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This paper explores the emergence and role of rural capitalists in colonial Sub-Saharan Africa by comparing three peasant-based economies: Bechuanaland, the Gold Coast and Tanganyika. Using social tables, we estimate the population and income shares of better earning agricultural producers and assess their impact on rural inequality and development. We find that rural capitalists in each colony ad
The emergence of large language models (LLMs) has made it easier than ever to create chatbots capable of generating human-like responses to user inputs. Moreover, improvements in text-to-speech and speech-to-text make it possible to converse with these systems, not just in text but also through speech. These improvements have led to an increase in chatbot applications across various contexts, such
Numerous studies show an association between military pressures and fiscal development, often based on cross-national correlations between wars and fiscal outcomes (e.g., tax ratios). However, investments in fiscal capacity may take time to yield higher tax revenues, obscuring the importance of factors that contributed to those investments. This article shifts attention from fiscal outcomes to the
Many audio applications, including echo-cancellation and active noise control, rely on the availability of accurately estimated room impulse responses (RIRs). For these applications, it is common that the source signal is short and primarily consists of speech or music, which may cause the estimation of the RIR to be poorly conditioned. Although priors on the amplitudes of the RIR could in princip
Childhood stunting (height‑for‑age z‑score < −2) remains a global public health challenge, and national averages often mask subnational clustering and spatial heterogeneity of underlying determinants. Across four papers, this thesis integrates geocoded household data with gridded geospatial surfaces from nationally representative survey data to map stunting hotspots, quantify spatially varying and
Iridium ditelluride (IrTe2) as a two-dimensional (2D) transition metal dichalcogenide (TMDC) has attracted significant attention as a promising catalyst for oxygen evolution reactions (OERs). Although its electrochemical performance has been explored, detailed surface–state analyses are essential to fully elucidate the underlying catalytic mechanisms. Here, we fabricated surface-modulated IrTe2 th
We consider a game with two players, consisting of a number of rounds, where the first player to win rounds becomes the overall winner. Who wins each individual round is governed by a certain urn having two types of balls (type 1 and type 2). At each round, we randomly pick a ball from the urn, and its type determines which of the two players wins. We study the game under three regimes. In the fir
Advances in liquid chromatography–mass spectrometry have significantly improved proteomic analyses of human plasma. However, information at the level of intact proteoforms remains limited due to the high dynamic range of protein abundance and the complexity of post-translational modifications. To address this challenge, we introduce soluble plasma proteoform analysis via acetonitrile precipitation
The present study was motivated by the unusually large differences in solubility observed between two polymorphic forms of an antibiotic active pharmaceutical ingredient, oxytetracycline hydrochloride. These differences significantly exceed typical polymorphic solubility variations. Through detailed structural analysis, we demonstrate that forms I and II are not true polymorphs but pseudopolymorph
Background: Whole Transcriptome Sequencing (WTS) is a comprehensive alternative to targeted panels for detecting gene fusions and splice variants. To integrate WTS into clinical diagnostics, we compared its performance against established fusion assays (Archer FusionPlex and TSO500 RNA). Methods: WTS was evaluated in an initial cohort of 64 FFPE tumor samples, and quality control (QC) thresholds w
Bifunctional DNA glycosylases employ an active site lysine or the N-terminus to form a Schiff base with an abasic (AP) site base excision repair intermediate. For 8-oxoguanine DNA glycosylase 1 (OGG1), cleaving this reversible structure is the rate-determining step in the initiation of 8-oxoguanine (8-oxoG) repair in DNA. Evolution has led OGG1 to use a product-assisted catalysis approach, where t
Whereas theoretical attacks on standardized crypto primitives rarely lead to actual practical attacks, the situation is different for side-channel attacks. Improvements in the performance of side-channel attacks are of utmost importance.In this paper, we propose a framework to be used in key-recovery side-channel attacks on CCA-secure post-quantum encryption schemes. The basic idea is to construct
The atmosphere, ocean, and sea ice components in Earth system models are coupled via boundary conditions at the sea surface. Standard coupling algorithms correspond to the first step of an iteration, so-called Schwarz waveform relaxation. Not iterating is computationally cheap but introduces a numerical coupling error, which we aim to quantify for the case of a coupled single column model: the EC-
We discuss instrumentalism as a component of the social changes that accompanied the second industrial revolution, following particularly the case of Germany. These changes constituted a departure from the Enlightenment tradition of natural philosophers towards a new approach to knowledge. We claim that instrumentalism cannot be separated from the disciplining of science that produced the sciences
Water resources are a critical societal issue. As they are more and more limited, their distribution, usage and contamination are of vital importance. In the Beauce region, there are concerns on both the water quality and quantity because of farming and the related groundwater contamination. Since water is a vector of contamination, these questions require a precise vadose zone water content chara
We present an innovative hydrogeophysical approach for non-invasive quantification of the unsaturated water flow. For the water content measurements, we apply the Magnetic Resonance Sounding (MRS) method in the time-lapse mode. For inversion of MRS measurements, we approximate the subsurface by a horizontally stratified media. Laterally, the MRS estimated water content is averaged over the area be
Accurate grading of Oil Palm Fresh Fruit Bunches (FFB) is pivotal for maximizing agricultural yield, yet manual assessment in unstructured environments remains labor-intensive and subjective. While Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) offer an automated solution, the conventional strategy of scaling network depth often yields diminishing returns or overfitting on moderately sized datasets. To over
Previous research in various educational areas has shown that literary texts have much to contribute through offering perspectives, contexts, and ways of presenting content. The present study has a particular focus on science education. The purpose of science education is under debate, and research as well as large-scale frameworks such as PISA increasingly highlight student agency and action comp
