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Digital technologies are becoming increasingly important for environmental defenders. Such technologies offer them possibilities to speak out and/or take action, but also increase the (digital) risks they face as a result of their (online) involvement. Recently, significant concerns have been raised about the use of various forms of online and technology-facilitated forms of harassment or 'digital intimidation' against environmental defenders. This raises the question of whether environmental defenders are adequately protected by the current legal framework. To assess this, it is essential to first understand the phenomenon of digital intimidation. This paper therefore aims to identify the 'core' components and characteristics relevant to digital intimidation to enable further legal qualification and analysis. As such, we propose a digital intimidation navigation tool that can facilitate a more sophisticated understanding of the different tactics used, as well as a fine-grained analysis of the existing legal framework. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The UN Committee on the Rights of the Child has published its much-awaited General Comment No. 25 on children's rights in the digital environment in 2021. Much of the conversations since its adoption have centred on how General Comment No. 25 influences State behaviours in the western world or globally. Little attention has been given as to what General Comment No. 25 means for children's right to privacy in Africa. This article seeks to explore the role of General Comment No. 25 in clarifying States' obligations in respect of children's rights to privacy and data protection in the digital era on the African continent. In doing so, this article first contextualises General Comment No. 25 in the broader context of the United Nations human rights system and analyses its recommendations on children's right to privacy. Second, the article examines children's right to privacy in Africa and analyses the specific features of the African human rights system that influence the understanding of this right. Finally, the article illuminates certain child-specific privacy and data protection measures that are being or have been included or discussed in the law-making processes and policy debates in a selection of African countries and links them to both General Comment No. 25 and the socio-cultural context of the continent. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Arms race dynamics are a common outcome of host–parasite coevolution. While they can theoretically be maintained indefinitely, realistic arms races are expected to be finite. Once an arms race has ended, for example due to the evolution of a generalist-resistant host, the system may transition into coevolutionary dynamics that favour long-term diversity. In microbial experiments, host–parasite arms races often transition into a stable coexistence of generalist-resistant hosts, (semi-)susceptible hosts, and parasites. While long-term host diversity is implicit in these cases, parasite diversity is usually overlooked. In this study, we examined parasite diversity after the end of an experimental arms race between a unicellular alga (Chlorella variabilis) and its lytic virus (PBCV-1). First, we isolated virus genotypes from multiple time points from two replicate microcosms. A time-shift experiment confirmed that the virus isolates had escalating host ranges, i.e., that arms races had occurred. We then examined the phenotypic and genetic diversity of virus isolates from the post-arms race phase. Post-arms race virus isolates had diverse host ranges, survival probabilities, and growth rates; they also clustered into distinct genetic groups. Importantly, host range diversity was maintained throughout the post-arms race phase, and the frequency of host range phenotypes fluctuated over time. We hypothesize that this dynamic polymorphism was maintained by a combination of fluctuating selection and demographic stochasticity. Together with previous work in prokaryotic systems, our results link experimental observations of arms races to natural observations of long-term host and parasite diversity. Graphical Abstract [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The importance of strong legislative frameworks to guarantee children's privacy, agency and safety in the digital environment has been emphasised by the Committee on the Rights of the Child in its most recent general comment. Both the EU and China, who(se Member States) are Parties to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, have adopted their own legislative frameworks for protecting children's rights to privacy and data protection in recent years. This article compares how these two distinct legislative frameworks safeguard these rights. The analysis focuses on the constitutional protection as well as on a comparison of the legislation that is currently in place, such as the General Data Protection Regulation in the EU and the Personal Information Protection Law, the Provisions on Online Protection of Children's Personal Data and other relevant regulations in China. More specifically, the article zooms in on the responsibilities emerging from these regulatory frameworks for private companies and platforms that process children's personal data. It ultimately aims to draw conclusions as to whether and how the child's rights to privacy and data protection are protected in different parts of the world where children use similar commercial apps and services. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although viral life history traits—the traits that determine reproductive and survival success—are critical to understanding the population dynamics and impact of viruses, they are understudied compared to molecular traits. This discrepancy is partly due to the challenge of phenotyping viral life histories. We developed improved methods to quantify the life cycles of chloroviruses, which are lytic double-stranded DNA viruses that infect unicellular “chlorella-like” algae. We modified classical one-step growth and survival assays by including flow cytometry and kinetic modeling, and applied these to four chlorovirus strains. Together, the modified assays quantified the full life cycle, including adsorption rate, probability of depolarizing the host cell, probability of releasing progeny virions, time until lysis, burst size, specific infectivity, and mortality rate of infectious virions. We also discovered that biphasic or “tailing” decay can occur in chloroviruses, and measured the fraction of infectious virions that resisted decay. The modified assays are more efficient than existing techniques, quantify more traits, and are applicable to other lytic viruses with quantifiable virions. The modified one-step growth assay is suitable for viruses with mutual exclusion, superinfection exclusion, or superinfection immunity; the modified survival assay can be applied to any lytic virus with quantifiable virions. IMPORTANCE Viruses play a crucial role in microbial ecosystems by liberating nutrients and regulating the growth of their hosts. These effects are governed by viral life history traits, i.e., by the traits determining viral reproduction and survival. Understanding these traits is essential to predicting viral effects, but measuring them is generally labor intensive. In this study, we present efficient methods to quantify the full life cycle of lytic viruses. We developed these methods for viruses infecting unicellular Chlorella algae but expect them to be applicable to other lytic viruses that can be quantified by flow cytometry. By making viral phenotypes accessible, our methods will support research into the diversity and ecological effects of microbial viruses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Children are keen consumers of audiovisual media content. Video-sharing platforms (VSPs), such as YouTube and TikTok, offer a wealth of child-friendly or child-appropriate content but also content which--depending on the age of the child-- might be considered inappropriate or potentially harmful. Moreover, such VSPs often deploy algorithmic recommender systems to personalise the content that children are exposed to (e.g., through auto-play features), leading to concerns about diversity of content or spirals of content related to, for instance, eating disorders or self-harm. This article explores the responsibilities of VSPs with respect to children that are imposed by existing, recently adopted, and proposed EU legislation. Instruments that we investigate include the Audiovisual Media Services Directive, the General Data Protection Regulation, the Digital Services Act, and the proposal for an Artificial Intelligence Act. Based on a legal study of policy documents, legislation, and scholarship, this contribution investigates to what extent this legislative framework sets obligations for VSPs to safeguard children's rights and discusses how these obligations align across different legislative instruments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the Irish Data Protection Commission fined TikTok 345 million Euros for violating the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) regarding children's personal data. It reports the investigation, initiated in September 2021, involved supervisory authorities and the European Data Protection Board. It highlights TikTok's processing activities and its vast E.U. user base, particularly among children.

