Lycium barbarum by-products (LBPs), including residual branches, leaves and fruits generated during processing, are rich in bioactive compounds exhibiting antioxidant, anti-inflammatory and immunomodulatory properties. However, their efficient utilization remains limited. This study investigated the effects of fermentation duration on the chemical composition and bioactivity of LBPs. Anaerobic solid-state fermentation was conducted using a mixed microbial consortium of Bacillus subtilis PFK1702, Lactobacillus, and yeast for 0 (CON), 3 (F3) and 5 (F5) days. Fermentation significantly altered the nutritional composition of LBPs, increasing crude protein and total polyphenol contents while reducing crude fat and crude fiber levels (P < 0.05). Nontargeted metabolomics identified 16 flavonoid metabolites, including 6,7,8-tetrahydroxy-5-methoxyflavone, diosmetin, rhamnocitrin, hispidulin, nepetin, luteolin-7-O-glucoside (cynaroside) and others. Most flavonoid metabolites were upregulated in F3 and F5 compared with CON, with the highest accumulation observed after 5 days of fermentation. KEGG pathway enrichment analysis indicated that luteolin-7-O-glucoside (cynaroside) may participate in the flavonoid biosynthetic pathway of LBPs, although further experimental validation is needed. Overall, prolonged fermentation enhanced flavonoid biosynthesis and improved the nutritional and functional properties of LBPs, suggesting that a 5-day fermentation period is optimal. These results offer theoretical and practical insights into the valorization of LBPs as functional feed or natural antioxidant resources.

Coal balls are our primary source of information about Pennsylvanian tropical peat swamps. They capture plant community composition and the complex ecological interactions between coeval terrestrial arthropods and plants. A small number of borings (or feeding tunnels) have been documented in permineralized and compression fossils from the Carboniferous Period. We report two borings filled with coprolites (fecal material) in a coal ball originating from the Mt. Rorah Coal Member (Tradewater Formation; Middle Pennsylvanian of Illinois, USA). Peels of the coal ball were prepared using the cellulose acetate peel method and digitized with a Zeiss Axio Zoom V16 microscope. The borings, measuring 3 cm and 6 cm in length, follow the transverse margin of Psaronius roots and are filled with two distinct types of uniformly shaped coprolites: type 1, ranging from 0.5–2 mm in diameter, and type 2, <60 μm in diameter. Both coprolite types consist of digested Psaronius root tissue and only occur in borings, with no signs of feeding damage observed in the surrounding plant tissues along the margins of the borings or the peel. The dimensions of the borings and morphology of type 1 coprolites suggest they were made by an early roachoid, millipede, or another terrestrial arthropod group. The distribution and content of type 2 coprolites indicate coprophagy, or secondary feeding on type 1 coprolites, likely by oribatid mites. These borings provide new insight into the life history of the organisms that created these tunnels, their role in litter decomposition, and the food webs of Pennsylvanian peat swamps.

An agent’s epistemic prospects depend on a combination of that agent’s individual characteristics and features of that agent’s epistemic environment. Such factors cannot always be cleanly separated. Often, individual characteristics impact agents’ epistemic prospects by shaping the epistemic environments in which individuals find themselves. In particular, features of individuals often repel or attract certain sorts of information, a phenomenon I label epistemic magnetism. I argue that epistemic magnetism is a ubiquitous and underrecognized phenomenon that sometimes promotes and sometimes frustrates the achievement of positive epistemic outcomes. Then, I consider a series of simple proposals concerning what distinguishes between beneficial and harmful forms of epistemic magnetism. I argue that these proposals cannot capture the impacts of epistemic magnetism. Instead, I offer a series of principles that serve to roughly characterize the consequences of this phenomenon. I conclude with some remarks on why epistemologists have thus far tended to overlook epistemic magnetism.

We introduce semiframes (an algebraic structure) and investigate their duality with semitopologies (a topological one). Both semitopologies and semiframes are relatively recent developments, arising from a novel application of topological ideas to study decentralised computing systems. Semitopologies generalise topology by removing the condition that intersections of open sets are necessarily open. The motivation comes from identifying the notion of an actionable coalition in a distributed system – a set of participants with sufficient resources for its members to collaborate to take some action – with an open set, since just because two sets are actionable (have the resources to act) does not necessarily mean that their intersection is. We define notions of category and morphism and prove a categorical duality between (sober) semiframes and (spatial) semitopologies, and we investigate how key well-behavedness properties that are relevant to understanding decentralised systems transfer (or do not transfer) across the duality.

