We study the dynamics of the profit rate of United States (US) non-financial resident firms between 1945 and 2020. The 1970s entailed the abandonment of industrial policy and the liberalisation and globalisation of markets. This left the US-resident productive sector at the mercy of an unstoppable growth of imports. These imports helped to contain inflation but cornered the US domestic market, which negatively affected the profit rate of non-financial resident firms. The increasing foreign competition forced US-resident firms to invest and increase their productive capacity. Such increasing productive capacity demanded higher market shares; however, US-resident firms continued to lose domestic and foreign markets. This explains the fall in the degree of productive capacity utilisation, capital productivity, and ultimately, the rate of profit since the 1980s.

We show that under mild conditions, the connected sum $M\# N$ of simply connected, closed, orientable n-dimensional Poincaré Duality complexes M and N is hyperbolic and has no homotopy exponent at all but finitely many primes, verifying a weak version of Moore’s conjecture. This is derived from an elementary framework involving $CW$-complexes satisfying certain conditions.

We challenge the standard interpretation of pain asymbolia (PA), a neuropsychiatric condition that causes unusual reactions to pain stimuli. The standard interpretation asserts that PA subjects experience pain but lack important features of the experience. However, we argue that the clinical evidence for PA does not support this interpretation and that the arguments put forward by the defenders of the standard interpretation end up making self-contradicting claims. Finally, we suggest that the best interpretation of the available evidence is to take a deflationist stance toward PA, at least until further evidence becomes available.

Spotted-wing drosophila, Drosophila suzukii, is a global pest of soft fruits that is capable of reproducing on a wide range of cultivated and wild plant species. In Canada, D. suzukii was first reported in British Columbia in 2009 and is now widespread across the country. Understanding the genetic structure of D. suzukii populations could be important for pest management if there are phenotypic differences between genetically distinct populations. For example, insect pest populations could respond differently to directional selection imposed by insecticides, differ in their host plant preferences, and vary in their susceptibility to biological control agents. Here, we used double-digest restriction site–associated DNA sequencing to examine large- and fine-scale patterns of the genetic structure of D. suzukii reared from fruit hosts in Canada. We found that this species has a large-scale spatial genetic structure; the flies collected formed two distinct genetic clusters, one of which was distinct to western Canada and the other to eastern Canada. At the local scale, D. suzukii populations showed no evidence of host-associated structuring in British Columbia, suggesting that pest management tactics may be best applied at the landscape level. Our results highlight the need to investigate phenotypic differences between western and eastern D. suzukii populations in Canada.

In the 19th century, sealing vessels visited the South Shetland Islands to exploit animal resources for the global skin and oil markets. The captains or mates of these vessels were responsible for keeping a logbook in which they recorded daily observations of weather conditions, hunting activities, etc. Despite the value of these documents as a source of information, archaeologists studying Antarctic sealing have not always relied on them. This paper examines the potential of logbooks for providing information that is relevant to the archaeological study of sealing in the South Shetland Islands. In particular, it discusses how documentary analysis of exploitation strategies can provide insight into the dynamics that influenced the configuration of sealers’ sites. To this end, we propose a methodology for investigating exploitation strategies, taking into account several archaeologically sensitive variables, including the number, location and duration of landings, as well as the activities carried out during these events. We have taken four logbooks dating from the early and late 19th century – specifically those of the Aurora (1820–1821), the Huron (1820–1822), the Thomas Hunt (1873–1874) and the Sarah W. Hunt (1887–1888) – as case studies to test the proposed methodology.

