In 1988, during the abolition centennial in Brazil, Verdi’s Aida and Carlos Gomes’s Lo schiavo were perceived and pitched as abolitionist operas thanks to events that unfolded at their stagings one hundred years earlier in Rio de Janeiro. Both operas stirred controversy by being recreated in productions intended to correct historical inaccuracies and unjust erasures, primarily in the context of African slavery, but with unexpected cultural and political repercussions. This article examines connections between operatic performances and social activism, discussing the role of opera singers in promoting an aesthetic of sensibility within the abolitionist movement of the 1880s, but also considering how the most controversial aspects of the nineteenth-century abolitionist movement resonate with issues debated in the 1988 productions.

A self-binding directive (SBD) can be included in mental health advance decision documents to request future involuntary treatment. SBDs are supported by service users but controversial and empirical evidence on their application is scarce. Here we present a first case report which describes the experience of a service user with bipolar disorder (hereafter ‘bipolar’) who has chosen to use an SBD. We compare the findings of the case report with results from a systematic review of reasons for and against SBDs. We discuss that the experience of the service user supports SBDs as a tool to maximise autonomy and challenge criticisms around negative liberty, implementation, capacity assessment, and harms. We conclude that this case report adds to mounting evidence that SBDs are a feasible, ethically justifiable intervention, supported by service users. Policy makers should consider supporting SBD implementation strategies within crisis care.

This article focuses on unilateral sovereignty referendums pursued by territorial autonomies. Due to their unilateral character, such referendums are unlikely to gain external recognition and, as a result, fail to effect or prevent any de jure change in sovereignty. However, they are still pursued despite these constraints, suggesting that they serve purposes other than formal changes in sovereignty. To explain this phenomenon, the article proposes a framework of seven potential motivations. The framework is examined through the case of Gagauzia’s 2014 referendums, which addressed two key issues: Moldova’s foreign alignment and Gagauzia’s deferred independence. The analysis follows three referendum stages — proposal, initiation, and implementation — focusing on the dual leadership of the executive and legislative branches. Drawing primarily on newspapers affiliated with these branches, the study finds empirical support for three key motivations: advancing the individual and collective political interests of autonomy leadership, strengthening Gagauzia’s ties with its patron (Russia), and empowering the territorial autonomy vis-à-vis the parent state (Moldova). This article contributes a framework of motivations for unilateral sovereignty referendums tailored specifically to territorial autonomies, going beyond existing explanations developed for all polities. It also provides a detailed account of one of the most significant political events in Gagauzia’s history.

For much of imperial Chinese history, chroniclers and explorers understood a maritime land called Liuqiu to be the Ryūkyūs. In the early twentieth century, however, a new dynastic history claimed that Liuqiu was in fact Taiwan. This article explores how and why an uncontested and unambiguous understanding of Chinese maritime history was suddenly rewritten in the modern world, becoming the accepted interpretation and shaping twenty-first century geopolitics. While scholars have weighed the veracity of Liuqiu as either Taiwan or Ryūkyū, this article focuses on how the Liuqiu–Taiwan thesis was produced and transmitted, showing how scientific methodology, imperialism, and nationalism worked to reshape geographical history. The article further contributes to an understanding of the shaping of the borders and claims of the modern Chinese nation: whereas scholars have investigated late Qing and early Republican debates over the western frontier and ethnicities, this article shows that questions over Taiwan were just as important.

The European praying mantis, Mantis religiosa (Linnaeus, 1758) (Mantodea: Mantidae), is an introduced predatory insect established in southwestern and southeastern Canada and much of the United States of America. Despite over a century of records, the geographic origins of North American populations have remained unclear. We analysed 807-bp fragments of the mitochondrial CO1 gene from 17 sequences from southern Quebec and Ontario, Canada, comparing them to 175 sequences from western, eastern, and southern Europe. Population genetics analyses revealed that Canadian samples carry haplotypes from two divergent lineages that co-occur in a localised region of western France. These haplotypes showed the closest affinities to others also found in France, strongly supporting a French origin. Historical records from Rochester, New York, United States of America, where M. religiosa was first documented in 1899, suggest introduction via the 19th-century horticultural trade. The low haplotype diversity in Canada may reflect founder effects or environmental filtering, though additional, undetected introductions remain possible. This study clarifies the likely French source of M. religiosa in southeastern Canada and underscores the value of combining molecular data and historical accounts to track invasion pathways.

Let $f \in \mathbb{Q}[x]$ be a square-free polynomial of degree at least $3$, $m_i$, $i=1,2,3$, odd positive integers, and $a_i$, $i=1,2,3$, non-zero rational numbers. We show the existence of a rational function $D\in \mathbb{Q}(v_1,v_2,v_3,v_4)$ such that the Jacobian of the quadratic twist of $y^2=f(x)$ and the Jacobian of the $m_i$-twist, respectively, $2m_i$-twist, of $y^2=x^{m_i}+a_i^2$, $i=1,2,3$, by $D$ are all of positive Mordell–Weil ranks. As an application, we present families of hyperelliptic curves with large Mordell–Weil rank.

