¿Cómo reconcilian los académicos del ámbito socio-jurídico, que comparan las sanciones monetarias con “sacarle sangre a un nabo” o “sacarle sangre a una piedra,” estas expresiones con el hecho de que las multas y recargos constituyen una industria en expansión? Abordamos este enigma enfocándonos en lo que tal vez sea la experiencia más común con sanciones monetarias entre la población: las multas de estacionamiento. Dado que las multas de estacionamiento se adjudican en un ámbito legal fundamentalmente distinto al de las sanciones penales – que dominan la atención académica –, nos preguntamos si estos resultados pueden extenderse más allá del ámbito penal hacia el municipal. Usando a Chicago como estudio de caso, nuestra investigación analiza los determinantes estructurales de 11.3 millones de multas emitidas entre 2013 y 2017. Aplicamos una serie de modelos de conteo para predecir las tasas de incidencia de las multas a nivel de tracto censal, así como para estimar cuántas estuvieron sujetas a sanciones por impago. Lo que encontramos evidencia disparidades racializadas en cuanto a quiénes son el objetivo de estas sanciones y quiénes resultan más perjudicados por ellas. Para interpretar estos resultados, articulamos ideas clave de la teoría crítica de la raza empírica junto con desarrollos recientes de la teoría de la depredación.

The objective of this study was to assess the prevalence and predictors of nutrition knowledge, nutrition label use and dietary diversity among a sample of university students in Bangladesh. A cross-sectional study was carried out from November 2023 to April 2024 among undergraduate and postgraduate students. About 428 participants (aged 18–26 years) completed a structured questionnaire containing questions related to their demographic information, nutrition knowledge, nutrition label use, and dietary diversity (consumption of different food categories). Separate logistic regression models identified the main factors associated with nutrition knowledge, nutrition label use and dietary diversity. Approximately 32.5% participants had satisfactory nutrition knowledge and 36.0% were frequent nutrition label users. Female participants were more likely to have satisfactory nutrition knowledge (adjusted odds ratio, AOR = 2.05, 95% CI = 1.29, 3.26) and use nutrition labels more frequently (AOR = 1.97, 95% CI = 1.22, 3.17) than their male counterparts respectively. Around 40% of the participants had a high level of dietary diversity. Students with satisfactory nutrition knowledge (AOR = 3.02, 95% CI = 1.41–6.45) and frequent use of nutrition labels (AOR = 2.73, 95% CI = 1.35–5.55) had a higher dietary diversity compared to their counterparts. Less than half of Bangladeshi students in this study have adequate nutrition knowledge, label use, and dietary diversity. The findings highlight the importance of implementing nutrition awareness programmes and nutrition education interventions for university students, such as basic food and nutrition knowledge and the use of nutrition labels, to enhance their dietary diversity and health status.

While parrots are popular companion animals, many experience significant welfare challenges, often resulting from not fulfilling their behavioural, environmental, and social needs. To address this issue, we developed a welfare assessment tool designed specifically for companion parrot caregivers. We involved a panel of seven experts with extensive working experience with companion parrots and in animal welfare assessment. Using an iterative process consisting of four online surveys and nine focus group meetings, the expert panel was invited to select relevant welfare indicators, rephrase selected indicators into user-friendly questions, identify missing content, and finally review the wording and structure of the tool. A preliminary version of the tool was then evaluated by four additional anonymous external experts and 69 parrot caregivers for its completeness, clarity and practicality through an online survey. Feedback from this stage was incorporated, and the revised version was subsequently reviewed again by the initial expert panel. The resulting tool, PsittaWel (freely downloadable at: https://www.vetmeduni.ac.at/psittawel), consists of 75 questions covering 145 welfare indicators and is divided into eight sections covering key aspects of parrot welfare: general information; physical health; housing and physical activity; provision of enrichment and exploration; nutrition and maintenance behaviours; social and reproductive behaviours; parrot-human interactions; maladaptive and fear-related behaviours. Further research is needed to assess the reliability of the indicators. Nevertheless, PsittaWel is already a valuable tool for caregivers to monitor welfare and identify potential room for improvement, ultimately improving the lives of their companion parrot.

