This article examines the identities of three sub-ethnic and ethnographic groups in Georgia – Adjarians, Megrelians, and Tushetians – and their relationship to the Georgian nation in political and ethnic terms. Drawing on fieldwork conducted between 2022 and 2023, the study explores how these groups navigate their distinct cultural markers, such as religion, language, and traditions, while engaging with the broader national identity. Using the theoretical framework of nationalization, the analysis explores four key themes: the salience of ethno-cultural differences, the transformation of sub-ethnic identities, the politicization of ethno-cultural markers, and the groups’ historical narratives emphasizing their contributions to Georgian-ness. The findings highlight the link between local identities and national integration. The findings contribute to broader theoretical debates on nationalization by demonstrating that the integration of sub-ethnic groups is not a unidirectional process of homogenization, but a dynamic negotiation of diversity and unity.

This article examines recent developments in three key areas of nationalism research that integrate emotions into theoretical frameworks and empirical analysis. First, it explores studies that revisit historical nation-building through the lens of the history of emotions. Second, it discusses how the “affective nationalism” literature has shifted the focus of banal nationhood reproduction from mental representations to emotions. Third, it reviews efforts to theorize the emergence of intense national emotions in certain periods and their role in political mobilization and change. The article highlights critical advancements across these areas, particularly in linking emotions to meaning through narratives, expanding research from national centers to the frontiers, and challenging the illusion of national harmony by emphasizing power dynamics and dialectical change. The conclusion suggests future research directions, including investigations of national emotions within diasporic communities and digital networks.

High-vowel laxing in Laurentian French is notoriously variable and complex: while high-vowel tenseness is categorically predictable in final syllables, speakers seemingly apply distinct combinations of optional processes in non-final syllables (see, e.g., Dumas 1987 and Poliquin 2006). The current study investigates laxing in non-final syllables with two core objectives: (a) to determine which grammars individual speakers have acquired, and (b) to elucidate whether subgroups within the community have distinct grammars as suggested by Poliquin or instead these subgroups are superficial categorisations (e.g., emerging from a shared community with wide distributions of possible weightings for constraints). The results reveal that a larger number of superficially distinct individual grammars emerge than were proposed in existing literature, but that these patterns fall on a spectrum centred on a shared community grammar. They also provide new evidence for the importance of prosody in conditioning phonological processes in this variety of French.

The term “Women of Color” (WoC) has seen a marked rise in usage, yet little is known about how it functions as a coalitional identity with political significance. I argue that WoC operates both as a descriptor and an identity. As a descriptor, it resembles a panethnic label for nonwhite women. When adopted as an identity—the focus of this study—it may carry deeper significance connected to its progressive roots. Scholars often categorize all racially diverse women as WoC based on presumed experiences of oppression. However, this assumption overlooks variation in race-gendered discrimination shaped by factors such as appearance and class. Women who are perceived as white or those with lighter skin tones, for example, may not experience racialization in the same ways as other nonwhite women. Given the label’s association with liberal political views and its emphasis on “color,” some women may choose not to adopt it or may be uncertain about their inclusion. Using 2020 CMPS data, this study builds on WoC scholarship by incorporating Asian women and compares their experiences and attitudes to those of Latina and Black women. Results show that the majority of Asian women identify as a WoC and report high levels of WoC-linked fate. Among Asian women, personal experiences with discrimination and empathy toward other marginalized groups are especially important in WoC identity formation. WoC-linked fate also demonstrates political relevance across all three groups, showing a positive relationship with support for undocumented immigrants and the #MeToo movement.

This article contends that the importance of post-biblical Jewish legal sources for the development of the case for infant baptism in England has been significantly underestimated. Focusing on the Westminster Assembly debates on baptism, it demonstrates how John Lightfoot’s interventions shaped contemporary understandings of that rite’s historicity. Lightfoot’s later work is shown to have further entrenched a conception of infant baptism as a development upon the proselyte baptism of the Jews. The study of Jewish texts thus emerges as having been an essential means of buttressing doctrine in mid- to late seventeenth-century England.

