The article analyses the role of victim organisations in shaping memory laws in the Czech Republic and Germany after 1989. The study focuses on four key actors: the Confederation of Political Prisoners (Konfederace politických vězňů; KPV) in the Czech Republic and, in Germany, the Association of Victims of Stalinism (Vereinigung der Opfer des Stalinismus; VOS), the Association of Victims of Stalinist Persecution (Bund der Stalinistisch Verfolgten; BSV) and the Union of Victims’ Associations of Communist Tyranny (Union der Opferverbände Kommunistischer Gewaltherrschaft; UOKG). The present study examines the interests, strategies and interactions of the subjects with political elites and among themselves. This article employs the conceptual frameworks of transitional justice and the politics of victimhood. The analysis is structured around case studies of selected memory laws that illustrate key moments of interaction between political leaders and victim organisations. These include the judicial rehabilitation laws adopted in the early 1990s in both countries; the 2007 German law introducing the so-called Opferrente (pension supplement for victims of the SED dictatorship); and the 2011 Czech Act on Participants in the Resistance and Opposition against Communism. The findings demonstrate that the unified and influential KPV in the Czech Republic achieved considerable legislative success, while in Germany, fragmentation and rivalry among victim organisations served to limit their impact. The comparative perspective underscores that success is contingent on not only the suffering endured but also the capacity to construct a shared narrative, mobilise resources and capitalise on propitious political contexts.

This article revisits the often contradictory experience of Allied rule in Italy, challenging the narrative of liberation and proposing instead to embrace more emphatically the lens of ‘occupation’. Building on the author’s own contribution to the field and reviewing the evolution of the literature over the past decades, it explores five central themes that help redefine our understanding of this era: the temporal and spatial backdrop against which Allied rule unfolded, shaped by the notion of ‘co-belligerency’; the impact of total war on Italian society; the role of British and American military and political leadership in shaping occupation policy; the cultural and symbolic influence of American forces; and the impact of war and occupation on women. It argues that the occupation regime profoundly shaped Italy’s experience during the mid-twentieth century as well as its postwar identity, contributing to a persistent national pacifism and ambivalence towards the new superpowers.

We consider the asymptotic behaviour of the expectation of the perimeter deviation of a uniform random spherical disc–polygon in a spherical spindle convex disc with smooth boundary. We also introduce the notion of duality on the sphere, define a model of random circumscribed disc–polygons, and determine some asymptotic results about them.

All animals, through their behaviours, modify their habitats. However, except for ecosystem engineers, for most species we know little about these modifications and their ecological consequences. Here, we assessed whether mantled howler monkeys in Mexico, through group defecations under sleeping trees, create microhabitats in the understory through increased dung beetle and rodent activity. In defecation and control sites, we sampled dung beetles with pitfall traps and rodents with camera traps. We also used experimental stations to measure dung removal and secondary seed dispersal by dung beetles and seed predation/removal by rodents. Supporting our hypothesis, we found that defecation sites had higher abundance of beetles and prolonged rodent visitation after one day and higher seed predation/removal after seven days. However, we found no differences in dung removal or secondary seed dispersal by dung beetles between defecation and control sites. Finally, contrary to our prediction, defecation sites had fewer photo records of rodents than control sites. Overall, our study shows that monkey group defecations under sleeping trees can create short-term microhabitat heterogeneity, although not necessarily in the expected direction. The next step will be to determine whether such effects can have longer-term consequences for forest ecology, such as promoting plant species coexistence.

Over the past 5 years, the policy constraint posed by the sovereign bond market has strengthened. Across the G7, governments have been forced into rapid policy reversals, often due to sharp and unexpected rises in bond yields. The fact that the bond market acts as a constraint on policy—particularly on long-term investment—is well known. What has become apparent is that this market constraint has sharpened and now shapes G7 policymaking outside periods of acute crisis. This paper examines the bond market constraint, and how it has evolved in recent years. The past 5 years have seen a striking evolution, with record levels of G7 debt issued. Focusing on the United States and the United Kingdom, we outline two key empirical puzzles: first, for both, bond yields appear higher than justified by benchmark models; second, in the United Kingdom, yields have become highly (and surprisingly) volatile. We then review candidate explanations for these changes. We posit and examine new forces—demographic shocks, news coverage of fiscal watchdogs, the role of hedge funds and stablecoins. Finally, we use a simple econometric framework to provide a first test of whether these forces may explain bond yields. We find indicative evidence that they do. However, much remains unexplained, suggesting the importance of further work to understand the implications of the higher debt costs across the G7. As part of this analysis, we introduce a new dataset of fiscal watchdog media salience and publication patterns, which we make available to support future research.

