Vietnam’s foreign policy – centred on multilateralisation, diversification, and international integration – has transformed the country’s economic fortunes and elevated its international standing. Throughout the Doi Moi era, Vietnam has cultivated a strong network of bilateral and multilateral frameworks to further its economic aspirations and protect its national sovereignty. It has leveraged astute diplomacy to navigate challenges and seize opportunities. Since the Thirteenth National Party Congress, which set a goal for Vietnam to become a developed nation by 2045, these challenges have become increasingly pronounced. Protectionism, great-power politics, an undermining of the rules-based order, ever-present tensions in the South China Sea, as well as pandemic- and war-related disruptions to supply chains, have complicated Vietnam’s quest for national security and its effort to ensure peace and stability in pursuit of its economic targets. Amidst such a fraught environment, strategic autonomy has become a buzzword among smaller states that seek to maintain the benefits of interdependence while actively alleviating the risks associated with heightened geopolitical tensions and dependent relationships. Scholars of Vietnamese foreign policy likewise argue that Vietnam’s foreign policy seeks to bolster its strategic autonomy. However, little effort has been made to clarify what exactly this entails. The present study defines the concept in the Vietnamese context by asking, “Where and how does Vietnam seek to strengthen its strategic autonomy?” It argues that Vietnam’s pursuit rests on three core components, which it examines through Vietnam’s responses to US–China rivalry, the Russia–Ukraine war, and the country’s evolving approach to infrastructure development, energy security, and foreign direct investment.

Phenomenon-based research involves uncovering context-specific mechanisms underlying complex organizational realities and, when applied to Chinese contexts, offers valuable potential to extend and refine global management theories. Drawing on three illustrative studies on person–environment fit (Chuang, Hsu, Wang, & Judge, 2015), CEO humility (Ou, Waldman, & Peterson, 2014), and authoritarian leadership (Huang, Chiu, Lam, & Farh, 2015) respectively, this editorial highlights how each exemplifies different stages in the evolution of theories, from indigenous, middle-range insights to universal, general frameworks. In doing so, it addresses challenges and potential solutions for publishing phenomenon-based Chinese management research in premier journals. Across these cases, several recurring challenges emerge, including difficulties in positioning context-specific findings within existing theoretical frameworks, translating culturally embedded constructs for international audiences, and balancing cultural authenticity with global understanding. The authors also reflect on practical challenges such as building research partnerships and gaining organizational support within Chinese contexts. By comparing experiences across these studies, this editorial offers guidance on how phenomenon-based research can deepen theoretical innovation while maintaining methodological rigor and practical relevance. Lastly, it argues that Chinese management research plays a vital role in advancing universal management knowledge and offers opportunities for future research.

A handful of planetary systems hosting a Hot Jupiter have been subsequently found to also host long-period giant planets. These “cold Jupiters,” giant planets residing beyond the snow line (∼3au), play an important role in the dynamical evolution of the system as a whole. In this work, we investigate the detectability of cold Jupiters around a sample of 28 well-studied Hot Jupiter host stars to estimate the occurrence rate of this distinctive system architecture. We perform extensive simulations using the combination of all publicly available radial velocity (RV) data for those stars with synthetic RV data. The synthetic data test observing strategies along three axes: cadence, duration, and measurement precision. For each scenario, we determine detection limits based on the semi-major axis at which a 1 Jupiter mass planet would be recovered 50% of the time. We find the following: 1) the existing RV data are remarkably insensitive to these Hot Jupiter/Cold Jupiter pairs; 2) the total baseline over which an observational campaign is carried out is the dominant factor in our ability to detect cold Jupiters; and 3) the results are relatively insensitive to the individual RV measurement precision. We conclude that metre-class telescopes with lower RV precision are ideally suited to surveying Hot Jupiter-cold Jupiter systems.

