Does gender influence how candidates in the United States present their prior political experience to voters? Messaging one’s experience might demonstrate a history of power-seeking behavior, a gender role violation for women under traditional norms. As a result, men should be more likely to make experience-based appeals than women candidates. For evidence, we analyze the contents of 1,030 televised advertisements from 2018 state legislative candidates from the Wesleyan Media Project. We find that ads sponsored by experienced men are significantly more likely to highlight experience than ads sponsored by experienced women. However, we find that women’s and men’s ads are roughly equally likely to discuss work experience, suggesting that men’s greater emphasis on experience is limited to prior officeholding. The results contribute to our understanding of gender dynamics in political campaigns, the information available to voters, and how advertising shapes the criteria voters use to assess candidates.

Violence against women in politics is on the rise, threatening political achievements with respect to equality. Little research, however, has been conducted on the experiences of women from minority communities. This article, therefore, takes an intersectional approach to explore how gender, religion, and other categories of difference intersect when it comes to Muslim women’s experiences in the UK. Based on a longitudinal case study of Bradford West during the 2015, 2017, and 2019 general elections that combines participant observations, qualitative interviews, and a Twitter analysis, we argue that, in addition to the violence often experienced by women, Muslim women are also confronted with Islamophobic bias and abuse, as well as intersectional intimidation and harassment from within the Muslim community in their constituencies. Our case study approach, however, also reveals the existence of appreciation and support for Muslim women in politics that needs to be nurtured to counter abuse.

The state of the Free Exercise Clause in U.S. constitutional law is uncertain. With an opportunity in Fulton v. Philadelphia to clarify the vitality of the current standard from Employment Division v. Smith, the United States Supreme Court has declined to do so. The lasting impact of Smith has been to move away from directly requiring government justifications for infringing free exercise. Instead, courts now use neutrality and general applicability as heuristics for government justification. Yet, relying solely on neutrality and general applicability to proxy for government justification when infringing religious exercise distracts courts from conducting a fact-based inquiry. This article demonstrates how more scrutiny of the legislative facts in free exercise doctrine may serve as a viable alternative to Smith’s flawed approach for evaluating government justifications. The author first shows empirically how more factual scrutiny—directly requiring the government to justify its actions with evidence—can benefit government and religious claimants and then discusses the normative advantages of a fact-intensive approach to constitutional scrutiny. During a moment of sharp division over religious freedom and other competing rights, factual scrutiny can be a powerful tool for handling free exercise challenges and promoting responsible religious freedom.

We study the parameterized complexity of the problem to decide whether a given natural number n satisfies a given $\Delta _0$-formula $\varphi (x)$; the parameter is the size of $\varphi $. This parameterization focusses attention on instances where n is large compared to the size of $\varphi $. We show unconditionally that this problem does not belong to the parameterized analogue of $\mathsf {AC}^0$. From this we derive that certain natural upper bounds on the complexity of our parameterized problem imply certain separations of classical complexity classes. This connection is obtained via an analysis of a parameterized halting problem. Some of these upper bounds follow assuming that $I\Delta _0$ proves the MRDP theorem in a certain weak sense.

Ventriculocoronary connections develop most commonly in children with mitral stenosis/aortic atresia hypoplastic left heart. These connections can lead to myocardial ischaemia and dysfunction. We report a newborn with mitral stenosis/aortic stenosis hypoplastic left heart who endured systemic ventricular injury post-Norwood, secondary to a large ventriculocoronary fistula. He was treated medically and had favourable outcomes following bidirectional Glenn procedure.

Civic associations underpin American democracy. How can politically cross-cutting associations engage members who hold divergent viewpoints amidst increasing partisan polarization and nationalization of politics? I examine this question in the context of labor unions, studying how unions engage members who hold conservative views at odds with some of the union’s political actions. Using original surveys of local union presidents, members, and non-members along with in-depth interviews in selected local unions, I show how local union leaders can foster norms of participation among politically cross-pressured members. Norms of participation increase conservative members’ perceptions of political representation and engagement in politics, including participation in the union’s political action committee and support for union political mobilization. These findings have implications for understanding civic associations and participation in an era of political division, as well as the role unions continue to play in politics.

