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Robotaxi services, or rideshare operated by autonomous vehicles, present an opportunity for independent and convenient transportation for people with disabilities. The proliferation of robotaxis in California has been met with mixed reactions from the disability community. To better understand perceptions of and expectations for robotaxis, this report uses semi-structured interviews with representatives from disability advocacy organizations. For many people with disabilities, especially for people with intellectual, developmental, and/or physical disabilities, robotaxis are inaccessible. Given the intricacies of accommodating a wide audience, not all interviewees were confident that robotaxi design and programming will be inclusive. Some interviewees trusted that autonomous vehicle companies will independently pursue accessibility features in their robotaxis. Other interviewees regarded statewide accessibility standards as essential to ensure accessibility. Overall, interviewees shared that people with disabilities want to be included in the process of designing, testing, and regulating robotaxis. Implications for accessible robotaxi governance in California is presented, with an emphasis on wheelchair access, considering impact on public transportation service, and centering people with disabilities. Interviewees also discussed ideal accommodations that would allow a broad audience to request a ride, board the robotaxi, communicate with the operation system, and exit the vehicle. These findings may be useful to AV companies as they consider how robotaxis can accommodate people with a variety of disabilities.

Uber came to Paris late in 2011, bringing with them a widely accepted narrative of their necessary 'disruption' of a stagnant taxi industry. They presented themselves as part of the 'Sharing Economy,' with 'driver/partners' rather than employees, taking a share of the profits of each trip but acknowledging no obligations beyond the use of their app. Uber broke French law, evaded taxes, and engaged in unfair competitive practices. Uber is one example of the gig economy, based on the digital platform, which has transformed the working lives of people throughout the globe, imposing on them – as many labor historians have noted – a form of work akin to the sweated piecework labor of the nineteenth century. The government of Socialist President François Hollande (2012–2017) managed to preserve a lane for taxis. His term, however, was bracketed by the conservative and deregulatory presidencies of Nicolas Sarkozy (2007–2012) and of Emmanuel Macron (2017–), who created a legal space for Uber and other platforms. Taxis survived. As this article will show, however, working conditions and the French social model have been undermined. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we investigate a general delayed diffusive predator–prey system with taxis and fear effect, which can have different functional response functions. By selecting the taxis coefficient and the discrete time delay as bifurcation parameters, we first derive an algorithm for calculating the third-order truncated normal form of Turing-Hopf bifurcation for this system. To demonstrate the effectiveness of the derived algorithm, we investigate a delayed diffusive predator–prey system with taxis, fear effect, and square root functional response function. We employ stability theory and bifurcation theory to study the existence of codimension-two Turing-Hopf bifurcation and obtain the third-order truncated normal form of Turing-Hopf bifurcation using the derived algorithm. With the obtained third-order truncated normal form of Turing-Hopf bifurcation for this practical system, we can analytically determine the dynamical classifications near the Turing-Hopf bifurcation point. Finally, we perform numerical simulations to verify the theoretical analysis results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article deals with the issue of intercategorial interactions between the categories of taxis and aspectuality in the context of modern functional-semantic studies. In the course of the study, such general scientific and linguistic methods as hypothetical-deductive, inductive, descriptive, contextual, as well as the method of interpreting and generalizing linguistic facts were used. The purpose of this article is to describe the intercategorial interaction of the categories of taxis and aspectuality from the standpoint of a «focused» or «centered» approach. The scientific novelty of this study is due to the insufficient development of the issue of taxi-aspect interaction in the German language. As a result of the study, it was revealed that the general categorial language units of taxis and aspectuality, which are various aspectual quantifiers, act as explicators and determinants of conjugate primary-taxis categorial meanings of simultaneity, precedence and following in German statements with temporal prepositions bei, in, mit, während, seit, bis, nach, vor. Durative quantifiers (attributes, adverbials) determine durative-primary-taxis categorial meanings. Iterative adverbials and attributes specify the actualization of iterative-primary-taxis meanings, and phasic verbs determine the speech realization of various phase-primary-taxis meanings (inggressive-phase-taxis, egressive-phase-taxis and mid-phase-taxis).

