The murder of George Floyd in May 2020 sparked a wave of Black Lives Matter protests in many cities throughout the United States. Protesters’ demands ranged from constraints on police use of force to defunding and disbanding the police altogether. These have led some to worry about the possibility of a “Ferguson Effect,” where police withdraw from policing, and in particular discretionary stops and searches, with deleterious consequences for crime. Drawing on data from four cities, we evaluate whether the 2020 BLM protests impacted police behavior, and whether changes in policing negatively impacted public safety. Regression discontinuity-in-time estimates suggest that although depolicing followed the BLM protests, in some respects the quality of policing improved, and public safety was not clearly impacted. Our findings have important implications for research on policing, social movements, and structural inequality in cities.

The four Piano Sonatas by W. A. Mozart with freely composed additional accompaniment for a Second Piano by Edvard Grieg (EG 113) were first published in 1879–80 but were not heard by English concertgoers until 5 March 1890, when both Agathe Backer-Grøndahl and Anton Hartvigson opened separate recitals in London with Grieg's version of the Fantasy in C minor K475, the latter following it with the Sonata in F major K533/494. This coincidence is noteworthy not only because Grieg's additions appeared to flaunt the prevailing expectation of fidelity to classical works, but also because Mozart's solo keyboard music was rarely included in professional recitals. Focusing on Backer-Grøndahl and Hartvigson's concerts, this article considers Grieg's additions not merely as ‘arrangements’ but also as a performance practice subject to a range of interpretations by recitalists and different sections of the audience. The article begins by placing the transformation of the additions from teaching aids into concert repertoire in the context of similar supplements to classic works and concurrent attitudes to Mozart's piano music. The next section examines the mixed reception of Backer-Grøndahl and Hartvigson's recitals, situating this within contemporary debates about the role of fidelity in modern performances of historic works and its relationship with dominant conceptions of musical taste. While critics condemned the use of Grieg's additions, several disdainfully noted that they were well received by the rest of the audience. The final section attempts to account for this discrepancy by considering the widespread perception of Grieg's additions as Norwegian ‘national music’, a popular genre of exoticist parlour music that critics disparagingly associated with a mass audience of young, female players and considered inferior to ‘international’ classics. The article concludes by reflecting on how these factors might have informed Backer-Grøndahl's decision to perform Mozart's music with Grieg's additions.

The need for collaborative and transparent sharing of COVID-19 clinical trial and large-scale observational study data to accelerate scientific discovery and inform clinical practice is critical. Responsible data-sharing requires addressing challenges associated with data privacy and confidentiality, data linkage, data quality, variable harmonization, data formats, and comprehensive metadata documentation to produce a high-quality, contextually rich, findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable (FAIR) dataset. This communication explores the experiences and lessons learned from sharing National Heart Lung and Blood Institute (NHLBI) COVID-19 clinical trial (including adaptive platform trials) and cohort study datasets through the NHLBI BioData Catalyst® (BDC) ecosystem, focusing on the challenges and successes of harmonizing these datasets for broader research use. Our findings highlight the importance of establishing standardized data formats, adopting common data elements and creating and maintaining robust data governance structures that address common challenges (i.e., data privacy and data-sharing limitations resulting from informed consent). These efforts resulted in a set of comprehensive and interoperable datasets from 5 clinical trials and 13 cohort studies that will enable downstream reuse in analyses and collaborations. The principles and strategies outlined, derived through experience with consortia data, can lay the groundwork for advancing collaborative and efficient data sharing.

Current prevalence of disability in Bangladesh stands at 7.14%. Due to various misconceptions, stigma, and lack of policies, they are more vulnerable to violence and abuse from perpetrators. However, there is a paucity of research on the prevalence of emotional, physical, and sexual violence in the country. To address this knowledge gap, the current study aims to estimate the prevalence and explore the experiences of emotional abuse, physical, and sexual violence of persons with disabilities with their coping strategies. This study adopted a mixed-method sequential design comprising qualitative and quantitative components. A total of 5000 persons with disabilities were interviewed during the survey, and mini-ethnographic case studies were conducted with 51 purposively selected persons with disabilities from all eight administrative divisions of Bangladesh. Descriptive and bivariate statistical analysis was performed for quantitative data. Qualitative data were analysed through thematic analysis. The study concludes that the lifetime prevalence of emotional, physical, and sexual abuse is 68.9%, 26.6%, and 11.5%, respectively. Male participants were more prone to experience sexual abuse than females for both lifetimes (male: 12.7% & female: 10.3%) and within the last 12 months before the survey (male: 6.6% & female: 5.1%). Neighbours and close family members were found to be perpetrators of emotional and physical violence, whereas immediate family members were the perpetrators of sexual violence. Even though participants shared several coping mechanisms, equal to or less than 0.5% sought help from a counsellor to cope with the trauma. Results from the study correspond to the earlier studies with implications for future research and urgent policy reform. Although women are more vulnerable to experiencing different forms of violence, men with disabilities are no different. However, this remains unseen and unheard. To reduce the prevalence of violence against this marginalised group, a coordinated and collaborative approach is required targeting nationwide sensitisation, easy access to help-seeking centres, and adequate policy implementation.