In [A. Capozzoli, C. Curcio, A. Liseno, MMS, Pizzo Calabro, Italy, 2022], the problem of modeling a source/scatterer using an equivalent radiator has been addressed and an approach has been given and numerically assessed.

Once dimensioned the radiating panel, a practical implementation can be provided by a non-uniform array. The element positions should be chosen so that the array is capable to approximate, with an adequate accuracy, the fields radiated by the equivalent radiator. Here, the array element positioning is performed by exploiting a quadrature rule which takes into account that the singular functions supported on the region of interest associated to the most significant singular values of the radiation operator are related to those supported on the equivalent panel by a radiation integral. The quadrature rule enables also to choose a set of weights which are essential in the definition of the element excitation coefficients from the knowledge of the source distribution on the equivalent panel. For simplicity, a one-dimensional problem with a Legendre quadrature rule is considered. The approach is numerically assessed by checking the capability of the array to radiate, with a satisfactory degree of accuracy, the singular functions associated to the region of interest.

The National Health Service Race and Health Observatory provides an evidence-based approach to tackling racial disparities in health and making policy recommendations. Its Mental Health Advisory Group is responsible for commissioning research into racial and ethnic disparities in mental health, and in this regard, improving access to psychological therapies became a key focus.

Majority of coronary artery fistulas are of the congenital origin, and they have been rarely reported after congenital heart surgery. Here, we present echocardiographic images and prognosis of multiple acquired coronary artery fistulas occurring after surgical myectomy in a child diagnosed with double-chamber right ventricle complicated with infective endocarditis involving the right heart valves.

For an arbitrary countable discrete infinite group G, non-singular rank-one actions are introduced. It is shown that the class of non-singular rank-one actions coincides with the class of non-singular $(C,F)$-actions. Given a decreasing sequence of cofinite subgroups in G with $\bigcap _{n=1}^\infty \bigcap _{g\in G}g\Gamma _ng^{-1}=\{1_G\}$, the projective limit of the homogeneous G-spaces $G/\Gamma _n$ as $n\to \infty $ is a G-space. Endowing this G-space with an ergodic non-singular non-atomic measure, we obtain a dynamical system which is called a non-singular odometer. Necessary and sufficient conditions are found for a rank-one non-singular G-action to have a finite factor and a non-singular odometer factor in terms of the underlying $(C,F)$-parameters. Similar conditions are also found for a rank-one non-singular G-action to be isomorphic to an odometer. Minimal Radon uniquely ergodic locally compact Cantor models are constructed for the non-singular rank-one extensions of odometers. Several concrete examples are constructed and several facts are proved that illustrate a sharp difference of the non-singular non-commutative case from the classical finite measure preserving one: odometer actions which are not of rank-one and factors of rank-one systems which are not of rank one; however, each probability preserving odometer is a factor of an infinite measure preserving rank-one system, etc.

The Malabar dwarf puffer, Carinotetraodon travancoricus is the smallest known pufferfish (family Tetraodontidae) and one of the smallest freshwater fishes of the Indian subcontinent. Due to their miniature size, wacky behaviour and appearance, they are much preferred in the international aquarium fish trade, although little is known regarding their breeding activity in captivity and their embryonic development. The purpose of this study was to fill these knowledge gaps. Wild-caught Malabar dwarf puffers were acclimatised to conditions, and pairs were introduced to breeding tanks. Adult fishes were fed with live and frozen diets including Artemia nauplii, moina and bloodworm. During spawning seasons, adult fish displayed elaborate courtship behaviour around sunset. Carinotetraodon travancoricus is a batch spawner releasing 1 to 5 eggs per diem. The eggs were spherical, and non-sticky, with a diameter of 1.48 ± 0.1 mm, and hatching took place after 108 to 116 h post-incubation. The newly hatched larvae were 3.5 ± 0.2 mm in length, and weighed 2.9 ± 0.4 mg. The early larvae have substantial yolk and oil globules as an energy reserve. Histological studies on mature females suggested the batch spawning nature of the species and low fecundity. Given its unique reproductive behaviour and characters, in situ protected habitats are required to ensure their continued survival in the wild, apart from encouraging captive breeding to augment the demand in the international aquarium fish trade.