Abstract Tribolium castaneum and Rhyzopertha dominica are cosmopolitan, destructive postharvest pests. Although research has investigated how high densities of T. castaneum affect attraction to the aggregation pheromone by conspecifics, research into the behavioral response of both species to food cues after high density exposure has been lacking despite its importance to foraging ecology. Our goal was to manipulate and observe the effects of crowding on the behavioral response of both species to common food and pheromonal stimuli and to determine how the headspace emission patterns from grain differed under increasing densities. Densities of colonies for both species was altered (10–500 adults) on a fixed quantity of food (10 g of flour or whole wheat), then the behavioral response to common food and pheromonal cues was evaluated in a wind tunnel and release-recapture experiment, while volatiles were examined through gas chromatography coupled with mass spectrometry. Importantly, at least for T. castaneum, crowded conditions attenuate attraction to food-based stimuli, but not pheromonal stimuli. Crowding seemed to have no effect on R. dominica attraction to food and pheromonal stimuli in the wind tunnel, but exposure to high density cues did elicit 2.1–3.8-fold higher captures in traps. The relative composition and abundance of headspace volatiles emitted varied significantly with different densities of beetles and was also species-specific. Overall, our results have implications for expanding our understanding of the foraging ecology of two economically important pests.

Organisms often swim through density-stratified fluids. Here, we investigate the dynamics of active particles swimming in fluid density gradients and report theoretical evidence of taxis as a result of these gradients (densitaxis). Specifically, we calculate the effect of density stratification on the dynamics of a force- and torque-free spherical squirmer and show that density gradients induce reorientation that tends to align swimming either parallel or normal to the gradient depending on the swimming gait. In particular, swimmers that propel by generating thrust in the front (pullers) rotate to swim parallel to gradients and hence display (positive or negative) densitaxis, while swimmers that propel by generating thrust in the back (pushers) rotate to swim normal to the gradients. This work could be useful to understand the motion of marine organisms in ocean or be leveraged to sort or organize a suspension of active particles by modulating density gradients. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When we use language, we normally do not engage in verbal interactions in isolation. So, when studying verbal exchange, one should expect other activities to be manifested in some ways in the lexicogrammar either at clause simplex or clause complex level. This article is a link in a chain of articles that set out to investigate different aspects of projection across a variety of languages. It studies the verbal environment in which verbal projection occurs. It mainly explores explicit and implicit quoting and reporting strategies and the activities that accompany quoting. It compares some characteristics identified by Matthiessen and Teruya (2014a) in their investigation of quoting strategies in English to those that appear in the environment of quoting in Arabic, in addition to exploring some other traits that are proper to the quoting environment in Arabic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Tribolium castaneum and Rhyzopertha dominica are cosmopolitan, destructive postharvest pests. Although research has investigated how high densities of T. castaneum affect attraction to the aggregation pheromone by conspecifics, research into the behavioral response of both species to food cues after high density exposure has been lacking despite its importance to foraging ecology. Our goal was to manipulate and observe the effects of crowding on the behavioral response of both species to common food and pheromonal stimuli and to determine how the headspace emission patterns from grain differed under increasing densities. Densities of colonies for both species was altered (10–500 adults) on a fixed quantity of food (10 g of flour or whole wheat), then the behavioral response to common food and pheromonal cues was evaluated in a wind tunnel and release-recapture experiment, while volatiles were examined through gas chromatography coupled with mass spectrometry. Importantly, at least for T. castaneum, crowded conditions attenuate attraction to food-based stimuli, but not pheromonal stimuli. Crowding seemed to have no effect on R. dominica attraction to food and pheromonal stimuli in the wind tunnel, but exposure to high density cues did elicit 2.1–3.8-fold higher captures in traps. The relative composition and abundance of headspace volatiles emitted varied significantly with different densities of beetles and was also species-specific. Overall, our results have implications for expanding our understanding of the foraging ecology of two economically important pests. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we investigate the spatiotemporal dynamics in a diffusive two-species system with taxis term and general functional response, which means the directional movement of one species upward or downward the other one. The stability of positive equilibrium and the existences of Turing bifurcation, Turing–Hopf bifurcation and Turing–Turing bifurcation are investigated. An algorithm for calculating the normal form of the Turing–Hopf bifurcation induced by the taxis term and another parameter is derived. Furthermore, we apply our theoretical results to a cooperative Lotka–Volterra system and a predator–prey system with prey-taxis. For the cooperative system, stable equilibrium becomes unstable by taxis-driven Turing instability, which is impossible for the cooperative system without taxis. For a predator–prey system with prey-taxis, the dynamical classification near the Turing–Hopf bifurcation point is clearly described. Near the Turing–Hopf point, there are spatially inhomogeneous steady-state solution, spatially homogeneous/nonhomogeneous periodic solution and pattern transitions from one spatiotemporal state to another one. