Comprehensive planning for family reunification following a disaster is complex and often underdeveloped, especially in hospitals. The 2013 and subsequent 2021 National Pediatric Readiness Project revealed less than half of hospitals had disaster plans that addressed the needs of children. Leveraging quality improvement (QI) language and methodology allows for alignment and engagement of hospital leaders and personnel unaccustomed to disaster planning. We aimed to create a family reunification plan which would enable child-safe reunification within 4 hours of an event using quality improvement methodology. QI tools such as the fishbone diagram, key driver diagram, and process maps enhanced the planning process. We then utilized the Plan-Do-Study-Act model to test and revise our plan. Active involvement of key stakeholders was crucial. By using quality improvement methodology, hospital personnel unfamiliar with disaster management helped develop and improve our hospital’s family reunification plan.

Motivated by recent developments of quasi-stationary Monte Carlo methods, we investigate the stability of quasi-stationary distributions of killed Markov processes under perturbations of the generator. We first consider a general bounded self-adjoint perturbation operator, and then study a particular unbounded perturbation corresponding to truncation of the killing rate. In both scenarios, we quantify the difference between eigenfunctions of the smallest eigenvalue of the perturbed and unperturbed generators in a Hilbert space norm. As a consequence, $\mathcal{L}^1$-norm estimates of the difference of the resulting quasi-stationary distributions in terms of the perturbation are provided.

One of the challenges for bryozoans is to avoid refiltering water that has already had its plankton removed. Larger colonies develop colony-wide maculae-centered feeding currents to avoid refiltering water and generally have elevated maculae (monticules). We hypothesize that the height and density of spacing of monticules are inversely proportional to curvature of the colony surface. Larger, flatter colonies should have higher and more closely spaced monticules. We compare two Permian stenolaemate bryozoans whose colonies form branches with elliptical cross sections: the smaller and more elliptical cystoporate Evactinostella crucialis (Hudleston, 1883) from Western Australia (N = 17) and the larger and flatter trepostome Tabulipora sp. from eastern North Greenland (N = 15). Using calipers and digital elevation models, we measured curvature, monticule height, and number of monticules per area. Results indicate that Evactinostella branches are at least twice as curved as those of Tabulipora, their monticules are half the height of Tabulipora, and their monticules are 22% less densely spaced than those of Tabulipora. In Evactinostella colonies, surface curvature is inversely proportional to monticule height and spatial density, which is not true for Tabulipora. Therefore, we conclude that the smaller and more curved the colony surface, the less the colony needs robust colony-wide feeding currents created by tall, closely spaced monticules.

When thinking about the current state of the study of Latin literature and about where the field might be heading next, the obvious place to start for this review is Roy Gibson and Christopher Whitton's Cambridge Critical Guide to Latin Literature. At more than 900 pages, it is a very substantial and exciting read. In fifteen chapters, plus an introduction by the editors and an envoi by Mary Beard, the contributors – all well-known and established experts in their areas of research – discuss the canons (Peirano) and periodizations (Kelly) of Latin literature, some of its key questions and methodological tools (‘author and identity’, Sharrock; intertextuality, O'Rourke/Pelttari), as well as its relationship with adjacent fields: medieval Latin (Stover), Neo-Latin (Haskell), reception (Uden), linguistics (Clackson), material culture (Squire/Elsner), philosophy (Volk), political thought (Lowrie), Roman history (Lavan), Greek (Goldhill), as well as the national traditions that shape the discipline (Fuhrer) and, one of its key tasks, the editing of Latin texts (Huskey/Kaster). As the editors themselves admit in their introduction, the topics covered in the volume are by necessity selective and could very well have included others that are now only touched upon in individual chapters, such as questions of gender, rhetoric, religion, education, science, or law.

