Amia Srinivasan is interviewed about her classic paper ‘The Aptness of Anger’, which challenges a common response to those who express anger at injustice: that their anger is counterproductive.

This small project was initiated to create a broader understanding of the working properties of sarsen and its challenges. This notoriously durable coarse-grained sandstone is most familiarly associated with the Phase 3 monument at Stonehenge, Wiltshire, although its exploitation persisted into the twentieth century. Discussion has focused on the probable methods employed in prehistory to work the stone: splitting, flaking and pecking. These techniques have rarely been applied in practice, but have been considered broadly in this project. The preliminary results, obtained from a single block of saccharoidal sarsen, have reawakened understanding and appreciation of the potential provided by shock waves to split and shape this intractable silicate successfully and repeatedly using direct percussion, techniques that were familiar to Neolithic communities to work flint. The flaking properties of the stone are considered together with attributes of hammer mode in comparison with data from prehistoric stone assemblages at Stonehenge. The discussion questions to what extent flaking could be controlled repeatedly to form a major part of monolith production. Results derived from the laborious nature of pecking supplement previous attempts to recreate dressed surfaces at Stonehenge. Efficiency was not improved by applying heat to the surface of the stone; indeed, it confirmed that uncontrolled, excessive heat shatters the structure of sarsen, rendering it unworkable.

This article explores how water conditions in geographical contexts could influence the construction of teachers’ professional identities and, consequently, their knowledge and beliefs about water sustainability. Water sustainability is defined as the responsible management of water from a perspective that integrates environmental, social and economic sustainability principles. This quantitative study employed an ad hoc questionnaire, inspired by the New Water Culture principles as a conceptual sustainability framework. The instrument, designed with Google Forms, was administered to 221 secondary school teachers from two cities with contrasting water and cultural conditions: Bogotá (Colombia) and Melilla (Spain). Results indicate that teachers’ knowledge and beliefs in both cities are not aligned with water sustainability principles, with no significant differences between the two groups due to their different water conditions. However, there are partial differences related to the respective personal experiences: in Bogotá, teachers show greater concern for water quality, whereas in Melilla the focus is more on the quantity available. These findings underline the importance of promoting teachers’ professional development in water sustainability aligned with professional identities, as a key strategy for nurturing aware and engaged citizens. This approach is fundamental to tackle water stress challenges and foster a paradigm shift towards more responsible, sustainable lifestyles globally.

This paper discusses Roman Jakobson’s concept of metonymy as a form of theatre and performance historiography. Following traces of elephants in Europe during the early modern period, the paper suggests that these fragmentary documents – be they textual, visual or material – do not align with a grand récit but hint at multiple layers of cultural negotiation, concerning questions of ontology, anthropology, politics and even technology. The proverbial ‘elephant in the room’ is a provocation to reflect on these larger categories, while its cultural impact is firmly grounded in its theatrical and performative qualities. Drawing on the paradigm of critical media history, fragmentary and scattered documents become legible as part of a larger process of cultural formation.

This article attempts to map some of Vietnam’s national identities that were constructed in the early twentieth century (1900s-1930s). Instead of treating Vietnamese national identity either as a monolithic entity or as too fragmented to be considered a useful concept, it shows that at least three interactive and overlapping national identities emerged, each with its own political significance and state institutionalisation. To map them, this article re-traces several key nationalists in the early twentieth century. It situates each of their national imaginations within interconnected global relations, namely, Civilisational relations of hierarchy, cultural relations of equality, and radical relations of exploitation and oppression. This analytical approach to mapping national identity offers a framework that may prove valuable for cross-national comparative studies.

The smallest eigenvalue of a graph is the smallest eigenvalue of its adjacency matrix. We show that the family of graphs with smallest eigenvalue at least $-\lambda $ can be defined by a finite set of forbidden induced subgraphs if and only if $\lambda < \lambda ^*$, where $\lambda ^* = \rho ^{1/2} + \rho ^{-1/2} \approx 2.01980$, and $\rho $ is the unique real root of $x^3 = x + 1$. This resolves a question raised by Bussemaker and Neumaier. As a byproduct, we find all the limit points of smallest eigenvalues of graphs, supplementing Hoffman’s work on those limit points in $[-2, \infty )$.

