Empirical studies often have to work with incomplete samples, with scholars rarely accounting for under-registration: in cultural heritage e.g. the age-long loss of artefacts can yield an under-estimation of the original richness of assemblages. Recently, it has been argued that unseen species models from ecology can estimate the unobserved diversity in cultural collections. We report an extension on shared diversity, i.e. the number of types that are common to two assemblages. As a case study, we use stories in medieval French and Dutch (ca. 1150–1450), which were frequently shared. We apply an established estimator (Chao-shared) with a novel bootstrap procedure. The estimator suggests that the surviving data underestimate the original number of shared stories: for example, when its source is no longer extant, a translation can no longer be identified as such. Interestingly, there is less evidence for the total loss of shared stories: precisely because of the redundancy caused by inter-vernacular translation, shared stories were less likely to be lost in both languages simultaneously. These results go beyond previous studies in that they provide more insight into the composition of the unobserved share of cultural diversity (instead of its mere size).

Weed management in rainfed rice cropping systems in Madagascar primarily relies on manual weeding. This labour-intensive practice often coincides with peak workloads on the smallholder farms, leading to delayed weeding, one of the major causes of rice yield losses. The aim of this study was to determine the critical period of weed interference (CPWI) in the specific context of low-input rainfed rice-based cropping systems under conventional tillage (CT). We further assessed whether no-tillage with a living mulch of Stylosanthes guianensis (NTLM) could postpone the optimal timing of weeding as cover crops and mulch are often proposed as a promising strategy to reduce weed infestation. Field experiments were conducted during the 2016/17 and 2017/18 cropping seasons. Two controls (weedy or weed-free during the full crop cycle) and six treatments combining two different weeding regimes, increasing weedy period or increasing weed-free period, to three durations (20, 40, and 60 days after sowing) were compared. Rice grain yield was about 2.69 ± 0.32 t ha-1 and 0.04 ± 0.04 t ha-1 in weed-free and weedy controls, respectively. Weed interference throughout the entire rice growing season caused yield losses of up to 99% in CT. In CT, the CPWI started 10 to 18 days after sowing in both years. By contrast, the NTLM system delayed the onset of the CPWI by about 18 days, reducing yield losses to 51% (rice yields of 3.3 ± 0.36 t ha-1 and 1.55 ± 0.51 t ha-1 in weed-free and weedy controls, respectively). Our results highlight the importance of early weeding in rice fields to avoid significant grain yield losses. No-tillage with a living mulch is a promising option, providing additional time to farmers during peak labour periods at the start of the rice growing season. However, further research is needed to confirm these findings and to identify the conditions and support mechanisms that would enable farmers to adopt this type of no-tillage cropping system.

In recent decades, design creativity and design theory have made great progress in terms of understanding and supporting the logic of engineering design for breakthrough and disruptive innovation. Design for transition relies on these new methods, but it also requires the capacity to be creative to facilitate more effective preservation – whether in terms of natural resources, biodiversity, energy, ways of life or other factors. Design for transition calls for a type of engineering design that is not Schumpeterian, not a ‘creative destruction’, but rather a design that manages creative preservation, creativity for better preservation and preservation for improved creativity. In the first section, we clarify the notion of creative preservation for transition; in the second section, we show how creative preservation can be addressed by recent advances in design theory, namely, C-K/Topos. Finally, in the conclusion, we demonstrate the implications of C-K/Topos for the management of the unknowns of transitions and the underlying logic of creative preservation.

Recent scholarship locates the origins of modern free trade policies in the early modern free port movement. This historiography has focused on the intellectual and political history of free ports and emphasized the importance of local and regional factors in shaping trade liberalizations in different European countries and colonies. Based on evidence from eighteenth-century Hamburg, this article proposes a different reading: it argues that free trade policies emerged in response to Atlantic trade expansion. The sources suggest that merchants and magistrates were aware of the monumental change which the growth of the Atlantic trade presented and the economic opportunities it provided. The liberalization of individual ports aimed to capture a greater share of that commerce. Free ports therefore constitute an early example of global economic change driving local European policymaking.

