This article explores the mechanics of institution building through a case study of Peru’s tax authority reform in the early 1990s. An agency riddled with corruption and despondency became a model bureaucracy oriented toward public service under the leadership of a career civil servant with a religious background. The explanation combines systemic factors associated with institutional change with other, less well-known forces. The profound socioeconomic crisis that had struck Peru at the time opened a window for reform. More significantly, the analysis focuses on the struggle to supplant old and enforce new institutional values. Management policy played a role by fostering a predisposed workforce. However, it was the charismatic performance of the reform leader and his task force, articulated around a nation-saving narrative, that instilled the belief that change was possible, encouraged employees to embrace new values, and paradoxically enabled the creation of an agency with a Weberian ethos. Subsequent developments hint at the limits of charismatic state building.

Commentary on the election of Pope Leo XIV has been framed in terms drawn from political and cultural oppositions: conservative vs liberal, traditionalist vs progressive, made vivid by the 2024 film Conclave based on Robert Harris’s 2016 novel. Part of my concern is to urge rejection of these as general terms of analysis of Catholicism, or at least to circumscribe their applications to matters inessential to Catholic faith and morals per se. In aid of that, and by way of broader purpose, I discuss the nature of Catholicism itself. Observing the long history of challenges, crises, and divisions, I then proceed to distinguish between subjective and objective modes of identifying the nature of individuals and institutions. Catholicism has a robust objective nature comprising a synthesis of Hebrew and Christian scripture, apostolic tradition, conciliar and other authoritative teachings, and sacramental practices, together consolidated and expressed in orthodoxy and orthopraxy. Political and cultural classifications are irrelevant to and distracting from this identification.

A meta-analysis was conducted to evaluate the effects of whey protein supplementation on growth performance, nutrient digestibility, blood parameters and carcase quality in broiler chickens. The dataset was compiled from studies published between 1964 and 2025, following the PICO framework, which included the following components: population = broiler chickens; intervention = various whey products (types of whey, inclusion methods and different inclusion levels); comparison = control versus treatment; and outcome = growth performance, nutrient digestibility, carcase traits, humoral immunity, antioxidant properties, intestinal morphology and microbiota composition. Overall, the inclusion of whey protein in broiler diets significantly improved average daily gain, feed intake, breast percentage and villus height (g’ > 0.500; P < 0.001). In conclusion, this meta-analysis highlights the strong potential of whey protein as an alternative protein source in poultry nutrition.

We construct a measure (fLMA) of the extent to which neighboring firms hire similar types of workers, based on the similarity between the labor profile of a firm and that of its locality. We show that a firm’s innovation is positively related to fLMA. The enhanced labor mobility induced by higher fLMA is an important channel for this positive relation. This relation is stronger when firms have increased outside job opportunities for employees, increased knowledge spillovers via coworkership, and more employee stock options. Innovation is higher when intellectual property ownership is with employers, not employees. This effect increases in fLMA.

This paper investigates the permanent effect on total factor productivity (TFP) of temporary shocks. We estimate a structural vector autoregression to test the predictions of endogenous growth models over the business cycle. According to theory, the stock of technological knowledge promotes its flow as researchers “stand on the shoulders of giants.” Therefore, if R&D investment is pro-cyclical—as data show and theory predicts—a recession leads to a temporary deviation of the R&D level from its trend, thus reducing new knowledge creation. The lost technological advancements cause the economy to follow a parallel but permanently lower growth path. Our findings align with the primary theoretical prediction. Quantitatively, the US economy forgoes approximately 1.3% in TFP following an increase in cyclical unemployment that peaks at 1 percentage point above the mean. The historical variance decomposition shows a strong positive effect during the boom of the late 1960s and strong negative effects around the Volcker disinflation period and the Great Recession. Finally, we estimate the effects on R&D of a TFP shock to differentiate between different explanations on how the R&D pro-cyclicality arises. Our results align with models where financial frictions or nominal rigidities drive it.

