This paper tests a new model to study the Roman conquest and colonization of the Western Mediterranean. This recent model depicts Roman expansion as a more sustainable process than previously assumed, which tapped into, reinforced and integrated wider Mediterranean settlement trends. Contrary to what is assumed by traditional narratives, colonization did not entail the immediate destruction and restructuring of native landscapes — but rather the integration, opportunistic reuse, appropriation and development of previous land-uses and settlements. Two legacy datasets collected through pedestrian survey in the colonial territories of Cosa (Italy) and Tarraco (Spain) were used to test this model on a supranational scale. The analysis indicated that certain portions of the native landscape were possibly integrated into the Roman Empire without initial drastic changes being reflected in the settlement patterns or the landscape.

The management literature has extensively explored how firms respond to underperformance through innovation, with prior studies based on the behavioral theory of the firm and the threat-rigidity thesis producing inconsistent results. The shifting focus of attention model provides crucial insights to reconcile this contradiction. We extend this model by highlighting the temporal dimension of performance shortfall. Specifically, we argue that underperformance duration flattens the inverted U-shaped relationship by attenuating both the problemistic search and threat rigidity mechanisms. The empirical results from a sample of Chinese listed manufacturing firms between 2010 and 2019 support our predicted inverted U-relationship between underperformance intensity and research and development (R&D) investment, and the moderating effect of underperformance duration. Interestingly, the inverted U-shape flips to a U-shape if underperformance extends into the long term. We contribute to the literature on performance feedback by considering both underperformance intensity and duration, which conceptualizes their interaction and reconciles extant contradictory findings from a new perspective. We also add new insights into innovation research by theorizing and examining the overlooked boundary condition for the curvilinear relationship between performance shortfalls and R&D investments, which calls for future research to explore the dynamics of the relationship and account for temporal effects.

Researchers have proposed that culture significantly influences perceived stress (PS). To date, however, twin studies on PS have been conducted mostly in western, individualistic cultures, which demonstrate that PS due to controllable (personal) life events is more heritable than PS due to uncontrollable (network) life events. This study aimed to investigate genetic and environmental influences on PS in South Korean twins. South Korea practices a dominant collectivist culture. In total, 1372 twin individuals (mean age = 22.4 ± 2.5 years) completed an online survey on PS, which consisted of the scales, Friendship, Academic Stress, Future Career, Family Conflicts, and Family Financial Difficulties (FFD). Friendship, Academic Stress, and Future Career can be considered PS due to personal life events, and Family Conflict and FFD, PS due to network life events. The general sex-limitation model-fitting analysis revealed the absence of qualitative or quantitative sex differences in genetic and environmental influences. Specifically, additive genetic influences were predominant for Friendship (63%), Academic Stress (67%), and Future Career (57%) for both sexes, with the remaining variance attributable to nonshared environmental influences. In contrast, shared environmental influences were largest for Family Conflict (47% for both genders) and FFD (64% for males, 63% for females) with no significant genetic effects. Despite known cultural differences in the means and variances of PS, South Korean twins exhibited significant genetic effects in PS due to personal life events and large shared environmental effects in PS due to network life events, which is similar to western samples.

Zipserite is a new mineral species discovered in a sample collected from the old mine dumps of the abandoned epithermal deposit Nagybörzsöny in Hungary. Zipserite occurs as anhedral to subhedral, lath-like grains, up to 500 μm in size, in hydrothermally strongly altered rocks. It is found at a contact between bismuth and bismuthinite, also associated with rare ikunolite and joséite-A. Zipserite is silvery white with a metallic lustre. Mohs hardness is ca. 2–3 and the calculated density is 7.815 g.cm–3. In reflected light, zipserite is grey–white, with colour and reflectance essentially matching those of bismuthinite. Bireflectance is weak, internal reflections not present. Anisotropy is moderately strong, with dark blue and grey colours of anisotropy. Reflectance values for the four Commission on Ore Mineralogy wavelengths of zipserite in air [Rmax, Rmin (%) (λ in nm)] are: 48.4, 46.4 (470); 47.8, 45.9 (546); 47.8, 45.8 (589); and 47.5, 45.6 (650). The empirical formula, based on electron-microprobe analyses, is (Bi4.74Pb0.31)Σ5.05(S3.38Se0.56Te0.02)Σ3.96, that can be simplified as Bi5(S,Se)4. The ideal end-member formula of zipserite is Bi5S4, which requires Bi 89.07 and S 10.93, total 100 wt.%. Zipserite possesses a fascinating crystal structure. The average structure is trigonal, with space group P$\bar{3}$m, a = 4.162(1) Å, c = 16.397(1) Å, V = 245.94(4) Å3 and Z = 2. The structure is built by the alternation of a double bismuth layer Bi2 and the Bi3S4 block which is a three octahedra thick layer. Its general formula can be expressed as Bi2 + Bi3S4, which corresponds directly to the observed stacking. At 98 K, the structure can be described using the superspace formalism with an R-centred trigonal unit cell a = 4.209(2) Å, c0 = 5.616(6) Å, a modulation vector q ≈ 4/3 c* and the superspace group R$\bar{3}$m(00γ)00. Zipserite is not only a new mineral but also the first named member of a new sub-group of compounds within the broader family of bismuth chalcogenides, characterised by complex stacking of structural units (Bi2 layers and Bi3S4 blocks). Some of these phases are being investigated as promising thermoelectric materials and synthetic analogues of zipserite could also be inspected for similar physical properties.

