trials that directly compare different treatments are needed to determine which mechanisms are treatment-specific, which are shared across treatments, and which contribute the most to outcomes.
Methods
We will conduct a 4-arm randomized, controlled clinical trial to compare the main effects, mediators, and moderators of three pain therapies: Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy, Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, and Emotional Awareness and Expression Therapy in adults with chronic spinal pain. Following baseline assessment of outcomes variables (two primary outcomes: pain intensity and pain interference) and potential mediators and moderators, we will randomize participants (up to 460) to one of the treatments or usual care control. Treatments will be conducted individually each week for 8 weeks via telehealth. We will conduct weekly assessments of both potential mediators and outcomes, as well as post-treatment and 6-month follow-up assessments. We will test whether any of the therapies is superior to the others (Aim 1); identify mediators that are specific to treatments and those that are shared across treatments (Aim 2); and identify baseline moderators that are specific to treatments or shared across treatments, and moderated mediators of treatments (Aim 3).
Discussion
The findings from this project can be used to improve the effects of psychosocial chronic pain treatments by identifying the most powerful specific and shared mechanisms and revealing for whom the mediator-outcome pathways are strongest.
This research investigates the extent to which ingroup-related cues can reduce anticipatory guilt associated with indulgent foods and examines the mechanisms behind this reduction. In two experiments, participants were shown images of unhealthy foods against either a neutral grey background (control) or a background featuring their university/team colors (team color foods). Experiment 1, conducted online, found that exposure to team color foods reduced guilt, leading to an increased preference for unhealthy foods. However, Experiment 2, conducted in a lab setting, revealed that this effect diminished when participants experienced an identity threat, resulting in decreased preferences for unhealthy foods. These findings suggest that ingroup cues subtly encourage unhealthy food consumption among sport fans. These findings offer valuable insights for sport marketers and policymakers on the role of group cues, emphasizing the need for careful consideration when integrating such cues in health promotion campaigns, given their potential to unintentionally promote unhealthy behaviors.
The widespread use of social media and other online platforms has facilitated unprecedented communication and information exchange. However, it has also led to the spread of hate speech and poses serious challenges to societal harmony as well as individual well-being. Traditional methods for detecting hate speech, such as keyword matching, rule-based systems, and machine learning algorithms, often struggle to capture the subtle and context-dependent nature of hateful content. This paper provides a comprehensive review of the application of large language models (LLMs) like GPT-3, BERT, and their successors in hate speech detection. We analyze the evolution of LLMs in natural language processing and examine their strengths and limitations in identifying hate speech. Additionally, we address the significant challenges and explore how LLMs method can affect the accuracy and fairness of hate speech detection systems. By synthesizing recent research, this review aims to offer a holistic understanding of the current state-of-the-art methods in hate speech detection utilizing LLMs and to suggest directions for future research that could enhance the efficacy and equity of these systems.
The global forest carbon stocks represent the amount of carbon stored in woody vegetation and are important for quantifying the ability of the global forests to sequester atmospheric CO2 and to provide ecosystem services (e.g., timber) under climate change. The forest ecosystem carbon pool estimates are highly variable and poorly quantified in areas lacking forest inventory estimates. Here, we compare and analyze aboveground biomass (AGB) estimates from five satellite‐based global data sets and nine dynamic global vegetation models (DVGMs). We find that across the data sets, mean AGB exhibits the largest variability around the tropical area. In addition, AGB shows a similar latitudinal trend but large variability among the data sets. Satellite‐based AGB estimates are lower than those simulated by DVGMs. The divergence among the satellite‐based AGB estimates can be driven by the methodology, input satellite products, and the forested areas used to estimate AGB. The modeled NPP, autotrophic respiration, and carbon allocation mostly drive the variability of AGB simulated by DGVMs. The future availability of a high‐quality global forest area map is anticipated to improve AGB estimate accuracy and to reduce the discrepancies among different satellite‐ and model‐based AGB estimates. We suggest the carbon‐modeling community reexamine the methodology used to estimate AGB and forested areas for a more robust global forest carbon stock estimation.
