In Argentina, the years 1930–43 became known initially as the ‘Infamous Decade’, book-ended by General Félix Uriburu’s coup of September 1930 and a further military intervention in June 1943. Though Uriburu’s dictatorship only lasted until February 1932, the following eleven years – encompassing the presidencies of Agustín P. Justo, Roberto Ortiz, and Ramón Castillo – were characterized by widespread electoral fraud and corruption. Drawing mostly on police records, this article sheds fresh light on how, in everyday life, activists from across the political spectrum experienced, negotiated, and resisted state power and ideological conflict during this period. The history of everyday life has found fertile ground in Argentina and, consequently, everyday life history approaches have revealed important insights into more recent periods of authoritarian rule in the country, including the ‘National Reorganization Process’ of 1976–83. However, everyday experiences of both state power and ideological tensions during the ‘Infamous Decade’ remain overlooked. More generally, studies of this earlier period have often focused primarily on the nation’s capital or the province of Buenos Aires. In contrast, this article brings together material from across the country, to further understandings of political activists’ everyday experiences of state control, resistance, and ideological conflict between 1930 and 1943.

This study uses electropalatography to investigate the production of Serbian laterals /l/ and /ʎ/ focusing on their place of articulation difference and susceptibility to variation as a function of utterance position and vowel context. Data obtained from four speakers producing these sounds utterance-initially, medially intervocalically, and finally and next to /a/, /i/, and /u/. The two consonants were found to be well-differentiated both in terms of their articulation (the front-back location of the closure and dorsopalatal side contact) and acoustics (F2–F1 difference), largely confirming previous observations in the literature. Both laterals showed relative stability across positions, and so did /ʎ/ across vowel contexts. /l/, on the other hand, was more susceptible to coarticulation from high vowels (notably /i/), especially in medial position. In general, its phonetic quality and behavior appeared to be intermediate between the typical clear and dark categories of /l/. The results are discussed in the context of positional and contextual variation of similar sounds in other languages and the cross-linguistic typology of laterals.

Animator Sydney Padua’s interaction with 19th-century science includes an obsession with Charles Babbage, Ada Lovelace, and the Analytical Engine that led to some of the first visualisations and animations of the machine. Most recently she teamed up with the Constructing Scientific Communities project, and their work on Science Gossip, animating illustrations from the 19th-century nature periodicals into shareable gifs. In this paper she shares some of her inspirations and processes for making creative projects from historical archives.

In this work, a novel hybrid algorithm is introduced that combines the range migration algorithm (RMA) and the back projection algorithm (BPA). The traditional image reconstruction algorithms used for synthetic aperture radar each have trade-offs between computational efficiency and imaging accuracy. The proposed hybrid RMA–BPA approach leverages the computational efficiency of RMA for the initial image reconstruction and object detection, followed by BPA for the refined, high resolution of the cropped region of data. The method of focusing computational resources on the smaller cropped datasets that contain the objects significantly reduces the processing time compared to that of traditional standalone BPA. The hybrid approach’s performance was evaluated over three different scenarios, providing a reduction in computation time for each scenario. Due to the algorithm’s approach to crop the dataset for the specific object, the increased efficiency varied. The different scenarios each produced different times to compute; however, the most impressive result delivered a 75.2% reduction in computation time compared to traditional BPA, without sacrificing the accuracy of the image. The hybrid approach is especially suited for applications that require precise object detection in healthcare, oil and gas, security, and industrial inspections.

Drawing on sources produced in the Spanish Caribbean and Canary Islands, this article reconstructs the chronology of the earliest known slaving voyages from Arguin, São Tomé, and the Cape Verde Islands to the Americas. As a corrective to narratives characterizing the early Atlantic slave trade as an exclusively “Portuguese” enterprise driven largely by the priorities and directives of Iberian monarchs, it argues that the incipient traffic from Africa to the Caribbean may also be viewed as an adaptation of older Mediterranean and trans-Saharan slaving practices; as a key component of a broader slaving industry centered in the Gulf of Guinea; and as a manifestation of integrated maritime circuits linking Portuguese and Castilian archipelagos in the North Atlantic. Peninsular Iberian monarchs and financiers benefited substantially from the early sixteenth-century traffic and attempted to control it, but closer attention to Spanish Caribbean and Luso-African contexts reveals the multiple genealogies of the Atlantic slave trade.

Does permitting voters to select multiple candidates in majoritarian elections increase diversity among those elected? While majoritarian systems typically use single-vote ballots, research suggests that allowing multiple selections may increase the representation of women and racial minorities. However, empirical evidence regarding actual voter behavior remains limited. To address this gap, we conducted a survey experiment that varied the number of selectable candidates from one to three in multimember local elections. The results revealed that, under the multiple-vote condition, respondents were more likely to alternate by gender, particularly in their second- and third-ranked choices, supporting the theory that multiple voting fosters more diverse representation. Nevertheless, men often emerged as the first-ranked choice, giving them an overall advantage at the aggregate level.

