The 2018 amendments to the People's Republic of China (PRC) Constitution saw the establishment of a system of supervisory commissions, which is a landmark development not only for anti-corruption, but also constitutional law in China. After providing an overview of the background and legal framework of the reform, this article discusses its constitutional implications from three perspectives. First, the reform alters the long-established state structure and creates interesting dynamics of institutional interactions among various branches of state structure. Second, it marks a reversal from the principle of ‘party-state separation’ and raises difficult issues of interface and transition between the party disciplinary system and the formal legal system. Finally, it legalises the previously extralegal practice of shuanggui (‘double specifications’) and affects the individual rights of those subject to investigation. The article concludes with some brief reflections on what this development indicates for the future of the rule of law in China, and highlights the potential for further research.

This review of recent scholarship (RRS) paper is a follow-up of the first, published in this journal in 2014. For this RRS paper, we identified and included 304 mixed-methods research (MMR) papers published in 20 top-tier applied linguistics (AL) journals. We used a six-pronged quality and transparency framework to review and analyze the MMR studies, drawing on six quality frameworks and transparency discussions in the MMR literature. Using the quality and transparency framework, we report on: (1) which sources AL MMR researchers use to frame their studies, (2) how explicitly they explain the purpose and design structure of the MMR studies, (3) how transparently they describe method features (sampling procedures, data sources, and data analysis), and (4) how they integrate quantitative and qualitative data and analyses and construct meta-inferences. The results of the analyses will be reported and will show how MMR has developed and is represented in the published articles in the second decade of the twenty-first century. The discussion of the results will also highlight the areas future AL MMR researchers need to consider to make their studies and reports more rigorous and transparent.

In our paper, we study multiplicative properties of difference sets $A-A$ for large sets $A \subseteq {\mathbb {Z}}/q{\mathbb {Z}}$ in the case of composite q. We obtain a quantitative version of a result of A. Fish about the structure of the product sets $(A-A)(A-A)$. Also, we show that the multiplicative covering number of any difference set is always small.

In noncausal explanations, some noncausal facts (such as mathematical, modal, or metaphysical) are used to explain some physical facts. However, precisely because these explanations abstract away from causal facts, they face two challenges: (1) it is not clear why one rather than the other noncausal explanantia would be relevant for the explanandum; and (2) why would standing in a particular explanatory relation (e.g., “counterfactual dependence,” “constraint,” “entailment,” “constitution,” and “grounding”), and not in some other, be explanatory. I develop an explanatory relevance account that is based on erotetic constraints and show how it addresses these two challenges.

Acteonellids were one of the most significant groups of marine macro-invertebrates in the Late Cretaceous biota of the Tethyan Realm. They were common faunal elements associated with Cretaceous carbonate platform communities most notable for their abundance of rudist frameworks and thrived in coeval lagoons. The Upper Cretaceous fossil-bearing Karababa Formation, cropping out in southeastern Turkey, yields a remarkable assemblage of acteonellid gastropods and rudists. Cretaceous gastropods from sedimentary successions in Turkey barely have been studied over the past 80 years. The subgenus Trochactaeon, a very successful and widespread taxon of heterobranch gastropods within the family Acteonellidae, dominated acteonellid assemblages throughout the Late Cretaceous. In the present work, we present the first record of Trochactaeon (Trochactaeon) giganteus subglobosus from Turkey. It is from a single lower Campanian bed in the upper part of the Karababa Formation of the Gölbaşı region (south of Adıyaman), corresponding to the northwestern part of the Arabian Platform. This record complements information on the temporal and spatial distribution of Trochactaeon at the southern margin of the Tethyan Ocean during the last part of the Cretaceous Period. This discovery increases the documented diversity of the paleofauna from the Upper Cretaceous succession in southeastern Turkey and provides new insights into the paleoenvironment of the carbonate ramp of the northern Arabian plate, and the paleobiogeography of Campanian gastropods in general.

Infrastructure has been the focus of geopolitically significant regional strategies, including the Belt and Road Initiative and the Asian Highway. Mega-infrastructure projects are thought to offer crucial stimulus to support economic recovery and “infrastructure diplomacy” efforts. Transportation projects, like roads, are material objects that offer complex questions for international law, most obviously when projects or their impacts cross borders. They are long-term and long-distance, with varying impacts upon closer and further populations and environments across the construction and life of the asset. This article draws on insights from new materialism to analyse what infrastructure's entanglements might suggest about international law. The relationship between international law and transportation infrastructure is contingent. However, there is a pattern to this contingency that foregrounds funding “gaps”, investment protections, and risk assessments, which minimizes intersecting impacts and human/non-human relationships.

The “psychologist’s green thumb” refers to the argument that an experimenter needs an indeterminate set of skills to successfully replicate an effect. This argument is sometimes invoked by psychological researchers to explain away failures of independent replication attempts of their work. In this article, I assess the psychologist’s green thumb as a candidate explanation for individual replication failure and argue that it is potentially costly for psychology as a field. I also present other, more likely reasons for these replication failures. I conclude that appealing to a psychologist’s green thumb is not a convincing explanation for replication failure.

