In order to maximize the utility of future studies of trilobite ontogeny, we propose a set of standard practices that relate to the collection, nomenclature, description, depiction, and interpretation of ontogenetic series inferred from articulated specimens belonging to individual species. In some cases, these suggestions may also apply to ontogenetic studies of other fossilized taxa.

Errors inherent in self-reported measures of energy intake (EI) are substantial and well documented, but correlates of misreporting remain unclear. Therefore, potential predictors of misreporting were examined. In Study One, fifty-nine individuals (BMI = 26·1 (sd 3·8) kg/m2, age = 42·7 (sd 13·6) years, females = 29) completed a 14-d stay in a residential feeding behaviour suite where eating behaviour was continuously monitored. In Study Two, 182 individuals (BMI = 25·7 (sd 3·9) kg/m2, age = 42·4 (sd 12·2) years, females = 96) completed two consecutive days in a residential feeding suite and five consecutive days at home. Misreporting was directly quantified by comparing covertly measured laboratory weighed intakes (LWI) with self-reported EI (weighed dietary record (WDR), 24-h recall, 7-d diet history, FFQ). Personal (age, sex and %body fat) and psychological traits (personality, social desirability, body image, intelligence quotient and eating behaviour) were used as predictors of misreporting. In Study One, those with lower psychoticism (P = 0·009), openness to experience (P = 0·006) and higher agreeableness (P = 0·038) reduced EI on days participants knew EI was being measured to a greater extent than on covert days. Isolated associations existed between personality traits (psychoticism and openness to experience), eating behaviour (emotional eating) and differences between the LWI and self-reported EI, but these were inconsistent between dietary assessment techniques and typically became non-significant after accounting for multiplicity of comparisons. In Study Two, sex was associated with differences between LWI and the WDR (P = 0·009), 24-h recall (P = 0·002) and diet history (P = 0·050) in the laboratory, but not home environment. Personal and psychological correlates of misreporting identified displayed no clear pattern across studies or dietary assessment techniques and had little utility in predicting misreporting.

Conventional OLS fixed-effects and GLS random-effects estimators of dynamic models that control for individual-effects are known to be biased when applied to short panel data (T ≤ 10). GMM estimators are the most used alternative but are known to have drawbacks. Transformed-likelihood estimators are unused in political science. Of these, orthogonal reparameterization estimators are only tangentially referred to in any discipline. We introduce these estimators and test their performance, demonstrating that the unused orthogonal reparameterization estimator in particular performs very well and is an improvement on the commonly used GMM estimators. When T and/or N are small, it provides efficiency gains and overcomes the issues GMM estimators encounter in the estimation of long-run effects when the coefficient on the lagged dependent variable is close to one.

Knowing the biological signals associated with appetite control is crucial for understanding the regulation of food intake. Biomarkers of appetite have been defined as physiological measures that relate to subjective appetite ratings, measured food intake, or both. Several metabolites including amino acids, lipids and glucose were proposed as key molecules associated with appetite control over 60 years ago, and along with bile acids are all among possible appetite biomarker candidates. Additional metabolites that have been associated with appetite include endocannabinoids, lactate, cortisol and β-hydroxybutyrate. However, although appetite is a complex integrative process, studies often investigated a limited number of markers in isolation. Metabolomics involves the study of small molecules or metabolites present in biological samples such as urine or blood, and may present a powerful approach to further the understanding of appetite control. Using multiple analytical techniques allows the characterisation of molecules, such as carbohydrates, lipids, amino acids, bile acids and fatty acids. Metabolomics has proven successful in identifying markers of consumption of certain foods and biomarkers implicated in several diseases. However, it has been underexploited in appetite control or obesity. The aim of the present narrative review is to: (1) provide an overview of existing metabolites that have been identified in human biofluids and associated with appetite control; and (2) discuss the potential of metabolomics to deepen understanding of appetite control in humans.

