This paper builds on the creation of new ways of organizing work, where the freelance economy specifically targets the increasing number of skilled self-employed individuals collaborating for shared output. Through describing and discussing creativity within the freelance economy, this paper seeks to understand creativity in collaborations among these self-employed individuals. Drawing from a case study conducted in the advertising sector, the paper concludes that creativity within the freelance economy occurs between equal and inherently creative freelancers rather than being the product of individual traits, despite their respective skills. Creativity between individuals arises when processes are appropriately formalized, while the creative output is constrained by individual decisions and styles. The paper contributes to existing research by shedding light on the distinctive characteristics of the freelance economy and its paradoxical organizational nature. By doing so, it offers insights that contrast with prior studies on artistic creativity.

Since metabolism, survival, and reproduction in hexapods are closely related to temperatures; changes in the mean and variance of temperature are major aspects of global climate change. In the typical context of biological control, understanding how predator–prey systems are impacted under thermal conditions can make pest control more effective and resilient. With this view, this study investigated temperature-mediated development and predation parameters of the predator Harmonia axyridis against the potential prey Spodoptera litura. The age-stage, two-sex life table of the predator was constructed at four temperatures (i.e. 15, 20, 25, and 30°C) by feeding on the first instar larvae of S. litura. Our results showed that the mean generation time (T) decreased but the intrinsic rate of increase (r) and the finite rate of increase (λ) increased with increased temperature. The mean duration of the total preadult stage decreased with higher temperatures. The T and r were 70.47 d and 0.0769 d−1 at 15°C; 58.41 d and 0.0958 d−1 at 20°C; 38.71 d and 0.1526 d−1 at 25°C; and 29.59 d and 0.1822 d−1 at 30°C, respectively. The highest net reproductive rate (R0) and fecundity were obtained at 25°C. The highest λ (1.1998 d−1) and lowest T (29.59 d) were obtained at 30°C, whereas the maximum net predation rate (C0) was at 25°C. Total population and predation rates projections were the highest at 30°C. Based on these findings, we anticipate that biological control strategies for this predator release against S. litura should be attuned to warming scenarios to achieve better biocontrol functions.

Many professional managers are driven to achieve the bottom line to secure income, honor, and standing in the workplace. Drawing on social information processing theory, we propose that supervisor bottom-line mentality in the workplace has a dysfunctional effect on organizations. Specifically, supervisor bottom-line mentality will hinder subordinates’ perception of the meaning of work, which eventuates high employee withdrawal (turnover intention and work withdrawal behavior). We also verified that amoral management weakens the negative relationship between supervisor bottom-line mentality and meaning of work in the first-stage moderated mediation model. Additionally, the strength of the indirect effects of supervisor bottom-line mentality on turnover intention and work withdrawal behavior is weaker (stronger) when supervisors’ amoral management is high (low). Our hypothesized moderated mediation model is supported by 301 data points generated by a three-stage full-time staff member. Furthermore, we put forward important theoretical and practical implications according to the research.

I commence this review with six important works on mobility, diasporas, ethnicities, and intercultural relations in antiquity; after a decade of relative dearth of significant contributions, it is truly wonderful that the field is moving again. Jonathan Hall and James Osborne have edited an excellent volume on the interregional networks in the eastern Mediterranean between 900–600 bce. The volume aims to link the novel approaches to Mediterranean history espoused in the major syntheses by Nicholas Purcell – Peregrine Horden and Cyprian Broodbank respectively, with new approaches to the study of cross-cultural interaction and material culture. The editors explicitly and convincingly argue in favour of employing multiple models for explaining the Early Iron Age Mediterranean; the ten chapters exemplify both multiplicity and important common themes. Certain contributions accept the concept of globalization as a useful way of explaining the changes evident across the Mediterranean. While some contributions problematize the concept of style as a means of drawing clear ethnic lines among artists and artistic traditions, other scholars argue for the need to maintain traditional ethnic labels like that of the Phoenicians, which is facing a current deconstructive trend; equally interesting is the stress on the agency of specific groups, like mercenaries, as agents of connectivity. Particularly significant, finally, is the focus on areas that have usually remained at the margins of discussion of Iron Age interconnectivity, like the North Aegean and the Troad, the Black Sea, Anatolia and Egypt.

