Interest in ageism research has grown immensely since the term was coined. Despitemethodological innovations to study ageism in different settings and the application ofdifferent methods and methodologies to the topic, qualitative longitudinal studiesinvestigating ageism are still underrepresented in the field. Through qualitativelongitudinal interview data with four individuals of the same age, this study explored theapplications of qualitative longitudinal research on ageism, highlighting its potentialbenefits and challenges to the multidisciplinary study of ageism and to gerontologicalresearch. The paper presents four distinctively different narratives through whichindividuals “do,” “undo,” and “challenge” ageism in their interview dialogues over time.Doing this underlines the importance of understanding the heterogeneity andintersectionality among encounters, expressions, and dynamics of ageism. The paperconcludes with a discussion of the potential contributions that qualitative longitudinalresearch makes to ageism research and policy. NotonlBy following the lives of ordinary people across time, we can better understand howindividual experiences of aging are constructed to follow normative life-course and matchage-appropriate guidelines. Qualitative longitudinal research (QLR) has the potential totrack and closely examine the changes, transitions, and temporality in individual lives, aswell as the meanings and interpretations individuals give to each of these changes.Recently, scoping reviews on ageism have underlined the need to research ageismlongitudinally in different settings, such as in working life , and durFirst, this paper begins with a discussion of the potential benefits and challenges of QLRon ageism. Second, it provides a practical example of how everyday experiences of ageism canbe studied using QLR. Finally, it considers the contributions that qualitative longitudinalstudies can make to the growing field of ageism research and policy.QLR, characterized as qualitative research involving two or more data generation timepoints over a period of time , QLR offThe key complication for qualitative studies on ageism seems to be the lack of a unifieddefinition of ageism, which, on the one hand, renders creating a unified theory moredifficult, and on the other, offers freedom to methodological advances in the field . AlthougBecause our everyday experiences of age and ageism are constructed in their spatio-temporalcontexts, researching ageism through time also presents challenges. It requires researchersto travel through time between past, present, and future interpretations, understandingageism and experiences of it as both situationally constructed and shaped through time.Addressing change over time through QLR creates challenges, which is why ageism researchershave been reluctant to approach qualitative longitudinal datasets, for instance, from adiscursive perspective . In addiQualitative longitudinal studies also require resources, time, and commitment from funders,researchers, and the participants, which may be challenging to achieve. Although QLR has thepotential to delve into the shaping causal processes and “what works?” in policy-making, qualitaThis paper explored the additional value that the QLR design can bring to the study ofageism. To achieve this, we utilized qualitative longitudinal interview data from anationwide longitudinal project titled “Towards Two-Speed Finland?” This projectinvestigated the lived experiences of individuals aged 50 years and over who experienced joblosses after working for the same employer for a long time and examined their everydaylives, career choices, and agency after exiting long-term employment. In this article, wefocused longitudinally on four (4) individuals of the same age (58 years) who lost theirjobs after a long career, totaling at 20 interviews under analysis, generated throughout theresearch process. In QLR, studying a small number of cases can also involve large volumes interms of data density and intensity, as the number of interview waves and different forms ofdata contribute to the insights achievable from the data .The overall data was generated by two researchers who interviewed the participants betweenthree and eleven times from 2015 to 2018 through face-to-face and phone interviews. A totalof 183 interviews were conducted. The research process and its timetable are illustrated inWhat has beenthe meaning of work in your life? How has your life changed now? How do you see yourfuture? To structure and facilitate memory work during the biographicalinterview, each participant was asked to draw two biographical maps of their adult lives,one each from their working life and private life, highlighting the life satisfaction theyexperienced at various life events. Introducing visual methods into qualitative interviewingnot only facilitates memory work, but also allows illustrations of nonlinearity andmultidimensionality during a life-course (Each participant was first interviewed face-to-face in their home or in other places theypreferred such as public libraries or cafés. Prior to each interview, the participantsconsented to recording the interviews, either in writing or verbally during the followinginterviews. The face-to-face interviews were semi-structured and attempted to capture thebiographical work and life events that the participants considered important during theirlife-course. The participants were asked various questions, such as: e-course , creatinParticipants were then contacted through phone calls and emails during the follow-upperiod, depending on their availability and interest, resulting in one or more phoneinterviews. Toward the end of the research process, participants were invited to take partin final face-to-face interviews in their homes or preferred public spaces. During the finalinterviews, the interviewers reflected on the longitudinal interviewing processes with theparticipants and revisited and reflected on their first interviews. Using the previousbiographical maps as guiding tools, the participants were asked to draw biographical maps oftheir financial situations during their adult life-course. All participants were givenpseudonyms, and their interviews were audio-recorded and transcribed verbatim.Traditionally, postal service has been considered an organization that provides longcareers and job stability. However, because of digitalization and a sharp decline in papermail, there have been some organizational shifts during the past years, resulting inchanging work demands and a high number of dismissals. Most of the participants had joinedthe postal service at a young age, gaining most of their education on the job during theirworking years. The four selected participants were all aged 58 years during their firstinterviews, and the lowest possible age at which they could receive an old-age pension wasset to 63 years and 6 months. However, with a 6-month severance bonus from their previousemployer, the participants were able to access an early exit through the unemploymentpathway to retirement, a scheme established to secure income during unemployment nearretirement . This meThe initial phases involved familiarizing with the data and participants by listening tothe audio recordings of the interviews and reading through the interview transcripts manytimes. Together with the researchers’ field notes, the transcribed face-to-face and phoneinterviews were then summarized into researcher-constructed case profiles  that chrFollowing Through QLR, we investigated ageism among four people sharing the same age and job lossfrom the same employer. In the following sections, we provide case histories of theparticipants, with a focus on whether and how ageism is present in their narratives. Tobetter understand the life-courses behind each interview account, we provide illustrations,and explanations of the biographical maps of work-life and overall life satisfaction duringeach participant’s adult years.I’m done with the postal service; now, it’s time for something new. But I don’t knowwhat that something new is yet. Of course, I’ve applied for positions, but at leastfor now, I think it’s because I don’t know how to do it. I don’t know how to marketmyself because I’ve never needed to do that.Vuokko, 58, had worked in various positions during her 38 years with the postal service.During her adult life, she had experienced some downfalls, as portrayed in I feel great. Let’s just say, I finally found a company where age was not a problem[laughing]. Because it’s mostly been the issue—it always goes, “yeah, you’re too old,this is not going to work out.” They don’t use these words, but that’s essentiallywhat it is.Vuokko had previously worked in information and communication technology, but having hadonly in-house training for the job, she lacked the formal education for positions thatmatched her experience. During her job search, she felt inferior, as most job openingsrequired some level of higher education, something she lacked. Although she wanted to finda job, she had already started to consider replacing paid work with volunteering and otheractivities with her retired husband. A couple of months after the first interview, Vuokkoheard from her friend about a job opening in a small company that was not publiclyadvertised. She applied for and got the job.50+ women are poisonous” in working life, which for hermeant taking even the part-time job she was offered. Simultaneously, she looked back ather unemployment period as a positive experience during which she got to “practiceretirement” with her husband. During her last interview, Vuokko shared herviews on aging and the future.At the same time, aging scares and doesn’t scare me. I’m disgusted that healthworsens, but I hope to stay fit enough to cope. And, of course, by doing things foryour own mobility, taking care of your health. Wearing glasses sucks. I don’t likethese; these are the things I find boring about becoming old. I’m not worried aboutwrinkles—these kinds of things—but losing an ability. That’s not nice. But at the sametime, I hope there will be more leisure time of your own. That’s what I’m waiting for.But, we’ve always been an active couple; we like to do and organize things even forothers. It’s always us who organize. If not all of it, at least part of it [laughing].I hope it continues the same way. I could easily learn a new language still because Ilike languages and find them easy, even now. Something like this, some kind of a hobbyis a must.Drawing from a commonly held understanding that older jobseekers are discriminatedagainst in hiring practices, Vuokko ascribed her unsuccessful attempts to find a job toher age. In her previous interviews, she attributed her unsuccessful job applications toher lack of education and the know-how of applying and marketing herself as an employee.However, after a couple of months, her perception changed. Vuokko had originally hoped fora full-time job, but having talked with other jobseekers in her position, she hadconcluded that “disgusting andboring.Despite having a retired husband at home, it was clear to Vuokko from the beginning thatshe wanted to continue working longer. In her interview account, she drew on the beliefthat old age equals decline, vulnerability, and loss of functionality, fueled by her ownrecent experiences of losing her