Forthcoming changes to clozapine monitoring present an opportunity to expand, not dilute, specialist care for chronic schizophrenia. Reduced administrative burden should support timely clozapine use, structured assessment, access to psychological therapies and embedded physical health care. Experience from Cambridgeshire shows that secondary-plus clinics within community mental health teams can deliver sustained, equitable long-term care.

This study examines the intricate relationship between financial development, institutional quality and environmental efficiency. While financial development has the potential to support environmental sustainability, concerns remain regarding its unintended negative effects through unchecked economic expansion. The objective of this research is to investigate how financial development affects environmental efficiency and to assess the moderating role of institutional quality, particularly when financial development proxies reflect financial market accessibility and efficiency. Using a directional distance function within a stochastic frontier framework and incorporating multiple financial development indicators alongside measures of institutional quality, we find that financial development significantly reduces environmental inefficiency, with institutional quality strengthening this effect. These results highlight the importance of policy approaches that simultaneously enhance financial development and institutional quality. Furthermore, our findings support targeted initiatives such as promoting green finance, building institutional capacity and investing in research and data infrastructure to inform evidence-based policymaking for sustainable development.

Questions about race and representation often hinge on the public’s beliefs about which policies affect different communities, yet there is limited evidence on how these associations are actually perceived. Using a nationally representative survey experiment, we examine how the issue priorities of political candidates shape perceptions of who they represent. Most policy areas are perceived to benefit White Americans; only a few, especially criminal justice and poverty, are strongly associated with African Americans. We also show that perceptions of candidate ideology and race correlate with perceptions of Black representation, but mediation analysis reveals that criminal justice is associated with Black representation above and beyond ideological inferences. Finally, analyzing nearly 200,000 congressional newsletters and find that while race is rarely explicitly mentioned, Black Americans are most frequently referenced in the context of criminal justice and poverty. Together, these results underscore how race-policy associations operate through both public perception and elite messaging, shaping broader understandings of political representation.

We study the bilateral preference graphs $\mathit{LK}(n, k)$ of La and Kabkab, obtained as follows. Put independent and uniform [0, 1] weights on the edges of the complete graph $K_n$. Then, each edge (i, j) is included in $\mathit{LK}(n,k)$ if it is bilaterally preferred, in the sense that it is among the k edges of lowest weight incident to vertex i, and among the k edges of lowest weight incident to vertex j. We show that $k = \log(n)$ is the connectivity threshold, solving a conjecture of La and Kabkab, and obtaining finer results about the window. We also investigate the asymptotic behavior of the average degree of vertices in $\mathit{LK}(n, k)$ as $n\rightarrow\infty$.

Procolophonidae, a clade of stem reptiles, are hypothesized to be some of the first highly specialized herbivores to evolve following the end-Permian mass extinction event. That hypothesis is largely based on qualitative observations of tooth shape, which are highly subjective and not generalizable. Quantitative studies of reptilian tooth shape have employed relatively sophisticated methods to capture tooth complexity, but these approaches often require expensive equipment and software and are time intensive. In this study, we built a predictive model based on extant lizards to quantitatively predict the diets of procolophonids using simple measures of tooth morphology. We use linear discriminant analysis (LDA) to predict dietary ecology from tooth dimensions and phylogenetic MANOVA to test for significant differences in tooth dimensions for different diet categories. We report two key findings: (1) procolophonids are largely predicted as herbivorous but occupy a different area of the LDA space from extant lizards, and (2) simple metrics return similar results as complex methods, but with less confidence. We hypothesize that Triassic flora posed different mechanical and processing challenges from modern plants, which contributed to the unique tooth morphologies of procolophonids and likely other Triassic taxa.

This article examines the structure and role of the Ulster Special Constabulary (USC) in rural Ulster in 1922. It is argued the actions of the USC during this period have not received sufficient academic or public attention. The origins and organisational structure of the Specials are considered and it is claimed that the force’s decentralised make-up made it almost impossible to control. In terms of personnel, access to newly released archives gives unique insight into the force. Traditional assumptions about the connection between the pre-war Ulster Volunteer Force and the USC are questioned. Furthermore, it is found that few ‘B’ Specials had prior service with the British army. Overall, it is concluded that the Specials were an almost exclusively Protestant force made up of inexperienced and at times ill-disciplined recruits, most of whom were ill-suited to any policing role. Furthermore, it is argued that the Specials played a significant role in shaping post-partition identities in Northern Ireland.

Social isolation and loneliness are concerns in gerontology. The impact of the human–animal interaction (HAI) on loneliness for older adults living alone is understudied. This scoping review explored the extent to which HAI is included in studies investigating social connectedness, specifically social isolation and loneliness, and if HAI bolsters healthy aging through increased perceived support. Following the PRISMA-ScR protocol, data from 58 articles were thematically categorized, identifying (a) existing inclusion of HAI; (b) definitions and descriptions of HAI; and (c) the relationships between HAI and loneliness outcomes, in social connectedness research. Studies including HAI (animal companions and animal-assisted interventions) have increased over time; many noting protection against loneliness and few noting health detriments. Older adults overwhelmingly consider interactions with companion animals as meaningful relationships, whether living at home or in care. Substantial knowledge gaps exist concerning the influence of HAI on perceived social connectedness for older adults living alone.

We study the existence of several families of reversible-symmetric periodic solutions in a three-dimensional system of differential equations that admits a reversible symmetry and includes differentiable perturbations depending on a small parameter $\varepsilon $, where the periodic solutions arise as continuations of circular solutions from the unperturbed system. We essentially impose symmetric constraints on the initial conditions and make use of the Poincaré continuation method. Both fixed-period and variable-period reversible-symmetric solutions are obtained. We provide sufficient conditions for their existence, expressed in terms of the perturbation functions. In addition, we compute the characteristic multipliers of these families of reversible-symmetric periodic solutions. We also compare different types of reversible symmetries with results from the averaging method. Several examples illustrating our results are presented.

A stratigraphic section made of Quaternary alluvial–lacustrine sediments belonging to the Baza Formation (South Spain) has been logged and studied for paleomagnetism, rock magnetic cyclostratigraphy, and electron spin resonance (ESR) quartz dating. Our results indicate that the section, which is found in the vicinity of a number of paleontological and archaeological localities, falls within the mid-Early Pleistocene (Calabrian), within the Matuyama Chron, and runs to the Jaramillo Subchron, encompassing the Cobb Mountain Subchron. The magnetostratigraphic results combined with rock magnetic cyclostratigraphy and ESR provide solid timelines, which allow gross accumulation rates to be estimated, and revealing an upsection decrease of sedimentation in accordance with the lithological and paleodepositional changes. Our study furnishes new chronologies to better understand the timing of the latest stages of endorheic sedimentation that precedes the capture of the Baza Basin by the Gualdalquivir River in the Middle Pleistocene.

In this article, we investigate the quantitative law of large numbers for noncommutative random variables. Firstly, we establish a Baum–Katz theorem for noncommutative successively independent random variables, which resolves an open problem posed by Stoica [48]. Our approach differs from the classical treatment but relies on the theory of asymmetric maximal inequality for noncommutative martingales. Additionally, we derive a moderate deviation inequality for noncommutative successively independent sequences, and extend this result together with the Baum–Katz theorem to noncommutative martingales. Finally, we conclude the article by applying our results to derive a noncommutative Marcinkiewicz–Zygmund-type strong laws of large numbers theorem, which extends the result of Łuczak [37] in some aspects.