We study the relationship between the enumerative geometry of rational curves in local geometries and various versions of maximal contact logarithmic curve counts. Our approach is via quasimap theory, and we show versions of the [vGGR19] local/logarithmic correspondence for quasimaps, and in particular for normal crossings settings, where the Gromov-Witten theoretic formulation of the correspondence fails. The results suggest a link between different formulations of relative Gromov-Witten theory for simple normal crossings divisors via the mirror map. The main results follow from a rank reduction strategy, together with a new degeneration formula for quasimaps.

Luminescence dating researchers benefit from many community-led software packages. These packages assist with data reduction, statistical modeling, calculation of dosimetric values, and plot production. Yet few resources are simultaneously intuitive, meant for simulating the reduction and growth of luminescence signals, and accessible to non-specialists. The Luminescence Sample Simulator (LuSS) is an application with a graphical user interface that simulates how apparent age and fractional saturation respond to three key scenarios in luminescence dating: sunlight exposure, heat exposure, and burial. Users can simulate these scenarios for an individual cobble or sand grain, or for a population of 100 sand grains. The underlying kinetic parameters can be adjusted manually or taken from a built-in library of published values. Plots of apparent age histograms, luminescence depth profiles, or fractional saturation and apparent age histories are visualized and can be exported. LuSS is written in MATLAB and can operate as a free-to-use, standalone application, or as an app within an existing MATLAB installation. A typical user workflow and three worked examples show how LuSS can model luminescence signal evolution in response to geologic scenarios. Limitations of LuSS include its inability to capture athermal fading or between-grain variability in geologic dose rate or sensitivity.

“Moral distress” was introduced in nursing ethics to describe the experience of having the moral conviction about the right thing to do while having limited agency to enact it. It exists at the intersection of moral philosophy, moral psychology, and moral communities that influence our desires to act. Although moral distress has significantly impacted bioethics scholarship, it has had almost no presence in business ethics scholarship. We argue that moral distress is useful for understanding important problems of business ethics. We claim it may be missing from business ethics discourse not because it is not present but rather because it is ever-present, an existential condition brought on by the tension between profit maximization and other moral purposes. We consider how the moral communities of medicine and business can be morally supportive or distressing and set forth a taxonomy of moral conditions involving the relationship between knowledge, action, and desire.

Bodily isomerism, often referred to as “Heterotaxy,” is the clinical entity in which the thoracic organs are themselves mirror-imaged in the same individual. The thoracic isomerism can be right or left. The left thoracic isomerism always has both atria with their atrial appendages of left morphology and frequently a mixed atrioventricular connection. Usually, there are two well-developed ventricles; however, in some cases, there may be univentricular physiology. In the set of left thoracic isomerism, no case of imperforate tricuspid valve with severe hypoplasia associated with a vascular ring has been reported in the literature.

Neonatal truncal valve insufficiency carries high postoperative mortality. Mechanical replacement is challenging, and leaflet-sparing repair alone may be insufficient due to fragile tissue and annular dilatation. We report a successful case using geometry-based root reconstruction guided by body-weight–adjusted reference values. This native-tissue approach restored physiologic root geometry, preserved the valve, and enabled growth potential, demonstrating a feasible strategy for durable neonatal repair.

This article traces the development of the state politics subfield within political science. Using three sources of evidence – the publication of state politics articles in the American Political Science Review, American Journal of Political Science, and Journal of Politics; the corpus of articles in State Politics & Policy Quarterly (SPPQ); and the programs of the State Politics and Policy Conference (SPPC) – we examine how the field has developed over the past six decades. We argue that the founding of SPPQ and SPPC helped formalize the subfield. But, as these subfield outlets entered the scene, the proportion of state politics research in leading generalist outlets began to decline even as the number of articles remains relatively constant. Additionally, the substantive focus of the subfield has endured, anchored in topics such as elections, legislatures, and public opinion, even as areas like judicial politics and gender have gained prominence and studies of political parties have declined. Finally, we document the rise of coauthorship in state politics research, reflecting the collaborative nature of the subfield.

