Ethics has become a central concern in applied linguistics, with researchers from both qualitative and quantitative paradigms increasingly engaging with ethical considerations. While methodological guidelines have been proposed to support ethical research practices (De Costa, 2024), it remains unclear to what extent these are implemented and reported. Narrative inquiry, in particular, poses complex ethical challenges due to its relational and often deeply personal nature. Although qualitative traditions have long led ethical reflections in applied linguistics, ethical enactment and transparency in narrative inquiry remain inconsistent. To explore this issue, we conducted a methodological synthesis of 332 narrative inquiry studies published between 2012 and 2023, examining ethical practices across study design, recruitment, data collection, and analysis. Findings reveal that while issues like anonymity were commonly addressed, other areas – such as IRB approval, participant incentives, considerations for vulnerable populations, and data sharing – showed marked variation. Drawing on current literature, we propose empirically grounded recommendations to strengthen ethical reporting in narrative research. Rather than associating macro-ethics and micro-ethics with specific paradigms, we integrate both to explore how ethical principles are enacted in context. Given the relational and situated nature of narrative inquiry, this review responds to a timely need for more transparent and reflexive ethical practice in the field.

In recent decades, the extent of ice-free areas has been increasing in the South Shetland Islands (Maritime Antarctica). The coastal sector is one of the zones most significantly affected by glacial retreat, with newly exposed land surfaces undergoing a wide variety of post-glacial environmental processes. Coastal areas are characterized by both continental and marine ice dynamics, which in turn have major influences on the morphology and processes shaping coastal landforms. A detailed geomorphological analysis was carried out at Spanish Cove, south-west Livingston Island, which constitutes a boulder beach close to the Spanish Antarctic Station Juan Carlos I. This research provides a classification of the existing coastal landforms in this sector, as well as an analysis of the recent behaviour of the area using drone surveys, material size measurements obtained through semi-automatic techniques and hardness analysis using a durometer. This study represents one of the first attempts to classify the Antarctic coastal environment and offers a basis for understanding the potential evolution of such environments over the coming decades under global change and the rapid transformation of present-day glaciated landscapes.

The prehistoric cultural material at the Lodoso Site, a Middle Archaic to Late Prehistoric campsite near Driscoll, Texas, is dominated by irregularly shaped heat-hardened fragments of earth called burned clay objects (BCOs). These artifacts are a common component of coastal plain archaeology in Texas and elsewhere in the state. Many such sites, especially those situated in sandy soils, do not preserve charcoal well, which renders dating the occupations challenging. The clayey matrix of the Lodoso Site does preserve charcoal, which presents an opportunity to assess the suitability of luminescence dating of burned clay objects by thermoluminescence (TL) and optically stimulated luminescence (OSL), and directly compare those results with charcoal collected from the same excavation provenience, as well as OSL dating of the sedimentary matrix. The TL and OSL results generally track together well but are consistently slightly older than charcoal collected from the same level. The charcoal dates suggest the midden formed between approximately 1500 and 2300 years ago, whereas the luminescence ages suggest formation occurred between 2000 and 3000 years ago. Where the luminescence ages occur out of stratigraphic order, so do the paired charcoal samples, indicating that this is a result of pedoturbation. The results of both radiocarbon and luminescence dating indicate that the midden is a diachronic feature resulting from use over a prolonged period rather than the product of a single burning event.

We show sharp well-posedness with analytic data-to-solution mapping in the semilinear regime for dispersion-generalized KP-I equations on $\mathbb {R}^2$ and $\mathbb {R} \times \mathbb {T}$. On $\mathbb {R}^2$ we cover the full subcritical range, whereas on $\mathbb {R} \times \mathbb {T}$ the sharp well-posedness is strictly subcritical. We rely on linear and bilinear Strichartz estimates which are proved using decoupling techniques and square function estimates. Nonlinear Loomis-Whitney inequalities are a further ingredient. These are presently proved for Borel measures with growth condition reflecting the different geometries of the plane $\mathbb {R}^2$, the cylinder $\mathbb {R} \times \mathbb {T}$, and the torus $\mathbb {T}^2$. Finally, we point out that on tori $\mathbb {T}^2_\gamma $, KP-I equations are never semilinear.