Human strongyloidiasis, caused by Strongyloides stercoralis, is a neglected disease of high worldwide prevalence, with considerable potential for severe, fatal outcomes in complicated cases. Studies using the rodent parasite Strongyloides venezuelensis as a model have provided valuable insights into strongyloidiasis, yet efficient, standardised methods for isolating large quantities of viable parasite eggs for biomedical research remain scarce. This study revisits and modernises the classical flotation principle, presenting a saturated-solution centrifugation protocol for egg recovery from infected clawed jirds (Meriones unguiculatus). Saturated NaCl outperformed sucrose, primarily due to enhanced egg visualisation and reduced microbial contamination, achieving mean recovery of 84.8 ± 6.7% (peaks to 94%). Key variables – including faecal suspension volume, solution concentration, reprocessing, and the NaCl gradient – were systematically optimised to maximise recovery and viability. The resulting protocol is cost-effective, rapid, and practical, enabling scalable collection of viable S. venezuelensis eggs (and likely other nematodes) for different applications, including hatching studies, larval development, microenvironmental assays, and drug screening. By integrating classical diagnostics with parametric optimisation, this study exemplifies how methodological advances preserve and renew foundational knowledge, underscoring its epistemological value in experimental parasitology.

According to the conventional wisdom among business ethicists, the “Business Judgment Rule” gives corporate leaders the discretion needed to abide by the firm’s moral obligations. In the first part of the paper, I challenge this view: managers have compelling reasons to believe that the Business Judgment Rule (and corporate law more generally) allows corporate leaders to pursue ethically motivated decisions only when these decisions are expected to be profit-enhancing. This is problematic because it instrumentalizes ethics, pushes ethically motivated corporate leaders to dissemble, and corrupts the quality of our public discourse. In response, I propose that corporate law should incorporate ethics into the Business Judgment Rule, explicitly giving managers discretion to make ethically motivated decisions that are profit-sacrificing. After responding to concerns about implementing such a rule, I contend that such a rule would be an important step to put corporate ethics in its proper place.

Following a trend across the sciences, recent studies in lithic analysis have embraced the ideal of replicability. Recent large-scale studies have demonstrated that high replicability is achievable under controlled conditions and have proposed strategies to improve it in lithic data recording. Although this focus has yielded important methodological advances, we argue that an overemphasis on replicability risks narrowing the scope of archaeological inquiry. More specifically, we show (1) that replicability alone does not guarantee reliability, interpretive value, or cost effectiveness, and (2) that archaeological data often involve unavoidable ambiguity due to preservation, analyst background, and the nature of lithic variability itself. Instead of allowing replicability to dictate research priorities, we advocate for a problem-driven, pluralistic approach that tailors methods to research questions and balances replicable measures with interpretive depth. This has practical implications for training, publishing, and funding policy. We conclude that Paleolithic archaeology must engage with the replicability movement on its own terms—preserving methodological diversity while maintaining scientific credibility.

We study time-inhomogeneous random walks on finite groups in the case where each random walk step need not be supported on a generating set of the group. When the supports of the random walk steps satisfy a natural condition involving normal subgroups of quotients of the group, we show that the random walk converges to the uniform distribution on the group and give bounds for the convergence rate using spectral properties of the random walk steps. As an application, we use the moment method of Wood to prove a universality theorem for cokernels of random integer matrices allowing some dependence between entries.