This article analyzes three kinds of privilege—roughly, the monopoly or near-monopoly of a prized social good by a group—in terms of the political barriers facing attempts to reform them. Extending previous work, it distinguishes among discrimination privileges, which are zero-sum and relative, benefiting some groups at others’ expense; monopolized social right privileges, involving goods enjoyed only by some that can and should be extended to all; and differential treatment privileges, involving disagreement over whether a good currently monopolized by some should be extended to all or to none. The political barriers to reforming discrimination privilege involve group interest; those to reforming monopolized social rights include privilege, ignorance, cost, priorities, policy uncertainty, and the psychological wage. Differential treatment privilege is complicated. An exercise in applied political realism, this article treats normative categories as political inputs rather than philosophical conclusions and seeks to demonstrate the insights enabled by doing so.

This paper explores changes in the commissioning, contracting and provision of NHS-funded cataract surgery in England over the last decade, focusing on the growing role of independent sector providers (ISPs). In recent years, there has been a dramatic rise in NHS-funded cataract surgery (from almost 417,000 cases in 2018/19 to about 650,000 in 2023/24) with the ISP share increasing from 22 to 57 per cent. A mixed-methods approach was employed, combining quantitative analysis of over 4.6 million NHS-funded hospital admissions for cataract surgery (2013–2024) and qualitative interviews with senior NHS and ISP stakeholders. Interviews were analysed using reflexive thematic analysis. The shift to ISPs was largely unplanned, driven by long NHS waiting lists, favourable payment tariffs, and low barriers to entry for new providers. ISPs’ involvement has contributed to reduced waiting times and improved productivity, potentially due to specialised infrastructure and incentive structures. However, concerns exist about contract management, service quality, and value for money. The study highlights the need for improved service commissioning, tariff reform, stronger contractual oversight, and effective monitoring to ensure quality and value. These findings have broader implications for healthcare systems balancing competition, patient choice, and public–private delivery models in elective care.

We consider the Brown measure of $a+\mathfrak {c}$, where a lies in a commutative tracial von Neumann algebra $\mathcal {B}$ and $\mathfrak {c}$ is a $\mathcal {B}$-valued circular element. Under certain regularity conditions on a and the covariance of $\mathfrak {c}$ this Brown measure has a density with respect to the Lebesgue measure on the complex plane which is real analytic apart from jump discontinuities at the boundary of its support. With the exception of finitely many singularities this one-dimensional spectral edge is real analytic. We provide a full description of all possible edge singularities as well as all points in the interior, where the density vanishes. The edge singularities are classified in terms of their local edge shape while internal zeros of the density are classified in terms of the shape of the density locally around these points. We also show that each of these countably infinitely many singularity types occurs for an appropriate choice of a when $\mathfrak {c}$ is a standard circular element. The Brown measure of $a+\mathfrak {c}$ arises as the empirical spectral distribution of a diagonally deformed non-Hermitian random matrix with independent entries when its dimension tends to infinity.

In the Early Modern period, many Chinese people undertook temporary or permanent overseas migrations from the Qing empire (1644-1911) to labour and trade. These circulations were almost entirely organized by translocal kinship networks with little to no involvement from the imperial state itself. In fact, in its earlier years the Qing Dynasty actively sought to prevent or delimit the activities of these migratory networks. Not surprisingly then, the relationship between these networks and the Qing state has often been framed as inherently antagonistic. In this paper, I explore the evolution of this relationship over the 17th and 18th centuries, with particular consideration towards the ways it influenced and was influenced by the circulation of technologies. I argue that as the dynasty expanded and its security anxieties declined, it increasingly found a place for diaspora within the framework of the Qing’s nebulous claim to rulership over ‘all under heaven’. I find that the state was forced at times to collaborate with migrant networks in the construction of a quasi-protectionist system that met key needs for both. This transformation had important consequences for technology transfer, especially in the fields of ship-building, cash crop agriculture, and mining.

