This study presents a comparative analysis of the radiocarbon dates obtained on paired samples of various organic materials extracted from a lake sediment core. AMS radiocarbon dating of bulk sediment, chironomid capsules, and Trapa seeds was conducted to assess whether systematic offsets exist in the dates obtained on material that are commonly used to develop chronological frameworks for lake-based paleoenvironmental research. The findings reveal significant discrepancies between 14C dates obtained on bulk sediment, chironomid capsules, and on the Trapa seeds used to develop a previously published age-depth model for a sediment core recovered from Deoria Tal, Garhwal Himalaya, India. The systematic offset between the bulk sediment, and to a lesser extent chironomid remains, and the Trapa seeds is attributed to the integration of allochthonous carbon in the bulk sediment, leading to older apparent ages. The 3.6‰ shift in the δ13C value of the bulk sediment at 252 cm is inferred to reflect an increase in the contribution of C4 plant matter to the lake. The increase in enriched δ13C organic matter, coincident with the increasing offset between the dates obtained on bulk sediment and chironomids, and those obtained on the Trapa seeds, between 800 and 400 cal BP, was likely driven by anthropogenic land use changes, as evidenced by the four-fold increase in Cerealia-type pollen during this interval. This study underscores the necessity of selecting appropriate materials for radiocarbon dating to ensure accurate chronological reconstruction and highlights the potential of using chironomids remains to develop robust radiocarbon chronologies for lake sediment records.

Dextro-transposition of the great arteries is a critical CHD traditionally considered sporadic, with low familial recurrence. Emerging evidence suggests a genetic component in select cases, particularly with rare familial clustering. We report concordant d-TGA in monochorionic diamniotic twins, a highly unusual occurrence, strengthening the argument for a heritable predisposition.

Quantifying marine reservoir effects (MREs) across time and space is crucial for establishing accurate archaeological chronologies, including the activities of past hominines. Although the northern Iberian Peninsula shows a high density of Upper Paleolithic sites and marine shells are frequently found in these assemblages, quantification of MREs in this coastal region remains limited. We performed Bayesian modeling of radiocarbon measurements from both terrestrial (Capra pyrenaica, Cervus elaphus and other herbivores unidentified at species level) and marine (Littorina littorea Linnaeus, 1758 and Patella vulgata Linnaeus, 1758 taxa) archaeological samples recovered from the Tito Bustillo cave (Asturias, Spain) in order to determine the ΔR values for northern Iberia during the Lower Magdalenian period (ca. 20–17 ka cal BP). For the time span between 18.6 and 18.2 ka cal BP we estimated ΔR values of –298±44 14C yr and –495±122 14C yr for the periwinkle L. littorea and the common limpet P. vulgata, respectively. This finding has significant implications for future archaeological research in the northern Iberian Peninsula, as researchers must apply distinct ΔR values depending on the mollusk species selected for radiocarbon dating. Furthermore, the consistency between our calculated ΔR value for P. vulgata and previously recorded data for the same taxon from a neighboring coastal region (Cantabria, Spain) suggests remarkable stability in the marine environment of this area during the Lower Magdalenian period.

Since 2016, global police data have revealed a significant rise in cocaine production in Latin America, as well as an improvement in the drug’s purity, together with more frequent seizures in Europe and sharply increased consumption in Asia, Africa, and Oceania. This article argues that these changes have been driven by an understudied platformization of global cocaine logistics. This article examines the governance mechanisms of this changing trade. It consists of three parts. The first examines the governance structure of an emerging criminal player, the Primeiro Comando da Capital (“First Capital Command” (PCC)). The second introduces the Agência, a PCC regulatory body that manages drug trafficking via a platform model. The third and final part investigates criminal efforts to establish a global, multimodal logistics system; it demonstrates how the cocaine market has become integrated into formal economies and why it challenges existing power structures. The analysis draws on extensive fieldwork conducted between 2018 and 2025, including interviews with former drug traffickers, law enforcement officers, and customs officials, as well as quantitative and documentary data on seizures, purity, and violence related to cocaine trafficking.