parents to illness. Although she did not mind lookingolder, as long as she could continue doing the things she enjoyed, Vuokko detested her ownaging process and saw staying active as a means to avoid aging and the inevitable loss offunctionality—something she found it was, especially in the end. I thought that if Iever retire from that company, I won’t work a day more than I have to. But now, afterthe re-education, and with my wife being five years younger, I was thinking I couldeasily work another ten years, as long as health allows, so easily until 68.I had this idea then, with the career. When I was working for the postal service, themotivation was what Kari, 58, worked for the postal services for 38 years before he chose to leave his jobduring downsizing. Looking back at his life, he was content with the things he hadaccomplished, as shown in … You could say that now, the possible, even the potential openings, jobs I’veapplied for, they’ve somehow disappeared. There haven’t been that many openings, but Iguess it still seems to be a problem that, as an adult, or let’s say even at this ageyou start changing professions, without the work experience, what weighs in the mostare age and lack of experience from the field. Little by little, I’m beginning tobelieve that the labor market here in Finland is no longer a place for people nearingtheir sixties.Over the months, Kari started to feel that finding a permanent job was unlikely andthought about setting up his own company. He noticed that many companies hired independentcontractors rather than permanently employed workers. Despite being an active jobseekerand constantly looking to improve his qualifications, Kari managed to find only short-termcontracts. This meant having to constantly look for the next job opening and jugglingbetween employment and unemployment.I’ve been thinking, since I’m part of the last blessed age cohort, if I don’t work inbetween, I get extended unemployment benefits until I’m eligible for old-age pension.There’s a possibility I could retire at 62. I’ve been thinking about it. It’s a bitless than two years from now, and if things won’t change, I’ll retire. And the otherthing is that if you’re on retirement, you can still work without having to worryabout its effects on unemployment benefits. But once I’m retired, nothing will affectmy pension. I could work a lot more, maybe even become an entrepreneur.Eventually, constant job searches and stress wore him down. Kari had previously hoped towork until the age of 68, but the idea started to seem distant over time. Like Vuokko,Kari characterized his age as a problem in his job search. Rather than challenging theidea that the labor market is no place for people nearing their sixties, Kari seemed toaccept it as a fact. After encountering precarious and uncertain working conditions, Kariplanned to retire as early as possible, not to withdraw from the labor market but tosecure his finances for the rest of his working years and continue working on retirement.In the end, Kari felt that because of his age, the policies in place encouraged him toretire rather than continue working, undermining the commonly shared political goal ofextending working lives. Instead of explaining his career decisions through ageism in thelabor market, he perceived retiring as the most favorable option, enabled by the labormarket policies that offered him a less problematic solution. In line with Vuokko, Kari’sperception of the future and retirement was filled with activities, in his case, workinguntil his younger wife could also retire.The one thing I hoped from work was that I could cope with it all. And, of course,needing some kind of relief, somehow, I felt that I was just exhausted. And thinkingat the same time, Mom, and Dad are still alive. I need to have energy to spend timewith them. They’re both over 80 now. And then there’s the small grandchildren, havingthe energy to be with them and do stuff.Laura, 58, had worked at the postal service for 40 years before her contract wasterminated due to downsizing. She and her husband owned a house together in a small citywhere she had worked all her adult years. Laura had received most of her education on thejob and was able to change positions and develop inside the company during those years.Having older parents to care for and small grandchildren, she had been concerned about herown coping and considered applying for a part-time pension a couple of months before thecompany announced its downsizing decisions. Laura described her adult life as happydespite the stressful years when her children were small and when she was promoted to asupervisory role in her forties, as shown in Now that things are possible, when you’re no longer in working life, I’m reallyinterested in learning something new or doing something, or joining an activity, but Ihave to say now it has been so busy. As I said, Mom, and Dad, and now withgrandchildren and everything so, I haven’t even had the time to think about what Iwant to do.Having her everyday life filled with caring for her family members, Laura was happy thather income was secured until retirement through her early exit. As the months passed, shehad noticed she slept and felt better than in years, and in some way, the job loss hadbeen a blessing in disguise, as it allowed her to spend more time with her family. She wasinterested in learning a new language and joining different volunteering activities, butas time passed, her parents needed more and more help.At the end of the data generation period, Laura had applied for an early part-timepension, and her everyday was filled with informal care responsibilities. She no longerfelt sad about losing her job even though she missed the interactions she had withcustomers. From the beginning, it was clear to Laura that she would not want to apply forjobs. She had worked a couple of days during the elections, which had resulted in a largeamount of paperwork and clarifications—something she wished to avoid in the future. Theexperience made her realize that getting back to working life would be more problematicthan retiring, similar to Kari’s experience.… Time is flying. I haven’t missed work, and the biggest reason for that right now ismostly that our mom, she’s been in quite a bad shape most of the spring and winter, sobasically during the days, I’ve been almost like a full-time caregiver. Siblings takecare of the evenings, nights, and weekends, but I’ve had things to do.Iida, 58, had worked for nearly 40 years at the postal service when her workplace wasclosed due to downsizing. She described her life as happy; having children and meeting hercurrent partner were especially joyous moments in her life, as illustrated in Now that I think about the upcoming summer, already last summer I thought we get tospend it at our cabin, not needing to leave the place more than once a week forgroceries, so now, in principle it might even work now that Mom is in good care, Ihave time to myself with no rush. It’s the, I don’t need any travels or extreme[laughing]. I’m just happy when I get to rest and knit socks.Eight months later, Iida and her siblings found an assisted-living facility for theirmother, and she finally had time to think about the things she wanted to do now that shewas out of work. She and her recently retired husband had long planned on a holiday intheir cabin, and they looked forward to taking the time to rest.… I know that I have full right to live on unemployment benefits, I don’t have aguilty conscience or feel that I should, that I’d be obliged to do something else.I’ve just thought, I have unemployment security; I am the fitting age and been workingenough years. In my case, I don’t feel bad about not being an active jobseeker. I’veinternalized that feeling of freedom now. I can leave as I want, do what I want, ofcourse, within the financial constraints that allow, but it doesn’t oblige me to leavehome at a certain time. The only things with schedules now are dentist and optometristappointments; the rest I can do as I please.A year after the first interview, Iida reflected on her career at the postal service, aplace she had considered her second home for 40 years. For her, it was clear from thebeginning that she would not look for another job, as her work identity had been builtaround being a postal worker. As a sign of ending her career, she had planned to burn herwork uniform and start a new chapter in her life.Similar to Laura’s situation, Iida also replaced paid work with informal care. Afterfinding her mother an assisted-living facility, Iida could no longer explain her workexit, drawing on the belief that women should take on informal care of their olderparents. Instead, she drew on her long working career and age, which enabled her earlyexit from working life. However, acting against the political goals of extending hercareer until she attained the age of 63 years and 6 months still pressured Iida to defendand explain herself, as if she was wrong for choosing to retire at her age.We employed a qualitative longitudinal methodology to research ageism in the interviewaccounts of four individuals who shared the same chronological age and former employer.Despite sharing these characteristics, the life stories and decisions of each individualfollowing job loss differed greatly, undermining the use of homogeneous concepts andarbitrary age limits in policy-making that time life events and transitions. Individualsdrew on ageism to explain their unsuccessful job search, their need to stay active, andtheir decision to retire earlier than planned. Even though the participants fitted the ageto exit early, there was a need to explain deviations from the political goal, whether itwas through continued activity on retirement, informal care, or through a long career.Simultaneously, old age was detested and perceived as a decline in health and activities,something the participants wished to avoid in the future.This paper has only scratched the surface of what QLR has to offer in the field of ageism.Despite the existing challenges, QLR provides novel and promising perspectives for therapidly expanding field of ageism research. First, QLR has the potential to answer questionssuch as when, why, where, and how ageism unfolds and is experienced through time andlife-course, and as such provides a comprehensive and versatile methodology able to uncoverageism in everyday life, policies, and practices. Second, QLR contributes to theunderstanding of ageism and life-course by underlining how life events and accumulatedexperiences contribute to the internalization and perceptions of ageism. Third, QLR providestools for political efforts and policy programs concerning age and for addressing short- andlong-term effects and potential ageism.Given the pervasiveness of ageism and age inequality, qualitative longitudinal studiesyield crucial insight into the dynamic interplay between individual pathways and decisions,organizational practices, and social structures, and how ageism operates within and betweenthem. Furthermore, understanding key life events and cumulative effects taking place duringthe life-course is crucial to understanding why individuals engage in ageist behavior andexclude themselves from certain activities in later life. Therefore, more research thatengages with ageism using QLR designs is urgently required.


