When we learn that someone holds irrational beliefs, we often respond by reducing our epistemic trust in them. In this paper, I will propose a novel account of such trust reductions. The recently popular relationship-modification account (RMA) of epistemic blame will serve as a foil for this project. RMA says that epistemically blaming others for their epistemic failings involves modifying our epistemic relationships with them, paradigmatically via a reduction of epistemic trust. RMA has recently faced two challenges of extensional inadequacy, which I will show result from a mistaken view about what type of response trust reductions are. I will draw on resources from legal theory to show that trust reductions bear all the hallmarks of so-called non-punitive measures, which serve preventative collective purposes. I will argue for an account of trust reductions as non-punitive epistemic measures that serve the purpose of preventing unreliable informants from negatively affecting the epistemic commons. My account explains when and why it is appropriate to reduce epistemic trust and shows where RMA goes wrong.

This article examines the financial strategies employed by Genoese businessmen in Atlantic Castile during the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, focusing on the relative value of private enterprises. It reveals how the interplay between Castilian market characteristics and the unique financial culture of Genoese merchants predominantly supported short-term and transient economic ventures. These methods significantly reduced the need for centralised corporate structures and redundant accounting procedures, supported by a robust notarial system. Consequently, trading in securities and credit extensions became prominent features of this financial market. The research demonstrates that the widespread use of account money, credit and bills of exchange allowed Ligurians to engage in trade and access markets with flexibility and agility through quantitative and functional economic analyses. It also highlights the importance of various credit arrangements, such as loans, bills of trade, or IOUs, which extend beyond merely deferring payments.

Following the announcement of lunar programs by the US and China in recent years, a new round of lunar competition has commenced. In the absence of effective international regimes, there is a pressing need to develop legal measures to preserve lunar security and safety. Rules on demilitarization and deconfliction are particularly crucial. The 1967 Outer Space Treaty establishes the principles of ‘peaceful purposes’ and ‘exclusively for peaceful purposes’, but their interpretation remains contested. The rise of cislunar space strategies further complicates the application of these principles. Meanwhile, for managing daily operations on the lunar surface, the US-led Artemis Accords propose safety zones to prevent harmful interference. However, non-signatories like China and Russia are not bound by these provisions. As a significant player in the lunar competition, China should contribute to the establishment and improvement of legal measures to ensure lunar security and safety. For lunar demilitarization, China should refine the PPWT draft to address the specific security demands of cislunar space and the Moon. Concurrently, China should actively participate in formulating norms, rules, and principles of responsible behavior to mitigate threats in cislunar space and on the Moon until a universally accepted legally binding treaty is achieved. For lunar deconfliction, considering that the creation of safety zones may become the earliest practice to fulfill the obligation to avoid harmful interference, China needs to coordinate with the US to negotiate detailed rules on the size, scope, nature, behavior, and dispute settlement measures related to safety zones.

We initiate the treatment of KMS states on uniform Roe algebras $\mathrm {C}^{*}_u(X)$ for a class of naturally occurring flows on these algebras. We show that KMS states on $\mathrm {C}^{*}_u(X)$ always factor through the diagonal operators $\ell_{\infty} (X)$. We show the study of those states splits into understanding their strongly continuous KMS states and the KMS states which vanish on the ideal of compact operators. We show strongly continuous states are always unique when they exist and we give explicit formulas for them. We link the study of KMS states which vanish on the compacts to the Higson corona of X and provide lower bounds for the cardinality of the set of extreme KMS states. Lastly, we apply our theory to the n-branching tree: in this example, $\beta =\log (n)$ is a phase transition admitting $2^{2^{\aleph _0}}$ KMS states, no KMS states for smaller inverse temperatures, and a unique one for larger ones (the Gibbs state). Moreover, we show that the behavior of the KMS states around $\beta =\log (n)$ is chaotic.