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: The majority of inguinal hernias are usually paucisymptomatic, so are restored electively. The main purpose of this study is to assess the trends in hernia repair surgery before and during the pandemic period, analyzing an Italian hospital series of 390 patients, in an attempt to quantify the negative impact regarding social costs derived from the Covid‐19 outbreak. Moreover, we want to focus on the concept of apparently minor pathology as hernioplasty which could represent a life‐threatening condition for patients. Methods: The study population consisted of all patients operated for inguinal hernia in a General Surgery Unit from 2019 to 2021, divided into a pre‐pandemic and a pandemic period. Results: The Covid‐19 pandemic increased urgent operations in a complicated setting. A statistically significant difference was found regarding the trend of hospitalization length as well as a strong positive correlation between the severity of hernia and the hospitalization length. Conclusions: During the pandemic, it has been registered a mishandling of inguinal hernias to the detriment of both the healthcare system and patients, due to multifactorial issues and, in particular, to the restrictions imposed by the regional government that erroneously declassed hernia pathology as a minor problem for public health. We do believe that patients, after diagnosis of inguinal hernia, should learn the Taxis maneuver for its feasibility and ease of execution, in order to reduce access to emergencies in many cases and likewise to better pain and discomfort perceived, even in the event of unexpected worldwide healthcare scenario. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study set out to investigate the impact of logical metafunction on syntactic complexity, and in doing so, it also measured the extent to which it impacted syntactic complexity. This study applied a one-group pre-test post-test experimental research design on 30 participants across a span of 40 sessions. To measure syntactic complexity, L2SCA accessed through TAASSC was used. A paired-sample t-test was employed in samples to make comparison of syntactic complexity deduced from the 14 indices. Furthermore, the study measured the Cohen's d values to discern the practical implication within the mean differences observed. A substantial enhancement in all indices of syntactic complexity was noted, except for one index (CP/C) which had a moderate effect. The study proved that this theory can be used by ESL educators and learners to make their writings logically connected and complex, resulting in marked enhancement of academic writing skills and language proficiency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Long-term trapping programs of stored product pests provide information for timely and accurate pest management. Tribolium castaneum (Herbst) (Coleoptera:Tenebrionidae) is a highly successful external-infesting grain pest and is frequently monitored using a commercial pitfall trap that combines pheromonal and kairomonal stimuli. However, an often overlooked component of lure-based traps is the potential for the volatile plume to change over time as individuals are captured. These now-dead insects may then release necromones altering the captures of conspecifics. In this study, we evaluated changes in (i) the behavior of T. castaneum and (ii) the relative change in volatiles over time since dead insects were added and among different densities of dead conspecifics in a commercially available kairomone oil. We used multiple behavior assays, including wind tunnel, release-recapture, and 2-way olfactometer, and performed chemical analyses via headspace collection and gas chromatography coupled with mass spectrometry. Tribolium castaneum response to the kairomone lure was not consistent among assays of density of conspecifics between 4 and 40 adults after 24 or 96 h, or time of seeding over 1–96 h or 8–11 days prior. Tested strains collected in 2012 and 2019 ruled out strain-specific differences. Oil batch effects were also ruled out as a factor contributing to the response of T. castaneum. The relative volatile composition was generally stable among the treatments despite using different seeding densities and seeding times. Given that attraction and relative volatile composition were generally unaffected by prior captures, long-term monitoring programs may be robust in their interpretability over time. Graphical Abstract [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Against the scholarly emphasis on precariousness, this article focuses on how gig work in 1970s Singapore was developed with the specific vision of enabling life for the working-class Singaporean family-man. From 1970 to 1993, the taxi company Comfort invested its operations with a powerful vision of the transformative potentials of taxi-driving labor. The gig work of taxis was made to change the work ethic of men, creating workers and fathers who could advance class mobility, nation-building, and the family, raising children who would become ideal workers of the future. Such hopes, however, still relied upon the insecurity of the gig to force the men into adherence. Entangled with patriarchy, nationalism, and familialism, this article examines the compromises exacted through the gig’s capacity to make live, and analyses how Comfort’s experiment has left a legacy in the ways that platformed gig work is governed today, which needs engagement and revision.