Branched-chain amino acids (BCAA: leucine, isoleucine and valine) are three of the nine indispensable amino acids, and are frequently consumed as a dietary supplement by athletes and recreationally active individuals alike. The popularity of BCAA supplements is largely predicated on the notion that they can stimulate rates of muscle protein synthesis (MPS) and suppress rates of muscle protein breakdown (MPB), the combination of which promotes a net anabolic response in skeletal muscle. To date, several studies have shown that BCAA (particularly leucine) increase the phosphorylation status of key proteins within the mechanistic target of rapamycin (mTOR) signalling pathway involved in the regulation of translation initiation in human muscle. Early research in humans demonstrated that BCAA provision reduced indices of whole-body protein breakdown and MPB; however, there was no stimulatory effect of BCAA on MPS. In contrast, recent work has demonstrated that BCAA intake can stimulate postprandial MPS rates at rest and can further increase MPS rates during recovery after a bout of resistance exercise. The purpose of this evidence-based narrative review is to critically appraise the available research pertaining to studies examining the effects of BCAA on MPS, MPB and associated molecular signalling responses in humans. Overall, BCAA can activate molecular pathways that regulate translation initiation, reduce indices of whole-body and MPB, and transiently stimulate MPS rates. However, the stimulatory effect of BCAA on MPS rates is less than the response observed following ingestion of a complete protein source providing the full complement of indispensable amino acids.

Do we have free will? In this interview, Helen Steward explains part of her very distinctive approach to the philosophical puzzle concerning free will vs determinism. Steward rejects determinism, but not because she denies that we are not material beings (because, for example, we have Cartesian, immaterial souls that have physical effects). Her reasons for rejecting determinism are very different.

Some scientific models and some claims about model–target relations are fruitfully diagnosed as dogwhistles. Dogwhistles, broadly speaking, are speech acts that send different, conflicting, and often differentially inflammatory messages to listeners. I distinguish two ways in which scientific models can be dogwhistles: representational dogwhistling and fit-for-purpose dogwhistling. I illustrate both kinds of dogwhistling using an example from computational social science, the diversity trumps ability theorem. I argue that dogwhistling threatens the objectivity of science, and I propose some ameliorative strategies.

Natural resource extraction is an important livelihood strategy for poor rural households in developing and emerging countries. Despite the sharp decline in poverty in Vietnam, inequality still exists between the ethnic majority and minority. This paper aims to analyze the impact of natural resource extraction on ethnic inequality. We use panel data from Dak Lak in the Central Highlands of Vietnam. The Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition shows that ethnic differences in extraction are due to different group characteristics and different returns to these characteristics. Endogenous switching regressions find that extraction has heterogeneous effects on consumption across extracting and non-extracting households, and between majority and minority households. Treatment effects suggest that extraction sustains the consumption of extracting minority households because their consumption would decline if they stopped extracting. Our results indicate that it is important to improve the natural resource base and the ability of minorities to cope with shocks.

This paper describes the results from a project to obtain radiocarbon determinations from Early Bronze Age log coffin burials. Log coffins have been recognised as a burial tradition since antiquarian excavations uncovered the first examples. However, comparatively few are associated with radiocarbon determinations and many old determinations are very imprecise. To address this, seven log coffin burials were identified across England, and 11 samples from these were submitted for radiocarbon dating. The dates from the project were reviewed with previously obtained reliable determinations to reconsider the origins and development of the log coffin burial by region. The resulting study indicates that the earliest log coffins were associated with Beaker burials but that regional variations involving different rites soon developed.

Monarchy is a form of government that, roughly, dictates that the right to rule is inherited by birth by a single ruler. But monarchy (absolute or constitutional) breaches fundamental moral principles that undergird representative democracy, such as basic moral equality, dignity and desert. Simply put, the monarchs (and their family) are treated as morally superior to ordinary citizens and as a result ordinary citizens are treated in an unfair and undignified manner. For example, monarchs are respected, enjoy dignity, income, opportunity, public office and exalted social status just because of their inherited office, which is due to the mere historical accident of family lineage. Hence, we have good moral reason to abolish monarchy. Finally, I briefly reply to the pragmatic argument for constitutional monarchy, namely, the argument that monarchy can be allowed to play a largely ceremonial role in the context of democracy because it is beneficial for the function of society. As I argue, societies run by presidential democracies can function equally well and, what is more, no matter what the pragmatic reasons for constitutional monarchy are, we still have stronger moral reasons against it. Therefore, it should be abolished.

The presence and influence of peripheral elites in national political institutions is frequently handled by the press. But, oddly enough, the lack of a comprehensive vision of this issue tends to feed flashy titles alerting about the influence of some territorial groups in central institutions such as the “Scottish Raj,” the “Tartan mafia,” or the “Cosa Scotia” in London. This article aims to provide a general theoretical framework able to orient those fragmented researches. This literature review was led from May 2018 to June 2020. It presents those results in six sections. The ways in which peripheral elites get access to central institutions are analyzed in the first section. In the second section, we introduce the literature about the presence of peripheral elites in the state apparatus, before stressing the different networks representing the interests of peripheries in the city capitals in section three. Fourth, this article points out the various career orientations of peripheral elected officials. This leads us to question their policy influence in different fields. Lastly, a short section tackles the phobias provoked by the rise of peripheral elites occupying central political positions, before proposing a general framework for orienting future research on this topic.

What should we do about climate change? This article examines the ethical problems that arise from climate change, and considers our obligations and responsibilities to one another, other species and the planet because of global warming.