Marine tardigrades are known from all oceans. However, Euclavarctinae (Halechiniscidae) is the only family-group taxon exclusive to the deep sea. We describe a new genus and species of this taxon, Ranarctus kondoi gen. et sp. nov. The new genus and species was sorted from a sediment sample collected at a locality north of Kuroshima island, Kerama Islands, Okinawa, Japan (water depth: 596–606 m) during a T/RV Toyoshiomaru cruise (Hiroshima University) in 2003. It does not completely conform to the subfamily’s diagnosis as in the case of Parmursa by its aliform expansions, trapezoid head, and primary clava and lateral cirrus sharing a common pedestal. Aside from these similarities, Ranarctus gen. nov. differs from Parmursa by its wrinkled aliform expansions lacking ribs, cephalic cirri’s constant-width scapi, and internal digits longer than external ones.

ZooBank LSID: urn:lsid:zoobank.org:pub:F096F6D5-0A25-4E99-8258-767550931186.

We examine the relationship between partisan social media messages and voters’ support for undemocratic transgressions against the president and Congress. Our survey experiments in Brazil, Chile, and Colombia randomly exposed respondents to partisan messages about contentious and consensus issues such as inflation, abortion, crime, and protests. We then assessed whether these messages increased support for undemocratic transgressions. Our findings reveal distinct inter-party differences: opposition voters were more inclined to support presidential impeachment, while incumbent voters were more predisposed to dissolve Congress. However, contrary to our initial pre-registered hypotheses, exposure to partisan social media messages did not consistently augment these tendencies. This implies that while voters often endorse undemocratic measures in line with their partisan leanings, such preferences are not heightened by exposure to partisan discourse on social media.

We study Volterra-type operators on Bergman–Morrey spaces. First, we obtain sharp boundedness criteria between scales, identifying the exact Bloch-type regularity required of the symbol and showing that the companion operator is bounded precisely for bounded symbols. Next, we develop the holomorphic optimal domain, prove that it is a Banach space with bounded point evaluations and multiplier algebra $H^\infty $, and establish strict inclusions as the parameters vary. Then, we introduce the meromorphic optimal domain, characterize the constant-symbol case, and show that it is a Banach space with point evaluations bounded off the zero set of the derivative. Finally, we analyze the symbol classes $W_g$ and $V_g^{p}$, prove the structural identity $W_g=T_g(H^\infty )+\mathbb C$, and give equivalence and comparison criteria for optimal domains across symbols.

Task-based language teaching (TBLT), an instructional approach for promoting real world communicative language use, has gained substantial attention among researchers and educators of additional languages, traditionally referred to as second languages (L2) and foreign languages (FL). Existing research on TBLT and tasks, predominantly conducted with adult learners, has primarily examined how meaning-focused tasks enhance (or do not enhance) learners’ communicative abilities in the target language and how different task implementations yield different outcomes (Ellis, 2017).

We investigate groups of rotations of $\mathbb {R}^3$ and $\mathbb {R}^4$ that act transitively on the unit sphere.

This introduction paper for our special issue on Chinese multinational enterprises (CMNEs) situates the important theme of CMNE growth within the context of rapid technological innovation, intensified geopolitical tensions, and trade wars in the global business environment of the mid-2020s. Using this context as a backdrop, we discuss the growth of CMNEs to derive implications for international business (IB) theory. We review key theoretical perspectives that inform prior research on CMNEs and outline the key challenges confronting CMNEs’ international expansion, as gauged against prior research. We summarize key theoretical insights from the eight papers included in this special issue. We then illustrate how future research can be informed by an explicit consideration of the international sanctions and geopolitical tensions in which CMNEs operate, as well as by the growing technological, linguistic, and ideological distance between China and European and North American countries, which influences CMNEs’ international strategies. We conclude by noting that at this critical juncture in CMNEs’ development, there are substantial opportunities for the IB community to broaden research and challenge existing theories by capturing the latest trends in the international expansion of CMNEs.

We argue that firms’ ability to disinvest real assets helps rationalize the negative distress premiums in stocks, bonds, and, as we show, loans and firm assets. Using a real options model in which shareholders and debtholders share disinvestment proceeds, the model suggests that the stock (debt) distress premium becomes more negative with the proceeds paid out to that class, and that both premiums can be negative when debtholders receive most of the proceeds. Using hard-asset disinvestment-ability proxies, the stock (bond or loan) distress premium becomes less (more) negative with those proxies, possibly suggesting that shareholders benefit more strongly from nonsecured-asset disinvestments.