Time delays and taxi effects are important factors in the predator–prey interaction. This paper focuses on calculating the normal form on the center manifold near the Hopf bifurcation point for a general delayed diffusive predator–prey system with taxis under the Neumann boundary condition. A delayed diffusive Lotka–Volterra predator–prey model with prey-taxis is considered as an application. By numerical simulations, in the two-parameter plane, different types of spatial-temporal patterns are observed by varying delay or taxis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We study a mathematical model of competition between two populations described by a system of nonlinear differential reaction–diffusion–advection equations. The taxis is introduced to model the heterogeneity of the total resource and the nonuniform distribution of both species. We analyze the role of the taxis in the area occupancy. The maps of migration parameters corresponding to various variants of competitive exclusion and coexistence of species are calculated. Using the theory of cosymmetry, we find parametric relations under which multistability arises. In a computational experiment, population scenarios with a violation of cosymmetry were studied. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Taxis are essential part of transportation systems in both urban and rural areas, as they cover targeted needs of travelers in a safe and efficient manner. The way taxis are hailed, or otherwise "hailing channels", are subject to continuous development and adjustment to modem technologies. For instance, street-hailing, cabstands and phone-hailing (radio taxi) have been the predominant channels in the past years, while hailing applications have rapidly been growing in market share lately. However, each channel comes with several advantages and disadvantages that stimulate policy makers to promote or undermine specific channels, depending on their aims and needs. As such, identifying the factors affecting drivers' preferences on those channels is necessary for targeted policies to be applied. In this study, those factors are investigated through the development of a multinomial regression model, based on the dataset collected from a questionnaire survey among taxi drivers in Greece. Findings suggest that phone-hailing is the drivers' most preferred channel, with street-hailing, applications and cabstands being also popular among them. Professional experience, daily revenue, familiarity with smartphone operation and English fluency, are significant socio-demographic determinants of driver preference on specific taxi-hailing channels. Additional professional characteristics (some of them related to tourism) may also influence driver preferences. A rather interesting finding suggests that drivers' environmental awareness is related to the probability of preferring doing business through taxi-hailing applications. Study results can be valuable for policy makers who are willing to promote more efficient hailing channels, by considering driver profiles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Given the semi-private nature of the mode, the conversion of taxi vehicles to electric requires a feasibility analysis, as it can impact their operations and revenues. In this research, we assess the feasibility of taxi companies in Santiago de Chile operating with battery electric vehicles (BEVs), considering the current electric mobility infrastructure of the city. We used a large database of GPS pulses provided by a taxi app to obtain a complete picture of typical taxi trips and operations in the city. Then, we performed an assessment of the feasibility of the fleet conversion by considering battery capacity, driving range, proximity to recharging stations, and charging power. The results are promising, as the number of completed trips ranges from 87.35% to 94.34%, depending on the BEV driving range. The analysis shows the importance of installing fast charging points in the locations or BEV driving ranges. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Lab evidence on trust games involves more cooperation than conventional economic theory predicts. We explore whether this pattern extends to a field setting where we are able to control for (lack of) repeat-play and reputation: the taxi market in Mexico City. We find a remarkably high degree of trustworthiness, even with price-haggling which was predicted to reduce trustworthiness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Статья посвящена описанию неоднозначного, многослойного и многоаспектного временного пространства простого осложнённого предложения. Цель: выявить значение как абсолютного, так и относительного времени, представить комплексную природу и синкретичных характер выражения таксиса и дейксиса в нетрадиционных осложнённых моделях русского предложения. Анализ выражения времени, таксиса и дейксиса разноструктурными средствами языка в их системных отношениях подтверждает тезис не только о семантическом, но и грамматическом (структурном) осложнении рассматриваемых предложений. Впервые в аспекте темпоральной семантики проанализированы конструкции с дуплексивами (членами двойной зависимости) и таксисные отношения в предложениях с объектным и целевым инфинитивом, где также обнаружено семантическое и грамматическое осложнение.

The entry of digital platform corporations, such as Uber, Lyft, and Taxify, into established taxi and limousine markets has severely challenged organized interest groups on both sides of the capital-labor divide as well as public policymakers who regulate these markets. Interest associations in different countries have regarded the market-disrupting strategies of platform corporations as either a unifying threat or as an opportunity to pursue and enforce their particularistic interests, and existing associational fields have shaped interest associations’ responses.The author compares California and Austria because of their distinctive traditions in valorizing the public participation of nonstate societal groups and interest associations in political and economic fields. By drawing on interest group theory and on sociological field theory, this paper demonstrates that both pluralist and neocorporatist associational fields have the potential to balance societal interests and to moderate power relations.Associational fields in California and Austria are contested societal orders whose ability to integrate all relevant societal interests has been disrupted. In California, the responses of business associations, trade unions, and labor groups to Uber reflect the fragmented state of pluralist associational fields. While diversity and competitive relations between interest groups are ideal-typical characteristics of pluralist associational fields, state actors do not serve as impartial mediators, and Uber has benefited from more favorable rules and conditions than those applied to taxi and limousine companies. In Austria, the responses of the highly centralized business and labor associations toward Uber reflect the strong disposition of the Chamber of Commerce and trade unions toward the logic of influence. However, that collective bargaining institutions or social partner agreements are not able to control the company points to the fragile and contested character of associational fields. It is nevertheless likely that the ongoing struggle for common rules for all market participants will reinforce neocorporatist associational fields.

