How does the party-state exercise leadership over universities and manage the individuals embedded in the university system without restraining their capacity for excellence and innovation? I argue that the presidential responsibility system has resolved a fundamental agency problem in Chinese universities. The system is supported by a set of mechanisms designed to enforce loyalty to the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party. It can easily adapt to political changes and thus maintain authoritarian rule without compromising the overarching agenda of research excellence.

The objective of this study was to investigate the gene-breastfeeding interaction on BMI based on the Chinese National Twin Register (CNTR). The study included 4,573 pairs of same-sex twins aged 2–18 from CNTR. Data were collected using a self-reported questionnaire, and a structural equation model was used to analyze the gene-environment interaction of breastfeeding with BMI in six age groups. Our findings indicate that as age increases, the heritability of BMI shows an increasing trend, being the lowest (h2: 0.08; 95% CI [0.00, 0.19]) in the 6- to 8-year age group and the highest (h2: 0.57, 95% CI [0.44, 0.72]) in the 12- to 14-year age group. Additionally, breastfeeding significantly modified the additive genetic component of BMI in the 6- to 8-year age group and 12- to 14-year age group. In the 6- to 8-year age group, breastfeeding decreased the impact of genes on BMI, with a genetic effect modification coefficient (βa) of −0.19 (−0.25, −0.13). In the 12- to 14-year age group, breastfeeding increased the impact of genes on BMI, with a genetic effect modification coefficient (βa) of 0.08 (0.02, 0.15). In conclusion, as age increases, the genetic influence on children’s BMI becomes more pronounced. Breastfeeding may modulate genetic effects at the ages of 6–8 and 12–14. Given the metabolic diversity of obesity, our findings offer insight into how breastfeeding interacts with genetic background, helping to unravel the complex gene–environment interplay influencing obesity.

Indigenous identity politics in South America increasingly mobilize language as a resource for political visibility, cultural continuity, and resistance to homogenizing state agendas. While many Indigenous movements pursue linguistic standardization, the Murui-Muina people of the Colombian Amazon advance an inverse project: they emphasize internal differentiation, maintaining four ethnolinguistic groups (Murui, Mɨka, Mɨnɨka, Nɨpode). Drawing on long-term ethnographic and linguistic fieldwork, this article examines how Murui-Muina speakers construct and sustain these distinctions through ideologically charged lexical contrasts (‘flag words’) that function as shibboleths of subgroup identity. Situated within histories of violence, Indigenous language politics, and Northwest Amazonian multilingual ecologies, the analysis shows how minimal linguistic differences become imbued with cosmological significance, social meaning, and political value. The Murui-Muina case challenges structuralist definitions of ‘language’, demonstrating that what ultimately counts as a language depends on local approaches to language itself, offering a broader insight into how linguistic diversity is lived, valued, and reproduced. (Indigenous identity, linguistic diversity, language standardization, Murui-Muina, Northwest Amazonia, Colombia)

The Middle Persian Nāmagīhā ī Manuščihr “Epistles of Manuščihr”, the Zoroastrian high priest of Pārs and Kermān, written in 881 ce, are an important testimony of an inner-Zoroastrian dispute on orthopraxy in early Islamic Iran. They reflect Manuščihr’s efforts to preserve the extensive purification ritual Baršnūm against being substituted with a simplified ritual by his brother, the teacher-priest (Hērbed) Zādspram. Manuščihr wrote three letters to make his position clear. His second letter, addressed to Zādspram, is interesting not only for its theological debate but also for the personal relationship it reveals between two priest-brothers. Manuščihr argues on an elaborate scholarly level by quoting from the religious authoritative texts, and expresses his brotherly love and responsibility for leading his younger brother back to the correct path. This article focuses on his theological argumentation but also on the debate, how the family ties may have affected it and how he used linguistic expressions and style in this context.

In a recent article, Michael Rea has argued that hope for universalism to be true is incompatible with a lack of belief in its truth, so that hopeful universalists should become believing universalists. His reasoning, in short, is that hope for universalism involves belief that universalism is good, and such belief conflicts with a recognition of what might be God’s perfect will – that universalism is false. In response, I defend hopeful universalism by arguing that at least in some cases, we should align our hopes (or what Eleonore Stump terms our ‘desires of the heart’) with what we take to be not God’s consequent will, but only God’s antecedent will – and it may be only God’s antecedent will, and not God’s consequent will, that universalism be true.

The COVID-19 pandemic has illustrated the importance of public support for non-pharmaceutical public health interventions and the perils of rampant spread of misinformed and conspiratorial beliefs. Open-minded epistemic attitudes may be associated with adherence to public health recommendations and protect against holding false beliefs. In a large (N = 46,745 from 68 countries) global sample collected during the first months of the COVID-19 pandemic, we find that a six-item self-report measure of open-mindedness predicts decreased belief in COVID-19 conspiracy theories, increased physical distancing, increased engagement in recommended hygienic behaviors, and increased support for public health policies that aimed at decreasing COVID-19 transmission. In fact, out of 17 individual difference measures that we examined, open-mindedness proved to be the strongest or among the strongest predictors of rejecting conspiracy beliefs, of supporting physical distancing and public health policies, and of engaging in physical hygiene behaviors. In exploratory analyses of the open-mindedness measure, we found that public health support is associated with a learning-orientedfactor while conspiratorial beliefs were associated with a threat-oriented factor. These results suggest that it will be important to investigate whether open-mindedness can be cultivated or encouraged through educational or other interventions to ensure that public health is protected and that conspiracy theories do not spread.