Long-term care homes (LTCHs) were disproportionately affected by the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic, creating stressful circumstances for LTCH employees, residents, and their care partners. Team huddles may improve staff outcomes and enable a supportive climate. Nurse practitioners (NPs) have a multifaceted role in LTCHs, including facilitating implementation of new practices. Informed by a community-based participatory approach to research, this mixed-methods study aimed to develop and evaluate a toolkit for implementing NP-led huddles in an LTCH. The toolkit consists of two sections. Section one describes the huddles’ purpose and implementation strategies. Section two contains six scripts to guide huddle discussions. Acceptability of the intervention was evaluated using a quantitative measure (Treatment Acceptability Questionnaire) and through qualitative interviews with huddle participants. Descriptive statistics and manifest content analysis were used to analyse quantitative and qualitative data. The project team rated the toolkit as acceptable. Qualitative findings provided evidence on design quality, limitations, and recommendations for future huddles.

Flagship species are those chosen to raise support for broader conservation marketing campaigns and can be used as symbols of the ecosystem services and evolutionary history of particular areas. Thus, flagship species can be employed for the protection of endangered species and threatened ecosystems. Northeastern Michoacán, Mexico, is an important region for amphibian diversity but approximately 40% of its mature forest has been removed. Among northeastern Michoacán amphibians, the use of Ambystoma ordinarium as a flagship species is supported by its co-occurrence with other threatened amphibians along riparian zones. To support this proposal, however, it is important to assess the functional traits and evolutionary history of amphibian species sharing their habitat with A. ordinarium. To evaluate the potential of A. ordinarium as a flagship species, we estimated the functional and phylogenetic diversity of amphibian assemblages in 60 riparian zones. The results showed that amphibian assemblages sharing habitat with A. ordinarium presented higher functional and phylogenetic diversity than those in which this species was absent. These results highlight the potential of A. ordinarium as a flagship species for the protection of associated amphibian species, their functions, and evolutionary history.

As a result of an ameliorative shift-to-opposite, the polysemous adjective wicked is an auto-antonym, having two senses opposite in meaning, that is, ‘evil’ and ‘good’. We discuss two studies which explore the social life of this word, with the first focusing on its production and the second on its perception. In the first study, conducted in Cornwall, United Kingdom, we find that young men are most advanced in the use of wicked ‘good’ while young women appear not to contribute to the incrementation, that is, the advancement, of this change. In the second study, conducted online across England, we find wicked ‘good’, relative to its synonym good, to be perceived as less young and to be evaluated positively across disparate characteristics relating to status and solidarity, particularly by older men. We find wicked ‘evil’, in contrast to its synonym evil, to be evaluated higher in status-type characteristics. This newly uncovered indexical field of wicked presents a possible explanation for the observed changes in production, contributing to ongoing questions about the role of social meaning in driving the incrementation of change. More generally, this article adds to the growing yet limited literature which explores semantic variation through the lens of variationist sociolinguistics.

A comparison of the modelling methodologies to capture the damage onset and delamination initiation in Abaqus and LS-Dyna is presented. A quasi-isotropic carbon fibre reinforced polymer laminate is modelled under a low-energy impact scenario. Hashin, Puck and Cuntze criteria are implemented for assessing intra-laminar damage in Abaqus in the linear elastic regime without damage evolution, with Virtual Crack Closure Technique being used for inter-laminar failure. In LS-Dyna, the Chang-Chang criterion is used for the intra-lamina failure with damage evolution, whereas delamination is captured using cohesive zone model and the tiebreak contact algorithm. The implementations carried out by both finite element software result in a modelling work well set to analyse and predict the impact response at the initial stages of delamination and damage within the plies. The composite damage criteria used in both finite element codes overall predict stiffer results when compared with the experimental data, however, remain in close agreement with each other.

The activity of Cardinal Stefan Wyszyński as the Primate of Poland occurred in a period when Poland did not maintain diplomatic relations with the Holy See. The period between 1948 and 1981 can be divided, from the perspective of the Warsaw authorities, into three subperiods: no relations and no talks (informal and official), 1948–1965; negotiations, 1965–1974; and working contacts, 1974–1981. The years 1964–1978 were also the period of the apogee of the Vatican's Ostpolitik carried out by Msgr Agostino Casaroli, under the auspices of Pope Paul VI. Cardinal Wyszyński was directly involved four times in talks on the arrangement of Polish–Vatican relations: in 1951, 1957, 1963, and 1965. With time, however, the primate gained more and more distance from the purposefulness of establishing relations between the Holy See and communist states. It should be added that from the beginning of the 1970s, the primate was quite critical of the effects of the Vatican's so-called Ostpolitik. At the end of the pontificate of Paul VI, an open conflict arose between the Secretariat of State and the Primate of Poland, which was resolved only with the election of Karol Wojtyła as Pope.

