This qualitative study was conducted through focus group discussions with members from three township communities in South Africa: Alexandra; Diepkloof; and the eThekwini Inanda, Ntuzuma and KwaMashu area. The primary objective of this study was to examine the crime of rape committed against patients and apprentice healers/initiates by traditional health practitioners. For generations, the Black population in South Africa has relied on Indigenous healers to address their healthcare needs. Many communities believe that Indigenous or traditional healers play a crucial role in providing primary healthcare and treating various ailments. However, this study found that some unscrupulous practitioners exploit their authority by engaging in non-consensual sexual intercourse with their patients or initiates under the pretext of healing or transferring healing powers to them. The findings advocate for the mandatory registration of all practitioners with the Traditional Health Practitioners Council of South Africa, as stipulated by the Traditional Health Practitioners’ Regulations 2024, as one measure to combat the atrocious behaviour of those meant to heal communities.

In legal discourse, the Marshall cases (C-152/84 and C-271/91) have become known as landmark judgements for gender equality. Yet for historians, Helen Marshall’s legal journey is an invitation to make a broader claim of how to approach a landmark case in the history of European law ‘from below’, moving away from a binary analysis of European institutions on the one hand and national structures on the other. Based on original research using a wide range of newspaper articles, published documents from the European Court of Justice (ECJ) and archival documents, this article follows Helen Marshall’s legal journey from 1978 to 1993. Using Marshall’s individual role as a ‘heuristic tool’, the article argues that Marshall was a ‘legal entrepreneur’ of her own cause with her actions reflecting the British zeitgeist through the medium of European law. It demonstrates that the legal construction of the Community was by no means a project driven solely by elites. The article further nuances the notion of Britain, as a nation, as an ‘awkward partner’ by highlighting that Marshall, a British citizen, actively contributed to European integration within a complex of other actors.

Rotterdam, a city in the Netherlands, experienced significant bombing in its city centre during the Second World War. Despite the trauma associated with this event, in 1948, the city adopted a new motto: ‘Sterker Door Strijd’, translating as ‘Stronger Through Struggle’. This motto remains visible today under the city’s coat of arms, symbolising the resilience and strength of its inhabitants as they rebuilt their city. ‘Sterker Door Strijd’ has become a central aspect of Rotterdam’s development, particularly in its architecture and urban planning. It showcases a shift in the city’s memory from pain to pride and hope for the future. The motto beautifully embodies Rigney’s ‘memory–activism nexus’ from a spatial perspective, reconstructing the city’s traumatic memory of destruction into a narrative of resistance. The motto is widely known and felt by every Rotterdammer, including foreigners who live and work in the city, like me. The visual essay ‘From Struggle to Strength’ poetically focuses on the city of Rotterdam and its motto. It intimately follows my personal artistic journey and my embodiment in the city. The story unfolds as I walk and draw around the city. Additionally, I interviewed inhabitants focusing on the challenges of social housing issues in the city, such as displacement and demolition and considering how the residents are actively resisting these issues. Through these interactions, the visual essay reflects on the transformative power of memory and activism in shaping the city’s past, present and future.

This study aimed to develop and validate a questionnaire that investigates sugar-related eating behaviour, excessive consumption, and addictive-like eating. This questionnaire was validated using a rigorous process assessing content validity, face validity, reliability testing, feasibility testing, and construct validity. Spearman’s correlation coefficients and Cronbach’s alpha were used to assess reliability. Feasibility testing was used to further validate and confirm the scoring/categorisation of ‘low’, ‘medium’, and ‘high’ scorers for use in future research. Exploratory factor analysis and reliability analysis were used to determine underlying latent factors and assess construct validity. Content validity was assessed by health professionals (n = 16), face validity was assessed by the lay public who had no expertise in nutrition or addiction (n = 20). Reliability (n = 54), repeat reliability (n = 50), and feasibility (n = 113) testing were assessed with a sample from the lay public. Spearman’s correlation coefficients were in the range of 0.58–0.91 and were statistically significant (P < 0.001), indicating good temporal stability within the questionnaire. Cronbach’s alpha coefficients were in the range of 0.62–0.93, indicating good internal consistency. Feasibility testing confirmed the use of calculating an ‘average total score’ from the data set and splitting the data set into tertiles: low, medium, and high scorers. Exploratory factor analysis confirmed three latent factors: F1: Compulsive Eating; F2: Comfort Eating; and F3: Withdrawal. Results suggest the questionnaire is highly reliable and was successfully validated. This questionnaire can be used in research to investigate problematic and addictive-like eating behaviour and its effects on ill health.

