This experiment was conducted to investigate whether dietary chenodeoxycholic acid (CDCA) could attenuate high-fat (HF) diet-induced growth retardation, lipid accumulation and bile acid (BA) metabolism disorder in the liver of yellow catfish Pelteobagrus fulvidraco. Yellow catfish (initial weight: 4·40 (sem 0·08) g) were fed four diets: the control (105·8 g/kg lipid), HF diet (HF group, 159·6 g/kg lipid), the control supplemented with 0·9 g/kg CDCA (CDCA group) and HF diet supplemented with 0·9 g/kg CDCA (HF + CDCA group). CDCA supplemented in the HF diet significantly improved growth performance and feed utilisation of yellow catfish (P < 0·05). CDCA alleviated HF-induced increment of hepatic lipid and cholesterol contents by down-regulating the expressions of lipogenesis-related genes and proteins and up-regulating the expressions of lipololysis-related genes and proteins. Compared with the control group, CDCA group significantly reduced cholesterol level (P < 0·05). CDCA significantly inhibited BA biosynthesis and changed BA profile by activating farnesoid X receptor (P < 0·05). The contents of CDCA, taurochenodeoxycholic acid and glycochenodeoxycholic acid were significantly increased with the supplementation of CDCA (P < 0·05). HF-induced elevation of cholic acid content was significantly attenuated by the supplementation of CDCA (P < 0·05). Supplementation of CDCA in the control and HF groups could improve the liver antioxidant capacity. This study proved that CDCA could improve growth retardation, lipid accumulation and BA metabolism disorder induced by HF diet, which provided new insight into understanding the physiological functions of BA in fish.

The problem of quantity is the problem of identifying what about the physical world explains why it can be so well represented with mathematical entities. I introduce “quantitative primitivism,” the dominant position in the literature, which offers only a partial solution to the problem of quantity. I argue that a reductive account of quantitativeness provides a full solution to the problem and describe two reductive accounts in the literature. I discuss some of the unique metaphysical consequences of reductive accounts of quantity, including a novel dissolution to the long-standing absolutist–comparativist debate.

At the turn of the twentieth century, Greek jurists insisted that the Ottoman Empire was legally pluralistic. While one jurist acknowledged the Sultan's ‘political purpose' in respecting the Greeks' privileges, another denied Muslims any agency free from Sharia. The alleged incommensurability between the Christian and Islamic law was their common agenda. Greek historians, on the other hand, saw the privileges as the Turks’ sign of goodwill, and emphasized the civilizational gap between the Catholic West and Ottoman East. Being a normative expression rather than a neutral description, legal pluralism functioned as a method of neglecting the Muslim quest for legal unity.

Defence Science and Technology Group (DSTG) is currently preparing for the launch of the Buccaneer Main Mission (BMM) satellite, the successor to the Buccaneer Risk Mitigation Mission (BRMM). BMM hosts a high-frequency (HF) antenna and receiver to contribute to the calibration of the Jindalee Operational Radar Network (JORN). Verification of the successful deployment and stability of the large HF antenna is critical to the success of the mission. A bespoke deployable optics payload has been developed by DSTG to fulfil the dual purpose of direct verification of the deployed state of the HF antenna and capturing images of the Earth through a rotatable, dual-surfaced mirror and a variable-focus liquid lens. The payload advances research at DSTG in several fields of space engineering, including deployable mechanisms, precision actuation devices, radiation-tolerant electronics, advanced metal polishing and optical metrology. This paper discusses the payload design, material selection, trade-offs considered for the deployable optics payload and preliminary test results.

Kolmogorov conditionalization is a strategy for updating credences based on propositions that have initial probability 0. I explore the connection between Kolmogorov conditionalization and Dutch books. Previous discussions of the connection rely crucially upon a factivity assumption: they assume that the agent updates credences based on true propositions. The factivity assumption discounts cases of misplaced certainty, i.e., cases where the agent invests credence 1 in a falsehood. Yet misplaced certainty arises routinely in scientific and philosophical applications of Bayesian decision theory. I prove a non-factive Dutch book theorem and converse Dutch book theorem for Kolmogorov conditionalization. The theorems do not rely upon the factivity assumption, so they establish that Kolmogorov conditionalization has unique pragmatic virtues that persist even in cases of misplaced certainty.