A large laser spark was produced in a homogeneous sulphur hexafluoride gas (pressures ranged from 10.7 to 101.3 kPa) by a focused high-power laser pulse (350 ps, 125 J, 1315.2 nm). Magnetic fields, electromagnetic pulses (EMPs), optical emission spectra (OES) and chemical changes associated with the laser-induced dielectric breakdown (LIDB) in the SF6 gas were investigated. During the laser interaction, hot electrons escaping the plasma kernel produced EMPs and spontaneous magnetic fields, the frequency spectrum of which contains three bands around 1.15, 2.1 and 3 GHz, while the EMP frequency band appeared around 1.1 GHz. The EMP emission from a laser spark was very weak in comparison to those generated at a solid target. Gas chromatography revealed the formation of only a limited number of products and a low degree of sulphur hexafluoride (SF6) conversion. OES diagnosed the LIDB plasma in the phase of its formation as well as during its recombination.

In this article, which has a strong methodological focus, we establish the labour relations that characterized the urban population of the Swedish town of Västerås in 1820. Several sources are combined: the so-called Tabellverket (an early form of demographic statistics) and observations made in, primarily, local court records. To assign labour relations as defined by the Global Collaboratory on the History of Labour Relations project, the preliminary picture based on the Tabellverket is complemented by systematically adding information from court records analysed in the Gender and Work project. This information captures both what people did and also, to some extent, what labour relations they were involved in. Subsequently, all the information is collated to estimate the labour relations characterizing the whole population in the selected town. The result of this experiment is a much more encompassing and richer picture of the labour relations within the selected community, one that acknowledges both women’s work and multiple employments. In a broader perspective, the case study contributes to our understanding of the gradual increase of commodified labour in the world.

Whether or not pre-planning extends beyond the initial noun in a noun phrase depends, in part, on the phrase’s dependency structure. Dependency structure disambiguates, in many contexts, the noun phrase’s reference. In the present experiment (N = 64), we demonstrate that advance planning is affected by the extent to which a dependency supports semantic disambiguation. Participants produced noun phrases in response to picture arrays. Syntax and lexemes were held constant, but semantic scope was manipulated by varying the contrastive functions of the first and the second noun. Evidence from eye-movement data revealed a stronger tendency for early planning in the extended scope condition. This is evidence that pre-planning requirements of structurally complex noun phrases are, in at least some contexts, determined by semantic functions.

The opening of Book 4 of Valerius Flaccus’ Argonautica finds its protagonists confounded by the loss of Hercules, their hero-of-heroes whom Juno has caused to run off. As the Argonauts deliberate, loyalty to the man contends with the desire to carry on his heroic labor, presented in terms of Vergilian arma uirumque. This paper uses the debate over Hercules’ abandonment as a case study for Valerius’ engagement with Vergil’s celebration of the fides, pietas and magnanimitas of his hero as the foundation of Roman political legitimacy. By setting Valerius’ Vergilian framing in dialogue with his engagement with Lucan’s Bellum Ciuile and Horace’s Epodes, I argue that the Argonautica rereads Aeneas’ exemplary model as a guide to internecine conflict, exploring how the essential Augustan concepts of duty and familial fidelity may be encoded and reproduced to a very different effect.

This paper explores the significant advancements in generating Structured Query Language (SQL) from natural language, primarily driven by Large Language Models (LLMs). These advancements have led to the development of sophisticated text-to-SQL integrated applications, enabling easier database (DB) querying for users unfamiliar with SQL syntax using natural language queries. However, reliance on LLMs exposes these applications to potential attacks through the introduction of malicious prompts or by compromising models with malicious data during the training phase. Such attacks pose severe risks, including unauthorized data access or even complete DB destruction upon success. To address these concerns, we introduce a novel large-scale dataset comprising malicious and safe prompts along with their corresponding SQL queries, enabling model fine-tuning on malicious query detection tasks. Moreover, we propose the implementation of two transformer-based classification solutions to aid in the detection of malicious attacks. Finally, we present a secure agent-based text-to-SQL architecture that incorporates these solutions to enhance overall system security, resulting in a 70% security enhancement overall compared to solely relying on a conventional text-to-SQL model.

