Seasonal variability and the effect of bottom interaction on the dynamics of the along-slope boundary current flowing around the Levantine basin are investigated using nested high-resolution simulations of the Eastern Mediterranean Sea. The numerical solutions show a persistent boundary current year-round that is ≈ 60 km wide and ≈ 200 m deep. An enstrophy balance diagnostic reveals significant bottom-drag influence on the boundary current, leading to anticyclonic vorticity generation in thin regions along the coast, which in turn become unstable and roll into surface intensified anticyclonic spirals characterized by (1) Rossby numbers. An eddy kinetic energy generation analysis suggests that a mix of baroclinic and barotropic instabilities are likely responsible for the spiral formation. The boundary current and spirals play a crucial role in the cross-shore transport of materials. In winter, the anticyclonic spirals frequently interact and exchange material with the energetic offshore submesoscale flow field. In summer, when the offshore flow structures are relatively less energetic, the spirals remain confined to the boundary current region as they are advected by the boundary current and undergo an upscale kinetic energy (KE) cascade that is manifested in spiral merging, and growth up to 100 km in diameter. In both seasons, a coarse-graining analysis demonstrates that the cross-scale KE fluxes are spatially localized in coherent structures. The upscale KE fluxes typically occur within the spirals, while the downscale KE fluxes are confined to fronts and filaments at spiral peripheries.
How do hard economic times affect countries’ foreign policy and, specifically, their international commitments? Although a large body of literature assumes that economic crises lead to the prioritization of domestic politics at the expense of international cooperation, these claims are rarely subjected to systematic empirical tests. This study examines one important aspect of these relationships: the consequences of economic crises for the survival of international organizations (IOs), a question that attracted only scant scholarly attention to date. Theoretically, we argue that even though economic crises can weaken member states’ commitment to IOs, they also underscore their ability to tackle the root causes of such crises and mitigate their most pernicious effects. As such, economic crises are actually conducive to IO longevity. We expect this effect to be especially pronounced for currency crises, IOs with an economic mandate, and regional IOs, given their particular relevance for international cooperation during hard economic times. These conjectures are tested with a comprehensive sample of IOs and data on currency, banking and sovereign debt crises from 1970 to 2014. Using event history models and controlling for several alternative explanations of IO survival, we find ample empirical support for the theoretical expectations.
Journalists and experts play a pivotal role in communicating risks and helping the public navigate uncertain futures. This study examines the co-construction of projections by journalists and experts across news and social media during the Covid-19 pandemic. Unlike traditional news production, where journalists exercise agency by transforming expert knowledge into news narratives, hybrid media environments involve multi-platform, multi-directional, and non-linear processes of knowledge production. In light of these characteristics, we introduce and develop the concept of “predictive agency,” referring to an actor’s active participation in predictive knowledge-making and encompassing journalistic, civic, and epistemic forms of agency in shaping and navigating future-oriented knowledge. We analyse the trajectories of 400 projections in Israel and the US, tracing the interactional and informational dynamics between journalists and experts. Through qualitative textual analysis of the various iterations of each projection, four types of co-constructed projection systems emerge: Amplify, Distill, Elaborate, and Contest. We explore the complexities of predictive agency and accountability in these systems, shedding light on how collective futures are contested and co-constructed in hybrid media environments.
This chapter explores the role of education processes in the construction of youth collective identities in 21st-century mainland China. Drawing on the results of a growing body of anthropological work and on data from two field studies among Han (Chinese) high school students conducted over the past decade or so, the discussion highlights the key role of ethnographic research in uncovering contemporary tensions within China’s educational agendas, and the conflicting forces shaping youth nationalism and global outlook. In particular, the chapter underscores the intersection between Chinese youth social positioning and perceived life chances, their attitudes toward official narratives of the “nation,” and their readiness to align themselves with the national collectivity.
Across countries and over time, support for economic globalization is highest among individuals with the highest levels of education. Yet despite long-lasting debates about the sources of this correlation, reliable evidence that isolates the causal effect of education from the nonrandom selection of individuals into education is lacking. To address this fundamental issue, I exploit compulsory schooling reforms that increased the minimum school leaving age in eighteen countries. Employing a fuzzy regression discontinuity design, I find that the reform-induced added years of education substantially and durably increased support for trade liberalization. Using new data on the content of school curricula, I find that the effect of schooling largely stems from instilling tolerance and pluralism in citizens and reducing perceived cultural threat from globalization. In contrast, there is little evidence that the effect of schooling reflects the distributive consequences of international trade separating globalization winners and losers.
The prevalence of obesity and obesity-related pathologies is lower in frequent cannabis users compared to non-users. It is well established that the endocannabinoid system has an important role in the development of obesity. We recently demonstrated that prolonged oral consumption of purified Δ-9 Tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), but not of cannabidiol (CBD), ameliorates diet-induced obesity and improves obesity-related metabolic complications in a high-fat diet mouse model. However, the effect of commercially available medical cannabis oils that contain numerous additional active molecules has not been examined. We tested herein the effects of THC- and CBD-enriched medical cannabis oils on obesity parameters and the gut microbiota composition of C57BL/6 male mice fed with either a high-fat or standard diet. We also assessed the levels of prominent endocannabinoids and endocannabinoid-like lipid mediators in the liver. THC-enriched extract prevented weight gain by a high-fat diet and attenuated diet-induced liver steatosis concomitantly with reduced levels of the lipid mediators palmitoyl ethanolamide (PEA) and docosahexaenoyl ethanolamide (DHEA) in the liver. In contrast, CBD-enriched extract had no effect on weight gain, but, on the contrary, it even exacerbated liver steatosis. An analysis of the gut microbiota revealed that mainly time but not treatment exerted a strong effect on gut microbiota alterations. From our data, we conclude that THC-enriched cannabis oil where THC is the main constituent exerts the optimal anti-obesity effects.
