Shareholder say-on-pay voting allows institutional investors to influence the incentives of managers and, consequently, corporate behaviour. Surprisingly, the preferences of investors on executive compensation have been largely overlooked in the ongoing debates on the role of say-on-pay in corporate governance and the impact of shareholder stewardship on sustainable corporate behaviour. The analysis of investor disclosed explanations of say-on-pay votes in the FTSE 100 companies during 2013–2021 shows that institutional investors rely repeatedly on several dominant themes aimed at improving the incentives of corporate managers and controlling managerial rent extraction. But shareholder interests remain the core focus of say-on-pay votes, with only few investors demanding that companies reward executive directors for protecting the interests of a broader range of affected stakeholders. Additionally, most investors can be grouped into several clusters formed around the voting recommendations of proxy advisers. A group of UK-based institutional investors stands out by taking a more individualistic and diverse approach to the stewardship of executive compensation. These findings highlight the role of local investors in the oversight of executive pay, the growing influence of proxy advisers along with the increasing share of foreign institutional investors, and the influence of best practice governance codes in driving investor stewardship preferences.

The Palaearctic ten-spotted lady beetle, Adalia decempunctata (Linnaeus), has been confirmed as established in North America, based on morphological characters and DNA barcodes. Its distribution currently appears limited to the Avalon Peninsula of the island of Newfoundland, Canada. Several characters, including the colour of the mesepimera, frons, labrum, antennal club, mouthparts, and legs, are reliable for discriminating among this species and the native, Holarctic two-spotted lady beetle, Adalia bipunctata (Linnaeus), in Newfoundland. An identification key to the two species is provided.

Early life is a sensitive period when microbiota-gut-brain interactions may have important impact on development. This study investigated the associations of the gut microbiota in the first three years of life (two, six, and 12 weeks, and one and three years) with problem behavior and executive functions in N = 64 three-year-old children. Higher relative abundance of Streptococcus at the age of two weeks, as well as its trajectory over time (including ages two, six and 12 weeks, and one and three years), was related to worse executive functions. Higher relative abundance of [Ruminococcus] torques group at the age of three years, as well as its trajectory from one to three years, was associated with less internalizing behavior. Besides, several robust age-specific associations were identified: higher Bifidobacterium relative abundance (age three years) was associated with more internalizing and externalizing issues; higher Blautia relative abundance (age three years) was linked to less internalizing behavior; and increased relative abundance of an unidentified Enterobacteriaceae genus (age two weeks) was related to more externalizing behavior. Our findings provide important longitudinal evidence that early-life gut microbiota may be linked to behavioral and cognitive development in low-risk children.

I provide simplified proofs for each of the following fundamental theorems regarding selection principles:

1. (1) The Quasinormal Convergence Theorem, due to the author and Zdomskyy, asserting that a certain, important property of the space of continuous functions on a space is actually preserved by Borel images of that space.

2. (2) The Scheepers Diagram Last Theorem, due to Peng, completing all provable implications in the diagram.

3. (3) The Menger Game Theorem, due to Telgársky, determining when Bob has a winning strategy in the game version of Menger’s covering property.

4. (4) A lower bound on the additivity of Rothberger’s covering property, due to Carlson.

The simplified proofs lead to several new results.

Catalan nationalism had always supported Ireland in its struggle for autonomy or independence against the British Empire. The outbreak of the Irish Civil War, nevertheless, surprised Catalanism. This article discusses the difficulties of the main Catalanist political parties in that period—the Lliga Regionalista, Acció Catalana, and Estat Català—to explain the Anglo-Irish Treaty in the Catalanist milieu as well as the difficulties of differentiating dominion and federation and adopting a coherent position according to their own ideology and to Catalan internal political dynamics. Focusing on this study case, the objective of the article is to show the difficulties of stateless national movements to explain their own politics and objectives from external models. And, likewise, how the look toward an external nationalism can stop being useful or even raise unexpected questions within the movement that tries to explain itself by simplifying the contexts of others.

Activity biosensors have been used recently to measure and diagnose the physiological status of dairy cows. However, owing to the variety of commercialized activity biosensors available in the market, activity data generated by a biosensor need to be standardized to predict the status of an animal and make relevant decisions. Hence, the objective of this study was to develop a standardization method for accommodating activity measurements from different sensors. Twelve Holstein dairy cows were monitored to collect 12 862 activity data from four types of sensors over five months. After confirming similar cyclic activity patterns from the sensors through correlation and regression analyses, the gamma distribution was employed to calculate the cumulative probability of the values of each biosensor. Then, the activity values were assigned to three levels (i.e., idle, normal and active) based on the defined proportion of each level, and the values at each level from the four sensors were compared. The results showed that the number of measurements belonging to the same level was similar, with less than a 10% difference at a specific threshold value. In addition, more than 87% of the heat alerts generated by the internal algorithm of three of the four biosensors could be assigned to the active level, suggesting that the current standardization method successfully integrated the activity measurements from different biosensors. The developed probability-based standardization method is expected to be applicable to other biosensors for livestock, which will lead to the development of models and solutions for precision livestock farming.

