Current explanations of Sino–American relations are dominated by realist and liberal understandings of world politics, neglecting crucial transnational actors that complexify Sino–American relations. In contrast and drawing from internationally informed Gramscian hegemony theory, and on extensive archival work, we offer an alternative complex multidimensional transnational account. By researching the Ford Foundation’s activities in China and the United States, specifically its contribution to the development of the international relations (IR) discipline in China, we break new ground and show that Ford was key in profoundly shaping Sino–American relations, especially by developing transnational knowledge networks. These transnational elite networks simultaneously integrated China into the LIO and had unintended consequences, particularly in encouraging Chinese counter-hegemonic dynamics that challenge the LIO from within. Our approach indicates a richer complexity of Sino–US relations than extant theories, suggesting that the future trajectories of this strategic relationship are uncertain and do not fall neatly into an inevitable war or peaceful interdependence binary.

Backers of nuclear deterrence are thought to use strategic logic, while nuclear disarmament advocates are believed to embrace moral reasoning. Yet policy makers and diverse publics may hold both—ostensibly contradictory—preferences. Recent studies find that publics in Western democratic countries support the nuclear strikes underpinning long-standing conceptions of deterrence policy. But other scholarship indicates that these very same publics want to abolish nuclear arsenals. A lack of comparative analyses across the Global North and the Global South limits the generalizability of these claims. Does a categorical dichotomy between nuclear deterrence and disarmament really reflect global public views on the bomb? What explains a multitude of seemingly inconsistent scholarly results? In this reflection essay, we argue that deterrence and disarmament are not necessarily incompatible tools for reducing nuclear dangers. We point to several ways that individuals might simultaneously accommodate both pro- and antinuclear weapons policy positions. To investigate this proposition, we offer a new observational dataset on global nuclear attitudes from a survey we conducted in 24 countries on six continents (N = 27,250). Unlike isolated studies of these phenomena, our data strongly confirm that publics do not subscribe to categorical views of nuclear weapons. This headline finding and novel dataset open new possibilities for studying nuclear politics.

This essay investigates intermedial interference – a perceptual phenomenon arising from the interaction of media features within the intermedial space – in the context of electroacoustic audiovisual composition. Grounded in visual music and intermedial arts traditions, this research explores strategies for combining, integrating and fusing sound and moving images to create artefacts that transcend conventional multimedia juxtaposition. This essay refers to the author’s doctoral practice-based research, in which a portfolio of six works is examined through the study, discussing the nature of interference, the interaction of media features in the intermedial space, the role of balance in managing perceptual equilibrium and novel compositional methods, including associative mapping and synchrony typologies. A case study of one of the portfolio works illustrates the application of these concepts, emphasising remediation, meta-narrative and audience interpretation. The findings contribute new insights into intermedial audiovisual practice, offering methodologies for composers to harness media interactions and foster open, subjective engagements with intermedial artefacts.

Whereas some prehispanic societies across North America pursued monumentality, hierarchy, and regional integration, others adopted inward-oriented strategies that fostered cohesion through symbolic containment and household autonomy. Mimbres Classic period (AD 1000–1130) communities in southwestern New Mexico exemplify this alternative trajectory. By situating Mimbres insularity within broader regional developments, this study examines how material practices were mobilized to construct and maintain a culturally bounded world. Drawing on theories of boundary maintenance and ritual sovereignty, I argue that distinctive forms of architecture, painted ceramics, mortuary practices, and regulated interaction localized sacred authority and deliberately limited external connectivity. In contrast to Chaco Canyon’s investments in monumentality and social hierarchy, Mimbres society sustained social coherence through practices rooted in household ritual and symbolic regulation. Crucially, this insularity was neither fixed nor absolute—it emerged in the AD 900s, peaked during the Classic period, and receded after AD 1130 as communities relocated and engaged with new material traditions and regional networks. By tracing this historical arc, this study challenges models that equate social organization with scale or connectivity, demonstrating instead how inward-oriented strategies can produce resilient, if historically contingent, cultural frameworks.

All around Santiago, Chile, there are water towers known to citizens as Copas de Agua. These towers are recognised as modern industrial heritage and integral landmarks within the city’s urban landscape, contributing significantly to its cultural identity. This article presents strategies for exploring aural architecture by creating a new space defined by sound in motion within an existing architectural structure with unique morphological and acoustic characteristics through the medium of sound installation art. The project Polyphono, a multichannel sound installation located within the Copa de Agua of Quinta Bella, Chile, establishes a dialogue between three different spaces: the invisible space of the sound installation, the existing space of the water tower and the symbolic space of experience. In this process, an interior space of sound emerges within the physical space of acoustic reactions, which is experienced by the audience as aural architecture. This dynamic situation involves animating the monumentality of the water tower, transforming it through the performative action of the sound installation, thereby intensifying the historical significance of the site in physical, sensory, political and social terms. The outcomes are framed as a transitional space, from site-specific sound to aural architecture, creating an affective space for aesthetic experience.

