In 1934 C.V. Raman, Nobel Prize laureate in physics, founded the Indian Academy of Sciences in an attempt to create a single unified national scientific society for India. Instead, due to actions of Raman, the Royal Society and other British and Indian scientists, three distinct Indian science academies emerged and have persisted to the present day. Taking place against a background of British imperialism, Indian nationalism and scientific internationalism, Raman’s actions provide a fascinating case study of scientific production and the shaping of scientific networks in (British) India. This paper scrutinizes this hitherto unexplored late imperial stage of the Indian scientific landscape and highlights the versatile role of British imperialism in influencing the founding and functioning of the Indian Academy of Sciences under Raman. The latter’s national and international career and leadership testify to a complex relationship where the personal and the political became intertwined with science in (British) India.

We develop a representation theory of categories as a means to explore characteristic structures in algebra. Characteristic structures play a critical role in isomorphism testing of groups and algebras, and their construction and description often rely on specific knowledge of the parent object and its automorphisms. In many cases, questions of reproducibility and comparison arise. Here we present a categorical framework that addresses these questions. We prove that every characteristic structure is the image of a functor equipped with a natural transformation. This shifts the local description in the parent object to a global one in the ambient category. Through constructions in representation theory, such as tensor products, we can combine characteristic structure across multiple categories. Our results are constructive and stated in the language of a constructive type theory which facilitates their implementation in proof checkers.

The dynamics of information diffusion on social media platforms vary significantly between individual communities and the broader population. This study explores and compares the differences between community-based interventions and population-wide approaches in adjusting the spread of information. We first examine the temporal dynamics of social media groups, assessing their behavior through metrics such as time-dependent posts and retweets. Using functional data analysis, we investigate Twitter activities related to incidents such as the Skripal/Novichok case. We present three ways to quantify disparities between communities and uncover the strategies used by each group to promote specific narratives. We then compare the impact of targeted, community-based interventions with that of broader, population-wide responses in shaping the diffusion of information. Through this analysis, we identify key differences in how communities engage with and amplify information, revealing distinct patterns in the diffusion process. Our findings provide a comparative framework for understanding the relative consequences of different intervention strategies, offering insights into how targeted and broad approaches influence public discourse across social media platforms.

What explains China’s decision to sign an alliance treaty with North Korea in 1961? The treaty was redundant to deter the United States and South Korea because China had credibly established its resolve and capability to defend North Korea after the outbreak of the Korean War in June 1950. The treaty even increased the risk of China’s entrapment in a Korean conflict. This article develops a triangular theory of alliance formation to show that China’s signing of the treaty was intended to drive a wedge between North Korea and the Soviet Union, not to deter South Korea and the United States. China was thus willing to incur more risk to neutralize North Korea from a pro-Soviet position. This article tests the theory by process tracing events in the China–North Korea–Soviet Union triangle from 1948 to 1961 with a plausibility probe of the China–North Vietnam–Soviet Union triangle from 1954 to 1965. The article concludes with implications for the contemporary China–North Korea–Russia bloc and the study of alliance politics in the Asian context.

This research examines occupants’ ability to detect lighting differences as a function of proximity to the illuminated area. By understanding how proximity influences light difference detection, energy-saving lighting design techniques can be developed that do not negatively impact the appearance of architectural interiors. The experiment examined vertical surface illumination, hypothesizing that vertical illuminance difference detection thresholds would increase with greater spatial separation from the observer, regardless of gaze conditions. Illuminance was selected as the accepted metric for assessing lighting, aligning with commonly used standards, such as the European Standard and the Australian/New Zealand Standard. Eighty participants viewed a 10.0 m × 2.4 m vertical wall with five sections using a five-alternative forced choice method to identify the dimmer section. Eight experimental conditions manipulated participant position and gaze, with each subject completing 10 trials for 20 lighting conditions. Participants’ ability to detect lighting differences was very poor for wall end portions, regardless of position or gaze. Results suggest vertical illuminance in temporarily unoccupied areas can be reduced by at least 10% without affecting perceived illumination quality. Greater reductions of 25% can be achieved in room corners. These findings provide a foundation for future research into illuminance optimization across all surfaces within architectural spaces.

As data are becoming increasingly important resources for municipal administrations in the context of urban development, formalization of urban data governance (DG) is considered a prerequisite to systematic municipal data practice for the common good. Unlike for larger cities, it is unclear how common such formalized DG is in rural districts and small towns. We therefore mapped the current status quo in small municipalities in Germany as a case exemplifying the broader phenomenon. We systematically searched online for policy documents on DG in all metropolitan regions, all rural districts, and a quota sample of nearly a sixth of all German small towns. We then performed content analysis of the identified documents along predefined categories of urban development. Results show that hardly any small towns dispose of relevant policy documents. Rural districts are somewhat more active in formally defining DG. Identified policy documents tend to address mostly economic activities, social infrastructure, and demography, whereas Housing and Urban design and public space are among the least mentioned categories of urban development.

Received scholarship by H.T. Huang and others has argued that the high incidence of lactose intolerance in East Asians discouraged the Chinese from adopting dairy on health grounds before the twentieth century. However, such wisdom overlooks Chinese medical literature that prescribes fresh dairy to treat chronic diarrhea. This essay considers what famed healer Sun Simiao (581–682) had to say about the uses of dairy products in treating digestive ailments. Towards this end, we consider the Essential Formulas Worth a Thousand Pieces of Gold for Emergencies (Beiji qianjin yaofang 備急千金要方) and the Supplemental Formulas Worth a Thousand Pieces of Gold (Qianjin yifang 千金翼方). We then compare the uses of dairy in the Sun corpus to both contemporary and earlier texts. Our analysis shows that Tang-dynasty (618–907) healers regarded milk products as generally good for the gut, and, in some cases, recommended using fresh dairy for cases of flux.