Biological control programmes often involve releasing natural enemies to control pests that are mobile, patchily distributed, or both. Determining the optimal dispersion of release points for biological control agents is challenging, particularly when knowledge of prey locations is imprecise or information on agent dispersal capacity is lacking. Chrysoperla rufilabris Burmeister (Neuroptera: Chrysopidae) is a commercially available green lacewing species that is often released in the larval stage as an augmentative biological control in various agroecosystems. We characterised the dispersal capacity of C. rufilabris using approximately 5-minute laboratory assays and then used our laboratory data to simulate dispersal over increasing windows of time. Larvae crawled a median of 0.5 m per 5 minutes, corresponding to median (95% confidence interval) simulated dispersal distances (metres) of 2 (0.1–10.3), 12 (0.4–59.6), and 25 (2.2–107.1) within 1, 6, and 12 hours, respectively. Our simulations suggest that larval C. rufilabris should be physiologically capable of dispersing several metres in search of prey following their release, although field dispersal capacity and behaviour could differ markedly from our laboratory observations. These findings will help to inform the dispersion of release points and underscore the ability of larval lacewings to move long distances after shipment.

Ice islands, massive tabular icebergs, are known to fracture as they drift. The footloose mechanism occurs when a large protuberance, known as a ram, develops along the submerged edge of the ice island and induces a buoyancy-driven bending stress. This study investigates the relationship between rams and footloose fracture using finite element models of ice islands with simulated underwater rams. Geospatial polygons of ice islands, derived from remote sensing imagery, were used to create three-dimensional shapes of ice islands at two thicknesses and with various ram sizes. Then, the location of maximum stress and fractures were predicted using finite element analysis (FEA) and the results were compared to remote sensing observations of the actual fractured pieces that calved from each of the 26 modelled ice islands. Accurate simulations of calving were achieved when a synthesized ram was placed along the ice island edge where the calving was observed. An empirical model was developed to predict the magnitude of stress from various ram sizes and shapes. The predictive ability of this empirical model suggests that ice island calving models can be improved and combined with drift forecasting models to help mitigate risks to offshore infrastructure and seafaring vessels.

Excrements are slippery objects of historical inquiry. They are seldom nominated, often tiptoed around. Excreta are only apparently trifling matters, yet they bear the traces of events that could not be otherwise observed. They demand consideration of the mundane and seemingly apolitical dimension of everyday life. They show up in archival trickles that, if followed up seriously, point to what political and economic histories may have swiped out of plain view. Excrements in 1859–69 Port Said convey that the Suez Canal Company may not have been at all that concerned or effective in its management of public hygiene in the encampments and towns sprouting along the canal. The Egyptian government was similarly unimpactful, but tried to tackle some of the issues confronting booming towns in Egypt and elsewhere: planning flaws, ‘miasmatic effluvia’, desertic and acquatic dumpsters and a seemingly ever-growing volume of and proximity to trash.

In this paper, we investigate asymmetric Nash bargaining in the context of proportional insurance contracts between a risk-averse insured and a risk-averse insurer, both seeking to enhance their expected utilities. We obtain a necessary and sufficient condition for the Pareto optimality of the status quo and derive the optimal Nash bargaining solution when the status quo is Pareto dominated. If the insured’s and the insurer’s risk preference exhibit decreasing absolute risk aversion and the insurer’s initial wealth decreases in the insurable risk in the sense of reversed hazard rate order, we show that both the optimal insurance coverage and the optimal insurance premium increase with the insured’s degree of risk aversion and the insurer’s bargaining power. If the insured’s risk preference further follows constant absolute risk aversion, we find that greater insurance coverage is induced as the insurer’s constant initial wealth increases.

There is a growing attention towards personalised digital health interventions such as health apps. These often depend on the collection of sensitive personal data, which users generally have limited control over. This work explores perspectives on data sharing and health apps in two different policy contexts, London and Hong Kong. Through this study, our goal is to generate insight about what digital health futures should look like and what needs to be done to achieve them. Using a survey based on a hypothetical health app, we considered a range of behavioural influences on personal health data sharing with the Capability, Opportunity, Motivation model of Behaviour (COM-B) to explore some of the key factors affecting the acceptability of data sharing. Results indicate that willingness to use health apps is influenced by users’ data literacy and control, comfort with sharing health and location data, existing health concerns, access to personalised health advice from a trusted source, and willingness to provide data access to specific parties. Gender is a statistically significant factor, as men are more willing to use health apps. Survey respondents in London are statistically more willing to use health apps than respondents in Hong Kong. Finally, we propose several policy approaches to address these factors, which include the co-creation of standards for using artificial intelligence (AI) to generate health advice, innovating app design and governance models that allow users to carefully control their data, and addressing concerns of gender-specific privacy risks and public trust in institutions dealing with data.