In a game with costly information acquisition, the ability of one player to acquire information directly affects her opponent’s incentives for gathering information. Rational inattention theory then posits the opponent’s information-acquisition strategy is a direct function of these incentives. This paper argues that people are cognitively limited in predicting their opponent’s level of information, and hence lack the strategic sophistication that the theory requires. In an experiment involving a real-effort attention task and a simple two-player trading game, I study the ability of subjects to (1) anticipate the information acquisition of opponents in this strategic game, and (2) best respond to this information acquisition when acquiring their own costly information. I study this by exogenously manipulating the difficulty of the attention task for both the player and their opponent. Predictions of behavior are generated by a novel theoretical model in which Level-K agents can acquire information à la rational inattention. I find an out-sized lack of strategic sophistication, driven largely by the cognitive difficulties of predicting opponent information. These results suggest a necessary integration of the theories of rational inattention and costly sophistication in strategic settings.

Vitamin B6 is implicated in multiple mental disorders, and accumulating evidence suggests an inverse relationship with depression; however, important aspects of the underlying dose–response patterns and the roles of individual circulating vitamin B6 metabolites remain incompletely understood. We analyzed data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) 2005–2010. Depression was defined as a Patient Health Questionnaire-9 (PHQ-9) score ≥10. Vitamin B6 status was assessed using serum pyridoxal 5′-phosphate (PLP), the biologically active coenzyme form, and 4-pyridoxic acid (PA), the principal catabolic and urinary excretion product of vitamin B6. Among 12,620 participants, 1,070 (8.5%) met criteria for depression. After adjusting for relevant covariates, multiple logistic regression revealed that individuals in higher quartiles of serum PLP and PA (Q2-Q4) had significantly lower odds of depression compared to those in the lowest quartile (Q1). Restricted cubic spline analyses identified nonlinear relationships: L-shaped for PLP (P-nonlinearity=0.001) and U-shaped for PA (P-nonlinearity=0.017). Below the inflection points (90.7 nmol/L for PLP; 73.9 nmol/L for PA), both metabolites showed significant inverse associations with depression (PLP: OR=0.992, 95%CI: 0.988–0.996, P<0.001; PA: OR=0.994, 95%CI: 0.993–0.996, P<0.001). Above these thresholds, the association became non-significant for PLP (P=0.353), while PA demonstrated a positive association with depression (OR=1.008, 95%CI: 1.002–1.013, P<0.01). Subgroup analyses confirmed the robustness of these inverse associations across demographic categories. Serum vitamin B6 metabolites, PLP and its excretion product PA, exhibit non-linear associations with depression, with distinct threshold effects and metabolite-specific patterns that likely reflect both vitamin B6 availability and turnover.

A particular fashion and lifestyle aesthetic called kankokuppo (Koreaish) has gained popularity among young Japanese women in the early 2020s, who increasingly admire what they perceive to embody the “atmosphere (fun’iki)” of South Korea. This article examines the semiotic rendering of a sensuous perception of Korea identified as “Koreaish” through aesthetically embodied practices and mediatized discourses. The analysis reveals the centrality of what I call a “soft unity”: softness that arises from ambiguated boundaries, taken up across discrete objects, practices, and social value regimes. Alongside growing calls to change Japanese society from a divisive to a borderless one, this softness is valorized as the quality of idealized sociality despite its association with highly normative femininity. The emergent “Koreaish” is emblematic of the postfeminist reformulation of the feminine ideal in neoliberal Japan, which manifests as a nexus of the demanifestation of differences and the reversion to conservative feminine values.

The focus of existing research on perceived organizational support (POS) has largely been concentrated at the individual-level, leaving an understudied gap at a higher unit-level of analysis. This study aims to fill this gap by examining the multilevel relationship between employee POS and job satisfaction, emphasizing the moderating role of unit-level POS. We hypothesize, based on POS theory and social comparison theory, that unit-level POS serves as a contextual moderator for the relationship between individual-level POS and job satisfaction. Additionally, at the unit-level, we identify clan culture values and unit-satisfaction as correlates of unit-POS. We test our hypotheses using a Bayesian Multilevel Structural Modeling approach on 45 work units and 317 employees. The results show that at low levels of unit-level POS, individual-level POS is more important for employees’ job satisfaction. We furthermore found support for a positive association between unit-level POS, unit-clan culture, and unit satisfaction. Our results, and their notable theoretical and practical implications, are discussed.