Armed conflicts in biodiversity hotspots across Africa significantly threaten conservation efforts. The incursion of armed groups since 2017 in the W–Arly–Pendjari Complex in Benin, Niger and Burkina Faso poses a severe threat to conservation efforts in one of West Africa’s largest transboundary natural World Heritage sites. Local conservation managers often have no clear strategies to address such threats. A better understanding of the key drivers of the armed conflict would help them to respond quickly and effectively using adaptive management approaches. We used the participative Delphi technique to identify the factors driving the conflict, the key players contributing to security threats in the region and the stakeholders who could contribute to solving the conservation issues linked to the security crisis. A panel of 20 experts identified the main drivers of the insecurity to be political, economic and social, especially the vulnerability and marginalization of local communities as a consequence of weak government control and limited resources. Violent extremist groups, particularly Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin, pose significant threats to conservation efforts in the region, which our results suggest would be best addressed through military action and regional cooperation to combat terrorism. We recommend that conservation managers adopt a community-focused strategy to reduce the vulnerability of forest-dependent communities and counter local alliances with Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin. Our findings contribute to a wider understanding of how the growing threat of violent extremist groups can negatively affect protected areas and what steps should be taken to counter this.

The emerging field of critical forest studies necessitates more-than-human approaches to knowledge creation with forestscapes that makes their complex and expansive relationships sensible. This calls for a new ecological reading of the research image, and in turn, a new image of research which attends to Indigenous and place-based connections across bodies, geographies and temporalities. This paper explores this new political ontology of the image as a process of ecologisation that works towards decolonising ends. By putting machine imaging technologies such as drone footage, thermal imaging and spectrograms into conversation with Indigenous painting and storytelling practices, we endeavour to express ecological processes which often go unseen within forests. Our speculative analysis of these images disrupts modernist separations of difference from sameness, body from environment, myth from science and imagining from empirical fact, proposing pedagogies which connect material and metaphysical dimensions of sensing and learning with forests.

Despite extensive research on discrimination, little is known about how disclosing invisible attributes, such as religion, socio-economic class, and sexual orientation, affects others’ discriminatory attitudes. This study examines the case of Zainichi Koreans in Japan, descendants of Korean migrants who remained in Japan after World War II under special permanent residency status. Zainichi Koreans face a dilemma: whether to disclose their ethnic identity by using a Korean name (honmy$\bar o$) or attempt to conceal it with a Japanese pseudonym (ts$\bar u$mei). Using two conjoint experiments with hypothetical job applicants, we find strong discriminatory attitudes against Zainichi Koreans based solely on their names. However, these biases are significantly reduced among individuals with frequent social contact with Zainichi Koreans. Our findings underscore the need to further move beyond visible attributes in research on discrimination and social contact. More broadly, this study provides a framework for examining bias against invisible identities in diverse global contexts.

In 2008, two Ponzi schemes, DMG and DRFE, were shut down by the Colombian government. Using matched administrative data for a sample of almost a quarter of a million of their investors, we analyze the household risk factors associated with three main outcomes: the probability of investing, the likelihood of making a profit, and the size of financial gains or losses relative to deposits. We find that education, age, and household wealth are positively associated with these outcomes, though effects are often non-linear and vary across margins. Geographical location is also important: individuals residing in the regions of origin of the schemes were substantially more likely to invest, profit, and achieve higher returns, suggesting a role for timing and access in driving outcomes. While higher education, which has been shown to be highly correlated with measures of financial literacy, improves outcomes, even the most educated groups suffer substantial losses on average. Our findings contribute to the literature on household finance, financial education, and financial literacy, and have implications for the design and targeting of financial education programs, particularly in settings with weak regulatory oversight and limited financial literacy.

In 1949, the British Labour Party had been in power for four years. Domestically, the British government faced post-war reconstruction; internationally, its imperial grip was loosening. Nonetheless, it still ruled over lands in Africa and Asia and controlled resources such as oil in the Middle East. A contradiction emerged between its people-focused internal politics and its condescension in the conduct of foreign and colonial affairs. Concerns around the emerging Cold War infused British imperial policy. Seeing the World Federation of Trade Unions (WFTU) as a communist vehicle, the British government treated it with suspicion, especially in view of its influence over two areas of imperial interest: the Iranian oil industry and the British colony of Malaya. An examination of the situations in both countries reveals the WFTU’s influence on trade union movements in those regions and uncovers London’s imperial anxieties about its position in the post-war global order.

