This paper examines how the interaction between natural selection, household education choices and R&D activities influences macroeconomic growth. We develop an innovation-driven growth model that integrates household heterogeneity in educational ability with endogenous fertility and the activation of innovation. Our findings reveal that households with lower educational abilities accumulate less human capital but have more offspring and initially gain a temporary evolutionary advantage. This demographic shift enhances the likelihood of innovation taking off; however, the resulting reduction in the share of high-ability households ultimately constrains R&D efforts and slows long-term economic growth. We empirically validate our theoretical model using cross-country data and instrumental variables, demonstrating that disparities in educational ability negatively impact education, innovation and growth over the long run. This study provides new insights into the complex dynamics between natural selection, endogenous fertility and economic development, with significant implications for both policy and theory.

The early 1970s was a tumultuous time for abortion law and policy in North Dakota where the defeat of an abortion liberalization initiative in 1972 was quickly followed by Roe v. Wade in 1973. The resulting political and cultural circumstances strongly favored the North Dakota Right to Life Association, which saw much of its agenda passed by the legislature with overwhelming bipartisan support. This study uses a political culture perspective to examine the development of North Dakota abortion law and policy in the years after Roe. It illustrates how the state legislature, interest groups, the bureaucracy, and the courts reacted to a series of disruptions in abortion policy. The resulting policies made abortion a continuing source of tension within North Dakota politics.

This study aimed to evaluate the effects of acetyl-L-carnitine on follicle survival and growth, stromal cell density and extracellular matrix, as well as on the expression of mRNA for nuclear factor erythroid 2-related factor (NRF2), superoxide dismutase (SOD), catalase (CAT), glutathione peroxidase (GPX) and peroxiredoxin 6 (PRDX6) in cultured bovine ovarian cortical tissues. Ovarian fragments (3 × 3 × 1 mm) were cultured for 6 days in α-MEM+ alone or supplemented with 10, 50 or 100 μM acetyl-L-carnitine at 38.5°C with 5% CO2 in humidified air. Before (non-cultured tissues) and after culture, the ovarian fragments were fixed in 4% paraformaldehyde for 12 h for histological analysis or stored at –80ºC for mRNA expression analysis of NRF2, SOD, CAT, PRDX6 and GPX1. The results showed that 100 μM acetyl-L-carnitine increased the percentages of morphologically normal follicles and stromal cell density in cultured ovarian tissues. On the other hand, acetyl-L-carnitine did not influence the percentage of collagen in ovarian tissue nor the expression of mRNAs for NRF2, SOD, CAT, PRDX6 and GPX1. In conclusion, 100 μM acetyl-L-carnitine increased follicle survival and stromal cell density in cultured bovine ovarian tissues but does not influence collagen fibre distribution or the expression of mRNAs for NRF2, SOD, CAT, PRDX6 and GPX1.

This article considers the link between industrialization and social movement strategy. In the late nineteenth century, temperance organizations, rebuffed by Congress, won prohibition at the state level, especially in the American South and West. Simultaneously, lawmakers in the Reconstruction South and West built railroads to Midwestern rail hubs, which housed breweries and distilleries that shipped liquor by rail back into dry states. The Woman’s Christian Temperance Union and Anti-Saloon League lobbied dry state congressmen to ban this interstate liquor traffic through the 1890 Wilson Act and 1913 Webb-Kenyon Act and eventually sought a complementary national amendment prohibiting liquor manufacturing, sale, and transportation. As railroad expansion and advances in liquor manufacturing undermined the state-level dry regime, prohibitionists pushed for a nationwide ban, contrary to voters’ preferences. This case shows how interest groups adapted a new legislative strategy, partly in response to industrialization and interstate rail development at the turn of the twentieth century.

