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Previous research using cued language switching paradigms has shown a reversed language dominance effect in highly proficient bilinguals, wherein the dominant language is most inhibited. This study investigated cued language switching in highly proficient Spanish–Basque bilinguals (N = 50) using pupillometry, a novel measure of switching cost that tracks cognitive load via pupil size. Response times during cued picture-naming showed faster responses on non-switch than switch trials and faster responses in Basque than in Spanish. These findings suggest balanced proficiency across languages, with Spanish showing overall slowed responses, indicating a reversed dominance effect. Pupil data revealed larger pupil responses for Basque, the less dominant language, suggesting greater cognitive load despite faster naming. This indicates more attentional allocation or activation of the non-dominant language during cued language switching. These results provide insights into the cognitive processes involved in bilingual switching and highlight the value of using pupillometry to explore bilingual language processing.
Low-carbon behaviour is a crucial pathway to addressing current climate change and promoting sustainable economic and social development. The importance of environmental education has become a widely recognised consensus among higher education institutions. However, the mechanisms through which environmental education influences the low-carbon behaviour of the new generation of college students remain insufficiently explored. This study introduces environmental attitude and green perceived value as mediators, while prosocial behaviour is a moderator. A moderated chain mediation model is developed from new perspectives of psychological, social and environmental values, and this theoretical model is empirically tested using 759 college students in China surveyed by a questionnaire. The findings reveal that environmental education positively drives college students’ low-carbon behaviour, with environmental attitude and green perceived value playing a partial chain mediation role between environmental education and low-carbon behaviour. Additionally, prosocial behaviour positively moderates the relationships between environmental attitude, green perceived value and college students’ low-carbon behaviour, significantly moderating the mediating effect of green perceived value.
It has long been recognized that legal documents are invaluable for understanding the growth of pre-university teaching across fifteenth- and sixteenth-century England; when surveyed as a whole, they allow the general spread of schooling to be mapped with precision. However, smaller, more scattered legal proceedings involving teachers can be no less suggestive. Late medieval and early modern masters submitted legal pleas on a range of issues, and found themselves accused of a striking array of crimes, including murder, assault, fraud, incompetence, theft, adultery, and even high treason. Such episodes have more than anecdotal value—they throw into relief many of the conditions in which teachers of the period operated. In particular, they provide clear insight into the economic realities of medieval and early modern teaching, showing the pressures, rivalries, and anxieties that overshadowed the lives of masters, and demonstrating that instruction was not staged in a social or political vacuum.
How do people form durable cognitive and affective bonds to state territories? How do these place attachments become rigid? I argue that territorial attachments rest on what social epistemologists call structural ignorance — background knowledge and cognitive mechanisms that filter out discomforting narratives to preserve a dominant view. As the state structures ignorance and as people reproduce it, certain knowledges — the nation’s artificialness and the past presence/ongoing oppression of non-core groups inhabiting the state’s territory — cannot be known, lest people’s cognitive environment and sense of self be disrupted. As structured ignorance becomes entrenched, territorial attachments rigidify. I shed light on the territorializing practices-structured ignorance-rigid attachments mechanism through the case of Azerbaijan and Nagorno-Karabakh. Through discourse analysis and practice tracing, I find that as the Azerbaijani state structured ignorance during the Soviet era about the symbolic significance of Nagorno-Karabakh and the erasure of ethnic Armenians, territorial attachments grew. I then show how the 1988–1994 war over Nagorno-Karabakh and practices leading to the 2020 War entrenched the structure and rigidified attachments. Uncovering the structure of ignorance and the attachments it prescribes reveals new ramifications of nation-building and one of the facets of intractable conflicts.
The primary objective of this study is to identify the most salient prosodic features at the sentence level in Colombian Spanish. Data were collected from the country’s major cities, and the study examines the intensity, duration, and pitch (F0) of vowels in pre-stressed, stressed, and post-stressed syllables within both statements and questions. Stressed vowels were compared to adjacent unstressed vowels to determine the most significant features for identifying vowel prominence. The results indicate that duration is the most consistent acoustic cue of stress, reliably distinguishing stressed vowels from adjacent unstressed vowels. In contrast, intensity predicts stress only in relation to post-stressed vowels, and F0 plays a limited role, distinguishing stressed from post-stressed vowels in specific contexts. An important contribution of this study is the demonstration that the stressed versus unstressed distinction in Spanish is primarily explained by duration, rather than F0. These findings challenge traditional classifications of Spanish as a syllable-timed language by showing that rhythmic grouping, previously thought to be exclusive to stress-timed languages, is also present in syllable-timed languages.