Drawing on extensive experience in training and supervising clinicians in enhanced cognitive behaviour therapy (CBT-E), we have identified ten prevalent misconceptions and communication gaps. These misunderstandings can impact the implementation of CBT-E and may potentially reduce its effectiveness. They include misconceptions regarding CBT-E’s flexibility, suitability for certain patient groups, real-world applicability, and alignment with anti-weight stigma principles. Such misunderstandings may make clinicians hesitant to recommend or deliver CBT-E appropriately. In the present paper, we address these misconceptions and gaps in communication and provide evidence-based guidance on CBT-E practice. We aim to enhance clinicians’ confidence in using CBT-E flexibly and appropriately, with the hope that this will improve its effectiveness.

Key learning aims

1. (1) Recognise common misconceptions and communication gaps about enhanced cognitive behaviour therapy (CBT-E) for eating disorders.

2. (2) Develop an understanding of how CBT-E can be implemented across diverse clinical settings and patient populations.

3. (3) Strengthen therapists’ confidence in delivering CBT-E flexibly while maintaining fidelity to its evidence-based framework.

A city must stand on stable ground for it to be a place of residence, sociability and peace. If so, the following is an exploration of how a city came to be in a wetland, with marshy ground, with an overflowing river, with stormy seas and with lowland liable to flooding. A wetland, the key ecology in what follows, was not easily urbanized. Indeed, in the late modern moment, taken in what follows simply as a shorthand to refer to the later nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, earth was dug, water was channelled, a river estuary was changed, reefs were affected, harbours were built and sea flow appeared to change. Yet, the manipulation of terrain of various kinds did not create a space which was a smooth site of connection and meeting for colonists and colonized. Rather, nature obstructed these fluid experiments of engineering in various ways. Simultaneously, the people who congregated at these sites forged new ways of considering their status in the ‘new imperial’ colony. The colonial reorganization of nature ran parallel with colonial attempts at arranging people; yet, both nature and people did not yield automatically to the hand of this new regime of modelling and segmenting environments in and around the sea and land.

The best strategy for getting away with lying is to lie small by only deviating from the truth as much as is necessary to achieve the intended deception. Why then do some demagogues lie big? One set of views has it that the only difference between small and big lies concerns the size of their contents. They claim that the purpose of big lies is the formation of false beliefs in their literal contents via counterfactual reasoning, conspiracy theories, or the illusory truth effect. The negative part of this paper questions these accounts. The positive part proposes a different explanation for why demagogues use big lies and argues that big lies may serve three distinct purposes for demagogues: they reinforce their supporters’ deeply held beliefs, test the loyalty of their close followers, or publicly demonstrate the demagogue’s power. For a big lie to serve these purposes, genuine belief in the lie is not required – in fact, few are likely to believe it. What matters is that the demagogue’s supporters publicly endorse the lie. We contend that they do so, either because they interpret them as motivational statements or use them to express or justify their shared emotions or convictions.

People use advance directives to express preferences that direct their future care when they lack decision-making capacity. One form of advance directive, a “dementia directive,” records preferences about living in various stages of dementia. This is important because many Americans want to avoid living with advanced progressive dementia. Unfortunately, traditional advance directives cannot dependably achieve this goal. In contrast, some dementia directives can achieve this goal, by directing cessation of manually assisted feeding and drinking.

While many dementia directives have been published, most have gaps and omissions that thwart the goal of avoiding extended intolerable life in advanced dementia. To overcome these problems, we formulated a new dementia directive. This article explains the value of this new directive. We proceed in six stages. First, we review the prevalence of advanced dementia. Second, we identify the disadvantages of another option for accomplishing the goal of not living into advanced dementia, preemptive VSED. Third, we distinguish notable court cases where dementia directives were unsuccessful. Fourth, we review nine prominent dementia directives, noting how the Northwest Justice Project’s Advance Directive for VSED remedies those shortcomings. Fifth, we review this directive’s legal status. Sixth, we articulate its ethical justification.

This paper examines the role of big business as the linchpin of late colonialism in Rhodesia (colonial Zimbabwe) during its Unilateral Declaration of Independence (UDI) years between 1966 and 1979. After Rhodesia’s rebellion against Britain in 1965, London and the world, through the United Nations, responded by imposing sanctions against Salisbury, hoping to bring it to legality quickly. However, Rhodesia survived the expected impact of sanctions until its demise in 1979. Scholarship has accounted for this survival in various dimensions, emphasising the role of white solidarity/redoubt in the region, manipulation of the market and sanction busting or breach by friendly states and businesses. Regarding sanction busting, less accounted for are the other major sanction busters, except for well-known governments of Portugal, South Africa, and the USA, as well as British and South African oil firms. Using primary documents from British archives and intelligence work, this paper shows the specific companies that were the raison d’etre of late colonialism and the British government’s response and actions against these firms. The paper argues that by acting as conduits for Rhodesia’s access to international markets, British firms kept its economy going, thereby propping up and propelling the Rhodesian rebellion, paying and sustaining late colonial rule, and delaying the decolonisation of Rhodesia. The paper further shows the duplicity and indecisiveness of the British government in dealing with the Rhodesian problem, thus elongating settler rule. In doing so, the paper thus contributes to the historiography of the politics and economics of late colonialism and the role of business in decolonisation in Southern Africa.