This article presents a case of osteomyelitis variolosa from a skeleton excavated in the Western Cemetery at Cirencester (Corinium) in Britain, dated to the 3rd or 4th c. CE. This osteological condition is caused by the variola virus, the causative agent of smallpox, and is found in some individuals who have survived a childhood smallpox infection, the condition manifesting many years later. The significance of this discovery is that it indicates that smallpox had been introduced into the Roman world, and to Britain in particular, by the late 3rd or 4th c. CE. Rather than postulating a separate and unrecorded introduction of smallpox into the Roman empire, we suggest that this discovery strengthens the case for seeing the 2nd-c. Antonine Plague as an early form of smallpox.

Among language users, it is a commonplace that multilingual speakers switch between languages to make themselves intelligible. Yet, sociolinguistics has had surprisingly little to say about this. This neglect traces back to early efforts to carve out a niche for the field by focusing on contexts where social rather than semantic factors like intelligibility shape multilingual practice. As fruitful as this approach has been, here I argue that it has ironically obscured much that is of social significance in multilingual practice. Focusing on prominent practices of code-mixing in Papua New Guinea, I show how their social meanings—the roles and identities they index—are tied to the way they make speech in global languages intelligible to people unfamiliar with them. In the wake of European colonialism, postcolonial nationalism, and neoliberal globalization, contexts of unevenly distributed multilingualism like this are ubiquitous. And there, intelligibility is often a prime social factor shaping multilingual practices. (Multilingualism, codeswitching, intelligibility, social meaning, global languages)*

Glucosinolates (GSLs) are significant and specialized metabolites found in Brassicas that have crucial roles in both human and plant defence. The present study investigated sinigrin, progoitrin and glucoerucin in Indian cauliflower genotypes using high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC). For this, 37 genotypes of cauliflower from early (14), mid-early (6), mid-late (15) and late (2) maturity groups along with broccoli (two) and Sicilian purple (one) were evaluated in randomized block design during 2019–20 and 2020–21. Glucoerucin was predominant in most of the cauliflower genotypes (30), followed by sinigrin (5) and progoitrin (2). It was also prominent in broccoli genotypes. Progoitrin was the principal GLS in Sicilian Purple ‘PC-1 (2.430 μmol/g). In cauliflower, the glucoerucin, progoitrin and sinigrin were ranged from 0.067 to 7.248 μmol/g, 0.001 to 0.849 μmol/g and 0.001 to 3.310 μmol/g, respectively. Pusa Deepali (early), Pusa Sharad (mid-early) and Pusa Shukti (mid-late) were found to be ‘low progoitrin-high glucoerucin’ varieties in their respective groups. In the late group, Pusa Snowball Kt-25 had low progoitrin. Glucoerucin and sinigrin were highest in the mid-early group. Progoitrin was highest in genotypes harvested in the first fortnight of November and the second fortnight of February, whereas sinigrin and glucoerucin were maximum in the genotypes harvested during the second fortnight of November. The K-means clustering identified four clusters, and principal component analysis revealed two principal components. The information on three GLSs in Indian cauliflower will be useful for breeding varieties with desirable GSL profiles for public health and plant defence.

The rise of online voicing and campaigns empowered by digital technologies and online social media is rejuvenating retail investor activism that has been mostly ignored in the traditional offline setting. This article argues that online activism that is initiated by retail investors will affect managerial attention intensity and attention priority on environmental issues, thus promoting green innovation. Using a Chinese-listed companies database with 13,795 firm-year observations over the period from 2011 to 2018, our results confirm that online environmental activism induces corporate green innovation. Online activism is more effective when the retail investor base holds larger shares in total and presents questions with a more intensely negative tone. Additionally, the above-mentioned moderating effects are stronger in digital firms. Our study offers insights into the online patterns of shareholder activism in the digital era and highlights the role of minority voicing in promoting corporate sustainable transformation.

The present contribution proposes a low-threshold action plan for research into what we consider critical areas in multilingualism where we see an urgent need for more empirical studies and research-based classroom interventions and a stronger commitment to multilingual standards both in research and teaching. Reaching out to a wide audience of researchers, educationalists and decision makers, we first stake out the conceptual frame for our discussion and delineate the theoretical base that informs our thinking. This is followed by a perforce perfunctory overview of the current state of things. Next, we outline three research tasks with concrete practical suggestions and guidance on how to operationalise and implement the respective projects. Each task is contextualised in terms of its broader socio-educational embedding and prospective practical-theoretical relevance. The overall aim is to challenge traditional monolingual-grounded notions of language development, promote a dynamic and inclusive multilingual perspective in language learning, teaching and assessment, and contribute to a more informed understanding of multilingualism.