In this study, we explore L1 and L2 speakers’ use of degree modifiers (DMs) aika/melko/ihan and quite/rather/fairly in a cross-linguistic setting, with academic Finnish and English as languages of interest. As a method, we apply a multivariate approach that considers the constructional features of the DMs. The statistical modelling showed reliably that, in both languages, L1 and L2 speakers made partially different choices when using the DMs. The model predicted the DM use of both languages well, although it explained the variation of the Finnish DMs better. In general, the English L2 use of the DMs was closer to English L1 use than was the case in Finnish, where the populations had a clearly different favourite among the three DM variants. The results suggest that the examined DM group is more fixed in academic Finnish, whereas in academic English the choice between the examined DM variants is more open.

Perron and Quinn gave independent proofs in 1986 that every topological pseudo-isotopy of a simply-connected, compact topological 4-manifold is isotopic to the identity. Another result of Quinn is that every smooth pseudo-isotopy of a simply-connected, compact, smooth 4-manifold is smoothly stably isotopic to the identity. From this he deduced that $\pi _4(\operatorname {\mathrm {TOP}}(4)/\operatorname {\mathrm {O}}(4)) = 0$. A replacement criterion is used at a key juncture in Quinn’s proofs, but the justification given for it is incorrect. We provide different arguments that bypass the replacement criterion, thus completing Quinn’s proofs of both the topological and the stable smooth pseudo-isotopy theorems. We discuss the replacement criterion and state it as an open problem.

This paper examines Summermood (1981), an electroacoustic work composed by Antonio Russek for bass flute and live electronics, situating it within the Mexican electroacoustic scene of the 1980s and in dialogue with international developments in live electronic performance. A pivotal work in both Russek’s career and flutist Marielena Arizpe’s repertoire, Summermood, stands among the earliest Mexican compositions for electronically modified acoustic instruments. It has not been able to be studied or performed due to the absence of published documentation, its dependence on the obsolete DeltaLab DL-4 digital delay unit, and its original association with Arizpe, who retired early following an accident-related injury. Drawing on archival documents, interviews, recordings and the graphic score and Russek’s notes, this paper analyses the work’s aesthetic conception, its integration of extended flute timbres with electronic processing, its graphic notation and the collaborative practices that informed its creation, arguing for its significance in the historiography of Mexican electroacoustic music. While briefly acknowledging the preservation challenges posed by obsolete technologies, the central aim of this paper is to reassemble Summermood as a case study that illuminates Mexico’s underexplored contribution to the global avant-garde of the late twentieth century.

The tree Xylopia decorticans is a rare endemic in the Brazilian Atlantic Forest, a global biodiversity hotspot. Described in 2007 from two protected areas, it was originally categorized as Least Concern but as a result of progressive forest conversion and degradation it is now categorized as Endangered in the Brazilian Red List and IUCN Red List. Ecologically, the search for new populations is important because the species provides resources to a range of wildlife in different forest layers, but there have been no demographic studies on which to base conservation action. To address this lack of information, we surveyed a private protected area in south-eastern Brazil where there was a new record of X. decorticans. We located 121 individuals within a minimum convex polygon area of 4.08 ha (density 29.65 individuals/ha), c. 30% of which were juveniles. Mean tree height was 9 m and diameter at breast height ≤ 10 cm. The species is ombrophilous and sensitive to edge effects, as evidenced by desiccation observed in the field. The findings of this study improve our understanding of the ecological characteristics of species within regions afflicted by ongoing forest degradation, and underscores the pivotal role of Reservas Particular do Patrimônio Natural (private natural heritage reserves) in Brazil in the conservation of threatened species such as X. decorticans.

