Sea anemones represent a highly abundant and diverse group within marine ecosystems, yet biodiversity analyses in Peru remain comparatively scarce. To enhance the inventory of biodiversity and its distribution, a comprehensive review of the available literature on species from Peruvian waters was performed. Only seven well-documented species (i.e. verified records) were found representing 31.8% of the total species reported in Peru (22 spp.) These seven species are Anthothoe chilensis, Phymactis papillosa (formerly reported as P. clematis), Phymanthea pluvia, Oulactis concinnata, Antholoba achates, Anemonia alicemartinae and Oulactis coliumensis. Overall, specimens were identified in 68 localities, the Actiniidae family exhibited the highest diversity with five species (71.4% of the total), whereas Actinostolidae and Sagartiidae each contributed one species (14.3%). The highest number of scientific publications (18) corresponds to the Lima region, with over twice as many studies as other regions, it is followed by Ica (8), Áncash (7), La Libertad (6), Tumbes (5), Piura (4), Arequipa (3), Tacna (2), Moquegua (1) and Lambayeque (1). However, the studied localities are unevenly distributed across regions. Rocky substrata (~55% of records) are the most reported habitat for sea anemones in Peru, including exposed vertical walls and sheltered crevices, caves and areas under rocks. Despite wide spatial distribution, our results indicate several under-researched regions. The growing interest in these benthic invertebrates over recent decades has revealed over 50% of reported biodiversity, yet many doubts about species described long ago remain. Potential biases in existing data require identification along with further analysis of environmental information.

The World Health Organization has classified Emergency Medical Teams (EMTs) into 3 types for international disaster response. They range from those that operate as daytime clinic facilities to those that have complete hospital capabilities that can provide 24/7 inpatient care. The most complex EMT (Type 3) includes a full-scale emergency department (ED), operating rooms, a medical/surgical ward, an intensive care unit, and laboratory services. The Israel Defense Forces Field Hospital was the first to be officially designated as a Type 3 EMT. Two models have been used by the Israeli EMT depending on the disaster response: standalone and hybrid. The standalone model is where the ED and hospital are set up in tents independent of any existing health care facilities. The hybrid model is where the equipment and personnel are combined with existing structures. Pediatric patients are examined in either a designated area staffed by specialized pediatric emergency physicians and nurses or integrated into the general ED. Models of ED layout, staffing, scheduling, and equipment are also described. While the Israeli team is a Type 3 EMT, the different models of ED organization can also be applied to other types of field hospitals to maximize care in the disaster setting.

How should democratic communities decide who should belong? Recent debates about issues such as voting rights for prisoners, denationalization policies or citizenship tests raise this fundamental democratic question. While many scholars argue that decisions about citizenship and voting rights should be more inclusive of subjected outsiders and more independent from electoral partisan politics, we still lack institutional proposals for inclusive and independent membership politics. This article contributes to the nascent institutional turn in the debate about democratic membership boundaries. My aim is to show that normative debates about membership politics can benefit from recent advances in democratic theory on sortition-based democratic innovations, constructive representation and systems thinking.

I argue that membership politics could be democratized by introducing a randomly selected political institution, which I call ‘boundary assembly’, that equally represents members and nonmembers and is charged with making binding decisions on a subset of a state’s membership questions. I argue that the strongest objections to empowered randomly selected assemblies (shortcut objection, alienation objection, capture objection, technocracy objection) lose most of their force in the ‘extraordinary’ political context of decisions on membership boundaries. Boundary assemblies cannot ‘solve’ the democratic boundary problem, but they could be a first step toward more democratic membership politics.

In this paper I offer a model-theoretic interpretation of Autonomy Theory as defended by Moreno, Mossio, Montévil, and Bich. I address accusations that Autonomy Theory is excessively liberal, such as those made by Garson (2017), arguing that these misunderstand the role of strategic abstractions and generalizations in theory construction. Conceiving of closure of constraints as a model-building effort that emphasizes generality—in the spirit of Levins (1966)—also clarifies its potential for application in empirical contexts.

