In an era of globalization, increasingly interconnected labor markets have intensified competition for skilled talent, particularly among countries in the Global North such as Canada. While Canada’s immigration policy prioritizes education and professional experience, these same credentials are often devalued upon arrival, as systemic barriers limit access to commensurate employment. This study examines the employment experiences of skilled, racialized immigrants in British Columbia, exploring how institutional narratives of meritocracy conceal exclusion, credential systems reinforce epistemic hierarchies, and settlement services pathologize migrant experiences. Using a qualitative design with four focus group discussions (n = 18), the study integrates critical migration theory, intersectionality, and decolonial social work to analyze the structural marginalization of skilled, racialized immigrants. Findings reveal a central paradox: the very system that celebrates global talent simultaneously erodes its value through credential gatekeeping, discriminatory hiring practices, and labor market practices that privilege local over global expertise. By situating these barriers within broader colonial and epistemic hierarchies, the study argues that integration must be understood not as individual adaptation but as institutional transformation. It contributes to critical debates on skilled migration, equity, and the reproduction of colonial logics within Canada’s labor market.

This paper presents the design and evaluation of reflectarray antennas at spherical surfaces aimed at achieving an optimal compromise between electrical performance and mechanical deployability for satellite antenna solutions based on offset reflector configurations. By implementing printed reflectarray elements on a spherical surface, the phase-shifting elements mitigate spherical aberration, leading to enhanced focusing capabilities comparable to those of parabolic reflectors. The spherical geometry inherently simplifies the folding mechanism due to the rotational symmetry of the reflecting surface and minimizes the differential spatial phase delay, improving the reflectarray in-band performance. Simulation results demonstrate that large-aperture spherical reflectarrays can replicate the gain and beam quality of parabolic reflectors with smoother phase distributions than flat or multifaceted reflectarrays. The integration of spherical reflectarrays in dual-antenna configurations is evaluated to realize compact and efficient antenna systems for next-generation satellites.

I provide several natural properties of group actions which translate into fragments of axiom of choice in the associated permutation models of choiceless set theory.

This project investigates how skin tone and gender of Black political candidates work together to influence White Americans’ evaluations. Drawing on the colorism literature and group position theory, I develop a theoretical framework anticipating how the skin tone of Black candidates may influence White voters’ perceptions. Two survey experiments were conducted on nationally representative samples. Both studies highlight that skin tone is meaningful to White voters’ evaluations, but in nuanced ways based on gender. Specifically, the darker-skinned Black female candidate is evaluated more positively than her lighter-skinned female and darker-skinned male counterpart across multiple domains, including vote choice and expected job performance. These findings suggest that gender can attenuate the negative stereotypes typically associated with darker skin tone in some contexts. These findings underscore the importance of theorizing about race as a multidimensional construct, with implications for understanding hierarchy, intergroup relations, and electoral politics in a diversifying American racial landscape.

Modern gravestones have been a common sight in European towns and cities for just over three hundred years. They provide a wealth of information beyond simply names and dates, and can teach us a great deal about the time and place in which they were erected and the people who built them. I have been recording and conserving gravestones for fifteen years, and here I present some of the techniques, sources, and hard-learned lessons of using gravestones as archival material that will enable you to see your local graveyard in a whole new light.

This article investigates the vocabulary of astral sciences preserved in the Huihui Guan Zazi (回回館雜字), a Persian–Chinese glossary commissioned by the Ming imperial court in the early fifteenth century. Situating the text within the broader context of Mongol and post-Mongol Eurasian intellectual exchange, this article analyzes the glossary’s technical astronomy and astrology terms with attention to their precision, methods of translation, and the direction of knowledge transmission. The findings suggest a high level of conceptual translation and a bidirectional flow of knowledge, pointing to a multilingual environment sustained by close engagement with scientific texts under Mongol rule and retained in the early Ming. By contrast, supplementary materials within the glossary produced in the late sixteenth century reveal the erosion of this intellectual vitality, signaling the decline of Persianate influence within the Ming imperial bureaucracy.

17p13.3 microdeletions involving deletion of the gene YWHAE are a newly recognised cause of neurodevelopmental disorder. There are now emerging case reports of this genetic disorder associated with CHDs, and this case report outlines the first instance of this specific 17p13.3 microdeletion with pulmonary atresia with ventricular septal defect.

Scholarship on overseas Chinese and modern Chinese diplomacy often centers on nationally recognized leaders and officials with prominent global roles. However, a fuller understanding of the diaspora requires examining lesser-known diplomats and local leaders who often had a greater impact on their communities than distant official policies. The transnational life and evolving identity of Yü Shouzhi (1907–1999) – a grassroots Chinese diplomat, community organizer, and small business owner in Mexico – exemplifies this dynamic. Initially trained and appointed by the Chinese Nationalist government, Yü’s diplomatic work extended beyond official channels to foster transethnic, transnational, and intergenerational networks within the Chinese-Mexican community. His transition from formal diplomacy to community leadership and commerce reflected how individual migrants successfully navigated transnational and national politics, community relationships, kinship, and transethnic relations and gained social power. In the process, Yü adjusted his sense of belonging and developed diasporic nationalism, transforming from a representative of the Nationalist government to a deeply rooted Chinese-Mexican community member. This article argues that Yü’s ability to adapt his role as a Chinese diplomat and cultivate a Chinese-Mexican identity was shaped by the interplay of formal state affiliations, grassroots networks, transnational and cross-ethnic relationships, and his personal initiative.

