We report an exceptionally early diagnosis of a Kommerell diverticulum on the first day of life, distinguished by unusual mid-ductal aneurysmal dilatation of the patent ductus arteriosus. Serial echocardiography documented the serial evolution of spontaneous ductal closure and thrombosis formation. CT confirmed a right aortic arch with a retroesophageal Kommerell diverticulum. The infant remains asymptomatic under close surveillance. This case represents one of the youngest reported cases with serial imaging documentation, providing unique insights into the early natural history and highlighting management challenges in asymptomatic neonatal patients.

This study investigated changes in serum folate and B12, and associations with endurance performance and bone outcomes, in women during military training. Women (n 137) had serum folate and B12, haematological markers and endurance performance (2·4 km run) measured at the start (week 1) and end (week 13) of British Army basic training. Whole-body areal bone mineral density and markers of bone metabolism were measured at week 1. Training decreased serum folate (mean change (95 % CI), −2·3 (−3·0, −1·6) nmol ∙ l−1, P < 0·001), B12 (−16 (−32, 0) pmol ∙ l−1, P = 0·042), Hb (−0·7 (−0·9, −0·5) g ∙ dl−1, P < 0·001) and erythrocyte count (−0·2 (−0·3, −0·2) × 10^9 ∙ l−1, P < 0·001), but had no effect on mean corpuscular volume (P = 0·438) or erythrocyte distribution width (P = 0·088). There was no association between serum folate, serum B12, Hb or erythrocyte count with run time (P ≥ 0·518). Serum B12 was not associated with areal bone mineral density or bone metabolism at week 1 (P ≥ 0·152). Higher serum folate was associated with lower plasma c-telopeptide cross-links of type I collagen (standardised β (95 % CI) = −0·31 (−0·48, −0·15), P < 0·001), but not whole-body bone mineral density or plasma procollagen type I N-terminal propeptide (P ≥ 0·152). Serum folate and B12 decreased after military training in women, resulting in a high prevalence of folate deficiencies at the end of training. Low serum folate may contribute to increased bone resorption, the implications of which are unclear.

Authoritarian regimes have increasingly leveraged foreign media to project influence within democracies, yet evidence of these co-opted outlets’ actual effects remains scarce. This study presents findings from a field experiment conducted during Taiwan’s 2020 general election, assessing the impact of The China Times, a Beijing-backed media conglomerate, on voter behavior and attitudes. The experiment incentivized participants to engage in sustained consumption of real-time news from this outlet in the weeks leading up to the election. Results from a panel survey linked to individual-level web-tracking data reveal that exposure to The China Times sways voters in favor of the People’s Republic of China (PRC). These effects, however, are primarily driven by nonpartisan and PRC-friendly voters. To the extent that I find effects among PRC-skeptics, they show evidence of backfiring. As Beijing’s media co-optation extends beyond Taiwan, my findings have broader implications for understanding the effectiveness and limitations of authoritarian influence operations.

Dilute Temperley–Lieb algebras are variants of Temperley–Lieb algebras arising in statistical mechanics in the study of solvable lattice models. In this article, we prove that the (co)homology of dilute Temperley–Lieb algebras vanishes in all positive degrees.

Though critic Paul Scudo predicted in 1850 that the French romance would be ‘more respected by posterity than many weighty scores’, the once-ubiquitous song genre has all but disappeared from modern recitals and musicological histories. While the reasons for this erasure are undoubtedly multifaceted, I argue that the loss of the vocal performance practices that animated the genre played a significant role. Specifically, French singers in the domestic sphere – commonly labelled ‘romance singers’ and exemplified by figures like the tenor Richelmi – cultivated an entirely different vocal production than the one popularzied by Gilbert Duprez and typically heard in classical singing today. This technique, known as the timbre clair (clear timbre), was produced using a rising larynx and a lowering soft palate, resulting in a bright, thin, delicate, and even slightly nasal sound that became a hallmark of early and mid-nineteenth-century French singing. Moreover, composers and audiences expected singers to adopt a declamatory approach when performing romances, to constantly vary the colour of their voices for expressive effect. By so doing, performers imbued these seemingly simple songs with a sophistication and nuanced meaning not readily apparent in the scores themselves. This study of timbral aesthetics – which, I suggest, ought to be more seriously explored in modern performance contexts – undercuts conceptions of the genre as vacuous or meaningless and sheds light on an essential aspect of the nineteenth-century French sound world.

