Maternal obesity delays mammary gland maturation, influencing milk composition and neonatal growth. This study investigated whether supplementation of obese rats with resveratrol (Res) improves mammary gland differentiation, milk composition, and offspring development. Female Wistar rats were fed either a high-fat diet, to induce maternal obesity (MO) or standard chow as control (C). One month before mating, and throughout gestation, half the rats received 20 mg/kg/day Res orally creating 2 additional experimental groups (CRes and MORes). Milk nutrients and fatty acids were analyzed at postnatal day 21 (PND21); maternal body composition, mammary gland weight, and fat pad weight were also obtained. Mammary gland morphology and indices of apoptosis were determined. Offspring metabolic parameters were studied at PND36. MO dams had increased adiposity, mammary gland weight and showed elevated glucose, triglycerides, and cholesterol levels compared to controls. MORes reduced all these parameters except mammary gland weight. Mammary gland development was delayed, and apoptosis increased in MO vs C. Resveratrol improved mammary gland development in obese dams. Milk protein/fat ratio, milk, protein and DHA intake decreased in the MO group compared to C; whereas, fat, saturated fat, monosaturated fat and ω-6 fatty acid was increased in MO. Reveratrol treatment restored these parametes in obese dams and significantly reduced adiposity in their offspring. Triglycerides, insulin and HOMA-IR increased in MO offspring but was prevented by Res, which also increased milk intake in controls. Conclusion, preconceptional Resvertrol supplementation protects against the negative effects of maternal obesity on mammary gland differentiation, milk composition and offspring metabolism.

Studying social behaviour of mobile and cryptic marine mammals is challenging, particularly for small species like harbour porpoises whom in many areas tend to be challenging to initially spot and then gain repeated observations. Recently, there has been a rise in the number of observations of harbour porpoises occurring in atypical group sizes that are larger than the typical size of two to three individuals. This behaviour, in conjunction with the evolving availability and usability of Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) technology, is supporting and improving the capture of information on social behaviours. Around Shetland, Scotland, harbour porpoises are sighted from land via opportunistic and systematic surveys year-round with atypical group sizes also observed. To capture information on group size, opportunistic and systematically collected UAV footage were collated and analysed. This revealed sexual approach behaviours in typical group sizes of small groups (two to four individuals), as well as atypical group sizes of medium groups (five to nine individuals), large groups (10 to 19 individuals), and aggregations (≥20 individuals) occur in multiple bays around Shetland. This is the first insight into group sizes and behaviours for the region which was recently designated as an Important Marine Mammal Area (IMMA). Further insight into these social behaviours and group size (e.g. seasonality, site fidelity) could aid harbour porpoise conservation and management within the IMMA and elsewhere.

The suitability of marine limpet shells for radiocarbon dating may depend on potential offsets due to diet and habitat, especially with regard to grazing mollusks on carbonate substrates (Dye 1994; England et al. 2013). A previous study on one grazing limpet species on the coast of Ireland found no offsets from carbonate substrates (Allen et al. 2019), but a similar study from mediterranean coasts found significant offsets on carbonate substrates (Ferguson et al. 2011). We carried out a new study of radiocarbon and stable carbon isotopes, using multiple species of mollusks collected live from the coasts of Gibraltar and Sardinia, from both carbonate and non-carbonate substrates. The 14C results indicate that one species, inhabiting the upper shore, has a significant offset at the carbonate locations. This species, Patella rustica, has adapted to tolerate desiccation and may have biological traits that result in higher metabolic-derived carbon incorporated in its shell. The results of this preliminary study imply that selected species of grazing mollusks are suitable for radiocarbon dating, even in areas of carbonate geology.

This article explores the evolving Chinese representations of Queen Victoria from the First Opium War (1839) to her Diamond Jubilee (1897), beginning with early Qing official histories that deliberately omitted or delegitimized her presence, portraying her implicitly as a female usurper whose rule violated Confucian gender norms and dynastic orthodoxy. Such initial silencing is later juxtaposed with increasingly complex portrayals across a broad spectrum of textual and visual sources, including painting captions, diplomatic travelogues, private poems, newspaper reports, and illustrations. Focusing on envoys like Binchun, whose cautious official diary contrasts with his more admiring private poetry, and Zhang Zuyi, whose pseudonymous writings convey ambivalence and critique, the essay examines how rhetorical strategies were shaped by genre, anonymity, and audience. The analysis also extends to popular and elite print culture, particularly Dianshizhai Pictorial and Shenbao, to trace how Queen Victoria’s image circulated among both literate and semiliterate readers. Throughout, the article argues that acts of translation and mediation—visual, linguistic, and ideological—shaped not only perceptions of the British monarch but also reflected the fractured modernity of the Qing empire. The study contributes to global Victorian studies by foregrounding non-Western receptions and complicating imperial iconography through a Sinocentric lens.