There is a growing trend for studies run by academic and nonprofit organizations to have regulatory submission requirements. As a result, there is greater reliance on REDCap, an electronic data capture (EDC) widely used by researchers in these organizations. This paper discusses the development and implementation of the Rapid Validation Process (RVP) developed by the REDCap Consortium, aimed at enhancing regulatory compliance and operational efficiency in response to the dynamic demands of modern clinical research. The RVP introduces a structured validation approach that categorizes REDCap functionalities, develops targeted validation tests, and applies structured and standardized testing syntax. This approach ensures that REDCap can meet regulatory standards while maintaining flexibility to adapt to new challenges. Results from the application of the RVP on recent successive REDCap software version releases illustrate significant improvements in testing efficiency and process optimization, demonstrating the project’s success in setting new benchmarks for EDC system validation. The project’s community-driven responsibility model fosters collaboration and knowledge sharing and enhances the overall resilience and adaptability of REDCap. As REDCap continues to evolve based on feedback from clinical trialists, the RVP ensures that REDCap remains a reliable and compliant tool, ready to meet regulatory and future operational challenges.

Both the quantity and quality of the maternal language input are important for early language development. However, depression and anxiety can negatively impact mothers’ engagement with their infants and their infants’ expressive language abilities. Australian mother-infant dyads (N = 30) participated in a longitudinal study examining the effect of maternal language input when infants were 24 and 30 months and maternal depression and anxiety symptoms on vocabulary size. Half the mothers had elevated depression and anxiety symptoms during at least one point in the study (at 6, 12, 18, 24, or 30 months). The results showed that only maternal input measures (word tokens, types, and mean length of utterance) predicted vocabulary size. While no evidence was found that brief periods of maternal depression and anxiety negatively impacted early vocabulary development, the findings highlight the critical importance and possible mitigating effects of maintaining good quality mother–infant interactions during early development.

This article compares the Secretary General of the Elysée Palace and the US Chief of Staff, central political advisors to the French and US presidents. Our aim is twofold. Firstly, we identify the precise roles of these advisors. By mapping their respective powers, we demonstrate their importance in presidential decision-making. By examining what the French Elysée Secretary General and the US White House Chief of Staff have in common and how they differ, we develop a comparative understanding of the mechanisms of the presidentialization of political executives. We show that the similarities of the two offices are linked to the ongoing presidentialization of the French and American political systems, which, by giving greater power to heads of state, also strengthens their advisors. This commonality does not rule out marked differences between these officials, demonstrating that presidentialization takes distinct forms, reflecting distinct political cultures as well as different balances of power within each institutional system.

Seed genebanks must maintain collections of healthy seeds and regenerate accessions before seed viability declines. Seed shelf life is often characterized at the species level; however, large, unexplained variation among genetic lines within a species can and does occur. This variation contributes to unreliable predictions of seed quality decline with storage time. To assess variation of seed longevity and aid in timing regeneration, ten varieties of pea (Pisum sativum L.), chickpea (Cicer arietinum L.) and lentil (Lens culinaris Medikus subsp. culinaris) from the Australian Grains Genebank were stored at moderate temperature (20°C) and moisture (7–11% water, relative humidity [RH] ~30%) and deterioration was assessed by yearly germination tests for 20 years. Decline in germination was fit to a sigmoidal model and the time corresponding to 50% germination (P50) was used to express seed longevity for each genetic line. The feasibility of using RNA fragmentation to assess changed seed health was measured using RNA integrity number (RIN) from RNA extracted from seeds that were stored for 13 and 20 years. Seed lots of legume grains that maintained high survival throughout the 20 years (i.e. they aged slower than other lines) had higher RIN than samples that degraded faster. RIN was lower in embryonic axes compared with cotyledons in the more deteriorated samples, perhaps indicating that axes exhibit symptoms of ageing sooner than cotyledons. Overall, RIN appears to be associated with longevity indicators of germination for these legumes and indicating that RIN decline can be used to assess ageing rate, which is needed to optimize viability monitoring.

We examine the changing patterns of knowledge production and diffusion in political science over the past five decades using a dataset of over 200,000 SSCI-indexed research articles from 1970 to 2020. We analyze how author identity and team diversity influence research outputs and outcomes. The results show that historically excluded groups of scholars have gradually improved their representation and expanded their collaboration networks over time. Although the publication gaps are narrowing, obscured gaps in evaluation and citation practices persist. Research specialties with higher proportions of minority researchers tend to have lower average citation impacts. The least cited research specialties are largely studied by women and racial/ethnic minority scholars. Papers written by racial/ethnic minorities and Global South scholars are significantly less cited. However, collaborating with outgroup scholars can effectively overcome this citation gap. We also find that papers written by women receive more citations than those written by men, after controlling for journal prestige and research topics. Furthermore, when we limit our investigation to leading universities, citation gaps diminish. However, scholars of African descent continue to experience entrenched citation disadvantages even if they are affiliated with highly prestigious universities. This study provides multidimensional measurements to advance diversity debates and adds nuances to our understanding of opportunity structures in political science.