Microplastic (MP) pollution in terrestrial ecosystems is attracting global attention. The transfer of MPs in terrestrial food chains remains poorly understood, particularly in poultry systems. This study investigates polystyrene (PS) MP transfer and surface weathering characteristics in an “earthworm-chicken” food chain by feeding chickens earthworms that had been previously exposed to PS MPs and by oral gavage. The results showed that MP concentrations decreased from soil (10.06 ± 0.03 mg/g) to earthworm casts (6.39 ± 1.05 mg/g) to chicken faeces (3.76 ± 0.39 mg/g), and the transfer process of MPs in the “earthworm-chicken” food chains is characterized by continuous fragmentation. MPs were distributed throughout different parts of the chickens’ digestive tract after 3 h oral gavage and were only detected in the faeces after 24 h. Scanning electron microscopy and Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy revealed that MPs underwent varying degrees of weathering in the earthworm casts, chicken faeces and gastrointestinal tract, exhibiting surface holes and cracks. Compared with pristine MPs, the significantly higher carbonyl index of MPs in the gizzard demonstrates the key role of the gizzard in MP fragmentation. This study contributes to understanding the trophic transfer and fragmentation processes of MPs in chickens, and provides a basis for future research on the environmental processes of MPs in terrestrial food chains.

This paper investigates how the historical institutional legacies of the Habsburg and Ottoman Empires affect present-day attitudes toward women and minorities in Romania. We conduct a thorough historical analysis which shows that the institutional setup in the Ottoman part of Romania was more favourable toward women and minorities compared to that in the Habsburg part. Using the 2016 round of the EBRD-World Bank Life in Transition Survey, we find that these differences in historical institutions have long-run impacts on attitudes today. While we find mixed support for our hypotheses when it comes to gender attitudes, consistent with our expectations, men and women in ex-Habsburg locations report that women have less decision-making power in the household and are less tolerant towards people of different races, gay people, and Jews. The paper has important implications for advancing the debate on long-run imperial legacies by highlighting their persistent impact on women and minorities.

The article reconstructs the missing debate between the Latin American theory of dependencia and the US theory of interdependence. It explores a set of central works in both schools of thought spanning 50 years of scholarship. It puts forward three main claims. First, dependencia shares a common interest with Robert Keohane and Joseph Nye’s Power and Interdependence in theorizing the consequences that stem from asymmetrical relationships. Second, this common interest fades away with the transition from Power and Interdependence toward neoliberal institutionalism. Third, following the 2008 financial crisis, interest in structural asymmetries has reemerged through a new generation of researchers who are engaging with dependencia, as well as through the critique that US scholars of “weaponized interdependence” make against neoliberal institutionalism. The paper concludes by outlining how a debate between recent scholarship on dependencia and weaponized interdependence would look against the backdrop of the “hierarchy turn” in international relations theory.

Seafood gained prominence as a southern flavor in middle-period China. Among the southern products that piqued gourmets’ fancy, the pufferfish as a deadly delicacy presented a special case. How did it come to acquire its contentious reputation? This article traces the process that transformed it from a dangerous ancient killer to an alluring treat by the early twelfth century. Its shifting cultural stature was propelled by demographic and geographical reconfigurations, negotiations between northern and southern culinary traditions, and the literati effort to collect and classify natural knowledge. Along the way, diverse encounters and experiences with different pufferfishes were coalesced into one uniform category hetun (“river-piglet”), connoting at once danger and delicacy. The metamorphosis of the pufferfish demonstrated the interplay between literary, medical, geographical, and natural knowledge across genres in middle-period Chinese history.

No man has seen God (1943) was the masterpiece of the Chinese Protestant theologian Wu Yaozong (1893–1979). This article retraces Wu’s leftward intellectual turn in the preceding years, which culminated in the book’s attempt to reconcile Christianity and Communism. Originally a follower of American liberal Christianity, Wu embraced Stalinism after the mid-1930s. His case testifies to an alternative afterlife of American liberal Christianity, the Socialist character of which had become moribund in America, but found new vitality in China through Wu’s Stalinist reappropriation. Today, Wu’s development of the American liberal tradition lives on in different Chinese Christian communities worldwide.

