This semi-systematic literature review examines signed language corpus research in the Nordic countries, with a quantitative and qualitative assessment of corpus research. The article first describes some critical components and functionalities of signed language corpora. It then outlines the evolution of Nordic corpus research, highlighting Sweden’s pioneering role and subsequent developments in Finland and Norway. The findings suggest a progression from method-focused publications to those exploring linguistic phenomena within and across (signed) languages. Although the number of research publications is modest, there is a discernible shift towards comparative studies and applications in signed language teaching and learning.

One of the less popular and less investigated topics of law is the use of biocontrol agents (BCAs). Despite the general growing attention to the use of BCAs in primary production, a comprehensive regulatory framework is still lacking. When shifting to possible uses of BCAs in the following phases of the food chain, legislation is even more incomplete (and inadequate) despite the challenging opportunities they offer both for pest control and for pathogen control. The paper will provide an overview of the uses of BCAs taking into consideration all the food chain stages, the relevant partial EU regulatory scheme and its critical issues.

The relationship of the Late Cretaceous amphibolite-facies Akrotiri and Vari subunits on the Greek islands of Tinos and Syros to similar occurrences in the Aegean is not fully understood, but a correlation with the Asterousia Crystalline Complex on Crete and corresponding rocks in the Upper Cycladic Unit on other islands of the archipelago is a plausible interpretation. There is currently no clear evidence that the Akrotiri subunit represents a fragment of the metamorphic sole of the nearby Tsiknias ophiolite, as there are differences in field appearance, geochemistry, metamorphic grade and retrograde overprint. Felsic rocks from amphibolite-gneiss sequences of the Akrotiri and Vari subunits are interpreted as reworked igneous rocks with minor admixture of terrigenous material. The Triassic U–Pb zircon age (c. 240 Ma) of such a gneiss from Syros indicates the magmatic crystallization age of the original source rocks. A similar interpretation is suggested for the studied Akrotiri gneiss, but is less clear due to the not fully clarified significance of the presumed Pb loss thought to be responsible for the considerable U–Pb age range of the dated zircons (c. 256–114 Ma). The Vari gneiss sensu strictu is closely associated with metadioritic rocks containing a Triassic zircon population (c. 238 Ma). The protolith is probably plutonic, but a mixture of volcanic and plutonic detritus cannot be excluded. Riebeckitic amphiboles occur in all rock types of the Akrotiri subunit, indicating late overprinting at elevated pressures, which is not known from similar occurrences in the southern Aegean.

In 1927 Lejaren à Hiller (1880–1969) produced a series of black and white art photographs entitled Sutures in Ancient Surgery evoking scenes from the distant past of surgery and medicine. Commissioned and distributed in North America by Davis & Geck, Inc. to promote sales of its surgical sutures (stitches), several depictions were erotic owing to the centrality and poses of nude female models. The first series appeared as ads in professional technical journals, then as packets assembled in paper portfolios distributed to doctors who were primarily men. The creation of Hiller's oeuvre in different forms over almost a century – journal advertisement, portfolio, book, exhibit, magazine features and textbook illustration – highlights his enduring broad appeal, although his work has since been subject to criticism because of its perceived sexism. At its root, Sutures was an advertising medium that connected a seller to a potential buyer. The content and presentation of the project also connected medicine present with medicine past, which also may have helped physicians to connect with the then blossoming field of medical history. The appeal Sutures may have had for a past male medical culture would not resonate with the more gender-inclusive and less overtly sexist medical profession of today, which also prompts discussion of the associations across art, obscenity, medicine and society. My reassessment of Hiller's work based on analysis of his artwork, contemporary interviews, published critiques, Hiller's own writings and DG company records extends previous analyses as it is more comprehensive in scope and also considers more fully works by Hiller antecedent to Sutures that probably greatly influenced it, such as photopoetry books, other advertising projects and his silent movie films.

This Article examines scenario analysis, a disruptive argumentation technique used by the German Federal Constitutional Court (GFCC) in recent high-profile cases, such as the so-called climate protection case (Klimaschutz) and other decisions on the fundamental right to intergenerational justice (Grundrecht auf Generationengerechitgkeit). After explaining the basic argumentative steps involved in scenario analysis, for example designing scenarios, identifying stakeholders, relating scenarios to strategies, determining the main driving forces, estimating scenario probabilities, the Article sketches a normative model for rational scenario design. The normative model is used as a lens for evaluating the arguments developed by the GFCC in the climate protection case. Such evaluation also builds on game-theoretic insights and points out some weaknesses in the Court’s argument. Finally, the Article observes that, as scenario analysis is used to assess the future impact of legislative decisions, it has the effect of imposing greater constraints on legislatures.

This paper analyses the institutional incentives and constraints of the Black Mouth Society – the traditional police of the pre-colonial Mandan and Hidatsa tribes – to understand how it successfully maintained social order without abusing power. The Black Mouth Society was a fraternal organization of middle-aged men that monitored and enforced rules created by the village council and chiefs. Two categories of institutions ensured reliable policing. First, on the front end, a long probationary period and system of unanimous consent facilitated the selection of reputable men who would wield policing power responsibly, reducing the chance of predation. However, individual Black Mouths occasionally abused their power. Therefore, on the back end, public communication created common knowledge, leading to social sanctions in the form of shame and restitution that punished abuses and limited further abuse. Thus, well-functioning self-governance, including reliable policing, is possible without a centralized state, as these tribes have demonstrated.

