This Research Paper tested the hypothesis that the dietary inclusion of a fermentation product of Aspergillus niger (ANP), alone, or in combination with a mannan-rich fraction (MRF) derived from Saccharomyces cerevisiae cell wall, would enhance dairy calf performance and rumen variables. Thirty Holstein–Friesian bull calves (age 19 ± 5 days) were obtained from a single farm and randomly assigned according to days of age to one of three dietary treatment groups and one of two cull dates, experimental day 27 (immediately prior to weaning) or experimental day 70. Dietary treatment groups were: CTRL, no treatment; ANP, 3 g/day ANP; MRF, 3 g/day ANP and 2 g/day MRF. Calves were housed and fed individually and had ad libitum access to starter concentrates, water, and straw. Throughout the trial, ANP calves consumed a greater quantity of solid starter feed than CTRL and MRF calves. Body weight, average daily gain, apparent total tract dry matter digestibility and faecal scores were unaffected by treatment. Calves fed ANP and MRF had improved feed conversion efficiency compared with CTRL in some weeks, but this was not consistent throughout the pre-weaned and weaned periods. Calves fed MRF had a decreased acetate to propionate ratio compared with CTRL pre-weaning, and ANP had a lower acetate to propionate ratio and higher propionate proportion of total VFA compared with CTRL post-weaning. At both culling timepoints, ANP and MRF had thicker stratum basale, stratum spinosum and stratum granulosum in their rumen papillae compared with CTRL. The inclusion of ANP and ANP + MRF could favourably alter rumen fermentation and increase the metabolic and absorptive capacity of papillae in transition stage dairy calves but no consistent effects of treatment on calf growth or feed efficiency were observed in this trial.

A newcomer to Madrid, I currently teach Latin American history and literature to undergraduates from my university spending their academic year abroad. Even as the Trump administration deports undocumented and legal residents from Latin America in record numbers, Spain is witnessing a surge of arrivals from the region. In stark contrast to the United States, the Sánchez government has made Spain an alternative destination for migrants from Latin America and other regions. The Trump administration recently abducted and extradited the president of Venezuela, threatened to annex Greenland, cut off oil and energy supplies to Cuba and launched an unprovoked war against Iran. While I lie in bed awake at night thinking about these alarming developments from a city replete with nostalgic reminders of the Spanish empire, I struggle to reconcile Madrid’s imperial past with its multicultural present. What can the twilight of past empires and dictatorships teach us about their present juncture and future direction? How do their monuments at once reveal and conceal their violent histories? What can the struggles against empire and fascism of previous centuries teach us about their re-emergence in new forms today?

Pragmatist philosophers of science often adjudicate realism debates by (1) deploying a unified ontological principle—that is, a unified rule for making ontological assertions—to all domains of empirical inquiry, and (2) comparing the ontological assertions made by realists and antirealists to the unified principle. By considering modeling practices in evolutionary biology, I motivate an alternative approach. Pragmatists should localize ontological principles to particular ontological questions in particular domains of empirical inquiry and adjudicate between various realisms and antirealisms in a radically piecemeal fashion.

In 1997, Malcolm Jewell published a review of state legislative research stating that there were great “difficulties and possibilities of doing comparative work.” Much of this difficulty lies with data and accessibility. As such, many of the foundational works in state politics, and particularly in U.S. legislatures, were rooted in single-state or small sample studies. In the 25 years since State Politics & Policy Quarterly started publication, comparative studies have become more common, allowing for better tests of “laboratories of democracy.” In this review essay, we document the extent to which state legislative studies have moved beyond single-state studies to larger comparative examinations. We outline the significant developments in the literature and highlight much of the notable research that has increased our understanding of state legislatures.

In this note, we study bounded functions of invariant average under multiplication. We show that if an arithmetic function is of moderate growth, then it is asymptotically uncorrelated to such functions. This provides several new disjointness results on the distribution of orbits along $\Omega (n)$.

Suppose an epistemic agent has multiple strategies available. One maximizes their expected accuracy, while another sacrifices their own expected accuracy to maximize the expected accuracy of the epistemic group. Call the latter strategy “altruistic.” The importance of epistemically altruistic agents has been highlighted in many areas of formal social epistemology. But how do some agents come to be epistemically altruistic? In this paper, I demonstrate, using a self-assembling model with simple multi-agent reinforcement learning, how a group of agents can learn to be epistemically altruistic. Counterintuitively, competitive incentives at the individual level lead to cooperative choices at the group level.