Hanns Eisler’s Kampfmusik, his revolutionary music for the working class, is famous for its rhythmic energy. Its steady beat has been understood as a legacy of the military march. I argue that this ‘Eisler Bass’ was instead ‘refunctioned’ from interwar German jazz. Using jazz pedagogical manuals to demonstrate how Eisler adapted the steady beat, I position Eisler’s writings and music within discourses of rhythm and rationalized factory labour. While this was central to Eisler’s political ambitions, it also led to his music participating in a larger practice of erasure of racial difference typical of the German Communist Party.

Taking its start from an argument of H. S. Versnel, that Greek expressions of disbelief in the existence of the gods are evidence of the possibility of belief, this article reviews the evidence of such expressions, and of ascriptions of atheism in Greek sources, and suggests that there was a difference of type, not only of degree, between Greek ‘atheism’ and our understanding of the term today. Atheist discourse in Greek sources is characterized by frequent slippages: for example, between the charge of ‘existential atheism’ and the failure to give the gods due acknowledgement; between introducing new gods and disrespecting the old. Ascriptions of atheism to third parties are commonly based on inferences from an individual's actions, lifestyle or presumed disposition – which in turn are rooted in a network of theological assumptions. The phenomenon of ‘Greek atheism’ is, fundamentally, a scholarly mirage.

Should citizens have equal say regarding the running of society? Following the principles of democracy, and most of political philosophy: yes (at least at a fundamental level, thus allowing for representatives and the like). Indeed, comparing the main alternative seemingly supports this intuition. Epistocracy would instead give power just to the most epistemically competent. Testing citizens’ political and economic knowledge looks likely to disproportionately disempower marginalized groups, making the position seem like a non-starter and democracy the clear winner. Nevertheless, this paper argues against giving citizens equal say, or at least, it offers the strongest possible motivation for this position. In particular, I introduce the progressive case for epistocracy, and what I term standpoint epistocracy. This account refigures the relevant notion of political competence such that it is not the most privileged classes who would likely constitute our epistocracy, but rather, the least. The resulting picture considerably improves on traditional versions of epistocracy and also democracy.

Domitian, son of the war hero and emperor Vespasian and related to a large number of Roman soldiers, should logically have found himself as a young man in the army. His repeated requests to serve, however, were all denied, reportedly from fear of his political ambitions. A more immediate reason may have been physical inadequacy. Suetonius writes of Domitian's malformed toes, and of a lingering disease – here we suggest polio – that left Domitian with thin legs. Residual weakness and chronic pain could explain Domitian's preference for a litter and his perceived unsuitability for military service. His martial interests and desire to display virtus, manly courage, however, never wavered, and found their outlet in archery, a skill requiring dexterity of hand rather than fast footwork. Hostile writers played on this skill by relating it to an alleged habit of spearing flies for pleasure. Modern scholars may find the suggestion of a chronic disability useful in considering his character.

This article is dedicated to investigating limit behaviours of invariant measures with respect to delay and system parameters of 3D Navier–Stokes–Voigt equations. Firstly, the well-posedness of such a system is obtained on arbitrary open sets that satisfy the Poincaré inequality, and then a unique minimal pullback attractor is attained by using the energy equation method and asymptotic compactness property. Furthermore, we construct a family of invariant Borel probability measures, which are supported on the pullback attractors. Specifically, when the external forcing terms are periodic in time, the periodic invariant measure can be obtained. Finally, as the delay approaches zero and system parameters tend to some numbers, the limit of the invariant measure sequences for this class of equations must be the invariant measure of the corresponding limit equations.

Average lifespans for people with physical disabilities are increasing; yet there is limited knowledge about their perceptions of what it means to age well. The criteria for Rowe and Kahn’s influential model of successful ageing effectively preclude people ageing with a long-term disability. Several authors have attempted to develop more-inclusive models of successful ageing. The aim of this study was to explore what successful ageing means for people ageing with either spinal cord injury (SCI) or post-polio syndrome (PPS). We used an emic-based methodology, and recruited from Australia 17 participants aged 40–78 years. Nine participants (one male, eight female) had acquired poliomyelitis in childhood and experienced PPS, and eight participants (seven male, one female) had acquired an SCI 15 or more years ago. We used semi-structured interviews to elicit participants’ views on the dimensions important to ageing successfully with a disability, and analysed the transcripts using inductive thematic analysis. We identified eight themes, which related to: (1) maintaining physical health, (2) retaining cognitive abilities, (3) a sense of safety and security, (4) being treated with fairness and respect, (5) positive psychological resources, (6) independence and autonomy, (7) social engagement and participation in community and (8) a sense of purpose. We used the findings to construct a multi-dimensional successful ageing model for those ageing with SCI or PPS. The model includes insights from lay perspectives that further illustrate the role broader society plays in supporting or hindering individuals to age successfully, and has implications for health-care and government services.

