This research article examines the role of immigrant labour and micro-innovations in transferring glass-making knowledge in early modern Britain. It argues that immigrants played a crucial role in adapting European products to local conditions by providing new recipes and access to trade routes. Furthermore, it emphasises the significance of mobility and secrecy in knowledge transfer. Immigrants created innovations through mobility by tailoring their roles to encourage movement and maintaining the confidentiality of their skills. The article also examines the demands of local settings and conditions for integrating new technology.

Let $R \to S$ be a cyclically pure map of Noetherian $\mathbb {Q}$-algebras. In this paper, we show that if S has Du Bois singularities, then R has Du Bois singularities. Our result is new even when $R \to S$ is faithfully flat. Our proof also yields interesting results in prime characteristic and in mixed characteristic. As a consequence, we show that if $R \to S$ is a cyclically pure map of rings essentially of finite type over the complex numbers $\mathbb {C}$, S has log canonical type singularities, and $K_R$ is Cartier, then R has log canonical singularities. Along the way, we prove a version of the key injectivity theorem of Kovács and Schwede for Noetherian schemes of equal characteristic zero that have isolated non-Du Bois points. Throughout the paper, we use the characterization of the complex $\underline {\Omega }^0_X$ and of Du Bois singularities in terms of sheafification with respect to Grothendieck topologies.

The Early Growth and Development Study (EGDS) began in 2002 as a longitudinal prospective adoption study of birth parents, adoptive parents, and adopted children (n = 361 adoptees). It expanded in 2007 to include a second cohort of adoptees (n = 200), and a third cohort of siblings (siblings reared by the birth mother at age 7 [n = 217 siblings in 2013] and additional siblings in both birth and adoptive family homes [n = 881 siblings in 2016]). Data are available in a national repository within the Environmental influences on Child Health Outcomes (ECHO) study and have been integrated into analyses with national and international cohorts. Birth and adoptive families were originally enrolled through a systematic recruitment approach that began with efforts to partner with all domestic adoption agencies in specific regions of the United States following the birth of a child. Longitudinal assessments are ongoing and occurred in 9-month intervals until the adoptees turned 3 years of age, and in 1- to 2-year intervals thereafter to age 21. Data collection includes child temperament, cognition, behavior, and physical health; birth and adoptive parent personality, mental and physical health, context, parenting, and marital relations; the prenatal environment; genetic, hormonal, and cardiovascular data; and geocoding. A unique aspect of the adoption-sibling design is its ability to detect environmental influences on development and test complex interactions and correlations between genetic, prenatal, and postnatal environmental influences on a range of outcomes. The sample and procedures are described, followed by an overview of multicohort findings and opportunities for integration with other registries.

This article examines the endurance of timbering and rafting along the upper Yellow River in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries as a case study of Fernand Braudel’s ‘social time’ of that critical section of the waterway, marked by intensified commerce and shifting political dynamics. The Muslim consolidation of midstream Ningxia, anchored in upstream Linxia, exemplified how Hui economic dominance intertwined with territorial control. These networks, later repurposed to support China’s resistance against Japanese imperialism, were abruptly disrupted by mid–twentieth-century dam construction and socialist collectivisation. Beyond economic history, the article interrogates historiographical silences surrounding Hui economic territorialisation. While external observers, including Republican officials and Japanese strategists, acknowledged Hui commercial monopolies, state historiography under the People’s Republic of China has often downplayed them to maintain narratives of ethnic harmony. Analysing cinematic representations across different eras of the twentieth century, the article further argues that film serves as a counterpoint to official narratives, offering an alternative medium where Hui agency and economic territoriality are articulated and contested. By bridging economic history, historiography, and visual culture, this study highlights the political stakes of ethnic commerce and the ways in which Hui identity has been shaped and reshaped across different political regimes.

This paper examines how incorporating theoretical virtues in belief updating affects the long-term success of epistemic communities. Drawing on NK landscape models of the type used by Lazer and Friedman (2007), simulation results are used to show that when epistemic agents in a connected community factor in virtues like conservatism, modesty, and familiarity in theory selection, agents hold differing beliefs for longer periods of time. This increase in transient diversity typically leads to greater long-term communal epistemic success, a benefit that becomes more pronounced as interconnectedness between community members increases.

Humanitarian and non-profit work places staff and volunteers in contexts of high moral responsibility and commitment to mission, which can simultaneously sustain and strain mental well-being. Drawing on literature from organizational psychology and studies of non-profit and voluntary organizations, this paper examines how workplace structure and dynamics shape psychological outcomes among humanitarian workers. It argues that distress is not solely a consequence of exposure to traumatic events but is significantly influenced by organizational factors, including hierarchical constraints, inequitable working conditions and limited autonomy in ethically complex environments. These conditions create a dual-edged experience: workers derive purpose and identity from their altruistic engagement, yet face structural and relational stressors that contribute to burn-out, moral distress and reduced well-being. By foregrounding organizational responsibility, this paper identifies key determinants of mental well-being and highlights the need for systemic approaches that move beyond individual resilience-focused interventions.

