This study examines how the Roman Catholic Church formulated and implemented its principal directive during China’s civil war and subsequent regime change in the mid-twentieth century, particularly the obligation that clergy remain at their posts alongside the relocation of seminarians to safer areas. Drawing on newly available Vatican archival materials, it demonstrates that the decision to evacuate seminarians was not solely prompted by the petition of the first Chinese cardinal to the pope, as previously assumed; rather, the Apostolic Internuncio’s shift in position played a decisive role. It further identifies an original Italian version of the directive that differs in sequence and emphasis from the widely circulated Chinese text. Against this background, criticisms of the Internuncio as “the executioner of native priests” require reconsideration. Rather, the study reinterprets him as an adaptive intermediary within the process of policy formation and implementation.

This study introduces an improved gesture-based human–swarm interaction control system for drone swarms that unifies motion and formation control while addressing the critical challenge of neglecting the impact of faulty robots on task performance. Unlike conventional approaches that treat these functionalities separately, our integrated framework enables robust task execution in challenging environments. Using 26 hand gestures (18 formations and 8 flight commands) processed by a variety of deep learning models, including convolutional neural networks (e.g., ResNet101 and MobileNetV2) and recurrent neural network-based approaches such as long short-term memory (LSTM), bidirectional LSTM, gated recurrent unit (GRU), and bidirectional GRU (BiGRU), the system provides comprehensive yet accessible control, notably through the BiGRU network with 99.4% accuracy in real-time gesture recognition tasks. Deployment testing conducted using the CrazyFlyt simulation platform demonstrated the system’s robustness in maintaining user-intended formations with low positional error and stable convergence times, even in the presence of sensor noise and faulty robots. Statistical analysis revealed highly significant main and interaction effects ($p\lt 0.05$) for swarm scale and scenario on performance metrics, indicating that the impact of swarm size is dynamically contingent upon environmental conditions. Post hoc evaluations predominantly highlighted significant performance degradation in faulty-robot scenarios compared to normal or noisy conditions, with swarm scale critically modulating these effects.

Precision psychiatry cannot deliver reliable care for women when treating reproductive neuroendocrine dynamics as background noise. This paper argues for routine, standardised reporting of reproductive stage, exogenous hormone exposure, and staging methods, making the case that hormone-integrated research could reduce heterogeneity, sharpen mechanisms, improve safety and enhance clinical utility.

The radiocarbon content of dissolved inorganic carbon (DIC: CO2(aq), HCO3–, CO32–) and gaseous CO2 can provide valuable information for the cycling and residence time of carbon in groundwaters, porewaters, hydrocarbon reservoirs, methane seeps, and hydrothermal systems. Fluids and gases from these systems often contain high concentrations of hydrogen sulfide (H2S) that interferes with critical steps of the analytical procedure, particularly the reduction of CO2 to graphite. We developed and tested a simple and effective method to remove H2S from water and gas samples prior to graphitization by passing the gas through a silver nitrate solution in dilute nitric acid. The resulting cleaned CO2 was sufficiently pure to be reduced to graphite by hydrogen on an iron catalyst. The mass of the process blank of this method is negligible (0.45 ± 0.10 µg C, with F14C of 0.30 ± 0.20) and almost identical to our process blanks without the H2S trap (0.43 ± 0.10 µg C, F14C = 0.30 ± 0.10). The method has been successfully applied to samples containing elevated H2S from multiple hydrothermal vent fluids.

The aim of this study was to evaluate fetal survival and neonatal outcomes following fetoscopic laser ablation (FLA) for twin-to-twin transfusion syndrome (TTTS). This retrospective study included 106 TTTS pregnancies treated with FLA at Harapan Kita Women and Children Hospital, from January 2016 to January 2025. Maternal and neonatal data were collected from medical records. Fetal survival, gestational age, and neurodevelopmental outcomes were assessed. Quintero staging was used to classify TTTS severity. Statistical analysis used the Mann‒Whitney-U test for continuous variables and the chi square test for categorical variables. Among the 106 pregnancies, 93 (87.73%) had at least one surviving fetus, and 82 (77.35%) had both fetuses that survived the procedure. The highest proportion of double fetal survival was observed in Quintero stage 2 (35/82, 42.68%), whereas double fetal death was most frequently observed in stage 3 (7/13, 53.84%) and stage 4 (4/13, 30.76%) (p = .003). Neonates surviving to 28 days were born at a significantly higher gestational age than nonsurvivors (32.25 ± 2.95 vs. 27.62 ± 2.68 weeks, p < .001; OR 1.70, 95% CI [1.40, 2.10]). The neonatal survival rate at 28 days was 44.87%. Brain injury was observed in 52.17% of the screened infants and long-term neurodevelopmental follow-up was documented in 8 infants, with 2 showing delayed milestones. Quintero stage at the time of the procedure, prematurity, and growth restriction were significantly associated with neonatal survival outcomes. Early detection, timely intervention, and long-term follow-up are essential to optimize outcomes and address potential developmental delays.

