Widely found at archaeological sites across the Roman Empire, the appearance in the late 1st c. BCE onward of the red gloss ceramic referred to as terra sigillata signals important transformations in the socio-economic organization of production and consumption for provincial societies. Nonetheless, relatively few studies have explored diachronically the ways in which the appearance of terra sigillata may have impacted local lifeways compared with the uses of earlier ceramics. This article explores these issues in the context of Roman Mediterranean Gaul, focusing in particular on the region of eastern Languedoc, by comparing, in both discard and funerary contexts, the differential uses of black gloss ceramics from the 3rd to the 1st c. BCE with later terra sigillata vessels. The evidence discussed here suggests that the appearance of terra sigillata was important in reifying more individual-centered social relationships in dining and other aspects of daily life.

This article investigates how autocratizing regimes instrumentalize the cultural domain to manufacture consent, assert societal dominance, and socialize oppositional actors into authoritarian logics. In contexts of competitive authoritarianism, memory politics becomes central not only to the incumbent’s efforts to legitimize power and construct hegemonic narratives of citizenship, identity, and history, but also to the opposition’s attempts to propose alternatives. Drawing on fieldwork, curator interviews, and audience responses, the article analyzes two large-scale centennial exhibitions held in İstanbul in 2023 and 2024 that offer contrasting portrayals of the Turkish Republic – one Islamist–authoritarian, the other liberal–Kemalist. Despite clear ideological differences, divergent aesthetic approaches, and distinct target audiences, both exhibitions rely on exclusionary, state-centric framings that inhibit critical or pluralist engagements with the past. The article argues that this convergence signals a deeper transformation: the autocratization of the cultural field, wherein even oppositional institutions internalize authoritarian norms and practices. In this context, history is staged as spectacle – either triumphant or nostalgic – narrowing the cultural imagination, consolidating incumbent power, and diminishing spaces for meaningful contestation.

Recent research highlights the crisis-driven approach for regional institution-building, suggesting that crises enhance the utility of regionalism. This study questions the applicability of crisis-driven regionalism in Northeast Asia, emphasising why certain crises catalyse regionalist efforts while others do not. We clarify the working mechanisms of critical juncture approaches and identify three variables influencing the effectiveness of crisis-driven regionalism, each operating at different stages – pre-crisis, in-crisis, and post-crisis. First, exogenous crises are more likely to trigger cooperation than endogenous ones, as the latter provoke disputes over the origins and responsibilities of the crisis. Second, crises should foster collective action and shared agendas among states, rather than being confined to respective domestic efforts of individual states. Lastly, we focus on the continuity of cooperative policies in the post-crisis period. This study examines the global financial crisis, environmental pollution, and COVID-19 as three illustrative cases – including both positive and negative instances – of crisis-driven regionalism, analysing why these crises have generated, or failed to generate, substantive cooperative outcomes.

Children associated with armed forces or armed groups (‘child soldiers’) experience conflict in highly differentiated ways, including in their exposure to gender-based violence. Cognisant of that reality, this article seeks to enrich current understandings of gender-based violence against female child soldiers by focussing on one relatively under-examined type: reproductive violence against female child soldiers. It revisits relevant cases from three jurisdictions which have most engaged with female child soldiers: the International Criminal Court, Special Court for Sierra Leone, and Colombian national courts. In each jurisdiction, the author closely examined publicly available court records, in order to detect references to (mostly uncharged) acts of reproductive violence against girls in armed groups. Forms of reproductive violence against child soldiers identified through this method include forcible impregnation and/or forced pregnancy, forced maternity, forced contraception and forced abortion, being forced to bear children before being sufficiently developed themselves, and the denial of reproductive health care. The article then explores how such reproductive violence might be charged as war crimes and crimes against humanity in future cases. This lens on child soldiers is especially timely, given the recent ‘reproductive violence’ turn in the field of international criminal law.