Trilocha varians is one of the major pests of Ficus spp. Based on 19 bioclimatic variables provided by the Worldclim, our study analysed the suitable distribution areas of T. varians under current and future climate changes (SSP1-2.6, SSP2-4.5, SSP5-8.5) for two periods (the 2050s and 2090s) using the maximum entropy algorithm (MaxEnt) model. Key environmental variables affecting the geographic distribution of T. varians were also identified, and the changes in the area of suitable range under current and future climate changes were compared. The results showed that the key environmental variables affecting the distribution of T. varians were temperature and precipitation, comprising annual mean temperature (bio1), temperature seasonality (standard deviation × 100) (bio4), precipitation of driest month (bio14), and precipitation of driest quarter (bio17). Under the current climatic conditions, the suitable distribution area of T. varians is within the range of 92°13′E–122°08′E, 18°17′N–31°55′N. The current high, medium, and low suitable areas for T. varians predicted by the MaxEnt model are 14.00 × 104, 21.50 × 104, and 71.95 × 104 km2, of which the high suitable areas are mainly distributed in southern Guangdong, southwestern Guangxi, western Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Hainan. Under different future climatic conditions, some of the high, medium, and low suitability zones for T. varians increased and some decreased, but the mass centre did not migrate significantly. The Pearl River Basin is predicted to remain the main distribution area of T. varians.

The past decade has seen a marked shift in the regulatory landscape of UK higher education. Institutions are increasingly assuming responsibility for preventing campus sexual misconduct, and are responding to its occurrence through – amongst other things – codes of (mis)conduct, consent and/or active bystander training, and improved safety and security measures. They are also required to support victim-survivors in continuing with their education, and to implement fair and robust procedures through which complaints of sexual misconduct are investigated, with sanctions available that respond proportionately to the seriousness of the behaviour and its harms. This paper examines the challenges and prospects for the success of university disciplinary processes for sexual misconduct. It focuses in particular on how to balance the potentially conflicting rights to privacy held by reporting and responding parties within proceedings, while respecting parties’ rights to equality of access to education, protection from degrading treatment, due process, and the interests of the wider campus community. More specifically, we explore three key moments where private data is engaged: (1) in the fact and details of the complaint itself; (2) in information about the parties or circumstances of the complaint that arise during the process of an investigation and/or resultant university disciplinary process; and (3) in the retention and disclosure (to reporting parties or the university community) of information regarding the outcomes of, and sanctions applied as part of, a disciplinary process. We consider whether current data protection processes – and their interpretation – are compatible with trauma-informed practice and a wider commitment to safety, equality and dignity, and reflect on the ramifications for all parties where that balance between rights or interests is not struck.

Whereas sinology, or the study of Chinese literature in English, has often been identifiable by a Chinese culturism, or belief in Chinese civilization as a coherent whole united by its writing system, this review article looks at five books that could be described as participating in a “translational turn” in Chinese literary studies. Yet even as they make powerful arguments against the fundamental unity and cohesiveness of a diachronic Chinese cultural-political identity in their translingual and translational approaches to scholarship, the books—Carla Nappi’s Translating Early Modern China (2021), Haun Saussy’s The Making of Barbarians (2022), Tze-Yin Teo’s If Babel Had A Form (2022), Yunte Huang’s Chinese Whispers (2022), and Nan Z. Da’s Intransitive Encounter (2018)—risk taking for granted the longevity of China’s participation in globalization and its economic integration with the United States. In light of current changes to the relationship between China, the US, and the world order, this review article reads these books while attempting to think through the gains and pitfalls of the translational turn in Chinese literary studies.