On December 11, 2025, the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights delivered a landmark judgment in Tsaava and Others v. Georgia. The case arose from the Georgian authorities’ forceful dispersal of major public protests outside the Georgian Parliament in Tbilisi on the night of June 20–21, 2019, also known as “Gavrilov’s night.” Thousands of people gathered to protest the authorities’ invitation to Sergei Gavrilov, an outspoken member of the Russian Duma, to sit in the chair reserved for the Speaker of the Georgian Parliament. The Grand Chamber found extensive violations of the European Convention on Human Rights stemming from the state’s violent dispersal of the protest and the excessive and indiscriminate use of “less-lethal” weapons, specifically kinetic impact projectiles and rubber bullets, against demonstrators and journalists. Beyond vindicating individual applicants, the Grand Chamber directed Georgia to take specific measures to conduct an effective investigation into the events and to put in place domestic regulations on crowd control and the limits of police force.

The present study aimed to evaluate the effect of N-acetylcysteine (NAC) on in vitro maturation (IVM) and in vitro embryo production in sheep. Cumulus–oocyte complexes (COCs) were collected and matured in vitro in a control medium or supplemented with different concentrations of NAC (1, 1.5 and 2.0 mM). After maturation, a subset of oocytes was used for morphological assessment and chromatin configuration analysis, as well as for evaluating intracellular levels of reactive oxygen species (ROS), glutathione (GSH), mitochondrial activity and DNA fragmentation using the TUNEL assay. Another subgroup of oocytes was subjected to in vitro fertilization (IVF), and the presumed zygotes were cultured in in vitro culture (IVC) medium to assess cleavage rates. Data were statistically analysed, considering significance at P < 0.05. The concentration of 1 mM NAC resulted in lower ROS levels compared to the control and 1.5 mM groups, in addition to reducing DNA fragmentation. No significant differences (P > 0.05) were observed in GSH levels or mitochondrial activity between treated and control groups. Furthermore, oocytes treated with 1 mM NAC showed higher cleavage rates compared to the other experimental groups. In conclusion, supplementation with 1 mM NAC improves oocyte quality and early embryonic development, as demonstrated by reduced oxidative stress and DNA fragmentation, resulting in increased cleavage rates.

A new study of the trial of Jesus of Nazareth urges that we turn our attention to the broader imperial context of the trial. Jesus made the local elites in charge of the Roman Empire deeply uncomfortable, and their status as elites - rather than their religion - best explains their response to his ministry.

Let v(k) be the smallest integer larger than 1 that does not occur among the denominators in any identity of the form

\begin{align*}1=\frac1{n_1}+\cdots+\frac1{n_k},\end{align*}

$1 \leq n_1\lt\cdots\lt n_k$

$v(k)\gg k!$

$c\gt0$

\begin{align*}v(k)\ge e^{c k^2}\end{align*}

To guarantee the safety and stability of cable-driven continuum robots (CDCRs) in multi-obstacle scenarios, this paper proposes a novel trajectory planning and tracking framework that integrates an artificial potential field (APF) based model predictive control (MPC) with a two-layer B-spline trajectory optimization framework. APF is incorporated as a penalty term in the objective function to enhance trajectory safety. Additionally, an improved whale optimization algorithm (IWOA) is introduced to circumvent the local optimal trap of MPC. Particularly, to improve tracking accuracy and stability, a two-layer B-spline optimization framework is proposed to enhance the smoothness of the planned trajectory. Simulation and experimental results show that the designed trajectory planning and tracking algorithm can generate collision-free trajectories and achieve high tracking accuracy in multi-obstacle environments.

Democracy today means liberal democracy. Exclusively. And ‘the crisis of liberal democracy is not necessarily a crisis of democracy as such’. This is the starting point of Philip Manow’s new book, Unter Beobachtung. Die Bestimmung der liberalen Demokratie und ihrer Freunde (‘Under Surveillance. Defining liberal democracy and its friends’). The German political scientist contends that through the new, exclusive understanding of democracy as liberal democracy, politics has been ‘suffocated’, and this largely contributed to the success of populism. In this review I argue that the populist promise for the rebirth of politics is dishonest, and I point to an underestimated consequence of liberal depoliticisation: rights inflation.