We examine the behavior of Canadian life annuity prices by measuring how quickly and fully they respond to changes in market interest rates. The price responses, though not immediate, start relatively quickly and become more complete over time. Over the whole sample period, the responses appear to be asymmetric – annuity providers generally raise prices faster when interest rates decline than reduce prices when the opposite occurs, which is disadvantageous to annuity customers. In addition, we find unusual annuity price behavior during the period of the 2008 financial crisis.

This Article identifies the problems of an Appellate Mechanism for ISDS Tribunals in relation with its possible benefits. We propose the inclusion of certain design features to improve the working of an eventual Appellate Mechanism and help mitigate problems related to procedural, conflict resolution, and substantive concerns. We finish by identifying the most central problems with a possible Appellate Mechanism, which helps to narrow down options within the ongoing reform process at UNCITRAL. Overall, we illustrate how institutional choice is always contextual and that all institutional options are imperfect and subject to important trade-offs.

Niven’s theorem asserts that $\{\cos (r\pi ) \mid r\in \mathbb {Q}\}\cap \mathbb {Q}=\{0,\pm 1,\pm 1/2\}.$ In this paper, we use elementary techniques and results from arithmetic dynamics to obtain an algorithm for classifying all values in the set $\{\cos (r\pi ) \mid r\in \mathbb {Q}\}\cap K$, where K is an arbitrary number field.

Cultural relevance is a core element of effective psychological interventions like cognitive behaviour therapy (CBT) or family intervention (FI), which can be considered Eurocentric. There have been few studies that have examined explanatory models of mental illness and its management in Pakistan to date. This study elicited patient- and carer-related health beliefs on psychosis including attributions to illness, and help-seeking behaviours to inform development of culturally sensitive treatment and improve outcomes in a unit in Lahore (Pakistan). The study group completed 45 semi-structured qualitative interviews at a mental health rehabilitation centre in Lahore. Data were analysed thematically using emerging themes and content analysis. Participants’ explanatory models for psychosis included religion or faith-driven beliefs, like previous wrong-doing and supernatural ideas such as black magic. Social factors that impacted families included high expectations, social stigma, and discriminations. Families first sought help from faith leaders and then medical or psychological sources of care. Participants had generally positive attitudes about their experience of psychological interventions.

In 2008, Ecuador recognized rights of nature (RoN) in its Constitution. Since then, RoN have been relied upon in judicial decisions 55 times in Ecuador. Following years of ad hoc treatment of RoN by Ecuador's government and courts, its Constitutional Court selected various cases to establish binding jurisprudence in respect of RoN. In doing so, the Constitutional Court and various provincial courts in Ecuador have clarified the content of RoN, including specific criteria for determining RoN violations and the relationship between RoN and other constitutional rights, including community and economic rights related to development. Moreover, the courts are imposing sanctions on RoN violators, including the state and powerful commercial sectors. This article shows how Ecuadorian court decisions are changing RoN from a vague, abstract concept into a set of specific standards for how to balance RoN with various human rights and existing environmental law in order to implement sustainable development in an integrated and holistic manner that does not sacrifice ecosystem functioning. In doing so, the article contributes to the emerging literature on how new environmental law norms are constructed as they are put into practice, as well as the important role that judges play as norm entrepreneurs.

Focusing on four jurisdictions where abortion facilities and providers faced violent attacks following the Morgentaler decision of 1988, this study compares provincial government responses to core feminist demands in the area of women's reproductive health: enhanced hospital access, public funding of clinic abortions and safe zone protections. Consistent with previous research on childcare and anti-violence policies, the study finds that in neoliberal times, the presence of left governing parties in Alberta, British Columbia and Ontario generally favoured abortion rights interests while conservative regimes disadvantaged them. The article contributes valuable new insights in revealing (1) the importance of centrist leaders in Ontario and at the federal level to pro-choice policy changes, (2) the significance of feminist critical actors to these outcomes, and (3) major variation among New Democratic Party provincial governments on abortion policy. The conclusion discusses implications of these results and proposes directions for further research.

During the Dutch Hunger Winter (1944–5), a woman sold ration cards on the Noordplein, one of the busiest streets in Rotterdam. She was paid twenty guilders for each ration card. Her buyers, in turn, resold the coupons for sugar, butter or bread separately in order to make a higher profit. They could make up to 150 guilders per ration card. Not far from there, in Amsterdam, people went to the corner of Rozendwarsstraat to fraudulently buy coupons for bread or wheat cake on the black market. Anyone with seven guilders could buy a slice. Considering that some people only earned twenty-two guilders a week, not everyone could afford to go to the black market for extra calories. Both of these stories were told by women who survived the Dutch Hunger Winter, and are included in Ingrid de Zwarte's recent monograph. They illustrate some of the important contributions that have emerged from recent historical works in the related fields of Hunger and Food Studies. They demonstrate the agency of ordinary and marginalised subjects, particularly women, in the face of scarcity. They reveal the importance of the coping strategies people developed, which allows us to think of these individuals beyond their traditional status as passive victims of scarcity. And they show us how, in the context of hunger and famine, ideas of what was normal or acceptable behaviour could be transformed.

