פרסומים

The Gobi Wall is a 321 km-long structure made of earth, stone, and wood, located in the Gobi highland desert of Mongolia. It is the least understood section of the medieval wall system that extends from China into Mongolia. This study aims to determine its builders, purpose, and chronology. Additionally, we seek to better understand the ecological implications of constructing such an extensive system of walls, trenches, garrisons, and fortresses in the remote and harsh environment of the Gobi Desert. Our field expedition combined remote sensing, pedestrian surveys, and targeted excavations at key sites. The results indicate that the garrison walls and main long wall were primarily constructed using rammed earth, with wood and stone reinforcements. Excavations of garrisons uncovered evidence of long-term occupation, including artifacts spanning from 2nd c. BCE to 19th c. CE. According to our findings, the main construction and usage phase of the wall and its associated structures occurred throughout the Xi Xia dynasty (1038–1227 CE), a period characterized by advanced frontier defense systems and significant geopolitical shifts. This study challenges the perception of such structures as being purely defensive, revealing the Gobi Wall’s multifunctional role as an imperial tool for demarcating boundaries, managing populations and resources, and consolidating territorial control. Furthermore, our spatial and ecological analysis demonstrates that the distribution of local resources, such as water and wood, was critical in determining the route of the wall and the placement of associated garrisons and forts. Other geographic factors, including the location of mountain passes and the spread of sand dunes, were strategically utilized to enhance the effectiveness of the wall system. The results of this study reshape our understanding of medieval Inner Asian imperial infrastructure and its lasting impact on geopolitical landscapes. By integrating historical and archeological evidence with geographical analysis of the locations of garrisons and fortifications, we underscore the Xi Xia kingdom’s strategic emphasis on regulating trade, securing transportation routes, and monitoring frontier movement.

Keywords: 

Gobi Desert; Mongolia; Gobi Wall; Tangut; Xi Xia; Western Xia; medieval wall system

Nano‐patterned magnetic materials have opened new venues for the investigation of strongly correlated phenomena including artificial spin‐ice systems, geometric frustration, and magnetic monopoles, for technologically important applications such as reconfigurable ferromagnetism. With the advent of atomically thin 2D van der Waals (vdW) magnets, a pertinent question is whether such compounds could make their way into this realm where interactions can be tailored so that unconventional states of matter can be assessed. Here, it is shown that square islands of CrGeTe 3 vdW ferromagnets distributed in a grid manifest antiferromagnetic correlations, essential to enable frustration resulting in an artificial spin‐ice. By using a combination of SQUID‐on‐tip microscopy, focused ion beam lithography, and atomistic spin dynamic simulations, it is shown that a square array of CGT island as small as 150 × 150 × 60 nm 3 have tunable dipole–dipole interactions, which can be precisely controlled by their lateral spacing. There is a crossover between non‐interacting islands and significant inter‐island anticorrelation depending on how they are spatially distributed allowing the creation of complex magnetic patterns not observable at the isolated flakes. These findings suggest that the cross‐talk between the nano‐patterned magnets can be explored in the generation of even more complex spin configurations where exotic interactions may be manipulated in an unprecedented way.

How can we build trust, especially in polarized societies? We propose that exposure to broad financial markets—where individuals place their assets in the hands of large groups of unfamiliar agents who nonetheless have the incentive and ability to promote their interests—can contribute to generalized trust. In a randomized controlled trial, we encourage Israelis to hold or trade stocks for up to seven weeks. We find that participation in financial markets increases the probability of expressing generalized trust by about 6 percentage points, equivalent to a quarter of the control group mean. The effects seem to be driven by political partisans along the left–right spectrum in Israel, and are robust to negative price changes. Thus, trust is not only a cause but can also be an effect of participation in financial markets.

Background
The ongoing Hamas-Israel war has put the civilian population in Gaza at risk of severe food and nutrition insecurity. Our goal was to provide objective, verifiable data to ascertain amounts and nutritional content of food supplied to Gaza through Israeli border crossings from January to July 2024. We aimed to assess their compliance with Sphere international humanitarian standards for food security and nutrition maintenance in crisis affected populations.