The public forum (ankét) entitled ‘Should Women Starve to Death?’, organised by the Hungarian Association of Feminists (FE) in late 1934, brought together intellectuals from a wide spectrum of political ideologies to debate women’s employment, feminism, the rise of fascism, and the economic crisis. The speakers emphasized the interconnectedness of women’s economic emancipation with the post-WWI crisis of masculinity and the family. In response to the national conservative attacks on women’s rights and feminism, many highlighted the class dimensions of women’s labour. I argue that these attacks were typical expressions of anti-modernism, with elements of backlash. The forum shows that despite being traditionally seen as a bourgeois-liberal feminist organization, by the 1930s the FE had developed a political agenda that aligned more closely with social democracy and the political left. The 1934 forum can thus be understood in the history of European feminist political thought as a moment of coalition-building, as well as an alternative to popular front political organizing – in the Hungarian case, with the striking absence of communists. Read together with the feminist efforts against death penalty just a few years earlier, these texts reveal a different type of feminist thought in 1930s Hungary, with general human values and social justice as core concepts, marginalising the still important, yet narrower gender equality ones. My analysis is situated within the history of political thought, incorporating elements of social and economic history, along with the recovery of biographies of interwar women intellectuals, highlighting both the specificities and commonalities of the Hungarian case within the broader context of East Central Europe.

The continued applicability of international human rights law in situations of armed conflict entails that the right to mental health also applies. It is therefore crucial to examine how human rights supervisory mechanisms engage with this right in such contexts. Building on this premise, the present paper investigates how United Nations treaty bodies address mental health in conflict and post-conflict settings in their Concluding Observations. The study is based on a textual analysis of these documents conducted through the Universal Human Rights Index database. The findings reveal that most recommendations contained in the Concluding Observations call for particular attention to the mental health of children, especially child combatants, and of women, particularly those who are victims of sexual and gender-based violence. In terms of action required, they emphasize the need to ensure the availability and accessibility of mental health and psychosocial support services to persons affected by conflict.

Glacial lakes are increasing in number and size worldwide, posing growing risks for outburst floods. Norway’s last glacial lake inventory used semi-automatic mapping on Sentinel-2 imagery from 2018–19. In this study, we test a more automated and reproducible workflow for updating glacial lake extents in Norway using Sentinel-2 and Sentinel-1 satellite imagery and a Random Forest classifier. Here, glacial lakes are defined as water bodies within 200 m of glaciers larger than 0.1 km2 with a minimum lake size of 400 m2. A 10th-percentile Sentinel-2 summer composite from 2023–24 mitigated snow and cloud cover, while Sentinel-1 ascending-descending difference composites reduced shadow misclassification without relying on DEMs. Validation across six glacier regions shows high detection reliability (F1-score: 0.81) as well as high delineation accuracy (median deviation <6.5 m). However, manual correction remains necessary, especially in steep terrain. We identified 1382 glacial lakes in 2023–24, covering 124 km2—a substantial increase relative to 2018–19. Excluding regulated lakes and adjusting for methodological differences, we estimate a 9–22% lake area increase over the past five years, mainly driven by glacier retreat. The workflow is efficient and reproducible, but regional threshold adaptation and retraining are required for transfer to other regions.

Human strongyloidiasis, caused by Strongyloides stercoralis, is a neglected disease of high worldwide prevalence, with considerable potential for severe, fatal outcomes in complicated cases. Studies using the rodent parasite Strongyloides venezuelensis as a model have provided valuable insights into strongyloidiasis, yet efficient, standardised methods for isolating large quantities of viable parasite eggs for biomedical research remain scarce. This study revisits and modernises the classical flotation principle, presenting a saturated-solution centrifugation protocol for egg recovery from infected clawed jirds (Meriones unguiculatus). Saturated NaCl outperformed sucrose, primarily due to enhanced egg visualisation and reduced microbial contamination, achieving mean recovery of 84.8 ± 6.7% (peaks to 94%). Key variables – including faecal suspension volume, solution concentration, reprocessing, and the NaCl gradient – were systematically optimised to maximise recovery and viability. The resulting protocol is cost-effective, rapid, and practical, enabling scalable collection of viable S. venezuelensis eggs (and likely other nematodes) for different applications, including hatching studies, larval development, microenvironmental assays, and drug screening. By integrating classical diagnostics with parametric optimisation, this study exemplifies how methodological advances preserve and renew foundational knowledge, underscoring its epistemological value in experimental parasitology.