This editorial argues that camouflaging, as developed in autism research, does not transfer coherently to attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). The executive functions required for sustained symptom concealment are precisely those impaired in ADHD. Current measures lack ADHD-specific validity, and compensatory behaviours should not be reclassified as camouflaging without dedicated theory, operational definitions and validated measurement.

This study examined resilience to flooding in Hoi An Ancient Town, a historical World Heritage Site in Vietnam. The town has been affected by flooding since at least the 17th century, and floods have recently increased in frequency and severity under the impacts of climate change and urban development. This study used the Adversity Acceptance as Resilience framework, which focuses on people’s abilities to comprehend, acknowledge, and adapt to challenges, to analyse the results of empirical research comprising on-site observations, examinations of historical and contemporary documents, and semi-structured interviews with stakeholders. The long experience that Hoi An residents have with flooding has informed a community understanding that is closely tied to different stages of predicting, preparing for, coping with, and recovering from floods. Residents have learned to predict the onset and retreat of floods by observing changes in the natural environment, adapted the layout and architecture of the town to flooding, and developed comprehensive measures to prepare for flooding each year. This proactive and holistic approach to flood management is deeply rooted in transgenerational knowledge, as exemplified by the flood marks provided on buildings to serve as both symbolic reminders of previous floods and indicators of possible flooding scenarios. Advances in modern technology have allowed weather forecasts and social media to play significant roles in flood management strategies as well. Finally, floods have even been incorporated into the tourism experiences offered by the town. Indeed, floods are woven into Hoi An’s identity, illustrating how environmental challenges can be transformed into opportunities for cultural sustainability.

Pusey is perhaps best known for his sacramental doctrine and his emphasis on the early Church fathers. His appointment as Regius Professor of Hebrew, therefore, may well seem an oddity given this reputation: it is easy to assume that, at most, his work as a biblical scholar was parallel, and unrelated to, his more familiar work. But in fact, Pusey’s biblical scholarship is intrinsically involved with the better-known aspects of his thought. This article examines Pusey’s engagement, as a biblical scholar, with three sets of questions: hermeneutics (which led to his engagement with the Fathers), philology and the nature of language (which informed his sacramental theology) and the centrality of the reader in interpreting Scripture (which is linked to his concern with Christian spirituality and sanctification). Appreciating Pusey’s perspective as a biblical scholar is therefore essential to understanding his theological project.

We show that the moduli spaces of Scholze’s p-adic shtukas with framing satisfy a p-adic rigid analytic version of Borel’s extension theorem. In particular, this holds for local Shimura varieties, for all local Shimura data $(G, [b],\{\mu \})$, even for exceptional groups G, and extends work of Oswal-Shankar-Zhu-Patel who proved a p-adic Borel extension property for Rapoport-Zink spaces. As a corollary, we deduce that all these spaces satisfy a p-adic rigid analytic version of Brody hyperbolicity.

Major depressive disorder (MDD), smoking, and drinking frequently co-occur, with evidence suggesting these relationships may differ by sex. However, the direction of causality and the extent of sex-specific associations remain unclear. We investigated sex-specific genetic relationships between MDD and substance use phenotypes using genome-wide association studies (GWAS) from the UK Biobank and publicly available sex-stratified GWAS for MDD and problematic alcohol use (PAU). Causal effects were assessed using bidirectional, sex-stratified Mendelian randomization (MR). We further applied multivariable MR (MVMR) to evaluate the influence of socioeconomic status (SES). Genetic correlation analyses indicated significant shared genetic architecture between MDD and all substance use traits in sex-combined GWAS. In sex-specific analyses, the correlation between cigarettes per day and MDD was significantly stronger in females, and drinks per week were correlated with MDD only in females. MR analyses showed that genetic liability to MDD increased the risk of smoking initiation and PAU in females, and was associated with reduced alcohol drinking frequency in males. In contrast, no tested substance use trait showed evidence of a causal effect on MDD in either sex. MVMR adjusting for SES attenuated the association between MDD and smoking initiation. The effect on PAU in females remained. In males, the negative association between MDD and drinking frequency became non-significant after SES adjustment. These findings reveal sex-specific genetic and causal relationships between smoking, drinking, and MDD, and highlight the role of SES as a potential confounder. Incorporating sex and socioeconomic context is critical when examining these associations.

