Staphylococcus lugdunensis (SL), a skin commensal, is a rare cause of native valve endocarditis and usually affects left-sided valves. Only a few cases of native tricuspid valve endocarditis have been reported in non-intravenous drug users, and none have been associated with concomitant congenital heart disease.

Informal international instruments increasingly influence domestic court rulings by serving as authoritative materials to interpret uncertain legal norms. This poses a significant democratic problem because the instruments originate from undemocratic international institutions and bypass parliamentary oversight. This Article challenges the established doctrinal description of the interpretative relevance of legally non-binding instruments by reimagining it through Niklas Luhmann’s systems theoretic description of law as communication. The approach reveals a decision-making mechanism that enables democratically suspect political influence to be exercised through the legal system. To address this systemic vulnerability, the Article argues that domestic courts can act as bulwarks of democracy when interpreting legal norms with applicable informal instruments. Drawing upon novel insights from Jürgen Habermas’s discursive theory of law and democracy and Martti Koskenniemi’s culture of formalism, the Article argues that a democratic legal culture—emerging from a democratic mindset held by judges who visualize themselves in the place of others—can help mitigate the democratic deficit of informal international instruments by bringing them into contact with discursive democratic requirements. Noting that courts are themselves capable of democratically questionable action, the Article finds that the democratic legal culture can also make legal systems more resilient to democratic backsliding.

This article examines the debate about what non-experts can assess when determining who qualifies as an expert. We focus in particular on the debate about metacriteria for expertise that non-experts can rely on. We make three central claims about what non-experts can actually infer about experts: (1) metacriteria are not indicators of expertise; (2) instead, they are indicators of experience and lack of epistemic integrity, with the latter marking whether the preconditions for any meaningful assessment of expertise or experience are even given; (3) by reframing the discussion about metacriteria of expertise in this way, we situate the debate about the identification of experts within the broader debate on trust in science. We argue that indicators of experience and lack of epistemic integrity are best understood as indicators of epistemic trustworthiness. We also connect our analysis of these indicators of epistemic trustworthiness to questions raised in the context of epistemic trespassing. In particular, we argue that what distinguishes problematic epistemic trespassing from fruitful boundary crossing is that trespassing experts lack the required experience (i.e., specialist tacit knowledge).

New Public Management (NPM) could be considered as a rediscovery of bureaucratic organization, which hit the German university sector in the mid-1990s. More university autonomy came at the cost of budget negotiations, agreements on objectives, accountability, steering by indicators, third-party funding competition, etc. In this article, the positions and roles of higher-education and science professionals are used to show how the NPM regime of bureaucratic organization expanded into academic functions. The discussion paper ‘More autonomy – less regulation. Proposals for the de-bureaucratization of the science system’ by the German Academy of Sciences (Leopoldina) is used as a point of departure to discuss increasing external regulation (case: public third-party funding competition) and university-internal bureaucratization (case: professorial hiring). The theory-led discussion is based on the elaboration of bureaucratic organization as a concept defining the social forces of structures, actors and activities. The concept is further detailed by the four sub-concepts official duties, authority relations, employment of qualified personnel and career paths, and individual agency/enterprise, which emphasize that bureaucratic organization provides some leeway for bureaucrats within legal and ethical boundaries. The generic theoretical concept is suitable for all kinds of studies on bureaucratic organization, and is substantiated by core categories/variables.