Climate change-induced disasters continue to disproportionately affect low, middle and upper-middle income countries (LMICs), often leaving survivors at risk of serious mental health challenges. Yet, mental health interventions in these settings remain limited and poorly integrated into health systems. This study explores the types and levels of existing mental health interventions for individuals affected by climate-induced disasters, using the Inter-Agency Standing Committee’s framework on Mental Health and Psychosocial Support. A systematic review was conducted following PRISMA guidelines across six databases, yielding 14 studies for final analysis. Key data on study design, disaster type, mental health conditions, intervention types and service providers were extracted and mapped against the Inter-Agency Standing Committee framework. While interventions were identified across all four layers of support, most were concentrated at the individual level, focusing on non-specialised services delivered by trained non-specialist providers (e.g., community health workers or lay counsellors) and specialised services provided by licenced clinical professionals, with limited emphasis on community-based or systems-level approaches. Results indicate such a significant gap, about 79% of the studies focused on the individual level, in mental health interventions in LMICs. It is therefore crucial to address these gaps to ensure comprehensive mental health care is available in disaster-prone countries.

The music of Paolo Papini (d. 1603) has gone almost unnoticed in spite of the existence of over forty liturgical pieces by him, located primarily in five large manuscript choirbooks with a provenance from the Ospedale di Santo Spirito in Sassia, Rome. These choirbooks are otherwise known for their manuscript copies of music by Palestrina. This article examines the sources, provides new biographical information about Papini, and evaluates the function of his music within the Ospedale. It argues that, together with documentary evidence such as inventories and financial records from Santo Spirito, Papini’s music throws new light on our understanding of the reform of liturgical music in the decades following the final session of the Council of Trent in 1563.

In August 2025, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACHR) issued the first-ever ruling from an international tribunal about the right to care. In Consultative Opinion 31, the IACHR affirmed three dimensions to care as a human right: the right to be cared for, the right to give care, and the right to self-care. The IACHR established that care constitutes a “universal human necessity and an indispensable condition for enjoying dignified existence” and that care, as a human right, sustains other human rights, like the right to health (IACHR 2025a). The IACHR further expressed concern about the unequal distribution of care burdens and called upon governments to establish measures that would advance the human right to care based on “social and familial co-responsibility … and the principles of equality and non-discrimination” (IACHR 2025a). The ruling profoundly reconceptualizes care’s normative and practical dimensions. If care is a human right with shared responsibility underlying its realization, then governments are obligated to provide care. Care becomes a public good that can be demanded, rather than a private cost that (mostly women) must bear.

In this paper, we prove that for a dense set of irrational frequencies with positive Hausdorff dimension, the Hausdorff (and upper box) dimension of the spectrum of the critical almost Mathieu operator is positive, yet can be made arbitrarily small. As a consequence, we investigate the spectrum of a class of multidimensional quasi-periodic Schrödinger operators that exhibit a Cantor spectrum, which answers a question posed by Damanik, Fillman, and Gorodetski [24].

Scoping reviews are increasingly used for evidence synthesis, yet a comprehensive overview of benchmarks for their conduct is lacking. This study aimed to extract and analyze key metrics of preregistered scoping reviews to aid researchers in planning, resource allocation, methodological rigor, and innovation. We examined 2,038 scoping review protocol registrations on the Open Science Framework between April and August 2024, identifying 891 corresponding publications. Extracted variables included review type (e.g., rapid scoping review), information about the number of studies in the screening process, methodological practices, and funding. Using Stata, we calculated process metrics such as review duration, yield rate, and team composition. Qualitative analysis was applied to further metrics, including aims and eligibility criteria frameworks. Among the 891 publications, 91.47% were published as scoping reviews. On average, reviews involved 6.11 authors and took 80.41 weeks from registration to publication, with rapid scoping reviews completed in 55.63 weeks. Most publications (80.13%) originated from high-income countries, where funding was more common. An average of 5.19 databases were searched, identifying a mean of 6,920.66 potential inclusions, with 92.64 studies ultimately included (yield rate: 5.68%). Endnote was the most frequently employed screening tool. Language restrictions were reported in 37.60% of cases, and 75.42% did not conduct or report critical appraisal. This study provides valuable insights into common practices within scoping review processes, offering researchers a foundation to allocate resources more efficiently and enhance research quality through methodological benchmarks. It underscores the need for greater transparency and improved methodological rigor.

The archaeological site of Edzna, located in the Peninsula of Yucatan, Mexico, provides insights into the ways in which ancient Maya used sound in ceremonial activities, and serves as evidence for the architectural and acoustic ability developed by ancient societies. This study employs data from acoustic measurements at key Edzna locations such as the Main Plaza, Great and Small Acropolises, to explore sound propagation in these areas. This research analyzes acoustic data using techniques to better understand this archaeological site as a dynamic space that offers profound insights into the interplay of sound, space, and society. The findings reveal that its architecture was probably designed to enhance auditory experiences, from public ceremonies to private meetings. The data show that sound played a crucial role in Maya societal and political functions, and archaeological evidence, including hieroglyphs, stelae, and sound-making instruments, supports this interpretation. The methodological approach, involving rigorous acoustic measurements and data analysis, underscores the impact of environmental factors such as wind and temperature on sound propagation. This research contributes to a broader understanding of ancient Maya culture and its integration of acoustics into architectural and ceremonial contexts.