Vitamin D deficiency is common in the UK, especially in certain ethnic minority populations. There is limited information on childhood vitamin D status in the UK, or factors associated with vitamin D deficiency. Using a cross-sectional study of 4650 children of South Asian, Black African and Caribbean and White European origins (9–10 years old) surveyed between 2004 and 2007, we investigated measurements of circulating 25(OH)D concentrations (a measure of vitamin D status) and anthropometric measurements. Overall, 68 % of children had 25(OH)D concentrations ≤ 50 nmol/L and were either insufficient (25–50 nmol/L) (45 %) or deficient (< 25 nmol/L) (23 %). Mean 25(OH)D concentrations were lowest in South Asian (especially Bangladeshi) children, intermediate in Black African and Caribbean and highest in White European children. Mean values were ≤ 50 nmol/L for all children during the winter months and ≤ 50 nmol/L throughout the year for South Asian, Black African and Caribbean children. In analyses adjusted for season, age, sex, ethnicity, socio-economic status and fat mass index, girls had a higher risk of being vitamin D deficient or insufficient (OR 1·49, 95 % CI 1·32, 1·68) compared with boys. South Asian children (OR 25·49, 95 % CI 19·95, 32·57) and Black African and Caribbean children (OR 10·31, 95 % CI 10·31, 17·52) had the highest risks of being deficient or insufficient compared with White European children. Childhood vitamin D deficiency was common in this study population. In the UK, targeted and novel interventions are needed to increase 25(OH)D concentrations, particularly South Asian and Black African and Caribbean children and reduce the health risks associated with low vitamin D status.
The effects of high plant-based proteins (PP) used as alternative protein sources in aquafeeds on muscle cellularity and myogenic factors of rainbow trout, Oncorhynchus mykiss, remain unclear. This study explored muscle fibre growth phases and the impact of two additive mixtures (A) in high-PP diets on muscle physiology. Over a seven-month trial, 2000 fish (2·22 g) were divided into four groups (five replicates each) and fed isonitrogenous (fry, 46 %; fingerling, 44 %; and grow-out, 42 % crude protein) and isolipidic (20 % lipid) diets: control (30 % fishmeal), PP, PP + A1 (krill meal, taurine, selenium) and PP + A2 (proline, hydroxyproline, vitamin C). Sampling for muscle histology and myogenic gene expression was conducted at ten sampling points from Day 0 to Day 214. Muscle histology (fibre distribution: small, 0–20 μm; small-medium, 20–60 μm; large-medium, 60–100 μm and large, ≥ 100 μm diameter) revealed four growth phases: hyperplasia (2·2–15 g), hypertrophy (15–50 g), hyperplasia (50–150 g) and hypertrophy (150–350 g). MyoD2 and myogenic regulatory factor 4 (MRF4) were upregulated during hyperplasia, while myostatin 1 (MSTN1)/myostatin 2 (2) and reduced Paired box 7 indicating growth inhibition and fewer satellite cells. The PP diet without additives altered fibre recruitment, while PP + A2 enhanced hypertrophy, increasing large (> 100 μm) fibres. Additive mixtures modulated myogenic gene expression, with PP + A2 promoting MyoD2, myogenin and MRF4 and reducing MEF2A/C, contrary to known hypertrophy markers. PP + A1 and PP + A2 diets reduced MSTN1 expression, potentially mitigating growth inhibition. Additive supplementation in PP diets alleviates negative impacts on muscle cellularity and myogenic regulation. The identified growth phases provide insights for precision nutrition, supporting improved feeding strategies for sustainable aquaculture.
‘Us and Them’ is a community history project and artistic collaboration exploring physical and intellectual disability and mental illness, in the past and present. It is part of a broader initiative to open out wider conversations about the history of psychiatric care in Epsom (Surrey, UK) and to explore ways in which medical histories, creative engagement strategies and oral history praxis can illuminate the instability of contemporary understandings of ‘healthy minds’ and ‘normative bodies’. This article charts our recent reuse of asylum photography and the restaging of wet-plate collodion portrait making, opening out key ethical questions about our complicity as consumers of historical sources, the role of re-enactment and empathy, and the place of the haptic and the ludic in exposing the porous and precarious boundaries between ableism and disability. Exploring our own vulnerabilities and solidarities in co-producing a public history project with our disabled artist collaborators, it offers insight into our evolving ‘micro ethics’, foregrounds lived experience perspectives, and offers some initial thoughts on ways to rethink critically some core tenets of oral history methodology.
