This article examines the Iranian mosque in Mumbai, known as Mughal Masjid, built in the 1860s by a Shirazi master mason for the Shirazi diaspora community, as a lens through which to reconsider the stereotype of the Iranian mosque. Conceived as a garden mosque, it combines the architectural traditions of mosques in the southern Zagros region with the spatial ambience of a Shirazi garden. With a survey of mosques across the southern Zagros, the article shows that historical mosques in this region are typically domeless, hypostyle structures, challenging the stereotype of the Iranian mosque defined by domes and monumental minarets. The article also critiques the stylistics of Mohammad-Karim Pirnia, arguing that nationalist historiography and colonial scholarship advance different narratives yet share a meta-narrative and epistemology that obscure regional diversity and marginalize Qajar architectural significance.

To understand the international nature of the macroprudential policy and the potential cross-border regulatory leakages these imply, we develop a three-country center-periphery framework with financial frictions and limited financial intermediation in emerging economies. Each country has a macroprudential instrument to smooth credit spread distortions; however, the banking regulations can leak to other economies and be subject to costs. Our results show the presence of cross-border regulation spillovers that increase with the extent of financial frictions, which are driven by the capacity of the regulation to limit aggregate intermediation, and that can be magnified if policymakers are forward-looking. We discuss the policy implications of the resulting macroprudential interdependence and the potential scope for policy design that improves the management of the trade-off between mitigating the financial frictions and curtailing intermediation.

This paper compares the experiences and conclusions of two imperial investigations into diasporic Chinese communities of the Asia-Pacific in the 1880s. These were the official investigations undertaken by the specially appointed Qing Commissioners Wang Ronghe and Yu Qiong, and the unofficial mission carried out by the British translator, orientalist, and diplomat Edward Harper Parker. At a crucial moment in the history of Chinese immigration, these two parties undertook almost simultaneous expeditions to investigate the conditions of the vast Chinese diaspora across Southeast Asia and Oceania. Both missions engaged with some of the most contentious issues surrounding Chinese migration of the era. In particular, I focus on their documentation of the brutal exploitation of trafficked Chinese workers on the tobacco plantations of Deli, in the Dutch East Indies, as well as the rising tide of white supremacist efforts to exclude Chinese migrants from British Australia. Arguing for bold new approaches to imperial engagement with Chinese diaspora, both parties faced significant resistance to their work. Using Chinese, British, Dutch, and Australian sources, this paper traces these journeys to reveal unexpected commonalities between two very different imperial systems, demonstrating the surprisingly global reach of the late Qing state. Moreover, it uses the materials created by these missions to paint in-depth portraits of two Chinese communities and situate the period’s “Chinese Question” of migration to white settler colonies in its broader diasporic context.

Stylistic variation has been a central concern in the study of prehistoric pottery in central Europe. In this paper, we approach stylistic variation from a visual cognition perspective, focusing on the effects that stylistic attributes of vessels have on patterns of attention. A free-viewing eye-tracking experiment was conducted using pottery vessels from central Germany spanning from 5500 to 1 bce. Our results show that, among modern observers, decorative patterns and motifs primarily guide visual attention over attributes like shape or luminance. Attentional patterns were associated with variation in decorations: vessels with spiralled or punctured motifs (Early–Middle Neolithic) tended to attract more attention, whereas the undecorated (Younger Neolithic), less decorated, burnished or linear motifs (Bronze Age), or standardized and symmetrical patterns (Late Iron Age) of later styles, were less visually engaging. Considering the archaeological context of pottery stylistic changes in central Germany, a provisional explanation is that increased standardization and specialization and the general displacement of interest towards other crafts reduced the importance of pottery for visually communicating important socio-cultural cues, producing fewer captivating designs. This study does not claim equivalence between modern and past populations, but demonstrates the potential of eye-tracking techniques for investigating visual-cognitive responses to stylistic change.

Human activity in the Antarctic is supported by a wide network of government agencies, policies, businesses and workers back home. This polar workforce is particularly important in the so-called ‘Antarctic gateway cities’, which foreground their economic and cultural connections with the far south. Rather than focusing just on the Antarctic continent as the place of work, this paper therefore takes a broader approach by turning attention to the people back home that enable Antarctic logistics, modelling, policymaking and public awareness to be executed successfully. The paper outlines a matrix for mapping polar work capacity, with Antarctic roles classified as direct or indirect and as in situ or ex situ. By bringing together stakeholders from a range of Antarctic workplaces (including local and national government, academia, tourism and local business owners and training providers) from Christchurch (New Zealand) in October 2024, a workshop event identified the key challenges facing the Antarctic sector over the coming 5 years and highlighted areas where international collaboration could help to address these challenges into the future. Key suggestions include the implementation of an overarching Antarctic strategy; training and education to improve local talent and pathways; enhanced visibility of existing skillsets; establishing exchange opportunities across the Antarctic gateway cities; and developing Antarctic identities, including through tourism opportunities.