Predictions of the pedestal temperature profile calculated using a model for electron-temperature-gradient (ETG) turbulent electron heat transport Field et al. (2023 Philos. Trans. R. Soc. A, vol. 381, p. 20210228) are compared with the pedestal structure of H-mode plasmas in JET-Be/W (with Be wall and W divertor) over scans of the deuterium–tritium (D:T) isotope mix and hydrogenic gas fuelling rate Frassinetti et al. (2023 Nucl. Fusion, vol. 63, p. 112009). Predictions for the electron temperature at the location of the density pedestal top $T_e(\psi _N^{n_{e,top}})$ (where $\psi_N$, is the normalised poloidal flux) are found to agree well with measured values over both scans across the full range of D:T ratio. However, the pedestal top temperature $T_{e,ped}$, typically located somewhat inside the density pedestal top, is under-predicted by as much as a factor ${\sim} 2$. This implies that the ETG heat flux scaling appropriate for the steep-density gradient region, on which the model is based, is not applicable where the density gradient is weak. This difference might be attributed to a difference between the physics of the ETG turbulence in regimes where the density gradient is either strong or weak, which are thought to be dominated by either the ‘slab’ or ‘toroidal’ branches of ETG turbulence. Other branches of turbulence might also play a role in the electron heat transport, particularly in regions of weak-density gradient. As in the experiment, the predicted $T_e$ across the pedestal decreases with the ratio of separatrix to pedestal density $n_{e,sep}/n_{e,ped}$, which increases with the gas fuelling rate. Results from three models combining the ETG heat flux model with the EPED1 pedestal (EPED) model (Snyder et al., Phys. Plasmas, 2009, vol. 16, p. 056118) are also presented, including one which also incorporates the density pedestal prediction mode of Saarelma et al. (Nucl. Fusion, 2023, vol. 63, p. 052002), this model providing a complete prediction of the pedestal profiles.

Human genetic data are simultaneously deeply personal, familial, and strategically valuable, raising regulatory challenges that individual-centered privacy frameworks only partially address. This is highlighted by the recent high-profile bankruptcy filing by 23andMe, which triggered widespread public concerns extending beyond consumer privacy interests to potential national security risks. To address this, this paper proposes a three-layer diagnostic model for more comprehensive analysis of genetic data governance: (1) individual privacy as sensitive personal data; (2) relational and group (privacy) interests reflecting genetic data’s shared nature; and (3) the state or strategic layer treating genetic information as a national asset relevant to public health and security. Drawing on comparative examination of select jurisdictions and critical review of scholarship, this integrated framework offers researchers, policymakers, and private actors a practicable pathway to navigate the complex governance challenges posed by genetic data.

This article describes the nineteenth-century landscape of surface water distribution in cities of the U.S. West, focusing on its persistence after the advent of modern water mains, based on studies of San Antonio, Texas; Los Angeles, California; Salt Lake City, Utah; and Phoenix, Arizona. These systems of ditches, acequias, zanjas, and canals began as the primary urban water supply, then later comprised a secondary system complementing the mains. Ditch networks shrank in the twentieth century, but this ostensibly obsolete waterscape survived for decades and in many places to the present. Ditches persisted because they continued to serve the purposes of their users, because sanitary reforms abated their former pollution, and because new categories of utility emerged in amenity, heritage, and ecosystem services. The study takes the perspective of users as well as providers and finds, in contrast to conventional stories of hydraulic modernity, a continuing example of “water plurality.”

The Phonomaton, a public web-facing facility, computes phonological derivations based on a user’s underlying representations and rules. The tool allows a formal implementation of phonological analyses using familiar methods and lets students interactively explore the mechanics of feature systems and serial derivations. We demonstrate a number of the program’s features and end with a discussion of its implementation in the classroom.

With the rise of digital and online technologies, subtitling practices once reserved for traditional media to regiment language are now available to ordinary netizens. This article explores the nature of these practices and the publics they project in digital media, focusing on a viral remix video that uses on-screen text to ridicule a Hong Kong government official for his Cantonese-accented Mandarin. Through parodic revoicing, the subtitles in the video mock the official’s linguistic blunders and create a series of incongruities to provoke humor intended for Cantonese-speaking Hongkongers. These subtitles, despite reproducing standard language ideology, bring into being a vernacular counterpublic organized around Cantonese and undermine the legitimacy of the public figures in the video. This article not only prompts us to reconsider the commonly assumed link between standard languages and national publics but also reveals subtitling practices in participatory media as potential sites where ideological reproduction and political resistance intersect. (Subtitling, counterpublic, Mandarin Chinese, Hong Kong, China)

Before the planters arrived, the Mississippi River Delta was a swampy jungle. In his 1941 memoir Lanterns on the Levee, William Alexander Percy, a prominent member of the regional plantation elite, described what the Delta might have looked like in those early days, with an emphasis on the area’s fluid nature. “A still country it must have been then, ankle-deep in water, mostly in shadow, with mere flickers of sunshine, and they motey and yellow and thick like syrup.”1 But in the early nineteenth century, news had started to spread about the fertility of the Delta soil. The younger sons of plantation families in the eastern states, looking for new land to plant staple crops, began to move west, turning the Deep South of the United States into the vertex of the cotton frontier. In Mississippi they settled near the river, which provided transportation, information, and recreation, in the form of leisure trips to New Orleans. “The real highway was the river,” Percy wrote in his personal history of the Mississippi Delta. The steamer Pargo regularly arrived on Sunday mornings in the Delta town of Greenville. Most people would be in church then, but when the Pargo’s whistle blew, the men immediately stood up from the pews and made for the riverfront, to hear the latest news and gossips.2 Knowledge was an important cargo aboard riverboats like the Pargo.3