Polymorphisms are maintained over time by trade-offs that alternatively favor morphs over space or time. In a polyphenic population of amphibians (Arizona tiger salamander; Ambystoma mavortium nebulosum), two morphs—paedomorphs and metamorphs—exhibit a trade-off in dispersal capacity. Larvae select between two discrete ontogenetic pathways based on environmental cues—adult paedomorphs remain in their permanent, natal pond, while adult metamorphs disperse between ponds of varying hydroperiods and overwinter in the terrestrial environment. This polyphenism is maintained in part by sex-specific reproductive advantages within each morph, with paedomorphic males achieving more reproductive opportunities and metamorphic females achieving higher egg production. In this study, we examined the role of a high-quality, primary prey taxon (fairy shrimp)—which is accessible to metamorphs only—in balancing the sex-specific component of this dispersal trade-off. Among the 95 metamorphs for which we evaluated diet and body condition, we found that most of the high-condition individuals were females that contained predominantly fairy shrimp in their stomachs. In addition, females specialized on fairy shrimp at much lower fairy shrimp densities than males, indicating that the consumption of this prey taxon may have differential fitness benefits across metamorph sexes. Our findings align with the expectations of parental investment theory, in which female reproductive success is most limited by the energetic resources necessary for egg production, while male reproductive success is limited predominantly by access to females.
When religion is the site of abuse and trauma, it can deeply impact a person's ability to relate to God and engage in spiritual practice. As such, religious trauma is ripe for philosophical exploration. Section 1 of this Element provides a brief history of the concept of psychological trauma, contemporary accounts of its neurobiological basis, and its impact on human agency. Section 2 sketches a model of religious trauma through the first-person narratives of survivors and emerging psychological data. Section 3 explores the social epistemology of religious trauma, focusing on how failures of knowledge create space for religious abuse and the insights of survivors may help communities guard against it. The last two sections consider three perennial topics in philosophy of religion from the perspective of religious trauma: the problem of evil, the problem of divine hiddenness, and religious experience.
This study, for the first time, tests the moderating effect of press freedom on the association between e‐government and tax evasion. It aims to suggest policymaking better to combat tax evasion through e‐government and the press. The study sample covers the period between 2002 and 2017 and includes 2202 country‐year records affiliated with 138 countries. The time‐fixed effect was executed to test the proposed hypotheses. The conclusions drawn from the study are as follows. First, the study finds that e‐government practices with four proxies curtail tax evasion through a long‐term vision of public administration, governments' adaptability to change, delivering online services to the citizens by governments, and crafting a legal framework for digital business services. Second, the study finds that all three proxies of press freedom (i.e., legal, economic, and political) are significant predictors of tax evasion implying that tax evasion is curbed in countries where the press is free in terms of highlighted dimensions of media freedom. Third, the free press, with its all three proxies, moderates and strengthens the relationship between e‐government implementation and tax evasion. To fully realize the benefits obtained from e‐government implementations, states worldwide need to build a better institutional environment one dimension of which is the free press.
In communication systems, the signal and preference for the signal have to match, limiting phenotypic variation. Yet, communication systems evolve, but the mechanisms of how phenotypic variation can come into existence while not disrupting the match are poorly understood. Geographic variation in communication can provide insights into the diversification of these systems. Females of the katydid Neoconocephalus triops use the pulse rate and call structure for call recognition. Using behavioral experiments, we determined preferences for pulse rate at two relevant ambient temperatures and preferences for call structure (continuous, versed) in females from Puerto Rico and Costa Rica. Puerto Rican females had closed preference at both tested temperatures, indicating high selectivity for pulse rate. In contrast, Costa Rican females had a closed preference only at 20 °C; at 25 °C the females were unselective toward higher than natural pulse rates. Additionally, Puerto Rican females were not selective for call structure, whereas Costa Rican females preferred versed calls. It is not clear whether the differences in pulse preference were due to neural constraints or different selective pressures, however, they may facilitate further divergence and reproductive isolation. Importantly, the reduced selectivity for call structure or pulse rate allows calls to display the necessary variation for the communication system to evolve.
The March 2, 2022, United Nations Environment Assembly Resolution 5/14: “End plastic pollution: Toward an international legally binding instrument by 2024” provides an important path for addressing global plastic pollution, from monomer design and production through the value chain to the final fate of plastic products, including resource recovery. Of the goals set for this effort, simplifying the polymer and additive universe is among the most significant. One primary obstacle to resource recovery from plastic waste is polymer variability, which renders post-use plastic inherently waste-like. While simplification will not address microplastics and leaching of chemicals during use, these measures simplify the plastic universe and mitigate leakage which is critical to ensuring circular plastic use. This study provides a pathway for simplification of formulations through the elimination of problematic additives and revealing paths toward simplifying and reducing the variability in polymers, waste streams and pollution, while preserving critical uses. This study focuses on phenolic antioxidants to support this concept; however, these principles can be applied to other additive classes. The results show extensive duplication of chemical species with different trade names and the appearance of only minor changes to species with the intention of evergreening patents for improved marketability.