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) tracking one moving target in an oilfield environment with dynamic obstacles has been studied. Firstly, the UAV tracking one target is modeled mathematically, including the oilfield environment, the UAV kinematic model, the moving target model and so on. Considering the oilfield environment with dynamic obstacles, the chance-constraint method is incorporated into the distributed model predictive control (DMPC) to realise the target tracking and avoid the obstacles in the environment. Secondly, to obtain high-quality control-input sequences, the improved salp swarm algorithm (ISSA) is designed as the solver for the chance-constraint DMPC, integrating the sine-tent-cosine chaotic mapping in the initialisation, the differential mutation operation in the leader-position updating and the nonlinear adaptive inertia weights in the follower-position updating. Finally, the simulation results show that the proposed method has great performance in tracking the moving target in an oilfield environment with dynamic obstacles.

Since the 1960s, increasing numbers of women have won the highest office in the world’s democracies despite clear gender effects in gaining office. But does reelection show the same gendered effects? Recent research suggests that compared to male leaders, women leaders often come to high office in more difficult conditions; enter with lower approval ratings; and experience more rapid decline in ratings over time. We know little, however, about the conditions that affect their odds of reelection. Does the type of office—president or prime minister—matter? Do economic and political conditions during their tenure affect their odds of success? We analyze gender and leader reelection across electoral democracies in the Americas, Europe, Africa, and Asia,1960–2023. We show that among leaders eligible to run, men and women have roughly equal odds of winning. We also find that women run somewhat more often than men.

Legged robots operating in irregular environments are often subjected to compound disturbances such as tilts and vibrations, which can degrade attitude stability and motion reliability. This paper presents a real-time disturbance-adaptive control framework for a hexapod robot. The proposed system integrates quaternion-based attitude estimation using an extended Kalman filter (EKF), a double-threshold pose classifier, and a modular gait library and is implemented on an embedded controller with a 2 ms control-loop latency. Analytical verification and laboratory experiments demonstrate that the proposed control loop achieves uniform ultimate boundedness (UUB) under deterministic hybrid disturbances composed of controlled tilt and vibration, with a mean recovery time of 5.7 s. These results demonstrate that a lightweight rule-based controller can ensure reliable posture recovery within the experimentally validated laboratory scenarios, providing a foundation for future extensions to more complex environments. The main contributions of this work are (1) a disturbance-adaptive gait selection architecture for quasi-static stabilization, (2) a noise-robust EKF-based attitude estimation and double-threshold pose determination scheme, and (3) a concise Lyapunov-based stability analysis demonstrating UUB of the closed-loop system.

Various strategies across food systems are needed for a systemic change, with dietary shifts representing a meaningful pathway – particularly in high-income nations. Plant-based analogues (PBA) that mimic animal-based foods represent a promising strategy to facilitate such shifts because they require minimal behaviour adjustments. This review aims to synthesise nutritional, health and environmental evidence on PBA by examining their benefits, challenges and research gaps to inform and support evidence-based policy and practice. PBA generally have lower greenhouse gas emissions, land use and water use than their animal-based counterparts. Nutritionally, PBA are complex, varying across product brands, product types, processing techniques and primary ingredients. The limited health evidence shows that consumption of plant-based meat analogues tends to be associated with positive health outcomes, while consumption of some plant-based drinks can be linked to micronutrient deficiencies. Fortified PBA can contribute to daily recommended intakes and sometimes provide more micronutrients than their animal-based counterparts, while also providing more fibre and less energy and saturated fat. Despite these potential benefits, debates persist around processing classifications and their health implications. Given this complex landscape, assessing what kind of role PBA could play in our food systems will demand product-specific evaluation, targeted dietary recommendations and expanding the range of healthier PBA. To advance the field and accelerate dietary shifts without unintended consequences, critical considerations include strengthening the nutritional evidence base, classifying PBA further for dietary recommendations and informed regulatory approaches, understanding processing effects and use of additives, and standardising environmental outcomes and research beyond single ingredients.