Informal music learning, pioneered by Green (2002, 2006, 2017), presents an alternative approach that integrates students’ interests in popular music, bridging the informal and traditional styles of Western music education in schools. We conducted a scoping review adhering to the PRISMA (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses) guidelines to investigate informal music learning. Our scoping review encompasses 28 empirical, peer-reviewed articles published from 2006 to 2023. First, we analyse the diverse contexts, methodologies and geographic locations in which informal music learning has been investigated. Second, we explore how different stakeholders perceive and engage with informal music learning in various educational settings. Lastly, we summarise the implications derived from the analysed studies on informal music learning. Our findings reveal that across various educational contexts, informal music learning has consistently demonstrated its positive impact in motivating students. We also find that researchers have extended their investigations from programme reform to exploring pupil and teacher’s musical identities. Recommendations for future research include exploring informal music learning in ensembles and elementary music classrooms and employing quantitative or mixed methods to assess its effectiveness and impact.

Early nutritional and growth experiences can impact development, metabolic function, and reproductive outcomes in adulthood, influencing health trajectories in the next generation. The insulin-like growth factor (IGF) axis regulates growth, metabolism, and energetic investment, but whether it plays a role in the pathway linking maternal experience with offspring prenatal development is unclear. To test this, we investigated patterns of maternal developmental weight gain (a proxy of early nutrition), young adult energy stores, age, and parity as predictors of biomarkers of the pregnancy IGF axis (n = 36) using data from the Cebu Longitudinal Health and Nutrition Survey in Metro Cebu, Philippines. We analyzed maternal conditional weight measures at 2, 8, and 22 years of age and leptin at age 22 (a marker of body fat/energy stores) in relation to free IGF-1 and IGFBP-3 in mid/late pregnancy (mean age = 27). Maternal IGF axis measures were also assessed as predictors of offspring fetal growth. Maternal age, parity, and age 22 leptin were associated with pregnancy free IGF-1, offspring birth weight, and offspring skinfold thickness. We find that free IGF-1 levels in pregnancy are more closely related to nutritional status in early adulthood than to preadult developmental nutrition and demonstrate significant effects of young adult leptin on offspring fetal fat mass deposition. We suggest that the previously documented finding that maternal developmental nutrition predicts offspring birth size likely operates through pathways other than the maternal IGF axis, which reflects more recent energy status.

Autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) have played a pivotal role in advancing ocean exploration and exploitation. However, traditional AUVs face limitations when executing missions at minimal or near-zero forward velocities due to the ineffectiveness of their control surfaces, considerably constraining their potential applications. To address this challenge, this paper introduces an innovative vectored thruster system based on a 3RRUR parallel manipulator tailored for micro-sized AUVs. The incorporation of a vectored thruster enhances the performance of micro-sized AUVs when operating at minimal and low forward speeds. A comprehensive exploration of the kinematics of the thrust-vectoring mechanism has been undertaken through theoretical analysis and experimental validation. The findings from theoretical analysis and experimental confirmation unequivocally affirm the feasibility of the devised thrust-vectoring mechanism. The precise control of the vector device is studied using Physics-informed Neural Network and Model Predictive Control (PINN-MPC). Through the adoption of this pioneering thrust-vectoring mechanism rooted in the 3RRUR parallel manipulator, AUVs can efficiently and effectively generate the requisite motion for thrust-vectoring propulsion, overcoming the limitations of traditional AUVs and expanding their potential applications across various domains.

This essay explores two texts in a fifteenth-century manuscript from Thetford Priory, Norfolk (now ms 329 in the Parker Library, Corpus Christi College, Cambridge). The first is an account of Marian miracles leading to the building of the Lady Chapel in the thirteenth century, and the second is an account of the formation of its relic collection in the twelfth century, which would be housed inside a statue of the Virgin Mary. The destruction of Thetford Priory at the Dissolution lends them a special significance since they offer evidence of a minor Marian cult that would be otherwise lost to us. The texts also highlight the interactions of aristocratic patrons – the Bigod family – and their Cluniac foundation. This essay explores the texts for the first time, offers a transcription and translation of them and considers their place in the cult of the Virgin at Thetford and in England generally.

Since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, both viral infection and the corresponding economic turmoil have wreaked havoc across the globe, highlighting the imperative function of the state as a social protection provider. The pandemic has seemingly created favourable political circumstances for rapidly expanding social protection, but its influences on public welfare attitudes remain unclear. In this study, I argue that the impact of pandemic-driven economic risk is too limited to spur strong public support for social protection. The employed empirical analyses using panel data collected in South Korea show that unemployment induced by the pandemic is conducive to higher degrees of individual support for social protection measures, but the impact is only short-lived. Further analyses show that, once individuals are re-employed and as the time spent in economic difficulties becomes more distant, personal unemployment experiences are no longer positively associated with support for social protection. Finally, pandemic-induced unemployment experiences have a lasting impact primarily on young adults. The evidence therefore suggests that significant institutional changes in the welfare state are hard to achieve by solely relying on the impact of economic risk.

The Lutheran minority in Warsaw celebrated the 100th anniversary of its magnificent classicist church in 1881, under Russian rule, when the parish was predominantly culturally German; and the 150th anniversary in 1931/2, during the Second Polish Republic, when the clergy were to a large extent Polish-speaking. This article compares these two jubilees to show acts of commemoration as a tool, steering religious bonds and social identification, whether or not consciously. It highlights the social, ‘terrestrial’ aspects of the functioning of confessional minorities, showing how the community was constantly reinvented through common memory.

