Bilinguals tend to have slower response times in picture naming than monolinguals in both their first and second languages. Naming speed interacts with item frequency, suggesting that the bilingual disadvantage may be due to less frequent exposure to each language. We measure response speed in a Picture Naming and a Picture-Word-Interference paradigm among 98 bilinguals and 83 monolinguals, looking for interactions between word frequency and frequency of use of both L1 and L2. We confirm previous findings that monolinguals outperform bilinguals, and that the bilingual disadvantage is stronger for low- than for high-frequency items. While immersed bilinguals seem to have an advantage in L2 naming over non-immersed speakers, self-reported use of either language does not affect naming in either language, and the L1 is not affected by the immersed vs. non-immersed distinction. We conclude that frequency remains an elusive factor in bilingual development, and particularly in L1 attrition.

The physical structures in which urban life occurs are an underappreciated determinant of how grassroots urban politics unfolds. In many rapidly growing cities, housing scarcity forces residents into multifamily buildings that create daily exposure to neighbors. We argue that these exposures affect political behavior by shaping residents’ access to political information and capacity for collective action. We focus on the informal, vernacular architecture of West Africa’s dominant urban housing form—the compound house. Compound house residents in urban Ghana participate more in politics than similar residents of other housing types. Leveraging an original survey, including novel measures of tenants’ spatial network centrality within their residential buildings, we suggest that key mechanisms for this relationship emerge from the effects of architectural design on visibility and social ties among co-tenants. Ultimately, built environments must be studied alongside demographic environments to best understand contextual effects on political behavior.

Pooling of gastropod samples is frequently used in surveys of the neurotropic nematode Angiostrongylus cantonensis to reduce cost and processing time. Here we highlight a potential limitation of this technique using the snail Theba pisana as an example. Pooled samples tested negative using a high-sensitivity qPCR assay, whereas subsequent individual testing revealed positive cases. This pattern is consistent with a dilution effect, where low parasite DNA concentrations could lead to false-negative results. These findings suggest that pooling may reduce diagnostic sensitivity in regions where infection intensities are low and should be applied with caution.

This position paper chronicles and critiques my attempts to help establish sport as a field of application for applied linguistics. In this way, it is a nontraditional article: a first-person, autobiographical, position paper. As background to this endeavor, the paper first acknowledges the critical role of collaborative publications and the establishment of a research network. The paper then explores the affordances and complications associated with building a sports-based community of applied linguistics, especially given preexisting scholarship in sports linguistics, as well as considerable scholarship in the related discipline of communication studies. The paper then briefly recounts my own research in sports linguistics with the aim of bringing to consciousness my goals and purpose. Drawing on Bakhtin’s imagined audience, I reflect on how these motivations not only shaped my research agenda but, in turn, my conceptions of the relationship between linguistics and sport and applied linguistics. I then turn to Bernstein to further reflect on my classification of sports linguistics – the discipline, its knowledge and knowers – and its influence on my attempts at community building. As a position paper, I conclude with some insights for readers who find themselves engaged in similar attempts at community building.

Self-harm and suicide are major public health concerns and leading causes of mortality worldwide, highlighting a pressing need for policymakers to identify and implement cost-effective interventions. This systematic review (PROSPERO registration #CRD42023460339) followed the PRISMA guidelines and aimed to synthesize the available cost-effectiveness evidence for the prevention of self-harm and suicide. Systematic searches were performed in MEDLINE, Embase, PsycINFO, CINAHL, Econlit, and ProQuest to identify full economic evaluations and return-on-investment studies on preventive interventions for self-harm and suicide published up to January 15, 2026. Methodological quality was assessed using Drummond’s 10-item checklist, and findings were synthesized narratively. A total of 69 eligible studies evaluated 22 types of interventions: three universal, five selective, five indicated, and nine multi-level. Most studies were rated as high-quality (n = 61/69) and conducted in high-income countries (HICs) (n = 63/69), primarily assessing the cost-effectiveness of universal interventions like means restriction (n = 6), selective and indicated interventions like psychotherapy (n = 30), support services (n = 15), and medication (n = 5). Evidence consistently found that interventions for self-harm and suicide prevention were generally cost-effective or cost-saving. Strong evidence supported the cost-effectiveness of several universal (e.g. awareness training), selective (e.g. psychotherapy, support services), indicated (e.g. suicide risk screening, support services, psychotherapy for adults in HICs like Australia, US, Canada), and multi-level interventions. However, more economic evaluations are needed for interventions targeting older adults and children in all countries, especially in low- and middle-income countries, where evidence is lacking.