This article responds to Laura A. Marshall’s argument that Socrates does not compare himself to a gadfly in Plato’s Apology but rather to a spur on the side of a horse directed by Apollo. In revisiting the evidence for the canonical reading, this article argues that ‘gadfly’ or some other irritant insect is the only plausible translation for μύωψ in the Apology. Scrutinizing the source of the contemporary notion of the Western philosopher is pressingly important—not only for its own sake, but because the ‘spur reading’ has made its way into public circles and even the Cambridge Greek Lexicon.

In recent years, the digitisation of historical data containing cause-of-death information has significantly increased. However, these data show considerable variations in diagnostic practices and nosology over time and place. Examining vague historical causes of death, often denoting symptoms rather than specific diseases, is a particular challenge. Infantile convulsions are an example of a common yet problematic cause of death. To improve our understanding of infantile convulsions, we propose an innovative mixed-methods, comparative approach. This study combines qualitative analyses of historical medical thinking on infantile convulsions with quantitative analyses of individual-level death records from four European cities: Amsterdam, Hermoupolis, Maastricht, and Rostock, covering different periods between 1800 and 1955. Our findings reveal that infant deaths attributed to convulsions encompass a multitude of causes from different disease categories. Significant differences emerged in the patterns of convulsions across time, age groups, and locations, even within the same country. The decline in convulsions mortality seems to be more related to the introduction of uniform registration regulations and systems, and advancements in medical knowledge than to the decline in overall infant mortality. This study’s outcome serves as a cautionary note that challenges the prevailing attitude towards convulsions and emphasises the complexity of interpreting deaths from convulsions. These were highly dependent on historical context, especially local medical culture and the variable accuracy of cause-of-death registration. These findings have implications for studies on infant mortality even when the main interest of such studies is not convulsions mortality.

State legislatures are critical policymaking bodies, yet recent studies suggest that elections rarely hold state legislators accountable for their representation and voters generally know little about legislative politics. Would state legislatures function differently if voters had access to more information about legislative politics? Leveraging the haphazard overlap of newspaper markets and legislative districts, I construct and validate a measure of legislative press coverage in all 49 partisan state legislatures for the years 2000–2022 that is plausibly uncorrelated with other district-level variables. Drawing on this large-scale dataset, this article traces the impact of press coverage on state legislative voters, elections, and, ultimately, representation. I find that robust local press coverage substantially augments down-ballot voter engagement, the electoral return to ideological moderation, and the incumbency advantage. Once in office, I further document that state legislators who receive stronger press coverage work more for their constituencies and diverge less from their district’s median voter. Overall, these results suggest that state legislators would be more moderate, representative, and productive were local press coverage strengthened.

There are few clear-cut examples of countries that have abolished or introduced compulsory voting. When the Netherlands abolished the system in 1971, Irwin (1974) documented how this led to a sharp reduction in voter turnout, especially among young people, women, and those with little political interest. Flanders, the largest autonomous region of Belgium, abolished compulsory voting in October 2024, and we accessed panel data collected before and after the event. We replicate Irwin’s analysis because electoral participation in the region decreased by almost 26 percentage points. Remarkably, our results are similar regarding the effect of gender and political interest, but we do not find a significant effect of educational level. Therefore, the normative argument that abolishing compulsory voting leads to more inequality based on education is not supported by our results. We do not find substantial consequences for the average policy input.

Following on Josine Blok’s article (this volume), this note assesses the possible historical contexts for the gift of grain to Athens recorded in Philochoros FGrH 328 F119.

Four new hemipteran insects are described from the Triassic (Norian) Cow Branch Formation of Virginia and North Carolina (USA), including one pair of isolated wings belonging to Hylicellidae (Hylicelloidea: Cicadomorpha), one complete specimen assigned to a distinctive new genus of Ipsviciidae (Scytinopteroidea: Cicadomorpha), and two heteropterans belonging to unknown families. Only the ipsviciid is preserved with enough morphological detail for systematic study and is herein described as Solitivicia reducta new genus new species due to its highly reduced forewing venation. The peculiar distribution of hemipterans in the Cow Branch Formation, namely the paucity of cicadomorphans and coleorrhynchans which are both otherwise abundant in Triassic deposits, is discussed.

