We study a skew Ornstein–Uhlenbeck process with zero being a sticky reflecting boundary, which is defined as the weak solution to a stochastic differential equation (SDE) system involving local time. The main results obtained include: (i) the existence and uniqueness of solutions to the SDE system, (ii) the scale function and speed measure, and (iii) the distributional properties regarding the transition density and the first hitting times. On the application side, we apply the process to interest rate modeling and obtain the explicit pricing formula for zero-coupon bonds. Numerical examples illustrate the impacts on bond yields of skewness and stickiness parameters.

In our recent faculty meetings here in Virginia, issues regarding ChatGPT and its uses were often broached, for reasons both good and bad, and this November, as I am writing these lines, turbulences in the AI sector are making the news. In papyrology and epigraphy, we have been relying on advanced digital technologies for a while now, and there's no doubt that recent advances in generative AI will soon bear fruit for all text and image-based disciplines in the humanities. Hence, I will open this general review with four exciting books on ancient science and technology.

The Asian citrus psyllid, Diaphorina citri Kuwayama (Hemiptera: Psyllidae), is the key vector insect transmitting the Candidatus Liberibacter asiaticus (CLas) bacterium that causes the devastating citrus greening disease (Huanglongbing, HLB) worldwide. The D. citri salivary glands (SG) exhibit an important barrier against the transmission of HLB pathogen. However, knowledge on the molecular mechanism of SG defence against CLas infection is still limited. In the present study, we compared the SG transcriptomic response of CLas-free and CLas-infected D. citri using an illumine paired-end RNA sequencing. In total of 861 differentially expressed genes (DEGs) in the SG upon CLas infection, including 202 upregulated DEGs and 659 downregulated DEGs were identified. Functional annotation analysis showed that most of the DEGs were associated with cellular processes, metabolic processes, and the immune response. Gene ontology and Kyoto Encyclopaedia of Genes and Genomes enrichment analyses revealed that these DEGs were enriched in pathways involving carbohydrate metabolism, amino acid metabolism, the immune system, the digestive system, the lysosome, and endocytosis. A total of 16 DEGs were randomly selected to further validate the accuracy of RNA-Seq dataset by reverse-transcription quantitative polymerase chain reaction. This study provides substantial transcriptomic information regarding the SG of D. citri in response to CLas infection, which may shed light on the molecular interaction between D. citri and CLas, and provides new ideas for the prevention and control of citrus psyllid.

As against the abiding popular image of the ever-dauntless Spartans, serious commentators have long recognized what a central part fear played in Lacedaemonian life: fear of the helots, fear of the laws, fear of defeat and dishonour and disgrace, without hope of respite this side of the grave. Yet the full implications of such a life, forever suspended most precariously ‘between shame and glory’ as Jean-Pierre Vernant put it, have not been drawn out, especially with respect to its supposed beneficiaries, the Spartiates, who were sacrificed to its merciless logic no less than those they were keeping under such brutal subjugation. This essay proposes to close the gap by fitting together the dispersed pieces and presenting a more comprehensive picture of the silent anxieties and hidden miseries of the vaunted masters of Sparta who purchased their dominion at so frightful a price, not only to others, but also to themselves.

Two 10-day in vitro experiments were conducted to investigate the relationship between nitrogen (N) isotope discrimination (δ15N) and ammonia (NH3) emissions from sheep manure. In Exp. 1, three different manure mixtures were set up: control (C); C mixed with lignite (C + L); and grape marc (GM), with 5, 4 and 5 replications, respectively. For C, urine and faeces were collected from sheep fed a diet of 550 g lucerne hay/kg, 400 g barley grain/kg and 50 g faba bean/kg; for C + L, urine and faeces were collected from sheep fed the C diet and 100 g ground lignite added to each incubation system at the start of the experiment; for GM, urine and faeces were collected from sheep fed a diet consisting of C diet with 200 g/kg of the diet replaced with GM. In Exp. 2, three different urine-faeces mixtures were set up: 2U:1F, 1.4U:1F and 1U:1F with urine to faeces ratios of 2:1, 1.4:1 and 1:1, respectively, each with 5 replications. Lignite in C + L led to significantly lower cumulative manure-N loss by 81 and 68% in comparison with C and GM groups, respectively (P = 0.001). Cumulative emitted manure NH3-N was lower in C + L than C and GM groups by 35 and 36%, respectively (P = 0.020). Emitted manure NH3-N was higher in 2U:1F compared to 1.4U:1F and 1U:1F by 18 and 26%, respectively (P < 0.001). This confirms the relationship between manure δ15N and cumulative NH3-N loss reported by earlier studies, which may be useful for estimating NH3 losses.

