The importance of worldwide linguistic and cultural diversity for climate change resilience.

Local minority languages and dialects, through the local knowledge and expertise associated with them, can play major roles in analysing climate change and biodiversity loss, in facilitating community awareness of environmental crises and in setting up locally-adapted resilience and sustainability strategies. While the situation and contribution of Indigenous and Tribal Peoples are of emblematic importance, the issue of the relationships between cultural and linguistic diversity and environmental awareness and protection does not solely concern peripheral highly-specialized communities in specific ecosystems of the Global South, but constitutes a worldwide challenge, throughout all of the countries, whatever their geographical location, their economical development, or their political status. Environmental emergency and climate change resilience should therefore raise international awareness on the need to promote the survival and development of minority languages and dialects and to take into account their creativity and expertise in relation to the dynamics of their local environments.

A 5 m dataset of digital terrain model derivatives across mainland France.

A dataset of three digital terrain model (DTM) derivatives was produced at 5 m spatial resolution across mainland France. This dataset includes (i) a topographic wetness index (TWI) that characterizes potential soil wetness as a function of the contributing area and local slope, (ii) a multi-scale topographic position color composite (MTPCC) that describes the position of a pixel relative to its neighborhood at three spatial scales, and (iii) a vertical distance to channel network index (VDCNI) that expresses the vertical height between the elevation of a pixel and the nearest channel. These three raster layers were derived from the French national airborne DTM at 5 m spatial resolution and the vector layer of the channel network of the national hydrological database.

National wetland mapping using remote-sensing-derived environmental variables, archive field data, and artificial intelligence.

While wetland ecosystem services are widely recognized, the lack of fine-scale national inventories prevents successful implementation of conservation policies. Wetlands are difficult to map due to their complex fine-grained spatial pattern and fuzzy boundaries. However, the increasing amount of open high-spatial-resolution remote sensing data and accurately georeferenced field data archives, as well as progress in artificial intelligence (AI), provide opportunities for fine-scale national wetland mapping.

Photophysical and Protonation Time Resolved Studies of Donor-Acceptor Branched Systems With Pyridine Acceptors.

A comparative study of the photophysical properties of octupolar pyridyl-terminated triphenylamine molecule, with its quadrupolar and dipolar analogues, by means of ambient and low temperature steady state spectroscopy and femtosecond to nanosecond time-resolved fluorescence spectroscopy is reported. The push-pull molecules bear triphenylamine electron donating core, pyridine peripheral electron acceptors, and acetylene π-bridge. The samples were studied in solvents of varying polarity and also upon addition of small amounts of acetic acid to induce protonation of the pyridine group.

Visual laterality in dolphins when looking at (un)familiar humans.

Understanding the evolution of brain lateralisation including the origin of human visual laterality requires an understanding of brain lateralisation in related animal species. However, little is known about the visual laterality of marine mammals. To help correct this lack, we evaluated the influence of familiarity with a human on the visual response of five captive bottlenose dolphins.