Methods
We obtained the registry of all food supplied to Gaza via air drops and land crossings from Israel’s Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT) from January to July 2024. This registry itemizes daily food shipments, their items and estimated weights. Food items in shipments were categorized, quantified, assessed and summed for energy (kcal), protein (g), fat (g), iron (mg) content, based on food labels and composition tables. We then calculated supply per capita per day supplied to the the Gaza Strip, according to the most recent population census of Gaza. Finally, we compared it to the Sphere standards for population food security.

Results
Adjusting for projected food losses, a net total of 478,229 metric tons of food was supplied to Gaza over the seven consecutively studied months. The average amount of energy available per person per day was 3,004 kcal, with 98 g of protein (13% of energy), 61 g of fat (18% of energy), and 23 mg of iron. Except for February, when entries dropped from January, there was a steady increase in the tonnage, energy, macronutrients and iron content of donated foods supplied to Gaza registered by COGAT. The amounts of energy, protein, and fat, but not dietary iron, in food crossing the border into Gaza consistently exceeded Sphere standards after making conservative adjustment for high food loss and the age distribution of the Gazan population.

Conclusions
This study assessed food deliveries by type, amount and nutrient composition, supplied to Gaza from January to July 2024. We found that, except in February, food crossing the borders into Gaza exceeded per capita minimal requirements for humanitarian aid. While reliable data do not exist for critical dimensions of food access and consumption across Gaza, these estimates suggest that adequate amounts of nutritious food were being transported into the Gaza Strip during most of the 1st half of 2024. We propose that with increased cooperation of all partners and shared efforts to overcome barriers, communication and data sharing, the UN Food Security Cluster, COGAT and humanitarian assistance agencies can develop a comprehensive, continually updated database to gauge food availability, access, nutritional value, and gaps to address, especially in the areas most disrupted by conflict in Gaza. This will also help ensure that food donations supplied to Gaza reach populations in greatest need.

In this Article, we offer a new design for our patent system with a view

to optimize its functioning. As multiple patent scholars have recognized, the

root cause of the ills of our patent system is the high rate of low-quality

patents. Extant patent law employs a binary screening process, under which

inventions either qualify for protection or fail. Thereafter, all qualifying

inventions are entitled to the same level of protection irrespective of the

degree of their novelty, utility and nonobviousness. As we establish

throughout this Article, patent law’s failure to distinguish among inventions

based on their quality greatly undermines the patent system’s principal

objective of optimally incentivizing and adequately rewarding innovative

progress. Society, at least in principle, ends up paying the same price for

all qualifying inventions, regardless of their level of innovation and

improvement upon the prior art.

This article is part of the Dendritic Cell Guidelines article series, which provides a collection of state-of-the-art protocols for the preparation, phenotype analysis by flow cytometry, generation, fluorescence microscopy, and functional characterization of mouse and human dendritic cells (DC) from lymphoid organs, and various nonlymphoid tissues. Within this article, detailed protocols are presented that allow for the generation of single-cell suspensions from human nonlymphoid tissues including lung, skin, gingiva, intestine as well as from tumors and tumor-draining lymph nodes with a subsequent analysis of dendritic cells by flow cytometry. Further, prepared single-cell suspensions can be subjected to other applications including cellular enrichment procedures, RNA sequencing, functional assays, etc. While all protocols were written by experienced scientists who routinely use them in their work, this article was also peer-reviewed by leading experts and approved by all co-authors, making it an essential resource for basic and clinical DC immunologists.

