Genomic consequences of population decline in critically endangered pangolins and their demographic histories

Pangolins are among the most critically endangered animals due to heavy poaching and worldwide trafficking. However, their demographic histories and the genomic consequences of their recent population declines remain unknown. We generated high-quality de novo reference genomes for critically endangered Malayan (Manis javanica, MJ) and Chinese (M. pentadactyla, MP) pangolins and re-sequencing population genomic data from 74 MJs and 23 MPs. We recovered the population identities of illegally traded pangolins and previously unrecognized genetic populations that should be protected as evolutionarily distinct conservation units. Demographic reconstruction suggested environmental changes have resulted in a population size fluctuation of pangolins. Additionally, recent population size declines due to human activities have resulted in an increase in inbreeding and genetic load. Deleterious mutations were enriched in genes related to cancer/diseases and cholesterol homeostasis, which may have increased their susceptibility to diseases and decreased their survival potential to adapt to environmental changes and high-cholesterol diets. This comprehensive study provides not only high-quality pangolin reference genomes, but also valuable information concerning the driving factors of long-term population size fluctuations and the genomic impact of recent population size declines due to human activities, which is essential for pangolin conservation management and global action planning.     

An improved memory-event-triggered control for networked control systems

In this paper, the H_∞ control problem is investigated for a class of networked control systems with network-induced delay. A memory event-triggered scheme (METS) is proposed to reduce the redundant packet transmission in the network channel. Different from the normal event-triggered scheme (ETS), some recent released packets are stored at the event generator and controller sides, which are utilized for the first time to generate the triggered events and design the memory-based controller. The proposed METS has the following two merits. (1) The information of certain recent released signals are first utilized, which helps to improve the triggering instants at the crest or trough of the responses. (2) A state-dependent time-varying threshold parameter is designed, which can adjust the packet transmission rate according to the information of the state. Based on the proposed METS, a memory event-triggered controller is designed, the controller feedback gains and triggering parameters can be co-designed by solving a set of linear matrix inequalities. Finally, an example is given to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed method.     

A dynamic output feedback control law for elastic joint robots via feedback-passivity approach

Motivated by recent dynamic output feedback passivation results, a new set-point control law is presented for an elastic joint robot when the velocity measurements are not available. The proposed methodology designs an additional dynamics with which the parallel-connected system is feedback passive. That is, the composite nonlinear robot system has relative degree one with a new output and its zero-dynamics subsystem becomes the virtual closed-loop system with a simple proportional-derivative (PD) control law. This approach provides an alternative way of replacing the role of the velocity measurements for the PD law. With the proposed control law, the transfer function of the additional system has the form of sG(s) with a strictly positive real (SPR) G(s). Robustness analysis is also given with regard to uncertainties on the robot parameters. The performance of the proposed control law is illustrated in the simulation studies of a manipulator with three revolute elastic joints.     

Technology sovereignty as an emerging frame for innovation policy. Defining rationales,ends and means

In recent years, global technology-based competition has not only intensified, but become increasingly linked to a more comprehensive type of competition between different political and value systems. The globalist assumptions of the post-Cold War era that reliable mutually beneficial agreements could be reached with all nations, regardless of ideology, have been shattered. A previously less visible, mostly political, risk dimension has been brought to the fore by recent geopolitical and geo-economic developments. Against this background, the notion of technology sovereignty has gained prominence in national and international debates, cutting across and adding to established rationales of innovation policy.In this paper, we propose and justify a concise yet nuanced concept of technology sovereignty to contribute to and clarify this debate. In particular, we argue that technology sovereignty should be conceived as state-level agency within the international system, i.e. as sovereignty of governmental action, rather than (territorial) sovereignty over something. Against this background, we define technology sovereignty not as an end in itself, but as a means to achieving the central objectives of innovation policy - sustaining national competitiveness and building capacities for transformative policies. By doing so, we position ourselves between a naive globalist position which largely neglects the risks of collaboration and the promotion of near autarky which disregards the inevitable costs of creating national redundancies and reducing cooperative interdependencies. We finish by providing a set of policy suggestions to support technology sovereignty in line with our conceptual approach.     

