In the early postcolonial period, Eastern Nigerian women increasingly entered the sex industry because of poverty, the Civil War, and limited employment opportunities. Drawing on archival records, oral histories, and newspapers, I examine local and transnational sex work among Eastern Nigerian women, highlighting their strategic decisions—from migrating to lucrative urban centers to developing social skills to attract clients. By framing sex work as labor rather than moral decadence, I challenge dominant moralistic discourses, positioning sex workers as economic agents who accumulated wealth and invested in businesses and property.

The COVID-19 pandemic unfolded alongside an unprecedented ‘infodemic’ that reshaped public engagement with science, health, and authority. This study examines how online infodemics translated into collective resistance and influenced population health through political mobilisation. Using structural equation models across six European countries, I conceptualise resistance as a latent construct – captured by residential mobility and protests opposing vaccines, lockdowns, and public health measures linked to populist radical right (PRR) movements – acting as a behavioural bridge between digital information environments and epidemic outcomes. The findings reveal a robust infodemic–resistance–epidemic pathway: greater exposure to infodemic content consistently predicts stronger opposition to non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) and vaccination. This effect is strongest in Germany and Italy, where PRR networks amplified narratives of ‘elite overreach’ and ‘freedom under threat’, transforming online discontent into organised mobilisation. In other countries, resistance appears weaker and more pandemic-specific. By integrating informational, political, and epidemiological processes, the analysis shows how epidemics can evolve into politicised collective behaviour that undermines compliance and sustains transmission. The results highlight populist mobilisation as a key amplifier of epidemic risk and suggest that effective responses must rebuild trust, depoliticise health communication, and address structural sources of grievance.

The Gas Dynamic Trap (GDT) facility at the Budker Institute of Nuclear Physics continues experimental studies in support of the Gas-Dynamic Multiple-Mirror Trap (GDMT) project – a prospective neutron source and thermonuclear reactor concept based on open-ended magnetic confinement. During the 2024–2025 upgrade campaign, key engineering systems and diagnostic suites were substantially modernised to address critical physics and technology challenges for the GDMT development. Three key research and development directions were pursued. First, a conductive wall stabilisation system was designed to suppress magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) instabilities at high plasma beta. Second, a new second-harmonic X-mode electron cyclotron resonance heating (ECRH) system operating at 54.5 GHz with 0.8 MW power was commissioned. Preliminary experiments demonstrated increased electron temperature compared with non-ECRH heated plasmas. Third, proof-of-principle experiments on bulk plasma fuelling using a Marshall gun injector were successfully performed, supporting further development towards a high-repetition-rate injector. These results provide essential experimental validation and technological groundwork for the GDMT project, demonstrating progress towards high-beta plasma operation, efficient heating schemes and particle balance control in open magnetic traps.

Most studies on modern state formation assume that enhanced state capacity and institutionalization increase clarity and predictability. We argue that this view fails to consider ambiguity politics—a form of governance in which formal and informal institutions are inconsistent, unclear, or ill-defined, thereby creating space for multiple interpretations, practices, and procedures. Combining inductive insights from research in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan and deductive engagement with different strands of literature, we developed a typology that distinguishes mechanisms of ambiguity politics according to the level at which the ambiguation takes place (elite/administrative) and the intentionality of it (strategic/accidental). Although ambiguity politics is particularly visible in conflict and postconflict settings, we show that it is not inevitably a temporary stage toward greater order and predictability but rather a persistent feature of governance in various contexts.

This study investigates the nuanced challenges of fine-grained word sense disambiguation (WSD) tasks with regular polysemy detection (RPD) of the named entity, focusing on evaluating the trade-offs between encoder and decoder-based model performance and computational efficiency. The datasets, including Chinese Wordnet 2.0 (CWN) as sense inventory, the Social Media Corpus (PTT) for user-generated content, and the Academia Sinica Balanced Corpus (ASBC) for formal linguistic data, were chosen to provide a diverse and representative framework for evaluating both common nouns and proper nouns with regular polysemy in Taiwan Mandarin. This analysis evaluated ten encoder- and decoder-based models, assessing their performance on two tasks. The encoder-based models demonstrate comparable accuracy to the decoder-based models on WSD tasks (77.5% vs. 78.5%), and similarly strong performance in RPD tasks (84.2% vs. 83.8%). On a large-scale all-words WSD task, the encoder model not only outperformed the decoder model but also generated substantially lower carbon emissions – an eight-fold reduction. These differences underscore the trade-offs between model architecture and task-specific performance, highlighting the necessity for balancing performance and energy efficiency in the design and application of language models, advocating for sustainable and eco-friendly practices in natural language processing development.

Speakers of pitch-accent languages, such as Japanese, are often overly sensitive to pitch cues, which may affect second language (L2) suprasegmental learning. The present study examined whether sensitivity to non-pitch cues (i.e., second formant, duration and amplitude rise time) is associated with more accurate perception of L2 English word stress following phonetic training. A total of 115 Japanese English-as-a-foreign-language learners were assessed on pitch and non-pitch dimensions of auditory processing and assigned to experimental or control groups. The experimental groups received perceptual phonetic training on English word stress, cued not only by pitch, but also by non-pitch information (duration, intensity and vowel quality). Results showed that brief training significantly enhanced prosodic perception of trained words. Importantly, auditory processing exhibited dimension-specific effects: more precise processing of non-pitch cues was associated with superior perception and greater training gains, whereas pitch sensitivity was unrelated to learning outcomes.

