Haemonchus contortus is one of the most pathogenic gastrointestinal parasites that infect small ruminants. The indiscriminate use of anthelmintics (i.e., benzimidazole class, BZ) to control infections has led to the reduction of drug efficacy in H. contortus populations worldwide. Resistance to BZ is associated with high frequencies of single nucleotide polymorphisms at F200Y, F167Y, and E198A positions of the β-tubulin isotype 1 gene. This study aimed to determine the frequency of single nucleotide polymorphisms associated with BZ resistance in H. contortus from 18 farms (545 sheep and 124 goats) in Paraná, Southern Brazil. Health management practices were identified as risk factors from individual farms. Genomic DNA was extracted from 20,000 larvae/farm and used in quantitative polymerase chain reaction assays for the three mutations. We ran a correlation analysis between flock health and quantitative polymerase chain reaction data. H. contortus was the most prevalent parasite in 67% (12/18) of the farms. Resistant allele frequencies were detected for F200Y (var. 46.4 to 72.0%) and F167Y (var. 15.7 to 23.8%). Only (100.0%) susceptible alleles were detected for the E198A. High treatment frequency (15/18), visual weight estimations for anthelmintic dose (15/18), no integration with other farm practices (14/18), treatment of all animals (14/18), and no quarantine period for newly acquired animals (10/18) were considered the most critical risk factors associated with BZ resistance. This is the first systematic prevalence study linking management practices on smallholder farms and the molecular data of BZ resistance of H. contortus in Southern Brazil.

In response to the crisis in validity of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, psychiatry has seen a proliferation of alternative research frameworks for studying and classifying psychiatric disorders. In this paper, I argue that the existence of multiple frameworks in which each employs their own standards of validity is problematic methodologically speaking for trying to do any kind of unified validation work. Fundamental disagreements concerning the underlying phenomenon, sources of validating evidence, and the very nature of validity move each framework into an unrecognized plurality. The consequence for psychiatry is a new validity crisis.

Drawing from the literature strands of philanthropy, business, and history, this work explores the business, prosocial, and political activities of a prominent family in the Scotch whisky industry, with specific emphasis on two brothers’ philanthropy and its impact on a place—the city of Perth, Scotland. In our analysis, we tell the story of the second-generation owners of Dewar’s Scotch whisky company, brothers John Alexander and Tommy Dewar, and their journey of prosocial place-based service and giving. Consistent throughout are the themes of global success, family, local and national networks, and regional embeddedness, alongside the role of formal and informal giving. We offer an analysis of the prosocial activities that represent unexplored dimensions of business success, placing them in both spatial and temporal contexts. Within this is the story of a multigenerational family business’s international growth and success.

Discrimination is widely studied, with extensive research measuring discrimination on the housing and labor markets. This study examines how local governments address this well-documented issue, by conducting content analysis on 45 policy documents and by performing semi-structured in-depth interviews with 24 alder(wo)men and diversity officers across nine Belgian cities. We introduce a temporal framework combining why, what, how, and when local anti-discrimination policy and actions are established. Such a framework is useful, as we do not approach policy as fixed, but pay attention to how actions evolve over time, even within one so-called anti-discrimination policy.This enables scholars and policymakers to identify decision-making patterns, predict changes over time, and understand contextual influences. Besides, unlike existing models rooted in integration or diversity policy, our framework captures the unique aspects of anti-discrimination policy, enabling a thorough understanding of the (non-)adoption of concrete anti-discrimination actions.

Mainstream parties have often shifted from initially portraying new competitors as undemocratic pariahs (i.e., a delegitimizing strategy) to portraying the same parties later as democratic (i.e., a legitimizing strategy). I argue that voters follow mainstream parties’ legitimizing strategies in their legitimacy evaluations of these parties. I investigate this argument with two independent survey experiments and a quantitative media content analysis in two countries that differ sharply in the nature of party competition—from mainstream parties delegitimizing a far-right party (i.e., Germany) to mainstream parties legitimizing it (i.e., Sweden). I find strong evidence that (a) mainstream parties can effectively legitimize pariah parties in the eyes of voters, (b) turning back to delegitimization has little effect, (c) legitimization is no less effective in the face of a third party’s delegitimizing strategy, and (d) legitimization resonates beyond co-partisans. The results suggest that mainstream party legitimization of pariah parties has far-reaching consequences.

This paper offers a socio-legal historical analysis of the process of formulation and evolution of Chinese marine insurance law by transplanting foreign laws, with a view to grasping from the material of legal history and social reality the deeper significance of the imported law’s relation to tradition, ideology and environmental context. The key argument is that this perspective reveals how transplanted law emerges as an authorless product shaped by social forces and processes. It is created by the operation of institutional arrangements of law-making, which provide the platform for the interplay of diverse traditions and interests generated by the social environment of the importing jurisdiction. This research integrates several lines of discussion of legal transplantation that lack connection, highlights the impact of the transplanting process and contributes to current theoretical debates by proposing potential interdisciplinary research for future studies of legal transplantation.

