Space weather describes the way in which the Sun, and conditions in space more generally, impact human activity and technology both in space and on the ground. It is now well understood that space weather represents a significant threat to infrastructure resilience, and is a source of risk that is wide-ranging in its impact and the pathways by which this impact may occur. Although space weather...

Introduction Both in generating human activity and in the visual perception of it, the brain is confronted with the many degrees of freedom involved in the movement of body and limbs. Not unlikely, the perception of motor actions is supported by mechanisms that are very similar to those in control of these actions. Hints towards an interaction between perceptual and action processes can be foun...

We investigate if known extrinsic and intrinsic factors fully account for the complex features observed in recordings of human activity as measured from forearm motion in subjects undergoing their regular daily routine. We demonstrate that the apparently random forearm motion possesses dynamic patterns characterized by robust scale-invariant and nonlinear features. These patterns remain stable ...

Peer-review is neither reliable, fair, nor a valid basis for predicting 'impact': as quality control, peer-review is not fit for purpose. Endorsing the consensus, I offer a reframing: while a normative social process, peer-review also shapes the writing of a scientific paper. In so far as 'cognition' describes enabling conditions for flexible behavior, the practices of peer-review thus constrai...

Recent research bridging mechanistic and ecological approaches demonstrates that plant attributes can affect herbivores, natural enemies of herbivores, and their interaction. Such effects may be genetically variable among plants and/or induced in individual plants by herbivore attack, and are mediated by primary plant attributes (i.e. nutritional quality and physical structure) and defense-rela...

Cultural polymorphism is a difficult phenomenon, which has multiform influence on the society's life. The active interest of society to local folk knowledge in life-support activities and Nature using is one of the distinctive marks of modern time. This interest has fallen on the period of active transformations of environment as a result of industrial society's pressing on Nature, and the gene...

We study the susceptible-infected model with power-law waiting time distributions P (τ ) ∼ τ, as a model of spreading dynamics under heterogeneous human activity patterns. We found that the average number of new infections n(t) at time t decays as a power law in the long time limit, n(t) ∼ t, leading to extremely slow prevalence decay. We also found that the exponent in the spreading dynamics, ...

For diseases that infect humans or livestock, transmission dynamics are at least partially dependent on human activity and therefore human behaviour. However, the impact of human behaviour on disease transmission is relatively understudied, especially in the context of heterogeneous contact structures such as described by a social network. Here, we use a strategic game, coupled with a simple di...

Mudslides are widespread in the world, especially in areas occupied by highly-fissured plastic stiff clays. Despite their strong impact on structures, infrastructures and, in general, human activity, the knowledge concerning the causes and mechanisms of mudslides is still rather limited. The paper reports some results of long-term research on mudslides in tectonised highlyfissured plastic clay ...

Human exposure to fine particles can have significant harmful effects on the respiratory and cardiovascular system. To investigate daily exposure characteristics to PM2.5 with ambient concentrations in an urban environment, a personal exposure measurements were conducted for school children, office workers and at their residents, in the city of Taj 'Agra', India. In order to account for all the...