In this study, a radiative divertor simulator was developed using the linear magnetic mirror device KAIMIR, considering the center chamber as the upstream scrape-off layer and the expander chamber as the downstream region. To achieve divertor-relevant conditions, the gas feed system of the KAIMIR device was upgraded to increase the particle flux at the downstream region. In addition, a differential pumping system using a skimmer structure was implemented to enable independent control of the neutral pressure between the upstream and downstream regions by reducing the vacuum conductance between the chambers. With this system, a neutral pressure up to 70 mTorr was achieved in the expander chamber while maintaining plasma characteristics in the center chamber. Simulations were then conducted, where non-monotonic behaviour of the ion saturation current and line-integrated density was observed with increasing neutral pressure in the expander chamber, suggesting a transition from attached to detached plasma regimes. Visible emission profiles from fast camera measurements revealed enhanced recombination emission and the formation of localised low-temperature plasma near the downstream region. These results demonstrate that the upgraded KAIMIR device provides a controllable linear divertor simulator suitable for the investigation of radiative and detached divertor plasma physics in a linear configuration.

The distinction between bridge verbs, which allow long-distance questions out of their CP complement, and non-bridge verbs, which do not, is found in a range of languages. In the previous literature, this distinction has been variably attributed to the lexical semantic/discourse properties of the CP-embedding verbs, or the syntactic positioning of the dependent CP. In this study, we provide evidence for an alternative, learning-based account, whereby positive input evidence is needed for children to acquire the possibility of wh-dependencies across a CP-embedding verb, and to further generalize this property to all such verbs. We examine the bridge/non-bridge distinction in English and Mandarin, with a corpus analysis of child-directed speech and experimental evidence provided for each language. We demonstrate that while English shows a clear bridge/non-bridge distinction, Mandarin CP-embedding verbs are all bridge verbs for both argument and adjunct wh-dependencies. These findings are predicted by a difference in the structure of the input data available to English versus Mandarin children as they acquire long-distance wh-dependencies, along with the proposed learning-based account of the bridge effect.

Foreign language anxiety (FLA) has been widely studied over the past four decades, yet the effectiveness of anxiety-reduction strategies remains insufficiently understood. This article offers a critical review of research on FLA-reduction interventions, synthesizing the findings from experimental studies across four major categories: emotion regulation, cognitive restructuring, skill building, and classroom environment enhancement. While many strategies show promise, the field lacks a coherent, psychologically grounded framework for supporting anxious learners. Drawing on psychological theories including cognitive-behavioral, acceptance-based, and analytical frameworks and emerging Daoism-inspired psychological perspectives, this article argues for a conceptual shift in FLA research: from viewing anxiety as a surface-level symptom to be eliminated toward understanding it as a meaningful psychological signal that may reflect deeper learner-internal processes. The article proposes an interdisciplinary approach that integrates pedagogical practice with psychological insight, positioning anxiety as a potential catalyst for self-awareness and growth. Implications for language teaching and future directions for FLA research are discussed.

This article constructs a new genealogy for one of the central rhetorical tropes of conservative politics in the United States in recent decades: “job-killing regulation.” Explaining how Republican politicians since Ronald Reagan have wielded this slogan so potently in their war against environmental regulation requires us to attend both to the social history of American capitalism and to the history of neoliberal intellectual production. Neoliberal intellectuals, clustered around the Mont Pèlerin Society, began warning in the 1940s that leftist elites sought to sacrifice the livelihoods of the working class for the sake of their anti-industrial aesthetic preferences. But this line of argument gained little cultural or political purchase in the US until the crisis of deindustrialization that erupted in the 1970s, when executives began systematically threatening layoffs in response to new environmental regulations. These threats were mainly pretextual but incompetently handled by regulatory policy makers, creating a political opportunity that Reagan exploited skillfully.

This Special Issue (SI) explores the enduring relationship between race and migration, arguing that race remains a central—yet often underexamined—analytical category in migration studies. Although overtly racialized migration policies have declined since the mid-20th century, racial dynamics continue to shape mobility regimes, access to rights, and perceptions of migrants across global contexts. This SI highlights how contemporary migration is structured by a “global mobility divide,” where racial hierarchies influence who can move, how they move, and how they are received. With interdisciplinary contributions, the SI examines several migration experiences, including forced displacement and labor migration across diverse geographical contexts; and methodologies, from participatory research to media analysis, uncovering how racialization operates at interpersonal, institutional, and structural levels. Collectively, the contributions challenge fragmented approaches within migration studies and call for a more integrated framework that centers race, advancing scholarship by demonstrating how racial politics shape migrants’ lived experiences.

Studies testing the relationship between preferences for Islamism and preferences for democracy in the Muslim world are inconclusive—and likely the result of measurement issues. Previously, we introduced a four-question battery measuring conceptions of Islamism and found that responses vary predictably across two components: whether respondents consider a shari‘a-based government to be one that provides services or one that imposes restrictive Islamic norms. Here, we demonstrate the consistency, generalizability, and utility of the battery through an analysis of 11,849 respondents in 11 Muslim countries. Defining a shari‘a-based government as one that provides is significantly and positively correlated with support for democracy, while defining it as a government that imposes is negatively correlated with these preferences across the entire sample.

