Recognizing the distributed nature of agency in human–AI interactions, this article proposes a framework for examining the power dynamics that undergird the use of generative AI (GenAI) for language learning. Drawing on Darvin and Norton’s model of investment, it adopts a critical sociomaterial lens to cast a light on the entanglement of bodies, objects and discourse in these interactions, while highlighting how issues of positioning, access to resources, and ideological reproduction emerge from this perspective. Human agency both interacts with and is constrained or amplified by the functionalities of GenAI. To invest in agentive GenAI practices that enable meaningful learning and the achievement of their own intentions, learners must not only recognize the power of GenAI to steer interactions and promote specific ways of thinking, but also resist fully delegating the production of meaning and texts to technology. Cultivating critical digital literacies that recognize how power operates in human-AI interactions is integral to fostering reflexive, inclusive and equitable language learning and teaching in the age of GenAI.

During the first half of the nineteenth century, Mid-Atlantic States expanded guardianship to include habitual drunkards. Legislators in Pennsylvania, New York, and New Jersey empowered courts to put habitual drunkards under guardianship, a legal status that stripped them of their rights to own property, enter into contracts, make wills, and, in some states, even vote. Amid the dramatic nineteenth-century expansion of male suffrage, the habitual drunkard signified a masculine failure of self-government that disqualified propertied men from the privileges of full citizenship. The struggle to define habitual drunkenness, detect the habitual drunkard, and put him under guardianship transformed the courtroom into an arena for contesting the thresholds of compulsion, policing respectable manhood, and drawing the borders of full citizenship in the nineteenth-century United States.

Bentonite is mined globally for use in commercial and industrial applications. In these applications, smectite content and composition are the paramount factors of the bentonite material and control its properties. As bentonite composition and properties can vary significantly over a large mining district or within a single mine, quality control is required including: mineral composition, especially smectite content; cation exchange capacity (CEC); exchangeable cation composition; and smectite crystallochemical features. Differences in bentonite composition locally or over a spatial area stem from the different geological settings present throughout bentonitization. The study aims were to: (1) determine the layer charge (LC) variation of dioctahedral smectite over the Bavarian mining district and within individual mines in the area; and (2) assess the error in smectite content calculations based on CEC data resulting from the actual range of experimentally determined LC values. This information has been missing in the scientific literature, as previous LC methods were laborious or subject to assumptions, making a comprehensive study over a large spatial area impractical. This study employed the use of the recently developed efficient and precise spectroscopic ‘O-D method’, which enabled the LC measurement of 40 samples from eight mines in the Bavarian bentonite mining district, covering an area of 250 km2, within the North Alpine Foreland Basin. Results showed LC values calibrated against the alkylammonium method (LC (AAM)) generally ranged between 0.29 and 0.30 eq per formula unit (FU), with only 10% of samples showing LC values >0.31 eq/FU. This narrow LC range has positive implications for the accuracy of determining smectite content calculated from CEC data, during routine quality control of Bavarian and other bentonites. The average error of the CEC-based smectite contents resulting from LC variations was, on average, ±3 wt.%.

This longitudinal survey examined the effect of the National Healthcare Safety Network’s (NHSN) recently updated Clostridioides difficile test method definition on reporting of hospital-onset C. difficile. Among six hospitals with ≥ 5 years of data available, the updated NHSN definition was associated with improved concordance between predicted versus reported cases.

We apply a synthesis review to revisit the concept, measurement, and operationalisation of social inclusion and exclusion in the context of comparative social policy, integrating the vast literature on the concepts, with the aim of elucidating a clearer understanding of the concepts for use by scholars and policymakers around the planet. In turn, we outline the conceptual development of the concepts, how they have been operationalised through social policy, and how they have been measured at the national and individual levels. Through our review, we identify limitations in extant conceptualisation and measurement approaches and suggest directions for refining conceptual and measurement frameworks to enhance their utility in social inclusion policy, emphasising the concepts’ multidimensional, multilevel, dynamic, and relational essence and highlighting their connection to related concepts such as social capital, social integration, and social citizenship.

We give a notion of boundary pair $(\mathcal{B}_-,\mathcal{B}_+)$ for measured groupoids which generalizes the one introduced by Bader and Furman [BF14] for locally compact groups. In the case of a semidirect groupoid $\mathcal{G}=\Gamma \ltimes X$ obtained by a probability measure preserving action $\Gamma \curvearrowright X$ of a locally compact group, we show that a boundary pair is exactly $(B_- \times X, B_+ \times X)$, where $(B_-,B_+)$ is a boundary pair for $\Gamma$. For any measured groupoid $(\mathcal{G},\nu )$, we prove that the Poisson boundaries associated to the Markov operators generated by a probability measure equivalent to $\nu$ provide other examples of our definition. Following Bader and Furman [BF], we define algebraic representability for an ergodic groupoid $(\mathcal{G},\nu )$. In this way, given any measurable representation $\rho \,:\,\mathcal{G} \rightarrow H$ into the $\kappa$-points of an algebraic $\kappa$-group $\mathbf{H}$, we obtain $\rho$-equivariant maps $\mathcal{B}_\pm \rightarrow H/L_\pm$, where $L_\pm =\mathbf{L}_\pm (\kappa )$ for some $\kappa$-subgroups $\mathbf{L}_\pm \lt \mathbf{H}$. In the particular case when $\kappa =\mathbb{R}$ and $\rho$ is Zariski dense, we show that $L_\pm$ must be minimal parabolic subgroups.