The dynamics of abandoned innovation activities: Learning from failure or learning to prevent failure?

We contribute to the literature on abandonment and innovation by showing the dynamic nature of the linkage between abandoned innovation activities and subsequent innovation outcomes at firm level. Based on a balanced panel of Spanish manufacturing firms from 2008 to 2016, we demonstrate that abandoning innovation not only leads to more successful innovation, but that there is an explicit time dimension to this. Firms which have prior experience of abandonment have stronger positive effects of more recent abandoned innovation activities on innovation output. However, these effects are largely restricted to prior experience from – and implementation in – the early (conception) phases of the innovation process. While firms systematically develop abilities to prevent failure, there is little evidence of learning from failure in terms of innovation abandonment.     

Problems of adoption and adaptation of energy-conserving innovations in UK beverage and dairy industries

The study has three interrelated themes:We comment on underlying assumptions of some models of technological change and their particular shortcomings for the industries discussed here: brewery, malting, distilleries and processing dairies. These have implications for some attempts to forecast energy consumption patterns even under apparently favourable economic conditions.The results of recent survey work in these industries are analysed for what they can reveal about the uptake of recent inventions and some longer standing innovations in energy conservation and recovery, and the ability and willingness to both adopt and adapt from technically proven concepts with promising economic potential: less than 15 percent of technically “feasible” opportunities for energy conservation were taken up during the five year (1979–1984) period covered by the study.The conclusion drawn is that, site specific and local managerial factors as well as economic considerations dominate the performance of firm in the industry (as measured by energy cost-saving efforts). While industry-wide “savings targets” may have some psychological value, they cannot, therefore, be based on “benchmarks” linked to “best” practices and measurable levels of technological achievement from any recognisably “typical” group of firms. It follows that attempts to forecast future energy consumption or energy savings which assume such technological changes could be misleading, unless underpinned by clear statements about technical and technological choices specifically usable (not merely “available”) by large segments of well-defined industrial activities.     

Split genes

Contrary to what Jacques Monod affirmed in the 1960s, it is now known that what is true of the bacterium is not true of the elephant. In particular, it was discovered in 1977 that the genes of the higher organisms are split into segments, instead of being continuous as is the case with, for example, Escherichia coli. What is the significance of this split structure and how do organisms manage to gather together the useful parts of their genes and to eliminate those which are surplus? This article reviews what is already certain in this field and comments on the most recent prospects opened up by the discovery of genes ‘in pieces’.     

Crowdsourcing for innovation: How related and unrelated perspectives interact to increase creative performance

In recent years, several organizations have opened up their innovation processes to individuals from outside of the organization by means of digital crowdsourcing. The literature on crowdsourcing has emphasized the importance of using digital technology to reach far beyond organizational boundaries and include individuals with (educational) backgrounds that are very different and unrelated to those within the organization in its innovation process. It has been argued that such individuals will contribute novel insights because they consider an organization's innovation challenge from different perspectives. Building on the literature on creativity and absorptive capacity, we instead argue that having a related perspective will positively affect an individual's idea performance, while unrelated perspectives only positively contribute to idea performance in combination with a related perspective. Analyses of 2178 ideas contributed by 948 crowd members to 68 crowdsourced idea challenges show that it is important to consider how (educational) backgrounds can provide individuals with multiple perspectives, which can be either related or unrelated, and study how the interplay of related and unrelated perspectives affects the value of ideas in organizational open innovation initiatives.     

Azilian pebbles: an unsolved mystery

The end of the Ice Age (c. 9–8000 BC) in the French Pyrenees and other European areas is characterised by, among other things, the production of enigmatically decorated pebbles. Many theories concerning their function have been put forward. A recent analysis indicates that the decoration is non-random, and may represent some sort of notation.     

