In plant genetic resources research, coancestry-based parameters are widely used to assess the amount of diversity retained in germplasm samples, breeding populations and conservation collections. Among them, the variance effective number and status number are often treated as different measures. However, the analysis presented herein shows that they are algebraically equivalent when expressed under the same coancestry framework. Using standard definitions of average coancestry among individuals, average inbreeding, and group coancestry including self-coancestry, both parameters are derived to show that they reduce to the same expression. A numerical example confirms the identity. This result clarifies that the distinction is unnecessary. It also supports a more consistent interpretation of coancestry-based diversity measures in plant genetic resources.

Widely found at archaeological sites across the Roman Empire, the appearance in the late 1st c. BCE onward of the red gloss ceramic referred to as terra sigillata signals important transformations in the socio-economic organization of production and consumption for provincial societies. Nonetheless, relatively few studies have explored diachronically the ways in which the appearance of terra sigillata may have impacted local lifeways compared with the uses of earlier ceramics. This article explores these issues in the context of Roman Mediterranean Gaul, focusing in particular on the region of eastern Languedoc, by comparing, in both discard and funerary contexts, the differential uses of black gloss ceramics from the 3rd to the 1st c. BCE with later terra sigillata vessels. The evidence discussed here suggests that the appearance of terra sigillata was important in reifying more individual-centered social relationships in dining and other aspects of daily life.

This article investigates how autocratizing regimes instrumentalize the cultural domain to manufacture consent, assert societal dominance, and socialize oppositional actors into authoritarian logics. In contexts of competitive authoritarianism, memory politics becomes central not only to the incumbent’s efforts to legitimize power and construct hegemonic narratives of citizenship, identity, and history, but also to the opposition’s attempts to propose alternatives. Drawing on fieldwork, curator interviews, and audience responses, the article analyzes two large-scale centennial exhibitions held in İstanbul in 2023 and 2024 that offer contrasting portrayals of the Turkish Republic – one Islamist–authoritarian, the other liberal–Kemalist. Despite clear ideological differences, divergent aesthetic approaches, and distinct target audiences, both exhibitions rely on exclusionary, state-centric framings that inhibit critical or pluralist engagements with the past. The article argues that this convergence signals a deeper transformation: the autocratization of the cultural field, wherein even oppositional institutions internalize authoritarian norms and practices. In this context, history is staged as spectacle – either triumphant or nostalgic – narrowing the cultural imagination, consolidating incumbent power, and diminishing spaces for meaningful contestation.

The weak preterit presents one of the most difficult problems in Germanic linguistics. Many investigators have applied themselves to the solution of the problem, and the number of publications occupied with this question is so great that a perspective can hardly be gained. The varied attempts at a solution, many quite recent, are proof that the much-discussed question has lost none of its appeal. The problem offers a recurring challenge to research, since it cannot yet be considered finally solved.

Recent research highlights the crisis-driven approach for regional institution-building, suggesting that crises enhance the utility of regionalism. This study questions the applicability of crisis-driven regionalism in Northeast Asia, emphasising why certain crises catalyse regionalist efforts while others do not. We clarify the working mechanisms of critical juncture approaches and identify three variables influencing the effectiveness of crisis-driven regionalism, each operating at different stages – pre-crisis, in-crisis, and post-crisis. First, exogenous crises are more likely to trigger cooperation than endogenous ones, as the latter provoke disputes over the origins and responsibilities of the crisis. Second, crises should foster collective action and shared agendas among states, rather than being confined to respective domestic efforts of individual states. Lastly, we focus on the continuity of cooperative policies in the post-crisis period. This study examines the global financial crisis, environmental pollution, and COVID-19 as three illustrative cases – including both positive and negative instances – of crisis-driven regionalism, analysing why these crises have generated, or failed to generate, substantive cooperative outcomes.

Area coverage optimisation is a hotspot in cooperative interception research for highly manoeuverable targets. In this paper, a geometric coverage-based fast approach is proposed to rapidly calculate cooperative interception regions for interceptors, achieving full coverage of the target predicted manoeuvering escape area. The method analytically derives both the required number of interceptors and the centre coordinates of each interceptable region. Simulation results verify the correctness and effectiveness of the proposed method. It demonstrates that for highly manoeuverable targets, this cooperative interception region calculation method can stably achieve full coverage of predicted manoeuvering escape areas while significantly reducing computation time, exhibiting excellent real-time performance.

Children associated with armed forces or armed groups (‘child soldiers’) experience conflict in highly differentiated ways, including in their exposure to gender-based violence. Cognisant of that reality, this article seeks to enrich current understandings of gender-based violence against female child soldiers by focussing on one relatively under-examined type: reproductive violence against female child soldiers. It revisits relevant cases from three jurisdictions which have most engaged with female child soldiers: the International Criminal Court, Special Court for Sierra Leone, and Colombian national courts. In each jurisdiction, the author closely examined publicly available court records, in order to detect references to (mostly uncharged) acts of reproductive violence against girls in armed groups. Forms of reproductive violence against child soldiers identified through this method include forcible impregnation and/or forced pregnancy, forced maternity, forced contraception and forced abortion, being forced to bear children before being sufficiently developed themselves, and the denial of reproductive health care. The article then explores how such reproductive violence might be charged as war crimes and crimes against humanity in future cases. This lens on child soldiers is especially timely, given the recent ‘reproductive violence’ turn in the field of international criminal law.