Pear (Pyrus communis L.) stands out as a prominent fruit species in temperate regions worldwide. The Çoruh River basin, nestled in the lower Caucasus in Türkiye, serves as a valuable repository of pear germplasm. To elucidate the genetic structure of pear populations in this region, 84 village pear cultivar genotypes (land races) from six villages, sample garden collections (SCC), and wild Panta root stock populations were analysed using eleven microsatellite markers. Genetic diversity and structure analyses indicated that village pear cultivar populations exhibit substantial genetic diversity and admixture. This diversity is attributed to local farming practices such as phenotypic selection and widespread dispersal of clonal materials. The genetic structure analysis, combined with the identification of private alleles, indicates that the pear genetic resources in the Çoruh river basin likely has originated from two gene pool sources, specifically the Meydancık and Camili village pear traditional cultivar populations. The Camili village pear cultivar population as a new in situ genetic reserve site has been proposed. Despite the existence an ex situ conservation site, the study suggests inadequateness of SCC as an ex situ site in capturing the full extent of genetic diversity of village pear cultivar genetic resources. Thus, enriching the genetic diversity in the SCC ex situ site is essential for effective pear genetic resource conservation in the Çoruh river basin. These findings contribute valuable insights for the development of targeted conservation strategies, ensuring the preservation of pear genetic resources in this region.

This article maps the memories of Gĩkũyũ women and girls who were forcibly concentrated during the 1950s emergency period in Kenya. Using Britain’s strategy of ‘villagization’, it considers the unique forms of surveillance and violence deployed against women understood as the ‘backbone’ of the anti-colonial Mau Mau movement. By analysing colonial records and women’s oral testimonies, the article examines civilian relationships to coercively designed counterinsurgency environments. It situates these ‘villages’ into a longer tradition of Britain’s carceral landscape across colonial states, offering fresh insights to established histories of violence, gender, and colonialism.

Motivated by distributional concerns raised by recent breakthroughs in AI and robotics, we ask how workers would prefer to manage an episode of automation in a task-based model, which distinguishes between automation and traditional technical progress. We show that under majority voting with the option to implement a “partial” UBI (as transfers to workers) it is optimal to tax capital at a higher rate than labor in the long run to fund the partial UBI. We show that, unlike traditional technical progress, automation always lowers the labor share in the long run, justifying distributional concerns. A quantitative analysis of an episode of automation for the US economy shows that it is optimal from the workers’ perspective to lower capital taxes and transfers over the transition. Nevertheless, this policy increases worker welfare by only 0.7% in consumption-equivalent terms, compared with a 21.6% welfare gain to entrepreneurs, because the welfare gains to workers from lower capital taxes are second-order, while the gains to entrepreneurs are first-order.

Climate change is responsible for marked increases in the frequency and severity of bush/wildfires, resulting in more people exposed to such events with long-term subclinical psychiatric symptoms. This editorial calls for immediate action to implement comprehensive and novel approaches to treating these conditions and preventing them from developing into more severe disorders.

Although many Fertility Centers have adopted day 5 or 6 embryo transfer policy, yet, 30% of embryo transfers in the US are performed on day 3. This is mainly due to concerns related to longer embryo culture effect and higher rates of embryo transfer cancellation on day 5, with no effect on cumulative pregnancy rate. We conducted a retrospective cohort study comparing individual embryo transfer order rank, best embryo for fresh transfer and intention to freeze, of day-3 and day-5 embryos based on their morphology score. Day-3 embryos of each patient were ranked by embryologists for the order of transfer and intention to freeze, based on morphological score, blinded to actual blastulation outcome. The corresponding blastocysts were similarly ranked for the order of transfer and vitrification intention. Ranking was compared to test the predictive value of day-3 morphological assessment. Sixty patients with 784 day-3 embryos were included. There was only a moderate positive significant correlation between ranks on day-3 and ranks on day-5 [r = 0.662 95% CI (0.611–0.706, p < 0.001)]. Only 25% of the best embryos for transfer on day 3 (rank = 1) were chosen for fresh transfer on day 5. A total of 441 embryos were intended to be frozen on day 3. Of those, 201 were not transferred nor vitrified on day 5–6 (45%), 3.35 embryos per patient. No significant difference was found between average day-3 rank of embryos ranked 1, 2 (3.12 vs 4.12, p = 0.074) and 3 (3.12 vs 4.08, p = 0.082) on day-5–6. To conclude, this study brings a different perspective to the comparison of day 3 and day 5 by following each embryo’s putative and actual designation. Day-3 ranking of embryo morphology did not provide a reliable prediction for blastocyst formation, transfer order and vitrification intention, and may support transfer or cryopreservation of blastocysts over cleavage stage embryos.

Microinstabilities drive turbulent fluctuations in inhomogeneous, magnetised plasmas. In the context of magnetic confinement fusion devices, this leads to an enhanced transport of particles, momentum and energy, thereby degrading confinement. In this work, we describe an application of the adjoint method to efficiently determine variations of gyrokinetic linear growth rates on a general set of external parameters in the local $\delta f$-gyrokinetic model. We then offer numerical verification of this approach. When coupled with gradient-based techniques, this methodology can facilitate the optimisation process for the microstability of the confined plasmas across a high-dimensional parameter space. We present a numerical demonstration wherein the ion-temperature-gradient instability growth rate in a tokamak plasma is minimised with respect to flux surface shaping parameters. The adjoint method approach demonstrates a significant computational speed-up compared with a finite-difference gradient calculation.