For $r\geq 3$ and $g= \frac {r(r+1)}{2}$, we study the Prym-Brill-Noether variety $V^r(C,\eta )$ associated to Prym curves $[C,\eta ]$. The locus $\mathcal {R}_g^r$ in $\mathcal {R}_g$ parametrizing Prym curves $(C, \eta )$ with nonempty $V^r(C,\eta )$ is a divisor. We compute some key coefficients of the class $[\overline {\mathcal {R}}_g^r]$ in $\mathrm {Pic}_{\mathbb {Q}}(\overline {\mathcal {R}}_g)$. Furthermore, we examine a strongly Brill-Noether divisor in $\overline {\mathcal {M}}_{g-1,2}$: we show its irreducibility and compute some of its coefficients in $\mathrm {Pic}_{\mathbb {Q}}(\overline {\mathcal {M}}_{g-1,2})$. As a consequence of our results, the moduli space $\mathcal {R}_{14,2}$ is of general type.

This paper explores the paradox of secularism in Chile’s 2022 constitutional proposal, celebrated as the “world’s most progressive” yet decisively rejected in a national referendum. The drafters sought to secularize Chile’s political institutions by curbing the influence of mainstream religions—above all, Catholicism—while simultaneously granting broad recognition and autonomy to Indigenous worldviews, including their spiritual and ritual dimensions. This dual strategy raises the question of whether the constitution merely substituted one religious framework for another under the guise of decolonial justice. To explain this apparent contradiction, the paper distinguishes between two axes of division: a first-order cleavage of oppressors vs. oppressed, which shaped the draft’s core commitments, and a secondary secular vs. religious cleavage, which played a subordinate role. The analysis concludes that Indigenous worldviews were embraced not as religious doctrines but as expressions of historically wronged communities deserving redress, whereas institutional religion was sidelined as a marker of colonial oppression. The paper contributes to debates on constitution-making and secularism in non-European contexts, illustrating how secular projects can entangle with alternative substantive doctrines in pursuit of historical justice.

Acute gastrointestinal infections (AGIs) can lead to significant morbidity and mortality. In diagnosing AGI, culture-independent diagnostic tests offer advantages over traditional methods and increase the chance of detecting multiple pathogens (co-detection). A retrospective analysis of data from a tertiary pediatric hospital was conducted to characterize occurrence of AGI co-detections and compare outcomes with patients who had only one AGI pathogen detected. Medical records were obtained for patients with stool samples tested using BioFire FilmArray GI Panel between 1 January 2016 and 31 December 2020. Data were described using descriptive statistics, correlation analysis, and logistic regression to identify risk factors and estimate co-detection rates. During the study period, 12,753 patients had a total of 17,159 stool samples tested. Of these, 8,212(47.9%) tested positive, with 6,040(73.6%) being single detections and 2,172(26.4%) being co-detections. Patients with single detection experienced higher hospitalization rates than patients with co-detection. Patients 1–4 years old exhibited the highest co-detection rate relative to other age groups, while Hispanic/Latino individuals were 1.75 times more likely to have co-detection than other races. This study emphasizes the significance of understanding pathogen interactions concerning clinical characteristics and epidemiology of AGI, and the necessity for effective diagnostic strategies and optimal healthcare resource allocation.

This study investigated how mental imagery is engaged during first language (L1) and second language (L2) speakers’ incremental sentence processing of English phrasal verbs, using a self-paced sensibility judgment task interleaved with schematic diagrams. L1 speakers showed selective compatibility effects modulated by abstractness, semantic transparency of phrasal verbs, event plausibility and the timing of visual input. In contrast, L2 learners relied more generally on visual support, reflecting weaker integration of semantic and perceptual cues. Learner-internal factors such as L2 proficiency and language dominance modulated learners’ sensitivity to integrate and resolve competing cues between semantic coherence and perceptual input. These findings support a simulation-based model of L2 comprehension, highlighting the developmental nature of sensorimotor activation in bilingual processing.

The aim of this review is to examine why cultural food security and cultural food sovereignty should be prioritised and embedded within conventional food security frameworks. It demonstrates how culturally grounded, community-driven approaches foster more just, sustainable and empowering food systems for ethnically diverse, Indigenous and local communities, while highlighting the limitations of conventional metrics that overlook socio-cultural, political and ecological dimensions essential to resilience. Conventional food security focuses on access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food, often sidelining access to culturally appropriate and spiritually meaningful foods that are integral to cultural identity and tradition (cultural food security) and the authority and decision-making power held by local people over their foodways (cultural food sovereignty). Its market-based, individualistic measurement paradigms further neglect collectivist, traditional and spiritual food values, resulting in assessments that may conform to global standards yet produce flawed outcomes, misaligned interventions and continued marginalisation of ethnically diverse, Indigenous and local communities. Drawing on socio-cultural, political, economic and environmental frameworks, the review demonstrates how food sovereignty and cultural food security provide more sustainable, equitable and empowering pathways for communities. It underscores the need for community-driven, culturally grounded food policies.

