Research on ground stone tools has expanded exponentially over the years. Here, I present the context of the initial work on granite sourcing that connected archaeological sites in Guatemala to sources in Belize. I also attempt to put into perspective the subsequent research that has been carried out, much of which is reported and elaborated in this Compact Section.

Arendt’s and Bonhoeffer’s thoughts, when reconstructed via a critical dialogue, can provide much-needed insight into applying religious truth claims to politics. Arendt emphasizes the role of plural voices for free politics. For her, a solution to the spread of misinformation is to establish and maintain a robust public sphere. For Bonhoeffer, this method is limited and incomplete. He argues that Christians must see the world as a space of solidarity among the oppressed, and a Christ-reality that resists both theocratic legalism and vulgar voluntarism must guide their actions. However, Arendt’s sharp judgment of the dangers of a modern society suggests that even a modest version of religious practice cannot remain intact in the face of modern socio-economic forces. Through a novel interpretation of their political theologies, this article investigates a way for religion to be a conscientious voice in politics yet eschew becoming a tyrannical force itself.

This article challenges the Weberian view that modernization stems from the rational legal system, wherein legal-rational authority displaces traditional and charismatic authority as the transformative agent. We contend instead that, in key instances at the forefront of Asian development, monarchy has orchestrated economic and built-environment modernisation. In Thailand and Malaysia, royal interventions have operated outside or behind formal laws governing planning and development, producing significant outcomes for cities and economies. Two case studies illustrate this claim. In Bangkok, the King has played a leading role in shaping urban development. In Johor, the Sultan—later Malaysia’s Yang di-Pertuan Agong—has similarly directed the Iskandar Malaysia development region. These interventions exceed the expectations of constitutional monarchy, relying not on legal-rational authority but on traditional notions of royal power. Thus, monarchy emerges as a decisive agent of modernisation, complicating conventional theories of rationalisation and authority in Southeast Asia.

Two central problems in extremal combinatorics are concerned with estimating the number $\mathrm {ex}(n,\mathcal {H})$, the size of the largest $\mathcal {H}$-free hypergraph on n vertices, and the number $\mathrm {forb}(n,\mathcal {H})$ of $\mathcal {H}$-free hypergraph on n vertices. It is well known that ${\mathrm { forb}}(n,\mathcal {H})=2^{(1+o(1))\mathrm {ex}(n,\mathcal {H})}$ for k-uniform hypergraphs that are not k-partite. In a recent breakthrough, Ferber, McKinley, and Samotij proved that for many k-partite (or degenerate) hypergraphs $\mathcal {H}$, ${\mathrm { forb}}(n, \mathcal {H}) = 2^{O(\mathrm {ex}(n, \mathcal {H}))}$. However, there are few known instances of degenerate hypergraphs $\mathcal {H}$ for which ${\mathrm { forb}}(n,\mathcal {H})=2^{(1+o(1))\mathrm {ex}(n,\mathcal {H})}$ holds.

In this paper, we show that ${\mathrm { forb}}(n,\mathcal {H})=2^{(1+o(1))\mathrm {ex}(n,\mathcal {H})}$ holds for a wide class of degenerate hypergraphs known as $2$-contractible hypertrees. This is the first known infinite family of degenerate hypergraphs $\mathcal {H}$ for which ${\mathrm { forb}}(n,\mathcal {H})=2^{(1+o(1))\mathrm {ex}(n,\mathcal {H})}$ holds. As a corollary of our main results, we obtain a sharp estimate of ${\mathrm { forb}}(n,C^{(k)}_\ell )=2^{(\left \lfloor \frac {\ell -1}{2} \right \rfloor +o(1))\binom {n}{k-1}}$ for the k-uniform linear $\ell $-cycle, for all pairs $k\geq 5, \ell \geq 3$, thus settling a question of Balogh, Narayanan, and Skokan affirmatively for all $k\geq 5, \ell \geq 3$. Our methods also lead to some sharp results on the related random Turán problem.

As a key ingredient of our proofs, we develop a novel supersaturation variant of the delta systems method for set systems, which may be of independent interest.

Neurocognitive patterns in leadership shape employee behavior and organizational outcomes, offering important insights for advancing human resource management (HRM) theory and practice. Using a focused, theory-driven journal-based content analysis of ten high-ranked HRM and organizational journals, this review synthesizes neuroleadership research published between 2005 and 2025. The analysis is guided by six integrated neuroleadership themes (decision-making, emotional regulation, motivation and reward processing, social cognition, stress resilience, and attentional control) across six core HRM domains and interpreted through performance-oriented and sustainability-oriented HRM perspectives. The findings suggest that neuroleadership research predominantly emphasizes sustainability-oriented HRM, with decision-making and emotional–cognitive themes most frequently examined within learning and development, followed by employee engagement and well-being and organizational development. In contrast, performance-oriented HRM emphases, such as performance control and transactional management, receive comparatively less attention. The review highlights the need to expand research on motivation, stress resilience, and attentional control to address the demands of an increasingly digitalized workforce.

