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2023 marked the 50th anniversary of the 1973 Eldfell eruption on the island of Heimaey, Iceland. The eruption began unexpectedly at 1:50 a.m. on the 23rd of January 1973, creating a need to evacuate all 5300 residents to the Icelandic mainland by fishing fleet. The eruption is synonymous with the islanders’ fight to save their town by spraying cold seawater onto the advancing lava flows. Previous research has focussed on the physical volcanology and igneous petrology of the eruption and the wider Vestmannaeyjar Volcanic System; however, very little research has focussed on the social impacts of the eruption. Fieldwork identified how the 1973 eruption is remembered and commemorated by the residents of Heimaey both in public and private settings. Over 50 memorials are discussed, including artworks, sculptures, museum exhibitions, in-person events, and online digital repositories that highlight connections to the eruption itself and to life before the eruption. Interviews and surveys with the local community draw attention to the ongoing impacts of the eruption—for example, traumatic responses to hazard events such as the Eyjafjallajökull eruption in 2010. A predominantly positive community narrative of the event has persisted for several decades. The narrative depends on the belief that no deaths were caused by the eruption, the successful rebuilding and recovery of the town, and the resilience of the residents. The last ten years, however, have seen a change in how the community discuss their experiences of the eruption, with a new focus on the loneliness, bullying, isolation, danger, and trauma experienced during the event. Ágrip Árið 2023 voru 50 ár liðin frá Eldfellsgosinu 1973 á Heimaey. Eldgosið hófst óvænt klukkan 01.50 þann 23. janúar 1973 og þurfti að flytja 5.300 íbúana til Íslands með fiskiskipaflota. Eldgosið er samheiti við baráttu eyjarskeggja við að bjarga bænum sínum með því að úða köldum sjó á hraunið. Fyrri rannsóknir hafa beinst að eðlisfræðilegri eldfjallafræði og bergfræði gossins og víðara eldfjallakerfi Vestmannaeyja, hins vegar hafa mjög litlar rannsóknir beinst að félagslegum áhrifum gossins. Vettvangsvinna leiddi í ljós hvernig eldgosið 1973 er minnst og minnst af íbúum Heimaeyjar bæði í opinberu umhverfi og einkaumhverfi. Fjallað er um yfir 50 minnisvarða, þar á meðal listaverk, skúlptúra, safnsýningar, persónulega viðburði og stafrænar geymslur á netinu sem draga fram tengingar við eldgosið sjálft og lífið fyrir gos. Í viðtölum og könnunum við nærsamfélagið er vakin athygli á viðvarandi áhrifum eldgossins, til dæmis áfallaviðbrögðum við hættulegum atburðum nútímans eins og Eyjafjallajökulsgosinu 2010. Aðallega jákvæð samfélagsfrásögn af atburðinum hefur verið viðvarandi í nokkra áratugi. Frásögnin byggist á þeirri trú að engin dauðsföll hafi orðið af völdum eldgossins, árangursríkri endurreisn og endurheimt bæjarins og seiglu íbúanna. Síðustu tíu ár hafa hins vegar orðið róttækar breytingar á því hvernig samfélagið fjallar um upplifun sína af eldgosinu, með nýrri áherslu á einmanaleika, einelti, einangrun, hættu og áföll sem urðu fyrir atburðinum.

Book review on Manfred Hildermeier: Die rückständige Grossmacht. Russland und der Westen. München: C.H. Beck, 2022, 272 s. Book review on Martin Schulze Wessel: Der Fluch des Imperiums. Die Ukraine, Polen und der Irrweg in der russischen Geschichte. München: C.H. Beck, 2023, 352 s.

This article discusses the historical background to the medieval Icelandic sagas. It draws on the work of Icelandic historians, especially Gunnar Karlsson, to argue that the key factor was a distinctive political order established in Iceland before the conversion to Christianity. This was not a peasant democracy, as some idealizing interpretations have suggested; it was an oligarchy sui generis, with power (and a remnant of religious authority) vested in an elite of chieftains. However, there was no executive centre. This decentralized regime left its mark on the Christianizing process; the Icelanders accepted Christianity without monarchy, and for a long time without a fully empowered Church. Together with a pronounced cultural focus on narrativity, this political context explains the rise of a vernacular literature that was in many ways influenced by Christian sources, but retained a connection to pre-Christian traditions.

Review article

Abstract Background Baleen whales are a clade of gigantic and highly specialized marine mammals. Their genomes have been used to investigate their complex evolutionary history and to decipher the molecular mechanisms that allowed them to reach these dimensions. However, many unanswered questions remain, especially about the early radiation of rorquals and how cancer resistance interplays with their huge number of cells. The pygmy right whale is the smallest and most elusive among the baleen whales. It reaches only a fraction of the body length compared to its relatives and it is the only living member of an otherwise extinct family. This placement makes the pygmy right whale genome an interesting target to update the complex phylogenetic past of baleen whales, because it splits up an otherwise long branch that leads to the radiation of rorquals. Apart from that, genomic data of this species might help to investigate cancer resistance in large whales, since these mechanisms are not as important for the pygmy right whale as in other giant rorquals and right whales. Results Here, we present a first de novo genome of the species and test its potential in phylogenomics and cancer research. To do so, we constructed a multi-species coalescent tree from fragments of a whole-genome alignment and quantified the amount of introgression in the early evolution of rorquals. Furthermore, a genome-wide comparison of selection rates between large and small-bodied baleen whales revealed a small set of conserved candidate genes with potential connections to cancer resistance. Conclusions Our results suggest that the evolution of rorquals is best described as a hard polytomy with a rapid radiation and high levels of introgression. The lack of shared positive selected genes between different large-bodied whale species supports a previously proposed convergent evolution of gigantism and hence cancer resistance in baleen whales.

