Fundraising is a critical element of legislative elections, yet problems of measurement and strategic candidate emergence have prevented researchers from evaluating how running extremist candidates affects parties’ fundraising prospects. This article combines an original candidate ideology scaling with a regression discontinuity design in primary elections in Congress, 1980–2022, and state legislatures, 1996–2022, to assess whether donors punish extremist nominees in general elections. I find that the “coin-flip” primary nomination of an extremist over a more moderate opponent decreases their party’s share of general-election contributions by 7 percentage points in the median contest and 18–19 percentage points when the ideological contrast between candidates is largest. This financial penalty is larger among corporate PACs than individual donors and is driven symmetrically by donors withdrawing support from extremist nominees and rallying behind their opponents. Applying a complementary panel-based identification strategy, I replicate these core findings and further document that the financial penalty to extremist nominees has fallen by nearly half since 2000. Overall, these results show how general-election donors act as a marked, yet waning, moderating force in American politics when parties run extremist candidates.

The Global Leadership Initiative on Malnutrition (GLIM) provides a consensus-based diagnostic framework for malnutrition in hospitalised patients, which includes at least one phenotypic and one aetiologic criterion. In GLIM, appendicular skeletal muscle based on bioelectrical impedance analysis (ASMBIA) and calf circumference (CC) are two common techniques for muscle mass assessment, but their accuracy remains debated. Therefore, the present study evaluates the prevalence of malnutrition upon hospital admission applied by GLIM criteria and mainly compares the effectiveness of ASMBIA and CC. We screened a total of 605 patients from four hospitals in Indonesia (August–October 2024). Multivariate logistic regression analysed associations with clinical outcomes. Prevalence of malnutrition was 72·7 % using three phenotypes, 55·9 % with two phenotypes, 22·1 % via ASMBIA and 62·6 % using CC. Significant associations (P < 0·05) were found between malnutrition and weight loss, BMI, mid-upper arm circumference, handgrip strength, sarcopenia and fat-free mass index. For all criteria combinations, sensitivity was greater in CC (86·1 %), followed by two phenotypes (76·8 %), while the ASMBIA had the poorest sensitivity (30·5 %). All GLIM-based diagnostic methods correlated with malnutrition risk screening and nutrition status indicators. The GLIM criteria provide a standardised, clinically relevant approach for diagnosing malnutrition in hospitalised patients, with CC emerging as a highly sensitive assessment to examine muscle mass.

In this article, I hone in on complex, assemblaic relations of human, non-human, more-than-human, animal, spatial, digital, environmental, and political economic questions questioning the role that language and other modes of semiosis have in the powerful production of planetary matters and anthropocenic landscapes. New theoretical and methodological directions are paved in the field of linguistic and semiotic landscape studies that underscore entangled space, methodological attunement, and the political economy as planetary actor. In this issue, we encounter ‘epistemic rupture’ in real time among numerous sensescapes on land, sea, and in the sky. This means it is time for scholars to acquire planetary repertoires and different ways of semiotic de-coding and meaning-making as it pertains to the Anthropocene, where human language is devalued. Post-humanism and assemblage theorization are put forward as promising frameworks while methods from off and online spaces may be the new norm in LL studies. (Anthropocene landscapes, planetary repertoires, perceptual coding, political economy, multispecies communication, epistemic rupture, linguistic and semiotic landscapes, assemblage theory, post-humanism)

