STORRE

The coastal environments of the Black Sea are of high ecological and socio-economic importance. Understanding changes along this extensive and complex coastline can help us comprehend the pressures from nature, society, and extreme events, providing valuable insights for more effective management and the prevention of future adverse changes. Current methods for monitoring coastal dynamics rely on the accurate extraction of coastlines from optical and/or Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) images,...

The arcuate fascicle (AF) is the main fibre tract in the brain for human language. It connects frontal and temporal language areas in the superior and middle temporal gyrus (MTG). The AF’s connection to the MTG was considered unique to humans and has influenced theories of the evolution of language. Here, using high-resolution diffusion MRI of post-mortem brains, we demonstrate that both wild and captive chimpanzees have a direct AF connection into the MTG, albeit weaker than in humans. This ...

Pathogens often exert strong selection on host populations, yet considerable genetic variation for infection defence persists. Environmental heterogeneity may cause fitness trade-offs that prevent fixation of host alleles affecting survival when exposed to pathogens in wild populations. Pathogens are extensively used in biocontrol for crop protection. However, the risks of pest resistance evolution to biocontrol are frequently underappreciated: the key drivers of fitness trade-offs for pathog...

The quantity and positioning of glazing on a building's facade has a strong influence on the building's heating, lighting, and cooling performance. Evolutionary algorithms have been effective in finding glazing layouts that optimise the trade-offs between these properties. However, this is time-consuming, needing many calls to a building performance simulation. Surrogate fitness functions have been used previously to speed up optimisation without compromising solution quality; our novelty is ...