UUID: http://zoobank.org/dbc44e2c-6e3d-4ec6-9912-7b041d6ca2fd

In response to the auxiliary requirements for the treatment and prevention of lumbar diseases, based on the biomechanical characteristics of the human waist, a novel unpowered rigid-flexible coupling waist exoskeleton with multiple degrees of freedom and its human-exoskeleton parallel wearable equivalent research prototype are proposed, further focusing on the encompassing kinematic compatibility and dynamic load-bearing effectiveness of the biomimetic coordination, an in-depth analysis is performed on the multi-body dynamic dimensional synthesis and its methodological research. Initially, based on the rigid-flexible coupling characteristics and experimental biomechanical data of the lumbar region in the sagittal plane, an accurate multi-body system dynamics model of the research prototype, which incorporates the rigid-flexible coupling characteristics, is systematically constructed. Subsequently, to effectively quantify the biomimetic coordination of the exoskeleton, a novel comprehensive optimization index, termed biomimetic load-bearing comfort, is proposed. Finally, by utilizing this index, the exoskeleton is optimized in dimension by employing a thorough combination of multi-dimensional spatial search algorithm and compression factor particle swarm algorithm. The simulation results validate the correctness and effectiveness of both the dynamic dimensional synthesis and its methodology. Furthermore, the study also reveals that the optimized exoskeleton’s passive working mode showcases favorable biomimetic coordination. These results are crucial for progressing the research on the biomimetic load-bearing capacities of other exoskeletons.

The new damselfly family Shundeagrionidae is proposed for Shundeagrion cheni n. gen. n. sp. from the Paleocene of the Sanshui Basin, South China. This new family is unique in a combination of wing venation characters that are separately encountered in other extant and fossil groups. Together with the extinct groups Dysagrionidae, Sieblosiidae, Whetwhetaksidae, Menatlestidae, Latibasaliidae, Euarchistigmatinae, and Eodysagrioninae, the Shundeagrionidae n. fam. is the eighth major group of Paleogene damselflies with large wings, very long postnodal area, and nodus relatively basally recessed. It confirms that an important diversification occurred worldwide among the damselflies during the Paleocene and Eocene. These relatively ancient groups were progressively replaced by the modern families of large calopterygoid damselflies during the Oligocene and the Miocene, leading to the modern faunas.

UUID: http://zoobank.org/e18cf9dc-c438-484c-b97e-dcc6d63986bd

Pterotheca Salter, 1853 is an unusual but readily identifiable bellerophontoid gastropod that occurs in the Upper Ordovician to the Llandovery of the lower Silurian in many parts of North America and Europe. Recently, a large collection of Pterotheca was obtained for the first time from the Xiushan Formation of middle Telychian (Llandovery) age in the Hunan Province of South China. This is also the first record of the genus in the low-latitude peri-Gondwanan region. On the basis of the collection, two new species of Pterotheca—P. yongshunensis and P. xiushanensis—were identified and are described herein. The morphologic analysis suggests that close relatives of these new species may be Pterotheca species from the Telychian of Scotland. The new species show continuous variations of marginal apex to submarginal apex, implying that one of the Pterotheca species may be ancestral to the Devonian Aspidotheca Spriesterbach, 1919. The Pterotheca species from South China possibly lived a slowly crawling life on a soft substrate, feeding on algae and/or detritus, and were adapted to a shallow-water setting with substantial terrigenous input. Given that all the known Silurian Pterotheca species occurred in siliciclastic settings, most of which represent sea-level fall and lowstand periods, we demonstrate that geographic isolation and enhanced ocean circulation during the early Silurian regression facilitated the speciation of Pterotheca globally, and the connection of a sea pathway during the Rhuddanian transgression after the end-Ordovician glaciation could have led to the primary dispersal of Silurian Pterotheca.