How do invocations of history inform speculative discourses in Western astrology? This article examines how events from the recorded past factor into predictive forecasts among professional astrologers for whom celestial patterns are indicative of shifting and evolving world-historical trends. Drawing on examples from prominent voices in the North American astrology community, across a range of commercial and social media platforms, I outline the parameters of what I call “astrological historicity,” a temporal orientation guided by archetypal principles closely associated with New Age metaphysics and psychodynamic theories of the self. I argue that while such sensibilities reinforce an ethos of therapeutic spirituality, they are not so narrowly individualistic as to preclude social and political considerations. Astrological historicity is at times a vehicle for culturally resonant expressions of historical consciousness, including critical awareness of historical legacies of racial and social injustice that directly link the past to the present and foreseeable future. Furthermore, while astrological accounts of history emulate aspects of modern historicism, including its orientation toward linear temporality and developmental themes, they rely on a nonlinear framework predicated on recurring cycles, correspondences, and synchronicities, bringing a complex heterotemporality to bear on world-historical circumstances. In seeking to understand the moral and political entailments of this area of occult knowledge production, this article aims to shed light on astrology’s cultural appeal not just as popular entertainment, spirituality, or therapy, but as an intellectual and cultural resource for many people searching for ways to express their frustration and disillusionment with reigning political-economic systems and authorities.

This study provides researchers, practitioners, and policy makers with a profile of older adults’ travel behaviour and the older adult population that reports unmet travel needs. In addition, we quantified associations between reporting an unmet travel need and measures of health and social connectedness. Data came from the second follow-up survey of the Canadian Longitudinal Study on Aging, collected from 2018 to 2021 (n = 14,167). Nine in ten (90.2%) older adults aged 65 years and older indicated that driving is the main way they get around. Older adults with an unmet travel need were more likely to be women, have lower household incomes and education levels, and have a mobility limitation. People with an unmet travel need had 2.7 times the odds of reporting fair or poor general health (OR = 2.66, 95% CI: 2.19, 3.22) and 3.1 times the odds of feeling socially isolated (OR = 3.10, 95% CI: 2.57, 3.72) compared to those without an unmet need.

This study investigates the use of double modals in Australian and New Zealand English using Twitter/𝕏 data. Double modals are rare grammatical constructions long believed to be limited to regional dialects in the Northern UK and the Southern US. Utilizing a geolocated corpus of over 80 million tweets, the study identifies 314 authentic double modal instances across 51 types, primarily occurring in informal tweets. Findings reveal widespread, albeit low-frequency, usage across both countries without clear geographical patterns. The results align with recent studies suggesting double modals are not confined to specific regions but are possible for most English speakers. The study also questions the traditional Scots-Irish origin theory, proposing an alternative view where the feature is a broader syntactic possibility. Future research should explore larger datasets and extend investigations to outer-circle English varieties to understand better the historical spread and syntactic nature of double modals.

Scholars of various backgrounds have noted how societies across the globe have come to rely on more and more policing and incarceration since the late 1970s. To date, however, detailed analyses of the causes and consequences of this “punitive turn” have been limited to the Global North, with the vast majority of studies focused on the expansion of states’ capacity for violence. This article offers a corrective to the global study of the punitive turn by tracing the rise of South Africa’s private security industry from its inception in the late apartheid period to its current position as one of the largest of its kind in the world. Using newspaper reports, archival material from the apartheid state’s security apparatus, and ethnographic interviews of former and current members of the security industry, it shows how counterinsurgency doctrine, civil war, and deindustrialization shaped South Africa’s punitive turn, precipitating a process where violence was devolved from the state to private actors, including local militias, vigilante groups, and private security firms. This process, it is argued, is far from anomalous, and should be seen as a paradigm for the way the post-1970s punitive turn has unfolded in the majority of the world.

Before World War I, the Ottoman Empire ruled the southwestern region of the Arabian Peninsula. However, unlike other Ottoman territories in Eastern Europe and the Middle East, the fate of this region was not decided during the Paris Peace Conference. This created a vacuum of power that allowed the local elites of Arabia to engage in a lengthy process of conflict, negotiations, peace talks, and the exchange of ideas to resolve issues of legitimacy, sovereignty, borders, and cultural differences. This article argues that these local elites of Arabia developed an alternative model of statehood and sovereignty that persisted until the outbreak of the Gulf War in 1990. The immediate result of this new model was the separation of al-Mikhlāf al-Sulaimānī region and the transformation of the people of the Najrān region into a sectarian group.

