In The Image of God (2022), Eleonore Stump seeks to address a residual problem that remains even after a successful theodicy, namely the problem of mourning. The problem of mourning concerns the appropriateness of certain evaluative responses (such as grief or disappointment) with respect to the world that contains suffering. To answer this problem, Stump seeks to demonstrate how lives with suffering are maximally great precisely because they contain suffering: some person S’s most glorious self is to be located in her participating in the sufferings of Christ and thereby magnifying God’s love in herself. This paper identifies a problem with Eleonore Stump’s solution to the problem of mourning, namely valorisation: Stump’s solution entails that there is a type of suffering that is constitutive of value and therefore a reason-giving end in it itself. Valorisation is something we should avoid. I therefore present a different solution to the problem of mourning that is based on the incommensurability of S’s best lives. After this I address one final issue – the problem of preference – that is in the neighbourhood of Stump’s problem of mourning. I argue that if S’s best lives are incommensurate, we can reject the preference problem as incoherent.

The structural optimisation of aircraft wings remains a critical task in modern, lightweight aeronautical design, where computational efficiency must be balanced against modeling fidelity. To that end, this paper presents an automated framework for the parametric finite element modeling (FEM) and surrogate-based optimisation (SBO) of an aircraft wing using MSC Patran and Nastran. The geometry and structural layout of the wing are generated through Patran Command Language (PCL) scripting, enabling fully parametric control of ribs, spars, stringers and thickness distributions. The automated model is then linked to MSC Nastran for static, global linear buckling and dynamic aeroelastic (flutter) analyses. To reduce the computational cost associated with repeated commercial FEM-based evaluations, surrogate models are constructed and used to drive the structural optimisation process. The framework is demonstrated on a representative high aspect-ratio wing structure, showing significant reductions in design cycle time while maintaining accuracy in predicting mass and performance metrics. The results highlight the potential of integrating surrogate modeling with commercial FEM software in an automated workflow, offering a practical and scalable approach for aerospace structural design and optimisation.

Previous studies indicate that in the United States, the effects of climate change disproportionately impact communities of color. Accordingly, we would expect racial/ethnic minorities to express greater concern over the environment than white Americans. However, racial/ethnic minorities are not monolithic. Therefore, we examine how intersectional identities within racial groups by partisanship and gender shape attitudes on the environment using the 2020 Collaborative Multiracial Post-Election Survey and the Climate Change in the American Mind (cross-sectional study 2008-2022). Our findings indicate that racial/ethnic minorities are more supportive of policies to combat climate change and are more likely to believe in climate change than white Americans. Latine and Asian American/Pacific Islanders also exhibit higher levels of anxiety about climate change compared to white Americans. In terms of intersectional identities, we find consistent partisan differences for Latine and White individuals, whereas gender and racial identity are inconsistent.

A novel family of $Ku$-band highly selective multi-band bandpass filters (BPFs) realized using groove-gap-waveguide (GGW) technology is presented. The conceived multi-band BPF structures are derived from a quasi-elliptic-type single-band prototype by applying a split-type single-to-multi-band frequency transformation. The baseline single-band prototype incorporates extracted GGW-rectangular-cavity sections at both the input and output accesses, which are preserved in the multi-band extension as multi-cavity tails. These extracted cavities enable the generation of multiple stopband transmission zeros (TZs) to obtain steep-attenuation characteristics in fully inductive-coupling filter structures without the need for cross-coupling mechanisms. Theoretical design examples of fourth-order dual-band and sixth-order triple-band filtering responses are developed using the coupling-routing-diagram formalism. These examples demonstrate the versatility of the proposed multi-band BPF approach in terms of bandwidths and center frequencies for passbands, spectral symmetry or asymmetry, and out-of-band TZ placement. For experimental-validation purposes, a proof-of-concept GGW dual-band BPF prototype exhibiting fourth-order passbands centered at 14 and 14.4 GHz and five stopband TZs is designed, manufactured, and measured. A compact two-layer vertically stacked GGW configuration is adopted for its physical implementation, confirming the practical feasibility of the proposed architecture. In addition, electromagnetic-simulation-based sensitivity analyses are performed to assess fabrication robustness, and a quantitative comparison with prior-art designs is provided to evaluate the RF-performance merits of the developed Ku band GGW dual-band BPF.