We also prove that the same conclusion about forbidden subgraph characterization holds for signed graphs. Our impetus for the study of signed graphs is to determine the maximum cardinality of a spherical two-distance set with two fixed angles (one acute and one obtuse) in high dimensions. Denote by $N_{\alpha , \beta }(d)$ the maximum number of unit vectors in $\mathbb {R}^d$ where all pairwise inner products lie in $\{\alpha , \beta \}$ with $-1 \le \beta < 0 \le \alpha < 1$. Very recently Jiang, Tidor, Yao, Zhang, and Zhao determined the limit of $N_{\alpha , \beta }(d)/d$ as $d\to \infty $ when $\alpha + 2\beta < 0$ or $(1-\alpha )/(\alpha -\beta ) \in \{1,\sqrt 2,\sqrt 3\}$, and they proposed a conjecture on the limit in terms of eigenvalue multiplicities of signed graphs. We establish their conjecture whenever $(1-\alpha )/(\alpha - \beta ) < \lambda ^*$.

Expectations about election outcomes shape voter behavior, yet little research has examined how expectations regarding the post-election formateur influence voting decisions. This study examines the conditions under which voters engage in formateur optimization – strategically supporting parties with a realistic chance of forming the government rather than their most preferred party. We argue that while formateur uncertainty plays a key role, its effect depends on voters’ preferences regarding their most preferred party and their preferred formateur. Using modules 1–5 of the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems (CSES) and German pre-election surveys (1998–2021), we find that formateur optimization is more likely in tightly contested elections. However, our results also show that voters’ preferences moderate the effect of formateur uncertainty: formateur optimization remains low even under high uncertainty when voters strongly favor a non-formateur party over the formateur’s party. Furthermore, we find that voters who expect their preferred formateur candidate to lose behave similarly to those uncertain about the outcome – and still engage in formateur optimization. These findings highlight the interplay between expectations and preferences in shaping voting decisions in coalition systems, offering new insights into voter calculations in multiparty democracies.

Cinco do Oriente is Timor-Leste’s most famous band. It was active for a relatively short period (1972 to 1975) and mainly performed songs made famous by Western groups. Yet Cinco do Oriente is praised today as a pioneer of the local music scene. The band was definitely popular, but it was not the only one performing at the time, and it was not the first. It is argued here that Cinco do Oriente has become a legend, not because of its music, but as a symbol of the resistance movement against Indonesia. This is because three of its members are believed to have been killed by the Indonesian military due to alleged revolutionary activities. This is discussed referencing various popular culture theorists. The article also examines the development of other bands of the era, Portuguese and Indonesian cultural missions in Timor, the Indonesian invasion and occupation, and other matters.

This article reflects upon the nature of ornamentation and how it applies within my recent works, Passacaglia (2021), Tor (2022), Fourteen transcriptions from across the plane (plain) (2023), and Through Gates Unseen (2023). I express ornamentation as a multifaceted set of activities which include the figurative, behavioural, layered and architectural. These components broadly move from the smallest sound unit to that of macro-level concerns. I argue that this behavioural aspect of ornamentation is exemplified by states of transition, density, kinetic energy, articulation and the organic. Here, ornamentation is used to distort and destabilise, as a vehicle for modulation, and as a framework for exploratory play between global and local-level details.

In this article, we report new marine reservoir age correction (ΔR) values from the Marine20 calibration for the Penghu Islands in the Taiwan Strait over the past 6700 cal BP, derived from 14C and U-Th ages of Holocene corals. Since secondary calcite from diagenetic processes can influence coral 14C ages, we developed a pretreatment protocol that ensures low calcite content (<1%, 0.8±0.2%) using a combination of thorough physical cleaning and repeated XRD measurements. We compare our new measurements with published ΔR values from the region, recalculated to conform to the Marine20 dataset. The results show larger temporal variation (∼300 yr) in ΔR from 5500 to 6700 cal BP for the Penghu Islands and ∼400 yr variability at several SCS sites from 5500 to 8200 cal BP. Relatively smaller ΔR variability is observed from 0–5500 cal BP: ∼220 yr in the Penghu Islands and ∼320 yr for South China Sea sites. The weighted mean ΔR value of –155±59 14C yr for the past 5500 cal BP is determined as the marine reservoir age correction around Taiwan and northeastern SCS, and this value is consistent with modern values inherited from the North Equatorial Current, the upstream source of the Kuroshio Current that feeds the northeastern SCS and the Taiwan Strait.

