Unlike with randomized controlled trials (RCTs) in clinical research, little has been said about the ethical principles that should regulate the use of RCTs in experimental development economics. One well-known principle in clinical research ethics is the principle of clinical equipoise. Some recent commentators suggest that an analogue of clinical equipoise should play a role in experimental development economics. In this article, I first highlight some difficulties with importing the concept to experimental development economics. I then argue that MacKay’s (2018, 2020) notion of policy equipoise avoids these difficulties and has a role to play in experimental development economics.

While there is evidence that childhood maltreatment (CM) is positively associated with drug use (DU), the strength and difference of the association between CM and its subtypes (hereafter CM + ST) and DU remains to be further explored. A multilevel meta-analysis was conducted on 101 independent studies reporting 333 effect sizes (N = 132,341; Mage = 24.65; 43.80%males). Results showed significantly positive correlations between CM + ST and DU (range from 0.109 to 0.185). The results of the subgroup analysis revealed notable disparities in the correlations between distinct CM subtypes and DU (F = 5.358, P<0.01). Specifically, the effect size for childhood sexual abuse (CSA) was significantly lower than childhood emotional maltreatment (CEM) and childhood physical maltreatment (CPM), while no significant difference was noted between the CEM and CPM groups. These effect sizes also varied across regions, drug types, gender, detection rate of CM, the presence or absence of alcohol in substances, publication status and measurement method. The significant yet differing correlations between different subtypes of CM and DU to some extent support the principle of equality in psychopathology. These findings help explain the relationship between CM + ST and DU laying the groundwork for further research into the intricate and complex associations between CM and DU.

We prove the following restricted projection theorem. Let $n\ge 3$ and $\Sigma \subset S^{n}$ be an $(n-1)$-dimensional $C^2$ manifold such that $\Sigma$ has sectional curvature $\gt1$. Let $Z \subset \mathbb{R}^{n+1}$ be analytic and let $0 \lt s \lt \min\{\dim Z, 1\}$. Then

\begin{equation*} \dim \{z \in \Sigma\; :\; \dim (Z \cdot z) \lt s\} \le (n-2)+s = (n-1) + (s-1) \lt n-1.\end{equation*}

$z \in \Sigma$

$\dim (Z \cdot z) = \min\{\dim Z, 1\}$

The core idea, originated from Käenmäki–Orponen–Venieri, is to transfer the restricted projection problem to the study of the dimension lower bound of Furstenberg sets of cinematic family contained in $C^2([0,1]^{n-1})$. This cinematic family of functions with multivariables are extensions of those of one variable by Pramanik–Yang–Zahl and Sogge. Since the Furstenberg sets of cinematic family contain the affine Furstenberg sets as a special case, the dimension lower bound of Furstenberg sets improves the one by Héra, Héra–Keleti–Máthé and Dąbrowski–Orponen–Villa.

Moreover, our method to show the restricted projection theorem can also give a new proof for the Mattila projection theorem in $\mathbb{R}^n$ with $n \ge 3$.

When people reach for symbolic language like metaphor in an effort to express their understanding of a complex experience like baby and pregnancy loss it is usually because everyday language is inadequate. We demonstrate how an analysis of people’s accounts of stillbirth, miscarriage and termination for fetal anomaly collected in England suggests a variety of explanations for “what remains” after pregnancy loss. These include bodily traces, ashes, symbolic objects, and social relationships: a range indicative of the different physical, material, and affective elements that inform how a person understands bodily and temporal separation after pregnancy loss. We engage with the work of feminist philosophers who critique models of pregnant embodiment; those who propose parthood, and theorists who argue for more complex models of intercorporeal relationality. We then discuss insights from linguistics about embodied cognition and metaphorical language. Paying critical attention to symbolic language, combined with feminist thinking about intercorporeality, offers a methodology for analyzing the embodied metaphors that people use when they talk about their experiences of pregnancy loss. These articulations about “what remains” support our claim that the intercorporeal model of embodiment should be extended spatially and temporally beyond the moment of physical separation following pregnancy loss.

Screw theory serves as an influential mathematical tool, significantly contributing to mechanical engineering, with particular relevance to mechanism science and robotics. The instantaneous screw and the finite displacement screw have been used to analyse the degree of freedom and perform kinematic analysis of linkage mechanisms with only lower pairs. However, they are not suitable for higher pair mechanisms, which can achieve complex motions with a more concise structure by reasonably designing contact contours, and they possess advantages in some particular areas. Therefore, to improve the adaptability of screw theory, this paper aims to analyse higher kinematic pair (HKP) mechanisms and proposes a method to extend instantaneous screw and finite displacement screw theory. This method can not only analyse the instantaneous degree of freedom of HKP mechanisms but also determine the relationships between the motion variables of HKP mechanisms. Furthermore, this method is applied to calculate the degree of freedom and the relationships between the motion angles in both planar and spatial cam mechanisms, thereby demonstrating its efficiency and advantages.