The unstable employment trajectories and low wages of Chilean workers mean that the amount of savings accrued in pension funds are often insufficient to cope with the high costs of living in the country, compelling many older adults to remain in the labour market. Although financial need seems to be an important reason for post-retirement work in Chile, a national survey revealed that a majority of older workers would like to remain employed even if there were no economic need. Hence, this research aims at exploring the intrinsic work motivation of older Chilean adults beyond retirement age. This qualitative study is the second phase of mixed-methods research to analyse the factors influencing post-retirement work in Chile. A total of 32 in-depth face-to-face interviews were conducted with older workers in the formal labour market who were legally entitled to retire but continued being economically active in Santiago, Chile. The data are analysed using thematic analysis. We identify three main emerging themes, namely the meaning that work gives to life, future projects and post-retirement orientations, and work as the primary source of social interaction. The findings of this study provide valuable insight into intrinsic work motivation, highlighting important gender and occupational differences. It makes a significant contribution not only to the literature but also potentially to national policy makers as well as employers, indicating the need to adjust the labour market to the ageing workforce.

A “reckoning” is an opportunity to settle a score. It is a moment of collision between what is and what is due. Woodly's excellent book not only espouses the formation and political organization of the Movement for Black Lives (M4BL) coalition, but it also describes how social movements challenge the status quo and demand transformation in light of systems that work only for the powerful few. This transformation, Woodly shows, is brought about by the grassroots theorizing and political praxis of social movement organizers. Reckoning models the development of these new ideas, demonstrating both their intellectual and practical legacies. In this essay, I consider Woodly's theoretical formulation of the M4BL's philosophy of “radical Black feminist pragmatism” and what I see are (1) its promise for centering the reorienting practices of radical Black feminist politics and (2) the ways “pragmatism” as a frame stands in tension with those radical elements of the movement.

For a continuous $\mathbb {N}^d$ or $\mathbb {Z}^d$ action on a compact space, we introduce the notion of Bohr chaoticity, which is an invariant of topological conjugacy and which is proved stronger than having positive entropy. We prove that all principal algebraic $\mathbb {Z}$ actions of positive entropy are Bohr chaotic. The same is proved for principal algebraic actions of $\mathbb {Z}^d$ with positive entropy under the condition of existence of summable homoclinic points.

We show that for every $\eta \gt 0$ every sufficiently large $n$-vertex oriented graph $D$ of minimum semidegree exceeding $(1+\eta )\frac k2$ contains every balanced antidirected tree with $k$ edges and bounded maximum degree, if $k\ge \eta n$. In particular, this asymptotically confirms a conjecture of the first author for long antidirected paths and dense digraphs.

Further, we show that in the same setting, $D$ contains every $k$-edge antidirected subdivision of a sufficiently small complete graph, if the paths of the subdivision that have length $1$ or $2$ span a forest. As a special case, we can find all antidirected cycles of length at most $k$.

Finally, we address a conjecture of Addario-Berry, Havet, Linhares Sales, Reed, and Thomassé for antidirected trees in digraphs. We show that this conjecture is asymptotically true in $n$-vertex oriented graphs for all balanced antidirected trees of bounded maximum degree and of size linear in $n$.

Puparia are commonly found in tsetse fly larviposition sites during studies on larval ecology. This chitinous shell is representative of past or ongoing exploitation of these sites by tsetse flies. The morphological characteristics of the puparium are not sufficiently distinctive to allow identification of the species. This study explores the applicability of biomolecular techniques on empty puparia for tsetse fly species identification. Five techniques were compared for DNA extraction from tsetse fly puparia, 1/Chelex® 100 Resin, 2/CTAB, 3/Livak's protocol, 4/DEB + proteinase K and 5/QIAamp® DNA Mini kit, using two homogenisation methods (manual and automated). Using a combination of two primer pairs, Chelex, CTAB, and DEB + K proved the most efficient on fresh puparia with 90, 85, and 70% samples identified, respectively. Shifting from fresh to one- to nine-month-old puparia, the Chelex method gave the best result allowing species identification on puparia up to seven months old. The subsequent testing of the Chelex extraction protocol identified 152 (60%) of 252 field-collected puparia samples at species level. The results show that reliable genetic identification of tsetse flies species can be performed from empty puparia, what can prove of great interest for future ecological studies on larviposition sites. The Chelex technique was the most efficient for DNA extraction, though the age-limit of the samples stood at seven months, beyond which DNA degradation probably compromises the genetic analysis.