Newly elevated to species rank, the Bahama Nuthatch Sitta insularis is or was a bark- and twig-gleaning insectivore only known in life from the pine forests of Grand Bahama in the Bahamas archipelago. It became increasingly difficult to find in the past 50 years, seemingly in part in response to multiple hurricanes in this century. In spring (June–April) 2018, when it was still known to be extant, we divided the island into seven sections and carried out point count transects with playback and measured habitat variables at 464 locations in pine forest across Grand Bahama. We made only six observations at six locations, all in the region of Lucayan North and each involving a single nuthatch (possibly all the same individual). Fourteen count points were within 500 m of the six locations, and tree size at these sites was greater in height and girth than at sites with no observations and indeed than at other sites within Lucayan North. Count points within 500 m of nuthatch records in 2004–2018 had larger trees and more snags than survey points over 500 m away from previous detections, while count points within 500 m of our 2018 nuthatch records tallied more snags than did those within 500 m of the 2004–2007 records. Declines in habitat quality, habitat extent, nesting substrate, and food availability (driven by logging, attritional island development, and the direct and indirect effects of hurricanes), plus speculated increases in populations of invasive predators/competitors and in major mortality events (hurricanes, increasing in force and frequency with climate change), are suspected to be the ultimate causes of the decline of the nuthatch, with Hurricanes Matthew and Dorian the proximate causes of its evident extinction in 2019.

Founded by Booker T. Washington in 1900, the National Negro Business League (NNBL) sought to unite Black business owners, promote entrepreneurship, and develop economic power. Despite its prominence in the early twentieth century, the group declined after Washington’s death in 1915. As a result, little is known about its organizational development. This study uses data on state and local Negro Business Leagues (NBLs), along with active and life members of the NNBL, to better understand the group’s first fifteen years. Analyses reveal that the NNBL’s development reflected closely the social and economic context of early twentieth century Black America. Generally speaking, the NNBL was stronger in states with larger urban Black populations and where the value of Black-owned farms was higher, consistent with the importance of agriculture to Black business during this era. These results both shed light on the NNBL’s early success and suggest avenues for future research on its decline.

Loss of skeletal muscle strength and mass (sarcopenia) is common in older adults and associated with an increased risk of disability, frailty and premature death. Finding cost-effective prevention and treatment strategies for sarcopenia for the growing ageing population is therefore of great public health interest. Although nutrition is considered an important factor in the aetiology of sarcopenia, its potential for sarcopenia prevention and/or treatment is still being evaluated. Nutrition research for sarcopenia utilises three main approaches to understand muscle-nutrition relationships, evaluating: single nutrients, whole foods and whole diet effects – both alone or combined with exercise. Applying these approaches, we summarise recent evidence from qualitative and quantitative syntheses of findings from observational and intervention studies of healthy older adults, and those with sarcopenia. We consider protein supplements, whole foods (fruits and vegetables) and the Mediterranean diet as exemplars. There is some evidence of beneficial effects of protein supplementation ≥ 0·8 g/kg body weight/d on muscle mass when combined with exercise training in intervention studies of healthy and sarcopenic older adults. In contrast, evidence for effects on muscle function (strength and physical performance) is inconclusive. There is reasonably consistent epidemiological evidence suggesting benefits of higher fruits and vegetables consumption for better physical performance. Similarly, higher adherence to the Mediterranean diet is associated with beneficial effects on muscle function in observational studies. However, intervention studies are lacking. This review discusses how current evidence may inform the development of preventive and intervention strategies for optimal muscle ageing and nutritional public policy aimed at combatting sarcopenia.