A growing body of literature has reported on the gendered impact of COVID-19. Unemployment and income loss are two consequences of the pandemic that disproportionately impacted women. Studies have shown that these consequences are associated with the rise in unpaid care work (UCW) following the implementation of public health measures to curb the spread of COVID-19. Around the world, UCW is largely the responsibility of women, including in Latin America, where there is a strong cultural value placed on caregiving roles. This paper undertakes a comparative analysis of the social protection measures introduced in Colombia and Costa Rica during the first two years of the COVID-19 pandemic, drawing on core themes of feminist political economy and Elson’s (New Labor Forum, 26(2), 52–61, 2017) Three R Framework to reflect on whether and how measures incorporated care-sensitive approaches and on the factors shaping the countries’ diverging responses. Of the two jurisdictions compared in this paper, Costa Rica’s social protection measures afforded greater visibility and support for UCW. We offer a discussion of potential factors contributing to Costa Rica’s care-sensitive approach, including a robust pre-pandemic social protection infrastructure, better integration of the informal economy into social protection measures, and greater representation of women in politics. Insights from this analysis can inform enhancements of social protection systems in Colombia, Costa Rica, and other comparable jurisdictions across Latin America, while also contributing to pandemic preparedness and more gender-responsive approaches to future global health crises.

Political tolerance of others’ civil liberties is an essential and everyday condition of democratic politics without which citizens cannot engage constructively with those of different views. In this paper, we combine insights from political theory and political behaviour to develop and test the concept of ‘partisan intolerance’. We conceptualize partisan intolerance as the gap between a person’s willingness to interfere with contentious activities by in-partisans versus the same activities by out-partisans. Using two pre-registered experiments, we find high levels of partisan intolerance in Britain. Moreover, while partisan intolerance is not associated with abstract measures of political tolerance, we find a strong association with affective partisan polarization. Our findings thus suggest that increasing affective polarization among partisans is accompanied by a high degree of intolerance towards their opponents’ basic civil liberties such as freedom of speech and the right to protest.

What can be learned about pandemic preparedness from greater attention to perspectives of people who live in regions labelled as ‘hotspots’ for disease outbreaks? And how might such attention require us to reconfigure science, policy, and practice – as part of a broader shifting of power in pandemics? These are the questions that motivate and are explored through the papers in this special issue on pandemic preparedness, for which this paper serves as Introduction. All the contributions to this special issue present perspectives, experiences, and reflections from African settings, drawing on research co-designed and conducted in close engagement with local communities or in dialogue with African scientists and public health actors. They approach biosocial questions from the concerns of the disciplinary fields of social, medical, and political anthropology, of engaged interdisciplinary social science, and, crucially, of embedded, ‘grassroots’ fieldwork by researchers who have grown up with the communities they are studying. The team bringing these complementary areas of expertise came together for a collaborative programme on ‘Pandemic preparedness: local and global concepts and practices in tackling disease threats in Africa’ supported by a collaborative award from the Wellcome Trust during 2018–2023. This special issue thus forms part of wider advocacy for rethinking pandemic preparedness and for the value of anthropology in informing its meanings and practices, now more than ever.

This article analyses multiple visions and perspectives offered by Chinese-speaking Muslim intellectuals during the Republican era (1912–1949) concerning their status as a Muslim community by looking into their debates on the modernization and secularization of the Turkish Republic under the Kemalist regime. The transformation of the multi-ethnic and religious Qing empire into a Republican Chinese nation-state presented new challenges to the ruling elite, intellectuals, and minority communities. This article explores how Chinese Muslims navigated the complex intellectual landscape as alternative visions and ideologies concerning nation-building, ethnic autonomy, religion, and modernity emerged in China. The article focuses on how Han Chinese intellectuals, the Kuomintang (KMT) elite, and Chinese Muslims selectively interpreted Turkish modernization in different ways to promote their socio-political cause. It analyses the overlaps and the complex, nuanced differences between Chinese Muslim interpretations of Turkey as a success story of the awakened modern Muslim and the KMT ruling elites’ view of Turkey in the 1930s as a model of developmental authoritarianism, highlighting Turkey’s success in establishing a homogenous nation-state that superseded religion with a sanctified state ideology. The article thus demonstrates how Chinese Muslim intellectuals responded to the KMT state’s increasingly authoritarian rule in the 1930s during the Japanese invasion and the subsequent era of the Civil War when the Chinese Communist Party emerged as a powerful alternative to KMT rule and ideology.

Wheat protein is essential to end-use products including bread and noodles. Protein levels vary based on weather, growing conditions, and production practices. This research identifies and quantifies the relationship between wheat prices and protein levels for seven Kansas crop reporting districts during 2001–2023. Results of a quadratic panel regression model demonstrate that local wheat prices are influenced by both (1) the absolute level of wheat protein in the local Crop Reporting District and (2) the local level of wheat protein relative to the overall wheat protein level in the rest of the State.