Research on partisan expressive responding suggests that the beliefs people express in surveys are more partisan than their underlying perceptions. This article examines the scope and importance of expressive responding through a meta-reanalysis of 44 studies from 25 articles. On average, treatments designed to reduce expressive responding shrink measured partisan bias by about 25%. Across the 242 survey questions in the data, treatments increase the correlation between the average Democrat’s and Republican’s beliefs from 0.81 to 0.86. Contrary to expectations derived from the two leading theories of expressive responding, misreporting (“cheerleading”) and congenial inference, there is no evidence that expressive responding increases in partisan identity strength or educational attainment. As research on expressive responding enters its third decade, greater emphasis on design-based tests of mechanisms may help build a firmer understanding of the nature and substantive importance of expressive responding—namely, whether the forces that produce expressive responding in surveys also shape real-world political judgments.

In 2002, the director of the Jindo Cultural Center learned of Waedeoksan, a tomb site said to commemorate Japanese naval soldiers who died in the 1597 Battle of Myeongnyang. Oral tradition framed the burials as an act of virtue toward foreign dead and remained confined to Jindo for centuries. After the discovery of a genealogical reference, the story gained attention and was mobilized as a symbol of Korea–Japan reconciliation, prompting a visit from a Japanese prime minister. In 2022, however, a historian challenged its archaeological basis, sparking debate. This article traces competing narratives and shows how the tradition became sensitive.

Social salience, the association of a social category with linguistic variables, has been hypothesized to be an important driver of language change. This hypothesis has not been rigorously tested due to the lack of a reliable measure of social salience. In this paper, we present Salience Categorization Test (Sali-CAT), a new approach to measuring the association of word variants with social categories across multiple lexical variables. The approach includes a customized experimental paradigm (three alternative forced choice) and a statistical method to establish the baseline Salience Ratio (Sali-RAT) score for word variants that do not have a bias in usage with respect to the social categories. We demonstrate the approach by testing the association of multiple variables with different generations of speakers in the Gurindji speech community.

For any power q of the positive ground field characteristic, a smooth q-bic threefold—the Fermat threefold of degree $q+1$, for example—has a smooth surface S of lines which behaves like the Fano surface of a smooth cubic threefold. I develop projective, moduli-theoretic, and degeneration techniques to study the geometry of S. Using, in addition, the modular representation theory of the finite unitary group and the geometric theory of filtrations, I compute the cohomology of the structure sheaf of S when q is prime.

The goal of the Paris Agreement is to prevent global temperatures from rising by more than 2°C above pre-industrial levels and pursue efforts to limit them to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels. This requires a significant reduction in global greenhouse gas emissions and achieving net zero emissions by 2050. Portfolio alignment metrics are forward-looking metrics intended to help investors understand whether their investment portfolios are on track to meet the Paris Agreement goals. They also aim to encourage capital flows towards activities needed for a net zero transition. Since 2020, several metrics have been put forward by industry groups and explored in technical papers. Companies and actuaries have been exploring the practicalities of these metrics and starting to incorporate them into investment reporting and design. But this has not been without key challenges. The Net Zero and Implications for Investment Portfolios working party aims to help actuaries improve their understanding of what net zero means for an investment portfolio and what the key mechanisms are to achieve this, as well as key challenges to date and the outlook for development.

Private investment in residential long-term care has surged around the world. Growing evidence shows that this is changing the institutional logic and the inner workings of the sector, prioritising the financial interests of asset holders above those of other stakeholders (eg. clients, care professionals and regulators). We know little about how policy makers and regulators are responding to private investment and profit-making in the long-term care sector. This paper addresses that gap by analysing policies prompting the growth of private investment and profit-making in residential long-term care, the emerging power struggles in some cases between asset holders and other stakeholders in long-term care, the controversies that have arisen and the concomitant responses of regulators and policy makers in Ontario (Canada), Lombardy (Italy), the Netherlands and England (United Kingdom). We show that the institutional context (eg. legal frameworks, policies and regulations) shapes controversies concerning quality, accessibility and affordability of care, and argue that regulators and policymakers in the constituencies we studied are responding reactively to such controversies rather than proactively anticipating and preventing unwanted effects. Our analysis provides policymakers with valuable insights regarding the regulation and governance of private investment and profit-making in the residential long-term care sector.