Human cerebral organoids (HCOs) are model systems that enable researchers to investigate the human brain in ways that had previously been impossible. The emergence of HCOs was accompanied by both expert and layperson discussions concerning the possibility of these novel entities developing sentience or consciousness. Such concerns are reflected in deliberations about how to handle and regulate their use. This perspective article resulted from an international and interdisciplinary research retreat “Ethical, Legal and Social Aspects of Human Cerebral Organoids and their Governance in Germany, the United Kingdom and the United States”, which took place in Tübingen, Germany, in August 2022. The retreat focused on whether HCO research requires new ethical and regulatory approaches. It addressed epistemic issues around the detection and theorisation of consciousness, ethical concerns around moral status and research conduct, difficulties for legislation and guidelines managing these entities, and public engagement.

As marine ecosystems respond to climate change and other stressors, it is necessary to evaluate current and past hybridization events to gain insight on the outcomes and drivers of such events. Ancestral introgression within the gadids has been suggested to allow cod to inhabit a variety of habitats. Little attention has been given to contemporary hybridization, especially within cold-water-adapted cod (Boreogadus saida Lepechin, 1774 and Arctogadus glacialis Peters, 1872). We used whole-genome, restriction-site associated, and mitochondrial sequence data to explore the degree and direction of hybridization between these species where previous hybridization had not been reported. Although nearly identical morphologically at certain life stages, we detected very distinct nuclear and mitochondrial lineages. We detected one potential hybrid with a Arctogadus mitochondrial haplotype and Boreogadus nuclear genotype, but no early generational hybrids. The presence of a late generation hybrid suggests that at least some hybrids survive to maturity and reproduce. However, a historical introgression event could not be excluded. Contemporary gene flow appears asymmetrical from Arctogadus into Boreogadus, which may be due to overlap in timing of spawning, environmental heterogeneity, or differences in population size. This study provides important baseline information for the degree of potential hybridization between these species within Alaska marine environments.

Review essay

Observational learning is a successful method for improving writing skills in various genres. We explore effects of a five lesson intervention series based on peer observation. Fifty-five Swedish 5th-grade students aged 10-12 years followed this intervention programme. The students watched short film clips with peers working with texts. Each lesson was organised according to a theme: reader's perception of the text, ordering of events, how to begin a story, how to end a story and how to edit a text. The students wrote four texts during the intervention. The quality of these texts was assessed by a panel of trained raters. Additionally, the language and reading comprehension and working memory capacity were tested. The results show that average text quality had significantly improved at the end of the intervention, and that this improvement was modulated by reading and language comprehension. Three months later, however, text quality was significantly decreased.

Abstract Atlantic salmon aquaculture is expanding, and with it, the need to find suitable replacements for conventional protein sources used in formulated feeds. Torula yeast (Cyberlindnera jadinii), has been identified as a promising alternative protein for feed and can be sustainably cultivated on lignocellulosic biomasses. The present study investigated the impact of torula yeast on the growth performance and gut microbiome of freshwater Atlantic salmon. A marine protein base diet and a mixed marine and plant protein base diet were tested, where conventional proteins were replaced with increasing inclusion levels of torula yeast, (0%, 10%, 20%). This study demonstrated that 20% torula yeast can replace fish meal without alteration to growth performance while leading to potential benefits for the gut microbiome by increasing the presence of bacteria positively associated with the host. However, when torula yeast replaced plant meal in a mixed protein diet, results suggested that 10% inclusion of yeast produced the best growth performance results but at the 20% inclusion level of yeast, potentially negative changes were observed in the gut microbial community, such as a decrease in lactic acid bacteria. This study supports the continued investigation of torula yeast for Atlantic salmon as a partial replacement for conventional proteins.

Highly fecund natural populations characterized by high early mortality abound, yet our knowledge about their recruitment dynamics is somewhat rudimentary. This knowledge gap has implications for our understanding of genetic variation, population connectivity, local adaptation, and the resilience of highly fecund populations. The concept of sweepstakes reproductive success, which posits a considerable variance and skew in individual reproductive output, is key to understanding the distribution of individual reproductive success. However, it still needs to be determined whether highly fecund organisms reproduce through sweepstakes and, if they do, the relative roles of neutral and selective sweepstakes. Here, we use coalescent-based statistical analysis of population genomic data to show that selective sweepstakes likely explain recruitment dynamics in the highly fecund Atlantic cod. We show that the Kingman coalescent (modelling no sweepstakes) and the Xi-Beta coalescent (modelling random sweepstakes), including complex demography and background selection, do not provide an adequate fit for the data. The Durrett–Schweinsberg coalescent, in which selective sweepstakes result from recurrent and pervasive selective sweeps of new mutations, offers greater explanatory power. Our results show that models of sweepstakes reproduction and multiple-merger coalescents are relevant and necessary for understanding genetic diversity in highly fecund natural populations. These findings have fundamental implications for understanding the recruitment variation of fish stocks and general evolutionary genomics of high-fecundity organisms.

Abstract The present work reports the evolution and growth of GeGaAs(O) polytype nanoislands over GaAs p‐type substrate with photoemission application in mind. Several morphological transformations from NIs to simultaneously present nanopits/holes are observed as a function of annealing parameters that is, temperature (350‐800°C) and time (5‐90 minutes). Structural and elemental analyses are executed using atomic force microscopy, scanning electron microscopy and energy dispersive X‐ray spectroscopy. Photoemission current of the nanostructured surfaces, measured upon exposure from 265 nm light emitting diode, is found to depend on the nanoislands size, which in turn depends on the annealing parameters. A maximum photoelectric emission is obtained for structure annealed at 650°C for 60 minutes, upon which an increment of roughly two orders of magnitude is observed.