Kongish Daily, a Facebook page promoting Kongish – a creative, critical, and colloquial form of Hong Kong English with Cantonese inflections – has attracted a following in social media over the past decade. It has also sparked interest among sociolinguists interested in (post-)multilingual developments in East Asia. This study is built on Hansen Edwards’s (2016) premise that Hong Kong English would gain wider acceptance in Hong Kong as the cultural identity of local language users shifted amidst sociocultural transformations. We first provide an overview of the Kongish phenomenon, followed by a qualitative study involving 30 active Kongish users from diverse age groups, genders and occupations. Through semi-structured interviews, we explore users’ perceptions of language and identity. Our findings support Hansen Edwards’s prediction regarding the strengthening of Hong Kongers’ cultural identification, while revealing an evolving, counter-stereotypical Hong Kong culture as well as an opinion divide on the future trajectory of Kongish.

Words in Tagalog/Filipino can be either penult-prominent or ultima-prominent. Scholars have been divided on whether the language has stress, or only phonemic vowel length in penults and default phrase-final prominence. Using a corpus of Original Pilipino Music, we find that both prominent penults and prominent ultimas are set to longer notes and stronger beats, even in phrase-medial position. We further find that among pre-tonic syllables, those that would plausibly attract secondary stress are mostly set to longer notes and stronger beats. Text-setting does not faithfully reflect differences in phonetic cues between the two types of prominence, nor is it sensitive to presumed phonetic differences between high and low vowels. We conclude that songwriters’ text-setting decisions reflect phonological stress in Filipino, and that both penult-prominent and ultima-prominent words bear stress.

Stroke is a prevalent neurological event that often induces significant motor impairments in the upper extremities, such as hemiplegia, which impacts bimanual coordination and fine motor skills. Robotic-assisted therapy has gained prominence as a contemporary rehabilitation modality, providing augmented motor repetitions and proprioceptive feedback, thereby potentiating neuroplasticity and functional recovery. This pilot study aimed to examine the therapeutic efficacy of a robotic intervention for wrist rehabilitation in two post-stroke adults aged 50–70 years. The intervention protocol, implemented biweekly over four weeks, encompassed 45-minute sessions consisting of passive muscle elongation (5 min) and robotic-facilitated exercises targeting pronation-supination (10 min), flexion-extension (10 min), and radial-ulnar deviation (10 min). Outcome measures included pre- and post-intervention assessments utilizing the motor activity log, Fugl-Meyer Scale, and robotic metrics for muscular strength. Results indicated enhancements in joint range of motion, motor precision, and neuromuscular control, with patient “B” demonstrating superior improvements, particularly in complex motor patterns. In contrast, patient “A” exhibited attenuated progress, attributable to pronounced baseline deficits and fatigue. Specific gains were observed in flexion-extension for patient “A” and pronation-supination for patient “B,” with minimal advancements in radial-ulnar deviation across both subjects. These findings provide preliminary evidence supporting the efficacy of robotic-assisted therapy in motor rehabilitation post-stroke with the novel proposed wrist rehabilitation device.

Grice’s foundational conversation model has inspired a range of influential developments, with various approaches to merging the maxims. This paper addresses unresolved controversies and circular dependencies that have fuelled assumptions of interdependence among the principles. It provides a revision of both Grice’s cooperative principle and the principles of truthfulness, relevance, informativeness and clarity, and extends them to include a principle of social conformity, which I collectively refer to as the TRICS-Principles. I demonstrate that the TRICS-Principles operate independently of each other at different levels and show the extent to which the other principles may function under the umbrella of a flouted principle of truthfulness. Furthermore, I distinguish the principle of social conformity from the concept of politeness, offering a nuanced perspective on their relationship. Finally, I provide new insights into factors influencing shifts in the prioritisation of the TRICS-Principles.

We extend the definition of the X-Rokhlin property to countable discrete groups and prove some permanence properties. If the action of a countable discrete group on X is free and minimal and the action of this group on the separable simple $C^*$-algebra has the X-Rokhlin property, then the reduced crossed product is simple.

In Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community? the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. speaks with conviction on the need for and importance of community. King depicts American society and modern civilization as a great “world house” that is inhabited, inherited—and imperiled. Behind the metaphor of the world house is a prophetic vision and dream—the realization of what he called the “beloved community.” In this article, the author considers King’s beloved community ideal through a housing lens. Engaging with King’s metaphor, the author frames the beloved community as an apologetic for integrated community. The author views the metaphor of the world house as a significant means to expand understanding of beloved community, elevate housing as a moral-ethical concern, and engender radical structural solutions that can be realized through racial justice in the housing sector.

This article contributes to the ongoing debate on reactionary internationalism by linking it with scholarly discussions on civilisation and civilisationism, which have mostly been running in parallel trajectories. By doing so, it attempts to address the question of how the radical right, rooted in numerous particularisms, such as cultural, national, and religious, has managed to foster a global movement with an internationalist ideology that poses a significant challenge to the liberal international order. Through an analysis of the relevant literature and a case study of the Serbian radical right, this article tries to elucidate this question and bridge the gap between the two debates by demonstrating that civilisationism forms the core of reactionary internationalism, unifying the radical right from the West to the East. This article examines the Serbian case and its history of civilisational and geopolitical reactions as a possible paradigm for the contemporary radical right in general. Furthermore, it explores the role of Russian revisionism and war in Ukraine in shaping this civilisational discourse, specifically considering the narratives built around the Serbian foreign fighters’ network in Ukraine. An additional contribution of this article is that it provides a non-Western perspective on civilisation, religion, and nationalism.