Allosteric communication is established by networks through which strain energy generated at the allosteric site by an allosteric event, such as ligand binding, can propagate to the functional site. Exerted on multiple molecules in the cell, it can wield a biased function. Here, we discuss allosteric networks and allosteric signaling bias. Networks are graphs specified by nodes (residues) and edges (their connections). Allosteric bias is a property of a population. It is described by allosteric effector-specific dynamic distributions of conformational ensembles, as classically exemplified by G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs). An ensemble describes the likelihood of a specific (strong/weak) allosteric signal propagating to a specific functional site. A network description provides the propagation route in a specific conformation, pinpointing key residues whose mutations could promote drug resistance. Efficiency is influenced by path length, relative stabilities and allosteric transitions. Through specific contacts, specific ligands can bias signaling in proteins, for example, in receptor tyrosine kinases (RTKs) toward specific phosphorylation sites and cell signaling activation. Thus, rather than the two – active and inactive – states, and a single pathway, we consider multiple states and favored pathways. This allows us to consider biased allosteric switches among minor, invisible states and observable outcomes. Within this framework, we further consider signaling strength and duration as key determinants of cell fate: If weak and sustained, it may induce differentiation; If bursts of strong and short, proliferation.

Information on registered primary healthcare diagnoses from the Register of Primary Health Care Visits (RPV) is used to allocate healthcare funding in Finland. Our aim was to analyse the diagnosis rate trajectories in the RPV and, through that, assess the equitable development of funding. We extracted national- and regional-level diagnosis numbers from the RPV. Joinpoint regression analysis with Model 1 (overall trend) and Model 2 (potential changes in trend) was used to assess diagnosis rate trajectories from 2018 to 2024. Model 1 demonstrated that the number of registered primary healthcare diagnoses has increased between 2018 and 2024, but the growth has not been uniform across all trajectories. Model 2 showed significant differences in the diagnosis rate trajectories between regions and diagnostic groups. There were significant discrepancies in the registration of primary care diagnoses. Reducing these discrepancies by standardizing diagnosis registration practices is necessary to ensure equitable healthcare funding.

Effective public health decision-making relies on rigorous evidence synthesis and transparent processes to facilitate its use. However, existing methods guidance has primarily been developed within clinical medicine and may not sufficiently address the complexities of public health, such as population-level considerations, multiple evidence streams, and time-sensitive decision-making. This work contributes to the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control initiative on methods guidance development for evidence synthesis and evidence-based public health advice by systematically identifying and mapping guidance from health and health-related disciplines.

Structured searches were conducted across multiple scientific databases and websites of key institutions, followed by screening and data coding. Of the 17,386 records identified, 247 documents were classified as ‘guidance products’ providing a set of principles or recommendations on the overall process of developing evidence synthesis and evidence-based advice. While many were classified as ‘generic’ in scope, a majority originated from clinical medicine and focused on systematic reviews of intervention effects. Only 41 documents explicitly addressed public health. Key gaps included approaches for rapid evidence synthesis and decision-making and methods for synthesising evidence from laboratory research, disease burden, and prevalence studies.

The findings highlight a need for methodological development that aligns with the realities of public health practice, particularly in emergency contexts. This review provides a key repository for methodologists, researchers, and decision-makers in public health, as well as clinical medicine and health care in Europe and worldwide, supporting the evolution of more inclusive and adaptable approaches to public health evidence synthesis and decision-making.

In this article, we identify the comics of the Real Cost of Prisons Project as graphic memory work that denaturalises ‘penal common sense’ and engages in graphic witnessing. To show how the United States’ ‘crime problem’ established a seemingly natural link between crime and incarceration, we first review the criminological aspects of American comics memory. Then, we demonstrate how The Real Cost of Prisons Comix reworks the historical and social dynamics of the American carceral regime through its abolitionist framework. We discuss the importance of the image–text form for abolitionist pedagogy by reflecting on the position of comics in carceral textual cultures and the use of these comics in activist education. Finally, we emphasise that the comics created by the Real Cost of Prisons Project should be understood as pedagogical tools in a broader abolitionist movement whereby the historical and social education initiated by memory work aims to ignite collaborative praxis. In this sense, we show that their activist memory work is a means to demystify the historical processes of carceral expansion, enabling its audience to develop historical consciousness.