The prevalence of obesity and obesity-related pathologies is lower in frequent cannabis users compared to non-users. It is well established that the endocannabinoid system has an important role in the development of obesity. We recently demonstrated that prolonged oral consumption of purified Δ-9 Tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), but not of cannabidiol (CBD), ameliorates diet-induced obesity and improves obesity-related metabolic complications in a high-fat diet mouse model. However, the effect of commercially available medical cannabis oils that contain numerous additional active molecules has not been examined. We tested herein the effects of THC- and CBD-enriched medical cannabis oils on obesity parameters and the gut microbiota composition of C57BL/6 male mice fed with either a high-fat or standard diet. We also assessed the levels of prominent endocannabinoids and endocannabinoid-like lipid mediators in the liver. THC-enriched extract prevented weight gain by a high-fat diet and attenuated diet-induced liver steatosis concomitantly with reduced levels of the lipid mediators palmitoyl ethanolamide (PEA) and docosahexaenoyl ethanolamide (DHEA) in the liver. In contrast, CBD-enriched extract had no effect on weight gain, but, on the contrary, it even exacerbated liver steatosis. An analysis of the gut microbiota revealed that mainly time but not treatment exerted a strong effect on gut microbiota alterations. From our data, we conclude that THC-enriched cannabis oil where THC is the main constituent exerts the optimal anti-obesity effects.
On the Mongolian plateau, the period between the collapse of the Kitan Empire (c. 1125 CE) and the rise of the Mongol empire (1206 CE) is still poorly understood. Although events leading up to the rise of Chinggis Khan's initial Mongol state are recorded in a number of historical sources, these accounts often look backwards over decades or even centuries from the perspective of a mature empire already made. Archaeology provides one path towards a better understanding of the circumstances, people, and polities contemporaneous with the collapse of the Kitan Empire and emergence of the Jurchen Jin and Mongol states. The eastern reaches of the Mongolian plateau is a region that can speak to these events based on the material record of archaeology. The Mongol-Israeli-American Archaeological Project has surveyed and excavated along Kitan frontier ‘long-walls’ in the northeast of Mongolia since 2018. One of our fortuitous discoveries was a well-furnished burial interred within the enclosure wall of a Kitan era frontier fortress. Analysis of this grave reveals that it likely postdates the use of the fortress and provides important information a
Drawing on Albert Arazi’s analysis of time motifs in pre-Islamic poetry, this essay will demonstrate how notions of time and temporality borrowed from ancient Arabic poetry are re-configured in the texts of 20th-century poets such as Maḥmūd Darwīsh, Sarkūn Būluṣ, ʿAbbās Bayḍūn, and Muḥammad al-Thubaytī. The figures of time generated by pre-Islamic poetry, I claim, are more compelling to the modern (agnostic) poetic imagination than ideas of a “fullness of time” in the afterlife as presented by Christian and Muslim doctrines. I will show how images gleaned and interpreted by Arazi and Georges Tamer actively function in modern Arabic poetry. Even when ironized and subverted, these intertextual references give density and depth structure to the surface prosaicness of the modern lyric. Rather than waging a mighty battle with the natural cycles and setting glorious deeds against the inevitable vicissitudes of time, modern poets court the graces of the passing moment and switch to strategies of tentative alignment with the meaningless chronicity of time, pure duration in Bergsonian philosophy, as a source of ibdāʿ, creativity. The de-escalation of the fight with the destructive element of time – the pre-Islamic dahr – involved making concessions in terms of the extreme dynamism of figurative language as represented in classical qaṣīda poetics. I argue that poets are then urged to find compensations for the loss of figurative mutability in intertextual practices that reinforce the descent to the mundane and the attention to lowercase truths rescued from ordinary passing time.
Multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children (MIS-C) is a hyperinflammatory condition caused by recent SARS-CoV-2 infection, but the underlying immunological mechanisms driving this distinct syndrome are unknown.We utilized high dimensional flow cytometry, cell-free (cf) DNA, and cytokine and chemokine profiling to identify mechanisms of critical illness distinguishing MIS-C from severe acute COVID-19 (SAC).Compared to SAC, MIS-C patients demonstrated profound innate immune cell death and features of emergency myelopoiesis (EM), an understudied phenomenon observed in severe inflammation. EM signatures were characterized by fewer mature myeloid cells in the periphery and decreased expression of HLA-DR and CD86 on antigen presenting cells. IL-27, a cytokine known to drive hematopoietic stem cells towards EM, was increased in MIS-C, and correlated with immature cell signatures in MIS-C. Upon recovery, EM signatures decreased, and IL-27 plasma levels returned to normal levels. Despite profound lymphopenia, we report a lack of cfDNA released by adaptive immune cells and increased CCR7 expression on T cells indicative of egress out of peripheral blood.Immune cell signatures of EM combined with elevated innate immune cell-derived cfDNA levels distinguish MIS-C from SAC in children and provide mechanistic insight into dysregulated immunity contributing towards MIS-C, offering potential diagnostic and therapeutic targets.
