Marine heat waves (MHWs) are prolonged periods of elevated ocean temperatures that can devastate marine ecosystems, fisheries, and coastal communities. Skillfully predicting these events with sufficient lead time is crucial for mitigating their adverse effects. This study presents a probabilistic subseasonal MHW forecast tool using a U-Net-based neural network architecture, with a focus on the Northern Indian Ocean and the Arabian Sea. The model was trained using sea surface temperature and sea surface height reanalysis data. The U-Net-based forecast tool demonstrated significant predictive skill up to 10 weeks in advance across various deterministic and probabilistic skill metrics. The model outperformed persistence and climatology-based benchmarks, especially in the tropical warm pool. Future applications of explainable artificial intelligence (XAI) methods have the potential to identify the sources of predictive skill, inform understanding of underlying dynamics, and improve dynamic subseasonal to seasonal forecast models.

We present independent imaging analyses of Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) observations of the active galactic nuclei in radio galaxy Centaurus A and quasar 3C 279 using Generative Deep learning Image Reconstruction with Closure Terms (GenDIReCT), a recently developed machine-learning framework built on conditional diffusion models that uses interferometric closure invariants as primary observables. For Centaurus A, our reconstruction reveals two prominent emission ridges ($\simeq 80\,\unicode{x03BC}$as each) along the jet sheath with a brightness ratio of $1.4\pm 0.1$ and an opening angle of $12.3\pm 0.3$ deg. For 3C 279, we identify three distinct components in the image, with the southern jet ejecta on sub-parsec scale exhibiting a proper motion of $4.6\pm 1.0\,\unicode{x03BC}$as over $\approx 5.39$ d away from the northern components, corresponding to an apparent superluminal velocity of $\simeq 10\pm 2$ times light speed. These measurements are consistent with those reported by the EHT Collaboration. The results are significant because we demonstrate that: (1) imaging from interferometric aperture synthesis data, especially in VLBI and most acutely in extremely sparse arrays like the EHT, remains a severely ill-posed and challenging inverse problem, yet closure invariants preserve robust morphological information that can strongly constrain structural features, and (2) more importantly, closure-invariant imaging largely avoids calibration systematics, thus providing a fundamentally independent view of spatial structure with very high angular resolution. The generative nature of GenDIReCT further allows us to sample and characterise clusters of plausible image solutions for each dataset. As a calibration-independent, generative imaging approach, GenDIReCT offers a robust and truly independent blind-imaging tool for current and future VLBI experiments.

People with severe mental illness (SMI) die 10–20 years earlier than the general population, largely due to non-communicable diseases (NCDs) such as hypertension and diabetes and risk factors such as hypercholesterolaemia. This cross-sectional study gathered data from people with SMI from three national mental health institutions in South Asia. Data was collected based on the WHO Stepwise approach to NCD risk factor surveillance and the prevalence of screening, diagnosis and treatment for diabetes, hypertension, and hypercholesterolaemia was assessed. Logistic regression models assessed the associations of sociodemographic characteristics with NCD screening. Three thousand nine hundred and eighty nine participants were recruited. Screening prevalence varied by country and disease, with hypertension being the most commonly screened NCD (Bangladesh = 52.5% [50.0–55.1], India = 43.1% [40.3–45.9], Pakistan = 60.9% [58.2–63.5]), and cholesterol was the least common (Bangladesh = 4.1% [3.2–5.2], India = 14.8% [12.9–17.0], Pakistan = 9.6% [8.1–11.3]). Characteristics such as BMI, age and education level were positively associated with screening, and females were more likely to be screened than males. There are low levels of screening for NCDs among individuals with SMI accessing tertiary institutions in South Asia, with significant sociodemographic disparities. Standardised screening protocols tailored to South Asian populations could mitigate the increased risk of NCDs in this population.

We examine whether free-speech protections influence corporate environmental performance. Using the staggered enactment of U.S. anti-SLAPP statutes in a stacked difference-in-differences design from 1990 to 2019, we find that these laws significantly reduce firms’ toxic emissions without curbing economic activity. Anti-SLAPP enactments also promote environmental investment through green innovation, abatement spending, and waste reduction management, and strengthen governance via improved sustainability oversight, ESG-linked executive pay, employee training, and supply chain management. The effects are stronger when stakeholder monitoring is stronger and when managerial incentives embed sustainability goals. Overall, free-speech protections generate powerful environmental benefits.

Radio recombination line (RRL) maser is a useful tool to study massive star formation regions with ionised gas close to new born massive stars. Masers often show sharp line profiles and/or extreme narrow widths, and high brightness temperatures. However, RRL masers were rarely detected only in several sources. Here we report the detection of sharp line profiles of the RRL H29$\alpha$, which can be interpreted as maser candidates, in two sources within W49A, a mini-starburst region in our Galaxy. These observations, conducted with high resolution ($\sim0.03''$) using the Atacama Large Millimeter/sub-millimeter Array (ALMA), reveal high brightness temperatures up to $\sim$9 000 K for H29$\alpha$ emission in another two sources, which might also be regarded as maser candidates. Additionally, suggestions for efficiently identifying RRL maser candidates are also provided.

