The recent discovery of a Middle to Late Iron Age bloomery iron-smelting site, revealed during archaeological works associated with the M2 Junction 5 improvement scheme in north-west Kent, has highlighted the possibility that the Stockbury Valley was the focus of a substantial ironworking industry during this period. Moreover, the waste slag assemblages recovered from the M2 Junction 5 scheme and several other sites around Stockbury appear to show an industry that employed elements of the prehistoric tradition (largely non-tapping) and the Roman tradition (tapping), producing tapped and non-tapped slag in the same smelt.

This study examines welfare governance in rentier states as an adaptive system. The system reconciles centralised control with selective modernisation. The empirical base is 143 policy documents from 1971 to 2024. The framework draws on the Policy Arrangement Approach, with assemblage theory and Foucauldian governmentality as supplementary lenses. Three questions guide the analysis. How does the rentier state calibrate welfare provision to sustain legitimacy? How does it absorb external pressures without conceding authority? And how do the four policy arrangement dimensions interact across reform episodes? The findings show four patterns. Centralised resource control entrenches power asymmetries. Selective integration channels civil society towards national priorities. Modernisation narratives mediate the tension between reform and control and flexible policy arrangements absorb external pressure while preserving state authority. This study contributes to comparative welfare scholarship by introducing welfare-as-governance, an analytical category through which rentier welfare is distinguished by membership differentiation and institutional continuity rather than social citizenship.

Boardgames appear frequently in early medieval Arabic literature, reflecting their embeddedness in everyday life and social discourse. Despite abundant textual and material evidence, the archaeology of games in Islamic contexts remains understudied, partly due to the scarcity of reliably-dated gameboards. This article addresses this gap by presenting a previously unpublished game board from the medieval hammam of Walīla (Roman Volubilis), Morocco. The bathhouse was built in the late eighth/ninth century CE and abandoned by the tenth or eleventh century CE, offering a rare secure context for the board’s date. The board’s design suggests it was used for playing tāb/sig, making it the earliest known evidence of this game in North Africa. This case study sheds light on how games intersected with communal life and public spaces in early medieval North Africa.

To identify associations between Hb concentration in different trimesters, Hb changes and Hb trajectories during pregnancy with risk of preterm birth (PTB) and low birth weight (LBW). A retrospective cohort study included 18 980 participants from Haidian District Maternal and Child Health Care Hospital from 2018–2021. Hb concentrations were measured at first (0–12 weeks), second (13–27 weeks) and third trimesters (≥ 28 weeks). Hb was categorised into four groups (< 110, 110–119, 120–129, ≥ 130 g/l), and Hb changes between trimesters were calculated. The latent class growth mixed model was employed to estimate Hb trajectories. Association assessment and dose–response relationship used logistic regression and restricted cubic spline. Compared with Hb 110–119 g/l, women with Hb ≥ 130 g/l significantly increased odds of PTB (OR: 1·74, 95 % CI 1·29, 2·31) and LBW (OR: 2·31, 95 % CI 1·65, 3·20) during the second trimester. In the third trimester, women with Hb 120–129 g/l showed 26 % (OR: 1·26, 95 % CI 1·04, 1·51) increased odds of PTB and 72 % (OR: 1·72, 95 % CI 1·36, 2·17) increased odds of LBW, while the OR of Hb ≥ 130 g/l for PTB and LBW were 1·45 (95 % CI 1·12, 1·86) and 2·60 (95 % CI 1·96, 3·43). Hb changes exhibited a linear increase in odds of PTB and LBW. Women with a decline-sharp-rise trajectory had a 1·48-fold odds of PTB (OR: 1·48, 95 % CI 1·26, 1·75), compared with a decline-gradual-rise trajectory. These findings underscore the importance of monitoring Hb during pregnancy.