This article foregrounds imagination to consider how African diasporic conditions converge with choreographic expression. The analysis “un/maps” dominant understandings of the choreographic process of mid-twentieth-century African American choreographer-anthropologist Katherine Dunham by expanding Kamau E. Brathwaite's (1993) concept of Tidalectics beyond the Caribbean to the wider African diaspora and a distinctly Caribbean comprehension of diasporic imagination. Utilizing datasets and visualizations created by the project, Dunham's Data: Katherine Dunham and Digital Methods for Dance Historical Inquiry, this article traces how the concept of Brazil is imagined and reimagined within Dunham's archive from 1937 to 1962. In doing so, it considers the complex positionality of Dunham as both a pioneering minoritized woman navigating the politics of race, gender, and financial precarity, and someone who yielded their imperial privilege as a US citizen through their career to bring nuance to Dunham's narrative as a canonical dance figure.

Surgical repair of channels between the ventricles is enhanced when the surgeon knows precisely where to place a patch, or baffle, so as to restore septal integrity. The paediatric cardiologist should provide the necessary information. Communication will be enhanced if the same words are used to account for the structures in question. Currently, however, the same term, namely “ventricular septal defect,” is used to account for markedly different areas within the heart. Closure of perimembranous defects found in hearts with concordant or discordant ventriculo-arterial connections restores the integrity of the ventricular septum, at the same time separating the systemic and pulmonary blood streams. When both arterial trunks arise from the right ventricle, in contrast, the surgeon when placing a baffle so as to separate the blood streams, does not close the channel most frequently described as the “ventricular septal defect.” In this review, we show that the perimembranous lesions as found in hearts with concordant or discordant ventriculo-arterial connections are the right ventricular entrances to the areas subtended beneath the hinges of the leaflets of the aortic or pulmonary valves. When both arterial trunks arise from the right ventricle, and the channel between the ventricles is directly subaortic, then the channel termed the “ventricular septal defect” is the left ventricular entrance to the comparable space subtended beneath the aortic root. We argue that recognition of these fundamental anatomical differences enhances the appreciation of the underlying morphology of the various lesions that reflect transfer, during cardiac development, of the aortic root from the morphologically right to the morphologically left ventricle.

Myocarditis is an inflammatory disease of the heart muscle that most commonly occurs after infectious diseases in childhood. The clinical picture of acute myocarditis ranges from asymptomatic infection to fulminant heart failure and sudden death (1). Most of the patients may present with nonspecific symptoms such as respiratory distress, chest pain, nausea, and vomiting (2). While rhythm abnormalities such as ventricular and supraventricular rhythm disorders can be observed in these patients, various degrees of atrioventricular blocks may rarely develop (3). In this article, we aimed to present a patient who developed second-degree, high-grade atrioventricular block after myocarditis and recovered completely after treatment.

Understanding the irregular variation of the solar cycle is crucial due to its significant impact on global climates and the heliosphere. Since the polar magnetic field determines the amplitude of the next solar cycle, variations in the polar field can lead to fluctuations in the solar cycle. We have explored the variability of the solar cycle at different levels of dynamo supercriticality. We observe that the variability depends on the dynamo operation regime, with the near-critical regime exhibiting more variability than the supercritical regime. Furthermore, we have explored the effects of the irregular BMR properties (emergence rate, latitude, tilt, and flux) on the polar field and the solar cycle. We find that they all produce considerable variation in the solar cycle; however, the variation due to the tilt scatter is the largest.