Many marine invertebrates are intermediate hosts to parasites. As some of these parasites may influence host behaviour and act as cryptic agents involved in mass mortality, knowledge of their presence, dynamics, and life cycles is important. Our aim with the present study is to provide a survey of parasites in subtidal cockles in the Limfjorden (Denmark), to examine their influence on cockles, and to assess their possible role in the surfacing of cockles, as this phenomenon is considered a prelude to mortality. The trematode fauna of the studied subtidal population was poor in species, but about 19% of the examined cockles in late summer and autumn were infected by Monorchis parvus – a species not previously reported from cockles in Danish waters. Heavily infected cockles were filled with small, undulating, worm-like sporocysts, each filled with metacercariae. From August to November, the number of metacercariae in sporocysts increased, and at a certain point, the growing stock of sporocysts is supposed to reach a level where the cockle is unable to perform vital life functions. Our data show that infected individuals exhibit less annual shell growth than uninfected ones. There was no significant difference in the prevalence of M. parvus between unburied and buried cockles. Cockle-eating fish from the family Sparidae are known as final hosts to M. parvus, but these fish do not occur in Danish waters. Therefore, the record-high presence of M. parvus in cockles from the Limfjorden is surprising, and we consider alternative life cycle options for this trematode.

The black walnut Juglans neotropica is a forest species characterized by being a monoecious and deciduous tree with a long life. This species has great ecological, environmental, and economic value, playing a fundamental role in the ecosystem. According to the IUCN, J. neotropica is threatened by anthropogenic activities that have drastically affected its distribution. In this study, the plastid intergenic spacer marker trnS-trnfM was amplified from 74 J. neotropica samples from eight locations in Amazonas region (Peru) to determine its haplotype network, genetic diversity, and genetic divergence. The results revealed that J. neotropica from Amazonas region showed i) a lineage composed of the eight populations embedded into the Rhysocaryon section; ii) three genetic groups within the haplotype network with the presence of an ancestral haplotype (H1) and possibly candidates for new taxa; iii) a high divergence between the populations of Molinopampa and Luya (1.62–2.64% of p-distance); iv) populations with high genetic diversity indices (Levanto = 0.32, Molinopampa = 0.41) with constant threats from anthropogenic activities; and v) high genetic structuring within populations (Fst = 0.04). Overall, these results collectively support a scenario of high variability with limited interpopulation genetic exchange. Our findings provide previously unavailable insights into the vulnerability of the black walnut J. neotropica by (i) quantifying the genetic consequences of human-induced habitat fragmentation and (ii) establishing baseline diversity metrics for future monitoring. These results directly inform in situ conservation priorities by identifying populations harbouring unique alleles that warrant immediate protection. Finally, further research should include nuclear markers (e.g., microsatellites or RAD-seq) to support our findings.

Since 2017, St. Catherine University has partnered with the Mapping Prejudice Project to build an interdisciplinary and community-engaged public humanities project that can serve as a model for other universities. The project, titled Welcoming the Dear Neighbor?, engages students, faculty, and staff across departments who work in collaboration with community partners to advance knowledge of systemic racism and its impact both historically and in present-day disparities. The result is mutually beneficial relationships that integrate high-impact practices for student success and retention and yield tangible resources for community groups in our city and surrounding suburbs. To date, more than 1,400 students have participated in the project. We report qualitative and quantitative evidence showing that the project enhanced students’ sense of place and enriched their learning. We describe challenges and lessons learned that will be of particular interest to universities interested in projects that undertake interdisciplinary, racial justice-focused public humanities work.

The artificial language of Esperanto would achieve remarkable success in early twentieth-century Europe. Its popularity there is not surprising: though designed as a universal language, Esperanto was essentially European in its grammar and lexicon. But this Europeanness – or, more precisely, this near-Europeanness – also spoke to communities living further afield. In India before the First World War, groups regarded as Europeanized by most Indians but as Indian by most Europeans found Esperanto a literal language with which to articulate their social location. As an ‘Esperantist’, there was no contradiction between being Indian and participating in European society, and to claim the label offered a shorthand that others (whatever their relationship to the movement) could readily grasp. This article considers these dynamics against the backdrop of a visit to India by the Irish Esperantist John Pollen, an event that sheds light on both the inner workings of the Indian movement and the importance that non-Indian Esperantists assigned to it. The popularity of Esperanto would eventually decline in India with the First World War, but until it did, the movement – indexical of Europe yet resonant in India – would promise a transnational community to which many in India felt they could aspire and belong.

