As a former practitioner who worked with adolescents in acute psychological distress, I read with great interest the study recently published by Bitar et al. (2026). The authors argue that “traditional approaches to understanding youth suicide risk have often focused on individual risk behaviors (…) in isolation,” whereas adolescents’ habits “often form interconnected patterns, known as health lifestyles, which reflect both their personal choices and the social environments they navigate” (p. 1). This framing, combined with the authors’ strong emphasis on prevention and intervention, naturally raises expectations regarding both theoretical innovation and practical relevance.

Data privacy and protection are inextricably intertwined, whereas the former often slides into a national security concern. Amid geopolitical tensions, the U.S. aims to preserve TikTok’s independence and prevent its use in cognitive warfare. The landmark case presents potentially groundbreaking trade-offs for the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States and the balance between data privacy and national security. The TikTok ban can be seen as a Catch-22 situation, presenting a Hobson’s choice for both the U.S. and China in the ongoing data war. The U.S. faces national security concerns regarding Chinese influence over the app’s data and its potential use for surveillance and propaganda. Conversely, banning TikTok risks setting a precedent for censorship and digital platform manipulation, undermining the U.S.’s long-standing commitment to free speech and open markets. The dilemma lies in whether to prioritize national security over the principles of free expression and open trade or to accept the risks posed by adversary-owned platforms operating in the U.S. This decision underscores rising tensions as the two powers grapple with data governance, digital sovereignty and geopolitical rivalry – an outcome that will shape global data governance and the technological landscape for years to come. A paradox emerges as China’s ideological aims and the U.S.’s technical concerns converge on a cutting-edge global challenge, that is, cognitive warfare in shaping global discourse and public opinion. This study examines how these conflicting forces shape TikTok’s quest to become a global platform, delving into the root causes of these tensions and exploring strategies to address the associated challenges.

Clostridioides difficile infection is a common community and nosocomial infection. Two-stage testing (initial polymerase chain reaction (PCR) test, followed by a confirmatory toxin test for PCR+ results) has been used to help differentiate colonization from infection. We report the impact of adopting two-stage testing at a tertiary Veterans Affairs medical center.

Linearly distributive categories were introduced to model the tensor/par fragment of linear logic, without resorting to the use of negation. Linear bicategories are the bicategorical version of linearly distributive categories. Essentially, a linear bicategory has two forms of composition, each determining the structure of a bicategory, and the two compositions are related by a linear distribution. After the initial paper on the subject, there was little further work as there seemed to be a lack of examples. The main goal of this paper is to demonstrate that there are in fact a great many examples, which are obtained by considering quantales and quantaloids and by extending familiar constructions from the (ordinary) bicategorical setting. It is standard in the field of monoidal topology that the category of quantale-valued relations is a bicategory. Here, we begin by showing that a quantale is Girard if and only if the corresponding bicategory is a Girard quantaloid, which is an example of a linear bicategory. The tropical and arctic semiring structures fit together into a Girard quantale, so this construction is likely to have multiple applications. More generally, we define LD-quantales, which are suplattices with two quantale structures related by a linear distribution, and their bicategorical analog, linear quantaloids. We show that $Q\text{-}{\sf Rel}$ is a linear quantaloid if and only if $Q$ is a LD-quantale. We then consider several standard constructions from enriched bicategory theory and show that these lift to the linear quantaloid setting and produce new examples of linear bicategories. In particular, we consider linear $\mathscr{Q}$-categories, matrices in $\mathscr{Q}$, and linear monads in $\mathscr{Q}$, where $\mathscr{Q}$ is a linear quantaloid. We develop non-locally posetal examples as well: $\mathscr{Q}\mathrm{uant}$, the bicategory of quantales, modules, and module homomorphisms; and $\mathscr{Q}\mathrm{tld}$, the bicategory of quantaloids, modules, and module homomorphisms. These turn out to be cyclic $*$-autonomous bicategories, which are in essence a closed version of linear bicategories.