Neuropsychiatric disorders (NPDs) are a leading cause of disability worldwide. The predominantly plant-based EAT–Lancet diet has been proposed to confer neuropsychiatric benefits, yet evidence remains limited. This study synthesized associations between adherence to the EAT–Lancet diet and neuropsychiatric outcomes. We searched PubMed, Web of Science, Embase, Scopus, and ProQuest Dissertations and Theses Global through September 4, 2025. Observational studies reporting associations between EAT–Lancet adherence and NPDs were included. Binary outcomes were pooled as hazard ratios (HRs) or odds ratios (ORs), and continuous outcomes as regression coefficients (β). Subgroup, sensitivity, and publication-bias analyses were performed. Certainty of evidence was assessed using the Grading of Recommendations Assessment, Development and Evaluation framework (GRADE). Twenty-two cohort and six cross-sectional studies were included. Higher adherence to the EAT–Lancet diet was associated with lower risks of depression (OR 0.76; 95% CI 0.71–0.81), anxiety (OR 0.82; 0.76–0.89), stroke (HR 0.84; 0.76–0.92), and dementia (HR 0.96; 0.93–1.00), whereas no significant association was observed for global cognitive function (β 0.02; −0.01 to 0.06). Sensitivity analyses supported robustness. Certainty of evidence was very low for anxiety, depression, and cognition, and low for stroke and dementia. Greater adherence to the EAT–Lancet diet was associated with lower risks of depression, anxiety, stroke, and dementia. However, given the low certainty of evidence, findings should be interpreted cautiously. Further large prospective studies and randomized controlled trials are warranted to improve evidence quality and clarify the potential role of the EAT–Lancet diet in neuropsychiatric disease prevention.

We examine the impact of microbial cell-free DNA (mcfDNA) NGS for the diagnosis of Histoplasma capsulatuim in a quaternary referral center in Texas. Of eight included patients, five had a change in their antifungal coverage after mcfDNA NGS results with faster turnaround times than antigen testing and cultures.

We prove that the positive-dimensional part of the torsion locus of the Ceresa normal function in $\mathcal {M}_g$ is not Zariski dense when $g\geq 3$. Moreover, it has only finitely many components with generic Mumford-Tate group equal to $\mathrm {GSp}_{2g}$; these components are defined over $\overline {\mathbb Q}$, and their union is closed under the action of $\mathrm {Gal}(\overline {\mathbb Q}/\mathbb Q)$. More generally, we study the distribution of the torsion locus of arbitrary admissible normal functions.

This study investigated associations between exposure to war-related violent content on social media and indirect, media-related post-traumatic stress symptoms (PTSS) in a nationally representative sample of adolescents and young adults in Germany (N = 1860; Mage = 18.6 years). Participants completed an online survey assessing violent media exposure, PTSS, alexithymia, different facets of empathy and perceived burden related to current political crises. Regression analyses showed that higher alexithymia, greater somatic empathy, stronger perceived crisis-related burden, younger age and personal exposure to war-related events were significantly associated with higher PTSS, explaining 14.1% of the variance. In contrast, the frequency of violent social media exposure was not significantly related to symptom severity. The findings suggest that individual emotional processing characteristics and contextual burden are more strongly related to PTSS than mere exposure to violent social media content, highlighting the relevance of emotional awareness and bodily empathic reactivity in responses to online violence.

Health Technology Assessment (HTA) is an essential tool for transparent decision-making and prioritisation of resources routinely used in many high-income countries. The use of HTA in resource allocation is now gaining traction in several Low- and Middle-Income Countries too. India is one such country that has taken critical steps to integrate HTA into its policymaking framework. We explore the potential role of Adaptive (aHTA) as a screening measure and a more flexible approach to optimising the capacity of HTA. Adaptive HTA, as ‘a structured approach to identify and conduct the optimised full HTA analysis’, offers a pragmatic way to balance the need for swift decision-making with methodological rigour. We examined the value aHTA brings to decision-makers based on the Indian experiences in conducting aHTA and further discussed the challenges involved in its methodology and implementation. Institutionalising aHTA is proposed as both a tool for topic prioritisation and optimising the full HTA for timely decision-making, integrated within the broader HTA ecosystem in India. Given the evolving nature of aHTA methods and processes, we propose that there is a need to: standardise aHTA methodologies and develop reference cases which benchmark a set of guiding principles, methodological, and reporting standards.