Competition lies at the heart of our economic, social, and political lives. Studies show that competitions motivate higher performance, but they can also have a dark side, by which competitors engage in deceptive, dishonest, and sabotaging conduct. In the paper’s primary study, we compare competitive behavior at 4 levels of competition intensity. As expected, we find that intensifying the competition has a general effect of increasing both the effort invested in the task and the tendency to sabotage the counterpart. We were particularly interested in whether participants would engage in sabotaging behavior at the lower boundary of competitive intensity that was devoid of any incentive to outperform the counterpart and also precluded any prospect for social comparison or social facilitation. In this condition, participants were matched with another person performing the same task, knowing that their relative performance will have no effect on payoffs and will not even be shared with each other. We found that, by itself, this illusory competition did not motivate higher performance, but when given the option to engage in (costly) sabotage, almost one quarter of participants chose to sabotage their illusory counterpart. The paper’s secondary study replicated this finding using a stimulus that included a comprehension test. These findings reveal competitive behavior under circumstances that, to the best of our knowledge, fall short of previously investigated types of competition. Theoretical explanations and normative implications are discussed.

Interest in probiotics and prebiotics in sports nutrition is growing, but research on Jordanian athletes remains limited. While gut microbiota influences athletic performance, little is known about athletes’ understanding and use of probiotic- and prebiotic-rich foods in this region. This exploratory study investigates the knowledge, dietary habits, and correlations with gastrointestinal (GI) problems among Jordanian athletes to inform future research and interventions. The study provides insights into how awareness and consumption of gut-supportive foods can impact GI health, offering broader nutritional implications for global dietary strategies for athletes. A standardised questionnaire was administered to 324 athletes (ages 18–22) to assess knowledge, dietary practices, and GI symptoms. Descriptive statistics summarised the data, and chi-square tests examined associations among knowledge, diet, and GI symptoms (p < 0.05). Knowledge and diet were scored based on correct responses and reported intake of gut-supporting foods. Results showed that 55.9% of athletes were familiar with probiotics and 32.1% with prebiotics. The majority reported low consumption of probiotic- and prebiotic-rich foods, with 72.2% scoring low on diet intake. Although 60.5% seldom consumed fast food, overall intake of gut-supportive foods was limited. No statistically significant associations were found, but a weak positive trend between dietary habits and GI symptoms was observed, suggesting diet may have a modest influence on GI health. Living arrangements influenced both dietary choices and GI symptoms. This study highlights the need for targeted nutrition education to improve awareness and intake of probiotics and prebiotics, potentially supporting GI health and enhancing athletic performance.

This paper discusses the syntactic behaviour of a small subset of object control verbs that have an implicative interpretation (e.g. obrigar ‘force’, impedir ‘prevent’) as well as the behaviour of superficially similar syntactic causatives in European Portuguese. By exploring different syntactic properties and giving special attention to inflected infinitives as complements to the two classes of verbs, we argue that implicative object control verbs are ambiguous between true control verbs (which are ditransitive) and syntactic causatives (which take a single, clausal, internal argument). To this extent, we present an argument defying Landau’s (2015) analysis of control under these verbs as predication. We also argue that the implicative interpretation of these verbs is not determined by the syntactic nature of their complement: This interpretation is maintained in both the causative and the control counterparts of the verb. By comparing implicative object control verbs and the understudied and superficially similar pôr a ‘put to / make’ and deixar a ‘put to / make’, and by highlighting the distribution and interpretation of inflected infinitives in their complements, we can argue that the latter are unambiguous syntactic causatives, which take as complement a small clause in which we internally observe control.