This article examines a set of important but unpublished shields from Malla, Nepal, discovered in the Patan Palace Complex, by combining philology with the study of material culture. The four shields, which display images of Hindu deities, are the only known instance of inscribed textiles in pre-modern Newar art history. The paper first deciphers the shields’ inscriptions to explain their overall importance for scholarship, and then seeks to uncover their iconographic scheme by studying the objects alongside unpublished liturgical texts in order to prove that they were commissioned for the worship of Ugracaṇḍā, a goddess key to Newar conceptions of kingship. I delve into the provenance and historical background of the shields and explore broader Indic ideas of the divinization of weapons to explain the ritual function and symbolic significance of these objects for royal celebrations. In doing so, we also posit the specific political context behind their creation.

Let $\{a_n(x)\}_{n\geq 1}$ be the sequence of digits of $x\in (0,1)$ in an infinite iterated function system with polynomial decay of the derivative. We first study the multifractal spectrum of the convergence exponent, defined by the sequence of digits $\{a_n(x)\}_{n\geq 1}$ and the weighted products of distinct digits with finite numbers, and then calculate the Hausdorff dimensions of the intersections of sets defined by the convergence exponent of the weighted product of distinct digits with finite numbers and sets of points whose digits are nondecreasing in such iterated function systems.

Fontan-associated lymphatic failure may result in severe complications such as plastic bronchitis. We report a 6-year-old Fontan patient with refractory plastic bronchitis despite catheter-based interventions. Surgical thoracic duct decompression via innominate vein rerouting to the right atrium resulted in marked symptomatic improvement and resolution of bronchial cast expectoration, highlighting its role in refractory Fontan-related lymphatic disease.

Consecutive $k$-type systems have become important in both reliability theory and applications; in spite of a large literature existing on them, three-dimensional consecutive $k$-type systems have not yet been studied for multi-state case. In this paper, we introduce several different types of multi-state linear three-dimensional consecutive $k$-type systems for the first time, with due consideration to possible overlapping of failure blocks. The finite Markov chain imbedding approach is then used for the derivation of their reliability functions with state spaces and transition matrices provided in a novel way, and the involved computational process is illustrated through several numerical examples. Finally, some possible applications of the work and potential extensions are pointed out.

Political theory has, until recently, exhibited a telling lack of interest in Indigenous thinkers and ideas. Remapping Sovereignty is an impressive history of twentieth-century political thought that follows recent efforts to correct this tendency. Remapping Sovereignty’s unique strength lies in its focus on individual Indigenous political theorists. Temin presents these figures as sophisticated, systematic thinkers with specific, context-motivated agendas and stakes animating the ideas they articulated. Remapping Sovereignty balances careful historicism with an edifying showcase of how twentieth-century Indigenous political thinkers’ situated ideas continue to offer generally valuable contributions to contemporary political theory. Temin’s textual expositions and the historical context he provides for the conceptual lineage he reconstructs will, hopefully, push readers to exercise and demand more precision when invoking the still sometimes vague category of “Indigenous political theory.”

In her 1983 How to Suppress Women’s Writing, feminist science fiction author Joanna Russ outlined the many approaches used to ignore, condemn, or otherwise belittle the intellectual productions by members of the “wrong” groups.1 In addition to discouragement and blocking access to requisite materials and training, other regular tactics include isolating a given author or one of their texts from the tradition to which they or it belong and simply “ignoring the works, the workers, and the whole tradition,” which Russ considers both most common and most difficult to combat.2 Among the many contributions of Temin’s Remapping Sovereignty is his actively counteracting the ignoring of “the works, the workers, and the whole tradition” by refusing to isolate the six individual North American Indigenous political thinkers who are his focus from the larger, internally diverse, dynamic political worlds of which they are part. Far from monolithic or univocal, what emerges is an intergenerational multi-nation effort to articulate aspirations and concerted action that respond with dignity and power to distinct and overlapping moments in ongoing processes of settler-colonial genocide and dispossession.