Based on the fundamental principles of social identity theory, this study examines how inclusive leadership can help build employees' organizational identification, stimulate leader-directed helping behavior, and improve task performance by facilitating insider status and relational coordination. Furthermore, we explored how these relationships are conditional on the synergy diversity climate in a moderated mediation model. We collected temporally segregated data (n = 300) from employees in diverse workforces at three time intervals with a 2-week gap between intervals. The results support the indirect effects of inclusive leadership on employee outcomes through the development of perceived insider status and relational coordination. Additionally, these indirect effects are more pronounced at higher levels of a synergy diversity climate. In conclusion, our study offers critical insights into the diversity and leadership literature by answering why and under what conditions an inclusive leader can generate favorable employee outcomes.

El estudio del parentesco permite comprender mejor las sociedades antiguas porque está relacionado con el comportamiento social, económico, político y reproductivo de la población. Es posible conocer la magnitud de la endogamia y hacer inferencias sobre la movilidad de ambos sexos. Una mayor similitud genética promedio dentro de muestras femeninas sugiere mayor migración masculina (modelo de residencia posmarital matrilocal). A la inversa se deduce un modelo de residencia patrilocal y si no hay diferencias se infiere un modelo bilocal. Nuestro objetivo es conocer la divergencia genética entre grupos incas del altiplano del noroeste de Cusco utilizando caracteres cuantitativos del cráneo para estimar el parentesco, el número de migrantes por generación y el patrón de residencia posmarital. Los restos óseos empleados (99 cráneos masculinos y 75 femeninos) proviene de los sitios Paucarcancha, Patallacta y Torontoy. Se aplicaron técnicas de análisis multivariado y modelos derivados de la genética de poblaciones. Existen diferencias morfológicas entre los sitios a pesar de la escasa distancia geográfica. La divergencia genética fue de 0,035 (siete individuos migrantes por generación). La varianza dentro de grupos es similar en ambos sexos (modelo posmarital bilocal). Se discute la evidencia obtenida con otras localidades y subregiones del Área Andina Centro Meridional.

This editorial outlines the formation of a new special interest group (SIG) in evolution and psychiatry. The formative beginnings of the evolutionary psychiatry field and founding of the group in Ireland are presented, identifying central figures of the field and their contributions. Furthermore, key milestones and accomplishments are discussed with current and future directions. Additionally, foundational texts and seminal papers are included to guide the reader in their journey to discover more about evolution and psychiatry. We hope this will be of relevance to those interested in how SIGs form and also to clinicians with an interest in evolutionary psychiatry.

We show how convergence to the Gumbel distribution in an extreme value setting can be understood in an information-theoretic sense. We introduce a new type of score function which behaves well under the maximum operation, and which implies simple expressions for entropy and relative entropy. We show that, assuming certain properties of the von Mises representation, convergence to the Gumbel distribution can be proved in the strong sense of relative entropy.

This article builds on the first in the trilogy, ‘What’s in a Name? An Examination of Current Definitions of Resource Churches’, by evaluating narratives in current literature about the origins of resource churches. These will be assessed according to the criteria, highlighted through the perspective of Foucault and Arendt on origin stories, of believability in their depiction of historical events, application to the manifest properties of contemporary resource churches, teleological purpose, and attentiveness to conflict. The origin, or creation, stories to be examined particularly consider the formation and development of resource churches in relation to the first century and Anglo-Saxon England, as well as following the start of the parish system.

Many water-stressed regions of the globe have a highly seasonal precipitation regime. However, seasonality in the past and under changing climates is little studied. Submonthly records of sclerochronological δ18O and δ13C values of Melanopsis shells from the Jordan River Dureijat archaeological site (JRD) in the upper Jordan River valley presented here document the hydrology of paleo-Lake Hula. These records were assessed for changes in seasonal hydrology in the lake and compared with modern shells collected from present-day waterbodies in northern Israel and with models of δ18Oshell. Results from shells in sediments dating from the last glacial maximum (LGM) to the Bølling-Allerød imply changes in waterbody size that qualitatively parallel changes in the late Pleistocene Lake Lisan levels; Hula Lake was well buffered when Lake Lisan stood at a high stand and poorly buffered when water levels were lower. Furthermore, data from shells dated to the LGM suggest inflowing water with lower δ18O values than local rainfall, providing evidence for a greater proportion of snow in the catchment than today. Reconstruction of water δ18O and mixing-model calculations suggest that snowmelt contribution to spring water during the LGM may have been more than twice the amount in the modern-day catchment.

“The archives are silent.” The starting point of this article is the alleged non-existence of archival sources on the Portuguese massacre of Wiriyamu (1972). The article proves this claim to be false and shows how the available sources can be used to improve our knowledge of the massacre. The article suggests that scholars’ ignorance of these sources is connected to general misconceptions about colonial archives and their alleged silence on wartime atrocities, which are based on the belief that such atrocities do only appear in the sources, if they are read against the grain. Revealing the explicit presence of war atrocities in the sources, the article argues that the legitimate concern about reading such sources against the grain should not prevent us from reading them at all.