Parties frequently target campaign promises on specific social groups, yet we lack evidence on whether such targeting yields greater electoral pay-offs than broad-based universalistic pledges. We address this gap with a pre-registered survey experiment fielded in Germany in 2024 (N = 3,500). We expose respondents to a fictional electoral campaign scenario featuring posters promising additional public spending either to the general population (broad-based pledge), or to a specific group – parents, pensioners, or rural residents (group-targeted pledge) – and examine how voters respond. We theorize that group targeting should raise the salience of party-group linkages and therefore boost support among voters who (1) belong to the target group, (2) identify with this group, and/or (3) view it as deserving. At the same time, it may alienate others who perceive such pledges as unfair. We find no consistent evidence that group-targeted pledges outperform broad-based ones in generating electoral support – even among intended beneficiaries. Instead, responses to targeted appeals are strongly moderated by group belonging and perception: support remains stable or slightly lower among intended beneficiaries, but drops substantially among other respondents. These patterns suggest that rather than securing net electoral gains, group-targeted promises can provoke exclusion-driven losses that outweigh limited ingroup appeal. More broadly, the study highlights how identity and deservingness perceptions shape voter reactions to realistic campaign pledges – and how even appeals to normatively ‘deserving’ or majoritarian groups may risk narrowing rather than broadening electoral support.

Fall panicum is a major annual grass weed in drill-seeded rice production systems on organic soils in Florida. Field studies conducted in 2021 and 2022 aimed to determine the effects of season-long fall panicum interference on rough rice yield on organic soils. The relationship between fall panicum density and percent rough rice yield loss relative to the weed-free control was described using the rectangular hyperbola model. Yield loss increased with increasing fall panicum density. The initial slope parameter (I), representing percent yield loss as density approaches zero, was estimated at 9.7%, indicating that even very low fall panicum densities caused measurable yield reductions. The asymptote parameter (A), representing percent yield loss as density approaches infinity, was estimated at 118%, suggesting that yield loss approaches 100% at very high fall panicum densities within the biological limits of the crop-weed interference. Within the observed density range (1 to 49 plants m−2), yield loss was predicted to increase from approximately 9% to 95%, and 50% yield loss was estimated to occur at 9 plants m−2. Thousand-grain weight declined linearly with increasing fall panicum density, with each additional fall panicum plant per square meter reducing thousand-grain weight by 0.18 g, indicating that fall panicum interference affected grain filling. These results demonstrate that fall panicum is highly competitive with rice and that even low infestations can result in substantial yield loss, showing the importance of timely and effective management in Florida rice organic soil production systems.

To successfully show that fusion is an attractive energy source, the ARC$^{\scriptstyle \mathrm{TM}}$ fusion power plant will need to operate with a robust, integrated power and particle exhaust solution. To maximise ARC’s fusion power output while avoiding excessive erosion of the plasma-facing components, we will need to radiatively dissipate most of the power crossing the last-closed flux surface, injecting radiating impurities such as argon or neon to access divertor detachment. Divertor detachment will need to be integrated with a high-performance core plasma, and with efficient impurity pumping to prevent the accumulation of helium ash in the core. To access and control detachment in high-performance plasmas, we have designed ARC with up–down-symmetric divertors, with secondary X-points in long, tightly baffled outer legs. Using a core-edge modelling workflow, we predict that with this divertor design, ARC will access detachment with modest argon seeding in the divertor (${c_{Ar,div}}\sim {0.9\,\%}$), which should have minimal impact on the core (${\Delta Z_{\textit{eff},\textit{core}}}\lt {0.5}$) for reasonable argon enrichment (${c_{Ar,div}/c_{Ar,\textit{core}}}={6}$). Due to the high predicted divertor neutral pressure (${p_{\textit{div}}}\sim {20\,\mathrm{Pa}}$), we predict that ARC will sufficiently pump helium to limit ash accumulation in the core (${c_{\textit{He},\textit{core}}}\lt {2\,\%}$) for a helium enrichment of ${c_{\textit{He},\textit{div}}/c_{\textit{He},\textit{core}}}={0.4}$. ARC’s divertor design is expected to increase the stability of a detachment front in the outer divertor leg, helping to prevent divertor reattachment during smaller heat-flux transients such as scrape-off-layer filaments associated with the quasi-continuous exhaust regime. However, this buffering will not be sufficient to prevent divertor reattachment during large type-I edge-localised modes (ELMs), and as such these will need to be avoided on ARC. Experiments on SPARC will be used to select an integrated scenario which avoids or mitigates type-I-ELMs while maintaining access to detachment, good core fusion performance and sufficient impurity exhaust. SPARC experiments will also be used to finalise ARC’s divertor design, by studying the impact of magnetic and first-wall geometry on detachment stability, impurity enrichment and neutral baffling under conditions similar to those expected for ARC. In conclusion, our analysis finds that ARC will have a viable power and particle exhaust solution which is compatible with high-power operations, and this solution will be validated in experiments on SPARC.