Blastoids have three primary systems providing entrances to blastoid hydrospires, the primary organ for respiration: (1) exposed hydrospire slits formed across the width of the radiodeltoid suture; (2) hydrospire pores formed at the aboral ends of the ambulacra; and (3) hydrospire tubules formed as invaginations along the radiodeltoid suture, becoming openings that pierce the radials and deltoids ontogenetically. Blastoid classification historically divided the blastoids into two groups—the Fissiculata and Spiraculata. The Fissiculata comprised those blastoids that have exposed hydrospire slits or spiracular slits. The Spiraculata had hydrospire pores and spiracles that connect internally to hydrospires. Spiraculate classification focused on the configuration of the spiracles and anispiracle in combination with thecal form. Spiracles are the adoral consequence of the ambulacra infilling the radial sinus and covering the hydrospires by the lancet and the side plates and are found in all spiraculate blastoids. In this revision of blastoid classification, we place primacy on the three mechanisms by which water is drawn into the hydrospires—hydrospire slits open to seawater, hydrospire pores, and hydrospire tubules. Hydrospire tubules are formed along the radiodeltoid suture, a very different ontogenetic position from hydrospire pores, which are formed at the aboral end of the ambulacrum, and a fundamental phylogenetic difference. We herein abandon the term Spiraculata and refer to the spiraculate grade as being the Stomatoblastida, new superorder for spiraculates with hydrospire pores and the Tubuloblastida, new superorder for spiraculates with hydrospire tubules. The Fissiculata is elevated to superordinal status.

Organizational ethical culture, though widely studied, lacks conceptual clarity and precision with levels of analysis. To diagnose the specific conceptual and levels limitations, we assess the state of the science of ethical culture by analyzing 155 articles. Analysis revealed conceptual disorganization, confusion between the conceptual domain and nomological network, and imprecise treatment of levels of analysis. These limitations have resulted in downstream problems with building and testing theory; existing research is affected by unfalsifiable hypotheses, conceptual invalidity, contamination among measures, and incorrect levels-based inferences. To help overcome these limitations, we present a revised definition that integrates the dynamic model of organizational culture with the concept of ethical affordances. We present a multilevel model and describe potential interactions that determine how and under what conditions ethical culture manifests at relevant levels. We conclude with recommendations that will help future research move past these limitations.

Over the past century, psychiatrists have neglected the importance of diet in the management of mental illness. This is especially the case in relation to mood disorders. There is now overwhelming evidence to support the view that a Mediterranean diet can play a role in the management of mood disorders. This is not in any way denying the importance of pharmacological and psychosocial strategies in the management of these disorders. Components of the Mediterranean diet not only impact brain function but also gut microbes, which are increasingly recognised as playing a role in the pathophysiology of mood disorders. Nutrition should be a component in the curriculum of psychiatrists in training.

Theists believe in a transcendent personal creator that is maximally perfect and intervenes in the creation. Deists believe in a transcendent personal creator that is maximally perfect and does not intervene in the creation. One alleged problem for deism is that its God cannot be maximally perfect. A God that intentionally and knowingly creates a world replete with suffering and anguish yet fails to intervene to ameliorate it is not morally perfect. Thus, theism is better off than deism. I argue that the God of theism is in just as much trouble vis-à-vis omnibenevolence as the God of deism. More specifically, theistic responses to why God answers some but not all petitionary prayers either (i) show theism’s God is less than morally perfect in the same way deism’s God is alleged to be, or (ii) are likewise open to deists.

In a previous paper, we stated and motivated counting conjectures for fusion systems that are purely local analogues of several local-to-global conjectures in the modular representation theory of finite groups. Here, we verify some of these conjectures for fusion systems on an extraspecial group of order $p^3$, which contain among them the Ruiz–Viruel exotic fusion systems at the prime $7$. As a byproduct, we verify Robinson’s ordinary weight conjecture for principal p-blocks of almost simple groups G realizing such (nonconstrained) fusion systems.

Currently, quadruped robots are widely used in diverse scenarios due to their high mobility, creating a demand for more advanced interaction capabilities. This study proposes a whole-body planning and control framework that integrates adaptive control into a hierarchical model predictive control (MPC) and whole-body control (WBC) structure, enhancing the environmental adaptability and interaction performance of quadruped mobile manipulators. Key innovations include: a recursive least squares and feedforward compensation strategy for accurate end-effector force estimation; relaxed barrier functions embedded in the MPC to combine dynamic obstacle avoidance with adaptive control; and a WBC-based priority hierarchy to enforce critical constraints. Validated in Gazebo simulation and on the B1-Z1 platform, the method allows the robot to handle unknown loads up to 3 kg and maintain tracking errors under 2 cm despite 35 N external disturbances. It also demonstrates strong adaptability in non-uniform object transportation, providing a reliable solution for unstructured environments.