Denote by $\mathbb F_q$ the finite field of order q and by $\mathbb F_{q^n}$ its extension of degree n. Some $a\in \mathbb F_{q^n}$ is called primitive if it generates the multiplicative group $\mathbb F_{q^n}^*$, and it is called $q^n/q$-normal if its $\mathbb F_q$-conjugates form an $\mathbb F_q$-basis of $\mathbb F_{q^n}$ if the latter is viewed as an $\mathbb F_q$-vector space. Furthermore, some $a\in \mathbb F_{q^n}$ is called $q^n/q$-completely normal if it is $q^n/q^d$-normal for all $d\mid n$. In this work, we prove a new construction of sets of completely normal elements and we establish, under conditions, the existence of elements that are simultaneously primitive and $q^n/q$-completely normal, covering some yet unresolved cases of a 30-year-old conjecture by Morgan and Mullen.

The uncertain aspects of early modern merchants’ future business activities are often emphasized. However, historians have not yet examined how merchants themselves discursively expressed the future. This paper examines the letters of eighteenth-century French merchants active in long-distance trade to explore how they wrote about future events with their business correspondents. The systematic analysis of merchants’ expressions about the future shows that, while the business context is often described as uncertain, this uncertainty was not prominent in their own writings. The article contributes to our understanding of the early modern future and the role of business correspondence.

This study proposes an integrative typology of popular support for democracy by combining acceptance of democracy, rejection of authoritarianism, and understanding of democracy. Applying the typology to waves 5 (2005–2008) and 7 (2017–2022) of the World Values Survey, the study reassesses the cultural legitimacy of democracy across 30 countries in five regions. Empirically, it reveals that public support for democracy has significantly weakened over the last two decades, especially in non-Western countries. Analytically, it shows that additional qualifications for democratic citizenship demonstrate relations between citizens’ support for democracy and the level of liberal democracy, partially confirming the congruence thesis of political culture. Substantially, these results suggest that democratic backsliding and authoritarian change are more severe and rapid in non-Western countries than in Western democracies.

The twin digital and green transition constitutes a major societal challenge in the upcoming decades. To remain competitive, governments need to invest in both transformations. However, budgetary limits constitute trade-offs in addressing both simultaneously. At the same time, both transformations have far-reaching consequences for labor markets. Yet, we know very little about citizens’ preferences for relative public spending on both transitions and their determinants. Here, we examine the role of subjective labor market risk resulting from these transitions in shaping relative spending preferences. We argue that individuals might prefer to spend less on the societal transformation they perceive as a job threat (single-pressuredness), while cross-pressuredness by both transitions leads to an equal split. Drawing on novel comparative survey data from six countries, we find that individuals prefer to divert investment from the transition they perceive as a threat to their jobs, while cross-pressuredness moves people slightly towards equal investment.

In an increasingly data- and AI-driven economy, integrating ethical values into algorithmic decision-making is becoming ever more pressing. Benevolence is a fundamental value in human and organizational interactions, fostering trust, fairness and long-term relationships. Companies, particularly in the financial sector, must balance economic efficiency with social responsibility. As business decisions become increasingly automated, the question arises whether and how benevolence can be programmed. Research on artificial benevolence explores how AI systems can maximize not only efficiency but also trust, mitigate discrimination and align with broader corporate purposes. This requires an interdisciplinary perspective integrating technical, ethical and legal dimensions. While existing regulations increasingly shape AI-driven decisions, the question remains how artificial benevolence can be implemented and legally anchored.

A brief examination reveals the multifaceted legal challenges involved in implementing artificial benevolence in consumer banking. In addition to the omnipresent questions of data privacy and liability, risks of discrimination shape the legal debate on a practice of benevolent AI-driven decision-making. Further issues stem from governmental participation in consumer banks based on the model of a public savings bank. The social impact of decisions made by banks in their interactions with private customers on tenancies, real estate projects and the provision of daily necessities is exceedingly important to fundamental rights. Another relevant question is whether administrative bodies could commit themselves to derivative participation claims. This article outlines these issues in the context of the growing regulatory framework provided by European Union law.