Despite Fanon’s recent popularity, his work on violence is portrayed as controversial, particularly regarding revolutionary violence. Revolutionary violence in anti-colonial movements is either glorified as a liberating force or vilified as terrorism. However, this portrayal misses one of the main contributions of Fanon’s thought on violence, that is, violence cannot be separated into direct and structural, physical and epistemic, or revolutionary and colonial violence. I theorise what Fanon calls ‘atmospheric violence’ – violence that is, like the air, pervasive within the colonial system and its totality is reflected not only in the apparatus, structure, and meaning, but also in the felt, visceral, and embodied. In this sense, atmospheric violence cannot be compartmentalised but is layered, dynamic, and able, which is particularly useful in investigating the revolutionary violence of the colonised being. This paper theorises atmospheric violence through three points of engagement: first, atmospheric violence shows that colonial violence is violence of abjection rather than of social domination and subordination; second, atmospheric violence indicates that revolutionary violence reveals the complex relationship to agency and postcolonial subjectivity; third, atmospheric violence shows how revolutionary violence poses a potential for and a limitation to decolonisation due to its nature of non-compartmentalisation.
This paper describes and analyses the ways in which women are disadvantaged in the Australian apprenticeship system. While women make up 47.9% of the Australian workforce, only 28.0% of apprentices and trainees are women.
‘Traditional trade’ apprenticeships are still predominantly undertaken by men. The newer ‘traineeships’, introduced in the 1980s to provide apprenticed training to more occupations and to allow equal access to women, receive less funding and fewer training resources. The paper traces the developments by analysing government reports, participation data by gender in the apprenticeship system, and apprentice/trainee funding rates for the main occupations. The paper also shows how post-COVID developments in the economy have been harnessed to favour male-dominated occupations in the apprenticeship system. The paper argues that the encouragement of women into trade apprenticeships has moved from an ‘equity’ argument to a ‘national interest’ argument, paralleling the conscription of women to fill the gaps left by men during the Second World War.
The discussion shows that the disadvantaged status of women is largely consistent with existing theories on gender and work, but there are some points of departure. The paper argues that more research into traineeships is needed to inform developments. It would provide a voice for feminised occupations and would assist in countering the monopolisation of the debate by masculinised interest groups.
While the data are Australian, the issues potentially apply to all countries which have apprenticeship systems, but have the most relevance for women in countries where male-dominated occupations are privileged in apprenticeship policy.
Ice shelves regulate ice sheet dynamics, with their stability influenced by horizontal flow and vertical flexure. MacAyeal and others (2021) developed the theoretical foundation for a coupled flow-flexure model (the “M21 model”), combining the Shallow Shelf Approximation with thin-beam flexure, providing a computationally efficient tool for studying phenomena like ice shelf rumpling and lake drainage. However, the M21 model relies on proprietary software, is unstable under compressive flow conditions, and does not incorporate fracture processes critical for capturing ice-shelf damage evolution. We present an open-source version of the M21 model addressing these limitations. Using the free Python libraries Firedrake and icepack, we introduce a plastic failure mechanism, effectively limiting bending stresses and thereby stabilizing the model. This enhancement expands the viscous M21 model into a viscoplastic flow-flexure-fracture (3F) framework. We validate the 3F model through test cases replicating key ice shelf phenomena, including marginal rumpling and periodic surface meltwater drainage. By offering this tool as open-source software, we aim to enable broader adoption, with the ultimate aim of representing surface meltwater induced flow-flexure-fracture processes in large-scale ice sheet models.
Traumatic and stressful life events can have lasting effects on mental health, particularly among older adults in low-resource settings. In Latin America, there is limited qualitative evidence capturing the lived experiences of these events. This study explores how older adults in Peru reflect on traumatic and stressful events throughout their lives, and how these experiences continue to shape their mental health in later life. This qualitative study was nested within the Global Excellence in COPD Outcomes (GECo) study in Lima, Peru. We conducted semi-structured, narrative-based interviews with 38 older adults (≥60 years) with moderate to severe symptoms of depression (Patient Health Questionnaire-9 ≥ 10), anxiety (Beck Anxiety Inventory ≥ 16) or a history of mental health treatment. Four main categories emerged: (1) violence (emotional, physical or sexual), (2) abandonment or loss of close relatives, (3) onset of severe illness or disability and (4) other miscellaneous life disruptions. Participants described their memories of past stressful events as deeply embedded in current thoughts and, in some cases, as shaping how they experience certain emotions in the present. Addressing trauma in older adults may improve well-being in low-resource settings. Recognizing the enduring impact of life-course stressors is crucial for culturally sensitive mental health interventions.