In a recent work of Moreno-Fernandez, Wierstra and the present author [‘A recognition principle for iterated suspensions as coalgebras over the little cubes operad’, Preprint, 2022, arXiv:2210.00839], a coendomorphism operad in the category of pointed topological spaces endowed with the wedge sum was introduced. In this paper, we construct an analogue completely internal to the category of simplicial sets with the goal of defining simplicial coalgebras. As an application, we show that simplicial n-fold suspensions are coalgebras up to coherent homotopy over the Barratt–Eccles $E_n$-operad provided they have finitely many nondegenerate simplices.

The Mediterranean diet has emerged as a promising dietary pattern for preventing non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD). This study aimed to examine the role of the Mediterranean diet on the risk of NAFLD in Turkish adults. A total of 252 individuals (126 NAFLD and 126 age- and sex-matched controls) participated in this case-control study. Dietary intake was assessed with a 24-h recall, and adherence to the Mediterranean diet was evaluated using the Mediterranean Diet Adherence Screener (MEDAS). Logistic regression models were applied to estimate odds ratios (ORs). The prevalence of NAFLD was higher in the lowest tertile (64.6%) and lower in the highest tertile (30.5%; p<0.001). Moderate adherence to the Mediterranean diet was associated with a 57.0% lower risk of NAFLD after adjusting for age, sex, BMI, and energy intake. High adherence conferred an 86.0% reduction after adjusting for age, sex, BMI, energy intake, and comorbidities. Frequent consumption of butter, margarine, cream, (OR=2.75; 95% CI: 1.72–6.43) and sugar-sweetened beverages (OR=2.87; 95% CI: 1.20–6.87) significantly increased the risk. However, consuming nuts three or more servings per week was protective (OR=0.46; 95% CI: 0.21–0.99). In individuals who did not consume ≥3 servings of fruit daily, the risk of NAFLD was significantly reduced (OR=0.28; 95% CI: 0.16–0.69). Adherence to the Mediterranean diet was strongly associated with a reduced risk of NAFLD, highlighting the importance of limiting saturated fats and sugar-sweetened beverages while promoting nuts as practical strategies for prevention.

We investigate branching processes in a nearly degenerate varying environment, where the offspring distribution converges to the degenerate distribution at 1. Such processes die out almost surely; therefore, we either condition on non-extinction or add inhomogeneous immigration. Extending our one-dimensional limit results from Kevei and Kubatovics (2024), we derive functional limit theorems. In the former case, the limit process is a time-changed simple birth-and-death process on $(-\infty, \infty)$ conditioned on survival at 0, while in the latter, it is a time-changed stationary continuous-time Markov branching process with immigration.

Today, the story of the opium trade is an almost archetypal representation of the social, economic and military power dynamics at play in the colonial world. But few, if any, are aware that the European encounter with Chinese opium smoking spurred a European interest in opium vapour therapy, or that its spirited uptake in European medicine inspired a research programme that spanned the continent for more than half a century. Opium smoking was intoxicating, something which experimental science suggested should be impossible, since the chemical properties of opium’s active alkaloids all but precluded the possibility of vaporization. Recalling opium smoking’s entrance into medical practice and the subsequent experimental interest in the chemical constitution of opium vapour, this paper reconstructs the history of European ‘opium science’. In doing so, it realizes opium science as the site of competing definitions of the biomedical reality implicated in the experience of opium intoxication, one centred on the intoxicated experiences of the colonial subjects themselves. Far from being a simple story of exchange between centres and peripheries, it examines the polycentricity of knowledge circulation in the colonial world and the implacable agency of intoxication.

Climate change is expected to significantly affect the physical, financial, and economic environments over the long term, posing risks to the financial health of general insurers. While general insurers typically use Dynamic Financial Analysis (DFA) for a comprehensive view of financial impacts, traditional DFA as presented in the literature does not consider the impact of climate change. To address this gap, we extend the stationary DFA framework to integrate climate risk, enabling a holistic assessment of the long-term impact of climate change on the general insurance industry and offering a foundational architecture for the DFA of individual insurers. Our framework captures the long-term impact of climate change on the assets and liabilities of general insurers by considering both physical and economic dimensions across different climate scenarios within an interconnected structure. Furthermore, it addresses the uncertainty of climate change impacts using stochastic simulations within climate scenario analysis that are useful for actuarial applications. Our extensions are tailored to the general insurance sector and address its unique characteristics. To demonstrate the practical application of our model, we conduct an extensive empirical study using Australian data and assess the long-term financial impact of climate change on the general insurance market under various climate scenarios. The results are benchmarked against those of a stationary DFA framework and show that the interaction between economic growth and physical risk plays a key role in shaping general insurers’ risk–return profiles. They highlight the advantages of the climate-dependent DFA over the stationary DFA in generating financial projections under climate change impacts. Limitations of our framework are thoroughly discussed.

