This study conducted an approximate replication of Teravainen-Goff (2023) to validate the Intensity and Perceived Quality of Engagement Scale for university students in the Japanese EFL context. Teravainen-Goff (2023) developed this scale based on an action-oriented definition of engagement and proposed a novel approach to measuring engagement among secondary school language learners in the UK. The study identified an 18-item, five-factor structure from a pool of 36 items through exploratory factor analysis (EFA). In this replication, we examined the validity and reliability of Teravainen-Goff’s scale in a different context, focusing on the replicability of the EFA results. We undertook this replication because engagement is context-dependent and EFA results can vary across samples. We compared the factorial structure with that of the initial study while modifying the target language and participant demographic. Results revealed a 22-item, six-factor structure with good fit. Although the same underlying factors emerged, several notable differences were observed. This approximate replication provided stronger evidence for the psychometric properties of the scale in a new context. Transparent documentation of modifications to the initial study and systematic comparison offered a promising approach to building robust evidence for engagement research and improving the rigour of questionnaire-based research overall.

Excavations at the Iron Age site of Worlebury hillfort during the mid-late 19th century revealed a large number of human skeletal remains, interpreted as victims of a ‘massacre’. Reanalysis of these remains, combining AMS dating, osteological, aDNA, histotaphonomy, and isotope analysis, has enabled a re-evaluation of this hypothesis. AMS dating lends support to the notion that many of these individuals may have died during a single episode, while osteological analysis has identified significant evidence for perimortem trauma, and the histology supports a short period between death and deposition. The genetic data suggest that the human remains represent a group with biological links through the maternal line and connections to another nearby site, while the isotope values are consistent with a local population, consuming animals raised in a salt-marsh environment like the Severn Estuary. Our results demonstrate the value of returning to often unpromising antiquarian collections using an integrated suite of modern analytical approaches.

This article argues that the extent and longevity of dry conservancy systems in urban England between the 1870s and 1920s is underappreciated for its impact on health and disease. Using Birmingham as a case-study, it advances knowledge on the systemized development of municipal pail systems and offers a deeper understanding of living with conservancy. It draws out the importance of looking at the fly problem and the transmission relationship, largely ignored until the second decade of the twentieth century. It also explores and challenges existing ideas in the debates surrounding investment in sanitation infrastructure and mortality decline.

The confirmatory factor analysis technique was used to quantify a latent variable for test-day lactation performance (TDLP) in the first parity of Chinese Holstein dairy cows by applying five measurable traits, including test-day milk yield (TDMY), test-day milk fat percentage (TDFP), test-day milk protein percentage (TDPP), test-day somatic cell score (TDSCS) and test-day milk urea nitrogen (TDMUN). The standardised factor loadings of TDMY, TDFP, TDPP, TDSCS, and TDMUN for describing TDLP were 0.46, −0.52, −0.70, −0.14 and −0.19, respectively. Genetic analysis was conducted using a multivariate repeatability model within a Bayesian framework. The posterior means for the heritability and repeatability estimates of TDLP were 0.26 ± 0.02 and 0.34 ± 0.02, respectively. In general, posterior means for heritability and repeatability estimates of the measurable traits were low to medium. The heritability estimates ranged from 0.05 for TDSCS to 0.28 for TDPP, and repeatability estimates ranged from 0.15 for TDMUN to 0.38 for TDMY. The latent variable of TDLP exhibited positive genetic (0.62) and phenotypic (0.40) correlations with TDMY, whereas its genetic and phenotypic correlations with other measurable traits were negative, ranging from −0.96 (TDLP–TDPP) to −0.11 (TDLP–TDSCS). The corresponding phenotypic correlations ranged from −0.85 (TDLP–TDPP) to −0.07 (TDLP–TDSCS). It may be concluded that breeding for higher TDLP might increase TDMY but could reduce milk composition traits. In general, the negative genetic and phenotypic correlations suggest a trade-off between milk quantity (yield) and quality (composition).

Vitamin D deficiency is a common nutritional problem in exclusively breastfed infants. Dilated cardiomyopathy is a rare but potentially fatal complication of this condition. We describe a 15-month-old who presented with cardiogenic shock. Laboratory and radiographic findings were consistent with vitamin D deficiency. Metabolic parameters normalised within one week and echocardiography normalised by 19 months after supplementation. Although rare, severe vitamin D deficiency must be on the differential for young children presenting with new-onset dilated cardiomyopathy. Clinicians must maintain a high index of suspicion for vitamin D deficiency in at-risk populations to prevent potentially life-threatening complications.