Traced monoidal categories model processes that can feed their outputs back to their own inputs, abstracting iteration. The category of finite-dimensional Hilbert spaces with the direct sum tensor is not traced. But surprisingly, in 2014, Bartha showed that the monoidal subcategory of isometries is traced. The same holds for coisometries, unitary maps, and contractions. This suggests the possibility of feeding outputs of quantum processes back to their own inputs, analogous to iteration. In this paper, we show that Bartha’s result is not specifically tied to Hilbert spaces, but works in any dagger additive category with Moore–Penrose pseudoinverses (a natural dagger-categorical generalization of inverses).

This article examines the institutional evolution and professionalization of the state police in Prague during the final decades of the Habsburg monarchy, arguing that the transformation of the Prague State Police between 1893 and 1910 represents a proactive effort in modern state-building. Drawing on reports from the Prague Police Directorate and the Bohemian Governor’s Office, it analyzes how recurring episodes of mass violence—specifically the unrest of the early 1890s, the riots of December 1897, and the nationalist disturbances of 1908—exposed the structural vulnerabilities of a security apparatus designed for routine policing rather than mass politics.

The article highlights a significant shift in administrative strategy: the movement away from a reliance on military intervention, which was increasingly viewed by civil authorities as a “double defeat” that undermined the legitimacy of the constitutional state. Instead, police directors such as Georg Dörfl and Karel Křikava successfully advocated for a robust, civilian-controlled force characterized by increased manpower, modernized equipment, and the establishment of a dedicated reserve for professional training. By 1910, the Prague Guard had largely expanded, reflecting a fundamental reconceptualization of urban order where protest was accepted as an unavoidable feature of political life to be contained by professional civilian forces rather than crushed by the army.

We study the classical relationship between a firm’s investment and q, for which an unobserved persistent shock is an important factor in the investment decision. In our setting, besides the potential measurement problem of q, controlling for the unobserved shock becomes a new challenge. We develop an estimation method that addresses both econometric issues given timing and information set assumptions. Using 16,256 unique public firms in the United States from 1975 to 2021, we find that q remains a significant factor of investment even after controlling for the unobserved shock and measurement error.

Prenatally diagnosed cardiac mass in a newborn caused cardiac tamponade. Cardiac MRI and histopathology confirmed a rare right ventricular mesenchymal hamartoma, previously reported only in the left ventricle.

An automorphism of the free group $F_n$ is called pure symmetric if it sends each generator to a conjugate of itself. The group $\mathrm {PSAut}_n$ of all pure symmetric automorphisms and its quotient $\mathrm {PSOut}_n$ by the group of inner automorphisms are called the McCool groups. In this article, we prove that every BNSR-invariant $\Sigma ^m$ of a McCool group is either dense or empty in the character sphere, and we characterize precisely when each situation occurs. Our techniques involve understanding higher generation properties of abelian subgroups of McCool groups, coming from the McCullough–Miller space. We also investigate further properties of the second invariant $\Sigma ^2$ for McCool groups using a general criterion due to Meinert for a character to lie in $\Sigma ^2$.

While the late Llandovery brachiopod faunas of South China are well documented, they are known almost exclusively from shallow-water settings. Here, we present a detailed study of a brachiopod fauna from the Ningqiang Formation (early to middle Telychian) at the Bifengguan section in Sichuan Province, South China. Quantitative analyses, including non-metric multidimensional scaling (NMDS) and network analysis, reveal three successive brachiopod associations. Significantly, the basal Aegiria–Epitomyonia association was characterized by the abundance of the deep-water indicator Epitomyonia. This represents the first definitive record of a deep-water (BA4) community within the Telychian Xiushan Fauna, which was previously thought to be restricted to shallower environments. This basal association is succeeded by the Aegiria–Megaspinochonetes and Fardenia–Striispirifer associations, and this complete succession indicates a shallowing-upward environmental trend from a BA4 to an upper BA3 setting. We interpret this shallowing trend as a response to regional uplift. The initial existence of this deep-water association was likely facilitated by the unique paleogeographical position of the locality, which likely provided a stable habitat for this deep-water community. This study expands the known ecological range of the Xiushan Fauna and underscores the critical role of local paleogeography in shaping benthic community structures during the early Silurian.