This article discusses European copyright law as applied to the development and training of generative AI and natural language processing in public interest research institutions and libraries. The article focuses on the scope of the new exceptions from copyright law for text and data mining (TDM) for research purposes and discusses them from the perspective of research ethics and principles of open science in publicly financed research. The public interest mission of research institutions and libraries includes the open dissemination of research results but the exceptions from copyright are focused only on the training phase in AI development. Regulation on data transparency is fragmented. The article finds that while new exceptions open for developing language models under research institutions and libraries’ public interest mission to preserve national languages, the regulation is not adapted to principles of research ethics and open science, and legal uncertainty remains.

Historians have long argued that abolitionism, as a distinct political project, never fully took root in the Ottoman Empire. While anti-slavery measures emerged from the mid-nineteenth century onwards, they are often seen as state-imposed responses to diplomatic pressure. From a state-focused perspective, abolition indeed appears to be the result of actions by the Ottoman state and international community, inevitably so, given its entanglement with the emergence and development of the Congress system in the aftermath of the Congress of Vienna. Yet a focus on individuals, organizations, and institutions also suggests a subversive, practical abolitionism concerned with everyday injustices rather than lofty ideals. This paper examines such efforts, reframing abolitionism as a political issue rather than a moral one detached from broader transformations. By situating abolitionist thought within the late Ottoman Empire’s increasingly radical politics, it challenges the conventional state-centered narrative, highlighting the diverse actors who shaped anti-slavery discourse and action.

By examining how Irish racial attitudes intersected with national and cultural identity, this article dismantles the idea that conceptions of race and racism are somehow peripheral or irrelevant to the nation's social history. Outlining a series of racialised incidents perpetrated against overseas students in mid-twentieth-century Ireland, it explains how attitudes to newcomers and ethnic ‘others’ can shed new light on post-independence national identity. By highlighting these distinctive aspects of national discourse, this article begins incorporating Irish understandings of race and diversity into the overwhelmingly white field of Irish history. It also adds an Irish perspective to a growing body of literature on race in predominantly white societies and challenges scholars to consider how conceptions of history, culture and identity fostered social inclusion and exclusion and conditioned attitudes to national and ethnic outsiders.

The Hi PerformanCZ visitor programmes, hosted regularly by the Czech Arts and Theatre Institute since 2018, have invited international theatre professionals, from directors and promoters to critics, to immerse themselves in the variety of theatre on the contemporary Czech stage. Showcased performances, themed in programmes dedicated to theatre for children and young people, puppet theatre, and text-based theatre, among other examples, are accompanied by symposia, meetings with Czech theatre-makers, theatre tours, and museum visits. In this article Mark Brown provides an overview of the Czech showcases from 2018 to 2024, while focusing particularly on four productions: Tomáš Dianiška’s The Magnificent 294 (2020, showcased 2023); Jan Jirků’s Zá-to-pek! (2019, showcased 2022); director Jan Mikulášek’s staging of Thomas Bernhard’s novel Woodcutters (2018, showcased 2022 and 2023); and Brno’s Goose on a String Theatre’s collectively devised piece Smokeout (2022, showcased 2024). These productions markedly represent the diverse strengths of Czech theatre in the twenty-first century.

From 1950 to 1963, a columnist named ‘Kadebona’ (The Experienced One) published regular pieces in Izwi lama Swazi (The Voice of the Swazi), the vernacular newspaper of the British protectorate of Swaziland (now named Eswatini). Although lacking definitive evidence, it is probable that Kadebona was John J. Nquku, a leading political figure of colonial Eswatini. Kadebona’s 300-plus columns positioned themselves as meeting places for the embryonic Swati nation. In contrast to the closed-door discussions of those in power, Kadebona’s columns styled themselves as transparent platforms for a give-and-take debate among emaSwati (as residents of Eswatini were called). Kadebona not only ‘spoke’ via his columns; he also expected replies on the part of the nation. His column was a space available to all, ‘where the rich and the poor, and where leaders and their followers, all meet’. In a period of debate over the future of the independent Swati nation, Kadebona’s columns encouraged all emaSwati to shape their country, and allowed all perspectives audibility via the column and ‘Letters to the Editor’. At the same time, however, there were distinct limits to the egalitarian public summoned through these articles. While Kadebona encouraged all emaSwati regardless of rank or class to speak up, he was far less welcoming towards other voices, including women and youths. This article provides an introduction to these fraught columns, a small sample of which are presented here, both in their isiZulu original and in English translation (siSwati – the language spoken by emaSwati – had no authorized written form well into the 1960s; instead, the South African isiZulu was used for written communication). In what follows, I provide Izwi lama Swazi’s history, discuss the emergence of Kadebona as a columnist in the 1950s, and comment on some of his key concerns.

