This article explores how memories of Muslim-Tibetan alliances predating Communist rule still shape social dynamics in Amdo. Based on ethnographic fieldwork in Northwest China, it analyzes narratives about relationships between Muslim Xidaotang merchants and Tibetan religious or secular institutions. These accounts reinterpret the past to make sense of present relationships, reshaping the meaning of historical interactions. The paper examines the emblematic case of the offering of a large cauldron to a Tibetan monastery – an act of alliance rooted in local conflict-resolution practices. This tradition of gift-giving is traced within a broader inter-institutional economy sustained by reciprocal hospitality and protection. The Tibetan designation of Xidaotang merchants as Chösoma (“new religion/teachings”) highlights the role of ethical reputation and technical skill in building trust. The paper concludes by examining the evolution of Xidaotang’s Tian Xing Long commercial label amid China’s ongoing economic reforms. The narratives reveal a trading culture grounded in moral valuation, shared responsibilities, and economic collaboration.

Fossil fuel companies no longer deny anthropogenic climate change in litigation, but they challenge the validity of climate science in establishing legal responsibility. Research on climate litigation, social movements, and legal mobilization has focused primarily on plaintiffs’ perspectives, showing how they use the judicial process as a site of knowledge production. This article shifts the focus onto defendants, conducting an analysis of scientific disputes in major climate change lawsuits and developing a typology grounded in both empirical analysis and theoretical insights for studying their arguments about science and evidence. Corporate defendants build evidentiary counter-narratives, challenge the substantive quality of plaintiffs’ claims, and contest the scientific integrity of compromising evidence. The future impact of such litigation will hinge on how courts evaluate climate research as legal evidence, and whether corporate defendants are successful in their efforts to reframe, undermine, and discredit the science.

What would it mean to build an archive not of texts or images, but of tastes, sounds, silences, and gestures, the fleeting traces through which memory takes shape? This essay proposes “taste archives” as a method within the public humanities for engaging communities around everyday acts of remembering and belonging. Beginning with chai as a personal anchor of migrant memory, I move outward to imagine a framework for archiving food-related stories and practices. The process unfolds in three movements: (1) gathering oral histories through food-centered conversations; (2) recording recipes, smells, tastes, and the sonic-material rhythms that accompany them; and (3) curating these into accessible, community-based collections, whether in libraries, cultural centers, or digital spaces. Along the way, I reflect on questions of consent, ownership, and the difficulty of translating sensory experience into archival form. “Taste archives,” I suggest, democratize heritage by placing ordinary rituals-meals, drinks, shared preparation at the center of cultural memory. By making the invisible histories of migration and daily life tangible and audible, the public humanities can reimagine the archive itself as something that can be sipped, smelled, and heard: a living practice of remembering together.

This paper proposes a method for reconstructing three-dimensional turbulent flows from sparse measurements without the need for ground truth data during training. A weight-sharing network is developed to infer the full flow fields from measurements of velocity sampled at three planes and boundary pressure at one additional plane, inspired by experimental configurations. The weight-sharing network shares identical parameters along homogeneous directions, which results in efficient data utilization and reduced computational memory requirements. First, we compare the weight-sharing network to the PC-DualConvNet, adapted from prior work, by reconstructing a 3D Kolmogorov flow from noise-free measurements with a snapshot-enforced loss. Both networks accurately recover time-averaged 3D flow fields and the correct energy spectrum up to wavenumber 10. The weight-sharing network has the ability to infer flow structures distant from measurement planes. Second, we carry out reconstruction from measurements corrupted with white noise (SNR 15) using a mean-enforced loss. We show that, for the weight-sharing network, validation sensor loss on unseen data decreases with training sensor loss—unlike PC-DualConvNet. This shows that the training sensor loss is a good estimate of the generalization error. The weight-sharing network offers good generalization, parameter efficiency, and hyperparameter robustness. The proposed method opens the possibility of three-dimensional flow reconstruction from experiments.

Populations of Paracentrotus lividus have been widely studied across their geographic range due to their key role as herbivores capable of transforming benthic communities. However, no comprehensive population assessment had previously been conducted in the Canary Islands. We carried out an extensive survey between 2006 and 2009 across five islands and the northern islets of Lanzarote, sampling both intertidal and subtidal habitats. Sea urchin abundance, algal composition, and physical variables were recorded to identify spatial patterns in population distribution. Macroalgal assemblages were grouped into functional categories: turf, Lobophora, brown erect algae, red bushy algae, and crustose corallines. Lobophora showed a strong negative relationship with P. lividus abundance, whereas brown erect algae were associated with the highest sea urchin densities. Island identity emerged as a major structuring factor, particularly in the subtidal, revealing a clear archipelagic gradient: populations were nearly absent in the westernmost island (El Hierro) and progressively more abundant toward the eastern islands. Wave exposure also significantly influenced abundance and size structure, although effects differed between habitats. In subtidal zones, P. lividus was more abundant in exposed areas, whereas intertidal densities peaked at intermediate exposure levels. At smaller spatial scales, substrates characterized by higher structural complexity and porosity supported greater sea urchin abundance. By integrating environmental drivers across spatial scales, this study highlights the combined influence of habitat structure, algal composition, and hydrodynamic conditions in shaping P. lividus distribution, providing a baseline for future management and conservation strategies in oceanic island systems.

A global increase in severe group A Streptococcus (GAS) infections has been reported following the COVID-19 pandemic, but data from Asia remain limited. We examined epidemiology and clinical characteristics of severe paediatric GAS infections across 86 Japanese hospitals, focusing on patients under 18 years of age, hospitalized between 1 January 2019 and 31 March 2024. Severe GAS infection was defined by the isolation of GAS from sterile sites, or from non-sterile sites under specific conditions, such as streptococcal toxic shock syndrome (STSS). A total of 83 cases were analysed. Cases increased from the summer of 2023, exceeding pre-pandemic levels. The median age was 4 (interquartile range: 1–8) years, with the highest number among 1-year-olds. No cases were reported in Hokkaido, northern Japan. Only 6% (5/83) of the cases had preceding GAS pharyngitis. Pneumonia was the most prevalent diagnosis (25%), with 76% of these cases being complicated by empyema, often necessitating intensive care or surgical intervention. Only 17% (14/83) of cases were reported as STSS in Japan’s national surveillance system. This study represents the first multicentre nationwide hospital-based investigation of severe paediatric GAS infections in Japan, identifying the recent increase in cases, thereby highlighting limitations of current STSS-based surveillance.