Ransomware groups pose a threat to both the economy and national security, yet little is known about their structural dynamics. This study analyses the Conti group using leaked Jabber encrypted instant messaging chat data (similar to Messenger) and Relational Event Models to examine how preferential attachment and triadic closure mechanisms shape its communication network. Findings show Conti prioritised efficiency through centralisation but mitigated risks via compartmentalisation, creating a hybrid structure that balances speed and secrecy. This adaptive approach enhances both effectiveness and resilience. The research provides new insights into the evolution of ransomware groups and suggests that disruption strategies should target internal cohesion rather than external infrastructure.
In health research, communities rarely receive findings in a form they can use. This problem is more complex in social network research, where findings are both relational and individual. The challenge compounds in rural, underserved settings, where low health literacy and limited exposure to scientific visualization severely constrain how results can be communicated. As part of a longitudinal personal network project on primary cancer prevention in rural areas, we developed an art gallery to return findings to the community. The installation was framed as a performative intervention that made relational structures visible, inviting awareness and reflection. It comprised seven digitally printed canvases and a three-dimensional network sculpture. Each item presented a level of social organization (personal network, household, community structure, socio-spatial concentration, and food culture) through designs intended for non-specialist viewers and supported by facilitation. The three-day exhibition attracted 103 visitors, all of whom rated its utility highly. It also revealed how the community reacted to findings about their rural context. This exploratory single-site study supports three lessons: linking each canvas to a single analytical level aided reading, the order of presentation helped viewers build a basic vocabulary for network visualization, and facilitation, more than the canvases alone, carried the interpretive work. Limitations include a single installation and ratings that seem to reflect acceptability and acquiescence rather than comprehension. Future work should directly evaluate understanding, compare reception across sites, and test refinements such as written legends. We describe a working approach, not a validated framework.
The dynamics of rough differential equations (RDEs) has recently received a lot of interest. For example, the existence of local random center manifolds for RDEs has been established. In this work, we present an approximation for local random center manifolds for RDEs driven by geometric rough paths. To this aim, we combine tools from rough path and deterministic center manifold theory to derive Taylor-like approximations of local random center manifolds. The coefficients of this approximation are stationary solutions of RDEs driven by the same geometric rough path as the original equation. We illustrate our approach for stochastic differential equations (SDEs) with linear and nonlinear multiplicative noise.
Members of the Daphnia longispina O. F. Müller, 1776 group (Branchiopoda: Cladocera) are keystone grazers in freshwater bodies around the world. Multiple cryptic species have been revealed and partially described within the last 20 years. However, high phenotypic plasticity, hybridization, and the limited number of available genetic markers have hampered attempts to fully explore species diversity and speciation factors in this group. Here, we present the first dated phylogeny of the complete D. longispina group using whole-genome data. Multiple mitochondrial relationships including divergent mitochondrial lineages are not supported by nuclear DNA. Additionally, several morphologically distinct species within two species complexes show a low genealogical divergence index, raising the question of lumping by the method. Species trees based on SNPs and gene trees differ strongly in bootstrap support for older nodes. Concordance factors do not strongly support either phylogeny, most likely due to prevalent incomplete lineage sorting. Our analyses indicate that geography has a stronger effect on the speciation of the D. longispina group than the trophic status of their habitat or introgression. We only find evidence of ancient introgression between species known to hybridize concurrently. This study provides novel insights into the species relationships in the D. longispina group.
The rise of nationalist and populist candidates worldwide provides compelling evidence that parties win elections, not by appealing to voters' policy preferences alone, but rather by connecting those preferences to group identities. This state-of-the-field article argues that party scholars need to integrate constructivist insights from neighboring fields to better understand the role of group identities in party competition. We review recent demand- and supply-side studies on the role of group identities in elections and bring them into conversation with the literature on ethnic politics and nationalism and political economic models of identity politics. On this basis, we suggest a research agenda that models voters as having both policy preferences and desires for self-esteem and self-consistency, which are mediated by their identification with social groups. Voters want to benefit others they see as being similar to themselves, to raise the status of the groups they identify with, and to maintain self-consistency by narrowing the gap between themselves and members of groups with which they identify. Political parties strategically combine policy offers with group appeals to address - and shape - all these motivations. Shifting from a 'policy-only' towards a 'policy-cum-identity' paradigm will enable the field of party politics to better understand the dynamics of real-world electoral competition and to reconcile its models with the latest developments in the political theory of representation.