Bangime is a language isolate, which has not been proven to be genealogically related to any other language family, spoken in Central-Eastern Mali. Its speakers, the Bangande, claim affiliation with the Dogon languages and speakers that surround them throughout a cliff range known as the Bandiagara Escarpment.  However, recent genetic research has shown that the Bangande are genetically distant from the Dogon and other groups. Furthermore, the Bangande people represent a genetic isolate.  Despite the geographic isolation of the Bangande people, evidence of language contact is apparent in the Bangime language. We find a plethora of shared vocabulary with neighboring Atlantic, Dogon, Mande, and Songhai language groups. To address the problem of when and whence this vocabulary emerged in the language, we use a computer-assisted, multidisciplinary approach to investigate layers of contact and inheritance in Bangime. We start from an automated comparison of lexical data from languages belonging to different language families in order to obtain a first account on potential loanword candidates in our sample. In a second step, we use specific interfaces to refine and correct the computational findings. The revised sample is then investigated quantitatively and qualitatively by focusing on vocabularies shared exclusively between specific languages. We couch our results within archeological and historical research from Central-Eastern Mali more generally and propose a scenario in which the Bangande formed part of the expansive Mali Empire that encompassed most of West Africa from the 13th to the 16th centuries. We consider our methods to represent a novel approach to the investigation of a language and population isolate from multiple perspectives using innovative computer-assisted technologies. Bangime is a language isolate spoken among the Dogon, Mande, Atlantic, and Songhai language families in Central-Eastern Mali. Despite Dogon disapproval, the speakers of Bangime, the Bangande, claim an ethnic identity with the Dogon. The Bangande are geographically isolated and current genetic research denoted their genetic disparity. However, here we show evidence of shared vocabulary among the Bangime and neighboring language groups. We investigate the layers of contact using a computer-assisted, multidisciplinary approach in a series of steps. We use lexical automated comparisons taking into account the qualitative and quantitative measures and the correction of the findings. Within archeological and historical contexts from Central-Eastern Mali, our results show that the Bangime language was spoken before the Dogon Expansion in the Escarpment 1400c. AD. This work represents a great mark in computational linguistics for the study of language isolates and the paradox of their history.Bangime, a language isolate spoken in central-eastern Mali, represents an enigma, not only in terms of linguistics, but also with regards to past ethnographic affiliations and migration patterns. The speakers of Bangime, the Bangande, live among and claim to constitute one of the Dogon groups that also occupy the rocky terrain of the Bandiagara Escarpment. However, there is little evidence in support of the Bangande being genetically affiliated with the Dogon or speaking one of the estimated 21 Dogon languages, nor of their being related to the neighboring Mande-speaking groups who inhabit a valley which stretches from the west and ends at the eastern edge of the Escarpment. Further to the north of the area where Bangime is spoken lies the vast Sahara Desert, the southern borders of which are occupied by Songhai-speaking populations. Throughout the region are found Fula semi-nomadic herders who speak Fulfulde. Thus, we know that the Bangande have had the opportunity to engage in contact with each of these populations, but because there are no written historical records of their past settlement and migration patterns, nor have there been any archeological investigations of the western portions of the Bandiagara Escarpment where the Bangande are found today, we must rely on data from the present to reconstruct a picture of the past.Although multidisciplinary data are available concerning Dogon, Fula, Mande, and Songhai social history and material culture, the precise genealogical positioning of their languages within a larger context remains disputed. Since Bangime represents a puzzle in this mosaic picture of central-eastern Malian languages, a closer understanding of its previous contacts will help to shed light on the deeper relations to these bordering languages. For the purposes of the current study, we focus on the linguistic  and genetic (genome-wide genotyping) data from a sample of these five ethno-linguistic groups and couch our findings in the historical background of what is known about these groups. The Bandiagara Escarpment which is currently home to the Bangande and neighboring populations was occupied by peoples that potentially pre-dated these ethnic delineations known throughout the literature simply as the ’Tellem’; we leave this matter to future research.We present a computer-assisted, multidisciplinary, first approach to addressing this problem of detecting the layers of contact in Bangime. First, we assemble lexical evidence of contact between Bangime speakers with their neighboring languages, using a computer-assisted technique, followed by an evaluation of the materials by contrasting them with genetic findings. Specifically, we propose trajectories for Bangande settlement patterns. With this study, we lay the foundation of future collaborative work that will improve, correct, and enhance the results of this study. The original data used for the study are made available so that additional researchers may follow up on and test our hypotheses concerning contact layers in Bangime.https://glottolog.org,In addition to Bangime, we focus on Fulfulde, plus languages from the Dogon, Mande, and Songhai affiliations for the purposes of the current study. Fulfulde, plus the Dogon and Mande, are thought to be distantly related in that each constitutes a separate branch of the Niger–Congo language phylum. On the other hand, Songhai is represents an unresolved brach of Nilo–Saharan , and data from other disciplines,e.g., archaeogenetics, or genetics, as these can confirm scenarios of contact among speakers of a population.In this study, we show how linguistic evidence from contact relations can be assembled in a coherent and transparent way, thus open for criticism and expansion through later work. Given the necessity to make use of external evidence when investigating contact layers, we illustrate how preliminary collaboration and comparison with genetic findings can help us to shed light on the history of the Bangime language and its speakers. Our research contributes to these historical hypotheses with data from both DNA and languages, analyzed with ground-breaking comparative computational methods.Besides oral histories, practically nothing is known about the past of the Bangande. The first time the Bangime language was mentioned in the literature was in the 1950s , describth C. AD) as well as the Ghana (8–12th C. AD) Empires. For this study, we investigated three Mande groups: Bambara, Bozo, and Soninke. However, among these, Jenaama, the Bozo population in this study, is not necessarily representative of the main Bozo groups of fishing villages along the Niger River and its floodplains. The “cliffs Bozo” we sampled here are suspected to represent linguistically converted Bozo speakers, perhaps originally speakers of a Soninke-like language .Beyond Bantu, Mande peoples and languages represent a relatively neglected part of West African ethnography; the term “Mande Expansion” was first used byThe Songhai Empire took place from the 15–16 th C. AD . Howeverth C. AD (th–16th C. AD) settlement of the Bandiagara Escarpment by the Dogon peoples based on traditional funerary practices and radiocarbon dating from different sites covering past cultures. It is likely that the Dogon took refuge in the caves and cliffs of the Escarpment in order to protect themselves from imposing empires, slave raids, and religious persecution. Because of this geographic isolation, many Dogon people maintain a traditional way of life even today.As noted above, the Bangande, speakers of Bangime, claim a Dogon ancestry. The Dogon themselves have been the topic of numerous studies and surveys dating back to the early 20h C. AD . The moshttp://dogonlanguages.org). Within the variation attested among the Dogon languages, the lowest limit for mutual intelligibility based on lexical estimates is 32%  speakers that have any contact with the Bangande, however in future studies it will be beneficial to include outside groups for comparison.th century.th century onwards. Either Fula or Songhai peoples could have brought the initial influence of Islam to the Bandiagara Escarpment populations, but this is a recent development and not all Dogon nor Bangande practice Islam today.According tolingua franca of the area is Fulfulde, which Bangime speakers use to communicate not only with Fula animal herders but also with Dogon and Mande-speakers. It is only through travel to the regional capital Mopti or the country’s capital Bamako that Bangande become conversant in Bambara. Otherwise, the only Bangande who speak languages other than Bangime are those that grew up outside of the seven Bangime-speaking villages. These include spouses (women) and migrants who moved from other, often Tommo So Dogon-speaking, villages. Specifically, blacksmithing communities, discussed below, in Bangande villages are of Tommo So heritage.As only the Bangande speak their language, Bangime, they are all to some extent bilingual, but few are multilingual. The only language passed from parents to children in the seven villages where Bangime is spoken is Bangime. The primaryBangande divide themselves into two categories: those of “noble” and “slave” castes. Despite the likelihood that these two classes are a superimposed relic from the Mali Empire, . To make sure that the data are comparable beyond the scope of a single application, CLDFBench essentially converts the data to the CLDF format, recommended by the Cross-Linguistic Data Formats initiative  between Bangime and Fulfulde, the Songhai languages, or Soninke. That is, while languages such as Fulfulde have impacted all of the languages in the region, the borrowing patterns between Bangime and Fulfulde also encompass the Dogon languages. Rather, Bangime directly shares vocabulary with Bambara, Jenaama (and its related Bozo languages in the sample), and the Dogon languages. This is not too surprising given that Fulfulde, Songhai, and Soninke are majority languages with wide reach, and that each of these is spoken in the immediate area of Bangime. On the other hand, direct borrowings between Bangime and Bambara are surprising given the geographic distance between the two groups. The proposed reason for this is discussed below. The following,In the following, we discuss the results of our computer-assisted methods to borrowing detection among the unrelated languages in our sample. To this end, we concentrate on Bangime. As a language isolate with no known relatives, it is impossible to find cognates, thus we must rely on borrowings as evidence for language contact. We have found that language, , contact is detected