Employing a cross-country sample, we examine how a population’s underlying cultural values help explain gender compensation variation across corporate executives. The results show that the cultural differences, embedded in societies long before the board’s compensation decisions, have significant explanatory power for the observed gender gap in executive compensation. Using an Oaxaca–Blinder decomposition combined with variables previously shown to be fundamental determinants of executive compensation, we find that adding cultural measures increases the model’s explanatory power of the gender compensation gap from 44% to 95%. We use further identification strategies to support causal inference.

This article introduces the blueprint model of production (BMP), which characterises the phonetics–phonology interface in terms of typed functions. The standard modular feed-forward view to the interface is that the phonetic form of a lexical item is the output of a phonetic module which takes the output of a phonological module as its input. The central idea of the BMP is that the phonetic form is instead the output of a higher-order phonetics function which takes the phonological function as one of multiple inputs. We explain how understanding the production process this way can account for systematic fine-grained variation in phonetic forms while maintaining a discrete phonological grammar. We present one possible instantiation of the model that simulates incomplete neutralisation, some cases of near-merger, and variation in homophone duration. Consequently, these types of systematic fine-grained phonetic patterns do not necessarily provide evidence against discrete, symbolic phonology.

Due to the nascency of synthetically derived biological systems, there is a need to develop protocols for safety and security management. These protocols can be adapted from existing safety and security protocols (e.g., Biosafety Level Classification of biological agents) as well as NASA’s and ESA’s planetary protection guidelines. Currently, NASA is preparing for its first sample return mission from Mars including determining how to manage the types of hazards that may be returned to Earth. Synthetic biology can look to risk management practices from related disciplines, and NASA can look to its established protocols from lunar exploration as it strives to minimize Mars sample return bio-risk. Notably, the biosafety concerns of synthetic cell research are very similar to those of planetary back-contamination from extraterrestrial samples. Thus, the measures taken to limit planetary back-contamination can serve to help develop biosafety protocols for synthetic cell research. We summarize existing tools used in planetary protection that can be repurposed to establish protocols for synthetic cell safety and security.

L-theanine, an amino acid found in tea, and caffeine, found in tea and coffee, are claimed to enhance attention. We conducted a double-blind, placebo-controlled, counterbalanced, two-way crossover trial to determine the acute effects of a high-dose L-theanine–caffeine combination on neurobehavioural (reaction time) and neurophysiological (P3b cognitive event-related potential (ERP)) measures of selective attention in acutely sleep-deprived healthy adults. Thirty-seven overnight sleep-deprived healthy adults (aged 22–30 years, twenty-one men) completed a computerised traffic-scene-related visual stimulus discrimination task before and 50 min after ingesting 200 mg L-theanine–160 mg caffeine combination or a placebo. The task involved selectively responding to imminent accident scenes (20 % probability) while ignoring randomly intermixed, more frequent safe scenes (80 % probability). A 32-channel electroencephalogram was recorded concurrently to derive ERP. The L-theanine–caffeine combination significantly improved the hit rate (P = 0·02) and target-distractor discriminability (P = 0·047), compared with the placebo. Although both L-theanine–caffeine combination (△ = 52·08 ms, P < 0·0001) and placebo (△ = 13·97 ms, P = 0·024) improved reaction time to accident scenes, the pre-post-dose reaction time improvement of the L-theanine–caffeine combination was significantly greater than that of placebo (△ = 38·1 ms, P = 0·003). Compared with the placebo, the L-theanine–caffeine combination significantly increased the amplitudes and reduced the latencies of P3b ERP component. Our findings suggest that L-theanine–caffeine combination improves the accuracy and speed of deploying selective attention to traffic scenarios in sleep-deprived individuals. This improvement is brought about by greater and faster neural resource allocation in the attentional networks of the brain.