This review examines the metabolic adaptations that occur in response to negative energy balance and their potential putative or functional impact on appetite and food intake. Sustained negative energy balance will result in weight loss, with body composition changes similar for different dietary interventions if total energy and protein intake are equated. During periods of underfeeding, compensatory metabolic and behavioural responses occur that attenuate the prescribed energy deficit. While losses of metabolically active tissue during energy deficit result in reduced energy expenditure, an additional down-regulation in expenditure has been noted that cannot be explained by changes in body tissue (e.g. adaptive thermogenesis). Sustained negative energy balance is also associated with an increase in orexigenic drive and changes in appetite-related peptides during weight loss that may act as cues for increased hunger and food intake. It has also been suggested that losses of fat-free mass (FFM) could also act as an orexigenic signal during weight loss, but more data are needed to support these findings and the signalling pathways linking FFM and energy intake remain unclear. Taken together, these metabolic and behavioural responses to weight loss point to a highly complex and dynamic energy balance system in which perturbations to individual components can cause co-ordinated and inter-related compensatory responses elsewhere. The strength of these compensatory responses is individually subtle, and early identification of this variability may help identify individuals that respond well or poorly to an intervention.

The expanding literature on growth regimes has recently been applied to explain the growth of populist movements across the OECD. Such applications posit a stand-off between debtors and creditors as the core conflict that generates populism. While insightful, the theory has problems explaining why, in some European countries, such movements pre-date both the global financial crisis and the austerity measures that followed, factors that are commonly seen as causing the rise of populism. This article takes a different tack. It derives shifts in both political parties and party systems from the growth regime framework. In doing so it seeks to explain the evolution of the cartel form of party that dominated the political systems of Europe from the late 1990s through to the current period and why that form proved unable to respond meaningfully to both the financial crisis and the political crisis that followed it.

Although the effects of dietary fat and carbohydrate on satiety are well documented, little is known about the impact of these macronutrients on food hedonics. We examined the effects of ad libitum and isoenergetic meals varying in fat and carbohydrate on satiety, energy intake and food hedonics. In all, sixty-five overweight and obese individuals (BMI=30·9 (sd 3·8) kg/m2) completed two separate test meal days in a randomised order in which they consumed high-fat/low-carbohydrate (HFLC) or low-fat/high-carbohydrate (LFHC) foods. Satiety was measured using subjective appetite ratings to calculate the satiety quotient. Satiation was assessed by intake at ad libitum meals. Hedonic measures of explicit liking (subjective ratings) and implicit wanting (speed of forced choice) for an array of HFLC and LFHC foods were also tested before and after isoenergetic HFLC and LFHC meals. The satiety quotient was greater after ad libitum and isoenergetic meals during the LFHC condition compared with the HFLC condition (P=0·006 and P=0·001, respectively), whereas ad libitum energy intake was lower in the LFHC condition (P<0·001). Importantly, the LFHC meal also reduced explicit liking (P<0·001) and implicit wanting (P=0·011) for HFLC foods compared with the isoenergetic HFLC meal, which failed to suppress the hedonic appeal of subsequent HFLC foods. Therefore, when coupled with increased satiety and lower energy intake, the greater suppression of hedonic appeal for high-fat food seen with LFHC foods provides a further mechanism for why these foods promote better short-term appetite control than HFLC foods.

The idea of body weight regulation implies that a biological mechanism exerts control over energy expenditure and food intake. This is a central tenet of energy homeostasis. However, the source and identity of the controlling mechanism have not been identified, although it is often presumed to be some long-acting signal related to body fat, such as leptin. Using a comprehensive experimental platform, we have investigated the relationship between biological and behavioural variables in two separate studies over a 12-week intervention period in obese adults (total n 92). All variables have been measured objectively and with a similar degree of scientific control and precision, including anthropometric factors, body composition, RMR and accumulative energy consumed at individual meals across the whole day. Results showed that meal size and daily energy intake (EI) were significantly correlated with fat-free mass (FFM, P values < 0·02–0·05) but not with fat mass (FM) or BMI (P values 0·11–0·45) (study 1, n 58). In study 2 (n 34), FFM (but not FM or BMI) predicted meal size and daily EI under two distinct dietary conditions (high-fat and low-fat). These data appear to indicate that, under these circumstances, some signal associated with lean mass (but not FM) exerts a determining effect over self-selected food consumption. This signal may be postulated to interact with a separate class of signals generated by FM. This finding may have implications for investigations of the molecular control of food intake and body weight and for the management of obesity.