Healthcare systems worldwide are under pressure due to increasing demand and rising costs. Simultaneously, there is a shortage of healthcare workers. This is leading to increased pressure on primary care, especially in countries where general practitioners (GPs) perform a gatekeeping function. One way to alleviate this pressure on GPs, and to reduce healthcare costs, is to introduce or expand, direct accessibility to allied health professionals. This study investigated the factors associated with this direct accessibility in the Netherlands.
Method:
We used data from electronic health records of physiotherapists, speech therapists, and dietitians, drawn from the 2022 Dutch Nivel Primary Care Database (Nivel’s PCD). The data included information ranging from 15,470 to 776,690 patients, and for 62 to 593 practices, depending on the particular paramedic discipline. Multilevel logistic regressions were employed to identify patient and practice characteristics associated with direct access.
Results:
Patient characteristics significantly associated with direct access included younger age, higher socioeconomic status, and diagnosis. The patient’s sex was also identified as a factor associated with the use of direct access in physiotherapy and dietetics, but not in speech therapy. Moreover, we observed significant variation between practices. We found that the dominant health insurer in an area was sometimes associated with direct access, as well as the number of therapists working in a practice.
Conclusion:
We observed significant associations between patient and practice characteristics and the direct access to allied health professionals in primary care. These findings suggest that the use of direct access to allied health professionals could be increased in order to enhance healthcare efficiency and thereby relieve pressure on GP care.
The impact of compressor gratings and transport optics imperfections on the power contrast ratio (PCR) is considered analytically, taking into account diffraction and all dispersion orders. All types of imperfections, including surface roughness, reflectivity fluctuations and surface dirt/damage/obscuration as well as the roughness and obscuration on the optics used to write holographic gratings are allowed for. For the same roughness and obscuration, the contribution to the PCR of the latter is significantly greater than the contribution of the gratings. Comparison of the PCR caused by obscuration and by roughness showed that at short times the latter prevails, whereas at long times the obscuration is dominant. The radiation scattered by the second and third gratings arrives at the target before the main pulse in the form of a vertical strip near the beam axis. Then this strip moves uniformly towards the axis, reaching it simultaneously with the main pulse.
Protecting animals from anthropogenic influences is important in vulnerable ecosystems such as Antarctica. A potential recent activity affecting Antarctic wildlife is the use of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). Previous studies in this area have mainly focused on animal behavioural observations and have reported reactions to UAVs in many cases. To gain insights into the influence of UAVs on physiology (stress hormones) in addition to behavioural reactions, we conducted an experiment on chinstrap penguin chicks (Pygoscelis antarcticus) on the South Shetland Islands (Antarctica) during the breeding season of 2017–2018. Using a small quadcopter UAV, we performed flights over groups of penguin chicks in the early crèche phase using ‘Hard’ and ‘Soft’ treatment setups (15 and 50 m above the penguins, respectively). The behavioural observations revealed clear reactions to the UAV during the Hard treatment, but we could not find an association between such UAV activity and stress hormone levels. As we cannot clearly disentangle the effects of handling during blood sampling and the direct influence of the UAV, we conclude that the physiological impact of overflights at 15 m ranges from no impact to a maximum impact equal to the impact associated with animal handling. During the Soft treatment (UAV overflights at 50 m), no behavioural or physiological effects were detected.