The notion of ‘urban exposome’ brings promise to the public health and epidemiology fields of inquiry, particularly within research projects conducted within birth cohorts. However, it is also challenging. The present paper addresses how combining qualitative methods with numerical data on exposures and health outcomes may help to fulfil that promise while posing important challenges to researchers. Quantitative methods based on Geographic Information System and other geo-technologies establish the linkage between participants’ residential locations and geospatial datasets, generating many quantitative measurements of environmental exposures throughout participants’ life course since birth. Yet, abstracted quantitative measurements alone do not capture lived experiences and do not allow for a rich inquiry about the complex and situated webs of social, physical, and biological phenomena that shape their bodies. Qualitative approaches may enhance quantitative data collected from sensors, blood samples, and physical examinations. These methods help to uncover, with depth and nuance, how individuals build meaning, navigate their surroundings, and how their complex contexts shape their lives and health, strengthening epidemiological evidence. In other words, they may help produce more data points and provide context, thus improving the interpretation of quantitative measurements. Besides, some of these methods promote reflection, collective discussion, and community empowerment. By integrating quantitative and qualitative approaches, researchers can obtain a more holistic and contextualised understanding of the external urban exposome. Multi-methods and mixed-methods approaches may strengthen the validity of findings, improve the interpretability of results, generate new hypotheses, and support the development of place-based interventions. Nevertheless, integrating quantitative and qualitative approaches may raise several challenges related to epistemological and ontological tensions, different scientific practices, ethical compliance, and the training of research teams. Concluding, the combined use of quantitative and qualitative methods in measuring the external urban exposome within cohort studies offers a powerful approach to understanding the complex interplay between urban environments and health outcomes.

This study combines corpus-based comparison and open-ended survey data to investigate kinship terminology usage in introductory contexts across languages. Focusing on the expression ‘this/here is my brother’, it examines how speakers of English and Chinese introduce a brother, with particular attention to whether they use a kinship term alone or add an appositive personal name. In addition, an open-ended questionnaire was completed by 119 participants representing 10 language backgrounds. The study further explores the cognitive motivations underlying these cross-linguistic differences in introductory kinship expressions. The results show that: (1) in the corpus data, Chinese speakers tend to introduce their brothers using kinship term alone, whereas English speakers typically include the brother’s personal name; (2) the questionnaire data suggest that many European-language speakers prefer a ‘kinship term + name’ pattern, whereas East Asian-language speakers more often rely on the kinship term alone and (3) these patterns can be interpreted with reference to the Focus-Shift Principle, the Principle of Least Effort and Typological Markedness. Overall, the study extends the English–Chinese corpus comparison to a broader multilingual sample and offers a cognitively informed account of recurring cross-linguistic tendencies in brother-introduction contexts.

In English pronunciation teaching, the Nativeness Principle has been influential in the curriculum standards, instructional materials, and teachers’ beliefs in China. Even though subtle shifts toward the Intelligibility Principle have been seen since the 2010s, some unresolved questions and challenges about applying the Intelligibility Principle to classroom teaching still need to be answered and addressed, which is the main purpose of this article. Under the 5W1H framework (Who, Why, What, When, Where, and How), the study argues that intelligibility-focused teaching is more realistic and beneficial for Chinese students across age groups. It also explores key phonetic features and accommodation strategies for mutual understanding in pronunciation. It further suggests a phased approach to intelligibility instruction, starting with broad phonetic teaching in early grades and focusing on targeted features in later years, and recommends the use of artificial intelligence (AI) tools for real-time feedback, while acknowledging that AI feedback can be biased on accents. Finally, the study points out the necessity for guiding teachers and for reliable intelligibility assessments, observing the influence of native-language familiarity on judgments. It calls for further research on explicit training in accommodation strategies, identification of prioritized pronunciation features, biases in AI tools, and context-specific intelligibility benchmarks.