On February 24, 2022, Russia escalated its aggression against Ukraine. In addition to a staggering civilian death toll (i.e., ≥ 14,383), the Russo-Ukrainian War had generated approximately 5,752,670 refugees as of October 31, 2025. While scholarship on the Russo-Ukrainian War’s refugees has centered on the three largest EU destinations—Germany, Poland and the Czech Republic—Spain has emerged as the fourth major host. Given its unique history as a colonizer and that Spanish news outlets demonstrably dehumanized refugees from the Syrian Civil War, we ask: How have Spanish news outlets textually and photographically portrayed the Russo-Ukrainian War’s refugees? Conceptually, we entwine Water Metaphors, Off-Whiteness, Orientalism and Sentence-Image. Through a Descriptive Content Analysis and a Visual Framing Approach, we examine the news coverage from El Mundo (n = 97) and El País (n = 119) between February 24 and March 15, 2022. We argue that, although both news outlets employed Water Metaphors that conventionally connote dangerousness (e.g., Avalanche), such meanings were textually and photographically disrupted through non-Orientalist, Off-White re-racializing lenses. Consequently, Spanish news outlets portrayed the Russo-Ukrainian War’s refugees as “Oriental European Others” whose movement was compelled yet “civilized” and whose whitened visibility rendered them absorbable by the “Western European Us”, thereby co-constructing distinctive “Contingent Safe Waters”.

Studies characterising the immunoglobulin (Ig)-bound microbiota apply varying methodologies, making comparisons difficult. This scoping review synthesised evidence on Ig–microbiota binding patterns in maternal and infant contexts, identified recurrent Ig-bound and -unbound bacteria across studies, and highlighted knowledge gaps for further study. Nine articles investigating Ig–microbiota binding patterns in stool or breastmilk samples in mothers or infants were included. Ig–microbiota associations were influenced by sample type, Ig-subclass, genetics, and diet. The most important antibody was IgA, with partial functional redundancy with IgM, while IgG appeared more selective for pathobionts. Ig-bound taxa in early life included important commensals and pathobionts, with high levels of individuality. Ig–microbiota associations shifted with microbiome maturation, environmental and host factors, resembling adults at around 2 years of age. Transfer of Ig-bound Bifidobacterium through breastmilk may contribute to vertical transmission from mother to infant. Ig–microbiota associations also differed between health and disease states, beyond the overall microbiota. Results were limited by study numbers and a lack of methodological consistency. We propose the standardised term “Ig-Seq” in referring to the technique to study Ig–microbiota binding patterns, and suggest standardisation of laboratory protocols, bioinformatic pipelines, and statistical analyses to improve consistency in Ig-Seq.

Whether continuous masking prevents healthcare-associated acute respiratory infections (HA-ARI) remains uncertain. We demonstrate that discontinuing continuous masking policies in 18 acute care facilities in Ontario was not associated with an increase in the incidence of HA-ARIs in hospitalized patients, or with ARI outbreak activity over two consecutive ARI seasons.

Through the life story of a sailor, merchant, former prisoner, and soldier, this article explores the Brazilian postcolonial empire’s experiments in settlement and domestic colonization during the Age of Revolutions. Johann Heinrich Lembke’s journey—from incarceration in the German territory of Mecklenburg-Schwerin, to his conscription into the Brazilian armed forces, to his eventual desertion—offers a unique entry point into the sociopolitical mechanisms of empire-building in the New World. Drawing on records from German, British, Portuguese, and Brazilian archives, this article traces Lembke’s trajectory within broader processes of territorial expansion, settler-military strategies, and normative pluralities that shaped imperial governance in Latin America. It illuminates the porous continuum between penal, military, and settler colonization projects, illustrating how such systems functioned as overlapping mechanisms of governance and control. Methodologically, a microhistorical analysis links the European and South American contexts, as this research uncovers the experimental nature of Brazil’s border policies and challenges binary representations of settlers in the South America. Lembke’s case thus becomes a window onto Brazil’s imperial formation, revealing how ordinary actors navigated the ambiguities of empire-building.

We surveyed infectious disease providers to examine beliefs and practices around oral antibiotic use. Provider demographics did not predict beliefs or practices. Certain clinical scenarios were more likely to achieve consensus for oral prescribing. Understanding beliefs and practice patterns can help stewardship teams craft interventions to increase oral antibiotic use.