An anecdote, ascribed to Dicaearchus by Athenaeus (13.603.a–b) and found also in Plutarch (Alexander 67.7–8), details Alexander's kissing of the eunuch Bagoas during theatrical contests in Carmania in 325 bce. This article examines the enthusiastic response that this encounter is said to have elicited from Alexander's soldiers. It is suggested that this impromptu kiss was read as a display of homoerotic behaviour that was fundamentally Greek, and even as a gesture of Greek domination over Persians, and that, as such, it was welcomed by the army as a momentary departure from the increasingly Persianized behaviour of the king himself and of his court. Further, consideration is given to the possibility that the choral contest in which Bagoas is reported to have competed prior to the kiss may have been an innovative form of pyrrhic dance, in which for the first time the dancers depicted Dionysus’ conquest of India.

There are sex-dependent differences in hematological and biochemical variables in adulthood attributed to the predominant effects of testosterone in males and estrogen in females. The Twin Testosterone Transfer (TTT) hypothesis proposes that opposite-sex females may develop male-typical traits due to exposure to relatively higher levels of prenatal testosterone than same-sex females. Additionally, prenatal testosterone exposure has been suggested as a correlate of current circulating testosterone levels. Consequently, opposite-sex females might exhibit male-typical patterns in their hematological and biochemical variables. Despite this hypothesis, routine laboratory investigations assign the same reference range to all females. Our cross-sectional study, conducted in Tamale from January to September 2022, included 40 twins, comprising 10 opposite-sex (OS) males (25%), 10 OS females (25%), and 20 same-sex (SS) females (50%), all aged between 18 and 27 years. Fasting venous blood samples were collected and analyzed using automated hematology and biochemistry laboratory analyzers. Results indicated that levels of hemoglobin, serum creatinine, gamma-glutamyl transferase, total protein, globulins, and total testosterone were significantly higher in OS males than OS females. Conversely, total cholesterol and low-density lipoprotein cholesterol were significantly higher in OS females than OS males. Unexpectedly, levels of low-density lipoprotein cholesterol and total testosterone were significantly higher in SS females than OS females. Contrary to expectations, opposite-sex females did not exhibit male-typical patterns in their hematological and biochemical variables. This suggests that the TTT effect may not occur or may not be strong enough to markedly affect hematological and biochemical variables in OS females.

In the wake of the Trump presidency—with its endemic corruption, norm-breaking, and open subversion of the rule of law culminating in an attempted insurrection and ongoing false claims of election fraud—an overdue national conversation about the health of US democracy is taking place. For many, this was their first conscious experience of US democracy as imperiled or in crisis, and it raised pressing questions about whether there was cause to hope rather than despair, and of what the sources of such democratic faith might be. Black political thought has long grappled with the foundational deficits of US democracy; even as Black activists have worked tirelessly to bring about such alternative futures the persistence of white supremacy has made it difficult to hope in the possibility of radical transformation. Reckoning provides rigorous, complex answers to the question of how to practice democratic hope and refuse despair without trafficking in easy answers or simple prescriptions. According to Woodly, social movements:

After six years, this will be my tenth survey review here – and last. Since these reviews are intended to enable some sense of the state of the evolving field, I thought I might in this swansong try to offer not just the usual smorgasbord of Roman entertainment but an attempt at a synthesis of five key directions in research. A whole host of qualifications immediately raise their heads, of course – anglophone dominance, incomplete representation of presses, and my own not inconsiderable limitations of time, ability, and interest. Still, since opportunities for such overviews over time are sparse, the exercise will hopefully be instructive even so hamstrung.