According to the conventional wisdom among business ethicists, the “Business Judgment Rule” gives corporate leaders the discretion needed to abide by the firm’s moral obligations. In the first part of the paper, I challenge this view: managers have compelling reasons to believe that the Business Judgment Rule (and corporate law more generally) allows corporate leaders to pursue ethically motivated decisions only when these decisions are expected to be profit-enhancing. This is problematic because it instrumentalizes ethics, pushes ethically motivated corporate leaders to dissemble, and corrupts the quality of our public discourse. In response, I propose that corporate law should incorporate ethics into the Business Judgment Rule, explicitly giving managers discretion to make ethically motivated decisions that are profit-sacrificing. After responding to concerns about implementing such a rule, I contend that such a rule would be an important step to put corporate ethics in its proper place.

Following a trend across the sciences, recent studies in lithic analysis have embraced the ideal of replicability. Recent large-scale studies have demonstrated that high replicability is achievable under controlled conditions and have proposed strategies to improve it in lithic data recording. Although this focus has yielded important methodological advances, we argue that an overemphasis on replicability risks narrowing the scope of archaeological inquiry. More specifically, we show (1) that replicability alone does not guarantee reliability, interpretive value, or cost effectiveness, and (2) that archaeological data often involve unavoidable ambiguity due to preservation, analyst background, and the nature of lithic variability itself. Instead of allowing replicability to dictate research priorities, we advocate for a problem-driven, pluralistic approach that tailors methods to research questions and balances replicable measures with interpretive depth. This has practical implications for training, publishing, and funding policy. We conclude that Paleolithic archaeology must engage with the replicability movement on its own terms—preserving methodological diversity while maintaining scientific credibility.

We study time-inhomogeneous random walks on finite groups in the case where each random walk step need not be supported on a generating set of the group. When the supports of the random walk steps satisfy a natural condition involving normal subgroups of quotients of the group, we show that the random walk converges to the uniform distribution on the group and give bounds for the convergence rate using spectral properties of the random walk steps. As an application, we use the moment method of Wood to prove a universality theorem for cokernels of random integer matrices allowing some dependence between entries.

Blastoids have three primary systems providing entrances to blastoid hydrospires, the primary organ for respiration: (1) exposed hydrospire slits formed across the width of the radiodeltoid suture; (2) hydrospire pores formed at the aboral ends of the ambulacra; and (3) hydrospire tubules formed as invaginations along the radiodeltoid suture, becoming openings that pierce the radials and deltoids ontogenetically. Blastoid classification historically divided the blastoids into two groups—the Fissiculata and Spiraculata. The Fissiculata comprised those blastoids that have exposed hydrospire slits or spiracular slits. The Spiraculata had hydrospire pores and spiracles that connect internally to hydrospires. Spiraculate classification focused on the configuration of the spiracles and anispiracle in combination with thecal form. Spiracles are the adoral consequence of the ambulacra infilling the radial sinus and covering the hydrospires by the lancet and the side plates and are found in all spiraculate blastoids. In this revision of blastoid classification, we place primacy on the three mechanisms by which water is drawn into the hydrospires—hydrospire slits open to seawater, hydrospire pores, and hydrospire tubules. Hydrospire tubules are formed along the radiodeltoid suture, a very different ontogenetic position from hydrospire pores, which are formed at the aboral end of the ambulacrum, and a fundamental phylogenetic difference. We herein abandon the term Spiraculata and refer to the spiraculate grade as being the Stomatoblastida, new superorder for spiraculates with hydrospire pores and the Tubuloblastida, new superorder for spiraculates with hydrospire tubules. The Fissiculata is elevated to superordinal status.