Understanding the interplay between buoyancy and fluid motions within stably stratified shear layers is crucial for unravelling the contribution of flow structures to turbulent mixing. In this study, we examine statistically the local relationship between stratification and fluid deformation rate in wave and turbulent regimes, using experimental datasets obtained from a stratified inclined duct (SID) containing fluids of different densities that form an exchange flow. We introduce rotational and shear components of varying strength within the vorticity and a family of coherent gradient Richardson numbers ($Ri_C$), ratios related to the buoyancy frequency and the strength of either the rotational or shearing motion. Conditional statistical analysis reveals that both shear and stratification intensity affect the probability distribution of the $Ri_C$, with extreme events occurring more frequently in areas of weak stratification. In the wave regime, we identify the persistence of fast-spin vortices within the strongly stratified density interface. However, scouring of the density interface is primarily driven by shearing motions, with baroclinic torque making a notable contribution to enstrophy transport. In the turbulent regime, rigid-body rotations occur at significantly shorter time scales than that associated with the local buoyancy frequency, making them more disruptive to stratification than shear. Additionally, correlation analysis reveals that irrotational strain distorts stable stratification similarly to shearing motions, but is weaker than both shearing and rotational motions and less likely to have a time scale longer than that related to the buoyancy frequency. Moreover, we observed that the interplay between rotational and shearing motions intensifies as stratification increases. Finally, a comparison of length scales along the shear layers highlights the $Ri_C$ as a valuable measure of the relative sizes of different motions compared with the Ozmidov scale and shows that stratification can influence sub-Ozmidov scales through baroclinic torque. This study highlights the critical impact of the type, strength and location of fluid deformations on localised mixing, providing new insights into the role of rotational motions in shear-driven stratified flows.
Water resources from the Indus Basin sustain over 270 million people. However, water security in this region is threatened by climate change. This is especially the case for the upper Indus Basin, where most frozen water reserves are expected to decrease significantly by the end of the century, leaving rainfall as the main driver of river flow. However, future precipitation estimates from global climate models differ greatly for this region. To address this uncertainty, this paper explores the feasibility of using probabilistic machine learning to map large-scale circulation fields, better represented by global climate models, to local precipitation over the upper Indus Basin. More specifically, Gaussian processes are trained to predict monthly ERA5 precipitation data over a 15-year horizon. This paper also explores different Gaussian process model designs, including a non-stationary covariance function to learn complex spatial relationships in the data. Going forward, this approach could be used to make more accurate predictions from global climate model outputs and better assess the probability of future precipitation extremes.
Zoonotic parasites associated with domestic dogs have been well-studied in the majority of Europe. In the Balkan region, however, there is minimal knowledge of the parasites in dogs in shelters for rehoming in other European countries. This study aimed to investigate parasitic infections in dogs from two private shelters in Pristina, Kosovo. Faecal samples were collected, representing both adult dogs (72%) and puppies (28%). Coproscopic analysis revealed that 88% of dogs were infected with at least one parasite, with hookworms being the most common. Amplicon metabarcoding targeting internal transcribed spacer (ITS)-2 rRNA gene confirmed the presence of only Uncinaria stenocephala in 68% of samples apparently susceptible to benzimidazoles. The canonical F167Y and Q134H isotype-1 β-tubulin of U. stenocephala mutations conferring benzimidazole resistance were not detected. No evidence of Ancylostoma caninum was detected. Molecular analysis confirmed Giardia duodenalis in 18% of samples, with assemblages B, D and C detected. Other parasites detected included Cystoisospora spp. (18%), Toxocara canis (4%), Toxascaris leonina (6%), Trichuris vulpis (32%), Eucoleus aerophilus (10%) and Dipylidium caninum (2%). Co-infections were identified in 48% of the samples. These findings demonstrate a high frequency of gastrointestinal parasites in shelter dogs. The presence of U. stenocephala and T. vulpis points to the challenges with monitoring and managing these parasitic infections in such settings, as these are likely translocated with the rehomed dogs. The frequency of detection of hookworms emphasizes the need for further research into the distribution of hookworms in Europe because of the emerging benzimidazole resistance on other continents.
In the newly fluid territory between jazz, rock, performance art, and the avant-garde in the late 1960s, members of the Groupe de recherches musicales (GRM) in Paris initiated experiments in improvised electronic music. This article focuses on two iterations of a group centred on Alain Savouret, Pierre Boeswillwald, and Christian Clozier, who were either students on the GRM’s 1968 course at the Paris Conservatoire or researchers at the GRM. The article follows the group’s development from a practice of ‘live musique concrète’ with hand-built electroacoustic devices, tape effects, and synthesizers to a pluralist improvisation that engaged collaborators from free jazz and European and non-European folk traditions. This history results in two lines of argument: the first concerns the relationship between new electronic instruments and new modes of performance around 1970, while the second concerns the promise of electronic music as the site of a cross-cultural fusion of genres and traditions.