This article explores (a) how conceptualisations of movement embed sedentism within the security–migration nexus and its protection logics and (b) which conceptualisation of movement can analytically challenge that embedding. The overall aim is to problematise the opposition between sedentism and movement. I address these questions by analysing mapping and countermapping practices and considering what insights can be gained by conceptualising life as fundamentally in motion. The maps reveal four concepts of movement: border crossing, routes, journeys, and threads. Each operates within the security–migration nexus. The article then extends the notion of threads into a conceptualisation of life (and matter) as inherently in motion, or life-in-motion. Allowing life to emerge from and through the coexistence of movements offers an analytical framework that creates cracks in sedentism inscriptions within the security–migration nexus while avoiding the reduction of movement to nomadism – the ‘other’ of sedentism.

This essay offers an ecocritical reading of decolonial love. It traces how, in Díaz’s fiction, people introject (post)colonial violence, redeploying its misogynist, masculinist, and sometimes violently hypersexual and racialized dynamics in their most intimate relationships. Díaz shows the connection between this kind of toxicity and the historical and economic forces that are laying waste to the planet.

The AVOID Frailty framework, developed by the Canadian Frailty Network, promotes five evidence-based behaviors to reduce frailty risk in older adults: physical activity, vaccination, medication optimization, social interaction, and nutrition. Although widely adopted, its deficit-based framing may limit engagement and appeal. This commentary proposes a positively framed alternative, the THRIVE Strategy for Lifelong Wellness, which retains the core behavioral focus of AVOID while adding a sixth pillar, engaging the mind, to reflect evidence on cognitive and emotional well-being in aging. We further recommend shifting from the language of frailty prevention and healthy aging towards lifelong wellness, a more inclusive and empowering concept. Drawing on health communication theory and aging research, we argue that gain-framed messages are more motivating, less stigmatizing, and relevant across the life course. By emphasizing thriving rather than avoiding decline, the THRIVE strategy offers a holistic and potentially more effective framework for promoting sustained well-being across adulthood and later life.

Black African women face disproportionately high rates of obesity, with prevalence reaching 37 % in the UK. These elevated rates significantly contribute to chronic non-communicable disease burdens, yet comprehensive dietary data for this group in the UK remain limited. Accurate dietary assessment is essential for identifying nutritional risks and guiding interventions, especially in ethnically diverse populations. Standard tools, including the European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition (EPIC) FFQ, often lack cultural specificity and have not been adapted or validated for Black African populations in the UK. This study aimed to modify and validate a culturally tailored EPIC FFQ for dietary assessment among Black African adults in the UK. A cross-sectional study with 112 Black African women (BMI > 25 kg/m2) was conducted. The EPIC FFQ was adapted by including culturally relevant African foods, identified via literature review and three non-consecutive 24-h recalls using Intake24. Participants completed the modified FFQ, and nutrient intakes from both methods were compared using correlation analyses, adjusted for within-person variation. Bland–Altman plots and energy-adjusted correlations assessed agreement. The modified FFQ expanded to 141 food items and showed significant correlations with 24-h recalls for various nutrients. Crude correlation coefficients ranged from 0·21 (fibre) to 0·87 (protein); energy-adjusted values ranged from 0·19 to 0·86. De-attenuated correlations improved further. Bland–Altman plots showed systematic overestimation of intake, particularly protein and fibre, but good overall agreement. The adapted EPIC FFQ is a valid tool for dietary assessment in Black African adults, though overestimation occurred. Further validation using dietary biomarkers is recommended.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has recommended contact precautions for healthcare personnel caring for COVID-19 patients since the beginning of the pandemic. However, current scientific evidence points to transmission through small respiratory droplets or aerosols and not contaminated fomites as the dominant routes of transmission of SARS-CoV-2. We believe science shows there is no benefit and thus only negative consequences to patients, the environment, and the U.S healthcare system associated with ongoing contact precautions for patients with SARS-CoV-2 infection, and we advocate for updated guidelines reflecting current science.