In modern nonmarine settings, previous studies have demonstrated the importance of elevation-correlated ecological gradients, but such studies tend to focus on relatively small areas and only one higher taxon. Here, we analyze Global Biodiversity Information Facility occurrence records from a wide variety of taxa across the southeastern U.S. coastal plain. Many taxa display ecological gradients (gradients in proportional or relative abundance) correlated with elevation, distance to the coast, and latitude. These gradients tend to be steepest within a few tens of kilometers near the coast and at elevations less than 25 m. Some taxa, notably terrestrial mammals, do not display gradients correlated with elevation and distance to the coast. The small sample sizes of these groups and their heterogeneous sampling raise concerns about whether sufficient data exist. Coupled with previous studies of these ecological gradients, their common presence over distances of tens to hundreds of kilometers and elevations of tens to hundreds of meters suggests they are likely important in the nonmarine fossil record. Because elevation and distance to the coast change predictably with cycles of accommodation and sediment flux, these ecological gradients are predicted to occur in the nonmarine stratigraphic record, especially through intervals that record transgression or regression. Such gradients will affect the local composition of species associations and occurrences, even in the absence of regional species origination, immigration, and extinction and of regional change in the structure of ecological gradients. The ordination of taxon counts in stratigraphically limited samples has great potential for establishing their existence.
This study aimed to explore English language teachers' vulnerability and identity negotiation in relation to self-branding on social media. It focused on 15 Iranian teachers' experiences in teaching and self-promotion on Instagram through narrative frames and follow-up interviews. The analysis of the teacher narratives demonstrated that the new online context that valorizes visibility by demanding audience appealing content and personalities generated a great amount of vulnerability among the language teachers. The results evidenced the teachers' constant struggles in competing against those who seemingly possess superior skills and resources for self-promotion and their resistance to the "rules of the game" in gaining quick visibility. They shed light on language teachers' vulnerability and identity negotiation in their efforts to present themselves as authentic and legitimate teachers on Instagram against popular, self-branded individuals. Highlighting the intersection of language teaching, emotion , and identity, this study provides theoretical and pedagogical implications for language teacher identity in a shifting teaching context.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) has created exciting and uncertain times and for many reasons. Long held norms in life have become unstable and chaotic especially when it comes to the role of a technology manager. One particularly scary factor is the increase in unemployability for long term employees who face jobs being replaced by artificial intelligence engines. Job security has been a strength for the tech industry for years but with AI many have begun to worry that their skills are less marketable on future development teams. AI and machine learning tools to train AI are here to stay; however, this work looks at an unconventional approach to solving the very problem that AI seems to have created. By using the A* search agent this research explores connecting older skills developed over years of participation in the industry with new skills that are more valuable in the new job place by replacing job skills and soft skills with locations on a map and then using the A* algorithm to determine proximity and thus similarity.
The interaction of transcription factors (TFs) with DNA precisely regulates gene transcription. In mammalian cells, thousands of TFs often interact with DNA cis‐regulatory elements in a combinatorial manner rather than act alone. The identification of cooperativity between TFs can help to explore the mechanism of transcriptional regulation. However, little is known about the cooperative patterns of TFs in the genome. To identify which TFs prefer co‐localisation, the authors conducted a paired motif analysis in the accessible regions of the human genome based on the Poisson background model. Especially, the authors distinguish the cooperative binding TFs and the competitive binding TFs according to the distance between TF motifs. In the K562 cell line, the authors find that TFs from a same family are always competing the same binding sites, such as FOS_JUN family, whereas KLF family TFs show significant cooperative binding in the adjacency region. Furthermore, the comparative analysis across 16 human cell lines indicates that most TF combination patterns are conserved, but there are still some cell‐line‐specific patterns. Finally, in human prostate cancer cells (PC‐3) and human prostate normal cells (RWPE‐2), the authors investigate the specific TF combination patterns in the disease cell and normal cell. The results show that the cooperative binding TF pairs shared by PC‐3 and RWPE‐2 account for over 90%. Simultaneously, the authors also identify 26 specific TF combination pairs in PC‐3 cancer cells.
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