Large-scale investment projects often involve contestation over competing notions of ‘development’—from promises of economic growth and integration into global value chains to perspectives that emphasise strong connections between people, territory, culture and way of life. This contestation also echoes diverse theories that have variously conceptualised development as growth, freedom, right or sustainability. This article argues that, in the face of such diversity and complexity, the notion of development that underpins international investment law tends to prioritise economic considerations. In the context of investment disputes, this can marginalise the ideas of development advanced by local actors and indigenous peoples. By connecting human rights and development in immediate terms, ongoing discussions about the right to development can provide an arena to centre ‘peoples’ as the key actor in development processes. But this normative shift would also require ensuring that the wider frameworks of international economic law recognise and provide space for plural notions of development.

This paper introduces a sophisticated trajectory capture and playback mechanism for collaborative robots, aimed at enhancing accuracy and operational efficiency through several innovative techniques. The Ju-Gibbs attitude quaternion is utilized for enhanced kinematic modeling across multi-axis systems, which simplifies variables, reduces dimensions, and enhances symbolic clarity, thus surpassing the limitations of traditional rotation vectors and unit quaternions. A new sliding filter is developed to effectively reduce noise and optimize trajectory details more efficiently. Additionally, an automated mechanism is implemented for adjusting the sampling rate and removing static data points at the trajectory’s start and end, further refining data collection accuracy. These advancements have been successfully replicated on the Kuka robot LBR iiwa 7 R800, demonstrating the practical applicability of the solutions in real-world settings.

Research on nutraceutical and dietary interventions in psychiatry has grown substantially, but progress is hindered by methodological inconsistencies and limited reporting standards. To address this, the International Society for Nutritional Psychiatry Research presents the first guidelines on clinical trial design, conduct, and reporting for future clinical trials in this area. Recommendations were developed using a Delphi process including eighteen researchers with considerable clinical trial expertise and experience in either methodology, nutraceutical, or dietary interventions in psychiatry. These guidelines provide forty-nine recommendations for clinical trial design and outcomes, five for trial reporting, and seven for future research priorities. The recommendations included in these guidelines are designed to inform both nutraceutical and dietary clinical trial interventions in Nutritional Psychiatry. Common themes include an emphasis on the importance of a multidisciplinary research team and integration of co-design processes into the conduct and design of clinical research, methods to improve transparency and replicability of trial outcomes, and measures to address common biases in nutrition trials. Furthermore, we provide recommendations for future research including examining a greater variety of nutraceutical and dietary interventions, scalable delivery models, effectiveness and implementation studies, and the need to investigate these interventions in the prevention and management of less studied psychiatric conditions (e.g. schizophrenia and bipolar disorder). Recommendations included within these guidelines are intended to improve the rigor and clinical relevance of ongoing and future clinical trials in Nutritional Psychiatry.

Recent developments in the foundations of physics have given rise to a class of views suggesting that physically meaningful descriptions must always be relativized to a physical perspective. In this article, I distinguish between strong physical perspectivalism, which maintains that all facts must be relativized to a perspective, and moderate physical perspectivalism, which maintains that all empirically meaningful descriptions must be relativized to a perspective. I argue that scientific evidence and philosophical considerations support moderate physical perspectivalism over strong physical perspectivalism. In particular, motivations connected to epistemic humility and the social nature of science are more compatible with the moderate approach.

Trichinellosis is a widespread food-borne zoonosis, causing mild to severe illness in humans with potential fatality. Its treatment remains challenging due to the side effects and limited efficacy of specific drugs. Therefore, the current study was conducted to assess the therapeutic effects of ellagic acid (EA) alone and combined with albendazole against trichinellosis and its biochemical and pathological alterations in mice. Mice were divided into two main groups: G1 and G2 for the intestinal and muscular phases, respectively. Then each group was subdivided into five subgroups: (a) non-infected control, (b) infected control non-treated, (c) infected and treated with EA, (d) infected and treated with albendazole, and (e) infected and treated with a combination of both. Parasitological, biochemical, and histopathological studies were used to evaluate the therapeutic outcomes. Treatment with EA resulted in a significant reduction of the mean counts of intestinal adult worms and muscular larvae compared to the infected control. EA improved oxidative stress as it reduced nitric oxide and increased catalase activities in intestinal and muscular tissues. Additionally, it alleviated the inflammatory response, as evidenced by downregulating IL-6 and increasing IL-10 expressions in tissues. Furthermore, it improved liver functions and ameliorated the pathological alterations induced by trichinellosis. The best results were detected in combination treatments that indicated synergistic effects between EA and albendazole. In conclusion, EA can be used as an anti-inflammatory and antioxidant with a promising anti-parasitic impact against trichinellosis.

Civil wars are not only destructive: they can also generate new, long-lasting social, political, and economic structures and processes. To account for this productive potential and analyse post-conflict outcomes, I argue that we should analyse civil wars as critical junctures. Civil wars can relax structural constraints, opening opportunities for wartime processes to generate changes or to reinforce, rather than transform, the status quo. Changes or stasis may then be locked in by conflict outcomes, creating path dependencies. Studying civil wars as critical junctures allows for a clearer understanding of what variables mattered and interacted at different points in the conflict process, and the varying roles of structure and agency in producing institutional change or reinforcing pre-existing conditions. I explore the potential benefits of a critical juncture approach in the civil wars literature on different aspects of post-conflict politics and illustrate them in analysing the literature on women’s empowerment during and after civil wars. Applying the critical junctures framework to civil wars’ effects on institutions and socio-behavioural patterns can provide analytical clarity about complex processes and contexts, can facilitate comparison across cases and studies, and draws critical attention both to what civil wars change and to potential pathways not taken.