Variation in wild bee assemblages along climatic gradients is still poorly known, particularly in eastern Canada. In this study, we assessed wild bee communities in forest stands that were recently clearcut along a latitudinal bioclimatic gradient. The analyses were conducted at two taxonomic levels: first at the genus level for bees as a whole (Anthophila) and then at the species level for bumble bees (Bombus spp. Latreille) (Hymenoptera: Apidae). Coloured pan traps were used to catch bees and a point-intercept method was used to survey floristic composition at each site. Abundance and richness of Anthophila genera and abundance of bumble bee species were inversely related to latitude, but richness of bumble bee species was not, being instead associated with sections of the gradient. These results indicate that the relationship between wild bee diversity and latitude varies among taxa and that climate and floristic resources probably each play a role. Bombus terricola, a species of concern in eastern Canada, was found in relatively high numbers throughout the study area. To our knowledge, this study provides the first assessment of wild bees in clearcuts in the province of Quebec, showing a clear differentiation of the communities along a spatial bioclimatic gradient.

From the thought of mid-twentieth-century Mexican philosopher Jorge Portilla (1919–1964), I develop a three-prong existentialist response to the problem of evil. One prong is granting that a version of the problem of evil is successful: no theodicy is credible while beholding innocent suffering. A second prong involves an affective engagement with evil that facilitates a loving human flourishing grounded in solidarity with sufferers, compassion, loving self-sacrifice, and taking responsibility for one’s own culpability. The final prong is the capacity of this affective engagement with evil to permit a belief in God as an existential commitment to a suffering God as a transcendental ideal of self-sacrificing love that guides one’s perpetual project of self-creation.

This article examines Coimbra City Council’s role in meat supply from the seventeenth to early nineteenth centuries. Focusing on public–private dynamics, it highlights how private contractors were tasked with providing fresh meat. The article explores how transaction costs and risk influenced contract delegation, revealing the council’s risk-averse preference for indirect supply. While this approach shaped contract decisions, it proved insufficient in limiting rising real meat prices or boosting per capita consumption. Using Coimbra as a case study, the article illustrates broader challenges in municipal supply systems and their limited ability to ensure both the affordability and availability of essential foodstuffs.

Psoriasis is a chronic debilitating skin disease affecting 2 % of the UK population. The aetiopathogenesis of psoriasis arises from a combination of genetic susceptibly and lifestyle patterns including stress, infections, alcohol misuse, lack of physical activity and adiposity. This unfavourable gene-lifestyle pairing triggers a series of inflammatory responses resulting in the uncontrolled proliferation of skin cells characteristic of psoriasis, which at present is an incurable disease. Concurrent with the systemic nature of the condition, psoriasis has effects beyond the skin with concomitant cardiometabolic complications, arthritis, gastrointestinal diseases and depression, emphasising the need for other strategies beyond pharmaceutical therapies to support psoriasis treatments. The role of diet in psoriasis management has not been clearly established and only two evidence-based recommendations are available for people with psoriasis. This review aims to critically appraise the research examining dietary patterns in psoriasis populations, highlight the gaps in the evidence-base, and present directions for future research.

Historians of capitalism have put monopoly corporations and slavery at the heart of the history of a political-economic system long mythologized as founded on free markets. Liberal political economic theory, presupposing and demanding a private economic realm free from state intervention that would drive world-historical progress, was partly a reaction to the long sway of corporations that collapsed distinctions between private and public. The categories of liberal social-scientific thought have now come to so thoroughly structure historical writing aimed at wider audiences that scholarly review isn't sufficient guard against its accidental and artificial separation of public and private in a manner reinforcing liberal myths about historical evolution. This essay shows how writerly habits that posit untenable distinctions between state and private actors, that invoke models of development invented in the colonial era, and that neglect critiques by minoritized scholars, extend myths about British imperialism and industrialism's fundamentally developmental (rather than exploitative and extractive) role and imperialism's economic benefit to only a narrow sector of British society. These theoretical and historiographical assumptions expand the space for politically motivated challenges to well-established knowledge that Britain prospered economically from empire and slavery. This essay places Philip Stern's Empire, Incorporated and Maxine Berg and Pat Hudson's Slavery, Capitalism and the Industrial Revolution in conversation with work by scholars (often from formerly colonized regions) who have more decisively diagnosed Britain's debts to the imperial past, to illustrate how the framing of these books eases the downplaying of the economic effects of imperialism and slavery in debates about Britain's past.1

This paper studies the role of central bank communication for the monetary policy transmission mechanism using text analysis techniques. In doing so, we derive sentiment measures from European Central Bank (ECB)’s press conferences indicating a dovish or hawkish tone referring to interest rates, inflation, and unemployment. We provide strong evidence for predictability of our sentiments on interbank interest rates, even after controlling for actual policy rate changes. We also find that our sentiment indicators offer predictive power for professionals’ expectations, the disagreement among them, and their uncertainty regarding future inflation as well as future interest rates. Policy communication shocks identified through sign restrictions based on our sentiment measure also have significant effects on real outcomes. Overall, our findings highlight the importance of the tone of central bank communication for the transmission mechanism of monetary policy, but also indicate the necessity of refinements of the communication policies implemented by the ECB to better anchor inflation expectations at the target level and to reduce uncertainty regarding the future path of monetary policy.