Статья посвящена репрезентации сложной, многоаспектной и разнообразной темпоральной (временной) характеристики простого осложнённого предложения в современном русском языке. Цель данной работы – выявить семантику как абсолютного, так и относительного времени, комплексную природу и синкретичных характер выражения этой семантики. В работе представлены традиционные осложнённые модели современного русского языка. Выявлен сложный характер логических отношений, аспектуальных и таксисных значений одновременности и неодновременности / следования описываемых в данных конструкциях событий / ситуаций. Представлены функционально-семантические категории таксиса и аспектуальности в плане их межкатегориального синкретизма.

The article features iterative-taxis categorical situations of simultaneity and non-simultaneity in German and Russian. The functional and semantic categories of taxis and iteration are closely interrelated. The intersection and syncretic unification of these functional-semantic categories makes it possible to define the model of their intercategorial interaction as a model of intercategorical crossing. Intercategorical crossing of taxis and iterative categories determines the actualization of various iterative-taxis categorical situations of simultaneity and non-simultaneity. They are actualized in iterative statements of various subtypes, e.g., verbal-iterative, deverbial-iterative, attributive-iterative, adverbial-iterative, etc., which contain iterative deverbatives, iterative verbs, and iterative quantifiers, i.e., attributes and adverbials. German and Russian proved to have such varieties of iterative-taxis categorial situations of simultaneity and non-simultaneity as (1) deverbative-iterative, (2) verbaliterative, and (3) adverbial-iterative and attributive-iterative. Actualization of certain iterative-taxis categorial situations of simultaneity and non-simultaneity depends on genetically-iterative, genetically-multiplicative, and word-formation-iterative deverbatives, as well as on iterative verbs of different semantics (actual iteratives, diminutives, multiplicatives, distributives, etc.) and iterative quantifiers (attributes and adverbials).

This article examines the competition between taxis and e-hailing from the perspective of the temporality of infrastructures, which refers to 1) decay and maintenance of infrastructures, 2) imaginations of infrastructures regarding old, new, past, and future, and 3) the (spatio)temporal experience of infrastructure supporters. I propose that taxis and e-hailing are simultaneously transport and livelihood infrastructures that facilitate passengers' and drivers' lives, and that they are maintained by the two parties. One reason that taxis are maintained in this competition lies in taxi drivers' preference for taxis as a livelihood infrastructure. The article highlights infrastructure supporters' labor and spatiotemporal experience, emphasizes the importance of the perspective of the decay and maintenance of infrastructures, and proposes a dialectic view of the infrastructure-related imaginations of old and new, especially in a context in which disruptive innovations in infrastructural technologies are continuously emerging. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The spotted lanternfly Lycorma delicatula White (Hemiptera: Fulgoridae) is a polyphagous insect pest that invaded the United States in 2014, in Berks County, Pennsylvania. It has since spread to several northeastern states and poses a significant threat to northeastern grape production. Most studied species of Hemiptera are known to communicate intraspecifically using some form of substrate-borne vibrational signals, although such behavior has not yet been reported in L. delicatula. This report demonstrates that adult and fourth-instar L. delicatula were attracted towards broadcasts of 60-Hz vibroacoustic stimuli directed to a laboratory arena and test substrate, which suggests that both adults and fourth instar nymphs can perceive and respond to vibrational stimuli. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

English disjunctive coordination is a clause complex that has two co-ordinands. Many scholars and researchers dealt with this phenomenon using different standard theories. However, there is still a controversy in literature whether non-constituent coordination exists or not; therefore, this research determines whether the disjunctive coordination constituents are non-constituents. The paper also describes the relationship between the disjunctive co-ordinands, coordinated phrases, or clauses joined by conjunction /or/. The article further aims to describe the structure of the disjunctive coordination and the category label of the disjunctive coordinator. The Systemic Functional Grammar and Minimalist Program framed this study. This qualitative paper purposively and conveniently selected from Facebook and WhatsApp groups for the National University of Lesotho's students; 13 structures were chosen from the WhatsApp group, while 15 were taken from Facebook. Results reveal that the disjunctive coordination constituents are not non-constituents. What seems prevailing or irregular at the Phonetic Form (PF) results from the movement and deletion of duplicate syntactic elements. This deletion of the syntactic features is done to satisfy the economic considerations. It is also reflected that the disjunctive co-ordinands have taxis and logico-semantic type relations or relationships. The paper further divulges that the structure of the disjunctive coordination is the complementiser phrase (CP), and the category label of the disjunctive coordinator/or/ is the complementiser (C). That is, it belongs to the C category.