The rise of internet celebrity cities has become one of the most striking phenomena in China since 2021. How do local governments respond and harness this trend to advance their development goals? This study focuses on local experimentation in creating such cities, drawing on the case of the Village Football Super League (Cun chao 村超) in Guizhou. We identify policy entrepreneurship as a key driver of local experimentation and highlight three core strategies for creating internet celebrity cities: crafting local symbols, co-producing viral content and mitigating public opinion risk. Further analysis shows that this experimentation, by attracting massive public attention, simultaneously promotes economic growth, strengthens social cohesion, reinforces state narratives and projects China’s national image onto the global stage. Overall, the findings suggest an emerging model in which public attention becomes a core resource for local development and governance in China’s digital era.

We investigate a novel first-passage percolation model, referred to as the Brochette first-passage percolation model, where the passage times associated with edges lying on the same line are equal. First, we establish a point-to-point convergence theorem, identifying the time constant. In particular, we explore the case where the time constant vanishes and demonstrate the existence of a wide range of possible behaviours. Next, we prove a shape theorem, showing that the limiting shape is the $L^1$ diamond. Finally, we extend the analysis by proving a point-to-point convergence theorem in the setting where passage times are allowed to be infinite.

By using satellite images, this study confirms 350 km of ancient roads, comprising 634 wide and 321 narrow roads, in southwestern Amazonia’s earthwork-rich landscape. The roads were straight, mostly under 500 m long, but with some extending several kilometers. They occurred most prevalently in areas of dense earthwork. Nested earthworks were more road-rich than simple ones, and roads were more common in structures with quadrilateral rather than roundish shapes. Geoglyphs typically featured wide ceremonial roads with start widths ranging from 15 to 40 m, sometimes wider, and gradual narrowing toward their distal ends. Mound settlements had narrow, short roads pointing in various directions, which may have been for everyday travel. They also presented narrow but long roads leading to distant destinations, occasionally spanning many earthworks. When the endpoint was observable, 39.7% of roads led to a riverine environment indicating access, 10.6% connected to other earthworks reflecting integration, and 49.7% faded into currently open terrain. Many roads starting from geoglyphs aligned with the cardinal directions suggesting a possible awareness of astronomical alignments in the construction of the ditched ceremonial enclosures. This study confirms that ancient roads provide key insights into past civilizations and are essential to the region’s archaeological heritage.

This paper addresses the question of the role that artificial intelligence (AI) image generators play in the reception of the ancient world, examining the assumptions on which they draw in the generation of images, and how the creation of such images influences perceptions about the classical past. After a brief outline of how AI image generators work, highlighting the inherent presumptions and biases of the visual productions, a small case study is then presented, in which the prompt ‘Roman Britain’ was submitted to eight different free image generators. The conclusion drawn from this experiment is that while the technology is impressive, none of the image generators have managed to produce pictures that effectively conjure up Roman Britain. Although the tools may be good at creating a general impression, individual details are often incorrect. Moreover, the output depends heavily on the training data available. In the case of the ancient world, no photographs exist; only archaeological remains, fragments, and later imaginative reconstructions survive. Consequently, these limitations inevitably shape the generated images. Despite these disadvantages, it is likely that AI-generated images will become part of cultural heritage, and it is, therefore, important to consider the role that such images might play in the reception of antiquity. In recognition of the problems, and the advantages, of this technology, some suggestions are made in the final section of the paper as to how generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) images may be used in a positive manner, particularly within the classroom.

In federal systems where multiple orders of government share authority, do citizens care about which order makes a policy? To investigate whether citizens place importance on the order of government and whether if they do, this reflects principled preferences or implicit assumptions about policy performance, we conducted a vignette experiment in Germany. The design of the study disentangles the effects of policy adoption and financing from the expected effectiveness of a policy and its impact on regional differences. Our findings show that citizens are largely indifferent regarding the order of government that adopts a policy, but they show a modest preference for financing by the federal government. These results suggest that previously observed preferences for federal policy-making in other studies may reflect citizens’ implicit assumptions about policy performance rather than principled support for centralization.

This paper investigates the frequency of commentary pragmatic markers in Ghanaian and Ugandan Englishes, and their use across different text categories, using the Ghanaian and Ugandan components of the International Corpus of English. These markers, which are grouped into assessment, emphasis, evidential, hearsay and manner-of-speaking markers, are explored from a variational pragmatic approach. The results show that Ghanaian English users employ an overall higher frequency of commentary pragmatic markers than Ugandan English users. Ghanaian English users utilise more commentary pragmatic markers in private and public dialogues and printed writing than Ugandan English users, while the latter employ more commentary pragmatic markers in monologues than their Ghanaian English counterparts. The study confirms the influence of local African languages and cultures on the use of some English commentary pragmatic markers, thus contributing to the research on nativisation and pragmatic variation in these varieties.