Vietnam’s initial response to Covid-19 was conspicuous for various reasons, including how its attempt at securitisation drew deeply from historical narratives, symbols, and traditions specific to the Vietnamese experience, as well as how the securitisation project was not simply top-down and state-driven but also featured ground-up participation where the public was mobilised to participate in and actively reiterate securitisation practices. This richly textured empirical case study of the workings of Vietnamese society and politics represents an invitation to explore key debates surrounding securitisation theory. Reflecting on the empirical material of the case, this paper builds on scholarship seeking to highlight the shortcomings of the Copenhagen School’s model of securitisation and from there further explore securitisation theory and its limits. It takes aim at how the audience and its agency is conceptualised in the theory and develops the notions of ‘historical resources’ and ‘activation architecture’ to more adequately explain the processes of securitisation.

Firms falling short of earnings expectations are more likely to cite stakeholder-focused objectives in their public communications following earnings announcements. This behavior is consistent with managers preferring to be evaluated by subjective stakeholder-based performance criteria when falling short on objective shareholder-based measures. This increased use of stakeholder language is most evident among firms narrowly missing earnings estimates and appears unrelated to a firm’s actual environmental, social, and governance (ESG)-related activity. Stakeholder language appears to influence the evaluation of CEOs; turnover–performance sensitivity is lower for managers citing stakeholder value. Collectively, our findings are consistent with concerns that stakeholder objectives reduce managerial accountability for poor performance.

In utero idiopathic constriction of the arterial duct is a rare condition with only a handful reported cases. Ductal aneurysms with thrombus formations on the other hand are significantly more common. We report a case of a term infant who presented with right heart failure due to premature ductal closure and postnatal severe respiratory distress. Subsequent diagnostics revealed paresis of left laryngeal nerve and obstruction of the left pulmonary artery secondary to a ductal aneurysm. Consequently, surgical intervention was considered necessary. Post-operatively, right ventricular function and hoarseness resolved slowly.

The cost-of-living crisis that began in the aftermath of the COVID-19 crisis and the attempted Russian invasion of Ukraine has major implications for social policy. In advanced industrial countries, this is the most dramatic cost-of-living crisis since the mid-late 1970s and early 1980s. In this contribution, we explore the inflation and social policy nexus to identify the nature and sources of inflation, its redistributive and policy implications, and the specific nature of the current cost-of-living crisis compared to two other recent crises: the 2008 financial crisis and the COVID-19 pandemic. Focusing on advanced industrial countries and drawing on the available scholarship about these topics, we offer the background necessary to understand the challenges facing welfare states in times of dramatically high inflation. As a way to provide broad context to the present themed section, our discussion stresses the economic, social, and political dynamics shaping social policy adaptation to inflationary pressures.

The Structure-Conduct-Performance paradigm was the core framework of industrial organization for two decades, and had a significant impact on competition policy from the 1950s through the 1970s. This essay considers what made the SCP framework so influential in the United States, the shortcomings economists identified in the framework during the shift to the “new IO” in the late 1970s, and the lasting contributions that the SCP paradigm made on policy and the study of industry and competition.

In this article I argue that the judicial concept of non-marriage racialises and orientalises minoritised communities and their marriages. Applying a critical postcolonial lens, I show how the development of non-marriage has been influenced by colonial racialising attitudes towards marriage. This has led to its application in racist and orientalist ways to demean and other minoritised marriage practices. My analysis of the case law exposes three patterns in the judicial discourse in this area. First, that the courts emphasise “English (Christian) marriage” and its supposed hallmarks when deciding if a ceremony is non-existent; second that judgments foreground the technical, formal aspects of the law obscuring the use of personal judicial opinions which are orientalist. Finally, the application of this concept to playacting, sham and forced marriages at the same time as legitimate minoritised marriage practices is demeaning and insulting to the already marginalised communities that practise them.