Focusing on conventional taxis and e-hailing, this paper discusses the technology, job and mobility choices of a conventional occupational group – taxi drivers – faced with an algorithm-enabled mode of mobility. Based on six-month ethnographic fieldwork in Xi'an, China, it shows that taxi drivers generally prefer taxis to e-hailing. Because the e-hailing algorithm treats each driver independently, drivers' spatio-temporal skills become marginalised and taxi drivers are no longer able to maintain a regular spatio-temporal arrangement that facilitates their community nodes as they do in taxi-driving. Their preference for taxis is a response to the potential threat to their community and social values imposed by algorithm-enabled mobilities. The paper emphasises how workers' response to algorithmic digital automation are centred around and operationalised by spatio-temporal mobility. It also shows that the impacts of new mobilities are distributed unevenly across groups with different socio-economic backgrounds and life experiences, in this case vis-à-vis the privatisation and urbanisation of Chinese society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although some research has investigated the interactions among stored product insects and microbes, little research has examined how specific fungal life stages affect volatile emissions in grain and linked it to the behavior of Sitophilus oryzae , the cosmopolitan rice weevil. Thus, our goals were to 1) isolate, culture, and identify two fungal life stages of Aspergillus flavus , 2) characterize the volatile emissions from grain inoculated by each fungal morphotype, and 3) understand how microbially-produced volatile organic compounds (MVOCs) from each fungal morphotype affect foraging, attraction, and preference by S. oryzae. We hypothesized that the headspace blends would be unique among our treatments and that this will lead to preferential mobility by S. oryzae among treatments. Using headspace collection coupled with GC-MS, we found the sexual life stage of A. flavus had the most unique emissions of MVOCs compared to the other semiochemical treatments. This translated to a higher interaction with kernels containing grain with the A. flavus sexual life stage, as well as a higher cumulative time spent in those zones by S. oryzae in a video-tracking assay in comparison to the asexual life stage. While fungal cues were important for foraging at close-range, the release-recapture assay indicated that grain volatiles were more important for attraction at longer distances. There was no significant preference between grain and MVOCs in a four-way olfactometer. Overall, this study enhances our understanding of how fungal cues affect the close and longer range foraging ecology of a primarily stored product insect. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract Movement is the primary means by which animals obtain resources and avoid hazards. Most movement exhibits directional bias that is related to environmental features (defined as taxis when biased orientation is voluntary), such as the location of food patches, predators, ocean currents or wind. Numerous behaviours with directional bias can be characterised by maintaining orientation at an angle relative to the environmental stimuli (menotaxis), including navigation relative to sunlight or magnetic fields and energy‐conserving flight across wind. However, new methods are needed to flexibly classify and characterise such directional bias. We propose a biased correlated random walk model that can identify menotactic behaviours by predicting turning angle as a trade‐off between directional persistence and directional bias relative to environmental stimuli without making a priori assumptions about the angle of bias. We apply the model within the framework of a multi‐state hidden Markov model (HMM) and describe methods to remedy information loss associated with coarse environmental data to improve the classification and parameterisation of directional bias. Using simulation studies, we illustrate how our method more accurately classifies behavioural states compared to conventional correlated random walk HMMs that do not incorporate directional bias. We illustrate the application of these methods by identifying cross wind olfactory foraging and drifting behaviour mediated by wind‐driven sea ice drift in polar bears (Ursus maritimus) from movement data collected by satellite telemetry. The extensions we propose can be readily applied to movement data to identify and characterise behaviours with directional bias towards any angle, and open up new avenues to investigate more mechanistic relationships between animal movement and the environment.

The purpose of this article is to consider the issue of actualizing of the categorical semantics of the non-prototypical taxis of simultaneity in German, Russian, Dutch, English and Polish. The study was conducted on the material of different structural languages within the framework of comparative typological and functional grammatical approaches to the study of taxis meanings, taking into account the phenomenon of interlanguage variability. The non-prototypic taxis of simultaneity is the secondary taxis of simultaneity, which is actualized in statements with taxis prepositions of adverbial semantics (conditional, causal, concessive, consecutive, final, modal, instrumental, medial) in German, Russian, Dutch, English and Polish. Taxis prepositions are distinguished by their interlanguage variability and polyfunctionality. They mark the semantics of the secondary taxis of simultaneity, in particular the causal, conditional, modal, concessive, consecutive, final and conditional taxis in German, Russian, English, Polish, Dutch, as well as the categorical semantics of the instrumental/medial taxis in Germanic languages: German, English and Dutch. Within the framework of this study, we distinguish the following variants of the non-prototypical taxis of simultaneity: modal taxis (secondary taxis of manner), conditional taxis, causal taxis, consequential taxis, concessive taxis, final taxis in German, English, Dutch, Russian and Polish, as well as instrumental and medial taxis in German, English and Dutch. The examined statements represent such secondary taxis categorical situations of simultaneity as: secondary taxis categorical situations of the manner, conditional-taxis, causal-taxis, concessive-taxis, consecutive-taxis, final-taxis (in German, Russian, English, Polish, Dutch), as well as instrumental-taxis and medial-taxis categorical situations of simultaneity (in German, English and Dutch).