This article examines three key cases decided by the CERD Committee to show how the semantic conundrum of the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD) becomes an obstacle in extending protection against racial discrimination to various racialized groups. It is argued that the wording of Article 1 of ICERD creates a tripartite classification of semantics, in which meaning generated through different protected grounds obscures the conception of racial discrimination. This places constraints on the Committee’s ability to decide in favour of racialized non-citizens. The article proceeds to examine the jurisprudence of direct, indirect, and positive discrimination in the context of Article 1. It contends that while the semantic conundrum of ICERD confines racial discrimination to limited grounds, using the forms of discrimination can yield positive results. This is shown by re-examining the three cases, this time using the lens of forms of discrimination. It is argued that this approach can enable the Committee to transcend the semantic conundrum of ICERD and arrive at more nuanced conclusions.

This article examines the trajectory of two Native American songs transcribed by French Jesuits in the seventeenth century, their subsequent inclusion in printed books in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and their use by historians and entertainers in the twentieth century. The study focuses on how these songs, initially part of Native American oral and aural tradition, were transformed into primary-source evidence for historical research and racialized entertainment. This is an intellectual and cultural history that uses history-of-the-book and bibliographical methodologies to understand the discipline of history’s formation in the academy. The article argues that converting these songs into written musical notation inherently altered their meaning and context. It highlights how transcribing music by ear involves subjective interpretation and the loss of crucial performative elements. Furthermore, reproducing these songs in printed form further distanced them from their original cultural context, making them susceptible to misinterpretation and appropriation. The fact that these changes occurred as history was founded as a discipline is crucial to understanding the argument. The study employs a multidisciplinary approach, drawing on historical documents, musical scores, and popular-culture materials. It examines the role of women scholars, such as Emma Helen Blair and Edna Kenton, in making these sources accessible to a broader audience through their work on primary-source anthologies. However, it also points out the unintended consequences of this accessibility, as the songs were increasingly decontextualized and used to perpetuate romanticized and inaccurate portrayals of Native American culture. The work of Blair and Kenton is central to the formation of history as a discipline in the academy, especially as they worked with and for men like Reuben Gold Thwaites and Frederick Jackson Turner. The research concludes that the transformation of these songs into historical sources and entertainment props reflects the complex relationship between scholarship, popular culture, and the representation of Native American culture in the twentieth century. It raises critical questions about authenticity, ownership, and access to Indigenous cultural expressions. Finally, this study emphasizes the importance of considering notated music as a historical primary source, acknowledging its limitations and potential for misinterpretation.

A clinical case is presented to discuss a framework for use of advanced diagnostics for central nervous system infections. Advantages, limitations, and diagnostic stewardship strategies are discussed for each modality: multiplex molecular meningitis/encephalitis panel, plasma microbial cell-free DNA sequencing, and cerebrospinal fluid metagenomic next generation sequencing.

A ten-year retrospective review of 176 pneumococcal bloodstream infections found broad-spectrum antimicrobial use despite high penicillin susceptibility. Complications occurred in 15%, and ICU admission in 10%. Only 22% had pneumococcal vaccination recommended at discharge. Findings reveal missed opportunities for Antimicrobial Stewardship and preventative care in invasive pneumococcal disease management.

There are various types of nominal appositives. One is predicative, as in She invited Lulu Moppet, an old friend, to the party; one is specificational, as in She invited an old friend, Lulu Moppet, to the party; and a further type is equative, as in She invited Reginald Kenneth Dwight, Elton John, to the party. This paper argues that each type of nominal appositive comes from a reduced copular clause of a certain kind. Such a copular clause is base-generated as the complement of a categoryless functional head, like a low conjunct or a modifier. The combination of the reduced copular clause and the functional head is merged with, and categorized by, the matrix clause. Thus, a nominal appositive is not base-generated in the same proposition-denoting expression where its anchor occurs. Explicit steps of derivation for building a nominal appositive construction are proposed. The proposed syntactic derivations rule out unacceptable positions of nominal appositives. The research explores the general syntax of non-argument-taking relations.