between not only geographically proximate, but also distant, languages. Furthermore, borrowings abound in Bangime in unexpected areas of the lexicon such as body parts and lower numerals. We present each of these findings in turn; rather than including lexical results in the text, we refer the reader to the supplemental materials.4.1.2 Specific results. Our analysis allows us to extract those cases in which language families share material exclusively between each other. We consider these examples particularly interesting, since they give us hints on specific situations of language contact, as these cases witness a much clearer shared past than we would find when investigating Wanderwörter in our data, whose origin is often difficult to trace. While all relations are potentially interesting, we exclusively concentrate on Bangime.It would be beyond the scope of this paper to discuss all the results of this analysis in detail here, since more work and more discussions with colleagues will be needed to evaluate the findings properly and to re-check their consistency. For this reason, we will only provide an anecdotal discussion in which we show where we think the linguistic analysis of the presumed borrowings can help to shed light on the history of Bangime. Henceforth, we concentrate on the relation between Bangime and Dogon, Bangime and Mande, and Bangime and Songhai. These three language combinations were chosen because Bangime shares the most vocabulary with Dogon and Mande, but the least with Atlantic and Songhai; the latter two may be erroneous guesses or coincidence.A Bangime–Dogon (56 concepts)The most numerous borrowings into Bangime are, naturally given the projected identity of the Bangande as being and speaking Dogon, from Dogon languages. There are many words which are shared between Bangime and all the Dogon languages.The Dogon languages form a tightly cohesive group. Many lexical items are shared among all the Dogon languages. Exceptions largely include borrowings from Songhai into the northern and eastern regions and from Mande languages into the western and southern areas. In terms of specific Dogon regions’ contact with Bangime, here, we examine the northeastern and southwestern Dogon areas.B Bangime–Northeastern Dogonhttps://wold.clld.org). Not only are these concepts numerous, one must note the prevalence of body parts and core vocabulary. Furthermore, honey cultivation from bees is essential to Bangande agricultural practices, yet the form for HONEY is shared.The Dogon subgroup with which Bangime directly shares the most vocabulary is that which is spoken at the greatest geographic distance, not to mention the arduous terrain that separates the two peoples. An example of this trend is the form for the concept HORN (ANATOMY): Bangime sìrà < Toro Tegu círá. The language with which Bangime shares the highest number of concepts is Bankan Tey. Furthermore, the majority of the 28 borrowed concepts shared with Bankan Tey have very low borrowing scores and high age scores in the World Loanword Database : Bangime wārì < Bunoge wàlè. Our methods did not detect these words as being shared with Mande languages though the forms are close. Further inspection of these patterns may lead to more generalized patterns.Given the geographic proximity of the southwestern Dogon and Soninke–Bozo (discussed below) languages to Bangime, it is somewhat surprising that so few words are found in the Bangime lexicon directly from influence from these languages. In fact, that there are so few direct borrowings from these languages, and their prevalence among more recently introduced terms to the area, implies that the speakers’ contact has not been longstanding. On the other hand, both the Mande and Dogon languages are internally tightly knit, and thus finding words that do not have cognates with other languages of their families is rare. Furthermore, many words are shared among different groups of the area. Despite this, the tendencies remain striking.F Bangime–Mande (25)In terms of Mande groups, Bangime speakers today are in closest contact with Jenaama speakers; their language is one of the Bozo languages, which in turn is most closely related to Soninke. However, the Mande language with which Bangime shares the most vocabulary is Bambara.G Bangime–BambaraAmong the 15 concepts shared between Bangime and Bambara, seven can be considered to be associated with the caste system of the Mali Empire, and more could be added if other language groups were also included such as HOST: Bangime nʤààtìɡì < Bambara jatigi which is also attested in Fulfulde njaa-tigi. For instance, the term for BLACKSMITH in Bangime tùw̃ɔ̀ is detected by our methods to be a direct borrowing from Bambara nùmṵ́, not shared with either of the other Mande, or Dogon, languages.Although two concepts are also found in Jenaama, none are shared with Soninke, and thus purportedly are not from the earlier Ghana Empire with which the Soninke language was associated. One notable exception to this generalization is the concept SLAVE: Bangime kɔ̀mɛ̀, which is likely borrowed from Soninke kòmê into Bangime, but not directly, as it is also found among the southwestern Dogon languages  kárénɡɛ̀, are borrowed into Bangime directly from Soninke tárò; kálàŋŋê. However, it does not seem as if either of these are coincidental. Note that ELEPHANT, a compound of the concepts BIG and EAR is also shared between Bangime, Jenaama, the Bozo languages, and, somewhat surprisingly, the Dogon language Bondu So. The form for TRAP (PITFALL) is probably the result of a slight semantic shift. The form ɡɛŋɡɛ for IRON is found in both the Dogon language Gourou and Bangime, which in turn, as noted above, is likely a borrowing from Bambara.J Bangime–BozoThere are only two lexemes which are found in Bangime and the Bozo languages as a group, but exclude Jenaama and Bambara: the form for HOT wáá in Bangime is identical, save for tones, to that of three Bozo languages. However, it is possible that the form is actually borrowed from Dogon languages of the northeastern group, which are  related to the Mande languages, and thus the phonetic similarities in Bangime are somewhat of a coincidence. On the other hand, MILLET dɛ́mɛ̀ is a concept that is essential to the livelihood of all the cultures in the sample, and thus the most common form is shared between all Dogon languages save for the southwestern group and Mande languages Bambara and two Bozo languages ɲo; the form found in Bangime and the Bozo languages in which it is attested dʒɛ̃ŋ, is an outlier.K Bangime–Songhai (2)Save for two concepts, ANCESTORS: Bangime kāàⁿ < kàà and SEVEN: Bangime kííjè < ʔí:jê, which could be attributed to chance, there are no Bangime-Songhai pairings in which other languages are not also implicated, illustrating that the chances of direct contact between Bangime and Songhai are low. An interesting trend, however, is the fact that the two Dogon languages that have most impacted Bangime, Bankan Tey and Bondu So, are those that have the most shared concepts with Songhai. Geographically, the areas where Bankan Tey and Bondu So are spoken are the closest among the Dogon groups to where Songhai Kiini and Songhai Senni are spoken. Thus, shared concepts among those areas are not surprising.L Bangime–Atlantic (4)Today, Fulfulde speakers have frequent contact with those of Bangime, and nearly all Bangande are fluent in Fulfulde, but there are hardly any direct loans between them that exclude the Dogon languages. An example is INJURE: Bangime bàrmà < Fulfulde barmude This implies that, as long as Bangime has been in contact with Fulfulde speakers, so have Dogon.M Dogon–Mande (111)In principle, at least, Dogon and Mande are related at the higher order of the Niger-Congo language phylum. This is reflected, whether by contact or a common inheritance, by extensive shared vocabulary in our dataset. Phonotactically, the difference is difficult to distinguish as sound correspondences can be found in both cases. Semantically, certain concepts such as BOAT: Tiranige Diga kǔ:ⁿ < Jenaama kūⁿ are likely a recent introduction into plains Dogon languages from Bozo fisherman, whereas the origin of concepts such as MARROW: Bondu So nòndî: Jenaama dòndì, with variable forms and pairings within the subgroups, is less clear.kṵṵ is shared among many Mande languages dʒɛ́mɛ̀-nɛ̀ / dʒɛ́mɛ̀-m] more likely is originally derived from the Dogon word for ‘black’ [dʒɛ́m]. In this case, our results reflect both the diachronic as well as the synchronic situation. This is discussed further below in the following sections.As noted above, Bondu So and Bankan Tey speakers have the most contact today with those of Songhai. Otherwise, although most Dogon languages share the word for BLACKSMITH with Songhai, the term [Patterns of genetic diversity in the Bandiagara cliffs of central-eastern Mali reflect complex population dynamics and deep history of settlements in this region of the West African fringe. The results show that the populations of central-eastern Mali have strong affinities to West Africans, in particular, Niger–Congo speaking West Africans. Interestingly, the genetic variation is driven, at some level, by the linguistic diversity and subsistence patterns. 4.2.1 Bangande. The Bangande population is genetically distant from the surrounding Dogon, Bozo, Fula and Songhai populations . Even though it is not common to report cases of marriage between the Bangande and the neighboring populations , which implies they lived south of the tse-tse fly belt where horses do not survive . Additionally, this is another case of lexical replacement, but it is slightly complex. In each of the languages, PIG also means warthog. Thus, the form for concept PIG is that which is used among the Eastern Dogon languages, along with Yorno So and Yanda Dom  is the ‘native’ term, although it is likely a Gur borrowing from languages outside of our sample. The form from Songhai, however, is solely used for the concept PIG; warthog is a separate lexeme. Thus, in the case of the Eastern Dogon languages, PIG was borrowed from Songhai with the same meaning, but then was expanded to encompass warthog as well.Songhai still influences adjacent Bondu So and Bankan Tey speakers more than any others.The genome-wide genetic data provides details about the genetic landscape of populations from central-eastern Mali. and reveals the mystery of Bangime language isolate and its speakers. Furthermore, the study reports limited admixture in the Dogon, the Bozo and the Songhai of Kikara pointing to the use of the cliffs as a refuge and a barrier to genetic mixtures. These recent results of the Dogon update previous interpretations of the Dogon structure .License: First steps towards the detection of contact layers in Bangime: a multi-disciplinary, computer-assisted approach” aims at studying Bangime, an isolate language spoken in Central-Eastern Mali by using novel computer-assisted technologies in order to better understand the history of the Bangande (speakers of the Bangime).This paper entitled “ As an isolate language spoken in a region where we can observe a high linguistic diversity with languages belonging to different language families (Niger-Congo and Nilo-Saharan), the status and the (linguistic) classification of Bangime remain unclear. Bangime however does share some lexical items (basic vocabulary) with surrounding languages such as Dogon or