The presence of right-to-left shunt has been proposed as a prominent mechanism of paradoxical embolism in patients with active cancer. We conducted a retrospective observational study including patients presenting to the Ottawa Hospital between January 2020 and December 2022 with ischemic stroke with and without active cancer. Among 491 patients (36.9% female, median age 53), 43 (8.8%) had active cancer, with 12 (27.9%, 95% CI 15–44) having a shunt. Of 448 patients without cancer, 133 (29.7%, 95% CI 25–34) had a shunt. Overall, our finding does not support the hypothesis that cancer-associated stroke is related to right-to-left shunting.

Several authors have investigated the structure of groups in which each subgroup satisfies a property $\mathcal {X}$ or a property which is antagonistic to $\mathcal {X}$. This point of view will be adopted here, considering groups in which each subgroup is either nearly normal or contranormal.

Political science is a field rich in multimodal information sources, from televised debates to parliamentary briefings. This paper bridges a gap between computer and political science in multimodal data analysis using audio. The adoption of multimodal analyses in political science (e.g., video/audio with text-as-data approaches) has been relatively slow due to unequal distribution of computational power and skills needed. We provide solutions to challenges encountered when analyzing audio, advancing the potential for multimodal data analysis in political science. Using a dataset of all televised U.S. presidential debates from 1960 to 2020, we focus on three features encountered when analyzing audio data: low-level descriptors (LLDs), such as pitch or energy; Mel-frequency cepstral coefficients (MFCCs); and audio embeddings/encodings, like Wav2Vec. We showcase four applications: (a) forced alignment of audio text using MFCCs, time-stamping transcripts, and speaker information; (b) speech characterization using LLDs; (c) custom-made classification models with audio embeddings and MFCCs; and (d) emotional recognition models using Wav2Vec for classification of discrete emotions and their valence-arousal dominance. We provide explanations to help understand how these features can be applied for different political research questions and advice on vigilance to naive interpretation, for both experienced researchers and those who want to start working with audio.

Radiocarbon dating by accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) requires transforming samples into graphite, a step that typically depends on liquid nitrogen and high-purity carrier gases, increasing both cost and operational complexity. We present μGRAPHILINE, a fully automated, modular combustion–graphitization line that removes these dependencies by combining dual-zone combustion with iron–zinc reduction. Performance was evaluated on more than 180 standards and reference materials targets measured on two independent AMS systems. The μGRAPHILINE consistently achieved >90% graphitization yields, stable backgrounds of ∼0.24 pMC (≈48,500 BP), and sample throughput of ∼3.5 hours per target. Reliable operation was demonstrated for a broad sample-size range, from routine 1 mg C down to ∼0.2 mg C, with ion currents sufficient for precise AMS analysis. The system’s automation, modularity, and low memory effect support improved laboratory throughput and operator efficiency. These results indicate that μGRAPHILINE provides a robust and efficient approach to radiocarbon sample preparation with broad potential applications.

Are nuclear weapons useful for coercion, and, if so, what factors increase the credibility and effectiveness of nuclear threats? While prominent scholars like Thomas Schelling argue that nuclear brinkmanship, or the manipulation of nuclear risk, can effectively coerce adversaries, others contend nuclear weapons are not effective tools of coercion, especially when designed to achieve offensive and revisionist objectives. Simultaneously, there is broad debate about the incorporation of automation via artificial intelligence into military systems, especially nuclear command and control. We develop a theoretical argument that nuclear threats implemented with automated nuclear launch systems are more credible compared to those implemented via non-automated means. By reducing human control over nuclear use, leaders can more effectively tie their hands and thus signal resolve, even if doing so increases the risk of nuclear war and thus is extremely dangerous. Preregistered survey experiments on an elite sample of United Kingdom Members of Parliament and two public samples of UK citizens provide support for these expectations, showing that in a crisis scenario involving a Russian invasion of Estonia, automated nuclear threats can increase credibility and willingness to back down. From a policy perspective, this paper highlights the dangers of countries adopting automated nuclear systems for malign purposes, and contributes to the literatures on coercive bargaining, weapons of mass destruction, and emerging technology.