Drone technology and digital image analysis have enabled significant advances in precision agriculture, especially in site-specific treatment of weed escapes in crop fields. This study evaluated a pipeline for weed detection in multispectral drone imagery, along with site-specific herbicide application, using a remotely piloted aerial application system (RPAAS) targeting late-season weed escapes in rice with a selective postemergence rice herbicide, florpyrauxifen-benzyl. The efficacy of the RPAAS-based herbicide application with geocoordinates of weed escapes obtained manually or based on image analysis was compared with conventional backpack broadcast spray. The weed species targeted were barnyardgrass, Amazon sprangletop, yellow nutsedge, and hemp sesbania. A Python-based rice–weed detection model was developed using the canopy height model and spectral reflectance of weeds and rice plants. Results indicate that the accuracy of image-based detection for late-season weed escapes in rice was highest for hemp sesbania (95%), followed by Amazon sprangletop (87%) and yellow nutsedge (74%), with barnyardgrass showing the lowest accuracy at 62%. The study found that the backpack broadcast method had the highest efficacy in weed control, followed by the RPAAS method using manually obtained geocoordinates and those based on image analysis. Site-specific herbicide application using RPAAS resulted in a 45% reduction in herbicide compared to the broadcast backpack application. Moreover, the RPAAS site-specific application method for late-season treatment minimized the field area affected by herbicide injury and protected rice grain yields compared to the broadcast method. Overall, the utility of unmanned aerial sprayer–based detection and site-specific treatment of late-season weed escapes in rice has been demonstrated in this research, but further improvements in weed detection efficacy and the accuracy of targeting plants with RPAAS are necessary.

In the early 1970s, Christopher Stone and Peter Singer influentially rejected the anthropocentrism of liberalism, contending that animals and nature deserved moral and legal consideration independent of humans. This article historicizes the emergence of nonhuman personhood by showing how they and other writers attempted to dismantle liberalism’s anthropocentrism at a dynamic time in humanist politics. Writers asserted nonhuman personhood as a continuation of 1960s liberation movements, employing the narrative of a “natural” extension of rights and equality from marginalized humans to nonhumans. This determinism, however, obscured nonhumans’ specific inability to make political claims. Drawing on the incipient 1970s human rights movement, writers circumvented this problem of political agency by emphasizing nonhumans’ capacity to suffer. Suffering allowed humans to see themselves in nonhumans and thus recognize their personhood. This turn to empathetic identification as the driver of historical change inaugurated an anti-anthropocentric humanism that extended personhood beyond humanity but reinscribed a more fundamental distinction between those able and those unable to make political claims. Drawing on both 1960s challenges to humanism and 1970s humanist preoccupation with suffering, anti-anthropocentric humanism preserved the very limitations of liberal politics into a new definition of personhood that effaced political agency from both personhood and history.

Kongish Daily, a Facebook page promoting Kongish – a creative, critical, and colloquial form of Hong Kong English with Cantonese inflections – has attracted a following in social media over the past decade. It has also sparked interest among sociolinguists interested in (post-)multilingual developments in East Asia. This study is built on Hansen Edwards’s (2016) premise that Hong Kong English would gain wider acceptance in Hong Kong as the cultural identity of local language users shifted amidst sociocultural transformations. We first provide an overview of the Kongish phenomenon, followed by a qualitative study involving 30 active Kongish users from diverse age groups, genders and occupations. Through semi-structured interviews, we explore users’ perceptions of language and identity. Our findings support Hansen Edwards’s prediction regarding the strengthening of Hong Kongers’ cultural identification, while revealing an evolving, counter-stereotypical Hong Kong culture as well as an opinion divide on the future trajectory of Kongish.

