Research that assesses individual judges’ ability to shape decisions typically focuses on courts that publish separate votes and opinions. Yet, many courts issue per curiam judgments that do not permit public dissent. To overcome this limitation, we use a convolutional neural network (CNN) to model the variation in judges’ expressed preferences from language in aggregated judgments. Specifically, we construct a CNN to analyze the written judgments of judge-rapporteurs and opinions of advocates-general from the Court of Justice of the European Union. Along a pro-/anti-EU dimension, we estimate how judgments differ within (1) each case relative to the advocate-general’s opinion, and (2) each judge-rapporteur, which captures how judges alter their writing across cases. Our results provide novel empirical support for theoretical models of European judicial decision-making: more pro-EU opinions driven by the Court, not the advocate-general or the judge-rapporteur, are associated with larger chambers and stronger external signals of compliance.

Neonates are highly susceptible to infection, a major cause of neonatal death, given their immature immune system. Comprehensive studies examining multiple immune-response-related proteins in relation to neonatal infection are scarce. We conducted a nested case-control study within the Shenzhen Baoan Birth and Twin (SZBBTwin) cohort, measuring 92 immune-response-related proteins in cord plasma of 149 twins (including 34 discordant twin pairs) with proximity extension assay. All twins were followed for clinical diagnoses of infection from birth until 27 days of age. Wilcoxon rank-sum test was used to determine differentially abundant proteins (DAPs) between infected and noninfected neonates, the predictive performance of which was evaluated by receiver operating characteristic curves, and their functions and pathways were annotated through enrichment analysis. Logistic regression was used to assess the associations between levels of proteins and risk of neonatal infection. Finally, five DAPs (ITGA11, FCRL6, DDX58, SH2D1A, and EDAR) were identified for neonatal infection, and the area under the curve of the five DAPs achieved 0.835 for infection prediction. Enrichment analysis indicated that five DAPs were mainly involved in immune function and cell binding, and they were mainly enriched in the nuclear factor kappa-B pathway. A higher level of ITGA11 was associated with an increased risk of neonatal infection in all twins (OR 3.00; 95% CI [1.33, 6.78]) and discordant twin pairs (OR 5.50; 95% CI [1.20, 25.23]). In conclusion, multiple immune-response-related proteins in cord plasma, particularly ITGA11, are associated with the risk of neonatal infection in twins.

Extending Singh’s theory of cultural “super-attractors,” this commentary examines the Intensive Care Unit as a living model of the cultural manifold. In this high-acuity clinical environment, patients, families, and clinicians unconsciously reconstruct cultural super-attractors through ritual, cooperation, and shared humanitarian goals. Integrating psychiatric consultation reveals how these attractors transform unconscious adaptation into structured healing and recovery.

Breast cancer represents one of the main causes of mortality among women, and the consumption of bioactive compounds seems to contribute to improving the prognosis of the disease. However, the relationship between polyphenol intake and breast cancer has not yet been fully elucidated. The objective of this study was to investigate the association between polyphenol intake and breast cancer mortality, survival, and recurrence. This is an observational study with a prospective sample of 95 women, followed up for an average of 11.5 years. Intake of polyphenols was assessed using a Food Frequency Questionnaire (FFQ) and estimated using the Phenol-Explorer® database. Cox proportional hazard models were used to investigate the associations. Survival curves were calculated using Kaplan-Meier analysis. An inverse association was found between the intake of total polyphenols, phenolic acids, and lignans, and the risk of breast cancer-specific mortality (HR= 0.20, 95% CI [0.05-0.80]; HR= 0.09, 95% CI [0.01-0.50]; HR= 0.15, 95% CI [0.04-0.63], respectively). Phenolic acids also showed an inverse association with breast cancer recurrence (HR= 0.35, 95% CI [0.13-0.98]) and all-cause mortality (HR= 0.23, 95% CI [0.07 - 0.77]). Coffee was the major contributor to total polyphenol, phenolic acid, and lignan intake. Total polyphenol intake was associated with longer survival when breast cancer mortality was considered (p=0.048). In conclusion, higher intake of polyphenols was associated with lower breast cancer-specific mortality. In addition, phenolic acids were associated with lower all-cause mortality and breast cancer recurrence. Further studies are needed to confirm these associations.

