We categorify the inclusion–exclusion principle for partially ordered topological spaces and schemes to a filtration on the derived category of sheaves. As a consequence, we obtain functorial spectral sequences that generalize the two spectral sequences of a stratified space and certain Vassiliev-type spectral sequences; we also obtain Euler characteristic analogs in the Grothendieck ring of varieties. As an application, we give an algebro-geometric proof of Vakil and Wood's homological stability conjecture for the space of smooth hypersurface sections of a smooth projective variety. In characteristic zero this conjecture was previously established by Aumonier via topological methods.

The former Yugoslavia was the site of fierce partisan resistance to occupying Nazi forces during WWII and of a vigorous alternative arts scene in the 1960s and 1970s. Recent books on partisan art and New Art Practices make it possible to trace connections between these two seemingly unrelated instances of radical art practices.

The responses by Russian, Ukrainian, and other countries’ Russophone poets to Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 constitute a unified artistic discourse, animated by recurring topics, motifs, and images. This article aims to open a discussion of this body of work by examining one of its major topics—the Russian language as both a weapon and victim of war—and by offering an overarching theoretical framework, based on the concept of witnessing, for the analysis of contemporary artistic modes generated by war, extremity, and crisis. The topic of language foregrounds the problem of the speaking subject, participating or implicated in ongoing traumatic events. I examine these poems as poetry of witnessing: verses that employ digital media to respond to traumas and atrocities from within the events and as they unfold, while questioning the moral parameters of their response and the adequacy of their artistic instruments.

The application of advanced biopreservation to organs donated for transplantation may make possible their indefinite storage and thereby improve the utility and equity they provide to patients. The technology is still at a preclinical stage, with many difficult, scientific issues that remain to be answered. At the moment, however, the actual capabilities of the technology are too indefinite to begin formulating the statutes, regulations, and ethical guidance that will be needed to obtain the benefits expected from its use.

How do external threats to state sovereignty benefit local development? In this paper, we look at Thailand’s railroad projects in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries as an example of a state’s strategic response to colonial encroachment. By transporting government officials and establishing a permanent administrative presence, the railways served to ensure Thailand’s sovereignty over peripheral regions and bring them under direct governance. These regions, long considered economically unviable and disconnected from Bangkok, gained rail access due to their strategic importance and, in turn, witnessed urbanization and increased agricultural production.

This paper examines the international role of sterling during the Bretton Woods era and argues that it was not a competitor to the U.S. dollar. I construct a novel dataset to measure the reserve role of sterling in Europe and sterling area countries. The postwar reserve role of sterling was limited to the sterling area and was artificial as this area was built as a captive market. I document how British authorities imposed exchange controls, commercial threats, and economic sanctions on sterling area countries to compel them to keep their foreign exchange reserves in sterling.

This paper highlights the importance of endogenous changes in the foundations of legitimacy for political regimes. It focuses on the central role of legitimacy changes in the rise of constitutional monarchy in England. It first defines legitimacy and briefly elaborates a theoretical framework enabling a historical study of this unobservable variable. It proceeds to substantiate that the low-legitimacy, post-Reformation Tudor monarchs promoted Parliament to enhance their legitimacy, thereby changing the legislative process from the “crown and Parliament” to the “crown in Parliament” that still prevails in England. The break with Rome permanently altered England’s political development.

The aim of this study was to examine spoken Namibian English by investigating how multilingual Namibian speakers produce vowel durations in pre-lenis and pre-fortis positions, and how those vowel durations compare to British English vowel durations in the same words. In British English and most other English varieties, vowel duration is affected by the voicing of the following consonant, so that vowels preceding phonologically voiced consonants are longer (pre-lenis lengthening) and vowels preceding phonologically voiceless consonants are shorter (pre-fortis clipping). The production data was collected using orthographic stimuli that were monosyllabic English words with voiced and voiceless final consonants after the target vowels. The data were collected from 14 multilingual Namibian English speakers. The vowel durations produced by the speakers in pre-lenis and pre-fortis position were first compared to each other and then to those produced by nine British English speakers in an earlier study. The results showed that the pre-lenis vowels were clearly longer than the pre-fortis vowels, and there were no differences between Namibian and British English vowel durations in most of the tested words. The results offer new insights into the realization of vowel duration in pre-lenis and pre-fortis positions in Namibian English.

This article offers a new interpretation of the coming of state ownership in aluminium-related big businesses in Norway. It shows that the Norwegian aluminium business of the late 1930s and the 1940s was undertaken by a Scandinavian business elite fully capable of filling capital requirements after the war. This elite had, however, entangled itself in the German war effort in Norway mainly by supporting the building of new aluminium plants under the German occupiers’ control. This left it morally vulnerable to the increasing emphasis during the war on aluminium as a strategic metal. The Allied war effort—especially evident in US attitudes—had come to see the cartelized aluminium industry of the 1930s as working against the national interest by impacting national production capacity in a negative way. The Allies bombed the major new plant in Norway in 1943, and after the war the US acted restrictively toward Norwegian capital assets in the US. By pursuing ownership after 1945, the Norwegian state performed strategic ownership roles in large corporations, thereby also protecting these entities from the possible wrath of the US against private owners.

This exploratory study set out to pilot use of a Risk Innovation approach to support the development of advanced biopreservation technologies, and the societally beneficial development of advanced technologies more broadly. This is the first study to apply the Risk Innovation approach — which has previously been used to help individual organizations clarify areas of value and threats — to multiple entities involved in developing an emerging technology.