Lunar impact flashes provide a direct means of estimating the flux of centimetre-sized meteoroids impacting the lunar surface. However, 25–60 frames per second imaging typical of most monitoring programs limit the ability to resolve the rapid temporal evolution of the impact process, while the integration of Earthshine background restricts the detection of faint flashes. In this work, we present high-speed observations of lunar impact flashes captured at 200 and 250 FPS using the Zadko Telescope in Western Australia. We resolve the light curves of four confirmed events, revealing complex morphologies, some of which are not well modelled by simple exponential decays. One event was simultaneously detected by a second observer using a 50 FPS system, revealing a significantly faster brightness drop in the high-speed data that cannot be explained by spectral differences alone, indicating temporal integration of the vapour plume and subsequent ejecta. Our data also indicates that the initial flash intensity (representing the vapour plume) exhibits significantly less variance across events than the total luminous energy. Furthermore, we found no statistical correlation between the initial luminous energy and the total integrated energy of the flashes in this data, suggesting that the physical mechanism driving the initial vapour expansion may be physically decoupled from the longer-duration glow driven by the cooling ejecta. High temporal resolution combined with high sensitivity are therefore essential for accurately characterising the physical properties of the impactor and distinguishing the initial vapour plume from the subsequent incandescent cooling phase, although a significantly larger dataset is required to definitively constrain these mechanisms.

Adolescent girls and young women (AGYW) living with HIV are at increased risk of developing suicidality. Yet little is known about the effects of HIV-related stigma, mental health challenges and social support on suicidality among AGYW living with HIV. We analysed cross-sectional data from 711 AGYW living with HIV who participated in two large prospective South African cohort studies, Mzantsi Wakho (2017–2018) and HEY BABY (2018–2019). Standardised and validated questionnaires were used to measure HIV-related stigma, mental health symptomology (mediator), social support (moderator) and suicidality (outcome). A moderated mediation analysis was used to investigate (1) the direct effects of HIV-related stigma on suicidality, (2) the indirect effects as mediated through mental health symptomology and (3) the moderating effects of social support on mental health issues and suicidality, adjusted for potential confounders. Higher HIV-related stigma (β = 0.45 [0.13, 0.78], p < 0.001) was directly associated with higher suicidality. Mental health symptomology was associated with increased risk of suicidality (β = 1.05 [0.66, 1.44], p < 0.001) and partially mediated the effect of HIV-related stigma on suicidality. Social support buffered the indirect effects of HIV-related stigma on suicidality (β = 0.86, bias-corrected 95% CI [0.01, 2.41]). HIV-related stigma is associated with higher suicidality. Programmes that simultaneously address stigma and strengthen social support services may improve mental health and reduce suicidality among AGYW living with HIV.

This article explores the integration of large language models (LLMs) and AI research agents into global benchmarking frameworks, with a focus on data for the public good. Against a backdrop of shrinking funding and rising demand for scalable and reproducible assessments, we ask whether AI can assume core roles in indicator development, evidence discovery, and policy evaluation without compromising contextual nuance or democratic legitimacy. Building on pilot experiments conducted within the Global Data Barometer (GDB), we employed a phased, adaptive methodology that tested workflow-based platforms and deep research agents across tasks ranging from legal interpretation to multisource policy analysis. The preliminary findings suggest that while AI systems show strong potential for automating structured assessments, they falter on complex, fragmented, or normatively loaded indicators, raising concerns about opacity, overinterpretation, and inclusivity. To navigate these tensions, we propose a hybrid human-AI architecture that combines standardized workflows, adaptive agent capabilities, and critical human oversight. Central to this model is the concept of a dynamic evidence infrastructure, designed to embed participatory validation and enhance transparency. By reframing automation as augmentation, the study contributes both an empirical, domain-specific assessment of the opportunities and limits of AI-assisted benchmarking and a theoretical framework for sustainable, context-aware evaluation in the age of AI. We argue that the success of AI-assisted benchmarking should be measured not only in efficiency gains but also in its ability to strengthen legitimacy, accountability, and inclusiveness in data ecosystems worldwide.

The Constitution of Uganda does not expressly provide for citizens’ right to participate in law-making processes. However, it can be inferred from the National Objectives and Directive Principles of State Policy and Article 38(1) of the Constitution. The drafting history of Article 38 shows that Ugandans are expected to participate in all affairs of government. In Male Mabirizi and Others v Attorney-General and Others, Supreme Court judges invoked foreign case law to interpret Article 38 as requiring meaningful public participation in the law-making process; however, in Hon. Fox Odoi and Others v Attorney-General and Others, it was held that those criteria were not applicable. I argue that the Constitutional Court erred in this, and that the process followed to pass the Uganda Peoples’ Defence Forces (Amendment) Act (2025) did not meet the criteria of meaningful participation. It was also contrary to the practice adopted by Parliament in processing other bills.

