Tonic immobility is considered an anti-predator defence, wherein prey adopts a motionless state in a characteristic posture elicited by external stimuli. The marine isopod Cleantiella isopus exhibits tonic immobility with an arch-like posture and motionless state lasting several seconds or minutes in response to external stimuli such as predatory attacks by fish. In this study, we describe tonic immobility by wild-caught C. isopus and examine the influence of body size, sex, and colour morph on the frequency and duration of tonic immobility. All individuals exhibited tonic immobility regardless of body size, sex, or colour morph, suggesting that the behaviour plays a major role in predator avoidance following detection by a predator. In males, smaller individuals exhibited more prolonged tonic immobility than larger individuals, whereas the relationship between the duration of tonic immobility and body size was unclear in females. Colour morph had no effect on the duration of tonic immobility. These findings provide a detailed documentation of tonic immobility in C. isopus and suggest that the factors affecting tonic immobility differ between males and females.

With the Solicitors Qualifying Examination (SQE) having been introduced in 2021 the training of solicitors has changed. But what impact will its legal research assessment have on their ability to do this sort of work? Here Greg Bennett, who works at BPP in London – where in addition to being a law librarian he is also studying the LPC – gives an overview of the situation and outlines his own concerns.

Recent years have witnessed the theorizing of international order from a global, rather than purely Western, perspective. We contribute to this approach by reviewing recent book-length theorizations by four prominent contemporary Chinese scholars. We outline how these conceptions of international order converge and diverge, identify their contributions and limitations, and compare them with Western paradigms of international order, such as realism and liberalism. We then demonstrate how insights from these Chinese approaches enrich existing international relations debates and shed light on contemporary Chinese foreign policy.

Many scholars and judges attempt to harmonize legal practices of contracting with the social practice of promising in ordinary life. This article explores an alternative genealogy of contract in traditional social practices that track many of contract's core norms: taking vows and oaths. Without denying that promissory morality infiltrates modern contract, contract-as-vow-or-oath can expose by way of a supplementary account why some contract rules work as they do and can take some pressure off of a more unitary promissory theory in justifying, explicating, and reforming contract law.

“Performing AI” raises new questions about creative labor. Might the mathematical entities called neural networks that constitute much contemporary AI research be expressive and “perform,” thus leveling the playing field between human beings and nonhuman machines? What human societal models do neural networks enact? What bodily, mental, and affective work is required to integrate neural networks into the profoundly anthropocentric domain of the performing arts?

In sixteenth-century Brazil, several European women governed the captaincies of their late or absent husbands during the first century of Portuguese colonization. A contextual and lexical analysis of the male-authored sources reveals that these women acted decisively to protect and expand familial patrimonies and, in doing so, were part of the colonizing movement. Although extensive written evidence survives that attests to their authority and agency over colonial affairs, their importance has been overlooked in the scholarship. Therefore, this essay argues that a small group of elite European women became imperial agents who wielded power against colonial subjects in select circumstances.

El trabajo analiza la innovación en la industria militar en España entre 1878 y 1939 a partir de las patentes y los contratos de defensa. El alto porcentaje de contratos de productos patentados (63%) es indicio de una notable relación entre patentes y contratos. Esto se ve confirmado por la coincidencia en el orden de los principales países en ambas variables. El test econométrico confirma la estadística descriptiva y, además, evidencia que las patentes a priori más valiosas (de invención, puestas en práctica, más longevas y empresariales) tienen una correlación más fuerte con los contratos. Desde la óptica sectorial también se observa una correlación positiva y significativa, aunque menos intensa que desde el espacial. El análisis micro confirma la estrecha relación de las patentes con la actividad del sector de armamento militar, explicita los protagonistas y las vías de esa relación (importación, producción local y licencias) y explica las disparidades observadas en el análisis agregado.

Positively experienced relationships with family, partners and friends are the most important source of meaning in life for older persons. At the same time, Western countries are confronted with a growing number of socially isolated older adults who lack those relationships. This study aims to explore whether and how older adults who live in social isolation experience meaning in life. Data were collected via in-depth, semi-structured interviews with 24 socially isolated older adults, ranging in age from 62 to 94, all living in Rotterdam, The Netherlands. The criterion-based sampling of participants took place in close consultation with social workers of a mentoring project for socially isolated older adults. Follow-up interviews with 22 participants improved the credibility of findings and contributed to the breadth and depth of the researched casuistry. Data were analysed using an analytical framework based on seven needs of meaning identified by Baumeister (purpose, values, efficacy, self-worth) and Derkx (coherence, excitement, connectedness). The study demonstrates that isolated older adults may find anchors for meaning in life, although not all needs for meaning are satisfied, and there can also be tension between different needs. The needs-based model provides concrete distinctions for enabling care-givers to recognise elements of meaning.

This short article introduces the Forum on Muslim modernity in South Asia, placing its four articles—by Muhammad Qasim Zaman, SherAli Tareen, Julia Stephens, and Justin Jones—in the context of existing scholarship. I highlight the authors’ contributions to the study of Islamic reform and of women’s agency, in particular, in understandings of Muslim modernity in South Asia. Each of the contributions is on a discrete topic; this introduction therefore endeavours to pull at the threads within each that underscores their interventions in the study of Muslim modernity and that tie them together in this Forum.

Official interpretations of Doppler shifts from the final satellite communications of missing Malaysian Airlines MH370 were based on a motion-decoupled ‘Up-Down model’. That model predicted an uncontrolled high-speed gravitationally accelerated dive following fuel starvation. Here, I challenge that model using a more-realistic motion-coupled ‘Declination model’. Aerial, satellite and underwater searches failed to find the predicted official violent crash-site near the 7th arc. Meticulous re-examination of debris damage by air-crash investigator Larry Vance concluded that the aircraft glide-landed under power with extended wing-flaps. The trailing-edges were then damaged, broke off their mountings, flailing about and retracted along the guides to cause the observed wing-flap damage. Larry's conclusions complement interpretations from the ‘Declination model’ which we demonstrate here with three example flight tracks. Our revised Doppler-shift analyses support the hypothesis of a controlled eastward descent. We conclude that the official theory of fuel starvation and a high-speed dive are fundamentally flawed.