I present historical background, contemporary status, and potential future development of the psychology of religion (PoR) in Russia, beginning with its origins: the formative people, places, and various intellectual schools of thought. Writing about the current state of the topic, I reflect on influential factors that are either facilitating or inhibiting the study of PoR, including publication options, topical emphases, practitioners, orientations, methodologies, and professional organizations.

I offer opinions concerning future development topics that are emerging as important in the immediate future and/or are perennially important in order to stimulate creative and useful research including Western theoretical relevance, the extent to which Western PoR theories may or may not contain reasonable expectations and concepts for this region, contextual nuances, Indigenous theoretical concerns, collaborative research opportunities, and common faux pas – reflections on what people unfamiliar with this region commonly and incorrectly assume about conducting PoR work in this context.

This chapter highlights the way in which Ekins and his co-authors in the Judicial Power Project market their publications politically as a backdrop to the debate over the Rwanda Bill. The chapter then describes the Supreme Court’s judgment that declared Rwanda ‘unsafe’ and how the subsequent Treaty between the UK and Rwanda plus the Bill, far from making Rwanda safe from the perspective of human rights law, rendered such law irrelevant. That makes it evident that Ekins and his coauthors were attempting to defend the indefensible. But what is really striking is that they wanted the Act to excise the few slivers of judicial review it preserved, thus giving the executive a completely free hand. The chapter also exposes the inconsistencies in their approach to international law in their different attempts to show that breaking international law is consistent with both the rule of law and international law itself.

Extended reality (XR), encompassing virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR), has become a crucial tool in Behavioural Data Science. This chapter explores the applications of XR, VR and AR in this field, with a focus on analysing human behaviour and decision-making in immersive environments. The chapter begins with an overview of XR, VR and AR technologies and their potential in Behavioural Data Science. It discusses the advantages of using immersive environments for studying human behaviour, such as the ability to control and manipulate variables, measure behaviour in real time and simulate complex scenarios. It reviews various applications of XR, VR and AR in Behavioural Data Science. The chapter covers how immersive environments aid in studying decision-making, social interaction, learning, training and cognitive processes, with specific examples like using VR for consumer behaviour studies and AR for employee training. The challenges and opportunities of applying XR, VR and AR in Behavioural Data Science are also discussed. This includes the need for advanced data collection and analysis tools, ethical considerations around data privacy and security and potential new applications in fields like healthcare, education and entertainment. The chapter emphasises the significance of XR, VR and AR in understanding human behaviour and decision-making in immersive environments. It calls for ongoing research to further explore the potential applications of these technologies in Behavioural Data Science and to develop new tools and methods for analysing data from immersive environments.

From this chapter on, we study upper ramification subgroups. In this chapter we introduce a geometric constuction used in the definition of the upper ramification subgroups. We take an immersion to a smooth scheme, take a dilatation, and construct a stable integral model by taking a base change and normalization. The existence of stable integral models is a consequence of the reduced fiber theorem proved in Chapter 9. As an example, we compute the construction in the monogenic case explicitly.

In this chapter, we study the fundamental question of finding large matchings in uniform regular hypergraphs and present the semirandom method – sometimes called the Rödl nibble. We present important applications to transversals in Latin squares and the existence of asymptotic designs.

The origin and development of writing systems is examined, and the kinds of writing systems are characterized. What writing systems have in common and why is presented. The history and changes in the English alphabet are discussed. Assumed mystical and magical properties of written symbols are examined and explained. This provides the backdrop to explicating philology, about how old written attestations of languages can be utilized to understand more about the history of the languages themselves and the changes they have undergone.

Nanoscale magnets have at least one dimension in the nanometre range. They exhibit size-specific magnetic properties such as superparamagnetism, remanence enhancement, exchange averaging of anisotropy and giant magnetoresistance when the small dimensions become comparable to a characteristic magnetic or electrical length scale. Thin films are the most versatile magnetic nanostructures, and interface effects such as spin-dependent scattering, antisymmetric exchange and exchange bias influence their magnetic properties. Thin-film stacks form the basis of modern magnetic sensors and memory elements. They are indispensibleindispensable for spin electronics. Nanowires and nanoparticles or nanodots also exhibit interesting magnetic properties that differ from those of bulk materials.

