This article reconsiders prevailing assumptions of bureaucratic continuity in postwar Japan by examining the case of the Ministry of Communications during the Allied Occupation. While existing scholarship emphasizes institutional inertia, this study shows how structural reform and inter-institutional negotiations involving both American authority and Japanese agency reshaped parts of Japan’s administrative system. The case calls for a more differentiated, organization-focused perspective on postwar reforms and demonstrates that these transformations had enduring effects beyond 1952.

The global COVID-19 pandemic has changed how elected officials govern, campaign, and present themselves. One key change is that politicians across the world often wear face masks when in public. To what extent does this practice influence how the public perceives politicians? We investigate this question in Japan, a country where people – though not politicians – often wore face masks even before the novel coronavirus outbreak. Conducting a survey experiment with a nationally representative sample of about $1500$ Japanese residents, we find that masks do influence public perceptions and that women politicians lose more public support when wearing masks than men. Given the nature of political campaigns in the COVID-19 world, we think that our results have broad implications for women politicians competitiveness, specifically, and for politics and gender, more generally. We outline these in the conclusion along with several new research directions.

Shiga toxin-producing Escherichia coli (STEC) are zoonotic, foodborne pathogens that cause outbreaks of infectious gastrointestinal disease, including haemolytic uraemic syndrome (HUS) which can be fatal. In November 2023, a foodborne outbreak of STEC serotype O26:H11 stx2a/eae, involving 40 cases (54% female and 76% aged 0–9 years old), including 19 children with HUS. Whole-genome sequencing analysis revealed the outbreak strain was multidrug resistant and likely originated from outside the United Kingdom. Epidemiological analysis showed greatest odds of exposure among cases for consumption of a dried fruit product, predominantly in multi-packs. Batch numbers of the packs consumed by cases were rarely available, and where recorded, other packs in the same the batch were unavailable for testing; therefore, targeted microbiological testing was not possible. Fruit for drying can become contaminated when the crop is exposed to irrigation water or rainwater run off containing animal faeces. For STEC, where detection of the causative agent in food is challenging, we recommend establishing multi-source weight of evidence frameworks that promote the application of epidemiological and food chain evidence for public health action and the expansion of global surveillance networks to enhance the detection of foodborne threats at home and abroad.

Spatial studies of British Victorian cities have been historically limited either in scope or specificity due to the unwieldiness of census data. However, over the last decade, the digitization of historical source material has created new possibilities for the exploration of geodemographic patterns. For the case of Manchester, the “shock city” of the British Industrial Revolution, these advancements are especially pertinent in order to settle long-standing debates as to the extent of segregation in the city. This article presents a method for the highly granular georeferencing of census data for the Manchester Township for the second half of the nineteenth century by drawing on historical material, including geographic and commercial surveys. Linking households to specific buildings presents increased possibilities for studies of heterogeneity and neighborhood patterns at a micro-scale. This approach ultimately lays the groundwork for future revisitations of nineteenth-century cities and the traditional claims that have been made around their urban dynamics.

Hyman Minsky stands as one of the most influential economists of the twentieth century. His contributions to macroeconomic theory are primarily situated within the post-Keynesian tradition. This paper provides a concise overview of the fundamental elements of Minsky’s theoretical framework, focusing on his principal insights, the financial instability hypothesis, and its broader implications. Although Minsky developed his theory predominantly during the 1980s, it remained largely overlooked until the emergence of the global financial crisis in 2008. The present study seeks to evaluate the socioeconomic conditions and prevailing perceptions during the intervening period that contributed to the marginalisation and underappreciation of Minsky’s approach and policy recommendations. In so doing, the paper critically analyses several potential explanations for the relative neglect of his theoretical contributions.

This paper investigates the causal effects of sovereign debt crises in a sample of 50 defaulting economies between 1870 and 2010. As default is potentially endogenous, we use the narrative approach to identify plausibly exogenous episodes. We find economically and statistically significant costs of up to 3.2 percent of GDP before recovering to the pre-crisis level after five years. The average aftermath, however, conceals a large heterogeneity by default cause. Defaults originating from negative supply shocks, political crises, or adverse terms of trade are associated with higher costs. Demand shocks, in contrast, have a moderate effect that is quickly reversed.

Depictions of numeracy among non-Europeans were a prominent feature of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Anglo-European travel writing, but remain largely overlooked in the extensive scholarship on travel, knowledge, and empire. This article shifts attention from traditionally ‘scientific’ forms of numeracy such as mathematics and astronomy towards more fundamental counting, calculation, and communication skills, to examine the way in which mutually reinforcing hierarchies of otherness and numerical knowledge were constructed in travel accounts. Focusing particularly on writings about China and the Americas, it demonstrates the way in which European written and mathematically precise numeracy was perceived as superior to oral, embodied, and object-based practices observed elsewhere. Exploring the reception of these ideas in eighteenth-century Britain reveals that numeracy became integral to emergent notions of European modernity and civilization. The example of numeracy, this article suggests, demonstrates the interrelationship between social relations in national context and global power structures.

The diagnosis and treatment of personality disorder are both highly contentious subjects. It is argued in this article that we have misunderstood personality pathology as yet another form of mental illness that should require treatment for its alleviation or removal. But it is not a typical mental illness; personality is a stable persistent component of the self and needs a different treatment approach based on adaptation.

The white mullet, Mugil curema (Mugilidae), is a catadromous euryhaline fish with an omnivorous diet, and is distributed mainly along the Pacific and Atlantic coasts of the Americas. Mullets represent an important economic resource for the artisanal fisheries in Mexico. In this study, 73 individuals of M. curema were analysed; specimens were sampled in 4 coastal lagoons of the Yucatán Peninsula, Mexico, between 2022 and 2024. Parasite identification was accomplished by using DNA sequences. Nineteen parasite taxa were found, including 1 monopisthocotylan, 1 copepod, 1 acanthocephalan, 1 nematode, and 15 trematodes. Specimens were sequenced for a nuclear or mitochondrial molecular marker. Ten taxa are reported for the first time in this host species, including the adult trematodes Saccocoelioides olmecae; Schikhobalotrema sp. 1 and sp. 2, Hemiuridae gen. sp., the larval trematodes Mesostephanus microbursa, M. cubaensis, Cardiocephaloides medioconiger, Saccularina sp., Bucephalus sp., as well as the larval nematode Contracaecum fagerholmi. Of the 21 metazoan parasites recorded, 58% were adults and 42% were larval stages. The checklist of the metazoan parasites of M. curema was updated. Our study contributes to the understanding of the parasite diversity of an economically important fish species with a wide distribution range and corroborates the usefulness of combining morphological and molecular data for species identification and for linking larval forms with adults to complete parasite life cycles. Our results will be useful in further studies of parasites as bioindicators of ecosystem health, and studies of the role of parasites in food webs in coastal lagoons.