Coconut oil, extracted from coconut kernels, is a rich source of medium-chain fatty acids, including lauric acid, capric acid and caprylic acid. This experiment aimed to investigate the protective effect of coconut oil against intestinal injury induced by lipopolysaccharide (LPS) challenge in piglets. A total of twenty-four piglets were used in a 2 × 2 factorial experiment with dietary treatment (3 % soybean oil v. 3 % coconut oil) and LPS challenge (saline v. LPS). After 28 d of the experiment, piglets were injected intraperitoneally with LPS (100 μg/kg body weight (BW)) or saline. Piglets were slaughtered and sampled for testing. Pigs fed coconut oil had higher average daily gain and BW during the entire study. Supplementation with coconut oil improved intestinal morphology and barrier function, indicated by increased jejunal villus height, as well as enhanced protein expression of ZO-1 and Occludin. Furthermore, coconut oil supplementation improved plasma antioxidant capacity, indicated by enhanced GSH peroxidase activity and decreased malondialdehyde concentration. Moreover, coconut oil ameliorated the LPS-induced release of pro-inflammatory cytokines, as indicated by decreased IL-1β expression in the jejunum. Coconut oil also alleviated the up-regulation of the expression of necroptosis protein receptor-interacting protein kinase 3 and mixed lineage kinase-like protein in the jejunum of piglets stimulated by LPS. In conclusion, dietary supplementation of coconut oil can improve the growth performance of piglets and alleviate LPS-induced intestinal injury and inflammation by inhibiting necroptosis signalling pathway.

In this paper, we prove a quantitative equidistribution theorem for polynomial sequences in a nilmanifold, where the average is taken along spheres instead of cubes. To be more precise, let $\Omega \subseteq \mathbb {Z}^{d}$ be the preimage of a sphere $\mathbb {F}_{p}^{d}$ under the natural embedding from $\mathbb {Z}^{d}$ to $\mathbb {F}_{p}^{d}$. We show that if a rational polynomial sequence $(g(n)\Gamma )_{n\in \Omega }$ is not equidistributed on a nilmanifold $G/\Gamma $, then there exists a non-trivial horizontal character $\eta $ of $G/\Gamma $ such that $\eta \circ g \,\mod \mathbb {Z}$ vanishes on $\Omega $.

How can electoral competition remain stable despite a weak party system? We argue that ideological identification can stabilize electoral behavior, serving as a substitute for weak or delegitimized political parties. Focusing on Chile, we combine repeated cross-sectional surveys, a conjoint experiment, and text analysis. We find that while partisanship has declined sharply over the past three decades, ideological self-placement remains remarkably stable. Conjoint results show that ideological alignment outweighs issue alignment in shaping vote choice. Drawing on survey questions and topic modeling of open-ended responses, we uncover emotionally charged and moralized language tied to ideological groups, suggesting that ideology in Chile displays features of a social identity, including intergenerational transmission, symbolic boundaries, and in-group affect. We also examine how intense political events, such as a plebiscite to end a dictatorship, shape long-term ideological attachments. Our findings offer insight into how electoral competition can remain ideologically structured even in the absence of strong parties, a pattern increasingly relevant in contemporary democracies.

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) has been frequently associated with an increased risk of obesity and metabolic disorders, including dyslipidaemia. However, research on lipid profiles and dietary intake in this population remains scarce. This cross-sectional study aimed to evaluate dietary patterns and their association with serum lipid profile in children and adolescents diagnosed with ASD. The study included 233 individuals from 2 to under 19 years assisted by the public health system in Pelotas, Brazil. Fasting blood samples were collected and analysed for serum concentrations of total cholesterol, HDL-cholesterol, LDL-cholesterol and TAG. Dietary intake was assessed using three non-consecutive 24-h food recalls (two weekdays and one weekend day). Dietary patterns were derived through reduced rank regression, using food group intakes as predictors and fibre density, energy density, carbohydrate and saturated fat intakes as response variables. Standardised pattern scores were calculated to assess individual adherence, and linear regression models, adjusted for potential confounders, were applied to examine the association between the dietary pattern scores and lipid profiles. Elevated TAG concentrations were observed in 48·9 % of the participants. Four dietary patterns were identified: Healthy, sugar and starches, mixed and dairy and biscuits. After adjustment, no significant associations were observed between dietary pattern scores and lipid profile. These findings underscore the complex nature of lipid metabolism in individuals with ASD and suggest that dietary patterns alone may not fully explain variations in lipid profiles. This reinforces the need for further research and development of appropriate nutritional interventions for this population.

