Election integrity is paramount to democratic health. The Electronic Registration Information Center (ERIC) is a multistate collaboration that facilitates essential election administration functions, whereby members share administrative data to ensure clean voter registration lists and to encourage individuals who are eligible but unregistered (EBUs) to register to vote. Despite ERIC’s primary focus on maintaining the accuracy of voter rolls, in 2022, some conservatives accused it of being a tool for partisan electioneering, prompting nine Republican-led states to leave ERIC. To assess the validity of a central criticism made against ERIC, we leverage field experiments conducted by member states during the 2016 elections in Pennsylvania and Nevada (i.e., two important swing states). We find no empirical evidence to support the claim that outreach to EBUs yielded a partisan advantage: ERIC’s registration efforts had little differential effect on party registration or turnout. This article discusses the importance of efforts to maintain accurate voter rolls and to encourage greater participation for promoting confidence in our democratic system.

The article examines artificial intelligence (AI) narratives of the three most important powers in the emerging global AI order – the US, China, and the EU. It argues that these narratives are central to constructing the meanings ascribed to AI in international politics and therefore to understanding the global competition for AI leadership. Specifically, the article uses a method of narrative analysis to reconstruct the AI narratives of the three powers from government documents and strategy papers. These narratives speak to the worldviews and AI images of the powers, how they view each other’s aspirations and behaviours, and what their objectives and motivations are to engage in AI competition. The relationship between the narratives sheds light on the scope for international AI cooperation and conflict. The results reinforce expectations of an intensifying ‘AI race’ between the US and China for global AI leadership. The EU comes out more as a bystander to this geopolitical competition, but strives to lead the development of international AI norms and standards. The article points to different potentials for cooperation and conflict on different aspects of AI and identifies status-seeking as a possible driver of AI competition.

On 18 June 2024, a fire devastated Block D of the Barbados Department of Archives (BDA), destroying irreplaceable local governance and health records. This disaster underscores the fragility of Caribbean archives, which face chronic underfunding, aging infrastructure, and climatic threats such as humidity, pests, and mold. Barbados’s documentary heritage is dispersed across local and global repositories. While digitization offers improved access, it cannot replace original records and introduces new risks of technological obsolescence and cost barriers. Post-pandemic, the BDA fire and closures of other local repositories disrupted research access for over a year, reminding us that archives need to be accessible for safeguarding national memory and governance. This article places the BDA fire within a larger context of regional vulnerabilities and examines policy gaps in disaster risk reduction (DRR) for Small Island Developing States (SIDS) in archives management. It argues for integrated strategies that balance modernization with conservation, prioritize cultural heritage in national planning, and strengthen collaboration among professional heritage managers in galleries, libraries, archives, and museums (GLAM). Sustained investment and transparent reporting are essential to protect and manage Barbados’s archives.

This paper presents a novel planar balanced-to-balanced diplexer with high isolation and harmonic suppression. Both the lower and higher channels of the diplexer consist of the two-stepped impedance resonators and one uniform impedance resonator. To enhance the inter-channel isolation of the diplexer, the cross-coupling between the resonators is used to introduce extra out-of-band transmission zeros. By utilizing stepped impedance resonators with different impedance ratios, the harmonics of the three resonators, except the fundamental harmonics, are different from each other so as to suppress the odd- and even-mode harmonics effectively and ultimately to achieve the purpose of broadening the stopband and enhancing the common-mode (CM) suppression. To verify the feasibility of this design, a microstrip prototype with dual-channel center frequencies of 2.01 GHz and 3.54 GHz was manufactured. Experimental results demonstrate that the in-band differential-mode (DM) isolation is higher than 41.6 dB and 41.5 dB for the lower and higher channels, respectively. CM suppression is greater than 20 dB in the 0–13.7 GHz range for the lower channel and 20 dB in the 0–9.0 GHz range for the higher channel. The stopband suppression level achieves 20 dB up to 18.5 GHz.

One of the most relevant types of human-made disasters, due to its intense and long-lasting effects on health, is the so-called Complex Emergency (CE) or Complex Humanitarian Emergency, defined since the early 1990s as “a relatively acute situation affecting a large civilian population, usually involving a combination of a situation of war or massive civil disturbance, food insecurity or shortage, and population displacement, resulting in a significant increase in mortality.”