Fulfulde, revealing therefore that the Bangande have been in contact with the speakers of the neighboring languages. In order to sort out the status of Bangime, the authors propose a multidisciplinary approach combining linguistic and genetic data. Regarding the linguistic data, the authors focused on the study of the putative borrowings found between Bangime and the surrounding languages in order to better understand the layers of contacts. The authors are also using computer-assisted techniques to help them identify these putative borrowings. I have found this paper very interesting for several reasons. First, it is true that Bangime is a fascinating language because of its particular status: it is an isolate surrounded by languages belonging to different language families. Therefore, trying to recover parts of its history by studying loanwords in order to better understand the ancient connections between Bangime and the other languages is very exciting. Second, the methods (computer-assisted techniques) used for this paper are also very novel and cutting-edge. Usually, in historical linguistics, when we want to identify loanwords, we have to apply the Comparative Method that will allow us to extract regular sound correspondences for the languages studied. We have to have a good knowledge of the languages studied in order to find the phonological clues that are going to point to the loanwords. In this paper, the authors are using tools developed for automated identification of cognate sets which are based on the study of phonetic similarities. In order to identify loanwords (and not cognate sets) with these automated methods, the authors applied an additional filter that has identified cognate words that occur in at least two different language families. For example, when they found a word in Bangime that was cognate with Dogon and Mande, this word would be assumed to be a loanword. The results they have obtained and presented in Table 3 are very interesting. The high number of cognate sets shared between Mande and Dogon languages makes sense because they belong to the same Niger-Congo family . But then, the (relatively high) number of cognate sets shared between Bangime and Dogon languages does not reveal common ancestry (because they are not related) but contacts and therefore borrowing! In section 4.1.2., the authors proposed a review of the loanwords shared between Bangime and the other languages. My only regret here is that they do not present concrete examples . Maybe they could have an annexe in which all the examples would be presented because I would be very interested in studying these loanwords. Finally, in order to better understand the history of the Bangande, the authors combined their linguistic findings with genetic findings and proposed a new hypothesis regarding the chronology and the layers of language contact. I recommend this paper pass peer review. The paper is very clear and well written. I think the idea of using lexical borrowing in order to investigate the layers of contact for Bangime with their neighbors was very interesting. Because Bangime is an isolate language, we do not have many options if we want to better understand its history.   I have just small remarks/questions that need to be addressed: First, in section 3.1.1, the authors wrote that the languages studied in Table 1 belong to “4 languages families” where the correct number is two because Mande, Dogon and Atlantic languages belong to the Niger-Congo family.) If the authors are only using cognate sets (shared between more than two language families), why did they take the time to align all the data? Were they able to spot some interesting phonological patterns? If I am not mistaken, “borrowing” corresponds to the linguistic process whereas “loanwords” correspond to the loanwords identified.If applicable, is the statistical analysis and its interpretation appropriate?YesIs the study design appropriate and is the work technically sound?YesIs the work clearly and accurately presented and does it engage with the current literature?YesAre the conclusions drawn adequately supported by the results?YesAre sufficient details of methods and analysis provided to allow replication by others?YesAre all the source data and materials underlying the results available?YesReviewer Expertise:African languages with a focus on Bantu and Bantoid languages, historical linguistics with a focus on linguistic classification, phylogenetic methods and language evolutionI confirm that I have read this submission and believe that I have an appropriate level of expertise to confirm that it is of an acceptable scientific standard. The authors appreciate the insightful comments of this reviewer. We have provided answers to the questions posed in the text as follows :My only regret here is that they do not present concrete examples . Maybe they could have an annexe in which all the examples would be presented because I would be very interested in studying these loanwords. AUTHORS ADDED: “We have clarified now that all examples can be easily accessed via the supplementary material and that we focus here on major patterns.” We have also added one example per pattern in the inline text.First, in section 3.1.1, the authors wrote that the languages studied in Table 1 belong to “4 languages families” where the correct number is two because Mande, Dogon and Atlantic languages belong to the Niger-Congo family.) AUTHORS CHANGED: 4 to 3, but with the note that our groupings are based on current classifications in Ethnologue as well as Glottolog.If I am not mistaken, “borrowing” corresponds to the linguistic process whereas “loanwords” correspond to the loanwords identified. AUTHORS ADDED: “In some traditions, there is a distinction between loanwords and foreign words, pointing to different time depths of integration. We decided to use "borrowing" as a neutral term throughout the text.”If the authors are only using cognate sets (shared between more than two language families), why did they take the time to align all the data? Were they able to spot some interesting phonological patterns? AUTHORS ADDED: “Alignments are only used for word pairs in order to assess similarity scores between words and can be visualized later with the help of the EDICTOR tool to make sure that identified borrowings show enough overall similarity. We have clarified this in the main text, adding one sentence specifying that the automated alignments are used for word-pair distance calculation.” This paper lays out a methodology for drawing together genealogical, archeological, and linguistic evidence to reconstruct settlement history. In doing so, it offers a preliminary analysis of Bangime, a language isolate spoken in central Mali whose speakers (the Bangande) claim to be ethnically Dogon but who are genetically and linguistically distinct. Understanding the settlement patterns for language isolates is challenging because there are no linguistic relatives for comparative/reconstruction data, but the authors show how identifying likely borrowed terms from surrounding languages and coupling this with genetic and archealogical evidence can help us understand patterns of contact and settlement in the absence of a written record. Overall, I found the paper very interesting and well written. The authors did a good job of acknowledging the limitations of the study while at the same time focusing on methodology so that others can replicate, expand upon, or argue against the analysis. This kind of interdisciplinary work offers exciting new avenues into understanding the prehistory of many regions of the world that lack a written record.Last sentence of plain language summary: “computational linguistic” -> “computational linguistics”Second to last paragraph of Section 1: What does “pre-ethnic” mean?Last sentence of Section 1: Remove comma after “follow up on”First paragraph of Section 1.1: “while Songhai is that of Nilo-Saharan” -> Maybe, “while Songhai is a branch of Nilo-Saharan”?Last paragraph of Section 1.1 could be fleshed out more. Non-linguistically savvy readers may not know what cognates mean and why we can’t rely on them in the case of a language isolate.First sentence of Section 1.3.1: Something about the parenthetical about art historians come across as strange. Think about reworking it.Middle of 1.3.2, “the puzzle of pieces” is a strange collocation.Last paragraph of 1.3.2 is a really nice summary of the paper as a whole.Section 2.1: “Among our Mande groups, Bambara, Bozo, and Soninke, …” Perhaps offset the three groups from the rest of the sentence either with parentheses or m-dashes. The commas made the sentence hard to follow.Last paragraph of Section 2.2: “Our samples from the Kikara, ….” this sentence is also really hard to follow, since it isn’t immediately clear that Tondi Songwai Kiini is related to Kikara, and that Humburi Senni is related to Humbori. Please rework.Section 3.2.1 B, this section could be fleshed out and explained more clearly. I was a little lost on the methods.Section 4.1.1, beginning: Make it more explicit here that there is loads of borrowing between Fulfulde and multiple language families, just not direct borrowings, as you define them here.Section 4.1.2 E, regarding DONKEY and WORK, if they are shared by Mande, wouldn’t this make them not direct borrowings? The last paragraph of this section could also be clarified a bit.Section 4.1.2 I, “ However, it does not seem as if neither of these are coincidental.” Too many negatives here.Section 4.1.2 M, there are cognates for kṵṵ in many other Mande languages, see Vydrin “On the problem of the Proto-Mande homeland”Section 4.2.2, extra open parenthesis before the years at the end of the paragraph.First sentence of 4.2.3, remove comma after “studied by Babiker”Section 4.2.5, missing comma after “the speakers of Humburi Senni”Section 5.2, first paragraph, “indicated” -> “indicating”. Also, the comma before “however” should either be a semicolon or a period.Section 5.2, third paragraph, spell out why the tse-tse fly belt is important to camels and horses.Section 5.2, last paragraph, “suggests for former ” What does this mean?Section 5.3, something is wrong in the first sentence, “Bangime language isolate” Also, “these recent results of the Dogon”… the Dogon what?Section 5.4, missing apostrophe (?) in “Gur languages contact” I have a few relatively minor comments and suggestions which I lay out below page by page:If applicable, is the statistical analysis and its interpretation appropriate?YesIs the study design appropriate and is the work technically sound?YesIs the work clearly and accurately presented and does it engage with the current literature?YesAre the conclusions drawn adequately supported by the results?YesAre sufficient details of methods and analysis provided to allow replication by others?YesAre all the source data and materials underlying the results available?YesReviewer Expertise:I am a linguist with expertise in the geographic/linguistic areas under study. I cannot comment on the genetic or computational approaches.I confirm that I have read this submission and believe that I have an appropriate level of expertise to confirm that it is of an acceptable scientific standard. R1: Section 4.1.2 M, there are cognates for kṵṵ in many other Mande languages, see Vydrin “On the problem of the Proto-Mande homeland” AUTHORS ADDED: "...among many Mande languages ". The authors are grateful to this reviewer's careful overview of our submission. We have made all the corrections suggested by the reviewer (indicated in itlaics), as well as added additional commentary, detailed as follows:Second to last paragraph of Section 1: What does “pre-ethnic” mean? AUTHORS ADDED: “ Bandiagara Escarpment which is currently home to the Bangande and neighboring populations was occupied by peoples that  potentially pre-dated these ethnic delineations known throughout the literature simply as the ‘Tellem’; we leave this matter to future research.”Last paragraph of Section 1.1 could be fleshed out more. Non-linguistically savvy readers may not know what cognates mean and why we can’t rely on them in the case of a language isolate.  