The purpose of this work is to study the influence of various local models in the equations of diffusion–advection– reaction on the spatial processes of coexistence of predators and prey under conditions of a nonuniform distribution of the carrying capacity. We consider a system of nonlinear parabolic equations to describe diffusion, taxis, and local interaction of a predator and prey in a one-dimensional habitat. Methods. We carried out the study of the system using the dynamical systems approach and a computational experiment based on the method of lines and a scheme of staggered grids. Results. The behavior of the predator – prey system has been studied for various scenarios of local interaction, taking into account the hyperbolic law of prey growth and the Holling effect with nonuniform carrying capacity. We have established paradoxical scenarios of interaction between prey and predator for several modifications of the trophic function. Stationary and nonstationary solutions are analyzed considering diffusion and directed migration of species. Conclusion. The trophic function that considers the heterogeneity of the resource is proposed, which does not lead to paradoxical dynamics.

Taxis spend a large amount of time idle, searching for passengers. The routes vacant taxis should follow in order to minimize their idle times are hard to calculate; they depend on complex effects like passenger demand, traffic conditions, and inter-taxi competition. Here we explore if reinforcement learning (RL) can be used for this purpose. Using real-world data from three major cities, we show RL-taxis can indeed learn to minimize their idle times in different environments. In particular, a single RL-taxi competing with a population of regular taxis learns to out-perform its rivals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nonlocal advection is a key process in a range of biological systems, from cells within individuals to the movement of whole organisms. Consequently, in recent years, there has been increasing attention on modeling non-local advection mathematically. These often take the form of partial differential equations, with integral terms modeling the nonlocality. One common formalism is the aggregationdiffusion equation, a class of advection-diffusion models with nonlocal advection. This was originally used to model a single population but has recently been extended to the multispecies case to model the way organisms may alter their movement in the presence of coexistent species. Here we prove existence theorems for a class of nonlocal multispecies advection-diffusion models, with an arbitrary number of coexistent species. We prove global existence for models in n = 1 spatial dimension and local existence for n > 1. We describe an efficient spectral method for numerically solving these models and provide an example simulation output. Overall, this helps provide a solid mathematical foundation for studying the effect of interspecies interactions on movement and space use. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Growing attention has been directed by South African commuter rights groups towards the incidence of sexual violence experienced by women when commuting in minibus taxis. Against this backdrop, data was collected through a series of unstructured individual interviews with 14 South African women. Putting to work the concept of affective atmosphere, findings revealed that the ways in which these women articulated the threat of sexual violence in minibus taxis was co-produced through shifting taxi↔commuters↔bodies assemblages which not only informed how the threat of sexual violence was experienced, but, also, how their own bodies, men's bodies, and everyday commuting were negotiated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We study taxi markets in Singapore to understand market entry in the field. Although market-entry games in the laboratory consistently produce equilibrium outcomes, we show that a lack of market knowledge hinders the markets from consistently reaching equilibrium in the field. In Singapore, a small, 720-square-kilometre island city that can be divided into 29 taxi markets, full equilibrium is elusive: 68% of the market-entry decisions made by the 2,728 taxi drivers in our data could be improved. Using three months of earnings and detailed movement data from these taxi drivers, we find an average 20% gap in marginal wage rates across markets. We use dynamic programming to derive the optimal solution for more than 3 million search decisions and find that only 32% of the searches ended in an optimal market. Finally, we find that market knowledge developed in a given month explains an additional 3% variation of the earning losses in the 2.6 million decisions for the subsequent two months, an improvement in model fit of 74%, whereas strategic thinking and minimization risk have no impact on earning loss. This paper was accepted by Yan Chen, behavioral economics and decision analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Platform work has grown significantly in the last decade. High-profile legal cases have highlighted the grey area which platform work inhabits in terms of the employment relationship and have raised concerns about the quality and conditions of work. Platform operators claim they are neutral intermediaries, yet often control over scheduling and tasks lies with them. This article presents a theoretical framework that integrates macro and micro-level analyses to account for the production of hegemony and playing out of consent, coercion and resistance within platform work. It does so by rearticulating Burawoy's concept of hegemonic despotism by drawing upon Foucauldian notions of neoliberal governmentality and reasserting