This article discusses the University of Kansas’s Kenneth Spencer Research Library as an unexpectedly rich resource for British and Irish studies. The library’s location in Lawrence, Kansas, at a distance from the coastal research corridors, means that its collections tend to be underexplored, despite their significance. Spencer Library’s strength in eighteenth-century British imprints is complemented by extensive manuscript holdings. Among these are several centuries of estate papers for Britain’s prominent North family, and manuscripts documenting the Asiento (agreement) and England’s trade in supplying captive Africans to Spanish colonies in the Americas in the papers of Arthur Moore. Particularly noteworthy is the library of writer, civil servant, and Irish nationalist P. S. O’Hegarty, which offers scholars an unparalleled resource for Anglo-Irish relations and Irish history, culture, and politics. O’Hegarty’s collecting of scarce and ephemeral material, on the one hand, and books with significant provenance, on the other, makes his library a valuable resource for researchers even in an age of digitized text.

This study investigates the hydroelastic interaction of flexural gravity waves with multiple porous elastic plates of varying lengths in finite-depth water, employing an integral equation approach. The floating ice sheet is modelled as a flexible plate of uniform thickness, governed by the Euler–Bernoulli beam equation. The primary objective is to evaluate the effectiveness of porous elastic plates as wave barriers for shoreline protection in ice-covered regions. Within the framework of linearized theory, the problem is formulated as a boundary value problem (BVP) and solved using an eigenfunction expansion method with nonorthogonal eigenfunctions. The mode-coupling relation is utilized to transform the BVP into a system of Fredholm-type integral equations, which is subsequently solved using the multi-term Galerkin approximation technique with Chebyshev polynomials. The numerical analysis evaluates the reflection and transmission coefficients, hydrodynamic forces, and wave energy dissipation, with a particular focus on the influence of the permeability and flexibility of the submerged plates, along with other relevant parameters. Validation is conducted by comparing the results with those of previous studies under specific conditions. This research underscores the practical benefits of incorporating porosity and flexibility into the model, demonstrating improved wave reflection and energy dissipation. Additionally, the findings reveal that the thickness of the ice sheet plays a crucial role in optimizing breakwater performance. The research delivers key insights into mitigating wave-induced forces and offers a reliable framework for designing effective and sustainable coastal protection systems that safeguard shorelines from high waves.

Depression affects over 280 million people worldwide. Long-chain n-3 fatty acids may relate to depression, but observational evidence is inconsistent. This cross-sectional analysis of the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey 2021–2023 examined the association between dietary long-chain n-3 intake and depression severity in USA adults ≥ 18 years with complete dietary, Patient Health Questionnaire-9 (PHQ-9) and covariate data (n 3608). PHQ-9 severity categories (0–4 to 20–27) served as the main outcome. Total n-3 (α-linolenic acid (ALA), EPA, DPA and DHA) from 24-h recalls (Food and Nutrient Database for Dietary Studies 2021–2023) served as the exposure; supplements were excluded, and supplement use was a binary covariate. Survey-weighted ordinal logistic regression (svyolr) was used with all continuous variables centred/scaled (OR per 1 sd). Covariates included age, sex, race/ethnicity (collapsed for sparse cells), income:poverty ratio, BMI, smoking, alcohol, physical activity and n-3 supplement use. Higher total n-3 intake was inversely associated with depression severity (OR 0·865 per 1 sd, 95 % CI 0·761, 0·983, P = 0·026). EPA showed a significant inverse association (OR 0·907, 95 % CI 0·824, 0·998, P = 0·045); ALA, DPA and DHA were NS. No interaction by sex (P = 0·656) or race/ethnicity (P = 0·155). Sensitivity analyses: excluding supplement users (n 3093) OR 0·872 (95 % CI 0·773, 0·984, P = 0·026); two recalls only (n 3229) OR 0·847 (95 % CI 0·751, 0·955, P = 0·007). Dietary n-3 intake, particularly EPA, was modestly and inversely associated with depression severity. Residual confounding and reverse causation remain possible; longitudinal studies with biomarkers are needed.

This paper studies the stabilization properties of time-varying capital requirements in an environment dominated by an oligopolistic banking sector, where banks accumulate capital subject to a leverage adequacy cost. The results indicate that macroprudential policy can stabilize fluctuations in business and credit cycles by controlling the loan rate, thereby influencing the spread within the banking system. A welfare analysis shows that the welfare gains from macroprudential policy depend on the type of shock hitting the economy, and that higher banking competition can amplify these benefits. The findings also highlight that time-varying capital requirements should not substitute for monetary policy, but rather complement it in addressing financial imbalances and adverse sectoral shocks.