Russia’s 2014 seizure of parts of Ukraine, notably the Crimean Peninsula, set in motion a flurry of legal activity. Ukraine’s “lawfare” strategy, which aims to fight Russia via international legal means, included explicit encouragement of Ukrainian investors to file disputes under the Ukraine-Russia Bilateral Investment Treaty. We consider the resulting Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) arbitrations, the first instances of ISDS in which state parties to the treaty are actively engaged in armed conflict. Although Ukrainian actors have consistently won at ISDS arbitrations, Ukraine moved to formally withdraw from the treaty a year after the full-scale Russian invasion of 2022. Developments before and since the invasion point to the diverging interests between commercial actors and their home states, the weakness of ISDS as a tool during wartime, and a reconsideration of treaty-based commitments to international investor protections. We highlight the implications of these events for several literatures in international relations.

Within this paper, glocalization is presented to explain the heterogeneity of the Uruk Expansion/Phenomenon, a process which saw extensive interactions and cultural integration across Mesopotamia during the fourth millennium bce, characterized by the spread of southern Mesopotamian material culture and cultural practices. Through close examination of archaeological data from the Adhaim-Sirwan Drainage Basin, southern Iraqi Kurdistan, a region which is emerging as a focus of intense culture-contact during the Uruk Phenomenon, I contend that a glocalized perspective of this phenomenon better illuminates its regional nuances and complexities, as well as the interactions between local and Uruk communities within the Adhaim-Sirwan. By employing a glocalizing framework, this paper demonstrates that cultural interactions led to varied adaptations of the Uruk Phenomenon and illustrates the dynamic interplay between global influences and local responses. Ultimately, this paper advocates for a nuanced understanding of the Uruk Phenomenon, highlighting its regional variability and the importance of local agency in shaping cultural outcomes, thereby framing it as a distinctly glocalized process rather than an expression of globalization.

The recent resurgence of exclusionary nationalism across the advanced capitalist world has caused historical scholarship on neoliberalism to reorient itself. Previous accounts of neoliberalism proved inadequate to theorize the hegemonic crisis that neoliberalism has been thrust into, prematurely rushing to declare neoliberalism dead. The task is to offer an interpretation of resurgent nationalism that can account for points of tension with hegemonic neoliberalism without underestimating the ways it lives on in the present. This essay critically reviews three books that offer distinct interpretations of neoliberalism’s enduring hegemonic crisis. If Melinda Cooper and Tehila Sasson’s respective works provide new critical perspectives on the history and present of neoliberal ideas, Jennifer Burns’s study offers an insider’s perspective on the pressures that neoliberalism is under from the nationalist right.

The topic of impersonalization has received a lot of attention in the literature, but the focus has mostly been on a limited number of strategies, such as the use of personal and indefinite pronouns and passive constructions. Impersonal strategies have thus far been examined using: (i) grammars, (ii) corpora, and (iii) language-based questionnaires. These methods suffer from several shortcomings if one wants to study the range of impersonal strategies. The present article aims to argue for a new way of investigating impersonal strategies that complements the other approaches, by reporting on the results of a visual questionnaire. More precisely, it discusses a visual questionnaire completed by speakers of Dutch and Afrikaans to determine whether this method is a satisfactory way of studying impersonal strategies and to also examine and compare the impersonal strategies of the two languages.*