Epilepsy affects 50 million people worldwide and is frequently associated with memory impairment, contributing significantly to reduced quality of life. Memory difficulties are commonly reported across epilepsy syndromes and may coexist with anxiety, reduced self-esteem and social withdrawal. While temporal lobe epilepsy is often highlighted due to the crucial role of mesial temporal structures in memory processing, memory functions also rely on distributed neural networks extending beyond the temporal lobe. A common concern among patients with epilepsy, discussed during clinic visits, relates to memory deficits. They often inquire if these deficits are linked to anti-seizure medications (ASMs), controlled or uncontrolled epilepsy or the underlying cause of their condition. It is crucial for the treating physician to understand the types of memory, the brain structures and circuits involved and how epilepsy, ASMs, structural brain lesions and neuromodulatory interventions affect the processes of acquiring and encoding memory. In this paper, we provide a brief yet clinically relevant overview of memory and the factors contributing to memory deficits. This publication is intended for both general physicians and specialists who care for patients with epilepsy and other neurological disorders. While previous studies suggest that epilepsy can affect memory, other contributing factors must also be considered. This paper will explore the fundamentals of memory, the effects of brain lesions and how treatments such as ASMs, ablative procedures, resective epilepsy surgery and neuromodulatory devices influence these processes. It also discusses cognitive rehabilitation and strategies to help patients cope with memory deficits and highlights areas for future research.

This paper analyzes the economic impact of plant-parasitic nematodes in the U.S. potato industry, focusing on how both unanticipated and anticipated yield losses affect producer decisions, market outcomes, and welfare. We use a modified Cournot model and estimate a system of supply and demand equations using Three-Stage Least Squares (3SLS). We simulate scenarios to measure how varying levels of nematode infestation influence producer profits and consumer surplus in the short-run and the long-run. Simulations suggest that reducing nematode damage could yield substantial gains in output and consumer welfare particularly in concentrated markets where strategic producer behavior amplifies these effects. Our findings underscore the need to account for both biological uncertainty and market structure when evaluating pest impacts and designing policy responses.

In high-dimensional (HD) sparse linear regression, parameter selection and estimation are addressed using a constraint $l_0$ on the direction of the parameter vector. We begin by establishing a general result that identifies this direction through the leading generalized eigenspace of specific measurable matrices. Using this result, we propose a novel approach to the selection of the best subsets by solving an empirical generalized eigenvalue problem to estimate the direction of the HD parameter. We then introduce a new estimator based on the RIFLE algorithm, providing a non-asymptotic bound for the estimation risk, minimax convergence, and a central limit theorem. Simulations demonstrate the superiority of our method over existing $l_0$-constrained estimators.

This review essay critically examines three recent books on the digitalization and datafication of humanitarian action: #Help, Humanitarian Extractivism, and Technocolonialism. Each monograph offers a compelling analysis of the myriad ways that humanitarians’ use of digital technologies has reshaped governance and the international order, created new risks, and exacerbated power imbalances. Fundamentally, each book concludes that the various transformations technology has wrought in humanitarianism are, at best, unintended, inconsistent, or unfulfilled in their impact and, at worst, deeply problematic. Setting aside the books’ contributions, each leaves out two important elements. First, in selecting examples, the authors leave mostly unanswered the question of what, if any, positive impacts data and technology have had on or for humanitarian response and those whom it is intended to help. Second, each is mostly silent with regard to practical steps that can be taken to address its critiques, with only Technocolonialism offering three broad avenues for reform. In the context of the current crisis in the humanitarian sector, with the closure of USAID and dramatic declines in funding, there is a need for pragmatic options for the future that, by necessity, involve a creative reimagining of the digital infrastructures underpinning the humanitarian response.

The compactly supported $\mathbb {A}^1$-Euler characteristic, introduced by Hoyois and later refined by Levine and others, is an analogue in motivic homotopy theory of the classical Euler characteristic of complex topological manifolds. It is an invariant on the Grothendieck ring of varieties $\mathrm {K}_0(\mathrm {Var}_k)$ taking values in the Grothendieck-Witt ring $\mathrm {GW}(k)$ of the base field k. The former ring has a natural power structure induced by symmetric powers of varieties. In a recent preprint, the first author and Pál construct a power structure on $\mathrm {GW}(k)$ and show that the compactly supported $\mathbb {A}^1$-Euler characteristic respects these two power structures for $0$-dimensional varieties, or equivalently étale k-algebras. In this paper, we define the class $\mathrm {Sym}_k$ of symmetrisable varieties to be those varieties for which the compactly supported $\mathbb {A}^1$-Euler characteristic respects the power structures and study the algebraic properties of the subring $\mathrm {K}_0(\mathrm {Sym}_k)$ of symmetrisable varieties. We show that it includes all cellular varieties, and even linear varieties as introduced by Totaro. Moreover, we show that it includes non-linear varieties such as elliptic curves. As an application of our main result, we compute the compactly supported $\mathbb {A}^1$-Euler characteristics of symmetric powers of Grassmannians and certain del Pezzo surfaces.