Labour contractors (enganchadores) were key figures in capitalist modernisation in northern Peru after 1880. Via overlapping networks of monetary, moral and coercive mechanisms, they shaped circuits of accumulation by linking highland labour to coastal sugar plantations. The reliance of coastal sugar planters on highland enganchadores for guaranteeing labour supply highlights the failure of an independent national state to consolidate in this period beyond local and regional hegemonies. Therefore, an examination of enganchadores and the hybrid markets they embodied challenges both linear narratives about the rise of modern economies and conceptual binaries between market and non-market, state and non-state and centre and periphery in Peru and globally.

Field research in the Petites Pyrénées (France) yielded new Late Cretaceous continental microvertebrates, including some of the few known mammals from Europe from this time. They come from the well-dated late Maastrichtian Auzas Marls Formation which has yielded some of the latest European Mesozoic vertebrates. Here, we report new discoveries, including for the first time a co-occurrence of multituberculate and eutherian mammals in the Cretaceous of Western Europe, breaking previously known strong provincialism of Late Cretaceous mammals in Europe. Two new mammals are described. The kogaionid species Hainina cassagnauensis n. sp. is the first multituberculate known from the Late Cretaceous of Western Europe and the earliest record of Hainina. It makes Hainina one of the only known vertebrate genera crossing the K/Pg boundary in Europe. H. cassagnauensis n. sp. is the first described evidence for a mammal dispersal between the Eastern and Western parts of the European Archipelago at the end of the Cretaceous. Mammals from Tricouté also include an upper molar of the new eutherian cf. Azilestes yvettae n. sp. It exhibits an advanced morphology showing affinities to other specialized endemic eutherians from the Cretaceous of Europe such as Valentinella vitrollense and Azilestes ragei. These three European species have a basic zhelestid dental morphology, but their specializations suggest a new, at least subfamilial, European clade. As with other vertebrates from the European Archipelago, the kogaionid multituberculates and the zhelestid eutherians are ancient relict lineages that belong to the «old European faunal core».

Melt ponding on Arctic sea ice is a key indicator of the transition from a predominantly perennial to a seasonal sea-ice cover, yet quantitative data on pond depth remain limited. Here, we present the first analysis of melt-pond depth using Ice, Cloud, and land Elevation Satellite-2 (ICESat-2)’s Advanced Topographic Lidar Altimeter System (ATLAS). The Density-Dimension Algorithm for bifurcating sea-ice reflectors (DDA-bifurcate-seaice) automatically detects multiple surface returns in ICESat-2 photon data and estimates corresponding surface heights, enabling melt-pond-depth retrievals under varied noise conditions.

Airborne lidar and imagery collected during the NASA ICESat-2 Project Arctic Summer Sea Ice Campaign (July 2022) provide near-coincident observations used to evaluate and optimize the algorithm’s melt-pond detection. Evaluation of the melt-pond-depth quantile using Chiroptera data shows that the uniform value used in the ATL07 release 7 data product is near-optimal. We demonstrate DDA-bifurcate-seaice’s capability to detect a wide range of melt feature morphologies, including smooth or rough bottoms, ridge-adjacent ponds, partial drainage and seawater intrusion. To further improve depth determination, we propose a depth-quantile function that reduces bias and mean-squared error by a factor of 2.75 and 2.2, respectively. This work improves melt-pond-depth estimation using the DDA-seaice-bifurcate, supporting Arctic- and Antarctic-wide mapping in the ICESat-2/ATLAS experimental sea-ice melt-pond data product on ATL07 (release 7).

This article identifies the centrality of the consumer to efforts to elicit civilian participation against rising crime in 1970s and 1980s New York City. From “best buy” reviews of anticrime products to the self-evaluation of home security arrangements and police services, these efforts championed individual responsibility, enterprise, and a vision of consumer citizenship, with safety secured via the acquisition of consumer goods or the assertion of consumer rights and rationality. Within a context of municipal austerity, diminished state legitimacy, and market-led restructuring, this vision proved popular and enduring, reorienting New Yorkers’ responses to crime but also their understandings of self and community and their relationship with the state. Yet it also embedded inequalities and exclusions inherent to urban neoliberalism and contemporary cities. A focus on consumer citizenship reveals the popular dimensions of the neoliberal turn and its ongoing relevance to both urban governance and anticrime activity in today’s New York City.