This study identifies, introduces and joins up the long lives of the geographically dispersed fragments that exist of the famed and fabled Stone of Scone/Destiny, used in inauguration and coronation of Scottish, English and British monarchs since medieval times. Based on an interdisciplinary approach that combines material culture studies and ethnographic methods, it characterises the networks in which the fragments have lived and considers what work these fragments were and are doing. It asks what difference fragmentation and the existence of fragments makes to our contemporary understanding of the meaning, values and significance of the Stone. The Stone and its considerable fragmentation evoke specific procedural and curatorial issues that invite wider reflection on the nature and role of fragments, and about private collections and their afterlives. Through the life of pieces, the study suggests, we can better understand what role social value could and should be playing in our museum and heritage practices.

The present study addressed the influence of lithological variability on hydrothermal alteration processes in the Çubuk region of Ankara, recognized globally for its agate occurrences. The objective was to clarify how differing host rocks, tuff and ignimbrite in Karadana, and perlitic units in Yukarıemirler, affect secondary mineral formation and alteration pathways. A combination of mineralogical (X-ray diffraction, Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy, field-emission scanning electron microscopy) and geochemical (energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy, whole-rock geochemistry, δ18O–δD) methods was utilized to characterize alteration assemblages and fluid conditions. The alteration sequence progressed through five stages, beginning with unaltered volcanic rocks. In the second stage, smectite-group clays, particularly montmorillonite, were formed under mildly alkaline and low-temperature conditions (pH 7.5–9.0; T 43–50°C). This initial clay formation was followed by zeolitization along two distinct pathways: clinoptilolite crystallized (K-rich, Si/Al ~4.2) in the Karadana tuff–ignimbrite units, while heulandite formed (Ca-rich, Si/Al ~2.7) in the perlitic host rocks of Yukarıemirler. These variations are attributed to differences in host-rock composition, permeability, and hydrothermal fluid chemistry. In more advanced stages, mordenite and chabazite precipitated under progressively higher pH and temperature conditions (pH 9.5–10.0; T 70–80°C). In the final stage, opal–quartz formed due to silica supersaturation triggered by a drop in pH, despite rising temperatures (pH ~8.5–9.0; T ~250°C). The paragenetic sequence confirms that clay mineral formation preceded zeolitization in both zones. Variations in zeolite types reflect strong lithological and hydrochemical controls, as well as the origin of the hydrothermal fluids; clinoptilolite formation in Karadana is associated with Na- and K-rich supergene fluids, while Ca-rich hypogene fluids promoted heulandite precipitation in Yukarıemirler. This study presents the first detailed paragenetic model for zeolite–clay alteration in the Çubuk volcanic system and offers new insights into post-caldera hydrothermal evolution in Central Anatolia.

In this paper, we present two corpus-based case studies which cast doubt on the postulation of a distinction between complements and modifiers in pre-head position in the English noun phrase. Based on examples such as medical student, the paper focuses on ordering patterns as an easily observable criterion, rather than more difficult or less reliable criteria such as anaphoric replacement or stress patterns. The conclusion is that the pre-head dependents treated as complements in, for example, the Cambridge Grammar of the English Language (Huddleston & Pullum et al. 2002), should rather be treated as type-dependents. This conclusion, at least as far as ordering patterns are concerned, is in line with the postulation of a “classifier” function in approaches to English noun phrases such as Feist (2009).

Patient interviews suggest there is a difference in surgical drain management after hospital discharge among patients who developed surgical site infection (SSI) compared to those without an SSI. Based on our findings, postoperative drain care instruction was revised with the goal of improving compliance with management of this device.