This study investigated the size and distribution of university-based journals published in federal universities of North-Western Nigeria. Using an exploratory descriptive survey design, data were gathered from institutional lists, university websites, and physical serial holdings in libraries of the universities. A total of 243 journals were identified across ten universities, with Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, Bayero University, Kano, and Usmanu Danfodiyo University, Sokoto collectively accounting for more than half of the total. Social sciences, arts, and humanities dominated the disciplinary distribution, while STEM, health sciences, and agriculture accounted for smaller shares. An important finding was that most university libraries did not maintain complete holdings of the journals published in the parent institution, revealing weaknesses in distribution strategy, bibliographic control and preservation. The study concludes that although journal proliferation is evident, visibility and long-term archiving remain problematic. It recommends the establishment of institutional and national journal registries, stronger archiving practices, and total migration to digital platforms to enhance access and global recognition of the journals.

Labor-managed firms, whether in the form of worker cooperatives, codetermination, or broad-based employee ownership, have recently prompted substantial public debate, to which political theorists have contributed with normative analyses that are seriously deficient insofar as they have neglected considerations of productive efficiency. I offer a normative view of labor-managed firms that leans squarely on efficiency considerations. I first argue that the value of productive efficiency is grounded not only on the interests of capital suppliers and society at large, but also on workers’ interest in avoiding domination by their bosses, and examine how efficiency may serve and set back this interest. I next argue that some variants of labor-managed firms can secure efficient production while protecting workers’ interest in nondomination more robustly than capital-controlled firms. Finally, I compare labor-managed firms to alternatives to achieve these aims, including self-employment, workplace regulation, unionization, and labor market policies to enhance workers’ exit options.

While prior research has focused on the role of cause lawyers in legal and social reforms within authoritarian regimes, the everyday practices of non-cause lawyers handling controversial cases remain unexplored. Drawing on 60 interviews with family lawyers and divorced women in Iran, this study directs attention to the everyday practices of ordinary lawyers, with a focus on divorce cases initiated by women, which are among the most challenging cases in Iran’s family courts. The study introduces a typology to distinguish between lawyers who are outcome-oriented and those who are transformative-oriented. I argue that lawyers’ perceptions of professional responsibility and their understandings of what counts as “meaningful reform” in a judiciary that is unreceptive to women’s rights influence how they pursue legal mobilization against codified gender inequality within an authoritarian system. This study concludes by suggesting that future research should examine how lawyers’ interpersonal interactions, as well as their educational and professional training, shape their approaches to challenging inequality and discrimination.

Lichens are multispecies consortia that visually and semantically masquerade as an ‘organism’, but beneath this illusion lies a fundamental challenge: how do we identify an ‘individual’ for our research? Our aim here is to offer a guide to some of the primary perspectives on individuality as they might apply to lichen symbioses, with an emphasis on the advantages, limitations and best use contexts for each. We introduce three perspectives of individuality that are relevant to the study of lichen symbioses: morphological, physiological and evolutionary individuality. By describing how each framework applies to lichen symbioses, we aim to clarify how individuality is realized in practice, and why these distinctions matter, not just for philosophical debates, but for empirical questions about diversity, biology and evolution. The goal is to emphasize why these different perspectives are relevant to our current research applications in lichenology, and how engagement with these ideas can challenge our current understanding of the symbiosis in constructive ways.

This paper reconceptualizes aesthetic action in John Stuart Mill’s art of life as a distinct, world-regarding action, oriented toward ideals such as justice, beauty, and nobility. While morality is guided by obligations to others and prudence by rationality and the cultivation of virtues, aesthetics concerns the aspirational pursuit of collective human flourishing. Rejecting character-based interpretations, the paper distinguishes aesthetic action by its transformative effect and expressive quality. Though not enforceable, aesthetic ideals expand moral imagination and inspire long-term social progress. Drawing on Mill’s separation between action and character evaluation, the argument clarifies that aesthetic action cannot be reduced to virtue or character. Instead, it completes Mill’s tripartite normative framework by illuminating a third domain that motivates ethical life through nobleness and imagination. Aesthetic action thus becomes essential to understanding Mill’s perfectionist aspiration and his vision of higher happiness.