This study presents a generalised theory that describes the thermodynamical processes during mixing of a moist aircraft exhaust with the ambient air and allows one to decide whether or not a contrail forms. Usage of alternative fuels like hydrogen or ammonia increases the moisture content in aircraft plumes compared to current kerosene combustion. Our analysis compares the thermodynamic plume evolution for the classical mixing line and a novel generalised formulation. Additionally, both formulations are used to evaluate the limiting ambient temperature, above which an aircraft does not produce a contrail. We find that the inaccuracies introduced by the classical mixing line cancel each other out, leading to negligible differences between both formulations. Furthermore, the impact of potential heat and water vapour recuperation systems on contrail formation behind fuel-cell-propelled aircraft is investigated. Reducing the exhaust’s thermal energy by technical means increases the contrail formation propensity. Especially, if fuels with high hydrogen content are used, plumes with reduced heat content could reach supersaturation values above $ 500{\%}$. This can trigger liquid water droplet formation directly from the gas phase, a process absent in conventional contrail scenarios, and may increase the number of formed ice crystals drastically. A concurrent increase in ice crystal numbers and contrail formation propensity would increase the contrail-cirrus climate impact. To mitigate this scenario, our analysis identifies requirements on the reduction of exhaust water vapour to suppress contrail formation by technical means and reduce the potential contrail climate impact by fuel-cell-propelled aircraft.

The EU–Mercosur agreement is one of the longest and most complex trade negotiations in modern economic diplomacy. Launched in 1999 and finally concluded in December 2024, it offers a unique lens through which to understand trade negotiations in an era of geopolitical uncertainty, domestic contestation, and multilateral fragmentation. Drawing on the authors’ direct experience in trade policy and negotiation, this article argues that the agreement was not delayed because technical solutions were unavailable, nor concluded because underlying conflicts disappeared. Rather, it moved forward when changing international conditions increased the political value of closure for both sides. Agricultural sensitivities, sustainability concerns, competitiveness debates, and Mercosur’s internal coordination challenges remained. What changed was the cost of failing to reach an agreement. The case suggests that trade agreements today are no longer merely instruments of market access; they also serve as tools of strategic positioning, regulatory reassurance, and geopolitical signaling. In this context, uncertainty can become not only a constraint, but also a catalyst for cooperation and agreement

Even though political conflict on inter-territorial inequality appears to play a crucial role in understanding salient political developments in Western democracies, we still have a limited understanding of how individuals form inter-territorial redistributive preferences. We argue that relative regional income – meaning the degree of equally shared economic growth across places – serves as a cue for voters to evaluate their individual future benefits from inter-territorial redistribution. We propose that absolute regional income, defined as a region being richer or poorer today, polarizes preferences over inter-territorial redistribution under contexts of rising inequality in relative income gains. We test this argument with a factorial survey experiment in France and Germany, where respondents are randomly exposed to different information about relative and absolute regional income. We find that absolute regional income is an important determinant of preferences for inter-territorial redistribution as relative income gains are skewed to the richest areas. The difference in absolute income, however, loses explanatory power for redistributive preferences as relative income gains are distributed more equally, demonstrating that equality in economic gains can unite poor and rich areas in their redistributive preferences. This interactive relationship between relative and absolute regional income is also found in an observational study of inter-territorial redistributive preferences across 146 regions from nine European countries, underlining the external validity of our findings.