Nuancing the conventional wisdom that informal economic activities endure by marginalizing, circumventing, or colluding with the law, we use original court data from China to reveal a counterintuitive mechanism: informal finance can endure through formal litigation. Drawing on 66,843 judicial decisions, case studies of seven top-filers, and interviews, we examine how sophisticated moneylenders, inactive debtors, and embedded courts collectively helped sustain unlicensed moneylending in China before 2020. Moneylenders—whether operating through Fintech or offline channels—leverage superior legal resources to enforce semilegal debts. Debtors facing moneylenders suffer from serious hurdles in accessing justice, especially lacking professional legal help that could potentially change case outcomes. Courts, despite concerns over debtor protection, largely tolerate the semilegal lending in alignment with the pre 2020 regulatory environment that valued the expansion of private financing, particularly through Fintech. Beyond China and the financial market, this litigation-endured mechanism of informal economy reflects a pattern in high-volume civil dockets where litigation is strategically used to bypass regulation, which has contributed to access-to-justice crises in other jurisdictions, including the USA. Theorizing these dynamics raises pressing questions about the institutional role of courts in either sustaining or remedying welfare pathologies, and in shaping a just society.

I am modest about my spelling accuracy. Oops, I cannot consistently believe that! Modesty about my spelling entails I underestimate my spelling. If I indeed underestimate my spelling accuracy, then my ignorance about spelling accuracy is contagious. For if I believe you and I are equals at spelling, then my modesty commits me to underestimating your spelling. In addition to my ignorance of my merit spreading to my ignorance of your merit, my ignorance can make you ignorant. After all, how do you know that I am modest rather than accurate? In general, any modesty I possess robs my peers.

This paper presents an innovative hybrid approach that integrates traditional control strategies with deep reinforcement learning for robotic assembly. By fusing multimodal information from visual and force feedback, the method leverages admittance control to ensure safe force feedback while using deep reinforcement learning to process visual input, enabling precise control and real-time correction of assembly actions. This multi-sensor feedback mechanism not only enhances the stability and accuracy of the assembly process but also improves the robot’s robustness and adaptability in uncertain environments. Additionally, a twin-delay deep deterministic policy gradient algorithm based on residual reinforcement learning is proposed. The design of a task-specific reward function, which simultaneously considers visual goals, force compliance, and contact stability, effectively addresses challenges such as difficult state information acquisition and sparse rewards in assembly tasks. This improves the robot’s interaction capabilities and task execution efficiency in real-world environments. Experimental results demonstrate that the method designed in this paper effectively reduces the training time for reinforcement learning from 400 epochs to 100 epochs, significantly decreases the magnitude of contact forces during the assembly process, and shortens the contact time.

Archaeological investigations in the Prut-Dniester region during the Roman Imperial Period have yielded numerous Sarmatian culture necropolises and isolated graves. Establishing a precise chronology for these remains has long been a challenge due to the limitations of typological dating alone. This study integrates radiocarbon (14C) analysis of 11 human bone samples from selected funerary contexts with traditional typological methods, refining the chronological framework of the Sarmatian culture in this region. The radiocarbon analyses were subjected to Bayesian modeling, which allowed for the delineation of these samples into distinct phases, thereby adjusting and improving the periodization established through traditional methods. The results not only confirm but also refine previously established chronologies, offering deeper insights into the cultural, social, and economic dynamics of Sarmatian communities in the Prut-Dniester Barbaricum. These findings represent a significant contribution to the broader understanding of the Roman Imperial Period beyond the Eastern Limes.

In the face of ever accelerating climate change, the ability to resist such change and work with nature to secure a more environmentally just future poses a striking but necessary challenge. From this perspective, the present article asks: Can a posthuman reimagining of the human, non-human, and more-than-human nexus in the context of a semiotic landscape analysis of the seas (henceforth, seascape) create new possibilities beyond the Anthropocene? This approach, which I call MARA—mapping and applying a rhizomatic assemblage of the seascape—aims to offer an exploratory framework for rethinking the interaction of the multispecies entanglement and the consequences in terms of vulnerability and resilience to climate change. This is achieved through a multisensory semiotic landscape approach to a case study of a blue tourism initiative in Ireland’s seascape. The results of the case study serve to undo the previously accepted binary structure of power which favours human over non-human. (Multisensory semiotic landscape, seascape, rhizomatic assemblage)