This article concerns a ‘craze’ for the tango that dominated Paris from 1911 to 1914. The dance floor of the amusement park Magic-City was one of the most elite venues in the city, and a significant site of the transformations to tango culture that took place. The Parisian tango, as exemplified by music composed by Magic-City affiliates René André and Camille de Rhynal, fit into specifically French notions of cosmopolitanism and aligned the dance with the idealized urban woman, referred to in advertisements, fiction, and the press as la Parisienne. At venues such as Magic-City, the tango was shaped into a form that suited middle- and upper-class French urban life and is reflective of ‘cosmopolitan modernity’, a concept borrowed from cultural theorist Mica Nava.

Literary scholars’ expertise is founded on knowledge of a small collection of texts, below which lies the vast realm of archived but long-forgotten literature that Margaret Cohen has called the “Great Unread.” Cohen’s account frames the Great Unread as the exclusive domain of highly trained specialists, while students are, for pragmatic reasons, taught to close-read the established canonical texts. This article argues that there is great value in facilitating the engagement of newcomers with the Great Unread, and in particular, the Global Great Unread. Within a course I created and taught at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, I guided undergraduates through exploring the Great Unread of nineteenth-century global periodicals, selecting a short story of interest and creating a digital edition to reintroduce the story to a present-day audience. In crafting editorial materials of various kinds, students independently studied and wrote about global contexts ranging from the linguistic to the cultural to the geopolitical. After the course was complete, students could choose to have their edition published on a website and thus actually become available to a public readership beyond the classroom. Through such initiatives, we can expand our understanding of the ways in which literary scholars and literary study can be valuable to publics on a global scale.

Planamandibulus nevadensis n. gen n. sp. is a newly discovered exceptionally preserved Laurentian phosphatocopid crustacean described from the upper Windfall Formation (Furongian, Stage 10) in Nevada. Planamandibulus nevadensis has closest affinity with the Baltic and Avalonian taxon Cyclotron. Its occurrence in sedimentary facies associated with dysoxia on the Laurentian paleocontinent fills in a gap in the global distribution of phosphatocopid crustaceans, facilitating a paleoenvironmental synthesis of this Cambrian group. We assess 75 taxa from nine paleocontinental areas spanning Cambrian stages 3 to 10 (~521–486.9 Ma). Comparison of these data with paleoclimate model simulations suggests that phosphatocopid distribution is explained partly by biogeography and ocean temperature patterns. Dabashanella species (e.g., D. hemicyclica Huo et al., 1983) are found across the low paleolatitude (<35°) paleocontinents of East Gondwanan (Australia), South China, and the central Asian terranes, spanning marine shelf carbonates to deeper marine black shale lithofacies, but are absent from mid- and high-paleolatitude sites, suggesting a warmer water preference. A similar warm-water preference is inferred for endemic taxa (e.g., Ulopsis, Parashergoldopsis) of East Gondwana, and perhaps for the newly described Laurentian Planamandibulus. By contrast, the mid- to high-paleolatitude paleocontinents Baltica and Avalonia are characterized by Veldotron, Cyclotron, Bidimorpha, Waldoria, Vestrogothia, Falites, and Trapezilites species, which occur in deep-shelf, cooler-water settings, typically below storm wave base. Hesslandona species sensu lato occur in mid-depth (likely above storm-wave base) warm tropical marine waters but are more typically found in deeper shelf and cooler waters in mid to high paleolatitudes. Phosphatocopids are also associated with sedimentary deposits characteristic of low environmental oxygen concentrations; this is emphasized by a peak in occurrences in the Guzhangian (Miaolingian) and Paibian (Furongian) stages, around the interval of the Steptoean Positive Carbon Isotope Excursion (SPICE) and its associated expansion of anoxic water masses onto shallow marine shelves. Our data compilation and data–model comparison support the environmental preference of phosphatocopids for low-oxygen, but not anoxic, water masses, and the new occurrence of Planamandibulus is consistent with this pattern.

UUID: http://zoobank.org/f136f8bf-1ccf-46b0-8980-b88be8f9603d

This article addresses cinematic remediations of literary works treating the Allied occupation of Naples: Liliana Cavani’s La pelle (1981) and Francesco Patierno’s Naples’44 (2016). Taking a memory studies approach, it surveys the corpus of cultural representations of the occupation and asks what the remediations studied contribute to the Italian cultural memory of the occupation. Analysis focuses on the diverse strategies deployed by the films to reshape the cultural memory of the occupation for their respective audiences. I argue that where Cavani’s remediation seeks to construct a feminist counter-memory of the Allied occupation, Patierno’s film betrays a contradictory impulse to both revive and lay the cultural memory to rest. I close by asking how successful the two films are in becoming meaningful ‘media of cultural memory’ (Erll 2010, 390) and what that may tell us about the place of the Allied occupation in Italian cultural memory at distinct historical junctures.