AUTHORS ADDED: “Cognates, following List (2016), are etymologically related words, stemming from a common proto-form, which explicitly ignores borrowings. Regarding of the use of the term, “borrowing”, in some traditions, there is a distinction between loanwords and foreign words, pointing to different time depths of integration. We decided to use “borrowing” as a neutral term throughout the text.”Section 2.1: “Among our Mande groups, Bambara, Bozo, and Soninke, …” Perhaps offset the three groups from the rest of the sentence either with parentheses or m-dashes. The commas made the sentence hard to follow.  AUTHORS ADDED: “However, among these, Jenaama, the Bozo population in this study, is not necessarily representative of the main Bozo groups of fishing villages along the Niger River and its floodplains.”Last paragraph of Section 2.2: “Our samples from the Kikara, ….” this sentence is also really hard to follow, since it isn’t immediately clear that Tondi Songwai Kiini is related to Kikara, and that Humburi Senni is related to Humbori. Please rework.  AUTHORS ADDED:”We collected samples in Kikara from the speakers of Tondi Songwai Kiini (hereafter simply ‘Kiini’), which is distinguished from other Songhai languages as the “mountain Songhay language” . Further, we collected samples in Hombori, where Humburi Senni Songhay (which we refer to as ‘Senni’) is spoken. Both languages belong to the eastern division of the Songhai languages spoken in Mali, which have been classified within the Nilo-Saharan language superfamily.”Section 3.2.1 B, this section could be fleshed out and explained more clearly. I was a little lost on the methods. AUTHORS CLARIFIED:  We added additional explanation of the manual refinement procedure by adding a longer and more detailed caption to Figure 2. AUTHORS ADDED: “That is, after the automatic methods assigned numbers to cognate sets as well as to borrowing sets, we manually inspected each set for accuracy and changed any spurious sets.”Section 4.1.1, beginning: Make it more explicit here that there is loads of borrowing between Fulfulde and multiple language families, just not direct borrowings, as you define them here.  AUTHORS ADDED: “In our sample, there are no direct borrowings (lexemes solely shared between two groups or languages) between Bangime and Fulfulde, the Songhai languages, or Soninke. That is, while languages such as Fulfulde have impacted all of the languages in the region, the borrowing patterns between Bangime and Fulfulde also encompass the Dogon languages.”Section 4.1.2 E, regarding DONKEY and WORK, if they are shared by Mande, wouldn’t this make them not direct borrowings? The last paragraph of this section could also be clarified a bit.  AUTHORS CLARIFIED: This is a good point to which I returned to the data in order to add examples for both lexemes. I also added: “Our methods did not detect these words as being shared with Mande languages though the forms are close. Further inspection of these patterns may lead to more generalized patterns.”Section 4.1.2 M, there are cognates for kṵṵ in many other Mande languages, see Vydrin “On the problem of the Proto-Mande homeland”  AUTHORS ADDED: “...among many Mande languages ”.


I extend to the case of complex matrices, rather than the case of real matrices as in a prior study, a method of iterating the operation of an “inflating random matrix” onto a state vector to describe complex growing systems. I show that the process also describes in this complex case a punctuated growth with quakes and stasis. I assess that under one such inflation step, the vector will shift to a really different one (quakes) only if the inflated matrix has sufficiently dominant new eigenvectors. The vector shall prefer stasis (a similar vector) otherwise, similar to the real-valued matrices discussed in a prior study. Specifically, in order to extend the model relevance, I assess that under various update schemes of the system’s representative vector, the bimodal distribution of the changes of the dominant eigenvalue remains the core concept. Overall, I contend that the punctuations may appropriately address the issue of growth in systems combining a large weight of history and some sudden quake occurrences, such as economic systems or ecological systems, with the advantage that unpaired complex eigenvalues provide more degrees of freedom to suit real systems. Furthermore, random matrices could be the right meeting point for exerting thermodynamic analogies in a reasonably agnostic manner in such rich contexts, taking into account the profusion of items  and their networked, tangled interactions 50+ years after their seminal use in R.M. May’s famous “interaction induced instability” paradigm. Finally, I suggest that non-ergodic tools could be further applied for tracking the specifics of large-scale evolution paths and for checking the model’s relevance to the domains mentioned above. Thermodynamics has the virtue of embedding a myriad of degrees of freedom into a simple collective response to system boundary conditions, based on maximum likelihood for equilibrium states. For very global systems, such as the economy or the planet’s ecological system, however, which are fed by external sources such as the sun, the challenge is different since non-equilibrium systems must be described, while the variety of their constituents is huge. The idea of a “simple collective response” thus becomes unlikely. Rather, a description of the largest events becomes the logical focus, hence a study of the role of stability and instability. It is now 50+ years since R.M. May ,2 introdNowadays, while May’s approach is still debated , the description of our own economic growth as actors of the Anthropocene relies on extreme simplifications. These are, for instance, the GDP (gross domestic product) or sectorial analysis limited to a few dozen sectors. Big data, on the other hand, are intensively exploited in the financial realm. Some prominent contributors  to GDP. It holds well on the 1820–2020 interval   could be developed. A possible perspective, in the spirit of thermodynamics, would be to apply various metrics of non-ergodicity , but wiAfter defining these aims and examining the related methodological issues, the paper proceeds as follows: In The two aspects I have combined in the matrix inflation model  can be d(A) First, in an iteration scheme dom laws ,17. Note(B) Secondly, when the size of the matrix is increased The mechanism that consists of making librium) ,19; or alibrium) ,9.q-exponential law of quakes spacing as the law of spacing observed in the actual model [At this point, a few simple remarks can be made. Convergence when using a matrix of a given size,al model ) could l©). I discard the absolute growth of the eigenvector at this stage, as it is easily rescaled arbitrarily. The I can now present the results of quotient  R(t)∈C:, there I am now in position to examine the various results of the next section.Let us first study the time iteration in relation to “inertia”. If a vector is assumed to describe a real system , then this system has some inertia. It would not shift from a matrix to an inflated matrix at once, as it takes time to have an innovation adopted. One could think of innovation diffusion, i.e., the ability of other innovations (other inflation steps) following a given innovation to incorporate it and amplify its effects. This would wash out the disruption effect of any given innovation, giving rise to “variable dynamics” all along time, and making it difficult to directly track anything “Schumpeterian” ,19. ThisAnother way of introducing inertia into the model is to “mix” the output While the idea is fairly intuitive , it can be questioned how it is modified between the two cases. A simple way to probe this is to blindly examine the probability distribution function (pdf) of the quantity the real  vs. the Using enough draws, I obtain the pdf for both cases in The model that I propose has two parameters, the number of repeats tion see . Hence, q-exponential law that I had found in [I have examined the extension of the growth model based on “matrix inflation” that I had previously introduced for the sole case of real matrices  in . As coulfound in , but theI did not take into account absolute growth, which may occur more freely here given that eigenvectors do not come in conjugate pairs (leading to “cosine” oscillations during iterations). However, it is much more difficult to imagine that the absolute growth can have a deep meaning in terms of the “punctuated equilibria”, if one thinks of the classical issues of ecological systems, whereby proliferation is generally tamed by the ecosystem as a whole. Weeds, for example, have an enormous growth potential if one counts the ability to grow more than 100 seeds from a single one per year. Human agriculture can therefore be conceived as a race against the weed in time and space to obtain plants that provide, relatively slowly, staple food rather than many new seeds. But it is also known from the same systems that weeds are constrained to a much lower effective growth rate, except in invasion sequences (often created by man). In the case of invasive sequences, the issues at stake are rather those of qualitative growth rather than merely quantitative growth. Plants that have some kinds of robust rhizome (bamboo) or worse, that have a rhizome robust and surviving to subdivision in small pieces  lead to striking invasions, while brambles and nettles are tamed after a while, e.g., as the forests that host them evolve over the years.Apart from these general considerations, I have shown that even a relatively simple change in the model, the “amount of renewing” of the new vector with the old one, has an important, subtle effect, in terms of eigenvalues. It will be interesting to see, looking at actual systems, what are the proper ways to understand their inertia, and whether it favors any of the eigenvalue patterns discussed above. I anticipate that forcing the eigenvalues to lie in a closer corner of the disc in the case of partial renewal (long inertia) would also lead to a different correlation pattern of successive eigenvectors, which will undoubtedly deserve further investigation.A final consideration concerns non-ergodicity. The “pragmatic” sensitivity analysis in ) series ,13,14,15However, it is maybe possible to play the same game that historians are often asked to play, i.e., giving “some kind” of previsions . Transposed into my framework, this means asking, for each given case, how much does the evolution in the past times (thus of concern for the few basic components), used as a temporal average, makes sense for future changes . Of course, this is admittedly a quite skewed vision of ergodicity, but the conversation on this point may receive more attention as more data are collected that carry quantities of “historic” information, which could at least be used to inform a variety of scenarios.q-exponential law of [A first step in the proposed direction is shown in To conclude, I addressed some simple mathematical-physical issues related to the use of the matrix inflation model, bearing in mind its application to economic systems and ecological systems, in order to explain, among other things, their “quakes and stasis” patterns. I suggested that complex matrices, while unnatural for describing the usual quantities of economics, might be a tempting approach. The resulting evolution of eigenvectors obeys rules quite similar to those of a real matrix, and I defer to further work the full check that a q-exponential law also applies to the spacing of quakes in time, as in the real case . And theI discussed how “inertia”, by partial renewal, was introducing an interesting bias on the set of successive dominant eigenvalues of the underlying matrix Some look challenging, such as importing the notion of ergodicity in a non-stationary context (although the network context could be useful to examine the issue, see  for an e