This inaugural presidential address of the Asian Law and Society Association features three recently published monographs to draw attention to research by the next generation of scholars and to show how they contribute to the field. Although the three books differ in terms of focus, methods, and findings, they share a hallmark of law and society, that is, they investigate practices, beliefs, and objects that are often taken for granted. At the same time, the three studies arrive at dissimilar conclusions about law, which reflects another unifying hallmark of law and society—its diversity. Together, the inconsistent findings expose the many profiles of law and demonstrate its fascinating nature. They remind us that we do not yet know the intricacies of law, and we need all kinds of law and society scholarships—on Asian societies and elsewhere—to continue advancing the field.

Individuals on the autism spectrum or with elevated autistic traits have shown difficulty in recognizing people’s facial emotions. They also tend to gravitate toward anime, a highly visual medium featuring animated characters whose facial emotions may be easier to distinguish. Because autistic traits overlap with alexithymia, or difficulty in identifying and describing feelings, alexithymia might explain the association between elevated autistic traits and difficulty with facial emotion recognition. The present study used a computerized task to first examine whether elevated autistic traits in a community sample of 247 adults were associated with less accurate emotion recognition of human but not anime faces. Results showed that individuals higher in autistic traits performed significantly worse on the human facial emotion recognition task, but no better or worse on the anime version. After controlling for alexithymia and other potentially confounding variables, autistic traits were no longer associated with performance on the facial emotion recognition tasks. However, alexithymia remained a significant predictor and fully mediated the relationship between autistic traits and emotion recognition of both human and anime faces. Findings suggest that interventions designed to help individuals on the autism spectrum with facial emotion recognition might benefit from targeting alexithymia and employing anime characters.

Given a general polarized $K3$ surface $S\subset \mathbb P^g$ of genus $g\le 14$, we study projections of minimal degree and their variational structure. In particular, we prove that the degree of irrationality of all such surfaces is at most $4$, and that for $g=7,8,9,11$ there are no rational maps of degree $3$ induced by the primitive linear system. Our methods combine vector bundle techniques à la Lazarsfeld with derived category tools and also make use of the rich theory of singular curves on $K3$ surfaces.

On 23 September 1920, when the Inter-Allied boundary commission arrived in the town of Gmünd (Cmunt), residents participated in a large demonstration about the small border change set to take place along the Lower Austrian-Bohemian border. While boundary commissions in Europe have historically acted as intermediaries between local and state interests, this article argues that the Inter-Allied commission members departed from this role when they refused to undergo any public consultation or meet with any demonstrators about the border change. Examining the (in)actions of the postwar Inter-Allied and state boundary commission representatives alongside the concerns of the local population in Gmünd reflects how international, state, and local actors all perceived Europe’s boundaries as malleable and negotiable over a year after the signing of the post-World War I (WWI) treaties. The lead-up to and demonstration in Gmünd in September 1920 further nuances the relationships between the Allied Powers, postwar states, and local populations during the boundary-making process in the wake of WWI, illuminating both successful and unsuccessful claim making strategies pursued by state and local actors.

This paper concerns an insurance firm’s surplus process observed at renewal inspection times, with a focus on assessing the probability of the surplus level dropping below zero. For various types of inter-inspection time distributions, an explicit expression for the corresponding transform is given. In addition, Cramér–Lundberg-type asymptotics are established. Also, an importance sampling-based Monte Carlo algorithm is proposed, and is shown to be logarithmically efficient.

In this article, I present the immunological account of physiological individuality courtesy of Thomas Pradeu and the evolutionary account of biological individuality from Ellen Clarke. I argue that in combination, the logic of these two accounts implies that all physiological individuals are capable of undergoing evolution by natural selection. The main objection to this view is the case of holobionts. Here I argue that this objection is unjustified and that holobionts meet basic criteria for evolutionary individuality. As such, this supports the view that physiological individuals are also evolutionary individuals.