This article examines American “capitalist feminism” as a type of “business feminism” through the lens of biography. To demonstrate crucial linkages between business culture and historical social developments, the article foregrounds an account of the first woman president of a major commercial bank, Mary G. Roebling. Roebling sought women’s collective uplift primarily through economic empowerment, forwarding her message through accommodationist tactics, such as presenting a “feminine” image, embracing capitalism, and espousing moderate politics. This essay briefly explores additional biographies to suggest that other professionally successful, elite white women held similar “capitalist feminist” views. The article also employs biographical and associational examples to illustrate how capitalist feminism is a distinct category of business feminism.

In this paper we prove disintegration results for self-conformal measures and affinely irreducible self-similar measures. The measures appearing in the disintegration resemble self-conformal/self-similar measures for iterated function systems satisfying the strong separation condition. We use these disintegration statements to prove new results on the Diophantine properties of these measures.

Contemporary technology oligarchs are reshaping global power through their control over critical infrastructures, political institutions, and ideas. Across six essays, this forum examines the territorial, temporal, and ideational ambitions of Silicon Valley billionaires, highlighting how individuals like Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Peter Thiel, and Mark Zuckerberg exercise unprecedented influence over states and societies. From charter cities and network-states to cloud computing and satellite systems, these oligarchs leverage personal wealth, technological mastery, and monopolistic control to bypass traditional state authority, turning themselves into quasi-sovereign actors. The essays situate these developments within historical and theoretical frameworks, comparing oligarchic power to early modern chartered corporations and the logic of state formation, while emphasizing the novel dimensions of control unique to the 21st century. Collectively, the essays demonstrate how individual technology oligarchs consolidate authority in ways that challenge traditional international relations theory, revealing a global order increasingly shaped by the ambitions and delusions of private actors.

This research paper addresses the hypothesis that sequence-based long short-term memory (LSTM) architectures improve the prediction of the next DO (days open) relative to a feed-forward multi-layer perceptron and a Cox model under strictly temporally valid predictors. Modern dairy farming can heavily benefit from optimising ‘days open’ for profitability and animal welfare. Machine learning can forecast this metric, improving farm management, disease prevention and culling decisions. This study used a dataset of 16,472 breeding records. The study compared the performance of feed-forward neural networks and two types of recurrent neural networks (RNNs). The results showed that LSTM most accurately forecasted the next ‘days open’. This demonstrates that RNN models, due to their ability to capture temporal patterns in the data, significantly outperform feed-forward and traditional statistical methods in terms of mean absolute error and concordance.

Dans la lignée des résultats existants pour les groupes, on montre que le radical nilpotent existe dans les anneaux de Lie qui n’ont pas de chaîne infinie de centralisateurs. On établit également un analogue du théorème d’Engel si la caractéristique est nulle.

We compute the Čech cohomology ring of a countable product of infinite projective spaces, and that of an infinite flag manifold. The method of our first result in fact computes the cohomology ring of a countably infinite product of paracompact Hausdorff spaces, under some mild assumptions.

This article examines the policy effects of Hong Kong’s Statutory Minimum Wage (SMW) on underemployment, working hours, and wages. Using a Difference-in-Differences methodology on General Household Survey data (2011–2019), we assess five SMW adjustment cycles. We define a ‘most disadvantaged’ treatment group and a ‘less disadvantaged’ group based on the concentration of minimum wage earners in their industry-occupation cell, relative to an unaffected control group. Our findings show no significant increase in underemployment or reduction in working hours for either group. Wage effects were also contained, with inconsistent direct gains for the most disadvantaged group and no evidence of significant wage spillovers for the ‘less disadvantaged’ group. These findings indicate that the SMW and its adjustments in Hong Kong did not lead to the feared wage-job trade-off constraints; instead, they highlight the need to explore policy options for appropriate SMW increases to reduce economic inequality.