A hierarchical network-oriented analysis of user participation in misinformation spread on WhatsApp

WhatsApp emerged as a major communication platform in many countries in the recent years. Despite offering only one-to-one and small group conversations, WhatsApp has been shown to enable the formation of a rich underlying network, crossing the boundaries of existing groups, and with structural properties that favor information dissemination at large. Indeed, WhatsApp has reportedly been used as a forum of misinformation campaigns with significant social, political and economic consequences in several countries.In this article, we aim at complementing recent studies on misinformation spread on WhatsApp, mostly focused on content properties and propagation dynamics, by looking into the network that connects users sharing the same piece of content. Specifically, we present a hierarchical network-oriented characterization of the users engaged in misinformation spread by focusing on three perspectives: individuals, WhatsApp groups and user communities, i.e., groupings of users who, intentionally or not, share the same content disproportionately often. By analyzing sharing and network topological properties, our study offers valuable insights into how WhatsApp users leverage the underlying network connecting different groups to gain large reach in the spread of misinformation in the platform.     

Networks of inventors and the role of academia: an exploration of Italian patent data

This paper proposes a quantitative analysis of social distance between Open Science and Proprietary Technology. A few general properties of social networks within both realms are discussed, as they emerge from the new economics of science and recent applied work on “small worlds”. A new data-set on patent inventors is explored, in order to show that social networks within Proprietary Technology are much more fragmented than Open Science ones, except for science-based technologies. Two propositions are then put forward on the “open” behaviour expected from academic inventors, namely university scientists getting involved in Proprietary Technology networks by signing patents. Both propositions are confirmed by data, which show academic inventors to be more central and better connected than non-academic ones. The database and methodology produced for this paper are suggested to be relevant for the more general debate on the role of geographical and cognitive distance in university-industry technology transfer.     

Fast algorithm for image denoising with different boundary conditions

In recent works several authors have considered the L₁ fidelity term, the L₂ fidelity term and the combined L₁ and L₂ fidelity term for denoising models, and they used the fast Fourier transform (FFT) algorithm which can only use periodic boundary conditions (BCs). In this paper, we combine the augmented Lagrangian method (ALM) and the symmetric Red–Black Gauss–Seidel (SRBGS) method to propose three algorithms that are suitable for different BCs. Experimental results show that the proposed algorithms are effective and the model with the combined L₁ and L₂ fidelity term demonstrates more advantages in efficiency and accuracy than other models with the L₁ fidelity term or the L₂ fidelity term.     

The policy implications of economic complexity

In recent years economic complexity has grown into an active field of fundamental and applied research. Yet, despite important advances, the policy implications of economic complexity can remain unclear or misunderstood. Here I organize the policy implications of economic complexity in a framework grounded on 4 Ws: what approaches, focused on identifying target activities and/or locations; when approaches, focused on the timing of related and unrelated diversification; where approaches, focused on the geographic diffusion of knowledge; and who approaches, focused on the role played by agents of structural change. The goal of this paper is to provide a framework that groups, organizes, and clarifies the policy implications of economic complexity and facilitates its continued use in regional and international development.     

pth Moment exponential stability of impulsive stochastic functional differential equations and application to control problems of NNs

This paper investigates the pth moment exponential stability of impulsive stochastic functional differential equations. Some sufficient conditions are obtained to ensure the pth moment exponential stability of the equilibrium solution by the Razumikhin method and Lyapunov functions. Based on these results, we further discuss the pth moment exponential stability of generalized impulsive delay stochastic differential equations and stochastic Hopfield neural networks with multiple time-varying delays from the impulsive control point of view. The results derived in this paper improve and generalize some recent works reported in the literature. Moreover, we see that impulses do contribute to the stability of stochastic functional differential equations. Finally, two numerical examples are provided to demonstrate the efficiency of the results obtained.     

Toward Cranfield-inspired reusability assessment in interactive information retrieval evaluation

Re-using research resources is essential for advancing knowledge and developing repeatable, empirically solid experiments in scientific fields, including interactive information retrieval (IIR). Despite recent efforts on standardizing research re-use and documentation, how to quantitatively measure the reusability of IIR resources still remains an open challenge. Inspired by the reusability evaluations on Cranfield experiments, our work proactively explores the problem of measuring IIR test collection reusability and makes threefold contributions: (1) constructing a novel usefulness-oriented framework with specific analytical methods for evaluating the reusability of IIR test collections consisting of query sets, document/page sets, and sets of task-document usefulness (tuse); (2) explaining the potential impacts of varying IIR-specific factors (e.g. search tasks, sessions, user characteristics) on test collection reusability; (3) proposing actionable methods for building reusable test collections in IIR and thereby amortizing the true cost of user-oriented evaluations. The Cranfield-inspired reusability assessment framework serves as an initial step towards accurately evaluating the reusability of IIR research resources and measuring the reproducibility of IIR evaluation results. It also demonstrates an innovative approach to integrating the insights from individual heterogeneous user studies with the evaluation techniques developed in standardized ad hoc retrieval experiments, which will facilitate the maturation of IIR fields and eventually benefits both sides of research.     

