Durham University

It’s not who you know: sociometric position did not shape children’s innovation or imitation propensities

Introduction The capacity for cumulative culture depends on the interplay between social learning and innovation, yet the social-ecological factors that shape individual variation in these processes remain poorly understood. Children’s position within peer networks has been theor...

A Novel Bioengineering Approach to Breast Cancer Invasion In Vitro Through Enhancing the Value of Existing Breast Cancer Epithelial Lineages

Breast cancer incidence is rising globally. The emerging literature implicates cancer cell interactions with their surrounding microenvironment as a clinically significant driver of cell migration and metastasis. Current in vitro modelling approaches often rely on basic two-dimen...

Cosmological Constraints from Full-scale Clustering and Galaxy–Galaxy Lensing with DESI DR1

Abstract We present constraints on cosmic structure growth from the analysis of galaxy clustering and galaxy–galaxy lensing with galaxies from the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) Data Release 1. Our analysis includes four samples drawn from the Bright Galaxy Survey (B...

Characterisation and modelling of lightning strokes as point events in time and space

Abstract. Lightning is a spatio-temporal phenomenon comprised of individual strikes with specific occurrence times and spatial coordinates. This study models and characterises lightning strikes from single thunderstorms, treating each strike as a point event. Utilising real-world...

On the benefits of temporal aggregation on forecasting and stock control: empirical evidence from statistical and machine learning methods

The ADIDA forecasting approach broke into the operational research literature in 2011, originally as a method for intermittent demand forecasting; 15 years and 226 citations later, with applications spanning from normal and intermittent to hierarchical demand, and inspiring the c...

Seismological Constraints on Subduction and Suture Zone Architecture in the Central African Copperbelt

Summary Central Africa marks a major collisional zone of the Pan-African Orogeny, involving convergence of the Congo and Kalahari plates during Gondwana assembly (~600–500 Ma). This collision formed the Lufilian Belt and one of the world’s most significant metallogenic provinces—...

The cultural evolution of play and magic dolls across 110 societies

Dolls represent one of the most widespread and enduring material objects that humans create across societies. The pervasiveness of dolls can offer novel insights into the role of human material culture in processes of cultural evolution. While commonly considered children's toys...

Signs of power: giant ficron handaxes may have played a non-utilitarian role in structuring social groups in MIS 9 Britain

Giant ficrons are a rare but recurrent sub-type of Acheulean handaxe, that in Britain are predominantly found in assemblages dating to the MIS 9 interglacial. A variety of theories have aimed to explain the striking size and appearance of giant ficrons as reflecting their use in...

Interannual and seasonal evolution of supraglacial drainage systems on Nivlisen Ice Shelf, East Antarctica

Abstract. Supraglacial channel networks (SCNs) represent critical components of the surface drainage system on Antarctic ice shelves, facilitating the redistribution of meltwater, including into and out of supraglacial lakes, potentially influencing ice-shelf stability. However,...

To Acquire or to Ally? Foreign Competition and Firm Boundary

ABSTRACT This study examines how foreign competition influences firms’ external growth strategies. Exploiting staggered US import tariff reductions as a quasi‐natural experiment, we find that heightened competition leads firms to expand their use of strategic alliances. This patt...

Life cycle environmental and cost analysis of a building insulated with different insulation materials: a British case study

Purpose To evaluate the whole-life environmental and economic performance of four insulation materials used in the UK, hemp fibre, wood fibre, glass wool and extruded polystyrene (XPS), by comparing their embodied and operational impacts within a consistent regulatory and modelli...

A photoinduced, FeX3-catalyzed, stereo- and regio-selective halofunctionalization of olefins with MXn via a radical-polar crossover reaction

The classical reaction for the halofunctionalization of olefins involves hazardous and highly toxic molecular halogens. The goal of chemists is to establish green, inherently safe, highly efficient and sustainable synthetic methods. Here, we report a green approach for the halofu...

Rethinking Diaspora Agency in Peace and Conflict

Diasporas’ versatile roles as victims of conflict, participants in conflict and agents of peacebuilding have been widely explored. We observe that diaspora contributions to ongoing conflicts and subsequent peacebuilding mechanisms have long been framed through a binary lens. Unti...

AI Companions and Loneliness: Conceptualizing and Operationalizing Synthetic Mindfulness and Exploring Its Role in Alleviating Loneliness

ABSTRACT The rise of AI companions has sparked interest in their potential to alleviate the growing social problem of loneliness, yet evidence of their effectiveness remains unsettled. Drawing on social surrogacy theory with a theories‐in‐use approach, this research introduces sy...

Halo mass functions in mixed cold and fuzzy dark matter models

Abstract We investigate the impact of mixed cold and fuzzy dark matter (referred to as MDM) cosmologies on the halo mass function (HMF) using numerical simulations performed with the AxiREPO framework. We consider models in which an ultralight axion-like component with mass m = 1...

Continuous Active Correction of Deployable Space Telescopes Using Machine Learning

Achieving high-resolution imaging for a deployable space telescope requires segments co-phased to nanometer precision. Typical alignment uses point sources (distant stars) or extended ground scenes. An on-board active correction system has been developed to provide continuous ali...

Reimagining nonviolence: Palestinian popular resistance and the Gandhian ideals in a settler-colonial context

Gandhi remains a major reference point in scholarship on nonviolent resistance, but the relevance of his political thought to Palestine is often asserted more readily than it is examined. This article reassesses that relationship by placing Gandhian nonviolence in conversation wi...

Edge Multiway Cut and Node Multiway Cut are Hard for Planar Subcubic Graphs

Abstract It is known that the weighted version of Edge Multiway Cut (also known as Multiterminal Cut ) is -complete on planar graphs of maximum degree 3. In contrast, for the unweighted version, -completeness is only known for planar graphs of maximum degree 11. In fact, the comp...

Diasporas and conflict transformation: Towards a new analytical framework

Diasporas are increasingly perceived as influential actors in contemporary conflicts as they directly or indirectly engage in peacebuilding and conflict resolution in their countries of origin and residence. Existing scholarship has well analysed what roles diasporas can play, ho...

The DESI Y1 RR Lyrae Catalog. I. Empirical Modeling of the Cyclic Variation of Spectroscopic Properties and a Chemodynamical Analysis of the Outer Halo

Abstract We present the catalog of RR Lyrae stars (RRLs) observed in the first year of operations of the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) survey. This catalog contains 6240 RRLs out to ∼120 kpc from the Galactic center and over 12,000 individual epochs with homogeneous...