A persistent puzzle in the study of public opinion is why political information often produces minimal attitude change despite reliably influencing beliefs. We argue that this duality reflects belief relevance—the extent to which specific beliefs bear on attitudes. Using conversations with large language models (LLMs), we elicit deeply held issue attitudes and the “focal beliefs” people use to justify those attitudes. We then randomly assign participants to receive an LLM-generated counterargument targeting either their focal belief, an issue-relevant but unmentioned belief (“distal belief”), or a placebo. In experiments with two large online convenience samples, counterarguments targeting the aforementioned beliefs successfully decrease belief strength, with effects persisting after 10 days. More importantly, focal belief counterarguments produce larger and more durable attitude change than distal counterarguments. These findings suggest that political information can successfully shift political attitudes and provide new evidence for the role of belief relevance in persuasion.

In this paper, we show that for each sufficiently large integer $H$, there is a real cubic number $\alpha$ and a rational number $r$, both of height smaller than $H$, such that $0\lt \alpha -r\lt 272/H^4$. The exponent $4$ of $H$ in this inequality is best possible. The numbers $\alpha$ and $r$ are both constructed explicitly. We also show that a necessary and sufficient condition on $(u,v)$ under which there is a positive constant $c_1=c_1(d,u,v)$ such that the inequality $|\alpha -\beta | \geq c_1 H(\alpha )^{-u} H(\beta )^{-v}$ holds for all real algebraic numbers $\alpha$ of degree $d \geq 2$ and all real algebraic numbers $\beta$ of degree $d-1$ is $u \geq d-1$ and $v \geq d$.

The worldwide adoption of automatic milking systems (AMSs) has expanded, attracting growing interest from researchers. Although several reviews have already been carried out regarding the features of AMS in confined systems, a comprehensive bibliometric analysis of the literature on automated milking in pasture-based systems is still lacking. Therefore, this review set out to provide a bibliometric approach focused on pasture-based AMS to explore and map the extent of research in the scientific literature. Initially, a comprehensive search was carried out in the Web of Science and Scopus databases. Then, a four-step PRISMA evaluation was applied on 235 identified articles, resulting in a final sample of 45 articles. Most studies were conducted in Europe (44%), in research herds (79%), involving Holstein-Friesian cows (76%), using automated milking from Lely (57%) and DeLaval brands (30%). White clover and perennial and annual ryegrass are the most commonly used pastures among the countries (87.5% vs. 75%). The main topics (33%) investigated over studies were milk production, composition and efficiency of AMS on pasture, followed by animal behaviour (27%), animal nutrition (16%), heat stress (9%), methane emissions (7%), health disorders (2%), economic viability (2%), somatic cell count and mastitis (2%) and energy consumption (2%). Concentrate allocation and heat stress were identified as emerging research areas that deserve greater attention in future studies. This study contributes to our understanding of scientific developments, trends and research gaps regarding pasture-based AMSs.

This article examines how WhatsApp functions as a space where people shape collective memory and challenge dominant sociopolitical narratives. Focusing on Nigeria’s Obidient movement, a youth-led campaign that supported Peter Obi in the 2023 presidential election, this article seeks to understand how everyday online interactions on WhatsApp produced alternative ways of remembering and forgetting. In other words, this articles asks, How did members of an unofficial Obidient WhatsApp group enact counter-memory practices regarding Nigeria’s 2023 general elections? To answer this question, this study deployed the ethnographic approach and drew from Foucault’s concept of counter-memory and assemblage theory to understand how memory, technology, and social interaction converged in dynamic ways. The results indicate that members of the WhatsApp group construct and circulate alternative narratives that challenge mainstream sociopolitical accounts. These results are discussed in two central themes: ‘Counter-memory and the construction of alternative narrative’ and ‘WhatsApp as a mnemonic community and assemblage’. Through practices of circulating first-hand experiences and lived testimonies, evidence of electoral misconducts, and memories of past elections and protests, members collectively produced what the author described as a ‘mnemonic community’, a space where memory is created, negotiated, and sustained through interaction. However, these practices are not independent but are shaped by the interconnectedness of human (members of the group) and non-human (WhatsApp, smartphones, or multimedia content) factors. Overall, this article argues that messaging apps, such as WhatsApp, significantly shape how people remember and interpret sociopolitical movements and participation.

