This article focuses on passages in which Confucius is portrayed in dialogue with Lord Ai of Lu (r. 494–468 bce), found scattered throughout a range of early texts, most centrally in the Li ji, the Da Dai Li ji, and the Xunzi. Examining intertextual connections among these dialogues and related texts, both received and excavated, it seeks to adduce evidence to determine whether their particular shared narrative frame might be original and integral to the content of these texts, as well as to reveal their close links with other early Confucian texts that hold important implications for the dating of all these interrelated texts.

On 29 December 1838, the Dean of Exeter Cathedral, Whittington Landon, died. In the months that followed, the cathedral chapter repeatedly refused to elect the individuals nominated by the Crown, setting the stage for a protracted struggle that would play out in Parliament and in the Court of Queen's Bench. This is the story of R v The President and Chapter of the Cathedral Church of St Peter in Exeter.1

Augmented reality (AR) is a technology designed to display three-dimensional virtual elements in a real environment. This technology could reduce the cognitive load of marine operators by simplifying information interpretation. However, field tests often reveal qualitative reports of inaccurately projected virtual elements. To address this issue, we present a theoretical model to quantify the error between virtual projections and their observed positions. Numerical simulations, using normal random variables, indicate agreement between the predicted model variance and the error’s standard deviation. Furthermore, a real navigation experiment is conducted where observed errors are inferior to corresponding estimates for error bounds, further indicating the model’s adequacy. The proposed model enables real-time error estimation, system performance prediction and the specification of accuracy requirements. Overall, this study aims to contribute to the systematic definition of accuracy standards for AR-based maritime navigational assistance.

Continuous functions on the unit interval are relatively tame from the logical and computational point of view. A similar behaviour is exhibited by continuous functions on compact metric spaces equipped with a countable dense subset. It is then a natural question what happens if we omit the latter ‘extra data’, i.e., work with ‘unrepresented’ compact metric spaces. In this paper, we study basic third-order statements about continuous functions on such unrepresented compact metric spaces in Kohlenbach’s higher-order Reverse Mathematics. We establish that some (very specific) statements are classified in the (second-order) Big Five of Reverse Mathematics, while most variations/generalisations are not provable from the latter, and much stronger systems. Thus, continuous functions on unrepresented metric spaces are ‘wild’, though ‘more tame’ than (slightly) discontinuous functions on the reals.

Biomedical research on advanced cryopreservation has spillover effects on innovation in the food and agricultural sector. Advanced biopreservation technology has three key domains of impact in the food system: (1) improving efficiencies in storage and utilization of gametes and organoids for plant and animal breeding; (2) isochoric methods for preservation of fresh food products; and (3) in biorepositories for storage of genetic resources for agriculturally significant plants and livestock species.

We analyzed invasive group A streptococcal puerperal sepsis cases in a large health zone in Alberta, Canada between 2013 and 2022. Of the 21 cases, 85.7% were adjudicated as hospital/delivery-acquired, with 2 clusters having identical isolates found through whole genome sequencing. We implemented policy interventions across Alberta aimed at preventing future infections.

The question arises when developing and testing Unmanned Surface Vessel (USV) Manoeuvring Autonomy (MA): ‘is the performance we are seeing in our current on-water tests better than that of the last autonomy software version we deployed?’ An approach to answer this question is inspired by educators’ rubrics, in which a teacher grades a student’s work to objective criteria and then sums the individual criteria to determine the student’s overall grade. Here, individual metrics are used to evaluate a USV manoeuvring within range of another vessel. A weighted average is then applied to determine the overall score. With that objective performance value now obtained, similar manoeuvring tests can be compared between autonomy software versions to determine if the autonomy under development is progressively improving. This paper does not determine the threshold score needed to establish that a USV is safe to operate; thresholding of sufficient performance is recommended for future study.