Predictions of the pedestal temperature profile calculated using a model for electron-temperature-gradient (ETG) turbulent electron heat transport Field et al. (2023 Philos. Trans. R. Soc. A, vol. 381, p. 20210228) are compared with the pedestal structure of H-mode plasmas in JET-Be/W (with Be wall and W divertor) over scans of the deuterium–tritium (D:T) isotope mix and hydrogenic gas fuelling rate Frassinetti et al. (2023 Nucl. Fusion, vol. 63, p. 112009). Predictions for the electron temperature at the location of the density pedestal top $T_e(\psi _N^{n_{e,top}})$ (where $\psi_N$, is the normalised poloidal flux) are found to agree well with measured values over both scans across the full range of D:T ratio. However, the pedestal top temperature $T_{e,ped}$, typically located somewhat inside the density pedestal top, is under-predicted by as much as a factor ${\sim} 2$. This implies that the ETG heat flux scaling appropriate for the steep-density gradient region, on which the model is based, is not applicable where the density gradient is weak. This difference might be attributed to a difference between the physics of the ETG turbulence in regimes where the density gradient is either strong or weak, which are thought to be dominated by either the ‘slab’ or ‘toroidal’ branches of ETG turbulence. Other branches of turbulence might also play a role in the electron heat transport, particularly in regions of weak-density gradient. As in the experiment, the predicted $T_e$ across the pedestal decreases with the ratio of separatrix to pedestal density $n_{e,sep}/n_{e,ped}$, which increases with the gas fuelling rate. Results from three models combining the ETG heat flux model with the EPED1 pedestal (EPED) model (Snyder et al., Phys. Plasmas, 2009, vol. 16, p. 056118) are also presented, including one which also incorporates the density pedestal prediction mode of Saarelma et al. (Nucl. Fusion, 2023, vol. 63, p. 052002), this model providing a complete prediction of the pedestal profiles.

Human genetic data are simultaneously deeply personal, familial, and strategically valuable, raising regulatory challenges that individual-centered privacy frameworks only partially address. This is highlighted by the recent high-profile bankruptcy filing by 23andMe, which triggered widespread public concerns extending beyond consumer privacy interests to potential national security risks. To address this, this paper proposes a three-layer diagnostic model for more comprehensive analysis of genetic data governance: (1) individual privacy as sensitive personal data; (2) relational and group (privacy) interests reflecting genetic data’s shared nature; and (3) the state or strategic layer treating genetic information as a national asset relevant to public health and security. Drawing on comparative examination of select jurisdictions and critical review of scholarship, this integrated framework offers researchers, policymakers, and private actors a practicable pathway to navigate the complex governance challenges posed by genetic data.

This article describes the nineteenth-century landscape of surface water distribution in cities of the U.S. West, focusing on its persistence after the advent of modern water mains, based on studies of San Antonio, Texas; Los Angeles, California; Salt Lake City, Utah; and Phoenix, Arizona. These systems of ditches, acequias, zanjas, and canals began as the primary urban water supply, then later comprised a secondary system complementing the mains. Ditch networks shrank in the twentieth century, but this ostensibly obsolete waterscape survived for decades and in many places to the present. Ditches persisted because they continued to serve the purposes of their users, because sanitary reforms abated their former pollution, and because new categories of utility emerged in amenity, heritage, and ecosystem services. The study takes the perspective of users as well as providers and finds, in contrast to conventional stories of hydraulic modernity, a continuing example of “water plurality.”

The Phonomaton, a public web-facing facility, computes phonological derivations based on a user’s underlying representations and rules. The tool allows a formal implementation of phonological analyses using familiar methods and lets students interactively explore the mechanics of feature systems and serial derivations. We demonstrate a number of the program’s features and end with a discussion of its implementation in the classroom.

With the rise of digital and online technologies, subtitling practices once reserved for traditional media to regiment language are now available to ordinary netizens. This article explores the nature of these practices and the publics they project in digital media, focusing on a viral remix video that uses on-screen text to ridicule a Hong Kong government official for his Cantonese-accented Mandarin. Through parodic revoicing, the subtitles in the video mock the official’s linguistic blunders and create a series of incongruities to provoke humor intended for Cantonese-speaking Hongkongers. These subtitles, despite reproducing standard language ideology, bring into being a vernacular counterpublic organized around Cantonese and undermine the legitimacy of the public figures in the video. This article not only prompts us to reconsider the commonly assumed link between standard languages and national publics but also reveals subtitling practices in participatory media as potential sites where ideological reproduction and political resistance intersect. (Subtitling, counterpublic, Mandarin Chinese, Hong Kong, China)