Contemporary scholarship rarely questions the expectation of gratitude in asymmetrical relationships, such as those between institutional structures and persons with disabilities, where refusal is difficult. This dynamic organises dependence and constrains choice in the Indian context, where access to education, welfare, and institutional accommodation is often contingent, negotiated, and unevenly realised. From the perspective of moral economy, affect theory, and disability studies, gratitude operates as a form of moral governance, not through overt coercion but through affective compliance. It is not simply expressed as a voluntary emotion but rather as a social performance, read as evidence of deservingness. This demand is not uniformly distributed; rather, its intensity flows through the faultlines of caste, class, gender, and religion such that the capacity to withhold gratitude is itself structured by power. This article argues that when gratitude lies not in its presence but in its necessity, and when appreciation becomes a condition of access, gratitude ceases to be a virtue and instead functions as the quiet consolidation of inequality.

Natural phonetic variability such as talker differences facilitates second language (L2) word learning. Whether accent variability enhances the talker variability benefit, particularly in the learning of words that differ only in lexical tones, has not yet been examined despite its potential applied value for L2 tone language learning. Two groups of monolingual English speakers completed six training sessions on four minimal-tone quadrads of Mandarin monosyllabic pseudowords, produced either by 12 talkers from Beijing (single accent) or by four talkers each from Beijing, Yantai, and Guangzhou (multiple accents). Bayesian mixed-effects modeling revealed strong learning improvement across sessions in both conditions, but the multiple-accent group improved faster than the single-accent group. In addition, the multiple-accent group demonstrated superior generalization to new talkers with a familiar and an unfamiliar accent, suggesting that natural L2-Mandarin accent variability facilitates English learners’ access to abstract tone-word lexical representations, beyond the benefits of talker variability alone.

In meta-analyses, effect size measures with bounded or non-normal sampling distributions are commonly analyzed on a transformed scale to justify normality assumptions. While point estimates and confidence intervals (CIs) are routinely back-transformed to the original scale for interpretation, this practice is nontrivial in random-effects models. In particular, standard inverse back-transformations yield estimates of the median rather than the mean effect size due to Jensen’s inequality. Integral back-transformations provide a principled solution for recovering the mean on the original scale, but their use entails practical issues. We study integral back-transformations for several effect size measures, including correlation coefficients, proportions, odds and risk ratios, and Cronbach’s alpha. We derive general formulations for integral back-transformations and corresponding CIs that are applicable across different transformation functions and provide a software implementation. Although required to obtain correct mean estimates, these approaches must be used with caution, as they are sensitive to heterogeneity estimation and can be unstable for unbounded transformations. Certain asymmetric transformations can also lead to inconsistent inference results. We illustrate these issues using analytical considerations and re-analyses of several meta-analyses. Importantly, we stress that the choice of back-transformation depends on the analyst’s goals. The standard inverse back-transformation remains well suited for descriptive purposes and is often preferable in practice, provided that it is correctly interpreted as a back-transformed median effect size. We recommend using the integral back-transformation only when a mean estimate is explicitly required, and restricting its use for CIs to cases where they are demanded, but not for hypothesis testing.

Multilevel regression and poststratification (MRP) is widely used to estimate opinion in small subgroups and to adjust unrepresentative surveys. Yet, even flexible MRP models contain errors generated by non-response and model misspecification. We propose a principled, data-driven method to leverage observable errors on auxiliary quantities with known marginal distributions—for example, election outcomes—to improve estimates of policy attitudes. Our method leverages the correlation between auxiliary variables and outcomes of interest to calibrate MRP estimates to these known marginal distributions. We illustrate our approach using a pre-election poll measuring support for an abortion referendum. We find that the method reduces county-level error by nearly two-thirds relative to traditional MRP. We also show how our calibration approach can be used to generate estimates for smaller nested geographies, such as precincts, even in the absence of poststratification data at this level. Our approach provides a framework for fully incorporating known population data to improve estimates of public opinion in small subgroups, providing scholars another tool to study representation.

This qualitative study explores how wage and payment practices inflict both economic hardship and psychological distress among tea garden workers in Sylhet and Moulvibazar. Using an interpretivist approach, semi-structured interviews were conducted with 12 purposively sampled workers in Sylhet. Transcripts in Bengali and the local Sylheti dialect were evaluated using reflexive thematic analysis. The findings reveal six key themes centered on the psychological impacts of wage insufficiency, unpredictable payment schedules, disproportionate quota penalties, and opaque deductions. Participants identified low base wages as the primary driver of chronic food insecurity and debt cycles. Furthermore, systemic issues like delayed payments, poor-quality rations, and gendered care burdens severely exacerbated their acute stress. Workers expressed their psychological suffering through culturally encoded idioms such as tension, chinta (worry), and khitkhite (irritability). Ultimately, the study highlights that workers' top priorities for mitigating distress include fair and sufficient wages, transparent payment systems, food security, and accessible healthcare. These findings emphasize that improving mental well-being in this vulnerable population requires systemic reforms in payment governance.