The scope sensitivity test is used to validate value estimates of non-market environmental goods and services derived from the contingent valuation method. The absence of economic scope could suggest invalid value estimates. Recent studies have attributed scope insensitivity to affective, cognitive, and behavioral factors. In this study, we extend the behavioral insights in explaining scope insensitivity by incorporating insights from the theory of mental accounting. Our empirical results indicate that if subjects consider the environmental good as part of their recreational budget within a mental accounting framework, we can explain the scope insensitivity with otherwise standard preference.

Psychiatry seems beleaguered: from underfunding of education, training, research and services to marginalisation within the healthcare world and even doubts about its relevance. Medical training, with advanced relational and formulation skills and a strong foundation of research, equips psychiatrists to exercise clinical leadership across the healthcare landscape. This expertise can and must be used to benefit patient care.

Unstable approaches are one of the main safety concerns that contribute to approach and landing accidents. The International Air Transport Association reports that, between 2012 and 2016, 61% of accidents occurred during the approach and landing phase, of which 16% involved unstable approaches. This study addresses this issue by applying the Functional Resonance Analysis Method to examine the dynamics of stable approaches. A total of 195 aviation safety reports, which referred to near-miss data from a single airline, were used in the analysis to identify both actual and aggregated variability. The findings revealed that variability mainly occurred in the following functions: control speed, configure aircraft for landing, communicate with air traffic control and manage flight paths. Effective communication, coordination and collaboration, as well as monitoring, briefings and checklists, were key factors in managing the variability of a stable approach. The study reveals how adopting a perspective of ‘how things go right’ provides insightful findings regarding approach stability, complementing traditional approaches focused on ‘what went wrong’. This study also highlights the value of utilising the Functional Resonance Analysis Method to analyse near-miss data and uncover systemic patterns in everyday flight operations.

Municipal parties in Canada are unique: They are not branches of national parties, they have no established ideological orientation and their lifespans vary considerably. In light of these characteristics, political scientists tend to overlook the factors that contribute to their emergence and disappearance as well as the diversity of their forms. The objective of this article is to fill this gap. Taking the city of Montreal as a case study, we draw on an electoral database spanning from 1960 to 2001 and a systematic press review to show that a party’s longevity is influenced by factors that are either external to the parties (institutional, economic and provincial political context) or internal to the parties (strong internal coordination, charismatic leader and ability to survive after a leader’s departure). For Montreal, this translates into a longer lifespan for two types of parties: platform-based parties and government coalitions.

Control of small turbojet engines is challenging due to the small number of sensors and actuators. In these engines, typically the spool speed and exhaust gas temperature are the measured variables and the fuel flow is the only manipulated variable. However, the thrust command must be achieved and the engine’s structural and operational limitations must be safeguarded. In this research, a minimum selector control structure with a saturation function is presented for controlling small turbojet engines. One control loop is considered to control the spool speed and another loop is used to manage the exhaust gas temperature. The output of the control loops is the fuel flow rate and the minimum value is selected between them. To prevent the compressor surge and combustor blow-out during engine acceleration/deceleration, a fuel flow rate saturation is defined. Due to the switching structure of the proposed controller and existence of the saturation function, stability analysis is a critical issue. Therefore, a methodology is presented to analyse the stability of the proposed structure. In simulation study, a nonlinear thermodynamic model that matches more than 90% with the test data is used and the response of the proposed controller is compared with a proportional integral (PI) controller. In a comprehensive scenario, the throttle degree varies from 75% to 100%. Using the PI controller, some outputs have some overshoot and the exhaust gas temperature exceeds the corresponding constraint by 40K. While the proposed minimum selector controller, in addition to accurately fulfilling the thrust command, fully protects the limitations governing engine variables.