Despite the urgent need for plant-based dietary shifts, few studies have examined current diet trajectories using longitudinal data. This study analyzed dietary transitions of French adults over 8 years (2014-2022), assessing diet quality and the role of various socio-economic factors. Consumption data from 17 187 NutriNet-Santé cohort participants, weighted for the French Census, were collected via FFQ in 2014, 2018 and 2022. Adopting a gender-specific approach, consumption changes in twenty-three food groups were assessed over time. Diet quality was evaluated using the Comprehensive Diet Quality Index score, categorising foods into ‘healthy’ and ‘unhealthy’. Socio-economic analysis targeted four food groups (red meat (including fresh beef, pork, offal and lamb), processed meat (e.g. sausages, ham and bacon), legumes and whole-grain products), strongly linked to mortality risk and recognised as significant markers of the sustainable diet transition. All analyses were conducted using multi-adjusted mixed-effects models. Consumption of some healthy plant-based foods (nuts +59 %, legumes +22 %, whole-grain products +7 %) significantly increased over time, while consumption of some unhealthy foods (red meat −19 %, refined cereals −18 %, sweetened drinks −15 %) decreased. Conversely, consumption of prepared and mixed dishes (+16 %) and processed meat (+35 %) increased. These changes differed in magnitude between genders and translated into an improved diet quality score (Comprehensive Diet Quality Index). Occupational status was linked to longitudinal changes in food consumption, showing increased consumption of plant-based foods among students and higher socio-professional categories. Our findings provide accurate data on trends and factors for targeted initiatives, guiding strategic interventions for a sustainable dietary transition.

This article examines the online reaction to the linguistic performance of a pro-China Hong Kong singer-actor in a commercial where he speaks Hong Kong English. Paradoxically, the posters criticizing his English are Hongkongers themselves, while those showing admiration are mainland Chinese. Understanding this paradox requires an appreciation of the multiple and complex orders of indexicality through which the variety is evaluated and of the increasing use of linguistic evaluations as a proxy for political judgements in a society undergoing significant changes. An analysis of online comments and remixes associated with the commercial shows that Hong Kong social media users attribute a range of different indexical meanings to the celebrity's English to shame him for his perceived ‘betrayal’ and to reclaim a sense of social superiority over mainlanders in the face of unease about Hongkongers’ cultural distinctiveness. It unpacks complexities surrounding the deployment of language ideologies in societies experiencing sociopolitical upheavals. (Language ideologies, linguistic ridicule, orders of indexicality, polycentricity, social media, Hong Kong)*

Sperm infertility or subfertility is detrimental to the precious highland germplasm like yak whose population has been gradually declining in India. Understanding the ‘omic’ landscape of infertile or subfertile yak sperm can reveal some interesting insights. In an attempt to do the same, this study considered the semen of infertile or subfertile yak bulls for whole-genome and transcriptome evaluations. DNA sequencing revealed that the yak sperm genome contains the necessary genes to carry out all the important biological processes related to the growth, development, survival and multiplication of an organism. Interestingly, RNA Seq results highlighted that genes like VAMP7, MYLK, ARAP2 and MARCH6 showed increased expression, while biological processes related to immune response (GO:0043308, GO:0002447, GO:0002278, GO:0043307, GO:0043312, GO:0002283, GO:0043299 and GO:0002446) were significantly overrepresented. These findings hint at a possible role played by immune system in regulating infertility or subfertility in yaks. Further, in-depth studies can validate these findings and help in improving our biological understanding in this area.

The zeolitic rocks of Akrotiri, on Santorini Island (Aegean Sea, Greece), can be grouped according to the zeolite minerals present. The first group includes zeolitic rocks that contain only clinoptilolite, the second group contains clinoptilolite and mordenite and the third group contains only mordenite. Clinoptilolite accounts for up to 56 wt.% and mordenite for up to 69 wt.% of the rocks. All samples contain feldspars (8–36 wt.%), clay minerals (6–8 wt.%), quartz (3–6 wt.%), opal-CT (2 wt.%), amphibole (2–4 wt.%) and amorphous materials (4–7 wt.%). The studied samples were classified chemically as andesites or dacites. The ammonium-exchange capacity of the studied samples was 104–158 meq 100 g–1. According to Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) No. 651/2013, zeolitic rocks that contain ≥80 wt.% clinoptilolite, ≤20 wt.% clay minerals and are free of fibrous minerals and quartz can be used as feed additives in animal husbandry. Zeolites with fibrous habit (mordenite, erionite, secondarily roggianite and mazzite) and SiO2 minerals such as quartz, cristobalite and tridymite can be dangerous to both humans and animals. The mineralogical study showed that, due to their low clinoptilolite content and the presence of both quartz and fibrous mordenite, the studied zeolitic rocks do not conform with European Regulation No. 651/2013. As a result, their use as feed additives and nutrition supplements is prohibited.