Investigations of the impact of physical activity on appetite control have the potential to throw light on the understanding of energy balance and therefore, upon body weight regulation and the development of obesity. Given the complexity of the landscape influencing weight regulation, research strategies should reflect this complexity. We have developed a research approach based on the concept of the psychobiological system (multi-level measurement and analysis) and an experimental platform that respects the operations of an adaptive regulating biological system. It is important that both sides of the energy balance equation (activity and diet) receive similar detailed levels of analysis. The experimental platform uses realistic and fully supervised levels of physical activity, medium-term (not acute) interventions, measurement of body composition, energy metabolism (indirect calorimetry), satiety physiology (gut peptides), homeostatic and hedonic processes of appetite control, non-exercise activity, obese adult participants and both genders. This research approach has shown that the impact of physical activity on appetite control is characterised by large individual differences. Changes in body composition, waist circumference and health benefits are more meaningful than changes in weight. Further, we are realising that the acute effects do not predict what will happen in the longer term. The psychobiological systems approach offers a strategy for simultaneously investigating biological and behavioural processes relevant to understanding obese people and how obesity can be managed. This experimental platform provides opportunities for industry to examine the impact of foods under scientifically controlled conditions relevant to the real world.

A discrete-element model of sea ice is used to study how a 90˚ change in wind direction alters the pattern of faults generated through mechanical failure of the ice. the sea-ice domain is 400 km in size and consists of polygonal floes obtained through a Voronoi tessellation. Initially the floes are frozen together through viscous–elastic joints that can break under sufficient compressive, tensile and shear deformation. A constant wind-stress gradient is applied until the initially frozen ice pack is broken into roughly diamond-shaped aggregates, with crack angles determined by wing-crack formation. Then partial refreezing of the cracks delineating the aggregates is modelled through reduction of their length by a particular fraction, the ice pack deformation is neglected and the wind stress is rotated by 90˚. New cracks form, delineating aggregates with a different orientation. Our results show the new crack orientation depends on the refrozen fraction of the initial faults: as this fraction increases, the new cracks gradually rotate to the new wind direction, reaching 90˚ for fully refrozen faults. Such reorientation is determined by a competition between new cracks forming at a preferential angle determined by the wing-crack theory and at old cracks oriented at a less favourable angle but having higher stresses due to shorter contacts across the joints.

Assessment of ontogenetic and geographic variation can have substantial influence on species delimitation and thereby on perceived patterns of species-level morphological variation and diversity in space and time. Here we describe the ontogeny and intraspecific variation of the early Cambrian trilobite, Zacanthopsis palmeri n. sp., based on silicified material from east-central Nevada, USA. Zacanthopsis palmeri is the oldest documented Cambrian corynexochine to shift from possessing a fused rostal-hypostomal plate to a functional hypostomal suture in mature specimens during ontogeny. Six geographically distinct samples of mature Z. palmeri from a single silicified limestone bed traceable over tens of kilometers in east-central Nevada permit exploration of geographic variation within this species using geometric morphometric methods. No one sample encompasses all of the shape variation expressed by Z. palmeri and several geographically segregated samples show some degree of morphological separation in pairwise comparison. Nonetheless, these samples are not qualitatively or quantitatively different from one another when all samples are taken into account. The degree of variation within Z. palmeri is similar in magnitude to the differences between other species in the genus known from much less material.

The authors draw upon the principles of the social identity tradition in order to elaborate a psychological model of mass communication. This centres on the way in which people construe their social identities and the meanings of events for these identities. They then go on to look at the ways in which these principles have been employed both to mobilize collective support for genocide and collective resistance to genocide. They conclude that it is critical to understand these principles and to apply them effectively in order to promote social harmony and the defence of vulnerable groups.