Over the next decade, I expect more and more computing on phones and small computers and less on clouds and supercomputers. Supercomputers are super impressive to engineers, but not to economists because economies of scale have more to do with the size of the market than the size of the machine. Clouds are like wire-wrapped Cray computers; they were never designed for mass production. There was never much supply or demand. Supercomputers and clouds are too expensive and burn too much power. The future is more promising for phones because the market is larger. In addition, there are a number of other advantages to computing on phones and small (commodity) machines designed for mass markets: privacy, power, size, weight, latency, bandwidth, and especially affordability.

We prove a version of Sylvester’s law of inertia for the Reflection Equation Algebra (=REA). We will only be concerned with the REA constructed from the R-matrix associated to the standard q-deformation of $GL(N,\mathbb {C})$. For q positive, this particular REA comes equipped with a natural $*$-structure, by which it can be viewed as a q-deformation of the $*$-algebra of polynomial functions on the space of self-adjoint N-by-N-matrices. We will show that this REA satisfies a type I-condition, so that its irreducible representations can in principle be classified. Moreover, we will show that, up to the adjoint action of quantum $GL(N,\mathbb {C})$, any irreducible representation of the REA is determined by its extended signature, which is a classical signature vector extended by a parameter in $\mathbb {R}/\mathbb {Z}$. It is this latter result that we see as a quantized version of Sylvester’s law of inertia.

This article explores how ancient Greek choral practices—collective singing and dancing called choreia—offer unexpected solutions to contemporary civic challenges. Drawing on interdisciplinary research with Australian military veterans and students, combining cognitive science, performance studies, and classics, we demonstrate how synchronized group performance generates measurable and lasting improvements in empathy, social cohesion, and democratic participation. Using motion capture technology and psychological assessments, we reveal the neurological and social mechanisms underlying these transformations and the means to reactivate them even after profound disagreements. The research suggests that ancient Greek democracy’s emphasis on embodied, collective practices provides valuable insights for addressing modern crises of political polarization and civic disengagement, demonstrating how democracy can be literally danced into being.

Biodiversity monitoring is essential to inform the state of wildlife populations, and the impacts of environmental change, conservation intervention, and sustainable development policies and actions. We review the current state of bird monitoring across Africa using public questionnaires and semi-structured interviews. We received 87 questionnaire responses from 46 (of 54) countries and, additionally, 24 in-depth interviews were carried out. Multiple data collection methods were reported with total counts of individuals being most frequent, but all-species surveys, essential for quantifying ecosystem health, were restricted to bird atlases and Common Bird Monitoring (CBM) projects in Kenya, Uganda, and Botswana. Data collection relied largely on volunteers, but their motivation, recruitment, training, and retention is a continuing challenge. The most sustainable programmes were driven by clear policy objectives (e.g. waterbird monitoring under the Ramsar Convention or the Convention on the Conservation of Migratory Species), monitoring of individual groups (e.g. raptors, vultures, bustards), specific threatened species, and where clear national priorities had been set within government agencies. Use of monitoring data by governments in country biodiversity reports or National Biodiversity Species Action Plans (NBSAPs) varied widely and, for many countries, simply did not exist. A lack of skilled analysts and a comprehensive approach to data curation and ownership were identified as major limitations. A more strategic approach to funding and monitoring is needed, whereby smaller funders collaborate to reduce costs associated with applying for small amounts of money, and bird (and biodiversity) monitoring is explicitly integrated with sustainable development goals to exploit broader funding streams.