This text addresses the materiality of radio art, situating it within the theoretical frameworks of contemporary research on new materialism as well as the materiality of media and sound. The analysis employs perspectives from Christoph Cox’s sonic materialism and approaches by such writers as Salomé Voegelin, Gregory Whitehead, Allen S. Weiss and Margaret Hall, who emphasise the ontological autonomy of sound and its impact on space and listeners. A critical close reading of the relevant literature is conducted with regard to its applicability to radio art. The article analyses radio art practices structurally and phenomenologically across composition, reception, materiality and technology, aligning with practice-informed media analysis. The author’s aim is to outline and systematise diverse theoretical approaches and frameworks that capture the materiality of radio being, as well as to reveal the ways in which the radio medium co-creates artistic sound reality. The results of the literature and artistic practice analysis highlight the significance of sound’s materiality and its relational character, indicating that sound does not exist in isolation but in interaction with the environment, technology and listener. Consequently, seven dimensions of radio art materiality are delineated, which integrate existing concepts and provide a comprehensive perspective on radio artistic works.

In the twenty-first century, leftist politics has taken a turn toward antiwork philosophy and postwork imaginaries. These politics critique not only the work-centered capitalist society but also challenge the “productivist ethics” of other leftist traditions. A popular variation of this antiwork/postwork politics calls for full automation, the replacement of as much human labor as possible with technological alternatives. Positioning work as a realm of unfreedom, these thinkers argue that human liberation can only be achieved in a world with less work. This article reads Oscar Wilde’s “The Soul of Man Under Socialism” (1891) as a precocious articulation of a postwork imaginary that demands full automation. In response to contemporaries like William Morris, who argued that capitalism had severed humanity from a natural affinity for work, Wilde expresses an antiwork position, arguing that humanity was made for contemplative leisure and creative expression. Thus, automated labor becomes a key element of his utopian vision. Though Wilde formulates a necessary critique of a Victorian radical politics that was decidedly prowork, his postwork utopia is based on a troubling premise: “civilization requires slaves.” In reading twenty-first-century postwork thinkers alongside Wilde, we find the same premise still subtly operative within this politics.

We explore the effects of fiscal policy shocks on aggregate output and inflation. We use the Bayesian econometric methodology of Baumeister and Hamilton applied to the fiscal structural vector autoregressive model to evaluate key elasticities and fiscal multipliers using U.S. data. In our baseline specification that ends before Covid pandemic, the government spending multiplier is equal to approximately $0.57$ and tax multiplier is approximately $-0.35$ after one year. The short-term output elasticity of government spending is statistically insignificant and the output elasticity of taxes is approximately equal to $2.26$.

The marked Hawkes risk process is a compound point process where the occurrence and amplitude of past events impact the future. Since data in real life are acquired over a discrete time grid, we propose a strong discrete-time approximation of the continuous-time risk process obtained by embedding from the same Poisson measure. We then prove trajectorial convergence results in both fractional Sobolev spaces and the Skorokhod space, hence extending the theorems proven in Huang and Khabou ((2023). Stoch. Process. Appl. 161, 201–241) and Kirchner ((2016). Stoch. Process. Appl. 126(8), 2494–2525). We also provide upper bounds on the convergence speed with explicit dependence on the size of the discretization step, the time horizon, and the regularity of the kernel.

Renewed interest in supersonic air travel has prompted researchers to reconsider the design and operation of supersonic transport aircraft. Previously, such aircraft were restricted to overwater routes due to the disturbances caused by their sonic booms. Now, however, low-boom designs and overland flight at marginally supersonic Mach numbers are seen as potential enablers for widespread supersonic air travel. As a result, the trajectories that next-generation supersonic transports may fly are likely to be less constrained than for previous types, and in the last decade there has been a noticeable increase in research focusing on trajectory planning for such aircraft. This paper reviews the different methods that have been used to generate and optimise the flight paths of past and future supersonic transports. The challenges associated with optimising trajectories for aircraft that do not yet exist are discussed, and suggestions for future research activity are presented. Climate-optimal trajectory planning and development of detailed, non-proprietary supersonic aircraft performance models are identified as two key areas for future work.