Object detection models, such as those in the YOLO family, are generally effective at identifying individual weeds, but their performance can be limited by occlusion of target structures in high-density scenes. These models are typically trained on images with low weed densities, where individual plants are clearly visible and easy to annotate, yet they are used in field conditions where areas of high density and dense vegetation may occur. Greenhouse experiments were conducted at the University of Florida, Wimauma, FL, to evaluate how purple nutsedge (Cyperus rotundus L.) density impacts the performance of a YOLOv8 model. A greenhouse density test dataset was developed by collecting 480 images of 12 densities ranging from 7 to 331 plants m−2, at transplant and at 3, 6, 10, and 17 d after transplanting. An independent dataset of 2,221 field and greenhouse images was used for the training of a YOLOv8 extra-large model to detect C. rotundus. A logistic sigmoidal model was fit to evaluate the F1 score as a function of increasing C. rotundus density at each data-collection time point. The F1 score showed sigmoidal relationships with density at all time points, exceeding 0.9 at low densities but dropping sharply to near 0 at the highest density and later time points. Performance decline was primarily driven by increased false negatives as density and occlusion increased, with minimal contribution from false positives, except at the highest densities. Density thresholds for optimal performance (F1 ≥ 0.90) decreased from 157 to 86 plants m−2 as canopy coverage increased, while marginal performance (F1 = 0.50) dropped from 322 to 140 plants m−2. Our findings suggest that object detection models for C. rotundus are strongly influenced by increased occlusion and morphological changes resulting from greater plant proximity and canopy coverage in high-density scenes.

This systematic review and meta-analyses provide the first synthesis of the literature on trait mindfulness and psychotic-like experiences (PLEs). Theoretical models suggest a protective function of mindfulness and it is important to understand any potential role of mindfulness in the prevention and treatment of PLEs. We examined the following: (1) What is the relationship between trait mindfulness and PLEs in nonclinical populations?; and (2) What is the effect of mindfulness-based interventions (MBIs) on PLEs in nonclinical populations? Five databases were searched, and effect sizes were extracted for each study. Seventeen papers were included in the review. Eleven papers explored the relationship between mindfulness and PLEs, and the meta-regression found a small negative association between PLEs and mindfulness (k = 8; pooled correlation r = −0.25; 95% confidence interval [CI]: −0.37, −0.13, p < .001). Eight studies investigated the effect of MBIs on PLEs and the summary effect was not significant in the meta-analysis (k = 5; pooled standard mean difference = .09; 95% CI: −0.61, 0.79, p = 0.80). Overall, the findings suggest that higher levels of mindfulness are associated with reduced PLEs, with no evidence for the effectiveness of MBIs in reducing PLEs. Findings should be interpreted cautiously given the small number of studies and high heterogeneity in the meta-analyses. Future studies are needed to determine whether MBIs might prevent the transition to psychosis or an at-risk mental state and might usefully measure a broader range of clinically relevant outcomes.

We study the homological stability of spin mapping class groups of surfaces and of quadratic symplectic groups using cellular $E_2$-algebras. We get improvements in their stability results, which for the spin mapping class groups we show to be optimal away from the prime $2$. We also prove that in both cases the $\mathbb {F}_2$-homology satisfies secondary homological stability. Finally, we give full descriptions of the first homology groups of the spin mapping class groups and of the quadratic symplectic groups.

The relationship between the European Court of Human Rights and the ideal of democracy is a complex one: Convention states tend to understand it in terms of the supremacy of national democratic arrangements, whereas the Court has conceived of the relationship in more substantive procedural terms involving Convention rights as interpreted and promoted by the Court. In recent political debates the ideal of democracy has been instrumentalized to attack the authority of the Court based on the former understanding, such that its contribution to democratic ideals has become muted. Against this background, this article seeks to rebalance political debates about the relationship between democracy and the ECtHR by clarifying ways in which we can understand the Court as playing a democratic role based on the republican democracy of Phillip Pettit. It highlights elements of Pettit’s republican democracy relevant to the Court and analyses features of the Court and its practice which can be understood as expressing those elements. In doing so it contributes to ongoing debates about the relationship between democracy and the Court with a view to protecting and promoting the ideal of democracy in an era in which it is increasingly under threat.

Scholars have shown that restrictive zoning is correlated with racial segregation, but we lack an understanding of why this occurs. I argue that the link operates through the clustering of housing costs generated by land use regulations. Using an agent-based model, I find that restrictive zoning produces racial segregation, but only when residents have homophilic preferences and unequal wealth. Then using a novel dataset of parcel-level zoning codes, I show neighborhoods that are restrictively zoned have higher home values, are less diverse, wealthier, and have more homeowners. Finally, I show that cities vary in the degree to which zoning regulations are geographically clustered. Collectively, these results indicate that land use regulations contribute to the maintenance of racial segregation across neighborhoods.