Restoring oak forests through direct seeding or planting: Protocol for a continental-scale experiment

The choice of revegetating via direct seeding or planting nursery-grown seedlings influences the potential stresses suffered by seedlings such as herbivory and drought. The outcome of the balance between both revegetation methods may ultimately depend on how species identity and traits such as seed and seedling size interact with environmental conditions. To test this, we will conduct a continental-scale experiment consisting of one mini-experiment replicated by multiple participants across Europe. Each participant will establish a site with seeded and planted individuals of one or more native, locally growing oak (Quercus) species; the selection of this genus aims to favour continental-scale participation and to allow testing the response of a widely distributed genus of broad ecological and economic relevance. At each site, participants will follow the present protocol for seed collection, seeding in the field, nursery cultivation, outplanting, protection against herbivores, site maintenance, and measurement of seedling performance and environmental variables. Each measurement on each species at each site will produce one effect size; the data will be analysed through mixed-effects meta-analysis. With this approach we will assess the main effect of revegetation method, species, plant functional traits, and the potential effect of site-specific effect moderators. Overall, we will provide a continental-scale estimate on the seeding vs. planting dilemma and analyse to what extent the differences in environmental conditions across sites, seed size, functional traits, and the phylogenetic relatedness of species can account for the differences in the effect of revegetation method on seedling performance across study sites and species.

Association Between Ov16 Seropositivity and Neurocognitive Performance Among Children in Rural Cameroon: a Pilot Study

Infection with Onchocerca volvulus was recently reported to increase the risk for epilepsy in Cameroonian children. We investigated whether infection with O. volvulus may alter the cognitive function of children who may or may not develop epilepsy later in their lifetime. Using rapid diagnostic tests, we determined the presence of Ov16 antibodies in 209 school-aged children without epilepsy recruited from three Cameroonian villages, as a proxy for onchocerciasis exposure. In addition, the neurocognitive performance of these children was assessed using a battery of validated tools. Participants were aged 6–16 years, and 46.4% were Ov16 seropositive. Upon standardizing age-specific neurocognitive scores and investigating predictors of neurocognitive performance using multiple linear regression models (adjusted for gender, education level, previous ivermectin use, and anthropometric parameters), we found that being Ov16-positive was significantly associated with reduced semantic verbal fluency (estimate –0.38; 95% confidence interval –0.65 to –0.11; p = 0.006) and lower scores on the International HIV Dementia Scale (estimate –0.31; confidence interval –0.56 to –0.04; p = 0.025). Furthermore, an increasing frequency of past ivermectin use was associated with increased neurocognitive scores. Our findings suggest that exposure to O. volvulus may affect neurocognitive performance of children.

Combined effects of homogenization and singular perturbations: Quantitative estimates

We investigate quantitative estimates in periodic homogenization of second-order elliptic systems of elasticity with singular fourth-order perturbations. The convergence rates, which depend on the scale κ that represents the strength of the singular perturbation and on the length scale ε of the heterogeneities, are established. We also obtain the large-scale Lipschitz estimate, down to the scale ε and independent of κ. This large-scale estimate, when combined with small-scale estimates, yields the classical Lipschitz estimate that is uniform in both ε and κ.

Low Energy: Estimating Electric Vehicle Electricity Use

We provide the first at-scale estimate of electric vehicle (EV) home charging. Previous estimates are based on conflicting surveys or are extrapolated from a small, unrepresentative sample of households with dedicated EV meters. We combine billions of hourly electricity meter measurements with address-level EV registration records from California households, including 64,000 EV owners. The average EV increases overall household load by 2.9 kilowatt-hours per day, well under half the amount assumed by state regulators. Results imply that EVs travel less than expected on electric power, raising questions about transportation electrification for climate policy.

Introducing the “VALOR” analysis framework for auroral field-aligned current sheets using observations from Swarm Alpha and Charlie

<p>The investigation of auroral field-aligned current (FAC) sheets is crucial in the context of space weather research since they serve as main transmitters of energy and momentum across geospace domains. Different magnetosphere-ionosphere coupling modes are reflected by the FACs’ multiscale nature with spatial scales, i.e., latitudinal extensions, ranging from below 1 km to hundreds of kilometers. The multiscale property can be addressed conveniently using ESA’s three-spacecraft mission Swarm. According to common practice a linear correlation analysis is performed on lagged and band-pass filtered scalar FAC density estimates from two nearby spacecraft.</p><p>We introduce the framework VALOR (Vectorial Association of Linearly Oriented Residua) which generalizes the common approach in two ways. First, VALOR utilizes the full magnetic field vector primarily observed at both spacecraft without filtering. Second, VALOR allows to test statistical association measures other than linear correlation in dependence of both time and along-track spacecraft lag. The method is further refined by considering the current sheet’s polarization, i.e., the directional preference of the associated magnetic field perturbation, which additionally constrains the sheet’s orientation.</p><p>Here, we apply VALOR to 1 Hz magnetic field observations from Swarm Alpha and Charlie and base the association measure on a vectorial version of the mean squared deviation. By means of a sample auroral oval crossing event we demonstrate that the incorporation of vectorial and polarization information helps to focus the association measure in the time-lag parameter plane leading to a smaller FAC spatial scale estimate. This result seems to hold in a statistical context including over 9000 quasi-perpendicular auroral oval crossings from 2014 to 2020. The fact that the VALOR derived FAC locations reflect the known ellipsoidal shapes of the auroral ovals speaks to the overall plausibility of the method as well as the independently supported finding that large-scale FACs (>300 km) dominate the dawn and dusk sectors while smaller scale FACs gain importance at noon and midnight. Among the various opportunities for future work are an application to 50 Hz high-resolution Swarm data as well as the investigation of the solar controlling parameters.</p>