Harm reduction is one of the most controversial and widely discussed approaches in public health and social policy, addressing a broad range of pressing societal issues, including drug addiction, sex work, alcohol and tobacco use, and homelessness. Surprisingly, however, harm reduction has received very little philosophical scrutiny. In this article, I aim to fill this gap. First, I provide a systematic analysis of the core features and normative commitments of harm reduction. Second, I propose a novel, relational egalitarian justification for harm reduction. I argue that the provision of harm reduction services is not solely or primarily a matter of mitigating the negative consequences associated with high-risk behaviours. Rather, most fundamentally, it is the appropriate response to the status of vulnerable individuals as equal members of society.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is transforming nearly every domain of science, and scholarly publishing is no exception. From automated language editing to machine-assisted peer review and large-scale content analysis, AI tools are increasingly embedded in scientific writing and publishing. The response from the scientific community has ranged from cautious optimism to outright skepticism. This viewpoint aims to articulate an editorial perspective on the integration of AI into scientific writing and publishing, evaluating both the opportunities and tensions that arise, and offering principles for navigating the road ahead.

Words in Tagalog/Filipino can be either penult-prominent or ultima-prominent. Scholars have been divided on whether the language has stress, or only phonemic vowel length in penults and default phrase-final prominence. Using a corpus of Original Pilipino Music, we find that both prominent penults and prominent ultimas are set to longer notes and stronger beats, even in phrase-medial position. We further find that among pre-tonic syllables, those that would plausibly attract secondary stress are mostly set to longer notes and stronger beats. Text-setting does not faithfully reflect differences in phonetic cues between the two types of prominence, nor is it sensitive to presumed phonetic differences between high and low vowels. We conclude that songwriters’ text-setting decisions reflect phonological stress in Filipino, and that both penult-prominent and ultima-prominent words bear stress.

Stroke is a prevalent neurological event that often induces significant motor impairments in the upper extremities, such as hemiplegia, which impacts bimanual coordination and fine motor skills. Robotic-assisted therapy has gained prominence as a contemporary rehabilitation modality, providing augmented motor repetitions and proprioceptive feedback, thereby potentiating neuroplasticity and functional recovery. This pilot study aimed to examine the therapeutic efficacy of a robotic intervention for wrist rehabilitation in two post-stroke adults aged 50–70 years. The intervention protocol, implemented biweekly over four weeks, encompassed 45-minute sessions consisting of passive muscle elongation (5 min) and robotic-facilitated exercises targeting pronation-supination (10 min), flexion-extension (10 min), and radial-ulnar deviation (10 min). Outcome measures included pre- and post-intervention assessments utilizing the motor activity log, Fugl-Meyer Scale, and robotic metrics for muscular strength. Results indicated enhancements in joint range of motion, motor precision, and neuromuscular control, with patient “B” demonstrating superior improvements, particularly in complex motor patterns. In contrast, patient “A” exhibited attenuated progress, attributable to pronounced baseline deficits and fatigue. Specific gains were observed in flexion-extension for patient “A” and pronation-supination for patient “B,” with minimal advancements in radial-ulnar deviation across both subjects. These findings provide preliminary evidence supporting the efficacy of robotic-assisted therapy in motor rehabilitation post-stroke with the novel proposed wrist rehabilitation device.

Grice’s foundational conversation model has inspired a range of influential developments, with various approaches to merging the maxims. This paper addresses unresolved controversies and circular dependencies that have fuelled assumptions of interdependence among the principles. It provides a revision of both Grice’s cooperative principle and the principles of truthfulness, relevance, informativeness and clarity, and extends them to include a principle of social conformity, which I collectively refer to as the TRICS-Principles. I demonstrate that the TRICS-Principles operate independently of each other at different levels and show the extent to which the other principles may function under the umbrella of a flouted principle of truthfulness. Furthermore, I distinguish the principle of social conformity from the concept of politeness, offering a nuanced perspective on their relationship. Finally, I provide new insights into factors influencing shifts in the prioritisation of the TRICS-Principles.

We extend the definition of the X-Rokhlin property to countable discrete groups and prove some permanence properties. If the action of a countable discrete group on X is free and minimal and the action of this group on the separable simple $C^*$-algebra has the X-Rokhlin property, then the reduced crossed product is simple.