University of Neuchâtel

Scaffolding students-AI dialogue for safe educational interactions

Abstract Adolescents are the fastest-growing and largest age group adopting Large Language Models (LLMs), tools not specifically designed for their educational, emotional, and developmental needs. Safe, pedagogically grounded AI interactions are essential for both AI literacy and...

Revisiting the Normalization of the Moran's I Index: A Correlation‐Based Approach With Inference

Summary Moran's index, the canonical measure of spatial autocorrelation, may take values outside the interval when arbitrary spatial weight matrices are used. This lack of boundedness complicates interpretation and may lead to misleading conclusions. We systematically evaluate se...

Chimpanzee food calls provide information about the value and type of food: a playback study

Abstract Functionally referential signals are taxonomically widespread but vary greatly in the specificity of information they convey to receivers. Chimpanzee food calls indicate the relative preference value of the eliciting food in a way that is intelligible to receivers, but w...

A reusable model of pangenome selection informs optimal surveillance strategies over vaccine introductions

Abstract Background The human pathogen Streptococcus pneumoniae is a major cause of disease, including pneumonia and meningitis. The introduction of Pneumococcal Conjugate Vaccines (PCVs) initially reduced the burden of disease through a reduction of colonisation by vaccine-targe...

Host status of cultivated and wild Fragaria genotypes to the quarantine root-knot nematodes Meloidogyne chitwoodi and Meloidogyne fallax

Abstract The quarantine root-knot nematodes Meloidogyne chitwoodi and Meloidogyne fallax pose a significant phytosanitary risk to agricultural production, yet little is known about their ability to reproduce on strawberry. This study evaluated the host status of cultivated and wi...

A determinant on birational maps of Severi–Brauer surfaces

We define a determinant on the group of automorphisms of non-trivial Severi–Brauer surfaces over a perfect field. Using the generators and relations, we extend this determinant to birational maps between Severi–Brauer surfaces. By means of this determinant and a group homomorphis...

Pinwheels in symplectic rational and ruled surfaces and non‐squeezing of rational homology balls

Abstract We use almost toric fibrations and the symplectic rational blow‐up to determine when certain Lagrangian pinwheels, which we call liminal , embed in symplectic rational and ruled surfaces. The case of ‐pinwheels, namely Lagrangian , answers a question of Kronheimer in the...

Deconstructing Thinghood = Constructing Personhood?

This article analyses the deconstruction of animals' thinghood status in Switzerland, asking what this reform reveals about the construction of new legal subjects within a democratic legal order. It aims to highlight the importance of the legislative procedure in such cases. The...