This study systematically investigated the effects of Lactiplantibacillus plantarum (Lp), cellulase (CE), and their combination (CELp) on the fermentation quality, fiber degradation, and microbial community in rapeseed straw silage. This research was carried out with a completely randomized design, and rapeseed straw was inoculated with L. plantarum (1.0 × 10⁶ colony-forming units [CFU]/g), CE (50,000 U/g), or CELp and fermented in vacuum-sealed bags at 25°C for 60 days. Results demonstrated that the CELp co-treatment yielded superior outcomes, significantly increasing lactic acid content, accelerating acidification, and effectively degrading neutral detergent fiber, acid detergent fiber, and hemicellulose compared to individual treatments. Microbial community analysis demonstrated that the CELp co-treatment effectively enriched functional bacterial treatments represented by Lactobacillus and Xanthomonas while significantly enhancing the activities of core enzymes, including L-lactate dehydrogenase, xylanase, and β-glucosidase. The CELp co-treatment intensified homolactic fermentation and structural carbohydrate decomposition, with correlation analysis revealing tight links among microbial composition, enzyme activities, and silage quality. In conclusion, the microbial–enzyme synergistic approach effectively improved the fermentation quality of rapeseed straw silage by directionally modulating the microbial community structure and enhancing core enzyme activities. These findings provide a novel theoretical basis for the efficient utilization of lignocellulosic agricultural by-products.

In this paper, we investigate how policyholder information and broader economic conditions jointly influence the duration of credit life insurance contracts in the French market. Employing a proportional-intensities regression framework built on inhomogeneous phase-type distributions, we capture the way covariates shape the distribution of policy lifetime until a lapse occurs. The model is estimated via a specialized expectation-maximization algorithm, adapted to handle censored data, covariates, and feature selection through shrinkage. Our analysis of real-world data shows that different policyholder attributes and economic factors can significantly alter lapse behavior, with effects varying across insurance products, individuals, and economic cycles. These findings highlight the importance of integrating both individual-level and macroeconomic indicators in lapse risk assessment, ultimately informing more accurate pricing and allowing for improved risk management strategies.

Many journals ask authors to report confidence intervals (to quantify estimation precision or uncertainty) and measures of effect size (to quantify a factor’s explanatory power). Arguments for such practices focus on benefits to interpreting and applying scientific findings that go beyond merely detecting effects, thereby implying that effect sizes and confidence intervals should be reported and discussed. Accordingly, we examined 150 recent articles from 6 journals that publish research on Judgment and Decision Making (JDM) to survey current practices for reporting and discussing results. We recorded which of those articles report p-values, standardized effect sizes, and confidence/credibility intervals in their Results sections. We examined the articles’ narrative sections (Abstract, Discussion/Conclusion) for explicit reference to the presence/absence of an effect, an effect’s size, and the precision or range associated with an estimate. Ninety-one percent of articles reported p-values, CI0.95 [85%, 95%], and all discussed the presence or absence of effects. Most articles gave effect size information, with 73%, CI0.95 [65%, 79%], reporting standardized effect sizes, and 63%, CI0.95 [55%, 71%], reporting confidence/credibility intervals or graphical SE bars. However, an estimation perspective was less apparent in the articles’ Discussion sections, wherein 59%, CI0.95 [51%, 66%], discussed effect size information—though often with limited detail—and only 3%, CI0.95 [1%, 6%], discussed interval estimates. Mostly, it seems, JDM researchers follow guidelines for reporting effect size and the uncertainty and precision for effect estimates. Yet, one might ask whether this impacts researchers’ interpretation and communication of those effects as it should.

Poor posture is a significant concern due to its detrimental effects on health and productivity. This article presents a collar-clipped device called PostureClip, designed to restrict users from sitting and working at a bent angle, by blacking out the screen and resuming on correcting posture, thereby promoting better posture. The device integrates sensors and feedback mechanisms to provide real-time posture feedback to users. To evaluate the effectiveness of PostureClip, a controlled experiment was conducted with participants (n = 165) who were working on a laptop/PC for over 6 hours per day. The participants were randomly assigned to both the intervention group (IG1, n = 54; IG2, n = 55), which used the collar-clipped device, and the control group (CG, n = 56), which did not use the device. IG1 did not get feedback, while IG2 got feedback from the device by notifying and further darkening the screen. The study was conducted in the office environment of the participants, for 4 weeks, and metrics such as posture angle, duration of bent angle, and user feedback were collected. Analysis revealed significant improvements in posture angle (p < .001) and a significant reduction in bent angle duration (p < .01) for the participants’ group using PostureClip with feedback and compared to the group without feedback and the control group (who were not intervened). The qualitative analysis of user feedback highlighted the device’s ease of use, effectiveness in providing timely feedback, and positive impact on participants’ awareness and habits regarding posture. These results indicate that PostureClip is an effective tool for promoting better posture during sedentary work.