While it is evident that the burden-sharing proposed by the Global Compact on Refugees (GCR) is a form of solidarity, it remains to be seen whether this represents solidarity between states to the exclusion of refugees themselves. If so, this may justify the critical conclusion drawn by renowned refugee scholar James Hathaway that the GCR is a cop-out by the global North to pick and choose who, when and how they want to share the burden of refugee protection rather than a form of solidarity. This article therefore considers whether the solidarity and community foreseen by the GCR have made things better for refugees who are supposed to be the primary beneficiaries or merely better for the refugee hosts. Recognizing that the basis of the GCR is the rights-based approach of the UN Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, this article argues that an investigation is warranted into whether the solidarity envisioned by the GCR can operate as a legal concept in this context and therefore hold the international community accountable for the protection of refugees.

Mineral Cup is an annual global volunteer-run competition to determine the most popular mineral, decided by public voting and played out mainly on social media. Over nine years of Mineral Cup, nine distinct minerals or mineral groups have been crowned champion, in chronological order: olivine, garnet, ice, magnetite, quetzalcoatlite, fluorite, zircon, rhodochrosite and kyanite. Participants in Mineral Cup can vote for minerals for any reason, ranging from scientific and often esoteric to aesthetic. Factors influencing voting include name or nickname, colour, striking appearance, utility, unusual characteristics, cultural impact, and fun facts. Mineral Cup has a global reach, with over 30,000 voters a year in 2018–2025 encompassing voters from over 100 countries per year. The popular knockout format of Mineral Cup could also be used in a wider range of geoscience competitions, and in late 2025 the first such instance of a spin-off competition (Ore Cup) was held. In the context of declining enrolments in geoscience degrees, we discuss Mineral Cup as a potential tool to promote the joy of mineralogy widely, including to audiences that may otherwise have limited or no exposure to geoscience. Finally, we provide an outline of future directions of Mineral Cup, the reach of which as an entity is currently limited by volunteer time and availability in much the same way as professional society activities are limited by the availability of their members.

Generative artificial intelligence is rapidly reshaping business education, presenting both opportunities and concerns for teaching, learning, and assessment. This study reviews how generative artificial intelligence has been addressed in business education research since 2023, with a focus on organisational and institutional implications. Using a scoping review guided by the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) protocol, 32 peer-reviewed Scopus-indexed articles published between January 2023 and June 2025 were analysed. Four key themes emerge in the use of generative artificial intelligence: curriculum redesign, teaching practices, assessment integrity, and professional skills. Findings highlight benefits such as enhanced interactivity, personalised learning, reduced workload, greater accessibility, and stronger alignment with industry practices. However, challenges persist, including factual inaccuracies, reduced critical thinking, weakened assessment practices, and ethical concerns. Overall, generative artificial intelligence integration is both transformative and uneven, requiring careful and responsible adoption from an organisational context. The study outlines implications for educators, curriculum designers, and institutional policymakers aiming to develop a future-ready business education ecosystem.

Trace fossils record in situ animal–substrate interactions and constitute key proxies for paleoecological and paleoenvironmental reconstructions, although their generally long stratigraphic ranges limit biostratigraphic applications. Recent multi-proxy studies integrating ichnological, paleontological, and geochronological data have demonstrated that such limitations can be overcome, revealing temporal reassignments driven by convergent ecological strategies, including the ‘déjà vu effect’. In the Ibiracatu region (Minas Gerais, Brazil), trace fossils attributed to bilaterian organisms were reported from successions tentatively assigned to the Ediacaran–Cambrian Bambuí Group. However, the lack of integrated stratigraphic and chronological constraints has generated uncertainty regarding their age and depositional context. Here, we combine detailed sedimentological and stratigraphic analysis, ichnological characterization, and geochronological data to establish the stratigraphic framework, depositional environments, and maximum depositional age of the trace fossil-bearing succession. Our data indicate that the Bambuí Group formed in a storm-influenced restricted marine system, whereas the ichnofossil-bearing succession developed within turbiditic deposits in a lacustrine setting. The ichnofauna comprises eleven ichnospecies, representing a mixed Scoyenia–Mermia ichnofacies, containing the Diplopodichnus association. The ichnodiversity combined with zircon provenance data indicates that the succession belongs to the Santa Fé Group, deposited during the Late Paleozoic Ice Age. Therefore, its occurrence within the Bambuí Group registers a tectonically trapped record due to fault reactivation associated with glacioeustatic adjustments following ice retreat.