Cortical function, including sensory processing, is surprisingly resilient to neuron loss during aging and neurodegeneration. In this Article, we used the mouse auditory cortex to investigate how homeostatic mechanisms protect the representational map of sounds after neuron loss. We combined two-photon calcium imaging with targeted microablation of 30–40 sound-responsive neurons in layer 2/3. Microablation led to a temporary disturbance of the representational map, but it recovered in the following days. Recovery was primarily driven by neurons that were initially unresponsive to sounds but gained responsiveness and strengthened the network’s correlation structure. By contrast, selective microablation of inhibitory neurons caused prolonged disturbance, characterized by destabilized sound responses. Our results link individual neuron tuning and plasticity to the stability of the population-level representational map, highlighting homeostatic mechanisms that safeguard sensory processing in the neocortex.

Environmental changes driven by anthropogenic activities often disrupt animal communication and mating behavior. Consequently, these changes may force animals to adopt alternative mating tactics and strategies to find a mate. The mating disruption technique is an environmentally friendly tactic often used to control the pink-bollworm moth population in cotton fields. Though mating disruption is eco-friendly, it represents a Human-Induced Rapid Environmental Change for the targeted moths. Mating disruption involves spreading a synthetic version of the species-specific sex pheromone in the field, creating a pheromone-polluted environment, making it difficult for male moths to locate females and thereby reducing mating rates. We hypothesized that the intense sexual selection and environmental changes affecting communication would lead moths to increase their use of alternative mating strategies. An observed alternative mating behavior in male pink bollworm moths is disturbing mating pairs to displace the male and mate with the female. We compared this behavior between two populations and found that males long exposed to mating disruption disturbed mating pairs more frequently than those never exposed to it. In addition, males with a prolonged history of exposure to mating disruption showed reduced choosiness of females and increased their mating rate with small females of lower reproductive potential. The success rate of the observed couple disturbance was low. Nonetheless, this strategy, alongside other strategies, may contribute to the males’ reproductive success when facing the additional challenge of locating females due to the pheromone-polluted environment.

Type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) is a multifactorial metabolic disorder characterized by insulin resistance and beta cell dysfunction, resulting in hyperglycemia. Olive oil, a cornerstone of the Mediterranean diet, has attracted considerable attention due to its potential health benefits, including reducing the risk of developing T2DM. This literature review aims to critically examine and synthesize existing research regarding the impact of olive oil on the expression of genes relevant to T2DM. This paper also seeks to provide an immunological and genetic perspective on the signaling pathways of the main components of extra virgin olive oil. Key bioactive components of olive oil, such as oleic acid and phenolic compounds, were identified as modulators of insulin signaling. These compounds enhanced the insulin signaling pathway, improved lipid metabolism, and reduced oxidative stress by decreasing reactive oxygen species (ROS) production. Additionally, they were shown to alleviate inflammation by inhibiting the NF-κB pathway and downregulating pro-inflammatory cytokines and enzymes. Furthermore, these bioactive compounds were observed to mitigate endoplasmic reticulum (ER) stress by downregulating stress markers, thereby protecting beta cells from apoptosis and preserving their function. In summary, olive oil, particularly its bioactive constituents, has been demonstrated to enhance insulin sensitivity, protect beta cell function, and reduce inflammation and oxidative stress by modulating key genes involved in these processes. These findings underscore olive oil’s therapeutic potential in managing T2DM. However, further research, including well-designed human clinical trials, is required to fully elucidate the role of olive oil in personalized nutrition strategies for the prevention and treatment of T2DM.

A recent discovery documented robust and reliable individual differences in how quickly people become aware of non-conscious visual stimuli (Sklar, Goldstein, et al., 2021). Given the seemingly large role that conscious experiences play in our lives, this trait is likely to be associated with later cognitive, emotional, and motivational processes. Here we examine the possible implications of this trait to perceptual conscious experiences. In two experiments we demonstrate that the speed of prioritization to awareness is correlated with the ability to notice changes in a change blindness paradigm. The first experiment (N = 97) found a correlation between prioritization speed and multiple parameters of change blindness performance. The second, preregistered, replication experiment (N = 99), further demonstrated that variability in other perceptual-decision making tasks cannot account for this correlation. The results of both experiments suggest that prioritization speed is tightly related with conscious experiences in other situations.