Cullen Maiden was a bass opera singer, poet, actor, composer, and teacher born in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1932. After serving with the US military in Korea and postgraduate study at the Juilliard School, he toured with the Katherine Dunham Dance Company and the Belafonte Folk Singers before travelling to Europe — Stockholm, Rome, London, Munich — for further study and professional engagements in the early and mid-1960s. His move to Europe was motivated by racist barriers in the music industry which, while still inescapably present in Europe, seemed more navigable than those in the United States at the time.1 Maiden therefore belongs to a multi-generational cohort of African American musicians who made similar moves to German-speaking Europe, as outlined in Kira Thurman’s landmark study Singing like Germans.2 A successful audition for the Komische Oper in East Berlin led to stable employment in the house’s ensemble, and Maiden later rose to prominence as a popular Porgy in productions of Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess. Maiden lived in West Berlin for over thirty years, regularly crossing the border for work, and he pursued many independent artistic projects there, some in collaboration with political and aid organizations. In the later 1970s and early 1980s, while still living in Berlin, he made a professional return to the United States to give a series of recitals and to perform with the Black-led company Opera/South. By the early 1990s, Maiden was experiencing difficulties singing due to a medical condition, so took on increasing teaching work during his final decade in then-reunified Germany. Maiden and his British wife, Chris Hall-Maiden, moved to London in 2000, from which point he focused his multifaceted creativity on composition. He died in 2011.

Following Heath White, let ‘divine determinism’ denote the pairing of the following theses: ‘(1) the facts about God’s will entail every other contingent fact, and (2) the facts about God’s will are explanatorily prior to every other fact’. In the article, we develop a theological version of Peter van Inwagen’s so-called Direct Argument and show that, if sound, the Theological Direct Argument leads to the conclusion that divine determinism is incompatible with human moral responsibility. But, the soundness of the argument depends upon two inference rules, one of which, called Rule B, is controversial. So, in the third section of the article, we offer a novel, two-part defence of Rule B. This defence, in the first part, has to do with how truth, in a fairly trivial way, depends on the world. The second part of the defence has to do with the way that the logic of conditionals works. The upshot of this defence is that counter-examples to Rule B are impossible. Even so, should that defence fail, we also consider, in section four, a way of reformulating Rule B that, if successful, circumvents alleged counter-examples to the original statement of Rule B.

Many adults learn languages with written forms that differ from their first language(s). Empirical research has demonstrated the influential role of written input on developing L2 phonology. However, existing studies are limited by (1) focusing on learning languages that share the same orthographic script, predominantly the Latin alphabet, (2) small sample sizes, and (3) limited consideration of L2 proficiency. This study investigated the influence of Arabic and English written input when lexically encoding the difficult /f-v/ phonological contrast for L1 Arabic-speaking learners of L2 English. A word learning study was completed by 114 L1 Arabic speakers, with varying English proficiency, and 117 L1 English-speaking controls. Mixed-effects modeling of L1 Arabic accuracy revealed an inhibitory effect of any written input when learning words differing by the difficult contrast. Performance improved with increasing L2 proficiency; however, the inhibitory effect of written input for words differing by /f-v/ persisted into high levels of L2 proficiency.

Given a group G and an automorphism $\varphi $ of G, two elements $x,y\in G$ are said to be $\varphi $-conjugate if $x=gy\varphi (g)^{-1}$ for some $g\in G$. The number $R(\varphi )$ of equivalence classes with respect to this relation is called the Reidemeister number of $\varphi $ and the set $\{R(\varphi ) \mid \varphi \in \text {Aut}(G)\}$ is called the Reidemeister spectrum of G. We determine the Reidemeister spectrum of ZM-groups, extending some results of Senden [‘The Reidemeister spectrum of split metacyclic groups’, Preprint, 2022, arXiv:2109.12892].