From the early years of Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, observers predicted that their de facto annexation might occur. Fifty-seven years later, it has happened. Although governed differently than other zones within the Israeli state, neither territory can be separated from Israel. Yet, the territories’ official status is that they are not part of the state. We offer four reinforcing analyses—legal, historical, discursive, and political—of this sustained discrepancy between what is and what is officially said to be. By analyzing Israel’s juridical techniques for regularizing the incorporation of territories occupied beginning in 1948, we show that de facto annexation has been Israel’s predominant form of territorial expansion. This helps account for the failure to implement de jure annexation, the intensity of conflict over attempts to overhaul the Israeli judiciary, and debates over the future of postwar Gaza.

We construct the first examples of infinite sharply 2-transitive groups which are finitely generated. Moreover, we construct such a group that has Kazhdan property (T), is simple, has exactly four conjugacy classes and we show that this number is as small as possible.

In this interview, which took place in Birmingham on 16 February 2023, Hakan Gültekin talks to playwright David Edgar about his theatre universe and the current state of British theatre. Edgar has long championed the social and economic rights of playwrights, and here suggests that the lack of long-term and sustained support from British theatres has created what he calls ‘Primark playwrights’. His plays are characterized by a careful examination of historical events and the impact of these events on society, as evident in his epic two-part play Destiny (1976), which examines the roots of the British Labour movement. Other notable plays include Excuses Excuses (1972), Saigon Rose (1976), Wreckers (1977), and Entertaining Strangers (1986), commissioned by the Colway Theatre. He has also written plays for the Royal Shakespeare Company, including The Jail Diary of Albie Sachs (1978), Maydays (1983, revived in 2018), and Pentecost (1994). More recently, he adapted A Christmas Carol for the RSC (2017) and staged the one-man show Trying It On (2018). He founded the first playwriting degree in Britain at the University of Birmingham in 1989, and served as President of the Writers’ Guild of Great Britain from 2007 to 2013.

This research communication screened and identified differentiated expressed genes in bovine mammary epithelial cells (BMECs) upon prolactin (PRL) stimulation. PRL of 5 μg/ml increased β-casein synthesis in BMECs with milk protein synthesis capacity. RNA sequencing (RNA-seq) was used to screen differentially expressed genes (DEGs). A total of 375 DEGs (165 up-regulated and 210 down-regulated) were identified between PRL-stimulated group and the control group. Gene ontology enrichment analysis showed that the up-regulated genes were primarily associated with cell functions, metabolic processes, and biological regulatory processes. Pathway enrichment analysis showed that the up-regulated genes were mainly enriched in JAK-STAT, Rap1, Ras and Notch signaling pathways, which are widely involved in cell proliferation, differentiation and milk component synthesis. This study provides an initial understanding of the changes in gene expression in BMECs with PRL-stimulation, as determined by RNA-seq transcriptomic analysis, thereby enhancing our knowledge of the molecular regulation of lactation metabolism.

For young men in Cameroon, football has long been a paradigm of sociality through competitive spirit. In recent decades, however, the stakes of competitive football have been raised: the sport has also emerged as a strategy for young men to migrate abroad and earn a living. On and off the football fields, young men seek to grab limited opportunities to sign contracts with clubs abroad, but few succeed. However, the aspiring athletes rarely see themselves as autonomous individuals competing for a limited number of spots in football clubs. Rather, they attribute failure or success to questions of trust and mistrust: in competitive peers, in neighbours and kin, in Pentecostal Christianity, and in football as a source of livelihood. Competing for a place in a global football industry has led the footballers to mistrust potentially envious others, but also increasingly to put their faith in a Christian God and develop a confident orientation towards a future of success despite the odds. The nexus of football, religion and migration aspirations in Anglophone Cameroon reveals how trust retains a central, albeit ambiguous, place in high-stakes competitive environments, namely as a leap of faith and a confidence in engaging uncertainty. It complicates the idea of competition as a singular and neutral principle that obviates the need for trust, and refines anthropological theory that tacitly confines trust to interpersonal relationships.