Neurodegenerative diseases (NDDs) are a group of complex disorders marked by pathophysiological mechanisms involving protein aggregation, mitochondrial dysfunction, oxidative stress and neuroinflammation. Irrespective of extensive research advances, NDDs have become a serious global concern and persist as a major therapeutic challenge. In recent years, microRNAs (miRNAs), a class of small non-coding RNAs, have established a pivotal role in combating NDDs. The altered expression of miRNAs is reported to be associated with the progression of various NDDs. This review aims to discuss miRNA biogenesis; dysregulation in NDDs, specifically Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease (PD) and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis; their potential as biomarkers; and promising therapeutic targets. Additionally, there are various emerging technologies discussed that are advanced approaches to enhance miRNA-based diagnostics and therapeutics.

Let $A\ \mathrm{and}\ B$ be subsets of $(\mathbb {Z}/p^r\mathbb {Z})^2$. In this note, we provide conditions on the densities of A and B such that $|gA-B|\gg p^{2r}$ for a positive proportion of $g\in SO_2(\mathbb {Z}/p^r\mathbb {Z})$. The conditions are sharp up to constant factors in the unbalanced case, and the proof makes use of tools from discrete Fourier analysis and results in restriction/extension theory.

Highlights from the International Symposium on Twins, held at the University of Crete on May 23−24, 2025, are summarized. The symposium, organized by Dr Maria Markodimitraki, Professor in the Department of Preschool Education at the University of Crete, attracted scholars and practitioners from Greece and around the world. Meetings with a pair of reunited monozygotic female twins, and a female twin in search of her sister, also from Greece, are described. This review is followed by summaries of twin research on neonatal outcomes, growth discordance and restriction, and romantic partners and alcohol use. Human interest stories include a book documenting the extraordinary lives of identical twins Celia and Mamaine Paget, a museum wing honoring the lost Rockefeller twin, a remarkable conjoined twinning case in India, the death of an Australian sports icon, and a most unusual triplet birth.

Effective performance of oil-based drilling fluids (OBFs) in demanding high-temperature environments hinges on the stability of their rheological properties. However, conventional organoclays (OCs) utilized to control these properties often exhibit thermal degradation at elevated temperatures, necessitating the development of more robust alternatives. Therefore, the present study aimed to develop a high-temperature-resistant OC to enhance OBF rheological stability. To address the thermal instability issues of conventional quaternary organo-montmorillonites (OMts), which manifest as interlayer structural collapse and particle aggregation, an innovative dual modification strategy was developed through the synergistic combination of quaternary ammonium intercalation and silane grafting. Montmorillonite (Mnt) was modified with dioctadecyl dimethyl ammonium chloride (1821) and stearyl dimethyl benzyl ammonium chloride (1827) at a mass ratio of 2:1 to yield 1821+1827-OMt, which was subsequently further modified with dodecyl trimethoxy silane (DTMS) to form 1821+1827+DTMS-OMt. Comparison of the properties of 1821+1827-OMt and 1821+1827+DTMS-OMt after high temperatures revealed the following. (1) Thermogravimetric (TG) and derivative thermogravimetric (DTG) analysis and gel volume tests demonstrated that the Si–O–Si bonds in 1821+1827+DTMS-OMt were thermally stable up to ~440°C, and the gel volume of the 1821+1827+DTMS-OMt suspension remained stable at 100 mL following high-temperature aging treatments. (2) X-ray diffraction and elemental analysis revealed that 1821+1827+DTMS-OMt exhibited a larger basal spacing and larger nitrogen content compared with ungrafted 1821+1827-OMt. (3) The suspension containing 1821+1827+DTMS-OMt demonstrated enhanced thermal stability at 260°C, evidenced by its narrower rheological parameter ranges of apparent viscosity (6–12 mPa s), plastic viscosity (5–9 mPa s), and yield point (1–3 Pa), compared with those of the suspension containing 1821+1827-OMt. (4) Optical microscopy demonstrated that 1821+1827+DTMS-OMt exhibited greater resistance to agglomeration at high temperatures than 1821+1827-OMt. The high-temperature-resistant OC developed in this study overcomes the thermal instability of traditional OCs, providing a robust approach for enhancing the efficiency and reliability of oil-based drilling fluids in high-temperature drilling applications.

In March 1933, the United States Congress declared beer up to 3.2 percent alcohol by weight to be “non-intoxicating,” thus allowing it to be produced and sold while the nation was still under the 18th Amendment’s ban of intoxicating liquors. Brewers had long argued that beer was a temperance beverage that should be regulated with a lighter touch than harder liquor. In fact, the declaration that 3.2 beer was non-intoxicating opened several markets that would otherwise have been closed to brewers. In the decades that followed Repeal, 3.2 beer continued to be treated differently than stronger alcohol with respect to who, when, where, and how it was legally available. This paper explores the important—and continuing—role that 3.2 beer has played in the post-Prohibition United States.