The cosmic 21 cm signal serves as a crucial probe for studying the evolutionary history of the Universe. However, detecting the 21 cm signal poses significant challenges due to its extremely faint nature. To mitigate the interference from the Earth’s radio frequency interference (RFI), the ground and the ionospheric effects, the Discovering the Sky at the Longest Wavelength (DSL) project will deploy a constellation of satellites in lunar orbit, with its high-frequency daughter satellite tasked with detecting the global 21 cm signal from cosmic dawn and reionization era (CD/EoR). We intend to employ the vari-zeroth-order polynomial (VZOP) for foreground fitting and subtracting. We have studied the effect of thermal noise, thermal radiation from the Moon, the lunar reflection, anisotropic frequency-dependent beam, inaccurate antenna beam pattern, and RFI contamination. We discovered that the RFI contamination can significantly affect the fitting process and thus prevent us from detecting the signal. Therefore, experimenting on the far side of the moon is crucial. We also discovered that using VZOP together with DSL, after 1080 orbits around the Moon, which takes about 103 days, we can successfully detect the CD/EoR 21 cm signal.

Identity-protective reasoning – motivated reasoning driven by defending a social identity – is often dismissed as a paradigm of epistemic vice and a key driver of democratic dysfunction. Against this view, I argue that identity-protective reasoning can play a positive epistemic role, both individually and collectively. Collectively, it facilitates an effective division of cognitive labor by enabling groups to test divergent beliefs, serving as an epistemic insurance policy against the possibility that the total evidence is misleading. Individually, it can correct for the distortions that arise from taking ideologically skewed evidence at face value. This is particularly significant for members of marginalized groups, who frequently encounter evidence that diminishes the value of their identities, beliefs, and practices. For them, identity-protective reasoning can counter dominant ideological ignorance and foster resistant standpoint development. While identity-protective reasoning is not without risks, its application from marginalized and counter-hegemonic positions carries epistemic benefits crucial in democracies threatened by elite capture. Against dominant views in contemporary political epistemology and psychology, identity-protective reasoning should be reconceived as a resource to be harnessed and not a problem to be eradicated.

The crystal structure of sparsentan has been solved and refined using synchrotron X-ray powder diffraction data and optimized using density functional theory techniques. Sparsentan crystallizes in space group P-1 (#2) with a = 11.4214(8), b = 12.0045(9), c = 14.1245(12) Å, α = 97.6230(22), β = 112.4353(16), γ = 110.2502(11)°, V = 1599.20(6) Å3, and Z = 2 at 298 K. The crystal structure consists of an isotropic packing of dimers of sparsentan molecules, linked by N–H···O=S hydrogen bonds. Several intra- and intermolecular C–H···O and C–H···N hydrogen bonds also link the molecules. The powder pattern has been submitted to the International Centre for Diffraction Data for inclusion in the Powder Diffraction File™ (PDF®).

In this work, we present a detailed assessment of fusion-born alpha-particle confinement, their wall loads and stability of Alfvén eigenmodes driven by these energetic particles in the Infinity Two Fusion Pilot Plant baseline plasma design, a four-field-period quasi-isodynamic stellarator to operate in deuterium–tritium fusion conditions. Using the Monte Carlo codes, SIMPLE, ASCOT5 and KORC-T, we study the collisionless and collisional dynamics of guiding-centre and full-orbit alpha-particles in the core plasma. We find that core energy losses to the wall are less than 4 %. Our simulations shows that peak power loads on the wall of this configuration are approximately 2.5 MW m-$^2$ and are spatially localised, toroidally and poloidaly, in the vicinity of x-points of the magnetic island chain $n/m = 4/5$ outside the plasma volume. Also, an exploratory analysis using various simplified walls shows that shaping and distance of the wall from the plasma volume can help reduce peak power loads. Our stability assessment of Alfvén eigenmodes using the STELLGAP and FAR3d codes shows the absence of unstable modes driven by alpha-particles in Infinity Two due to the relatively low alpha-particle beta at the envisioned 800 MW operating scenario.

Edible goods are not usually considered suitable for archiving. This short article introduces an unconventional archive of images relating to design, book, costume, and performance history. Each image in this archive depicts an intricately decorated biscuit (cookie) set inspired by historical artifacts or styles. I began making these biscuits during the pandemic as a way of engaging with material culture while traditional archives and museums were closed, and I now perform this work as a form of close reading. I also collaborate with heritage organizations to make biscuit sets that share collection items with online audiences. This work has contributed to my own research process while celebrating the collections of a broad range of British archives.