In December 1937, influential physician and politician Lord Dawson of Penn introduced an Infanticide Bill into the House of Lords. Seven months later, following minor amendments, Dawson’s Bill passed into law as the Infanticide Act, 1938. This legislation significantly altered the earlier provisions of the Infanticide Act, 1922, which introduced the offence of infanticide into English and Welsh courtrooms for the first time. Under Dawson’s reforms, a woman could be found guilty of infanticide rather than capital murder if the killing of her child, aged no more than one year old, could be attributed to a disturbance in the balance of the mother’s mind following childbirth or from lactation. Although the language and implications of the 1938 Act have ignited significant debate within legal scholarship, the creation of Dawson’s Bill and the leading role medical practitioners played in its enactment have received limited attention from historians. This article helps to address this gap by analyzing the critical response of the inter-war British medical profession to the question of infanticide reform against a backdrop of growing psychiatric ambivalence about a causal link between insanity and female reproductive states. Crucially, this paper contends that ancillary concerns over citizenship, motherhood, and the health of the nation informed Dawson’s motivations and justification for infanticide reform during the 1930s. It also seeks to foreground the physician’s distinct contribution to the birth of the 1938 Act by underscoring his efforts in devising and promoting the Bill within Parliament and among inter-war medical and legal communities.

Crete has long been celebrated as the cradle of Greek sculpture. This acknowledgement relies partly on the literary ‘phantom’ of Daidalos and partly on the copious finds of early, especially seventh-century BC, sculpture from the island. Although Knossos and its region are prominent in the literary tradition on the works of Daidalos and have produced numerous early sculptures, this has largely been ignored. My paper addresses the problem and argues for the significance of the evidence from Knossos for the study of early Greek sculpture. The argument is grounded on the publication of three sculptures from the site: two mid to late seventh-century BC fragments of architectural sculpture and a head of a probably free-standing work of the mid sixth century BC, the last piece falling within the alleged Archaic Gap. By integrating art-historical, archaeological and archival perspectives, I study the character, style, dating and findspot of these works, and situate them within their spatial context and their Knossian and broader Cretan and Greek artistic context. The analysis establishes that Knossos and its region boast the fullest sequence of Early Iron Age to Archaic sculpture from Crete, hence they deserve a prominent place in discussions of early Greek sculpture for reasons extending beyond the textual tradition for Daidalos.

We assess how an economy’s wealth distribution shapes its labor market dynamics. We do so in a quantitative job-ladder model featuring directed search, incomplete markets, aggregate shocks, and endogenous on-the-job human capital accumulation. Poorer workers apply for lower-wage jobs when unemployed and under-accumulate human capital when employed to self-insure against unemployment risk. In response to an aggregate downturn, poorer workers reduce their human capital accumulation, all else equal, while richer workers increase it. The wealth distribution therefore matters for the response of aggregate human capital. In the calibrated model, we show that a negative aggregate productivity shock leads to a persistent decline in aggregate human capital, and a more dispersed wealth distribution would amplify this decline.

The Senior Wellbeing Practitioner (SWP) postgraduate certificate is a new low-intensity psychological training intended to expand the Children and Young People’s mental health workforce. It builds on the skillset of qualified Child Wellbeing Practitioners (CWPs) and Educational Mental Health Practitioners (EMHPs), by providing training to work with a broader range of presentations including neurodivergence. The SWP Skills and Competency Framework (SWP-SCF) is a new tool developed in response to the need to operationalise and assess the skills necessary to work with the range of presentations SWPs are required to treat, whilst retaining fidelity to the low-intensity intervention approach. As training providers we have used the SWP-SCF with our first cohorts of SWPs as an aid for skill development and reflective practice, as well as for assessment of clinical competency within assignments. Students and tutors have reported good face validity and utility, and further assessment of the validity of this framework appears warranted.

Key learning aims

1. (1) To understand the role of the SWP and how this fits into the wider child and adolescent mental health workforce.

2. (2) To outline the key skills and competencies necessary for SWPs to deliver effective interventions at the low-intensity level.

3. (3) To present how the SWP Skills and Competency Framework was developed and how this can be used as a tool within training and supervision.