Often in Software Engineering, a modeling formalism has to support scenarios of inconsistency in which several requirements either reinforce or contradict each other. Paraconsistent transition systems are proposed in this paper as one such formalism: states evolve through two accessibility relations capturing weighted evidence of a transition or its absence, respectively. Their weights come, parametrically, from a residuated lattice. This paper explores both i) a category of these systems, and the corresponding compositional operators and ii) a modal logic to reason upon them. Furthermore, two notions of crisp and graded simulation and bisimulation are introduced in order to relate two paraconsistent transition systems. Finally, results of modal invariance, for specific subsets of formulas, are discussed.

Brun’s constant is the summation of the reciprocals of all twin primes, given by

$$ \begin{align*}B=\sum_{p \in P_2}{\bigg( \frac{1}{p} + \frac{1}{p+2}\bigg)}.\end{align*} $$

While rigorous unconditional bounds on B are known, we present the first rigorous bound on Brun’s constant under the assumption of GRH, yielding $B < 2.1594$.

This article documents the legal and social history of “distress for rent” (also known as rent distraint) in early Republic New York, a legal tool that allowed landlords whose tenants were in arrears to seize tenants’ belongings and sell them to offset the cost of the unpaid rent. Rent distraint was a practice and topic around which New Yorkers contested ideological and practical conceptions of class, the rights of property, the role of law, and welfare. In 1811, New York City officials began tracking tenants in arrears of rent, creating a deep archive of documents that reveal the nuances of landlord-tenant relations and subsistence in this period. This article follows that paper trail, exploring distraint in this context as a legal remedy, as an experience with major impacts on individuals’ lives, and of efforts to reform the law and the lived experience of law. In the first decades of the nineteenth century, poor, middling, and wealthy New Yorkers were engaged in knowledge exchange around distraint and the social categories and experiences associated with it. Their stories document a materialist sensibility that crossed class lines and was attuned to the practical dimensions of working people’s living conditions.

Malta was a British colony for over 150 years until it became independent in 1964. Though the presence of the British in Malta was considerable and permeated all sectors of Maltese life and culture, the island’s commercial and cultural ties with neighbouring Italy never ceased. This article aims to analyse how Malta’s cultural sympathies and affinities with Italy alongside British colonialism contributed to the musical growth of the wind band tradition in Malta between the mid-nineteenth and the mid-twentieth century. The co-existence in Malta of the political and cultural conflict brought about by the two competing cultures at this time and, paradoxically, their confluence transpire here as central to processes of musical growth through opportunities for syncretism.

Cystic echinococcosis is a zoonosis caused by Echinococcus granulosus sensu lato, which leads to serious public health problems. Considerable phenotypic variation has been described between parasites depending on the intermediate host and genotype. Knowledge of species/genotypes present in an endemic region is clue for control programs. Although DNA sequencing is the most accurate tool for this purpose, its high cost makes it less affordable. A multivariate study of the morphometric parameters of rostellar hooks of E. granulosus sensu lato of human origin from Neuquén was carried out using Principal Components Analysis and classification trees. A valid classification criterion to differentiate E. granulosus species using morphometry of rostellar hooks in human hydatid cysts was determined. Seventy-six human fertile hydatid cysts (48 E. granulosus sensu stricto G1 and G3, and 28 E. canadensis G6) were included. Overall, 2,280 hooks were measured. The rostellar hooks belonging to E. granulosus sensu stricto were significantly smaller than those of E. canadensis. The Large Total Length (LTL) was sufficient to classify a new isolate into the 2 species: if LTL < 25.3 μm, then it corresponds to E. granulosus sensu stricto, and if LTL ≥ 25.3 μm to E. canadensis. This is the first multivariate study that establishes a morphometric cut-off value to discriminate between 2 species of E. granulosus sensu lato from human patients, using a significant number of cysts of both species identified by sequencing of mitochondrial genes. It constitutes a useful predictive tool in endemic areas where both human infective species overlap.

The scale function plays a significant role in the fluctuation theory of Lévy processes, particularly in addressing exit problems. However, its definition is established through the Laplace transform, which generally lacks an explicit representation. This paper introduces a novel series representation for the scale function, utilizing Laguerre polynomials to construct a uniformly convergent approximation sequence. Additionally, we conduct statistical inference based on specific discrete observations and propose estimators for the scale function that are asymptotically normal.

Norm contestation has become an established research programme in International Relations. However, scholars have yet to scrutinise the form and effect of radical contestation. I argue that radical contestation is a disruptive form of contestation, distinguished by (1) the extensive scope that attacks a specific norm and wider normative order, institutions, and actors sympathetic to the norm, and (2) high emotional intensity in animating contestation. To bring these features of radical contestation together, I use insights from the study of emotions and backlash movements to advance a new ‘emotional backlash’ framework and explain the construction, mobilisation, and outcome of radical contestation. I subsequently apply this framework to analyse the emotional backlash against Rohingya refugees during Covid-19. Cultivated by resentment, the emotional backlash against the Rohingya contests refugee protection norms and extends to radically challenge human rights advocates, United Nations agencies, and the larger humanitarian and cosmopolitan principles. In doing so, backlash supporters aim to restore a society without refugees and their sympathisers, and instead to promote racism as a ‘normal’ organising principle. By capturing radical contestation, this contribution steers norms scholarship towards a new research terrain and highlights the implications that the backlash has for the international refugee regime.