Data on the distribution of iodine in the urine and breast milk of lactating women are limited. This study aimed to establish a formula to assess iodine status in lactating women by evaluating the fractional iodine excretion in urine and breast milk. A 3-d 24-h iodine metabolism survey in 2021–2023 was conducted on fifty-four pairs of lactating women and infants in Tianjin and Luoyang, China. We used the 24-h dietary record and salt weighing method to assess daily iodine intake (DII). Iodine excretion in breast milk and urine was measured. The median 24-h urinary iodine concentration and breast milk iodine concentration were 135·06 μg/L and 150·26 µg/L, respectively. When the DII was between 240 μg/d and 600 μg/d, the predicted value of fractional breast milk iodine excretion was 31·48 % (95 % CI: 27·16 %, 36·22 %). When the daily iodine excretion was between 258 μg/d and 476 μg/d, the fractional urine iodine excretion (59·09 %) and fractional breast milk iodine excretion (40·91 %) were stable. DII can be derived from the spot urinary iodine concentration as follows: urinary iodine concentration (μg/L) × (0·0009 L/h/kg × 24 h/d) × body weight (kg) ÷ 0·59 ÷ 0·94 = DII (μg/d). In conclusion, lactating women with adequate iodine delivered approximately 31·48 % of the DII to their infants. A stable proportion (59·09 %) of iodine excretion was discharged through urine, which was used to assess the iodine status based on the spot urinary iodine concentration of lactating women. This study was registered at ClinicalTrials.gov (NCT04492657).

For every positive integer n, we introduce a set ${\mathcal {T}}_n$ made of $(n+3)^2$ Wang tiles (unit squares with labeled edges). We represent a tiling by translates of these tiles as a configuration $\mathbb {Z}^2\to {\mathcal {T}}_n$. A configuration is valid if the common edge of adjacent tiles has the same label. For every $n\geq 1$, we show that the Wang shift ${\Omega }_n$, defined as the set of valid configurations over the tiles ${\mathcal {T}}_n$, is self-similar, aperiodic and minimal for the shift action. We say that $\{{\Omega }_n\}_{n\geq 1}$ is a family of metallic mean Wang shifts, since the inflation factor of the self-similarity of $\Omega _n$ is the positive root of the polynomial $x^2-nx-1$. This root is sometimes called the n-th metallic mean, and in particular, the golden mean when $n=1$, and the silver mean when $n=2$. When $n=1$, the set of Wang tiles ${\mathcal {T}}_1$ is equivalent to the Ammann aperiodic set of 16 Wang tiles.

As extreme political views gain popularity and acceptability, the conditions under which media exposure to extreme right views contributes to this process, and strategies to counter media-induced persuasion and normalisation effects remain unclear. Using population-based survey experiments leveraging real-world interviews with extreme right activists on Sky News UK and Australia, we test whether media exposure leads to higher agreement with extreme right statements. We also test whether exposure affects perceptions of how many others agree with these statements. Our findings are consistent across both countries: exposure to uncritical interviews increases agreement with extreme statements and perceptions of broader support in the population. Testing the media strategy in the UK, we find that critical interviewing tarnishes the activist’s image and reduces effects, but still heightens perceived support for extreme statements. This study identifies a mechanism through which extreme political ideas spread and offers insights into media strategies to counteract persuasion and normalisation effects.

Increasing numbers of children and young people (CYP) are presenting with common mental health difficulties. In 2017, the UK government outlined a service transformation plan which led to the development and implementation of Mental Health Support Teams (MHSTs), to deliver evidence-based interventions in schools for mild to moderate mental health difficulties. This service evaluation aimed to evaluate the effectiveness of individual interventions delivered by MHST practitioners trained to deliver low-intensity cognitive behavioural interventions to CYP with mild to moderate mental health difficulties, within one service based in the South East of England. Four hundred and fifty-nine CYP engaged in an individual intervention delivered by MHST practitioners between January 2021 and December 2022. Interventions were delivered either online via video call or face-to-face. All children and their parents/carers were invited to complete two routine outcome measures (Revised Children’s Anxiety and Depression Scale (RCADS), and Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ)) at baseline and post-intervention. Outcome data demonstrated significant improvements across all child- and parent-rated RCADS anxiety and depression scales. Significant improvements were also shown for both child- and parent-rated SDQ total difficulties and impact scores. These all showed effect sizes ranging from medium to large. Girls presented higher scores pre- and post-intervention compared with boys apart from the OCD subscale; gender was not a predictor of improvement in the majority of analyses. Individual, low-intensity cognitive behavioural interventions delivered in this MHST service were effective in reducing symptoms of emotional and behavioural difficulties in CYP with mild to moderate mental health difficulties.