Innovative Seismic Microzonation Maps of Urban Areas for the Management of Building Heritage: A Catania Case Study

Several urban areas in the Mediterranean have already been subjected to seismic microzonation studies aimed at determining the acceleration expected on the ground surface, therefore mitigating the associated seismic risks. These studies have been generally related to free-field conditions. The present paper shows innovative seismic microzonation maps based on a large-scale estimate of soil-structure interaction (SSI) effects on design accelerations for some areas characterized by a high seismic risk in Catania, Italy. The proposed procedure combined: (1) geotechnical characteristics; (2) building features; and (3) 1-D seismic response analyses in free-field conditions. The seismic hazard and site effects were evaluated using artificial inputs and inputs recorded recently in Catania. Structural fundamental periods and related spectral accelerations, considering both the fixed-base building configuration and flexible-base configuration, were mapped in the Google My Maps environment. These results showed that SSI often had a beneficial effect, but sometimes it had detrimental effects, especially for some masonry buildings. These maps provided important information for planning the seismic retrofitting of investigated buildings, which were based on more detailed analyses of SSI and the developed maps requiring them.

Author Correction: A large-scale estimate on the relationship between language and motor lateralization

An amendment to this paper has been published and can be accessed via a link at the top of the paper.

Estimation of Equivalence Scale and Assessment of Its Impact on Poverty Measurement in Bangladesh

Anti-poverty policies for sustainable development require efficient targeting, for which appropriate poverty lines play a crucial role. In Bangladesh, official poverty lines are estimated with the implicit assumption that there are no economies of scale in household consumption with respect to household size or composition, which raises the question of the accuracy and reliability of the measurement of poverty line. We test the existence of economies of scale, estimate their size, and assess the impact of applying equivalence scale to poverty measurement, using the 2010 Household Income and Expenditure Survey data of Bangladesh. The results confirm the existence of economies of scale in household consumption. Following the model developed by Kakwani and Son, the overall index of economies of scale in household consumption is estimated around 0.85. Modified poverty lines show that under official poverty lines, the probability of being poor is high with respect to household size. The result implies that the poverty head-count ratio(HCR) for households with large number of members might be overestimated in Bangladesh, and that there may be an incentive for low income families to enlarge family size to avail of anti-poverty public transfers.

A large-scale estimate on the relationship between language and motor lateralization

Human language is dominantly processed in the left cerebral hemisphere in most of the population. While several studies have suggested that there are higher rates of atypical right-hemispheric language lateralization in left-/mixed-handers, an accurate estimate of this association from a large sample is still missing. In this study, we comprised data from 1,554 individuals sampled in three previous studies in which language lateralization measured via dichotic listening, handedness and footedness were assessed. Overall, we found a right ear advantage indicating typical left-hemispheric language lateralization in 82.1% of the participants. While we found significantly more left-handed individuals with atypical language lateralization on the categorical level, we only detected a very weak positive correlation between dichotic listening lateralization quotients (LQs) and handedness LQs using continuous measures. Here, only 0.4% of the variance in language lateralization were explained by handedness. We complemented these analyses with Bayesian statistics and found no evidence in favor of the hypothesis that language lateralization and handedness are related. Footedness LQs were not correlated with dichotic listening LQs, but individuals with atypical language lateralization also exhibited higher rates of atypical footedness on the categorical level. We also found differences in the extent of language lateralization between males and females with males exhibiting higher dichotic listening LQs indicating more left-hemispheric language processing. Overall, these findings indicate that the direct associations between language lateralization and motor asymmetries are much weaker than previously assumed with Bayesian correlation analyses even suggesting that they do not exist at all. Furthermore, sex differences seem to be present in language lateralization when the power of the study is adequate suggesting that endocrinological processes might influence this phenotype.

Band Edge Localization Beyond Regular Floquet Eigenvalues

We prove that localization near band edges of multi-dimensional ergodic random Schrödinger operators with periodic background potential in $$L^2({\mathbb {R}}^d)$$ L 2 ( R d ) is universal. By this, we mean that localization in its strongest dynamical form holds without extra assumptions on the random variables and independently of regularity or degeneracy of the Floquet eigenvalues of the background operator. The main novelty is an initial scale estimate the proof of which avoids Floquet theory altogether and uses instead an interplay between quantitative unique continuation and large deviation estimates. Furthermore, our reasoning is sufficiently flexible to prove this initial scale estimate in a non-ergodic setting, which promises to be an ingredient for understanding band edge localization also in these situations.