The purpose of this cross-sectional study was to investigate knowledge about multiple-birth families among midwives and public health nurses working in maternity and child health clinics in Finland. The data were collected with a Finnish language questionnaire in spring 2022. Because relevant questionnaires did not exist, we created a new questionnaire based on existing knowledge and practices. The questionnaire assessed three themes of multiple-birth knowledge relevant for the target population. The response rate was 50% and the number of respondents was 72. A total of 92 items were assessed and these showed high levels of consistency within themes. The respondents had substantial variation in their levels of multiple-birth family knowledge concerning different themes (Kruskal-Wallis test, p < .001). Post-hoc pairwise comparisons revealed many significant differences between themes, the two themes of knowledge of speech development of twins and breast feeding having the lowest level of knowledge, while interaction and support expected by the parents having the highest level of knowledge. The respondents had good knowledge of only five themes of multiple-birth family knowledge. Of all the themes, only knowledge about breast feeding was not significantly related to other themes, except for a weak correlation (r = .264, p < .05) with knowledge about caring for twins and understanding the situation. The age, educational level and work experience of respondents did not significantly affect their scores (all p > .1). Although the respondents had knowledge about early interaction, bonding and supporting the growth and development of child, its application is insufficient or lacking because of the special needs of multiple birth families. Further research is required on the effectiveness of training interventions and on nursing in different nursing contexts.

This reflective practitioner essay asks what it means to teach law ‘as a conversation’ and who is heard as speaking law within that conversation. Drawing on teaching notes from an elite Indian law school writing classroom, the article analyses a staged counter-factual dialogue among four legal thinkers (Nicholas J. McBride, Patricia J. Williams, Kiruba Munusamy and Angela D. Gilmore). ‘Counter-factual pedagogy’ names a method that stages an ‘as-if’ encounter that is structurally unlikely within conventional legal education in order to make institutional defaults newly visible, including neutrality as epistemic rigour, professionalism as merit and doctrinal learning as separable from social power. The article reads the exercise through five literature-informed lenses (voice, neutrality, performance, justice, discomfort). No student quotations, paraphrases or artefacts are reproduced.

Linearly distributive categories were introduced to model the tensor/par fragment of linear logic, without resorting to the use of negation. Linear bicategories are the bicategorical version of linearly distributive categories. Essentially, a linear bicategory has two forms of composition, each determining the structure of a bicategory, and the two compositions are related by a linear distribution. After the initial paper on the subject, there was little further work as there seemed to be a lack of examples. The main goal of this paper is to demonstrate that there are in fact a great many examples, which are obtained by considering quantales and quantaloids and by extending familiar constructions from the (ordinary) bicategorical setting. It is standard in the field of monoidal topology that the category of quantale-valued relations is a bicategory. Here, we begin by showing that a quantale is Girard if and only if the corresponding bicategory is a Girard quantaloid, which is an example of a linear bicategory. The tropical and arctic semiring structures fit together into a Girard quantale, so this construction is likely to have multiple applications. More generally, we define LD-quantales, which are suplattices with two quantale structures related by a linear distribution, and their bicategorical analog, linear quantaloids. We show that $Q\text{-}{\sf Rel}$ is a linear quantaloid if and only if $Q$ is a LD-quantale. We then consider several standard constructions from enriched bicategory theory and show that these lift to the linear quantaloid setting and produce new examples of linear bicategories. In particular, we consider linear $\mathscr{Q}$-categories, matrices in $\mathscr{Q}$, and linear monads in $\mathscr{Q}$, where $\mathscr{Q}$ is a linear quantaloid. We develop non-locally posetal examples as well: $\mathscr{Q}\mathrm{uant}$, the bicategory of quantales, modules, and module homomorphisms; and $\mathscr{Q}\mathrm{tld}$, the bicategory of quantaloids, modules, and module homomorphisms. These turn out to be cyclic $*$-autonomous bicategories, which are in essence a closed version of linear bicategories.