As the epitome of modern, rational organizations, bureaucracies are often believed to select candidates based on rules and reason. We argue that intuitive—and even instinctive—assessments of candidates’ external appearances sometimes underpin seemingly rational and calculated decisions. Using a novel, AI-based algorithm that learns and reproduces human assessments of facial appearances at scale, we examine how perceived facial traits influence the careers of over four thousand mid- and senior-level Chinese officials. We find that officials who look more competent, trustworthy, and less aggressive enjoy significantly better promotion prospects and lower purge risk than their peers. Warmth-related traits (e.g., trustworthiness and non-aggressiveness) are especially valued at higher-level promotions and for male candidates. Additional analyses, including conjoint experiments with real officials, demonstrate that appearances’ influence over selection preferences is comparable to performance or political connections. These findings challenge the prevailing meritocratic and relation-based theories of bureaucratic selection and highlight the role of impressions in the workings of government institutions.

The stellar initial mass function (IMF) is a fundamental ingredient in galaxy evolution, linking observed integrated light to stellar masses, star-formation rates, and chemical enrichment histories. Constraining the full IMF shape beyond the Milky Way remains challenging, as most studies focus either on the low-mass end of quiescent galaxies or the high-mass end of star-forming galaxies. Here, we present the first simultaneous analysis of both ends of the IMF in 214 star-forming galaxies from the Hector survey ($z \sim$ 0.01–0.07). We estimate the low-mass end slope ($\alpha_{\mathrm{low}}$) using a stellar population approach that fits IMF-sensitive absorption features with extended star formation histories, while the high-mass end slope ($\alpha_{\mathrm{high}}$) is derived via the Kennicutt diagnostic, which compares the observed H$\alpha$ equivalent width and $g-r$ colour with stellar population synthesis model predictions. We find substantial diversity in IMF shapes, with galaxies spanning combinations of bottom-heavy/light and top-heavy/light slopes. A weak but statistically robust correlation between the low- and high-mass IMF slopes is observed, but partial correlation analysis indicates that this apparent link is largely driven by their mutual dependence on stellar mass and metallicity. Both IMF slopes show significant correlations with stellar mass, star formation activity (traced by H$\alpha$ luminosity and surface density), and stellar metallicity ([M/H]). In general, higher stellar mass, stronger star formation activity, and higher metallicity are associated with both bottom-heavy and top-heavy IMFs. We find that the full IMF shape seems to be modulated by total stellar mass. Partial correlation analysis reveals that $\alpha_{\mathrm{low}}$ is primarily driven by [M/H], whereas $\alpha_{\mathrm{high}}$ is mainly linked to stellar mass and recent star formation. Because $\alpha_{\mathrm{low}}$ traces the IMF over long-term averages and $\alpha_{\mathrm{high}}$ captures only recent ($\lesssim10$ Myr) star formation, the processes shaping each end likely occur over different and possibly decoupled timescales. Our findings challenge the universality of the IMF and emphasise the need for galaxy evolution and stellar population models to incorporate a flexible IMF prescription. Accounting for these variations is essential to build an IMF-consistent picture of galaxy evolution across cosmic time.

On 1 November 2024, a concrete and steel canopy at a newly reconstructed railway station in the Serbian city of Novi Sad collapsed, instantly killing 14 passersby, with two more succumbing to injuries in the following weeks. Many citizens saw this as the outcome of rampant government corruption and staged silent vigils for the victims. In response to the regime’s violent crackdown on a vigil in front of the Faculty of Dramatic Arts in Belgrade, students went into blockade, a protest performance that soon spread to all state universities in the country.

The Sexual Economy of Capitalism is a unique, illuminating, and deeply disturbing book. In this essay, I seek to show that Yuran’s key themes – sex and money – are chosen precisely for their obscene, transgressive nature, and that this choice is of methodological significance. Yuran’s subject matter, I argue, sheds light on profound transformations of unwritten ethical rules and values regarding exchange and the singular, as well as their historical afterlives and residues. The conceptual core of the book – its analysis of the relationship between the market and the economy in capitalism as a relation of included exclusion, in which the market is both affected by and leaves traces on what is excluded from it – enables Yuran to reveal subtle yet incorrigibly obscene entanglements of money and sexuality in modern life.

We present 29 successfully recovered Civ time lags in Active Galactic Nuclei from the complete Dark Energy Survey Reverberation Mapping campaign. The AGN in this sample span a redshift range of $1.9\lt z\lt 3.5$. We successfully measure the velocity dispersion from the Civ spectral linewidth for 25 of these 29 sources, and use these to calculate new high-redshift black hole mass estimates, finding masses between 0.8 and 1.3 billion solar masses. We also identify a selection effect due to the duration of the survey that can impact the radius-luminosity relation derived from this and other (high-redshift) data. This paper represents the culmination of the OzDES Civ campaign.