As an industrial science, vaccinology is susceptible to changing social, economic and political frameworks. This article reconstructs the history of the birth of the Sabin strains-derived inactivated polio vaccine (sIPV) in China. The development of this nascent vaccine can be attributed first and foremost to the circulation of knowledge and technology in the global polio research network of the 1980s, before the privatization of vaccine manufacturing and the escalation of intellectual-property protections. Tracing correspondence between Jonas Salk and a Chinese scientist, Jiang Shude, and his colleagues, we chart how institutional efforts in search of a profitable product and scientists’ motives in pursuing personal careers in the post-socialist reform era led to collaboration on many levels, centered around polio vaccines. In response to recent polio history research, we also emphasize the impact of multiple temporalities of polio dramaturgy on the vaccine manufacturer, as this article demonstrates how the confluence of shifting global polio eradication agendas and contingencies in complex vaccinology undertakings ironically helped to materialize the idea of the sIPV. Finally, stories of vaccines and scientists in China add compelling subplots to the global polio history, which reveals the need to reconsider the politicization of imported technology in broader socialist contexts.

A letter dated ‘3 June 1986’ was mailed from Jonas Salk to Jiang Shude (姜述德). Jiang had been an unknown vaccinologist working at the Institute of Medical Biology (IMB) in Flower Red Cave in the Western Hills of Kunming, in south-western China. Salk had visited two years earlier to discuss the feasibility of the IMB's proposal to manufacture inactivated polio vaccine (IPV). The initial collaborative plan had come to a halt by the time Salk wrote the letter to Jiang; still, he kindly offered Jiang an opportunity to travel to Bilthoven and then Lyon to learn IPV-related technology with a generous $10,000 grant for his one-year stay in Europe.1

Automatic Identification System (AIS) provides estimated position time along with reception time and a time stamp at the receiving station; however, the exact position estimation time remains unidentified. Therefore, this study examines the extent of positional error when using current AIS reception time. As a result, a maximum positional error of 116.9 m was observed between AIS and RTK-GPS (Real-Time Kinematic GPS). Subsequent time correction reduced this error to less than 10 m, with the product of ship speed and correction time nearly matching the error pre-correction. Consequently, it was concluded that transmitting position estimation time is essential for maintaining the reliability of Position Accuracy transmitted by AIS or VHF Data Exchange System (VDES). Furthermore, VDES may possess the communication capacity to transmit and receive vessel attitude data. Therefore, to assess the required transmission frequency, the data transmission period of roll and pitch attitude data was analysed through the mutual correlation of acceleration and angular velocity. The results indicated that the correlation coefficient for each axis exceeded 0.65 at frequencies of 0.5 Hz or higher.

Anselm described god as “something than which nothing greater can be thought” [1, p. 93], and Descartes viewed him as “a supreme being” [7, p. 122]. I first capture those characterizations formally in a simple language for monadic predicate logic. Next, I construct a model class inspired by Stoic and medieval doctrines of grades of being [8, 20]. Third, I prove the models sufficient for recovering, as internal mathematics, the famous ontological argument of Anselm, and show that argument to be, on this formalization, valid. Fourth, I extend the models to incorporate a modality fit for proving that any item than which necessarily no greater can be thought is also necessarily real. Lastly, with the present approach, I blunt the sharp edges of notable objections to ontological arguments by Gaunilo and by Grant. A trigger warning: every page of this writing flouts the old saw “Existence is not a predicate” and flagrantly.

This article deals with a fiscal reform implemented in Chile during the late 1870s, when the country was suffering a severe economic and fiscal crisis, on the eve of the War of the Pacific. In 1879, the Chilean government introduced a new set of direct levies, taxing inheritance, income and wealth, despite the historic resistance of most of the economic elites to direct taxation in a highly unequal society. The process also shows that not all the economic elite avoided direct taxation. Despite other challenges faced by any developing country in extracting taxes from its population (e.g. lack of both proper information and human capital), during c.1879-1884 collection of these new direct taxes was successful, mainly on account of the improved extractive capacity built up during the preceding decades. Yet, by the mid-1890s all direct taxes (new and old) had been either derogated or transferred to local government (in some cases after being modified). Once again, Chilean central government depended entirely on indirect taxes, with export duties on nitrate being the most important. Nitrate provides a good example of an export boom shaping taxation for the worse; rather than increasing and diversifying the sources of revenue, a dominant sector of the Chilean economic elite decided to stop paying direct taxes and to make the state entirely dependent on the cycles of the international economy. However, some members of the economic elite, although defeated in their purpose, were aware of the wide range of benefits of keeping direct taxation: social justice, financial health and less vulnerability to trade cycles. Unfortunately, the balance of power favoured elite groups with enough power to hinder direct taxation.