The German grain legume market is characterized by fragmentation and limited competition, restricting farmers’ market access and legume cultivation. The aim of this study is to analyze the current trader structure and optimize its configurations using k-means clustering. Results reveal a concentration of traders in southern and western Germany, while many farmers lack access to traders, even within a 100 km radius. A more competitive market can be achieved without increasing the number of traders, but by expanding their trading distance between farmers and dealers. Optimized site selection is of central importance in this context. Policy should create incentives – for example, by supporting digital platforms – that encourage farmers to engage with more traders through improved information and transparency, and conversely, motivate traders to expand their service radius via drop shipping.

We extend the theoretical framework of proof mining by establishing general logical metatheorems that allow for the extraction of the computational content of theorems with prima facie “noncomputational” proofs from probability theory, thereby unlocking a major branch of mathematics as a new area of application for these methods. Concretely, we first devise proof-theoretically tame logical systems that allow for the formalization of proofs involving algebras of sets together with probability contents, that is probability measures which are only assumed to be finitely additive. Based on these systems, we provide extensions for the tame treatment of Lebesgue integrals on probability contents as well as $\sigma $-algebras and associated probability measures, all via intensional approaches. All these systems are then shown to be amenable to proof-theoretic metatheorems in the style of proof mining which guarantee the extractability of effective and tame bounds from large classes of ineffective existence proofs in probability theory. Moreover, these extractable bounds are guaranteed to be highly uniform in the sense that they will be independent of all parameters relating to the underlying probability space, particularly regarding events or measures of them. As such, these results in particular provide the first logical explanation for the success and the observed uniformities of the previous ad hoc case studies of proof mining in these areas and further illustrate their extent. Lastly, we establish a general proof-theoretic transfer principle that allows for the lift of quantitative information on a relationship between different modes of convergence for sequences of real numbers to sequences of random variables.

The Easter 1916 rebellion occasioned significant civilian casualties. Having initially resisted the idea of compensating bereaved or injured civilians, the British government relented by establishing the Rebellion (Victims’) Committee (RVC) which assessed 550 compensation applications for death and injury. Utilizing these applications as well as Dublin Castle, Treasury, press, and parliamentary records, this article examines five aspects of the state’s treatment of civilian casualties: why the government’s initial opposition to compensation was eventually reversed; the establishment of the RVC, the bureaucratic compensation process, and the surveillance of working-class claimants; what the compensation claims reveal about the nature and circumstances of civilian casualties during the rebellion; how the Workmen’s Compensation Act (1906) was used to determine compensation awards and, consequently, how this minimized the state’s financial liabilities by treating civilian casualties not as victims of war but on a par with injured workers; and, lastly, why the workmen’s compensation legislation was an inadequate means of treating civilian war casualties. The RVC compensation records enable a unique case study of how the 1916 rebellion adversely affected the lives of ordinary men, women and children, and how the British state endeavoured to limit its obligations to make reparations to them.

This article theorizes the concept ‘ethnolinguistic infusion’ as a language socialization and language management practice. Infusion involves community members incorporating fragments of their group language, in which most members have little or no competence, in the context of a different dominant language, with the potential effect of fostering ideological links among the individual, group, and language. I explain the metaphor, enumerate several characteristics, and offer a categorization of different types of infusion. I contextualize ethnolinguistic infusion among related constructs in language contact, sociolinguistics, and linguistic anthropology, including translanguaging, postvernacularity, and metalinguistic communities, I explain its relationship to ethnolinguistic repertoire, and I distinguish it from out-group-initiated phenomena like crossing and mock language. I demonstrate how ethnolinguistic infusion plays out in my research on American Jewish summer camps. I offer empirical questions for future research, and I conclude by arguing for the utility of ethnolinguistic infusion, both for academic analysis and for language activism. (Language and ethnicity, heritage language, symbolic language, emblematic language, language and group identity, Hebrew, infusion, loanwords, language contact, translanguaging, metalinguistic community, postvernacularity, endangered languages, language reclamation, language revitalization)