Africa-West migration is on the increase. For many young Nigerians, emigration is a goal that must be achieved by any means possible, regardless of the realities in receiving countries. With exposure to new environments, migrants can identify with their home culture, assimilate the lifestyles of the host country, or find a middle ground. This study examined the patterns of self-identification among Nigerian migrants and their understanding of the complex concept of “immigrant integration.” The study explores the (dis)connections between migrants’ self-identification and their viewpoint of immigrant integration. The study analyzed thirty qualitative interviews with sixteen Nigerian migrants in the United States (US) and fourteen in the United Kingdom (UK). The study employed a thematic analysis approach and utilized NVivo (version 14) to manage the data, finding that most participants reported a stronger allegiance to Nigerian culture than to the host country, with their justifications primarily revolving around food, social life, and citizenship. Others identified fully with the host country, primarily because of unpleasant experiences in their country of origin. Using W. E. B. Du Bois’s concept of “double consciousness,” the study reveals that, despite an overwhelming identification with their country of origin, most participants conceived of immigrant integration as assimilation—a process of “sinking,” “learning,” “assimilating,” and “adopting” the culture of the host country. The study suggests that migrants’ identity and identification are inherently fluid. The disconnect between self-identification and the understanding of integration is attributed to the framing of immigrant integration by host governments and migrants’ urge for a positive migration experience in the host country.

First published in 1614, John Selden’s Titles of honor has long been ignored by historians of political thought. A large and compendious description of the various titles of Europe and the Near East; by its structure and tone, it resembles nothing more than a work of dusty antiquarianism. It attracted none of the controversy that would plague Selden’s Historie of tithes (1618); and it did not state its polemical purpose in such explicit terms as his Mare clausum (1635). If historians of political thought have remembered it at all, they have done so because Thomas Hobbes recommended the work in chapter 10 of Leviathan (1651). This article will treat Titles of honor as a work of political intention. Following Selden’s engagement with Roman Civil Law, it will argue that he composed the treatise to criticize sixteenth-century theories of resistance, and the medieval theories of divided sovereignty upon which they were founded. In short, this article will seek to reframe Titles of honor as a defence of state sovereignty against theories of noble resistance – and so explain Hobbes’s affection for the work.

Data-embedded instruments that couple sensing, modelling and sound production are increasingly used in electroacoustic practice, yet their ethical and cultural configurations remain under-analysed. This article develops an ethical-embodied framework for examining how particular data, sensing and mapping arrangements configure relations of care, listening and musical agency. Drawing on feminist and decolonial listening practices, disability and critical data studies and accounts of embodied instrumentality, it combines a selective genealogy of electroacoustic and globally situated practices with a mid-level comparative lens that treats its technical axes as heuristic rather than taxonomic. Case vignettes analyse works using gesture tracking, electromyography (EMG) and brain–computer interfaces (BCI), audience-sensing installations and machine-learning vocal systems, alongside the author’s own data-embedded instrument. Across these examples, the analysis shows how similar technologies can reproduce or contest institutional surveillance, extractivism and aesthetic normativity and outlines implications for the design, evaluation and teaching of data-mediated musical systems foregrounding situated listening and collective accountability.

A large body of literature examines the drivers of individual attitudes towards international trade policies. This article contributes to this literature by exploring the role of border regions across the European Union (EU). Border regions offer a unique context for examining trade attitudes. Residency in either EU, non-EU, or maritime borders generates differential impacts on individuals’ support for distinct trade policies. Focusing on attitudes towards import duties and EU trade agreements, this article demonstrates that individuals in non-EU borderlands and maritime border regions are particularly supportive of lowering import duties, whereas support for extra-EU trade agreements is largely uniform across regions, with only a modest positive tendency among maritime residents. Broader sentiment on trade shows limited regional differences, chiefly between EU-border and non-EU-border residents. Including a battery of control variables drawn from the literature, the article leverages individual-level data at the most fine-grained level available in the EU to explore these dynamics relying on several regression models. This article speaks to both the literature on trade attitudes and border studies by offering a conceptualization of borders that distinguishes between EU borders, non-EU borders, and maritime borders, each of which has distinct implications for individuals’ trade attitudes.

We present a detailed analysis of the Vela pulsar’s rotational behaviour using approximately 100 months of observational data spanning from September 2016 to January 2025, during which four glitches were identified. Here, we demonstrate the post-glitch recovery of these glitches within the framework of the vortex creep model. We further present the investigation of vortex residuals (the difference between observed values and those predicted by the vortex creep model) by interpreting them in the context of the vortex bending model. In addition, we report a positive correlation between the glitch magnitude and the time to the next glitch, applicable only for the large glitch events observed in the Vela pulsar. Furthermore, we estimate the braking index of the Vela pulsar to be 2.94 $\pm$ 0.55.