This study aimed to investigate whether n-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids (n-3 PUFA) supplementation enhances the anabolic signaling response, muscle hypertrophy, and strength gains following a resistance training program in healthy young men with habitual protein intake ≥1.6g·kg⁻¹·day⁻¹. In a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial, 46 resistance-trained men (28.1±5.8years, 24.8±3.1kg/m2, 1.8±0.5g·kg-1·day-1 protein intake) were assigned to receive either n-3 PUFA (W3; 6.3g/day n-3PUFA) or placebo (PLA) during 14 weeks of supervised lower-limb resistance training 2x/week. Body composition, ultrasound-derived muscle cross-sectional area (mCSA), maximal dynamic strength (1-RM), muscle tissue fatty acid composition, and muscle fiber morphology were assessed pre- and post-intervention. Phosphorylation of mTOR, p70S6K, and 4E-BP1 were evaluated at rest and 4 h after exercise, before and after the intervention. Adherence to supplementation and training was high in both groups (>94% n-3 PUFA supplementation; >96% training session attendance). A marked incorporation of n-3 PUFA into skeletal muscle (interaction p=0.017) was observed in the W3 group. Both groups presented increases in lean mass, 1-RM strength, rectus femoris and vastus lateralis mCSA, vastus lateralis muscle fiber CSA, and minimum Feret’s diameter (all main time effects p<0.05), with no differences between groups. No effects were observed for anabolic signaling between groups or over time (all p>0.05). In conclusion, despite substantial incorporation into muscle tissue, n-3 PUFA supplementation did not enhance muscle hypertrophy, strength gains, or anabolic signaling in healthy adult men with adequate protein intake undergoing resistance training. Future studies should focus on populations with impaired anabolic responses, during periods of disuse or caloric restriction.

BIOARC (Bioregional Mineralisation with Agricultural Resources for Construction) explores how agricultural residues and regional microbial resources can be combined to create low-impact construction materials rooted in local ecological contexts. Working across four European bioregions, the project investigates wheat in Poland, sunflower in France, hops in Germany, and rice in Italy as feedstocks for the development of construction boards, insulation materials, acoustic panels and partition wall systems.

The project combines agricultural by-products with biomineralisation processes, in which microorganisms induce the formation of calcium carbonate minerals that act as natural binders within plant-based composites. Alongside biomass resources, BIOARC has isolated mineralising bacterial strains from limestone-rich and calcium-rich environments within each participating region, establishing a bioregional approach in which both material feedstocks and microbial agents originate from the same local context.

The demonstration presents a biomineralised construction prototypes alongside the agricultural residues, bacterial cultures and microscopy imagery that underpin its development. Together, these artefacts communicate the transformation from regional agricultural by-products and environmental microbial communities into construction-oriented materials. By linking agriculture, biotechnology and construction, BIOARC demonstrates how place-based material systems can support circular value chains, reduce reliance on conventional mineral-intensive products, and contribute to more resilient and regenerative approaches to the built environment.

This article develops three elements for a pastoral approach to dialogue between Catholics and those who identify as spiritual but not religious. The 2023 Pew Survey “Spirituality of Americans” provides a useful overview of attitudes among those who assume this designation. Two recent synod documents reveal the church’s initial response to this phenomenon. Three elements then outline a pastoral response. First, four occasions of interreligious dialogue described in the Vatican document Dialogue and Proclamation are appropriated for conversation with spiritual but not religious persons. Second, the hermeneutic theory of Hans Georg Gadamer is examined for what it offers the church about conversation across difference. Then, in an exercise of theological ressourcement, “Letter 102” of Saint Augustine of Hippo and his book Instructing Beginners in the Faith are consulted to glean from his thought what might enrich a contemporary pastoral response to those who seek a spiritual life outside of religion.

The Developmental Origins of Health and Disease (DOHaD) framework recognizes that preconception exposures influence offspring health, yet paternal nutrition has received little attention compared to maternal diet. To better understand this emerging area, we undertook a systematic evidence mapping exercise in accordance with the PRISMA 2020 guidelines to develop an evidence gap map (EGM). Seventy-five studies examining paternal preconception diet and offspring health outcomes were identified, including sixty animal experiments and fifteen human observational studies. Animal studies consistently showed that paternal high-fat or low-protein diets impaired offspring metabolism, and that targeted dietary interventions such as omega-3 fatty acids or methyl donors, mitigated these effects. Human studies were fewer, narrower in scope, and largely focused on famine exposure or single food group intakes, with no randomized trials and only half of the studies accounting for maternal diet. Offspring outcomes were limited to birthweight and adiposity, with little investigation of cardiometabolic, neurodevelopmental, mental health, or other chronic disease–related outcomes. The current evidence therefore suggests that paternal diet may influence offspring health, but highlights major methodological and conceptual gaps in human research. By mapping the scope and limitations of the existing evidence, this study provides a roadmap for future Paternal Origins of Health and Disease research, and underscores the need to develop paternal-inclusive preconception nutrition strategies and public health interventions to improve intergenerational health.