Using the concept of the carceral state, this article articulates how Israel’s control of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip has shifted to a nondemocratic one-state paradigm. While, initially, Israel operated a separate military carceral system for these areas, between 2000 and 2006 it dismantled the military system, transferred most Palestinian prisoners into Israel, and rebranded its civilian prison service as the National Prison Authority, making it the sole agency responsible for the incarceration of Palestinians. This reorganization consolidated a single carceral system inside Israeli territory—the one carceral state— which serves as crucial evidence of the de facto one-state paradigm and forms a centerpiece of this new regime in Israel/Palestine. By analyzing a broad range of archival and administrative documents and 168 Supreme Court decisions on the management of prisons and Palestinian prisoners, this study reveals how the massive “exclusionary inclusion” of the Palestinian prisoner population in Israeli state law and its administrative mechanisms changes the entire landscape of the Israeli settler-colonial citizenship regime. Palestinian prisoners become “carceral citizens” of the “one state” and are subject to a parallel, alternate legality, in which they expand their repertoire of resistance against the wider racialized and repressive regime across Palestine/Israel.

Mundo Quinta is a documentary theatre creation programme for adolescents in Madrid, launched by Espacio Abierto Quinta de los Molinos and directed by the theatre company Cross Border Project. This publicly funded programme started in 2018 and is currently celebrating its sixth season. Each season takes place during the academic year and culminates in the premiere of a new play. This article combines empirical and ethnographical methods with theatre analysis to examine the foundations, artistic vision, and creative process of Mundo Quinta, and to analyze how artistic quality is ensured in the final productions. The research undertaken focuses on the fourth season, and identifies the techniques used to create the verbatim theatre play ¿Me quieres alfileres? (Multiformas de quereres) [Do You Love Me? (Multiforms of Love)] in 2022 with designated young participants.

The international struggle against impunity for perpetrators of atrocities, including genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes, has been a key interest of the international community since the end of World War II. Many achievements have been accomplished with respect to international collaboration on the “substantive issues” of international criminal law (ICL), such as defining and criminalizing the core crimes of international law, yet collaboration on the procedural and practical aspects of ICL, known as mutual legal assistance (MLA) has been neglected.

The aim of this study was to evaluate parameters for the prediction of peripartum hypocalcemia in cattle. The study consisted of two independent investigations (A and B) conducted in different time periods and locations. Blood sera were analyzed for the activity of alkaline phosphatase (ALP), the concentration of ionized (iCa), and total calcium (Ca) two weeks before calving. On the day of calving, urinary net acid/base excretion was calculated, and the serum Ca concentration was analyzed. Ca concentration less than 2 mmol/l on the day of calving was defined as hypocalcemia. The results differed between the two investigations. Part A showed high predictive values for the antepartum parameters ALP and Ca concentration, but these could not be replicated in part B. Animals enrolled were quite young (average age 5.5 years) and the group of animals with hypocalcemia was comparably small in both investigations. The reason(s) for the different results in investigation A and B are not clear. These findings indicate that there are probably as yet unidentified parameters and influences on calcium homeostasis in cattle. None of the parameters investigated in the present study can be considered a reliable universal parameter for prediction of hypocalcemia risk in general.

This article assesses the inner workings of Cuban diaspora statecraft behind the ‘La Nación y la Emigración’ Conference, post-Soviet era Cuba's first major outreach to the Cuban community abroad. In contrast to works observing how changing emigration demographics might have transformed Cuba, this study argues that the Cuban state purposefully tried to reshape the homeland–diaspora relationship through the design of its emigration strategies. Because the Cuban geopolitics of mobility had profound security, economic and ideological implications, the leadership discussed not just how to neutralise the counterrevolution abroad but how to address both the diaspora's needs and popular sentiment at home.