Tropidoleptus is a brachiopod genus with a very peculiar morphology that existed throughout the Devonian as a cosmopolitan taxon. Although there have been reports of the presence of this genus in the Paraná Basin since the nineteenth century, its actual occurrence has been the subject of much debate. The objective of this paper was to clarify this situation. For this purpose, dozens of specimens from Monjolo dos Padres and Juscimeira outcrops (São Domingos Formation, possibly Givetian) in the Brazilian state of Mato Grosso were analyzed. The samples studied here exhibit the typical characteristics of Tropidoleptus, confirming that this genus also occurred in the Paraná Basin. It is possible that Tropidoleptus entered the Paraná Basin during the Eifelian/Givetian from the Amazonas and/or Parnaíba basins (Brazil), during a period of warm-water transgression. When Tropidoleptus is found in situ, it can serve as an indicator of a shallower water environment (shoreface to shallower portions of transitional offshore). In the Paraná Basin, its presence can indicate rocks no older than the Eifelian–Givetian transition.

We have two volumes in Bloomsbury's Classical Receptions in Twentieth-Century Writing series edited by Laura Jansen, namely, Derek Walcott and the Creation of a Classical Caribbean by Justine McConnell, and J. R. R. Tolkien's Utopianism and the Classics by Hamish Williams. Both texts have three main chapters to which is devoted one aspect of the author's reception of the classical world. In the former, McConnell identifies three recurring approaches or processes in Walcott's creation of a ‘classical Caribbean’, often drawing on postcolonial theory. These are: non-linear or non-colonial temporalities (explored under the heading ‘Time’), ‘Syncretism’, and ‘Re-creation’. At the same time, McConnell not only analyses the St. Lucian author's relationship to classical culture and education, but situates his work within that of other Caribbean writers. McConnell paints a cohesive picture of Walcott's (self-)positioning in these entanglements of times, places, and traditions, and makes a number of useful observations about classical reception more broadly.

This study of Paradise Lost, interpreted through the lens of John Milton's treatise De doctrina Christiana, argues that the poet seeks to breathe new life into the tropes of orthodox Christian theodicy by radicalising concepts chosen eclectically from both Reformed and Arminian schools of thought, integrating them within the patchwork of his own idiosyncratic heterodoxies and thus catalysing a fundamentally new theology propelled by his narrative priorities. This approach makes the drama that Milton intuits itself the driver of dogma, which drama allows him to bring God and reader into the same story, under the spell of his own theodical narration.

International Relations (IR) scholarship on ontological (in)security has explored how political agents seek to shape collective identity through the contestation and securitisation of memory narratives around controversial historical events. This article contributes a novel approach for understanding how actors promote emotional engagement with such narratives, synthesising nascent scholarship on vicarious identity and military subjectivity to develop the concept of ‘militarised vicarious identity promotion’. I use this framework to analyse how national custodian, the Royal British Legion, used the British 2014–18 First World War (WW1) centenary to promote affectively resonant revisionism around a war with difficult resonances in Britain by encouraging subjects to ‘live through’ others. Its ‘LIVE ON’ and ‘Every One Remembered’ initiatives first countered the centenary’s potential to destabilise homogenised militarist narratives underpinning national ontological security by rehabilitating WW1 through vicarious frames blurring different military subjectivities together in ways designed to reincorporate WW1 into homogenised remembrance discourses. Second, Britons were encouraged to integrate the nation’s military history into their personal biographies by vicariously identifying with ancestral and adoptive WW1 connections. Through enabling feelings of pride and status assuaging civilian anxiety, ‘vicarious military subjectivity’ based on family connections provided emotional reinforcement for identification with simplistic WW1 revisionism and homogenised British militarism more broadly.

Emily Carroll and Parker Crutchfield propose a new inconsistency argument against abortion restrictivism. In response, I raised several objections to their argument. Recently Carroll and Crutchfield have replied and seem to be under the impression that I’m a restrictivist. This is puzzling, since my criticism of their view included a very thinly veiled, but purposely more charitable, anti-restrictivist inconsistency argument. In this response, I explain how Carroll and Crutchfield mischaracterize my position and that of the restrictivist.