We present a new explicit formula for the determinant that contains superexponentially fewer terms than the usual Leibniz formula. As an immediate corollary of our formula, we show that the tensor rank of the $n \times n$ determinant tensor is no larger than the $n$-th Bell number, which is much smaller than the previously best-known upper bounds when $n \geq 4$. Over fields of non-zero characteristic we obtain even tighter upper bounds, and we also slightly improve the known lower bounds. In particular, we show that the $4 \times 4$ determinant over ${\mathbb{F}}_2$ has tensor rank exactly equal to $12$. Our results also improve upon the best-known upper bound for the Waring rank of the determinant when $n \geq 17$, and lead to a new family of axis-aligned polytopes that tile ${\mathbb{R}}^n$.

We consider two continuous-time generalizations of conservative random walks introduced in Englander and Volkov (2022), an orthogonal and a spherically symmetrical one; the latter model is also known as random flights. For both models, we show the transience of the walks when $d\ge 2$ and that the rate of direction changing follows a power law $t^{-\alpha}$, $0<\alpha\le 1$, or the law $(\!\ln t)^{-\beta}$ where $\beta>2$.

Sextic double solids, double covers of $\mathbb P^3$ branched along a sextic surface, are the lowest degree Gorenstein terminal Fano 3-folds, hence are expected to behave very rigidly in terms of birational geometry. Smooth sextic double solids, and those which are $\mathbb Q$-factorial with ordinary double points, are known to be birationally rigid. In this paper, we study sextic double solids with an isolated compound $A_n$ singularity. We prove a sharp bound $n \leq 8$, describe models for each n explicitly, and prove that sextic double solids with $n> 3$ are birationally nonrigid.

The article evaluates clerical professionalisation in the eighteenth-century Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth by examining the division of labour within parishes. It argues that proponents of the Catholic Enlightenment endeavoured to achieve post-Tridentine reforms while also assigning to the clerical profession responsibilities for the material well-being of parishioners and service to the Commonwealth. It concludes that the process of clerical professionalisation remained incomplete. Firstly, approval for hiring assistant priests resulted in the delegation of many, if not all, ecclesiastical duties to them. Secondly, the improved professional education of priests occasionally led to unexpected withdrawal from pastoral duties seen as falling below their acquired competencies.

This article examines manuscript sermons to reveal how a Calvinist minister, Hugh Ramsden, preached predestination from his parish pulpit in the late 1620s. It shows how he adapted a scholarly work for this purpose, sought to balance inclusive and exclusive visions of the Christian community, and attempted to frame the doctrine as a comfort. By comparing two manuscripts for the same sermon, the extempore aspects of his live preaching are explored. Lastly, it considers the negotiation that allowed Hugh's like-minded brother, Henry, to continue with Calvinist preaching under the Laudian regime of Richard Neile in the 1630s.

The international migration literature has highlighted four key stylized facts from the perspective of the source country: (i) Migration rates are notably high, with some nations seeing over ten percent of their population living abroad. (ii) Certain developing countries have witnessed a significant exodus of skilled workers, commonly referred to as brain drain, spanning several decades. (iii) Migrants often maintain strong ties to their country of origin, evidenced by the substantial remittances they send back to their relatives. (iv) Migration is not necessarily permanent, as a considerable number of individuals return to their home country after a period spent abroad. In this paper, we present a theoretical model that endogenously explains these facts. Our model allows us to explore key issues in migration literature from a theoretical standpoint. We analyze the general equilibrium effects of migration, its long-term implications, and its welfare consequences. Additionally, we investigate whether the combined impact of return migration and remittances can counterbalance the effects of skilled migration. Finally, we evaluate the efficacy of policy interventions designed to mitigate the adverse effects of brain drain.

Assessing the conservation status of a species is important for designing effective conservation measures. Consequently, it is often vital to review it to update biodiversity management initiatives. The Parana Antwren Formicivora acutirostris is a bird found in pioneering formations (coastal marshes) of Brazil’s southern flood plains. It is considered threatened in Brazil but near threatened globally. In 2007, its distribution, habitat, and population size were estimated based on aerial photographs from 1978 and 1980. Since the species is threatened and occupies a small area across a region under pressure, we aimed to reassess its conservation status and assess its Green Status. We compiled new records, conducted new density estimates, and compared them with the previous mapping with satellite imagery to estimate the current distribution in terms of extent of occurrence (EOO), area of occupancy (AOO), area of habitat (AOH), habitat loss, and population size, and review its conservation status. The species is distributed across 10 populations, including two new populations further south. We estimated the EOO at 26,655 km², AOO at 320 km², AOH at 41 km², and the population as 6,285 mature territorial individuals. The previously mapped AOH decreased by 15.35 km² due to ecological succession. The loss of habitat due to invasion by exotic grasses is the main anthropogenic impact. We recommend that the species be considered “Vulnerable”. The Green Status indicates that the Conservation Legacy of actions taken thus far and the Conservation Dependence of ongoing actions are inefficient due to their small scales, but it highlights the importance of future actions for species conservation. We propose the establishment of exotic-free zones as small areas with a significant amount of minimally invaded environments, which we suggest as priority areas for the conservation of the species due to their cost-effective management potential. We also propose assisted colonisation to enhance its long-term conservation.

Although forensic psychiatrists are often asked to comment on a defendant's capacity to form the necessary mens rea for their alleged offence, little has been written on how mental disorders map onto legal concepts of mens rea, particularly those of intention. In this article we explore legal concepts of mens rea and the relevance of mental disorders and alcohol intoxication. We briefly consider philosophical approaches to intentional action and a variety of common mental disorders. We conclude that despite the presence of significant psychopathology it is rare for mental disorders to cause a defendant to lack the ability to form mens rea. Experts should therefore be cautious about coming to the conclusion that they do lead to a lack of capacity to form mens rea and should make clear the limits of their expertise, given the difficulty of translating clinical mental states into legal concepts of liability.