Milk fat synthesis is tightly regulated by hormones and growth factors. Leptin is a versatile peptide hormone that exerts pleiotropic effects on metabolic pathways. In this study, we evaluated the expression and function of leptin and its long form receptor OB-Rb in dairy cow mammary tissues from different physiological stages and in cultured mammary epithelial cells. The results showed that the expression of leptin and OB-Rb were significantly higher in the mammary tissues of lactating cows as compared with dry cows, suggesting that they are related to milk component synthesis. In cultured dairy cow mammary epithelial cells, leptin treatment significantly increased OB-Rb expression and intracellular triacylglycerol content. Transcriptome analysis identified the difference in gene expression between leptin treated cells and control cells, and 317 differentially expressed genes were identified. Gene ontology and pathway mapping showed that lipid metabolism-related gene expression increased and signal transduction pathway-related genes were the most significantly enriched. Mechanistic studies showed that leptin stimulation enhanced sterol regulatory element-binding protein 1 expression via activating the phosphatidylinositol 3-kinase/protein kinase B/mammalian target of rapamycin (PI3K/AKT/mTOR) signaling pathway, which in turn up-regulated the expression of genes related to milk fat synthesis. Moreover, we found that fatty acid synthesis precursors, acetate and β-hydroxybutyrate, could positively regulate the expression of leptin and OB-Rb in bovine mammary epithelial cells, thereby potentially increasing milk fat synthesis. Our study provided novel evidence in the regulation of leptin on milk fat production in mammary glands of dairy cows, as well as experimental basis for artificial regulation of milk fat

We give a geometric proof of the binomial identity for all natural n and real a,b. This work was inspired by the book [1], where the binomial identity for n = 3 and a,b > 0 is proved by breaking a cube C of size (a + b) × (a + b) × (a + b) into eight rectangular boxes and counting their volumes as follows.

Since the 1990s, Japan has experienced the rise of a phenomenon known as “lonely death” (kodokushi 孤独死): people who die alone and whose death goes unnoticed for a certain period of time. This has triggered public anxiety and moral panic because lonely death is often perceived as a form of “bad death” and a sign of the breakdown of family ties and neighborly relations. In the 2020s, this “feeling rule,” which associates lonely death with shame and fear, has quietly begun to be challenged by a group of post-mortem cleaning workers. By sharing their work experience and feelings through blogs, artworks, and books, the workers’ accounts of how they deal with the remnants of the deceased have turned the public perception of lonely death from an abstract, totalizing, fearful category into an understanding that such incidents have specific causes that can be faced and even prepared for. The cleaners’ emotional labor, especially their mourning for the dead, creates a sense of relatedness to the deceased, a feeling which is conveyed to the public through the cleaners’ narratives. The cleaners thereby change the feeling rules associated with the labor of dealing with the aftermath of a lonely death, turning it from “dirty work” into meaningful social action. This article contributes to an understanding of feeling rules by highlighting how individuals’ efforts, particularly, their reflections on their emotional labor, can change collective feeling rules.

The disappearance of migrants, which has reached preoccupying high numbers in recent decades, is related both to the particular vulnerability of migrants traversing dangerous migratory routes and to the high degree of impunity that characterizes investigation and search efforts required. This article argues that the disappearance of migrants at the hands of non-state actors in contexts of systematic impunity and in situations where the state had knowledge or should have had knowledge of a serious risk of such disappearance, but failed to act to prevent it, can be considered to have occurred with the acquiescence of the state. Thus, given that all further elements of the definition of enforced disappearance have been satisfied, this factual situation qualifies as an “enforced disappearance” for the purposes of international human rights law. Key to this demonstration is the concept of knowledge, which is an essential component of acquiescence. This article not only addresses the normative framework of acquiescence and its interpretation by international and regional human rights bodies, including how it relies on the element of state knowledge, but it also examines the extent to which this factor is critical to understanding states’ due diligence obligations to prevent, investigate, and sanction human rights obligations, including disappearances. In order to better understand the factors that should be taken into consideration while assessing a state‘s knowledge of migrant disappearances, including in the context of systematic impunity, it is then suggested to borrow from the international criminal law test related to the concept of “constructive knowledge” and to the doctrine of command responsibility. These considerations should inform a test for assessing whether disappearances of migrants occurring in contexts of systematic impunity can be considered as having been known by the state and as having occurred with its acquiescence and, thus, as constituting “enforced disappearances” under international human rights law.

Stendhal syndrome represents a compelling psychosomatic response, characterised by intense emotional and physiological reactions to viewing art, that intersects the fields of psychiatry, neurology and aesthetics. Despite lacking formal diagnostic recognition, a confluence of historical anecdotes and contemporary research underscores its validity as a unique neuropsychiatric phenomenon. This review endeavours to integrate insights from various scholarly domains to elucidate the syndrome's clinical manifestations, neurobiological foundations and its cultural and psychological relevance. Through an examination of historical contexts, clinical case studies and the underlying neurological mechanisms, this article aims to provide a comprehensive overview of Stendhal syndrome, thereby contributing to the broader discourse on neuroaesthetics and the profound impact of art on human emotion and cognition.

This paper comprises a brief study of a law firm library in Malaysia, which has utilized an automated library system to organize its collection. The paper aims to demonstrate how the automated library system was implemented and to identify the statistics that can be generated through that system. The particular software used is the Applied Library System (ALS).