The Afro-Arabian dome is a broad (4000 × 1500 km) topographic swell extending from Ethiopia to the Eastern Mediterranean, initiated by Late Eocene epeirogeny associated with the Afar plume and further shaped by Oligo-Miocene rifting of the Red Sea. Here, we evaluate stages in the uplift history of Afro-Arabia by analysing the mineralogical and geochemical properties of Oligocene-Miocene sediments from the Levant Basin of the Eastern Mediterranean. Our findings show that the 3-km-thick siliciclastic section in the basin preserves a unique record of the regional-scale uplift in Afro-Arabia, revealing a three-stage evolution: (1) Oligocene sediments (∼33–25 Ma) exhibit extreme weathering signatures reflecting deep chemical alteration of Neoproterozoic basement rocks of the Arabian-Nubian Shield. These sediments record the erosion of widespread Late Cretaceous-Late Eocene etchplains that blanketed the region and were dismantled during early stages of mantle-driven domal uplift; (2) A major transition occurred in the Late Oligocene-Early Miocene (∼25–20 Ma) when sedimentation rates peaked, sediment weathering intensity declined and recycling intensified, reflecting more vigorous erosion as uplift accelerated along the emerging Red Sea Rift shoulders; (3) Since ∼20 Ma, sediments show reduced weathering intensity, reflecting incision through the residual weathering mantle into fresh basement and marking the development of a rugged, high-relief landscape. Together, this record documents a stepwise transition from a deeply weathered, low-relief surface to a high-relief topography, shaped by the combined effects of regional doming and flexural uplift along the Red Sea Rift margins. It provides independent sedimentary constraints on the timing and style of Oligocene-Miocene uplift of Afro-Arabia.

This photoarticle interrogates the notion that groundwater is an inherently democratic resource by examining the historical development of the Ogallala Aquifer in the U.S. Southern Plains. While aquifers are celebrated for their capacity to help reclaim new territories, the persistent overextraction of the Ogallala reveals a wider inability to sustainably govern this resource. Through a close analysis of photographs documenting the first efforts to mine the Ogallala, this essay explores how visual representations of groundwater extraction helped construct a racialized and gendered subjectivity centered on white male ownership and stewardship. These images, produced as part of speculative property schemes, framed groundwater as a tool for transforming both the material and social landscape. By tracing how this ideology took root, this essay argues that groundwater’s seeming resistance to sustainable governance is not a product of its physical properties, but rather the outcome of historically constructed power relations and capitalist logics.

Sagittal otoliths are structures that integrate the sensory system of teleost fish, assisting in balance and hearing, which are normally composed of calcium carbonate in the form of aragonite. The dusky grouper Epinephelus marginatus has great economic importance and there are already initiatives to produce this species through aquaculture. This study aimed to check the frequency of anomalous otoliths and to characterize the crystallization of sagittal otoliths in E. marginatus from a rearing system. We examined sagittal otoliths of 184 E. marginatus, most otoliths presented normal morphology (n = 152; TL = 24.0 ± 3.59 cm; OW = 0.034 ± 0.014 g), while about 17% were deformed (n = 32; TL = 29.7 ± 1.87 cm; OW mean = 0.040 ± 0.011 g). Raman spectroscopy detected aragonite deposition in all normal and anomalous otoliths. The morphological changes in otoliths of groupers may have been caused by transport between hatchery and fattening locations, by the constant flow of aeration during hatchery rearing, or even by a possible starvation period.

This article examines how popular Hindi cinema has become integral to the political aesthetics of Narendra Modi’s India. Focusing on Modi’s strategic proximity to Bollywood through celebrity interviews, public endorsements of controversial films, election-timed hagiographies, and militarized spectacles, it argues that cinema now growingly operates as an infrastructure of governance rather than a cultural expression. Tracing a trajectory from ostensibly “apolitical” media performances such as the Modi–Akshay Kumar interview to films like The Kashmir Files, The Kerala Story, and Uri: The Surgical Strike, the article shows how cinematic narratives are mobilized to manufacture affect, stabilize nationalist truth claims, and pre-empt journalistic or historical scrutiny. Particular attention is paid to the feedback loop between cinematic representation and political rhetoric, wherein slogans, war-room imaginaries, and heroic masculinities migrate seamlessly from screen to statecraft. Situating these developments within the broader “saffronization” of public knowledge, the article contends that Bollywood is increasingly training audiences to recognize enemies, rehearse outrage, and internalize a grammar of permanent retaliation. What emerges is not merely propaganda cinema but a mode of rule in which spectacle substitutes deliberation and representation collapses into authority.