On October 7, 1888, approximately 176 Chinese passengers arrived in San Francisco aboard the S.S. Belgic. They carried laborer return certificates—documents that, until just days earlier, had guaranteed their right to reenter. But on October 1, President Grover Cleveland had signed the Scott Act into law, abruptly voiding those certificates. Officially, the act barred only Chinese laborers from returning. In practice, however, Chinese merchants and U.S.-born children of Chinese parents also traveled with laborer return certificates. They, too, would now be denied readmission.

It has long since been accepted that where a defendant induces a primary wrongdoer to commit a tort against a claimant, the procurer may be held liable for the losses and harm thereby caused. Typically, the existence of such liability has been asserted rather than rigorously demonstrated both by judges and jurists. And while some detailed scholarly engagement with this form of liability has been proffered, the explanations on offer have tended to rely less on established principles of law, than on certain theoretical pre-commitments held by the authors in question. The Supreme Court’s decision in Lifestyle Equities v Ahmed has injected some much-needed clarity into this conspicuously underexplored area of law. Yet even now, as this article seeks to show, there is much that remains uncertain concerning the nature and scope of such liability. It therefore seeks to shed light on those matters.

Here we introduce the nine research articles assembled in this special issue. Together they explore the implications for foreign policy and international security of the forced deprivation of individuals’ freedom by state or non-state actors for political advantage – what we and our authors call ‘politicised captivity’. Despite its ubiquity, politicised captivity has attracted surprisingly little scholarly attention. Although some research explores cases of kidnappings by terrorists, the use of human shields, and hostage diplomacy, there are few studies that engage the political implications of captivity in their full complexity. This is particularly odd given the recent increase in scholarly interest in the role of emotions in international politics. After all, popular emotions permeate captivity, and what we call ‘captivity passions’ have at times influenced national security policies. This volume therefore aims to redress the lack of sustained theoretical and empirical attention to how captivity triggers national emotions and affects international security.

The increasing demand for sustainable feed ingredients in aquaculture has driven research into alternative protein sources to replace fishmeal. This study evaluated the nutritional, physiological, and microbiological impacts of housefly (Musca domestica) larvae meal as a replacement for fishmeal in the diets of rainbow trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss). Diets were formulated to replace fishmeal with larvae meal at 50% and 100% inclusion levels. Growth performance, body composition, intestinal health, and gut microbiota were assessed over a 16-week feeding trial. Fish fed larvae meal-based diets exhibited comparable growth metrics, muscle yield, and hepatosomatic index to those fed fishmeal and commercial diets, indicating no compromise in growth efficiency. Intestinal histological examination revealed no diet-induced morphological changes, with all parameters remaining within normal ranges, highlighting the compatibility of larvae meal with fish intestinal health. Analysis of gut microbiota showed a shift toward Firmicutes dominance and increased abundance of Clostridiales in larvae meal-fed fish, suggesting enhanced fermentation activity. Blood chemistry parameters were consistent across dietary groups, supporting the physiological suitability of larvae meal-based diets. These findings demonstrate that housefly larvae meal is a sustainable and nutritionally viable alternative to fishmeal in aquafeeds for rainbow trout. The results underscore its potential to reduce reliance on fishmeal while maintaining fish health and growth performance.

We extend the construction of the p-adic L-function interpolating unitary Friedberg–Jacquet periods in previous work of the author to include the p-adic variation of Maass–Shimura differential operators. In particular, we develop a theory of nearly overconvergent automorphic forms in higher degrees of coherent cohomology for unitary Shimura varieties generalising previous work for modular curves. The construction of this p-adic L-function can be viewed as a higher-dimensional generalisation of the work of Bertolini–Darmon–Prasanna and Castella–Hsieh, and the inclusion of this extra variable arising from the p-adic iteration of differential operators will play a key role in relating values of this p-adic L-function to p-adic regulators of special cycles on unitary Shimura varieties.

It is overdue for political science to consider the names of nation-states, the discipline’s primary unit of analysis and the world’s largest, richest, and most powerful actors. I begin this analysis by examining the descriptors used in formal country names, including empire, kingdom, Islamic, republic, democratic, socialist, and people’s. I analyze country names as independent variables, hypothesizing that they have value as signals of political characteristics. To test my hypotheses, I turn to the Varieties of Democracy dataset. I use fixed-effects panel regressions to examine whether countries’ descriptors correlate with the characteristics they name. I find that except for the democratic descriptor, all other descriptors are surprisingly accurate. This is the first step toward developing an understanding of names in political science as well as adding a new tool for comparative politics.