Innate antiviral defense demonstrates high energetic efficiency in a bony fish. BMC Biology 19, 138 (2021). 10.1186/s12915-021-01069-2This paper is a response to Polinski, M. P. et al. The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12915-023-01548-8. Piscine orthoreovirus (PRV). The stated aim of their study was to determine the metabolic costs of viral exposure and the ensuing immune response. To test their hypotheses relating to the energetic costs of viral infection, the authors used IHNV as a virus associated with acute infection and PRV as a virus associated with low virulence. Polinski et al. conclude that PRV exposure is of little consequence to sockeye salmon, but we argue that this study is not adequate to make such a conclusion. In some instances, the data may even suggest — in accordance with observations from other Pacific salmon [In a laboratory study on sockeye salmon, Polinski et al.  investigc salmon –6 — thatPolinski et al. start with the assumption that respiration is tightly tied to energy consumption and argued that infection-related metabolic costs should be evident as changes in an organism’s respiratory performance. To measure the respiratory state of individual fish, as a proxy for costs of infection, Polinski et al. used a suite of fifteen measurements, developed by some of the authors  and knowOur comments are largely focused on the reported physiological response of sockeye to PRV exposure, rather than the transcriptomic data or the IHNV challenge. We group our commentary according to themes adapted from a recent framework for evaluating epidemiological research . First, Our data reanalysis has identified a number of discrepancies in the analysis and interpretation, which we argue undermine the claims of Polinski et al. that PRV infection has minimal impact on sockeye physiology. A more objective treatment of the data makes clear that a reasonable reader could draw different conclusions than those offered in the original paper — or that it is not possible to draw firm conclusions at all. Below, we outline several major concerns based on principles of sound experimental design and our best efforts to reproduce the originally reported statistical analyses.Oncorhynchus mykiss), coho salmon (Oncorhynchus kisutch), and other Pacific salmonids [PRV is implicated in similar disease pathways, all of which involve substantial lysis of infected red blood cells, across Pacific salmon species. In Chinook salmon, PRV is associated with jaundice/anemia  and the almonids , 4, 6, 9p=0.0457). We suggest that the “time specific” statistical analysis, small sample sizes, and an overreliance on statistical hypothesis testing [In the case of standard metabolic rate (SMR), a statistical difference was observed between the control and the IHNV-exposed samples at week 9. However, the overall impact of PRV exposure was comparable to that of IHNV exposure Fig. C, but no testing , may welInsufficient power (discussed in more detail below) makes real effects difficult to detect, and the sheer number of tests performed makes spurious results highly likely. For instance, using a significance threshold of 0.05, every 100 tests performed when the null hypothesis is true will yield about five “significant” false positive results. For their physiological and blood measures Polinski et al. performed 132 tests and reported 7 significant results using a 0.05 threshold, and while they adjusted p-values “for familywise error,” “no false discovery rate calculations were applied over the suite of comparisons.” It is thus virtually impossible to tell which “statistically significant” results reported by Polinski et al. are likely to be real and which ‘insignificant’ results are in fact evidence of biologically relevant processes. In this situation, biologically significant results — and not just technically statistically significant ones — should be discussed, especially when such results run counter to the authors’ assumptions or conclusions. Further study with a larger sample size is needed to determine the true effect of PRV on physiological stress, but the limited data available suggest that PRV-exposed fish may lower their metabolism to tolerate infection and protect against low oxygen, just as argued for low-load IHNV infections.Statistical power  is directly influenced by a study’s sample size, and this affects the ability to answer the associated research questions. Although there are perfectly valid financial and practical limits to the scope and size of laboratory studies, the resultant power must still inform associated claims, especially where findings indicate a lack of statistical effect. Polinski et al. report that the power of their analyses was over 0.85. Their power analyses overlooked considerable relevant information, however. They only estimated power at large effect sizes , did nota priori power analysis, the issue of pseudoreplication also impacts the multiple comparisons. With only two tanks used for each viral treatment (with the exception of IHNV at week 1) and for the controls, it is effectively impossible to determine whether a given response variable is more impacted by unknown tank effects or the virus challenge itself. Polinski et al. treated individual fish as independent replicates, even if they came from the same tank, a classic example of pseudoreplication without an appropriate analytical framework [In addition to confounding the ramework . Becauseramework ), each fexposure, not PRV infection, this would have been more acceptable. Although we agree that the experimental setup was broadly suitable to examine the transcriptomic response to exposure, classifying the fish negative for the virus as “infected” throughout the main text of the manuscript was misleading. This is especially true given that PRV load was significantly correlated with several measures including hemoglobin, hematocrit, and EPOCdur . While the study was framed as an investigation of the energetic costs of viral response, individuals that were exposed to either virus, but that failed to show evidence of infection  were included in the exposed group. Although these fish had technically been exposed to the virus, they were virus-negative and, in effect, uninfected. It is possible these fish fought off infection via an immune response. However, it seems more likely that the ability to resist infection is only short-lived since almost all fish are infected at later time points . Regardless, to include the virus-negative fish from the first time point in the ‘infected’ group is misleading, since they dilute any effects of infection in the experimental group  is a disease-causing agent , 23, 24.all Pacific salmon species. Until there is reliable evidence that PRV has no effect on sockeye, we suggest that the most appropriate management response would likely be to proceed in a precautionary manner, in accordance with Canadian federal policy [The question of whether PRV infection in sockeye salmon causes a disease that impacts population productivity is highly relevant to policy makers in British Columbia, Canada. This is especially true for the management of salmon farms, which present a disease-transmission risk to wild salmon –31. Despl policy .Data was obtained from the Supplementary Information of Polinski et al.  at each time point there were four fish sampled from each tank, with two tanks for each of the virus treatments and control groups; (ii) the individual observations within each tank were independently, normally distributed with a common standard deviation; and (iii) there were also random tank effects that were independently, normally distributed with mean 0 and a common standard deviation. We used two different values for the standard deviation of this random factor, the minimum possible value of 0 and a moderate value of 0.5, which was substantially below our fitted estimates for SMR, EPOC, and EPOCdur (between 0.71 and 1.59). These assumptions allowed us to use the non-central parisons .All code and data files are available in the supplementary materials.As described by Polinski et al., certain variables  were log-transformed prior to analysis. Since these variables contain 0 values, and log 0 is undefined, 0.001 was added to all of these values. Note: we are not endorsing this approach, but recreating it for consistency with the original analyses. Additionally, we applied arcsine transformation to the hematocrit values. This transformation is not described in the methods of Polinski et al. but is described within the legend of their Fig. To replicate the significant effect of PRV exposure on hematocrit at 4 weeks post treatment, reported by Polinski et al., we were forced to remove an “outlier” from the control group at that time point (ID 66). In the supplementary materials associated with the original paper, this individual was described as being visually anemic, and we believe the authors also removed this sample since it is not visible on their plots, although this is not mentioned in their paper.p-value adjustments using Dunnett’s test were conducted in groups of two contrasts between each of the two viral treatments and the shared control, ignoring the main ANOVA results.We aimed to replicate the statistical analysis described by Polinski et al, in which the data were assessed by 2-way ANOVA followed by Dunnett’s multiple comparison tests “in a time-point-specific manner”  and the cor.test function in R  PRV and B) IHNV exposed fish at all three time points. Figure S4. The effect of PRV and IHNV challenge on the IRAP and blood measures showing all time points merged. Figure S5. The effect of PRV and IHNV challenge on the IRAP and blood measures at each individual time point. Supplementary text 3. PRV infection in sockeye appears to result in metabolic changes consistent with PRV induced disease pathways observed in other species of Pacific salmon. Supplementary text 4. Suitability of laboratory studies and physiology to determine the risk posed to wild salmon.Additional file 2. Contains the reproducible code and data files required to run the code.