Books about Ancient Greeks and Romans for general readership abound, so it was with a certain weariness that I started reading Jennifer Roberts’ ‘accessible and lively introduction to the Greeks and their ways of living and thinking’ (jacket blurb). I like to read the acknowledgments section first to get a sense of the person behind the book. Among the formulaic, the catalogic, and the dutiful, slight personal details or minor idiosyncrasies can be revealing and even endearing, sparking my curiosity about the author's persona and their world view. Roberts pulled me in immediately with an anecdote about her dictation programme's hilarious interpretations of the name Thucydides (‘Facilities’, ‘The city flees’, ‘Abilities’, ‘He silly is’, and … ‘Frank’). I provide this detail not just because it is amusing, but also because it is telling. Although this book covers the territory I am very familiar with, I really enjoyed reading it and just could not put it down. Roberts is a wonderful writer and storyteller. Her sprawling narrative, dotted with quotations and anecdotes, is reminiscent of Herodotus. Even though the book is meandering at times and full of digressions, Roberts manages to both outline the historical macro-narrative about the Greeks from the Bronze Age to the end of the Hellenistic Age and, more importantly, to convey a good sense of who they were as a culture and what mattered to them, ranging from the myths about the heroic past, the city states and their various political organizations, attitudes towards women, slaves, and foreigners, competitiveness, religion, philosophy, afterlife, and (I see what she did there – but at the expense of internal logic because afterlife should have been paired with religion) reception. The tone is just right, instructing without condescension, lively without cuteness or overfamiliarity, and – what is probably the most difficult task when a professional Classicist is pitching to a wide audience – straightforward and confident, truly written with a wide audience in mind, rather than plagued by prevarication anticipating the snarky reviews by colleagues. This is a terrific and engaging book, and I hope that it will reach a wide audience well beyond the US (despite its title).

Motivated by recent papers [11] and [19] we prove a boundary Schwarz lemma (Burns-Krantz rigidity type theorem) for non-smooth boundary points of the polydisc and symmetrized bidisc. Basic tool in the proofs is the phenomenon of invariance of complex geodesics (and their left inverses) being somehow regular at the boundary point under the mapping satisfying the property as in the Burns-Krantz rigidity theorem that lets the problem reduce to one dimensional problem. Additionally, we make a discussion on bounded symmetric domains and suggest a way to prove the Burns-Krantz rigidity type theorem in these domains that however cannot be applied for all bounded symmetric domains.

What proportion of integers $n \leq N$ may be expressed as $x^2 + dy^2$ for some $d \leq \Delta $, with $x,y$ integers? Writing $\Delta = (\log N)^{\log 2} 2^{\alpha \sqrt {\log \log N}}$ for some $\alpha \in (-\infty , \infty )$, we show that the answer is $\Phi (\alpha ) + o(1)$, where $\Phi $ is the Gaussian distribution function $\Phi (\alpha ) = \frac {1}{\sqrt {2\pi }} \int ^{\alpha }_{-\infty } e^{-x^2/2} dx$.

A consequence of this is a phase transition: Almost none of the integers $n \leq N$ can be represented by $x^2 + dy^2$ with $d \leq (\log N)^{\log 2 - \varepsilon }$, but almost all of them can be represented by $x^2 + dy^2$ with $d \leq (\log N)^{\log 2 + \varepsilon}\kern-1.5pt$.