Posture-related musculoskeletal issues among office workers are a significant health concern, mainly due to long periods spent in static positions. This research presents a Posture Lab which is a workplace-based solution through an easy-to-use posture monitoring system, allowing employees to assess their posture. The Posture Lab focuses on two key aspects: Normal Head Posture (NHP) versus Forward Head Posture (FHP) measurement and thoracic spine kyphosis. Craniovertebral (CA) and Shoulder Angles (SA) quantify NHP and FHP. The Kyphosis Angle (KA) is for measuring normal thoracic spine and kyphosis. To measure these angles, the system uses computer vision technology with ArUco markers detection via a webcam to analyze head positions. Additionally, wearable accelerometer sensors measure kyphosis by checking the angles of inclination. The framework includes a web-based user interface for registration and specialized desktop applications for different measurement protocols. A RESTful API enables system communication and centralized data storage for reporting. The Posture Lab serves as an effective tool for organizations to evaluate employee postures and supports early intervention strategies, allowing timely referrals to healthcare providers if any potential musculoskeletal issues are identified. The Posture Lab has also shown medium to very high correlations with standard 2D motion analysis methods – Kinovea – for CA, SA, and KA in FHP with kyphosis measurements (r = 0.607, 0.704, and 0.992) and shown high to very high correlations in NHP with normal thoracic spine measurements (r = 0.809, 0.748, and 0.778), with significance at p < .01, utilizing the Pearson correlation coefficient.

Our work is motivated by obtaining solutions to the quantum reflection equation (qRE) by categorical methods. To start, given a braided monoidal category ${\mathcal {C}}$ and ${\mathcal {C}}$-module category ${\mathcal {M}}$, we introduce a version of the Drinfeld center ${\mathcal {Z}}({\mathcal {C}})$ of ${\mathcal {C}}$ adapted for ${\mathcal {M}}$; we refer to this category as the reflective center ${\mathcal {E}}_{\mathcal {C}}({\mathcal {M}})$ of ${\mathcal {M}}$. Just like ${\mathcal {Z}}({\mathcal {C}})$ is a canonical braided monoidal category attached to ${\mathcal {C}}$, we show that ${\mathcal {E}}_{\mathcal {C}}({\mathcal {M}})$ is a canonical braided module category attached to ${\mathcal {M}}$; its properties are investigated in detail.

Our second goal pertains to when ${\mathcal {C}}$ is the category of modules over a quasitriangular Hopf algebra H, and ${\mathcal {M}}$ is the category of modules over an H-comodule algebra A. We show that the reflective center ${\mathcal {E}}_{\mathcal {C}}({\mathcal {M}})$ here is equivalent to a category of modules over an explicit algebra, denoted by $R_H(A)$, which we call the reflective algebra of A. This result is akin to ${\mathcal {Z}}({\mathcal {C}})$ being represented by the Drinfeld double ${\operatorname {Drin}}(H)$ of H. We also study the properties of reflective algebras.

Our third set of results is also in the Hopf setting above. We show that reflective algebras are quasitriangular H-comodule algebras, and we examine their corresponding quantum K-matrices; this yields solutions to the qRE. We also establish that the reflective algebra $R_H(\mathbb {k})$ is an initial object in the category of quasitriangular H-comodule algebras, where $\mathbb {k}$ is the ground field. The case when H is the Drinfeld double of a finite group is illustrated.

Ice-sheet volume during Marine Isotope Stage (MIS) 3 (57–29 ka) is controversial. Several recent studies have proposed that the Greenland Ice Sheet was smaller during MIS 3 than it is today based on radiocarbon ages of molluscan bivalve shells reworked into sedimentary deposits adjacent to the present ice margin. Such a result contrasts with available records of MIS 3 climate, ice volume, and sea level. We revisited a site previously interpreted as containing evidence for smaller than present ice during MIS 3. We collected marine bivalve shells and combined progressive acid dissolution in preparation for radiocarbon dating with new-generation amino acid analysis, which focuses on aspartic acid racemization. Our results suggest that contamination by young carbon yields finite radiocarbon ages despite bivalve shells likely dating to MIS 5e (∼125 ka) or even older. This result should be further tested, which could be accomplished with additional studies of this kind in combination with ice-sheet modeling and additional paleoclimate data generated from adjacent seas.

In this article, we propose a series of latent trait models for the responses and the response times on low stakes tests where some test takers respond preliminary without making full effort to solve the items. The models consider individual differences in capability and persistence. Core of the models is a race between the solution process and a process of disengagement that interrupts the solution process. The different processes are modeled with the linear ballistic accumulator model. Within this general framework, we develop different model variants that differ in the number of accumulators and the way the response is generated when the solution process is interrupted. We distinguish no guessing, random guessing and informed guessing where the guessing probability depends on the status of the solution process. We conduct simulation studies on parameter recovery and on trait estimation. The simulation study suggests that parameter values and traits can be recovered well under certain conditions. Finally, we apply the model variants to empirical data.