Seed germination responses to light influence the timing of weed emergence and management outcomes. We evaluated (1) variation in light-dependent germination among germplasm sources, (2) the relationship between primary dormancy and far-red light–enforced germination inhibition, and (3) the role of seed size in light-dependent dormancy. Between 2022 and 2025, germination of 70 kochia [Bassia scoparia (L.) A. J. Scott] populations and 49 common lambsquarters (Chenopodium album L.) accessions was evaluated under three light environments—dark, red, and far red—for both freshly harvested and stored seed. Bassia scoparia germination did not differ among light environments (ANOVA, P = 0.67), indicating weak photoblastic regulation at the species level. In contrast, C. album exhibited pronounced differences in light-dependent germination among accessions (P < 0.0001). Accessions with greater primary dormancy, defined as the difference between germination of freshly harvested and stored seed, exhibited stronger far-red-enforced germination inhibition, indicating coordinated regulation of dormancy depth and light sensitivity. Seed weight was not strongly associated with primary dormancy (Spearman’s ρ = 0.057, P = 0.11) or far-red suppression (ρ = 0.50, P = 0.06). These results indicate that variation in light-dependent dormancy and germination in C. album is governed primarily by genetic and physiological regulation of light perception rather than by seed size.

National foodborne outbreaks of gastrointestinal disease often require rapid case–control investigations to identify the source. Online market panels offer a potential alternative to traditional control recruitment. We compared market panel controls to traditional controls in case–control recruitment during a 2024 UK outbreak of STEC O145. Two case–control studies were conducted for two different control groups (a) Salmonella cases as case–controls and (b) online market panel members. Timeliness, cost, and resources were compared, and a logistic regression compared findings in a control–control analysis. In total, 43 cases of STEC O145, 63 Salmonella case–controls, and 93 panel controls were recruited. Neither control group reached the recruitment target for the younger adult age group. Salmonella case–controls had a ninefold greater staff time to recruit and cost five times more than panel controls (£25.82 vs. £4.99 per control), partially due to interviewer-administered questionnaires compared with self-completion by panel controls. Both analytical approaches identified the same outbreak source, with no significant differences in exposures between the control groups. The cost and resource savings associated with panel controls justify their use as a standard procedure in outbreak investigations. We recommend exploring engagement with age groups that are difficult to recruit and assessing alternative strategies to reach them.

In this commentary on Pfadt et al. (2026, Psychometrika , 1–35), I first make the case for implementing psychometric methods, such as the conditional standard error of measurement (CSEM), in software that is user-friendly from a practitioner’s perspective. Furthermore, I argue that bias and variance in CSEM estimates are still poorly understood and I report a small simulation study comparing the coverage rates of the CSEM estimate recommended by Pfadt et al. with those of the estimated (unconditional) standard error of measurement. The results point to possible directions for future research on CSEM estimation.

Pfadt et al. present accessible methods for estimating conditional standard errors of measurement (CSEMs) and implement them in the open-source software JASP. Their emphasis on individual-level precision represents an important contribution to applied measurement practice. This commentary discusses several conceptual issues that clarify and extend the authors’ treatment of dimensionality, error definition, and score interpretation. The aim is to strengthen alignment between CSEM estimation and the interpretive purposes for which test scores are used.

Contaminated surfaces in long-term care facility resident rooms may contribute to transmission of healthcare-associated pathogens. We demonstrated that a far ultraviolet-C light technology operated for 2 to 4 hours during periods when residents were out of the room was effective in reducing contamination of surfaces and personal items.

The integration of artificial intelligence (AI) agents into payment systems signals a profound shift in the architecture of financial transactions. Building on advances in large language models and autonomous systems, “agentic payments” refer to transactions initiated and completed by AI agents without direct human intervention. This article provides a conceptual and technical analysis of agent-enabled payment systems, examining their operational logic, defining features and emerging use cases across retail, e-commerce and decentralised finance. It distinguishes agentic payments from traditional automated systems by emphasising autonomy, contextual reasoning and adaptability. The article further identifies and categorises a range of technical, legal and societal risks, including cybersecurity vulnerabilities, liability gaps, regulatory non-compliance, and potential economic disruption. Through case studies and architectural illustrations, it highlights both the innovation potential and governance challenges posed by agentic systems. It argues that current regulatory frameworks – designed for human-intermediated payments – are ill-equipped to address the dynamic and decentralised nature of agent-led transactions. The article concludes by proposing a multi-layered governance framework combining core regulatory requirements with supporting ecosystem measures to ensure accountability, security, and transparency in the age of autonomous financial agency.

This article explores the reinterpretation of Ming porcelain inscribed with ‘Great Ming’ (大明) in Chosŏn Korea following the Imjin War and the collapse of the Ming dynasty. Utilising archaeological findings, writings from Chosŏn literati and contemporary fieldwork, it argues that these objects transformed significantly – from luxury goods exchanged through tribute and wartime interactions to ritual vessels laden with ideological significance. As formal diplomatic relations weakened and Qing forces exerted political and cultural pressure on Chosŏn, Ming-marked ceramics emerged as powerful symbols of commemoration, moral sentiment and anti-Qing loyalty. Employed in westward-facing rituals honouring Ming emperors, they allowed Chosŏn elites to assert their claims to Ming cultural heritage and articulate a distinct Confucian identity in early modern East Asia. This study demonstrates how imported objects can acquire new meanings, highlighting the role of material culture in shaping Chosŏn’s self-identity as the guardian of a fallen civilisation.