the centrality of Gramsci's work in understanding power and hegemony, in particular the concept of contradictory consciousness and the dialogical contest between hegemonic 'common sense' and 'good sense', which constitutes our understanding and sense-making in the social world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How people detach from financial relations is a critical but overlooked dimension of economic life. This paper offers a response by exploring how financial loss is reckoned with in the wake of disruptive digital technological change. It examines the experiences of people who have lost significant financial investments owing to the rise of gig economy rideshare platforms to evaluate how a loss of investment is reckoned with as both a financial and existential challenge. Through fieldwork with owners of taxi licences in Melbourne, Australia, the paper contributes to debates on affective investments within geography and beyond to argue that financial and affective investments are inextricably linked. For these investors, their financial loss precipitates the loss of affective investments expressed in terms of a loss of faith in institutions; a loss of face in terms of public respect; and a loss of conviction in terms of an inability to move forward with their lives. The paper argues that reckoning with these losses involves working on one's active and passive affections—capacities to act and sense. The paper concludes that this work of divestment is difficult and acceptance is not guaranteed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Being an active field for the interplay of diverse linguistic processes such as condensation, displacement, substitution and ellipsis manifested through a wide variety of literary devices in the pursuit to expand the semantic possibilities of language and communicate the experiential and interpersonal meanings aesthetically, the language of poetry and the unique ways by which different linguistic elements in it are structured and sequenced has always been a matter of curiosity among the linguists (Levin 1963a, Baker 1967, Landon 1968, Jakobson 1968, Cable 1970, Cureton 1981, Muller 1981). Expanding the scope of this linguistic enquiry to the poetry of North-East India, the present paper by the use of SFL model of taxis explores the text construction strategies in the poems of two hitherto linguistically unexplored North-East Indian poets Robin S. Ngangom and Mamang Dai in an endeavor to ascertain the most frequently used structures in the poems of these two poets, the tactic relations in the clause complexes in their poems, the use of embedding in their structures and the similarities or variations in the poetry of these two poets on account of the usage of taxis and embedding. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The question of qualifying the meaning of allied means, which in traditional grammar are defined as syntactic markers of “immediate” or “fast” succession, and in the part of corpus studies are considered as connectors of “immediate succession”, is studied. Complex sentences with a conjunction “yedva” [hardly] is the object of the study. The types of taxis relations that are expressed in such sentences are analyzed. The research has shown that the grammatical semantics of sentences with the conjunction of “immediate succession” is determined by a whole complex of categorical features, the most important of which is the linguistic representation of time in events. This feature is an indicator of the category of the time order. It was found that the sentences under consideration signal “disturbance of the natural course of events”, and the marker of such a “failure” is a conjunction “yedva” [hardly]. The authors believe that its semantic function, is complicated by the meta-meaning “exaggeration”, which indicates a special communicative attitude of the speaker. The relevance of the research lies in the consistent functional and semantic interpretation of grammatical phenomena. Such interpretation takes into account the established grammatical tradition of considering syntactic units. In the context of modern linguistic research, the scientific continuity of research paradigms is extremely important.

Dicyemids (Phylum Dicyemida) are endosymbionts present in the kidneys of benthic cephalopods. They usually consist of 10 to 40 cells and are characterized by 2 distinct body types: vermiform individuals and infusoriform larvae. Vermiform individuals remain attached to the internal surface of the host's renal appendages, while infusoriform larvae leave the renal sac to search for a new host. To investigate how dicyemids respond to various host and environmental cues, we evaluated phototaxis, chemotaxis, thigmotaxis, and rheotaxis responses of vermiform individuals and infusoriform larvae of 2 dicyemid species in a laboratory setting. Vermiform individuals did not exhibit phototaxis and chemotaxis to the major components of the host: urine, tissue fluids, or extracts of the host gills. However, they showed positive thigmotaxis and positive rheotaxis to slow water flow, probably contributing to enabling attachment to the renal appendages and remaining in the renal sac, respectively. The infusoriform larvae exhibited negative chemotaxis to host blood and negative thigmotaxis, but there was no evidence of phototaxis and rheotaxis. Negative thigmotaxis may facilitate the release of infusoriform embryos from the renal appendages. Negative chemotaxis to the host blood suggests that the infusoriform larvae do not enter through the vascular system to gain access to the renal sac, so the process by which infusoriform larvae enter the cephalopod host is yet to be determined., (© American Society of Parasitologists 2024.)