Key learning aims

1. (1) Understand the context of Mental Health Support Teams (MHSTs) as an early intervention service within school settings.

2. (2) Learn about the impact of MHST-delivered interventions on symptoms of emotional and behavioural difficulties in children and young people.

3. (3) To gain an understanding of how boys and girls may respond differently to MHST-delivered interventions.

Cosmogenic 7Be and 10Be are effective tracers for studying atmospheric dynamics and Earth’s surface processes, with over 90% of these isotopes reaching the surface via wet deposition. However, the characteristics and influencing factors of 7Be and 10Be wet deposition remain unclear in different regions, limiting the precision of these nuclides as tracers of environmental change. This study analyzes the annual variation of 7Be and 10Be wet deposition in Xi’an and examines the impact of precipitation on their deposition. Ultra-trace levels of 7Be and 10Be in precipitation were synchronously measured using state-of-the-art accelerator mass spectrometry. One-year (July 30, 2020 to September 3, 2021), high-frequency (individual rain events) and time-synchronized series of observations of 7Be and 10Be wet deposition data (n = 49) were analyzed. The total annual wet deposition fluxes of 7Be and 10Be in central China (34.22°N, 109.01°E) for 2020/21 were (218 ± 24) × 108 atoms·m–2·yr–1 and (314 ± 16) × 108 atoms·m–2·yr–1, respectively. Precipitation amount, intensity, and duration were quantitatively analyzed for their effects on total wet deposition flux, mean concentration, washout ratio, deposition velocity, and scavenging coefficient of 7Be and 10Be during individual rain events. The results indicate that precipitation amount is the most significant factor influencing the wet deposition flux of both nuclides.

Montesquieu’s philosophy of moderate government offers only a qualified endorsement of commercial republics. Recent scholarship has increasingly recognized the extent to which he advocated a monarchy balanced by an aristocracy. This article explicates Montesquieu’s understanding of honor as a vital aristocratic motive and one more consistently favorable to liberty than mercantile self-interest. It then compares this argument to the constitutionalism of the American Federalists. Whereas Publius attempts to create a balance of powers on the basis of representing aggregates of individuals, Adams throughout his writings affirms Montesquieu’s assumption that the impulse for honor creates enduring hierarchies in society, which must be explicitly accounted for in constitutional design. It concludes by suggesting that, amid today’s concerns about oligarchy, inequality, and populism, Adams’s realism points toward a healthier relationship between elites and people.

This article delves into the often-overlooked scholar Robert Greene, a Fellow of Clare Hall, Cambridge, who authored works in both religion and natural philosophy. Greene made significant contributions to the debate on the interplay between reason and faith, with his primary target being John Locke, whose epistemology and views on the relationship between reason and faith he considered detrimental to religion. This article examines Greene’s criticism of Locke’s views on the relationship between reason and faith within its institutional context, shedding new light on Locke’s early reception at the University of Cambridge.

In East Jerusalem, the vast majority of Palestinians contest the legitimacy of the Israeli state’s claim to sovereignty. This necessarily affects how Palestinians engage with the state in pursuit of goods and services. But how? Using data from 55 interviews and original observational and experimental survey data from a representative sample of East Jerusalemites, I show that civilians’ engagement with each good, service, and institution of the state is a function of their perceptions of the state’s legitimacy, or right to rule, in that sector. Civilians will avoid engagement with goods, services, and institutions that explicitly affirm the state’s claims to monopolized sovereign rule, without forsaking essential goods and services. This article empirically illustrates that the same individual will make different choices with respect to each state sector, and in doing so builds on the burgeoning recognition of sector-level choices in the citizen claim-making literature.

Turbulence driven by gyrokinetic instabilities is largely responsible for transport in magnetic fusion devices. To estimate this turbulent transport, integrated modelling codes often use mixing length estimates in conjunction with reduced models of the linearized gyrokinetic equation. One common method of formulating and solving the linearized gyrokinetic eigenvalue problem equation uses a Ritz variational principle, particularly in the local collisionless limit. However, the variational principle as typically stated in the literature is mathematically incorrect. In this work, we derive a mathematically correct form of the variational principle that applies to local linear collisionless gyrokinetics in general geometry with electromagnetic effects. We also explicitly derive a weak form of the gyrokinetic field equations suitable for numerical applications.