The climate is currently warming fast, threatening biodiversity all over the globe. Populations often adapt rapidly to environmental change, but for climate warming very little evidence is available. Here, we investigate the pattern of adaptation to an extreme +10°C climate change in the wild, following the introduction of brine shrimp Artemia franciscana from San Francisco Bay, USA, to Vinh Chau saltern in Vietnam. We use a resurrection ecology approach, hatching diapause eggs from the ancestral population and the introduced population after 13 and 24 years (∼54 and ∼100 generations, respectively). In a series of coordinated experiments, we determined whether the introduced Artemia show increased tolerance to higher temperatures, and the extent to which genetic adaptation, developmental plasticity, transgenerational effects, and local microbiome differences contributed to this tolerance. We find that introduced brine shrimp do show increased phenotypic tolerance to warming. Yet strikingly, these changes do not have a detectable additive genetic component, are not caused by mitochondrial genetic variation, and do not seem to be caused by epigenetic marks set by adult parents exposed to warming. Further, we do not find any developmental plasticity that would help cope with warming, nor any protective effect of heat‐tolerant local microbiota. The evolved thermal tolerance might therefore be entirely due to transgenerational (great)grandparental effects, possibly epigenetic marks set by parents who were exposed to high temperatures as juveniles. This study is a striking example of "missing heritability," where a large adaptive phenotypic change is not accompanied by additive genetic effects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents the discussion on TikTok being a short-formvideo app allowing users for creating and sharing creative and funny videos and for communicating with others coming to the use of clear and plain language in all communication.

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It is often difficult to determine why parasites do not evolve broader niches, especially when there are closely related and ecologically similar hosts available. We used an experimental evolution approach to test whether source–sink demography or trade‐offs drive specialization, and its underlying traits, in two microsporidian parasites infecting two brine shrimp species. In the field, both parasites regularly infect both hosts, but experiments have shown that they are partially specialized. We serially passaged the parasites on one, the other, or an alternation of the two hosts; after 10 passages, we assayed the infectivity, virulence, and spore production of the evolved lines. Our results indicated a weak between‐host trade‐off acting on infectivity, but a strong trade‐off acting on spore production. Consequently, spore production maintained both parasites' overall pattern of specialization. This study highlights that when trade‐off shapes differ among traits, one key trait can prevent the evolution of generalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Vast amounts of personal data of children are collected and processed in today's increasingly digital, connected society by public and private actors. Children do have a right to the protection of their personal data and, according to the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), even merit specific protection. Children should be clearly informed of and understand what happens with their data when it is collected, processed, stored and transferred. To that end, specific transparency standards require the provision of information in a clear and plain language that the child can easily understand. In this article, after having mapped these existing requirements, the privacy policies of Instagram, Snapchat and TikTok — services which are very popular with children — are evaluated. The findings suggest that such policies are still complex, long and primarily text based. In order to improve this, possible practical ways of enhancing transparency for children such as legal visualization, co-design, co-creation techniques and participatory design methods which focus on presenting legal information in a transparent and clear manner are explored. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Children are engaging with technology to establish and maintain intimate relationships and explore their sexual identity. Sexting is one of the ways in which this exploration occurs, often on a consensual basis. In a first stage, this article reflects on the concepts of trust, control and privacy as prerequisites to engage in sexting. In a second stage, the authors explore the extent to which legislative instruments enable the legitimate exploration and expression of one's sexual identity, and aim to minimise adverse consequences thereof. To that end, the fundamental right to privacy, data protection frameworks and criminal legislation on the non-consensual dissemination of sexual images were identified as potentially harnessing the concepts of trust, control and privacy. Questions were examined regarding the potential undermining thereof through the application of child sexual abuse material legislation to instances of (consensual) sexting between children. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]