The convergence of nuclear and radiological preparedness with epidemic and pandemic response, reveals valuable opportunities for cross-disciplinary learning and capability development. Insights from the extensive career of Dr. C. Norman Coleman illustrate how methodologies from radiation medical countermeasures can inform strategies for managing emerging infectious diseases. While nuclear incidents are infrequent, infectious disease outbreaks occur regularly, underscoring the need for sustained, adaptable capabilities to detect and respond to such threats. To draw on some examples, case studies on the development and deployment of vaccines against filoviruses highlight measurable advances in response speed and efficacy, while persistent challenges related to equitable access to medical countermeasures during public health emergencies can be addressed drawing lessons from the COVID-19 pandemic. Iterative improvement, strategic planning and performance optimization is very important, as is, the value of understanding the structure of a problem to find its solution.

Existing accounts of normative change in international politics place undue focus on powerful actors as norm entrepreneurs and the organizational platforms that facilitate their advocacy. This can obscure the ideational innovation that precedes advocacy, biasing analysis towards structural incentives, rather than agency. To rebalance such accounts, we offer an agentive model of ideational innovation that treats norm entrepreneurship as a process, rather than locating it in a single actor. By bridging IR and history of political thought, our model helps trace the origins of normative ideas, development, and influence forensically. We illustrate its benefits with multi-archival research (conducted in the US, UK, and Czechia) into Bohuslav Ečer, Czechoslovakia’s representative at the 1943–1948 UN War Crimes Commission. Employing process tracing methods on new evidence, we show how Ečer synthesized multiple influences into an innovative proposal for holding individuals criminally responsible for aggression. Using original archival documents, we show how his ideas swayed key US policymakers via unlikely channels and helped shape a pivotal international norm codified in the 1945 Nuremberg Charter. Appreciation of Ečer’s agency alongside other key innovators contributes to our understanding of a pivotal norm, helps remedy biases in knowledge production, and enriches our theoretical understanding of normative change.

Early Paleozoic trilobites from the Umachiri Inlier of the Peruvian Altiplano, ~ 100 km northwest of Lake Titicaca, comprise two assemblages, one Cambrian and the other Ordovician. The former assemblage comes from the arkosic upper member of the recently defined Llallahue Formation and represents the oldest record of Cambrian trilobites in the Central Andean Basin. The assemblage consists of transported sclerites of aphelaspidids (Aphelaspis sp. indet. 1; Aphelaspididae gen. indet. sp. indet.) and indeterminable parabolinoidids, indicative of a Paibian–early Jiangshanian (= early Furongian) age. The Ordovician trilobites come from the lower Cunahuiri Member of the overlying Umachiri Formation and include some widespread taxa (Neseuretus Hicks, 1873; Annamitella Mansuy, 1920) that are scarcely geographically diagnostic, plus an asaphid species—Suriaspis? cf. Suriaspis trumpyi (Harrington and Kay, 1951)—that is closely related to material previously described in the Early Ordovician of Colombia. Despite the low diversity of both trilobite assemblages, the Cambrian record is comparable to early Furongian cosmopolitan taxa described primarily in Gondwana (Antarctica), Laurentia, and other regions. The scarce Ordovician specimens, recorded from siltstones and conglomerates, include forms that are more clearly Gondwanan to peri-Gondwanan. These new Cambrian and Ordovician Central Andean Basin assemblages on the Arequipa Terrane belong to separate tectonostratigraphic environments separated by a regional unconformity. The Cambrian assemblage has some affinities to Antarctic taxa that can be explained by the existence of wide back-arc basins along a continuous Terra Australis margin of Gondwana that contributed to effective dispersal of cosmopolitan taxa; in contrast, the Ordovician basin was more restricted and contained trilobites that were endemic to western Gondwana, which is consistent with brachiopod taxa reported from the same Ordovician strata.

This study is a prospective observational study to systematically compare the effects of intermittent tube feeding and thickened feeding on dehydration status, thirst degree and quality of life in patients with dysphagia after stroke. A total of forty-eight patients with dysphagia after stroke were selected and divided into intermittent tube feeding group (twenty-four cases) and thickened feeding group (twenty-four cases). The grouping was based on the nutritional intake mode after clinical decision-making. Participants were selected from the Affiliated Brain Hospital of Nanjing Medical University and the First Affiliated Hospital of Nanjing Medical University. All enrolled patients received conventional treatment and nursing measures and were treated for 2 weeks. The dehydration status was evaluated by plasma osmotic pressure. The degree of thirst is evaluated by the Numerical Rate Scale. Total protein and Hb are used to assess nutritional status; The Functional Oral Intake Scale (FOIS) assesses swallowing function. The Swallowing Quality of Life Scale (SWAL-QOL) was used to assess the quality of life. After 2 weeks of treatment, the improvement in dehydration and thirst in intermittent tube feeding group was better than that in thickened feeding group (P < 0·05). The FOIS and SWAL-QOL scores of both groups of patients improved compared with those before treatment (P < 0·05). Intermittent tube feeding can improve the dehydration status of patients with dysphagia after stroke, relieve thirst and enhance swallowing function and quality of life. The study may provide a more comprehensive basis for the selection of clinical nutritional support plans.