This chapter explores the significance of adopting a posthuman approach to placemaking as a strategy for cultivating hope and resilience amidst rapid global change. Drawing on posthuman theory, the author argues for moving beyond human-centric perspectives to embrace interconnectedness with other species, technology, and the environment. To strengthen a ‘psychology of place’, the author recommends recognising our kinship and deep psychological bonds with non-human entities and environments, embracing Indigenous knowledge systems, and fostering ethical relationships with technology. Practical strategies include designing places that encourage multispecies interactions, promoting local biodiversity, and integrating cultural rituals and ceremonies that reinforce communal and ecological bonds. Furthermore, fostering collective dialogues across communities to repair human and ecological relationships is emphasised. Ultimately, the chapter calls for a transformative approach to placemaking that prioritises ecological and relational repair, recognising shared vulnerabilities, and actively cultivating inclusive environments where diverse forms of life collectively can thrive.

This chapter explores the flourishing of Buddhist print culture during the Song dynasty, focusing on its visual, material, and transregional dimensions. It shifts attention from elite literary publishing to religious book production, highlighting how Buddhist printing developed in both court-sponsored and commercial contexts. Beginning with rare early blocks, it sheds light on some of the earliest extant printed materials. The discussion on the Imperial Secret Treasures demonstrates visual strategies in imperially sponsored scripture printing. Finely produced Buddhist texts discovered in the tomb of Lady Sun reveal how printed books functioned in funerary practice and lay devotional life. The final section examines Hangzhou as a vibrant printing hub, where family-run publishers produced richly illustrated scriptures. Modular visual strategies in these frontispieces facilitated the circulation of Buddhist imagery, spreading Hangzhou’s Buddhist print culture to Xi Xia, Korea, Japan, and other parts of Asia. The chapter argues that image-bearing prints operated as visual and ritual media, enabling dynamic visual transmissions that often exceeded the textual reach alone.

This chapter examines how “open science” is a practical problem for scientists, focusing on what is central to it: the extended access to research data. It considers how researchers evaluate the social and moral accountabilities of the open access to data and the tensions that result from them. In astronomy, most large scientific datasets are made by collaborations. This chapter considers two collaborations, including the MUWAGS team discussed in Chapter 6. As these teams’ members prepared datasets for public release, they became both inquirers into, and actors in, what many astronomers refer to as their discipline’s “culture of open data access.” Both teams can be described as groups of practical methodologists who used “inner dialogues” to explore the normative expectations and tensions of this domain ethnographically, seeking to inhabit proper statuses in it. The chapter argues that examining scientists’ understanding of statuses and their achievement offers resources for a refined critique of “open science” that is considerate of the context sensitivity of data production and use. Along the way, it examines some methods by which scientists, as members, are “doing ethnography.”

Network and collective choice models are foundational tools in Behavioural Data Science, offering deep insight into how individual decisions scale into system-level outcomes. These models underpin everything from public health planning and traffic optimisation to social media influence and climate action coordination. Yet, as they become more integrated into decision-making architectures – especially under the regulatory framing of the European Union’s AI Act – questions of bias, equity, explainability and accountability become unavoidable. This chapter argues for a responsible approach to network and collective choice modelling, grounded in legal foresight, social ethics and behavioural realism. Beginning with an overview of the theoretical foundations and methodological advantages of these models, it then unpacks critical concerns: selection and confirmation bias, representational fairness, algorithmic opacity and privacy loss. Special attention is paid to the risks of amplification of systemic inequality and marginalisation through flawed modelling assumptions. The chapter draws on real-world applications to show how stakeholder co-design, model interpretability and participatory governance can mitigate harm. By weaving legal obligations under the AI Act with behavioural science principles, this chapter offers a pathway to designing socially beneficial, transparent and context-aware models of collective decision-making in digital systems.

After presenting motivating examples, cyclotomic extensions, the relation between the conductor of Galois representations and the level of the corresponding automorphic forms, and the Grothendieck–Ogg–Shafarevich formula, we sketch the fact that fundamental properties of the main objects of the book, lower and upper ramification groups, show sharp contrasts. The structure of the book together with the content of each chapter are explained. Required backgrounds are also listed.