This paper develops an interdisciplinary perspective, which combines ideas from anthropology, sociolinguistics and interface design, on how AI chatbots project recognizable social identities. Specifically, it brings together Silvio’s notion of animation, the social practices through which “humanness” is projected onto nonhuman entities, and Blommaert’s notion of enoughness, the idea that the authenticity of linguistic performances is a matter not of the accuracy of a performance but of how audiences collectively evaluate it as socially recognizable. The analysis draws on a corpus of metapragmatic artifacts posted on social media sites related to ChatGPT’s advanced voice mode and Sesame.ai’s hyper-realistic voice interface. Analysis of these artifacts reveals how designers, users and AI systems co-produce boundaries of authenticity through the deployment and uptake of linguistic and discursive features such as accent and stance. In doing so, they continually recalibrate what counts as culturally competent performances, shaping emergent norms of identity and sociality around AI. The paper highlights how humanness and culturality are distributed across technical systems, corporate discourse, and human interlocutors, with important implications for understanding how generative AI reproduces cultural stereotypes by drawing on the linguistic labor of users.

Recent quantitative work on the variable [g]\~{}[ŋ] alternation in compounds of certain dialects of Japanese has revealed token frequency of the compound as a whole, and of the compound’s second member in its freestanding form, to be important predictors of the alternation. We propose a formal phonological analysis that integrates usage-based factors like frequency with the action of the phonological grammar, extending mechanisms of lexicon–grammar interaction previously proposed in the context of Lexical Conservatism. We demonstrate that our model fits the experimental data better than – or at least comparably to – a theoretically naïve statistical model proposed in previous work. Based on the success of our modelling, we discuss the role of token frequency in phonological patterning more broadly, and how the mechanism that we propose might be extended to unify a range of contradictory frequency-dependent processes that have been observed in the literature.

In this commentary, we argue that aesthetic chills provide empirical evidence for Singh’s subjective functionalism. These pleasurable and measurable somatic events mark dopaminergic-mediated validation when cultural artifacts resonate with cognitive architecture. Research demonstrates chills can be predicted, induced, and therapeutically deployed for depression. This transforms aesthetics from ornamental to functional, revealing how feeling drives cultural transmission while enabling interventions.

Prioritising invasive species is crucial for managing invasions and mitigating impacts on biodiversity globally, yet most efforts are concentrated in the Global North, with significant gaps in the Global South. In the absence of region-specific assessments, land managers in the Global South often rely on broad global priority frameworks, whose relevance at smaller spatial scales remains uncertain. In addition to of spatial scale, robust prioritisation frameworks should incorporate multiple dimensions of species distribution and impact. To help fill this gap, in this study we used complementary approaches: herbarium-based and expert assessments to evaluate the distribution and impact of invasive plant species in a biodiversity hotspot in India. We scored species across different dimensions of impact, and generated a composite score that was used to rank and prioritise the invasive species. To understand the concordance of rankings across scales, we compared our regional rankings with national and global rankings for these species. We identified seventy-nine invasive plant species in the Northern Western Ghats and Konkan region, which revealed a ten-fold difference in their spatial extent. Expert assessments indicated that only few species had high scores across the different distribution and impact dimensions, while most had low to moderate scores. The results show that distribution-related dimensions were correlated, but impact-associated dimensions remained independent, highlighting the need to include both in prioritisation frameworks. Although most regional species were included in national and global invasive species lists, their priority rankings differed at these different scales. Overall, our study underscores the importance of integrating both distribution and impact dimensions for species prioritisation and highlights the importance of local-scale assessments for effective invasive species management.

Throughout the Mediterranean region, adherence to the Mediterranean diet is decreasing especially among young people. The Mediterranean diet is the most studied dietary pattern with proven health benefits, especially regarding the prevention of non-communicable diseases at a time when their incidence is increasing worldwide. It has also been recognized as a sustainable diet model with multiple interdependent benefits on social, cultural, environmental, and economic dimensions. Faced with the challenge of promoting adherence to the Mediterranean diet, a Joint Med Diet Task Force of CIHEAM, FENS, and IUNS was formed to set the path for reversing the erosion of the Mediterranean diet heritage, by promoting its benefits, as a way of living, as defined by UNESCO. In this paper, the rationale and propositions of the Joint Task Force are described for the development of a voluntary code of conduct for promoting the adherence of the Mediterranean diet, and sustainable diets per se, addressed to all interested stakeholders and rights holders, linking food consumption and production, toward sustainable food systems transformation in the Mediterranean and beyond.