Let $(Z_{t})_{t \geq 0}$ be a planar Brownian motion running in some domain W and denote by $\tau _{W}$ the exit time of $Z_{t}$ from W. To establish the finiteness of $\mathbf {E}(\sup _{0\leq t\leq \tau _{W}}|Z_{t}|^{p})$ from the finiteness of $\mathbf {E}(|Z_{\tau _{W}}|^{p})$ for some $p>0$, Burkholder [‘Exit times of Brownian motion, harmonic majorization, and Hardy spaces’, Adv. Math. 26(2) (1977), 182–205] imposed an additional condition on the exit time $\tau _{W}$, namely the finiteness of $\mathbf {E}(\log (\tau _{W}))$. Such a condition is typically difficult to verify, since the law of the exit time is often delicate. In this paper, we revisit Burkholder’s condition and propose an alternative viewpoint. Our approach is purely analytic, weaker and formulated in terms of proper analytic maps rather than exit times themselves. This provides a more flexible framework for further applications.

Aircraft arresting systems (AAS) are critical safety components required for the operation of fighter aircraft, particularly during aborted take-off or emergency landing scenarios. The most significant challenge in the development and certification of these systems is the high-cost full-scale dead-load testing required to verify their performance under various aircraft mass and entry-speed conditions. This study presents a novel and fully domestic test system that reproduces the kinetic energy input defined in the MIL-STD-3036 standard by using high-inertia flywheels driven by electric servomotors. The proposed system stores the required energy in dual flywheels and transfers it to the arresting barrier through a controlled release mechanism, thereby replicating real aircraft-entry conditions without the need for jet engines, runways or physical dead-load vehicles. The study focuses on the conceptual design and analytical modelling of the proposed system. Dynamic analyses were conducted to determine flywheel geometry, material selection, allowable stresses, rotational speeds and energy absorption capacity. The system was shown to meet the highest energy level defined in the MIL-STD-3036 test matrix, while being designed to enable accurate and controlled evaluation of arresting force, torque response, angular deceleration and stopping time. Experimental validation has not yet been conducted and is planned as part of future work. The results demonstrate that the proposed test system provides an economical, repeatable and safe alternative to conventional dead-load tests and enables performance evaluation, maintenance verification and certification of AAS. Furthermore, the system offers a scalable platform for future arresting technologies, including those designed for unmanned aircraft and next-generation military platforms.

We investigate solutions to the matrix Diophantine equation $ X^n + Y^n = n!Z^n $ within specific classes of $2 \times 2$ integer matrices. Firstly, we introduce a class of $2\times 2$ matrices $G_2(d)$ and show that $X^n + Y^n = n!Z^n$ admits a solution in $G_2(d)$ if and only if the classical Diophantine equation $x^n + y^n = n!z^n$ has a solution in $\mathbb {Q}(\sqrt {d})$. We further present a constructive theorem for generating matrix solutions over a general number field K. Finally, we introduce a determinant-fixed class of matrices $G_2(d, l)$, and prove that the Fermat-type equation $X^n+Y^n=2Z^n$ has only the trivial solution in $G_2(d, l)$ whenever $n>2$.

Standard Community Assessment for Public Health Emergency Response (CASPER) methods, a type of rapid needs assessment (RNA) for collecting data on household needs and impacts following emergencies, are not always suitable for rural, destroyed, or severely damaged communities, or disasters affecting small geographical areas. The objectives of this modified RNA were to: (1) identify the strengths, limitations, and operational challenges for utilization of modified RNAs for post-disaster, quick response research; and (2) capture the acute mental and physical health impacts and lived experiences of communities affected by the 2024 Arbor Day tornado in Nebraska (USA). This field study tested modifications of the CASPER methodology in rural and inaccessible communities in Washington and Douglas County, Nebraska following the 2024 Arbor Day tornado. A 60-item survey was developed using validated questions, including on mental and physical health impacts. Survey completion rates for Washington and Douglas Counties were 57.3% and 89.3%, respectively. Exacerbation of existing conditions, worsening allergies, and stress were commonly reported following the tornado. Modified RNAs were useful and feasible approaches for capturing perishable data following the 2024 Arbor Day tornado outbreak. These findings can be used to inform not only public health response but also future planning and policy.

A finitely based, finitely generated variety with finitely many subvarieties is a Cross variety. In the present article, it is shown that a variety of J-trivial monoids is Cross if and only if it excludes 14 specific almost Cross varieties. Consequently, these 14 varieties exhaust all almost Cross varieties of J-trivial monoids.