Hyperelliptic mapping class groups are defined either as the centralizers of hyperelliptic involutions inside mapping class groups of oriented surfaces of finite type or as the inverse images of these centralizers by the natural epimorphisms between mapping class groups of surfaces with marked points. We study these groups in a systematic way. An application of this theory is a counterexample to the genus $2$ case of a conjecture by Putman and Wieland on virtual linear representations of mapping class groups. In the last section, we study profinite completions of hyperelliptic mapping class groups: we extend the congruence subgroup property to the general class of hyperelliptic mapping class groups introduced above and then determine the centralizers of multitwists and of open subgroups in their profinite completions.

We present case studies on three objects of high importance for cultural heritage in southern Poland, dated in years 2018–2022 at the Gliwice 14C and Mass Spectrometry Laboratory with radiocarbon (14C) and dendrochronology methods. The first was a richly ornamented wooden cane, discovered during excavations on the market in Bytom city. The cane can be associated with medieval court proceedings. The archaeological context indicates the 13th century AD, and the 14C result corresponds perfectly with this time, confirming that it is the oldest object of this type in Poland. The second was a 4-m-tall oak column from St. Leonard Church in Lipnica Murowana, a UNESCO heritage site. The local story said it was previously devoted to Światowid, a pagan deity. Our analysis excluded the pre-Christian age, as the tree was felled no earlier than the late 15th century, which is in agreement with historical records. The third was a wooden Saint Lawrence Church in Bobrowniki. The presbytery was covered with up to five layers of polychromic paintings, some of high artistic value. We dated three samples from the original wooden board, and by wiggle-matching, the calibrated age interval was narrowed to 1731–1754 cal AD.

Although common, little is known about the potential impacts of sibling victimization, and how best to ameliorate these. We explored longitudinal associations between sibling victimization and mental health and wellbeing outcomes, and promotive and risk factors that predicted better or worse outcomes following victimization. Data were from >12,000 participants in the Millennium Cohort Study, a longitudinal UK birth cohort, who reported on sibling victimization at age 11 and/or 14 years. We identified potential risk and promotive factors at family, peer, school, and neighborhood levels from age 14 data. Mental health and wellbeing outcomes (internalizing and externalizing problems, mental wellbeing, self-harm) were collected at age 17. Results suggested that over and above pre-existing individual and family level vulnerabilities, experiencing sibling victimization was associated with significantly worse mental health and wellbeing. Having no close friends was a risk factor for worse-than-expected outcomes following victimization. Higher levels of school motivation and engagement was a promotive factor for better-than-expected outcomes. This indicates that aspects of the school environment may offer both risk and promotive factors for children experiencing sibling victimization at home. We argue that effective sibling victimization interventions should be extended to include a focus on factors at the school level.

While there is disagreement over the value of public shaming, scholars largely agree that social media introduce pathologies. But while scholars rightly identify the effects of online public shaming (OPS), they misidentify the cause. Rather than solely a problem of scale, OPS’s effects are also shaped by the network structure within which they take place. In this article, I argue that the social conditions necessary for productive public shaming are more likely to obtain in a closed social network structure. Using the cases of Twitter, Wikipedia, and Reddit, I show how the design of social media platforms facilitates different network structures among users, with differing results for OPS. In evaluating OPS by way of network structure, I argue, we can not only better understand why OPS works productively in some cases and not in others, but also derive lessons for how to deploy, discuss, and respond to it more effectively.

I develop a model revealing the interplay between a stock’s liquidity and the policies and value of the issuing firm. The model shows that bid-ask spreads increase not only the firm’s cost of capital but also the opportunity cost of cash, then lowering cash reserves, increasing liquidation risk, and reducing firm value. These outcomes are stronger when internalized by liquidity providers, simultaneously leading to a wider bid-ask spread. A two-way relation between the firm and the liquidity of its stock arises, implying that shocks arising within the firm or in the stock market have more complex implications than previously understood.