This study provides a business history of the construction project to build a large Anglican church in colonial Shanghai in the 1860s. Employing three theoretical lenses, it focusses on the project’s management, setting it in its social, political, economic and architectural contexts. As well as analysing the project’s progress in detail, the paper discloses circumstances that were being faced more generally by resident British and international traders in Shanghai at this unsettled time. It also identifies forces which would in due course influence the long process of change leading to the eventual transformation both of Shanghai and of China itself, enhancing our understanding of the region’s economic history.

Let us start with a wonderful book that shows us not only Plautine comedy, but also Republican literary culture in a new light: Emilia Barbiero's fascinating exploration of the role played by letters in Plautus’ comedies. In five chapters dedicated to Bacchides, Persa, Pseudolus, Curculio, and, finally, Epidicus and Trinummus, she develops a powerful argument for the intricate metatheatric implications of the writing, reading, forging, or not-opening of letters on the Plautine stage. Countering a scholarly trend that tends to emphasize the role of improvisation, collaboration, and preliterate forms of theatre in Plautus’ comedies, Barbiero shows that the use of letters in Plautus’ comedies – without exception employed for amorous affairs – rather points to a deep concern with writing as the basis for acting and that they can be understood as mirrors of the text within the text and as mise-en-abyme of the origins of Plautine comedy in a script.

Developmental psychopathology started as an intersection of fields and is now a field itself. As we contemplate the future of this field, we consider the ways in which a newer, interdisciplinary field – human developmental neuroscience – can inform, and be informed by, developmental psychopathology. To do so, we outline principles of developmental psychopathology and how they are and/or can be implemented in developmental neuroscience. In turn, we highlight how the collaboration between these fields can lead to richer models and more impactful translation. In doing so, we describe the ways in which models from developmental psychopathology can enrich developmental neuroscience and future directions for developmental psychopathology.

A generalisation of the well-known Pell sequence $\{P_n\}_{n\ge 0}$ given by $P_0=0$, $P_1=1$ and $P_{n+2}=2P_{n+1}+P_n$ for all $n\ge 0$ is the k-generalised Pell sequence $\{P^{(k)}_n\}_{n\ge -(k-2)}$ whose first k terms are $0,\ldots ,0,1$ and each term afterwards is given by the linear recurrence $P^{(k)}_n=2P^{(k)}_{n-1}+P^{(k)}_{n-2}+\cdots +P^{(k)}_{n-k}$. For the Pell sequence, the formula $P^2_n+P^2_{n+1}=P_{2n+1}$ holds for all $n\ge 0$. In this paper, we prove that the Diophantine equation

$$ \begin{align*} (P^{(k)}_n)^2+(P^{(k)}_{n+1})^2=P^{(k)}_m \end{align*} $$

has no solution in positive integers $k, m$ and n with $n>1$ and $k\ge 3$.

Biofertilizers, such as arbuscular mycorrhiza fungi and phosphate-solubilizing bacteria (PSB), have been reported to enhance plant growth under water stress conditions. This study aimed to investigate the effect of different biofertilizers on potato photosynthesis and growth under water deficit stress. The experiment was conducted over two crop years (2019 and 2020) using a randomized complete block design with three replications. Four irrigation intervals (70, 90, 110 and 130 mm of cumulative evaporation) and six biofertilizer treatments (PSB, Funneliformis mosseae [FM], Rhizoglomus fasciculatum [RF], PSB + FM, PSB + RF and no use) were applied. Severe moisture stress (130 mm evaporation) compared to no stress (70 mm evaporation) increased substomatal carbon dioxide concentration. The application of biofertilizers improved tuber yield under severe moisture stress, with FM showing the highest increase (62.9%), followed by RF (59.8%) and PSB (48.4%). The use of PSB along with mycorrhizae led to a significant decrease in mycorrhizal colonization percentage at all irrigation levels. The highest percentage of colonization and net photosynthesis was obtained from the application of both mycorrhizal species under irrigation conditions after 70 mm of evaporation. The application of PSB alone resulted in a 14.6% increase in the transpiration rate, additionally, the use of mycorrhiza led to an 18.7% increase in stomatal conductivity compared to no-biofertilizer. The results suggest that the simultaneous use of PSB and mycorrhizae can be effective in mild moisture stress, but in severe moisture stress, the use of mycorrhizal species alone is more effective.