Magnetophoretic manipulation in microsystem using carbonyl iron-polydimethylsiloxane microstructures

This paper reports the use of a recent composite material, noted hereafter i-PDMS, made of carbonyl iron microparticles mixed in a PolyDiMethylSiloxane (PDMS) matrix, for magnetophoretic functions such as capture and separation of magnetic species. We demonstrated that this composite which combine the advantages of both components, can locally generate high gradients of magnetic field when placed between two permanent magnets. After evaluating the magnetic susceptibility of the material as a function of the doping ratio, we investigated the molding resolution offered by i-PDMS to obtain microstructures of various sizes and shapes. Then, we implemented 500 μm i-PDMS microstructures in a microfluidic channel and studied the influence of flow rate on the deviation and trapping of superparamagnetic beads flowing at the neighborhood of the composite material. We characterized the attraction of the magnetic composite by measuring the distance from the i-PDMS microstructure, at which the beads are either deviated or captured. Finally, we demonstrated the interest of i-PDMS to perform magnetophoretic functions in microsystems for biological applications by performing capture of magnetically labeled cells.     

Explicit expressions for the Leimkuhler curve in parametric families

In this paper we obtain the Leimkuhler curve in the case of some important statistical distributions proposed in the informetrics and econometrics literature. In this way, we complete the previous work of Burrell [Burrell, Q. L. (2005). Symmetry and other transformation features of Lorenz/Leimkuhler representations of informetric data. Information Processing and Management, 41, 1317–1329], where several open problems were stated. To do this, we use a recent and general definition of the Leimkuhler curve proposed by Sarabia [Sarabia, J. M. (2008a). A general definition of the Leimkuhler curve. Journal of Informetrics, 2, 156-163], and a new representation of the Leimkuhler curve in terms of the first-moment distribution of the population. Specifically, we obtain the Leimkuhler curve of the following distributions: classical and exponentiated Pareto distributions; three-parameter lognormal distribution; generalized gamma distribution, which includes to the exponential and classical gamma distributions among others; generalized beta distribution of the first kind and generalized beta distribution of the second kind, which includes as particular or limiting cases next important families like beta distribution of the second kind, Singh–Maddala, Dagum, Fisk or Lomax distributions. All the obtained Leimkuhler curves can be computed easily.     

Improving zero-shot retrieval using dense external expansion

Pseudo-relevance feedback (PRF) is a classical technique to improve search engine retrieval effectiveness, by closing the vocabulary gap between users’ query formulations and the relevant documents. While PRF is typically applied on the same target corpus as the final retrieval, in the past, external expansion techniques have sometimes been applied to obtain a high-quality pseudo-relevant feedback set using the external corpus. However, such external expansion approaches have only been studied for sparse (BoW) retrieval methods, and its effectiveness for recent dense retrieval methods remains under-investigated. Indeed, dense retrieval approaches such as ANCE and ColBERT, which conduct similarity search based on encoded contextualised query and document embeddings, are of increasing importance. Moreover, pseudo-relevance feedback mechanisms have been proposed to further enhance dense retrieval effectiveness. In particular, in this work, we examine the application of dense external expansion to improve zero-shot retrieval effectiveness, i.e. evaluation on corpora without further training. Zero-shot retrieval experiments with six datasets, including two TREC datasets and four BEIR datasets, when applying the MSMARCO passage collection as external corpus, indicate that obtaining external feedback documents using ColBERT can significantly improve NDCG@10 for the sparse retrieval (by upto 28%) and the dense retrieval (by upto 12%). In addition, using ANCE on the external corpus brings upto 30% NDCG@10 improvements for the sparse retrieval and upto 29% for the dense retrieval.