Pretesting for exogeneity has become routine in many empirical applications involving instrumental variables (IVs) to decide whether the ordinary least squares or IV-based method is appropriate. Guggenberger (2010a, Econometric Theory, 26, 369–382) shows that the second-stage test – based on the outcome of a Durbin-Wu-Hausman-type pretest in the first stage – exhibits extreme size distortion, with asymptotic size equal to 1 when the standard critical values are used. In this paper, we first show that both conditional and unconditional on the data, standard wild bootstrap procedures are invalid for two-stage testing. Second, we propose an identification-robust two-stage test statistic that switches between OLS-based and weak-IV-robust statistics. Third, we develop a size-adjusted wild bootstrap approach for our two-stage test that integrates specific wild bootstrap critical values with an appropriate size-adjustment method. We establish uniform validity of this procedure under conditional heteroskedasticity or clustering in the sense that the resulting tests achieve correct asymptotic size, regardless of whether the identification is strong or weak. Our procedure is especially valuable for empirical researchers facing potential weak identification. In such settings, its power advantage is notable: whereas weak-IV-robust methods maintain correct size but often suffer from relatively low power, our approach achieves better performance.

With the widespread application of smart antennas in 5G communication and radar detection, adaptive beamforming technology based on deep learning has become a research focus for improving the anti-interference performance of antenna arrays due to its powerful nonlinear modeling capability. It can transform the beamforming problem into a neural network regression problem, enabling the model to rapidly output an approximately optimal beamforming weight vector without prior information. Aiming at the issues of poor adaptability to dynamic interference and high computational complexity of traditional algorithms, this paper proposes IRDSNet, a novel adaptive beamforming algorithm based on Inception-ResNet-dual-pool Squeeze-and-Excitation Network (DP-SENet), to optimize the performance of uniform circular array antennas. IRDSNet integrates the Inception structure, depthwise separable convolution, and Ghost convolution to construct a multi-scale feature extraction module, enhancing the model’s feature extraction capabilities while maintaining a low parameter count. By introducing an improved DP-SENet, the model’s ability to focus on key features is enhanced, while the incorporation of residual modules optimizes feature transmission efficiency. Simulation results demonstrate that the IRDSNet algorithm achieves a null depth exceeding −90 dB at various interference angles, with an output Signal-to-Interference-plus-Noise Ratio (SINR) consistently above 23 dB and a short inference time, demonstrating excellent interference suppression performance.

Obesity and overweight in pregnant women increase pregnancy and neonatal morbidity with a risk of metabolic syndrome for children in later life. Maternal preconceptional bariatric surgery reduces maternal and paediatric outcomes but may induce fetal nutritional deficiencies and intrauterine growth restriction through placental reprogramming. The aim of this study was to describe feto-placental unit modifications induced by obesity, and the effect of bariatric surgery performed before gestation, on a diet-induced obese rat model. One month after surgery, rats of ‘control’, ‘obese’ and ‘bariatric surgery’ groups were mated and then sacrificed at D19 of gestation. Clinical description, immuno-histochemistry and molecular analyses were performed on feto-placental units. Obesity induces placental modifications including lipid accumulations, increased inflammation and oxidative stress. Some of these modifications are partially restored by maternal preconceptional bariatric surgery. On the other hand, a reduction in the expression of markers of glucose transport, insulin function and amino acid transport, after bariatric surgery was observed. This phenotype may lead to fetal caloric restriction, adoption of a ‘thrifty phenotype’ and subsequently fetal growth restriction. These preliminary findings highlight the importance of a close follow-up of women who have undergone bariatric surgery and their children.

The second Trump administration has shaken the foundations of US leadership in global health, with this column assessing rapid shifts in global health governance. By analyzing how the administration’s anti-science ethos, foreign assistance cuts, and multilateral disengagement have undermined global solidarity, the column considers the destabilizing impacts on global health and examines how other states, regional bodies, and international organizations are responding to this US decline. This examination reveals both strains for global health promotion and resilience within a changed governance landscape.

Paleolake coring initiatives result in large datasets from various proxies taken at different resolutions, ranging from continuous scans to samples collected at coarser intervals. Higher-resolution data (e.g., core-scan X-ray fluorescence [XRF]) can detect short-duration changes in the paleolake and help identify unit boundaries with precision; however, interpreting the causes of such changes may require sampling and more intensive laboratory analysis like X-ray diffraction (XRD). This study applies a published wide and deep learning model, developed for the Olduvai Gorge Coring Project (OGCP) 2014 cores from the Pleistocene Olduvai basin, Tanzania, to reconstruct the mineral assemblages from saline-alkaline paleolake Olduvai using core-scan XRF data and core lithology. A classification model (predicting mineral presence or absence) and a regression model (predicting relative abundances of minerals) yielded predictions for two OGCP cores (2A and 3A), which were compared with published XRD mineral data and detailed core sedimentological descriptions. The models were excellent at identifying dolomite-rich layers, carbonate-rich intervals, intervals of sandstone within claystone, and altered tuffs within claystone and at predicting whether illitic or smectitic clays dominate. The models struggled with less-altered tuffs and with zeolites in non-tuff sediments, especially when XRD identified chabazite and erionite (rather than phillipsite) as the dominant, non-analcime zeolite.