These three books are strong contributions to contemporary democratic theory. They are, however, very different in tone, intent, and argument and represent a wide range of methodological and philosophical traditions with little overlap. Mary Scudder and Stephen White both draw on a deliberative democracy background with deep roots in Jürgen Habermas’ communicative ethics. They build their arguments in the language of ontology, affective imagery, and aesthetic resonance to paint a picture of the sort of ethos needed to bridge the divide between two competing visions of democracy. Jack Knight and Melissa Schwartzberg offer a more eclectic mix, but rational-choice institutionalism and a type of Madisonian realism certainly feature — as does the postwar no-nonsense pluralism of Robert Dahl, Charles Lindblom, and David Truman. In their view, politics is about power and competing interests, and democratic politics is about the regulation of power and competition in the interest of citizens understood as equals. Bargaining is the key to this regulation. Finally, using the precise tools of analytic philosophy, Adam Lovett argues that empirical social science offers clear evidence that American democracy is so compromised that the state loses its moral authority to command obedience. Under these conditions, he contends, philosophic anarchism is the only defensible position.

The rapid evolution of SARS-CoV-2 has led to the emergence of variants of concern (VOCs) characterized by increased transmissibility, pathogenicity, and resistance to neutralizing antibodies. Identifying these variants is essential for guiding public health efforts to control COVID-19. Although whole genome sequencing (WGS) is the gold standard for variant identification, its implementation is often limited in developing countries due to resource constraints. In Bolivia, genomic surveillance is a challenge due to its limited technological infrastructure and resources. An RT-qPCR-based strategy was designed to address these limitations and detect the mutations associated with VOCs and variants of interest (VOIs). The multiplex RT-qPCR commercial kits AllplexTM Master and Variants I (Seegene®) and the ValuPanelTM (Biosearch®) were used to target mutations such as HV69/70del, E484K, N501Y, P681H, and K417N/T. They are characteristic of the Alpha (B.1.1.7), Beta (B.1.531), Gamma (P.1), Omicron (B.1.1.529), Mu (B.1.621), and Zeta (P.2) variants. A total of 157 samples collected in Cochabamba from January to November 2021 were evaluated, identifying 44 Gamma, 2 Zeta, 20 Mu, and 10 Omicron were identified. The strategy’s effectiveness was validated against WGS data generated with Oxford NanoporeTM technology, showing a concordance rate of 0.96. This highlights the value of the RT-qPCR strategy in guiding the selection of samples for WGS, enabling broader detection of new variants that cannot be identified by RT-qPCR alone.

Recent elections around the globe have seen politicians increasingly adopt anti-corruption rhetoric, yet little is known about the conditions under which such appeals are effective. While existing literature has focused on the factors that mitigate electoral sanctions for corrupt politicians, it has often overlooked the relevance of anti-corruption efforts. This paper investigates the impact of anti-corruption promises on electoral support and perceived effectiveness in cleaning up government. Using an unforced conjoint experiment in corruption-prone Paraguay, I vary candidate profiles with different anti-corruption platforms, genders, and disciplinary records. The results reveal that anti-corruption appeals significantly influence electoral support. Concrete anti-corruption promises with specific policies are more persuasive, indicating citizens prefer substance over vague rhetoric. Surprisingly, a clean disciplinary record does not substantively enhance a candidate’s anticorruption appeal, and male candidates appear to benefit more from adopting anticorruption platforms. These findings illuminate under what conditions anti-corruption platforms are more effective. They highlight the importance of specific policy stands and reveal that having a history of corruption surprisingly does not damage the credibility of anticorruption advocates.