This paper proposes a kinematically redundant wall-climbing robot (CR), which employs a kinematically redundant parallel mechanism (PM) as its main body, combined with a serial mechanism, to achieve wall-climbing motion and avoid the dangers associated with manual operation. The improved Grübler-Kutzbach formula is utilized to analyze the degrees of freedom (DOF) of the PM. Subsequently, a kinematic analysis covering position, velocity, singularity, and workspace is conducted to establish the theoretical basis for the robot’s motion planning. To cope with complex working environments, trajectory planning is carried out for the CR, and the complex path planning problem in space is addressed through hierarchical processing, including global path planning, local path planning, and single-step motion planning. After theoretical analysis, kinematic, singularity, workspace analysis, and trajectory planning method of the proposed CR were verified through simulation experiments, confirming the correctness of the kinematic modeling and trajectory solution. Finally, a physical prototype was built to verify the climbing capability of the robot.

This article introduces CriTaRep v1, a geo-coded event dataset documenting state repression against Crimean Tatars (2000–2024). Drawing on locally sourced materials in Crimean Tatar, Ukrainian, and Russian languages, CriTaRep records n = 709 repression events affecting more than 2,200 individual victims. We inductively identify 22 repression types across three categories: deprivation of liberty, legal and administrative repression, and physical repression. Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea marked the onset of a large-scale and systematic repression campaign against the Crimean Tatar population. We document a concentration of arbitrary searches on Thursdays, physical repression targeting elites, and intensified repression during periods of dissent. Empirical analyses show that repression spikes in response to protest activity. Russian authorities respond rapidly and increasingly harshly to dissent, pursuing a dual strategy of protest suppression and long-term deterrence. CriTaRep fills critical gaps in existing datasets and provides new opportunities to study patterns and mechanisms of demographically targeted repression in Russian-occupied territories and beyond.

In a world of increasing human movement and displacement, language learning is an educational concern with significant implications for social inclusion in contexts of migration. This review of recent research analyses 40 empirical studies which explore various aspects of language education with adult migrants, investigating what they reveal regarding pedagogical approaches and the impact of policy on language learning, teaching, and assessment. It identifies issues in relation to diversity among adult migrant learners, the value of multilingual practices and the recognition of multiliteracies, as well as the potential of digital learning and affective approaches to language teaching. In addition, this review shows how migration and integration policies can influence language instruction, considering programme design, testing requirements, the learning of minoritised languages, and the role of educators in this field. It outlines directions for further research in areas including critical multilingual approaches to language teaching, equitable forms of assessment, trauma-informed pedagogy, the development of inclusive policies, and teacher education. This paper can thus inform educators, researchers, and policymakers by providing insights which may guide language-related educational support for adult migrants.

This study assessed the predatory activity (PA) of Dactylellina candida (Dc) and Arthrobotrys musiformis (Am) against Haemonchus contortus infective larvae (HcIL). It also examined the effect of crude extracts from HcIL, Panagrellus redivivus (Pr), and Turbatryx aceti (Ta) on liquid cultures of these fungi as potential enhancers of their nematocidal activity against HcIL. The fungi were cultured in sweet potato dextrose broth (SPDB), and the corresponding nematode crude extract (NCE) was added to flasks containing the fungus. Control groups included fungi without extracts and media alone. Liquid culture filtrates were assessed at three concentrations (100, 50, and 25 mg/mL) against HcIL during 72 hours at 18–25°C. The highest mortality (86.61%) was observed with Dc stimulated by HcIL crude extract (HcCE) at 100 mg/mL (p < 0.05). Arthrobotrys musiformis showed 47.49% mortality when stimulated with HcCE. Both fungi increased their nematocidal activity when exposed to HcCE, demonstrating their potential nematocidal activity against H. contortus.

Bernard Williams contends that philosophy is part of a broader humanistic enterprise of ‘making sense of’ ourselves and our activities, including the activity of science. Whereas the scientific enterprise purports to offer an absolute conception of the world as it is (independently of any local perspective on it), the humanistic enterprise cannot disengage itself from the contingent history of our ideas upon which it operates. While I agree with Williams that philosophy should be more attentive to history, his account of philosophy, from which he derives this conclusion, is fatally flawed, being unable to meet three perennial challenges to any principled defense of philosophy as a discipline: i.e., the questions of authority, incubativity and peculiarity. Those challenges can be met only if we understand philosophy not as a humanistic discipline that is part of the broader humanistic enterprise, but as a distinctively normative discipline that tasks itself with finding answers to explicitly or implicitly normative questions, in contrast to various scientific and humanistic disciplines of descriptive inquiry. In this paper, I argue for the equivalence of philosophicality with normativity, explicate the theoretical and practical implications of the normative account of philosophy, and defend it against potential objections.