In January 2025, a symposium convened by Japan’s National Committee of the International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS) adopted the Gunma Declaration on Heritage Ecosystems, a new World Heritage framework that, for the first time, explicitly references Indigenous Peoples and the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) as part of the World Heritage system’s “authenticity” criterion. This commentary offers a critical and reflexive analysis of the declaration’s development, drawing on the author’s experience as a symposium participant. It examines the tension between the declaration’s transformative potential – particularly its alignment with Indigenous understandings of the inseparability of nature and culture – and the structural exclusion, silencing, and erasure of Indigenous voices witnessed during its drafting. The analysis highlights how colonial narratives of “contaminated” Indigenous cultures, “purity,” and “authenticity” continue to determine Indigenous legitimacy in practice. This commentary argues that the Gunma Declaration’s advances risk becoming forms of symbolic recognition and illusory inclusion unless translated into enforceable state practice. Ultimately, this commentary is offered as an act of Indigenous resurgence, urging that the future of heritage governance be grounded not in institutional rhetoric but in Indigenous self-determination and the courage to imagine the World Heritage system otherwise.

Global Englishes, and within that the field of English as a lingua franca, is a huge and expanding area of research and pedagogy. This paper provides a sample of our beliefs about productive areas of research. The nine tasks presented suggest the importance of research in the areas of intercultural and digital communication, especially through the adoption of trans theories such as translanguaging, transmodality, and transcultural communication. Furthermore, concepts such as communicative competence will need rethinking to match the multilingual, multimodal, and multicultural resources that appear in such communication. The implications for pedagogy are extensive, including a re-evaluation of models and aims such as the (ir)relevance of the native speaker, global citizenship education, translanguaging, and decolonial perspectives, and approaches to both oral and written communication. Accompanying any changes in pedagogic practices must be changes in how we think about teacher education as well as assessment. Pedagogic research is crucial as there is a need to address the persistent gap between “real-world” translingual, transmodal, and transcultural uses of English and monolingual, Anglophone-orientated English language teaching models and approaches.

This article analyzes the geopolitical and cultural implications of a U.S. military bombardment of Caracas in January 2026. It argues that the second Trump administration has redefined hegemony through “technical supremacy,” shifting the Make America Great Again (MAGA) narrative from industrial nostalgia to high-tech dominance. The text explores how this technological asymmetry renders Venezuelan sovereignty “unthinkable.” Through an analysis of social media reactions, particularly on TikTok, the article identifies a process of “digital myth-making.” Overwhelmed by the “surgical” nature of the attack, Venezuelan users resort to sci-fi tropes—such as cyborgs or aliens—to explain U.S. capabilities. The article concludes that this disparity leads to a collapse of political meaning, where local populations reinterpret imperial intervention not as aggression, but as a form of “technical justice” and spectacle that invalidates their own national agency.

Education, including in design, is at a crossroads with the rise of generative artificial intelligence (GenAI). Although its use is exponentially growing, there are concerns that its unreflective use may undermine the development of essential skills. Regarding creativity-specific contexts, its potential to either enhance or constrain cognitive processes and creative confidence remains underexplored. This study investigates ChatGPT’s impact on ideation among User Experience Design students (N = 35), focusing on their cognitive processes, creative confidence and idea creativity. In a within-group experiment, participants generated a total of 214 design concepts under conditions with and without ChatGPT. Data collected included pre-experiment self-report of ChatGPT usage, creative confidence measures, artifacts (sketches, collages, mind maps), experts’ assessment of creativity and post-experiment self-report on creative confidence, ideas and ideation process, along with interviews. Findings indicate that while ChatGPT enhanced convenience and speed, it was associated with dampened cognitive engagement, which may result in an increased reliance on the tool and possible decreased creative confidence, potentially triggering a cycle of dependency and reduced self-efficacy, warranting further longitudinal investigation. We finalize this article with recommendations for design education to integrate metacognitive training and encourage critical evaluation of AI use, thereby empowering novice designers as active, reflective creative thinkers.

This article examines the diplomatic conduct of Gelasio Caetani during his tenure as Italian Ambassador to the United States in the early years of Mussolini’s government, highlighting his influence and decision-making processes. It investigates the reasons behind Mussolini’s choice of Caetani as his representative in Washington and analyses the major issues he confronted, ranging from foreign policy to Italy’s war debt stemming from the First World War, which Mussolini sought to address. Drawing on Caetani’s personal archive and cross-referencing primary sources from other collections, the study offers a comprehensive and nuanced account.

Prosecutor v Al Mahdi (Al Mahdi) has repeatedly been criticized as a “missed opportunity” for the International Criminal Court (ICC) to engage with Islamic law. However, an in-depth analysis of trial transcripts reveals that the ICC is already deeply engaged with Islamic normativity, albeit in ways that reproduce colonial patterns of recognition: it refuses to recognize the jihadist institutions as a legal order while simultaneously validating Sufi religious practices as authentically Islamic. Combining a praxeological law-in-action approach with scholarship on legal pluralism and colonial recognition, we argue that the ICC cannot adjudicate such cases without making implicit determinations about legitimate and illegitimate forms of Islamic practice. In our view, Al Mahdi thus reveals the inherent limitations of international criminal law when confronted with alternative normative orders. The politics of recognition at work here echo colonial practice, demonstrating how international criminal justice transforms and reifies the very normative systems it claims to engage with.