Between 2014 and 2019, millions of people witnessed and participated in a mass of commemorative activities for the First World War. Millions of pounds were spent for projects that brought together academic historians, community groups, artists, schools and the general public. These projects have been reviewed in government evaluations, by arts organisations and universities. However, commemoration is highly context-specific, affected by the contemporary actors as much as the events commemorated. Since 2019, the pandemic and the ongoing financial crisis in Higher Education have undermined the strength of the research community and the arts and heritage sectors. The world is becoming increasingly polarised and new technologies such as Artificial Intelligence pose new challenges for our discipline. By 2039, we can expect that there will be increased public interest in commemorating the Second World War. This contribution reviews the learning from the commemoration activities between 2014 and 2019 to identify what we can apply to 2039 and how we can begin to prepare in our current environment.

Poor socket fit is the leading cause of prosthetic limb discomfort. However, currently clinicians have limited objective data to support and improve socket design. Finite element analysis predictions might help improve the fit, but this requires internal and external anatomy models. While external 3D surface scans are often collected in routine clinical computer-aided design practice, detailed internal anatomy imaging (e.g., MRI or CT) is not. We present a prototype statistical shape model (SSM) describing the transtibial amputated residual limb, generated using a sparse dataset of 33 MRI and CT scans. To describe the maximal shape variance, training scans are size-normalized to their estimated intact tibia length. A mean limb is calculated and principal component analysis used to extract the principal modes of shape variation. In an illustrative use case, the model is interrogated to predict internal bone shapes given a skin surface shape. The model attributes ~52% of shape variance to amputation height and ~17% to slender-bulbous soft tissue profile. In cross-validation, left-out shapes influenced the mean by 0.14–0.88 mm root mean square error (RMSE) surface deviation (median 0.42 mm), and left-out shapes were recreated with 1.82–5.75 mm RMSE (median 3.40 mm). Linear regression between mode scores from skin-only- and full-model SSMs allowed prediction of bone shapes from the skin with 3.56–10.9 mm RMSE (median 6.66 mm). The model showed the feasibility of predicting bone shapes from surface scans, which addresses a key barrier to implementing simulation within clinical practice, and enables more representative prosthetic biomechanics research.

Microplastic release in Antarctica is an issue of increasing concern, despite the limited human presence in the region. This study estimates the annual release of microplastics from the wastewaters of scientific facilities through the use of personal care products and laundering. Furthermore, it analyses the most cost-efficient policy interventions to target this pollution. The study has estimated a potential release of 238 kg per year, which is negligible on a continental scale but could have substantial local environmental impacts. A comprehensive cost-efficiency analysis demonstrates that microplastic release can be effectively mitigated through low-cost preventative measures, such as installing washing machine filters and banning hygiene products containing microbeads. Furthermore, the implementation of wastewater treatment systems is suggested as a crucial and long-term cost-effective solution for treating wastewater effluent and removing other pollutants from the Antarctic region. These results provide a framework to inform policy decisions on microplastic release in Antarctica and lay the foundation for improved environmental protection strategies in this sensitive region.

Marbled Teal Marmaronetta angustirostris is a globally threatened species that has been undergoing population declines across much of its range in recent years. This is particularly true in the Middle East and the Caucasus, where the species once commonly bred across much of the region. However, there is a dearth of recent literature and population-level assessments of the species in the countries in this region. For example, the last update of conservation status for Marbled Teal in Armenia was undertaken in 2009 and in Türkiye in 2008. Therefore, this study addresses the urgent need for an updated evaluation of the species’ status in both Armenia and Türkiye. For Armenia, the current population estimate is 8–11 breeding pairs, with a steep decline of 87% between 2003 and 2019. In Türkiye, the species appears to be functionally extirpated from the country due to an absence of breeding in almost a decade and multiple years without any records, with only a handful of wandering individuals detected in recent years. This study highlights the threats facing the species, particularly changes to wetland habitat and quality as well as hunting pressures and illegal poaching. Based on our findings, we propose that the conservation status of Marbled Teal in both countries be updated from “Endangered” to “Critically Endangered”. Finally, we note the conservation requirements for the species in the region and provide a set of recommendations for its protection, including a species recovery plan. Without urgent conservation measures such as the creation of new protected areas and establishment of new populations from released birds, the long-term viability of Marbled Teal populations in the region is in jeopardy.