Smoking is a major risk factor that significantly affects public health. Although the South Korean government spends significant money on smoking cessation services, the smoking rate remains stagnant. Families influence health-conscious decisions, and family meals can positively affect smoking suppression and health behaviors. Therefore, this study investigated whether family meals are correlated with adults’ smoking behaviors.This study used data from the 2019–2021 Korean National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey. Having a meal together with family was defined as “yes” for those who have at least one meal with their family each day and “no” for those who do not. Current smoking status was classified as having smoked at least 5 packs of cigarettes (100 cigarettes) in one’s lifetime and having used either conventional cigarettes or e-cigarettes in the last 30 days. Multiple logistic regression analyses were used to examine the association between eating together, smoking, and weight application.When comparing the group that ate with their family compared to the group that did not, the odds ratio for current smoking status was 1.27  for male participants and 1.90 (95% CI: 1.33–2.71) for female participants. This showed a dose-dependent effect according to the frequency of family meals. Those who smoked conventional cigarettes had a strong association . However, those who only vaped e-cigarettes or used both conventional cigarettes and e-cigarettes had no statistically significant correlations.This study provides evidence suggesting that eating meals as a family is related to smoking behavior and can positively affect smoking cessation intentions in adults. Consequently, a smoking cessation program can be developed that uses social support, such as encouraging family meals.The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12889-023-17155-9. Smoking is a global public health issue and the most significant risk factor affecting health. The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that the annual death toll from smoking is 8 million, and has rated tobacco as “one of the biggest public health threats the world has ever faced” . SmokingFamily is the most important and central experience in social relationships . AccordiPrevious studies on the association between family meals and smoking have predominantly focused on adolescents, both domestically and internationally. Cohort studies conducted by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute in the United States and studies on Minnesota adolescents indicated that dining with family members increases the sense of kinship within the family and ultimately inhibits smoking behavior through the structure and flow of family dynamics –23. MoreTherefore, this study aimed to investigate the association between having meals with family members and smoking behavior in adults, and identify practical information that can be used to suggest policies and establish institutional support to enhance smoking cessation success rates.This study used cross-sectional data from the 2019–2021 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (KNHANES), which was conducted by the Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Agency (KDCA). The KNHANES is an annual self-reported survey designed to assess the health and nutritional status of South Koreans of all ages, utilizing a stratified, multi-stage, cluster sampling methodology. Therefore, the survey was conducted using random cluster sampling, allowing for statistical generalization of the research findings to the general population. According to the National Health Promotion Act 16, the KNHANES is a nationwide survey that calculates national statistics through the health level, health-related consciousness and behavior, and food and nutrition intake of about 10,000 people aged 1 or older. The survey was introduced in 1998 and conducted every three years until 2005 and has been conducted annually since 2007. Anyone can access it, and we conducted an analysis using secondary data. It provides information on the development and assessment of health policies and programs. Additionally, the results of the KNHANES are used to compare health status between countries, as required by organizations such as the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). This study was exempt from the ethics review board because the KNHANES adheres to the Declaration of Helsinki.n = 3,868). Additionally, participants who lived alone , and those with missing data  were excluded. Consequently, a final sample of 11,079 participants was included in this study, as presented in Supplementary Table Of the 22,559 participants in the survey, those aged less than 19 and those who did not participate in the KNHANES smoking questionnaire were excluded . Specifically, individuals who had smoked more than five packs (100 cigarettes) in their lifetime and had been smoking conventional cigarettes or using e-cigarettes in the last 30 days were classified as “currently smoking,” while those who did not meet these criteria were classified as “currently non-smoking.” The current use of e-cigarettes has been defined as a question of whether cartridge-type or liquid-type e-cigarettes are currently used. People who formerly smoked were classified as those who smoked more than 5 packs (100 cigarettes) in their lifetime but did not smoke at present. This categorization is consistent with previous studies that investigated smoking behavior using the same research tool .The main independent variable was whether the participant had a meal with family members and was defined using two survey questions. The first question was “In the last year, have you eaten with others when having a meal?” and only those who answered “yes” to the first question were asked a second question. The second question was, “Who was the person you had a meal with?”. This question could be answered as “family” or “non-family.” Accordingly, we classified those who answered “family” as the group who had a meal with family and those who answered “non-family” as the group who did not have a meal with family. The questions were asked separately for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and those who had at least one family meal daily were categorized as “yes,” while those who did not were categorized as “no.” In addition, we measured the frequency of family meals per day by combining questions based on whether family meals  occurred or not.The covariates included demographic , socioeconomic , health-related , and other factors (frequency of eating out and survey year). Specifically, occupational categories refer to office workers as “white collar,” production workers as “blue collar,” and service workers who provide or sell services as “pink collar.”N) and percentages (%), and the results were assessed and compared using chi-squared tests. Following this, multiple logistic regression analysis was performed, controlling for covariates, to examine the association between current smoking status and having meals with family. Subgroup analyses, stratified by independent variables, were performed according to marital status, educational level, region, occupational category, household generation composition, and number of household members. Furthermore, a subgroup analysis was performed for a more complete analysis, stratified by dependent variables  and confounding variables . Specifically, attempt or plan for smoking cessation was measured by the questions, “Have you ever quit smoking for more than a day (24 h) in the past year?” and “Do you have any plans to quit smoking in the next month?” All analyses were stratified by gender to account for gender differences in conventional or e-cigarette use, which was more prevalent in male participants. Statistical analyses were performed using SAS version 9.4 .Weighted estimates were used in all analyses to improve the representativeness and generalizability of the data, and clusters and strata were assigned to the study population. Briefly, we used variables of stratified sampling (kstrata) and clustering (primary sampling units) provided by KNHANES to explain the limited proportion of the final population. Descriptive analysis was used to determine the general characteristics of the study group, including frequencies (p < 0.0001).Characteristics of the study population are presented in Table Table Table Figure Figure The results showed that both genders had a lower risk of current smoking when eating with their families than when they did not. This is in line with previous studies showing that having a meal with families has a positive association with increasing health behaviors. This trend was more pronounced among female participants than male participants. According to previous studies, women who smoke are more emotionally affected than men who smoke when deciding to quit smoking, and the effect of nicotine therapy replacement is relatively low , 24, 27.It is particularly noteworthy that the risk of smoking was lower in the group that often had meals with their families. Both men and women were less likely to smoke when they ate at least one meal a day with their families than the group who ate alone, and both men and women were less likely to smoke in the group that ate more than two meals a day with their families; both were statistically significant while controlling for other covariates or confounding variables such as age and socioeconomic status. This supports previous studies showing that the more frequent family meals are, the lower the likelihood of smoking among male and female adolescents . AdditioAccording to the results of the independent subgroup analysis, the age groups with a relatively higher association between having a meal together with family and smoking were male participants in their 60 s and older and female participants in their 30 s and 40 s. According to previous studies, it can be assumed that older adult men’s family ties play an important role in health care , 36. AddFinally, the analysis conducted by dividing the relationship between having a meal with family and smoking by cigarette type revealed remarkable results. The group that smoked only conventional cigarettes was the most affected by family meals. People who used both conventional cigarettes and e-cigarettes were relatively less affected, and the group that used only e-cigarettes had the lowest association. Because e-cigarettes smell relatively less than conventional cigarettes, e-cigarette users are presumed to have fewer opportunities to receive health advice from families while eating meals together , 42. FurThis study has several limitations. First, this study was cross-sectional, which means that the temporal relationship is unclear, and reverse causality may be possible. Regarding family meals, it is unknown when the habit of eating with the family started and whether it preceded smoking initiation. Therefore, caution is required when interpreting these results and further prospective cohort studies are required to clarify these findings. Second, the KNHANES uses self-report surveys, which introduce potential limitations in the reliability and accuracy of health-related, socioeconomic, and smoking statuses. This can result in recall bias, particularly regarding the underestimation of smoking prevalence. Third, despite attempts to include as many independent variables related to family meals and smoking as possible, potentially uncontrolled confounding variables may still exist. Fourth, it is important to note that the presence or absence of family meals does not necessarily reflect the depth of family relationships or the frequency of face-to-face interactions. It is possible for families to have a close bond even without regularly eating meals together, or conversely, not to have a strong bond despite sharing meals together. Finally, this study did not assess the quality of family meals. According to a previous study, even when families eat together, there can be significant differences in the proportion of mealtime spent in conversation depending on family members’ participation . In thisDespite these limitations, this study has several strengths. First, this study utilized data from the KNHANES, a nationally representative survey that reflects the health behaviors and characteristics of South Koreans. Second, the inclusion of recent data from 2019 to 2021 is significant, as it encompasses not only current smoking status but also factors such as e-cigarette use, past smoking history, and smoking cessation attempts and plans. Third, although previous studies examining the association between family meals and smoking have often focused only on conventional cigarette smoking or adolescents, this study included all adults and e-cigarette smoking.This study found that having a meal with family members may have a positive effect on adult smoking control and smoking cessation intention. Considering tobacco addiction and the continued release of new e-cigarettes, the government needs to actively utilize social support for smoking cessation activities, such as encouraging having meals with family members. Additionally, educational programs that promote family dialogue and remind people who smoke of their bonds with their families are important. Thus, it is necessary to develop programs and actively promote smoking cessation clinics at public health centers and educate family members about the importance of family meals. By combining these efforts, the health of people who smoke can be improved and a healthy culture of smoking cessation can be created through family and social support.Additional file 1: Supplementary 1. Flowchart of the study participants displaying the inclusion and exclusion.Additional file 2: Supplementary 2. General characteristics of the study population for each smoking behavior (cigarette type).Additional file 3: Supplementary 3. Subgroup analysis of smoking cessation attempt and plan among all participants.