Forcibly displaced populations are among the most vulnerable groups in disasters. They experience poorer health conditions compared with nondisplaced individuals. However, a clear picture is lacking regarding the overall health problems encountered by disaster-induced mid- to long-term displaced people. This study investigated these disorders prevalence and identified their correlates among long-settled displaced populations worldwide. The current scoping review follows the PRISMA-ScR guidelines; a systematic search was conducted on PubMed, Web of Science, and CINAHL and included original peer-reviewed studies, commentary, reviews, and grey literature published in English between January 1990 to June 2022. In the thematic and content analysis, the authors applied the narrative review approach to identify themes and sub-themes. Forty-eight documents were identified as fully relevant to this study. The largest number of published papers were from Asia, followed by the Middle East, the United States, and Europe. IDPs in developed countries were the most researched populations. Human-made disasters were addressed by 89% of the included studies. The four main thematic categories included were “physical health,” “mental health,” “inadequate facilities,” and “lack of healthy behaviour.” The worsening of noncommunicable diseases had the highest prevalence, followed by communicable diseases. Due to their condition, forcibly displaced migrants face a triple burden of communicable diseases and noncommunicable diseases such as mental health issues. Health-related research and policy need to consider the links among disasters, health problems, and forced migration as a determinant of health in the new era of climate change-driven displacements.

There is an ethics of blaming the person who deserves blame. The Christian scriptures imply the following no-vengeance condition: a person should not vengefully overtly blame a wrongdoer even if she gives the wrongdoer the exact negative treatment that he deserves. I explicate and defend this novel condition and argue that it demands a revolution in our blaming practices. First, I explain the no-vengeance condition. Second, I argue that the no-vengeance condition is often violated. The most common species of blame involves anger; anger conceptually includes a desire for vengeance; and there are many pleasures in payback. Third, I clarify that it is possible to blame non-vengefully in anger and highlight three good uses for anger in non-vengeful blame. Fourth, I offer two reasons that justify the divine command prohibiting vengeance, and I note that the Christian God is merely sufficient to make non-vengeance morally obligatory. Fifth, I defend the no-vengeance condition against four biblical objections.

In June 2023, the OECD published ‘targeted updates’ to the newly renamed OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises on Responsible Business Conduct. This piece examines some of the most significant updates from the perspective of civil society. The majority of the updates strengthen the authoritative international standards on responsible business conduct; for example, by addressing new and important topics, such as climate change, and clarifying expectations on established due diligence concepts. Meanwhile, the revised implementation procedures suggest progressive measures for governments to strengthen their National Contact Points, but largely do not require specific improvements. This piece discusses the strengths and shortcomings of these changes and assesses the impact of the updates on international norms.

Female fertility is a complex trait with age-specific changes in spontaneous dizygotic (DZ) twinning and fertility. To elucidate factors regulating female fertility and infertility, we conducted a genome-wide association study (GWAS) on mothers of spontaneous DZ twins (MoDZT) versus controls (3273 cases, 24,009 controls). This is a follow-up study to the Australia/New Zealand (ANZ) component of that previously reported (Mbarek et al., 2016), with a sample size almost twice that of the entire discovery sample meta-analysed in the previous article (and five times the ANZ contribution to that), resulting from newly available additional genotyping and representing a significant increase in power. We compare analyses with and without male controls and show unequivocally that it is better to include male controls who have been screened for recent family history, than to use only female controls. Results from the SNP based GWAS identified four genomewide significant signals, including one novel region, ZFPM1 (Zinc Finger Protein, FOG Family Member 1), on chromosome 16. Previous signals near FSHB (Follicle Stimulating Hormone beta subunit) and SMAD3 (SMAD Family Member 3) were also replicated (Mbarek et al., 2016). We also ran the GWAS with a dominance model that identified a further locus ADRB2 on chr 5. These results have been contributed to the International Twinning Genetics Consortium for inclusion in the next GWAS meta-analysis (Mbarek et al., in press).

With Hegel on Being, Stephen Houlgate presents an impressive philosophical analysis of one of the most obscure, but also most important texts of the whole Western philosophical tradition. Houlgate's book is an in-depth systematic investigation of the entire doctrine of being of Hegel's mature logical system. This work takes up and develops a series of reflections presented in The Opening of Hegel's Logic (2006), which were dedicated to the first two chapters of the section on quality in the Science of Logic, and extends them to the further two sections of the first part of Hegel's mature system. Houlgate's text is thus particularly interesting, especially if one considers that not many Hegel scholars have dealt with the difficulties of the sections dedicated to quantity and measure. This is probably due to the complexity of the dialectic of the categories involved in these sections of the Logic and to the necessity of approaching Hegel's dialogue with the exact and natural sciences of his time. On the interaction of Hegel's philosophy with these scientific contributions, Houlgate offers us particularly significant pages. Suffice to mention the excursus on differential calculus at the end of the section dedicated to quantity, or the analysis of the relevance of Galileo Galilei's and Johannes Kepler's discoveries in the context of the analysis of realized measure.