In this study, we engage in a deep dive into Black Americans views of the Congressional Black Caucus. We argue that given the goals of the organization, Black people should be the CBC’s strongest supporters. We also anticipate that age will be a major cleavage in support for the CBC among Black people. We test our hypotheses using the 2020 Collaborative Multiracial Post-Election Survey (CMPS). We find that Black people, and older Black people in particular, are the most supportive of the CBC. Moreover, we find that disparities in support among the youngest and oldest Black respondents are greater than the differences between Black and White people in our analysis. We empirically explore the causes of this intergenerational rift and show that younger Black Americans’ lower levels of support for the organization are in part tied to their lower levels of linked fate and their perception that elected officials do not work to advance their interest in government.

Scholars trained in disciplines like anthropology, history, law, political science, and sociology helped to give rise to the field of law and society over the past two generations. What theories does law and society offer those disciplines in return, and are scholars in those fields looking back to law and society? To answer these questions, this article, which introduces a symposium celebrating the 60th anniversary of the Law & Society Review, brings together scholarship across disciplines to share the possible future influence of law and society on the disciplines. This theoretical and forward-looking inquiry invites us all to reflect upon law and society’s contributions over the past two generations and to consider what law and society will contribute to the next generation of interdisciplinary – and disciplinary – scholarship.

Bribery by the pharmaceutical industry is one common manifestation of corruption that can be found in a pharmaceutical system. This study analyzes patterns of bribery in the global pharmaceutical industry through a systematic review of Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) Working Group on Bribery Phase Reports published between 1999 and February 2025. These reports document investigations and enforcement actions related to bribery across jurisdictions. An inductive thematic analysis was used to identify key patterns in cases implicating pharmaceutical firms. We found patterns across many of the cases we studied. For example, bribery was often approved by high-ranking managers. Also, the use of intermediaries and complicated corporate structures to obscure bribes. Multiple cases revealed the involvement of subsidiaries, third-party vendors, or shell companies that processed payments disguised as legitimate transaction. Reported bribes amounted to about US$12.6 million, with sanctions exceeding US$1.1 billion. Government officials, regulatory authorities, and healthcare providers were bribed through cash, gifts, luxury travel, and fraudulent research to gain market access, increase sales, or influence prescribing. These findings underscore the systemic nature of bribery in the pharmaceutical sector and call for stronger oversight and accountability to protect public trust and equitable medicine access.

This study proposes a new qualitative method in historical pragmatics to extract politeness formulae for master-servant directives from nineteenth-century French advice literature. Whereas traditional politeness models study strategic face-saving, this study investigates non-strategic, routinized or conventionalized politeness by mapping explicit linguistic instructions in historical prescriptive metasources. Because etiquette and conduct books targeted middle-class households – typically defined as having at least one live-in servant – they routinely discussed interactions with servants. The self-built corpus comprises 43 sources: etiquette and conduct manuals, alongside servant manuals. Through close reading I manually extract politeness formulae, which are compiled into a formulary. Historians underline servants’ harsh conditions and social erasure, typically mirrored by bare imperatives. Advice on a kind prosody is widespread, but politeness formulae (e.g. voulez-vous? – je vous prie) only emerge in the 1870s, when the crisis of domestic service begins. This shift suggests that domestic service was increasingly viewed in transactional rather than purely hierarchical terms. Despite these changes, master-servant, servant-master and peer directives remain rigidly compartmentalized. The article addresses a notable gap in French historical im/politeness studies by showing how politeness formulae in prescriptive discourse reveal the persistence of caste-like social structures in nineteenth-century French domestic service.

This study aimed to verify whether a higher percentage contribution of food and beverage consumption at dinner and evening snack was associated with overweight in schoolchildren from a city in southern Brazil. Cross-sectional study conducted with schoolchildren aged 7–14 years from the Prevalence Study of Obesity in Children and Adolescents of Florianopolis/SC. Weight and height were measured individually by trained researchers. The assessment of the weight status of the schoolchildren was conducted using the BMI, classified according to the Z-score for age. The self-reported food consumption was obtained through the online Web-CAAFE questionnaire. Multivariate logistic was used to verify the association between the percentage contribution of food groups in the dinner and evening snack meals with overweight. A total of 1379 schoolchildren participated in the study, of which 33·8 % were overweight. It was observed that a higher percentage contribution of meat, eggs, and seafood consumption at dinner was positively associated with overweight (OR: 1·61; 95 % CI: 1·27, 2·04); P = 0·001). In contrast, a higher percentage contribution of water consumption at dinner and dairy products and sugary drinks at the evening snack were negatively associated with overweight (OR: 0·67; OR: 0·61; and OR: 0·67, respectively). It is concluded that a higher percentage contribution of food groups in schoolchildren’s diet at dinner and evening snack is associated with overweight. However, further studies are recommended to assess food consumption in schoolchildren during dinner and evening snack meals for more conclusive findings.