Evidence on the association between coffee consumption timing patterns and metabolic syndrome (MetS) prevalence remains limited. This cross-sectional study analyzed data from 11632 participants aged 20 years or older in eight National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) cycles (2003-2018), to examine how coffee consumption timing patterns and their combination with coffee amount relate to MetS. Coffee consumption timing patterns were identified using K-means clustering. Two timing patterns were identified: morning-concentrated and evenly distributed. Survey-weighted logistic regression was used to examine associations between timing patterns and MetS prevalence, adjusting for sociodemographic, lifestyle, and dietary covariates. The morning-concentrated pattern was significantly associated with lower prevalence of MetS (OR: 0.80, 95% CI: 0.68, 0.96) compared with non-drinkers, while the evenly distributed pattern showed no significant association. Results were robust across multiple sensitivity analyses. Combined analysis revealed that the morning-concentrated pattern was consistently associated with lower MetS prevalence across all intake levels. Stratified analyses showed stronger inverse associations among women, individuals with normal weight/underweight or overweight, and those aged ≤ 40 years, with significant effect modification by body mass index (BMI; P for interaction < 0.001) and age (P for interaction = 0.006) groups. These observational findings suggest that the timing of coffee consumption, particularly the morning-concentrated pattern, may be inversely associated with MetS prevalence.

The power grid is a critical infrastructure underpinning all aspects of modern society and its services. Maintaining its effectiveness requires continuous adaptations. In particular, addressing sustainability targets, demand patterns, and urbanisation trends requires implementing changes to the network. Actual developments can potentially span over a decade, with supply continuity and service quality that must be preserved throughout by ensuring conformance to several topological and combinatorial invariants. Long-term power grid planning deals with the above process, and although planning languages could be a natural choice, the kind of properties and invariants needed are cumbersome to express in such languages; on the contrary, they can be elegantly and succinctly encoded in answer set programming (ASP). In this paper, we propose the first approach to automate and optimise the long-term power grid planning process using ASP. Experimental evaluations conducted on synthetic and real-world grid data confirm the expressive power of the proposed ASP-based approach and demonstrate its effectiveness.

Justin’s epitome is a central source for significant parts of especially Hellenistic history, and it is our only window into the important work of Trogus. To understand Justin’s epitome and use it methodologically soundly, a reasonably firm grasp on its date of composition is, as always with ancient writers, central. This has proved elusive: the only indisputable terminus ante quem is Jerome’s mention of Justin from 407, and most commonly Justin is dated to either the year 200 or the late fourth and early fifth centuries. This article provides new arguments for a late dating of Justin’s work: Justin presents the obeisance demanded by Alexander the Great as a form of adoratio, a gesture which in turn is depicted as royal and Persian. This presentation of Alexander’s obeisance deviates markedly from the parallel sources, and the conceptualization of adoratio as Persian is unprecedented before the fourth century. On the other hand, Justin’s description exhibits clear parallels with the fourth-century critique of Diocletian for introducing the adoratio. This provides strong support for a late dating of Justin’s work, and the 390s or the first years of the fifth century may tentatively be suggested.

This paper explores the emergence of the bolo-player as a robust icon of personhood (Carr (2010)) in urban jiujitsu training rooms between China and the United States. I trace how this figure emerges as a kinesically enregistered stereotype (cf. Agha (2007)and Cohen (2021)) within a contrapuntal ecology of motion texts, from its mass-mediated origo: the berimbolo. Here, the berimbolo, or “scramble” in Brazilian Portuguese slang, describes a combination of movements in jiujitsu that—over a few generations—has mutated from an unintelligible zone of action leading to an inexplicable position of dominance for the player executing it; to a now highly choreographed repertoire of movements that have come to stand for an entire synesthetic ethics and personhood of bolo-ness.

The Endangered Kashmir musk deer Moschus cupreus is a conservation priority species facing population decline as a result of habitat loss and illegal hunting for its musk pod. Effective conservation requires identifying habitats that support the species’ survival and persistence. We used sign survey and camera-trap data with single-species occupancy modelling to examine the environmental factors influencing the species’ habitat use in Pattan Valley, Himachal Pradesh, and Govind Pashu Vihar National Park, Uttarakhand, India. We deployed a total of 43 camera traps and surveyed 54 trails in Pattan Valley, and had 23 camera traps and 43 trails in Govind Pashu Vihar National Park. The results indicate that M. cupreus occupies conifer forests (Pinus wallichiana, Picea smithiana, Abies spectabilis and Cedrus deodara, intermixed with Betula utilis) at 2,946–4,418 m in Pattan Valley, and mixed forests (P. wallichiana, P. smithiana, C. deodara, B. utilis, A. spectabilis, Taxus wallichiana and Quercus semecarpifolia) at 2,145–3,641 m in the National Park. Elevation and conifer forests had positive influences on the occupancy and detection probability of Kashmir musk deer in Pattan Valley, similarly mixed forests and elevation had positive influences on occupancy and detection probability, respectively, in Govind Pashu Vihar National Park. Contrarily, supporting model suggests that conifer forests have a negative influence on detection probability of Kashmir musk deer in the National Park. As high-altitude forested areas are vital habitat for M. cupreus, there is a need to improve protection and minimize anthropogenic disturbance in these areas. Our findings will aid wildlife managers in conservation planning and help inform management decisions for this species.