We commend developing a processual, relational and experiential psychosocial framework for exploring the human impacts of crises, disasters and extreme events that encompasses multidisciplinary contributions interactively. We suggest a paradigm shift employing the notion and properties of liminality, because this refers directly to change and meets the challenges we outline.

This study examines how CEOs’ hobby of reading fiction reinforces empathy and, in turn, is associated with higher corporate philanthropy. Grounded in the Empathy–Altruism Hypothesis, we propose that fiction-reading sustains and deepens a multidimensional yet integrated empathic capacity, which motivates prosocial organizational decisions. With a large dataset of CEOs from non-state-owned enterprises (non-SOEs) listed in China’s A-share market from 2001 to 2018, we show robust evidence that firms led by fiction-reading CEOs engage more in corporate philanthropy; additionally, we confirm that empathy mediates this positive relationship. Furthermore, a difference-in-differences analysis with CEO transition data reveals a significant increase in corporate philanthropy with a newly appointed fiction-reading CEO. Supplementary results show that fiction-reading CEOs promote broader prosocial practices, including employee welfare and ethical governance. By introducing fiction-reading as an unobtrusive, verifiable measure of empathy, this study offers a novel methodological approach for tracing the micro-foundations of corporate social responsibility.

Rock climbing performance is affected by psychophysiological stress that can vary based on route difficulty relative to the climber’s ability. The purpose of this study was to investigate psychophysiological, emotional, and performance differences between climbers attempting a lead route above (CLLabove), at (CLL) or below (CLLbelow) their on-sight ability level. 61 intermediate to advanced climbers completed a single on-sight lead ascent. Measurements of climbing performance (technique, tactics, etc.), psychophysiological (heart rate, cardiovascular reactivity, cortisol, etc) and psychometric variables (somatic and cognitive anxiety, self-confidence) were taken before and after receiving the task instructions; and pre, during and post climb. The main findings of this study were: a) significant improvements in climbing performance with increased ability relative to the route (geometric entropy: p = .013); b) greater intensity of somatic (p < .005) and cognitive anxiety (p = .005) and lower self-confidence (p < .005) between CLLabove and CLL and CLLbelow; c) a significant difference in anticipatory HR between CLLabove and CLLbelow (p = .002), but no significant differences in salivary cortisol. Results suggested that increased difficulty relative to a climber’s ability, yielding an increased likelihood of a climber falling or being unable to complete the route, was likely to elicit a negative emotional response, increase anxiety, decrease self-confidence and disrupt performance.

Accurately assessing dietary intake in children and adolescents is essential for understanding dietary patterns and informing public health strategies. In Latin America, rapid nutrition transitions and increasing childhood obesity highlight the need for culturally appropriate, validated dietary assessment tools (DATs). However, methodological challenges and limited regional data hinder effective dietary surveillance. This scoping review identified and characterised DATs used among children and adolescents (5–18 years) in Latin America, examining tool types, features, validation and regional coverage. Following Joanna Briggs Institute and PRISMA-ScR guidelines, comprehensive searches were conducted in EMBASE, Web of Science, PubMed, and LILACS (April 2024) in English, Spanish, and Portuguese. Eligible studies included original research developing, validating, or applying DATs in Latin American populations. Of 13,946 records screened, 105 reports met the inclusion criteria. Brazil and Mexico contributed the most studies, while six countries (Paraguay, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Panama, Honduras, and Belize) had none. Forty-three DATs were identified, 77% of which were food frequency questionnaires (FFQs). Half targeted adolescents, 39% children, and 11% both groups. Most were interviewer-administered (58%) and applied in person (49%), with only 19% conducted online, reflecting regional digital limitations. Validation was reported for 70% of tools, primarily against 24 HR. The DAT landscape in Latin America remains dominated by FFQs and traditional administration methods, with limited use of digital platforms. Developing age-appropriate, validated and culturally adapted digital DATs is essential to strengthen dietary surveillance and guide effective nutrition policies across the region.