Refugee and forced migration studies scholars largely ignore the early modern period when they discuss modern refugee crises, thus overlooking the transhistorical, cultural origins of refugee identity formation. Following Louis XIV’s Revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685, around 200,000 Huguenots fled France for the wider diaspora. Often depicted as republicans, if not anarchists, bent on the destruction of Christianity and the French sacral monarchy, Huguenots sought refuge for their own safety and in the process reimagined themselves first as religious refugees and then as political ones. As religious refugees, Huguenots like the theologian Pierre Jurieu donned the mantle of the Ancient Israelites, as a means to maintain their community against French purgation of the Calvinist sect. As political refugees, Huguenots like Rabaut Saint-Étienne developed several strategies at courting the favor of the Bourbon monarchy, many of which challenged the French sacral state to imagine itself in secular terms. In developing a political refugee identity, these Huguenots created the empathetic, cultural refugee, which could transcend religious affiliation in favor of promoting a national identity.

Weaning stress impacts piglet performance, prompting antimicrobial resistance concerns from antibiotic overuse. Clostridium butyricum-derived antimicrobial peptides (CBP) show potentials as a safe, effective antibiotic alternative. We initially characterized novel antimicrobial peptides within the CBP fraction, synthesizing and confirming their potent activity. This study evaluated CBP’s effects on intestinal health and growth performance of weaned piglets using a lipopolysaccharide (LPS)-induced inflammation model. Fifty weaned Jinhua piglets (45 days, 9.95 ± 2.03 kg) were randomly allocated to control group (CON) and CBP group (n = 25), with five replicates each. Piglets in the CBP group were orally administered 3 mL of CBP daily (145.59 mg of total peptide) for 21 days, while the CON group received sterile water. During this period, CBP significantly improved growth performance, evidenced by increased average daily gain (P = 0.047) and reduced feed conversion ratio (P = 0.015), alongside a decrease in diarrhea incidence (P < 0.05). To further investigate the mechanism, a subset of animals from each group was challenged with LPS on day 21 to induce intestinal inflammation. Mechanistically, CBP enhanced intestinal barrier functions by optimizing crypt architecture and upregulating tight junction proteins expression (P < 0.05). CBP also exerted a potent anti-inflammatory effect, substantially reducing pro-inflammatory cytokines (P < 0.05) and suppressing NLRP3 inflammasome activation. Integrated microbiome and metabolomic analyses revealed CBP modulated the gut microbiota by increasing beneficial bacteria Lactobacillus and Coprococcus (P < 0.05) and elevating protective metabolites, including butyrate and hyocholic acid (P < 0.05). In conclusion, our findings demonstrate that CBP supplementation effectively promotes piglet growth and alleviates intestinal injury by regulating the gut microbiota and associated metabolic profiles. These effects are mediated through enhanced intestinal barrier functions and suppressed inflammation via the GPR43-NLRP3 pathway. This study provides strong evidence for CBP as a promising, safe alternative to antibiotics.

This article examines the rise of conspiratorial thinking in wartime Russia as a response to a deeper collective anxiety – not merely the replacement of people, but the erasure of narrative agency. While the Russian version of the ‘Great Replacement’ echoes familiar Western themes such as elite betrayal, cultural erosion, and demographic decline, its central concern shifts towards symbolic displacement. Drawing on Mark Sedgwick’s interpretation of the Great Replacement as a stable narrative structure and J.V. Wertsch’s concept of narrative as a cultural tool, this article argues that conspiracy operates here as a means of reclaiming authorship in a national story whose core meanings have grown unstable. The analysis draws on social media discourse, pro-war commentary, volunteer statements, and nationalist media, showing how anxieties are shaped through emotionally resonant storylines of betrayal and erasure. Yet the reassertion of control paradoxically intensifies fragmentation, turning the Great Replacement into a narrative of narrative disappearance – where the gravest loss is not demographic, but symbolic.