Metaphysics traditionally presumes a fundamental distinction between kinds (properties, classes, abstract universals) and particulars (concrete individuals). Whereas kinds and classes have members, for example, individuals have parts. This article contrasts the kind/individual distinction with a different but equally fundamental distinction between explainers and nonexplainers. It is often presumed that kinds are explainers and individuals are nonexplainers. This article defends a contrary thesis—explanatory individualism—according to which some explainers are concrete individuals, and it explores how this thesis is connected to the thesis of biological species individualism, according to which biological species are concrete individuals rather than kinds or classes.

Forearms and hands of 100 staff from five nursing homes were sampled on breakroom entry or end-of-shift. Twenty (20%) were multidrug-resistant organism (MDRO)-positive (90% methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus). Recent high contact resident-care activities were associated with contamination (OR = 9.1 (1.1–74.2), P = .04). Enhanced barrier precautions and hand hygiene are important to prevent staff MDRO acquisition.

Visuality played a central role in the representation of non-aligned relations, and the display of Yugoslav–Cambodian ties was no exception. Both sides were keen to capitalise on diplomatic visits, whether it was their own representatives travelling abroad or when hosting guests in Yugoslavia and Cambodia, respectively. Belgrade also utilised photography to convey domestic and international messages on ideas about leadership and global relevance, as well as non-aligned cooperation and relationships between south-eastern Europe and Asia. On the other hand, travel writers and photographers were central actors in shaping the literary and cultural history of the non-aligned movement. This paper explores how state-sponsored and private photographic practices established a complex imagery of non-alignment that often navigated the fine line between the established colonialist (self-)representation of Indochina, on the one hand, and anti-colonialism as a central pillar of Yugoslavia’s foreign policy, on the other. By analysing the photographs that Tito’s cabinet photographers took on the occasion of official Yugoslav–Cambodian diplomatic encounters and both the written and photographic oeuvre that came out of the Yugoslav travel writer Nada Marinković’s stays in Cambodia, the paper touches upon a broad variety of themes and entangled histories of Yugoslavia and Cambodia. It suggests that photographic practices reflected and co-constructed ideas and practices of entangled histories within the non-aligned movement, conflicting notions of colonial traditions of visual representation and vernacular cultures of (self-)representation, predominantly traditional imageries of masculinities and femininities, and visualised concepts of solidarity and anti-colonialism.

How ruling parties in competitive authoritarian regimes adapt their strategies to sustain power while evading accountability remains central to scholarly inquiry. Yet, little attention has been paid to the role of quasi-state actors in electoral manipulation or how citizens respond. Drawing on fieldwork in Gutu District, this study examines Forever Associates Zimbabwe (FAZ), a Government-Organised Non-Governmental Organisation (GONGO) aligned with the Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) and the Central Intelligence Organisation (CIO). FAZ operated as a parallel intelligence structure, deploying covert tactics including unauthorised data collection, surveillance at voters’ roll inspection centres, opposition infiltration and illegal ‘exit polls’. Citizens responded variably; some complied, and others utilised quiet resistance, avoidance or moral denunciation. We argue that FAZ represents an authoritarian innovation that enabled repression while offering ruling elites plausible deniability. Contributing to debates on GONGOs and regime survival, this study shows how such actors entrench dominance and undermine democratic consolidation in Africa.