The procedure for mandatory reviews, also known as confirmations, has existed in Malawi since the colonial period. It requires that when a subordinate court convicts a person and imposes a punishment that passes a prescribed threshold, the case record be forwarded to a higher court for review. This article examines the evolution of this procedure in Malawi from the colonial era to how it is being currently understood and applied. It argues that the understanding that courts have recently attached to the procedure does not align with how this procedure has historically developed. Moreover, this understanding diminishes the procedure’s effectiveness in its function of protecting convicts’ rights. The article suggests ways of improving the procedure to ensure it remains relevant and suitable for the purpose for which it was originally established.

This study investigates the political consciousness, identity, and cultural resilience of Okinawan emigrants to mainland Japan, focusing on the Hyogo Prefecture Okinawan Association. Using surveys and interviews, it highlights how Okinawans navigate migration challenges while preserving their heritage. Key findings reveal a strong affinity for Okinawa among members who were first-generation Okinawan, while younger generations showed a shift toward broader Japanese identification. Cultural practices, such as Okinawan cuisine and traditional events, have remained essential but were less common among younger members. Most respondents opposed the concentration of US military bases in Okinawa, though views on economic dependency and base removal were divided.

Respiratory infections trigger asthma exacerbations. Despite being less severely affected by COVID-19 than adults, the subsequent lockdowns had a great impact on children. Previous studies showed a decrease in asthma exacerbations during the COVID-19 lockdowns, but findings from secondary care settings are scarce. We aimed to elucidate the trends in frequency and characteristics of asthma exacerbations in children presenting on an emergency department (ED) of a secondary care setting before, during, and after the COVID-19 pandemic. A retrospective analysis was conducted using data from ED visits between January 2018 and November 2022 for asthma exacerbations in children. The incidence of ED visits, hospital admissions, paediatric intensive care unit (PICU) admissions, administered medication, and demographic information were compared. A total of 1121 exacerbations were reported in 670 children, of whom 476 (42%) were admitted to hospital and 44 (3.9%) required PICU admission. We observed a decrease in ED visits for asthma exacerbations during the pandemic but an increased risk in hospital admissions and PICU transfers for exacerbations. This suggests a more severe course of exacerbations. Barriers to health care and lower viral exposure may contribute to this.

We compute the integral Chow rings of $\overline {\mathcal {M}}_{1,n}$ for $n=3,4$. The alternative compactifications introduced by Smyth – and studied further by Lekili and Polishchuk – present each of these stacks as a sequence of weighted blow-ups and blow-downs from a weighted projective space. We compute all the integral Chow rings by repeated application of the blow-up formula.

This article explores the impact of LM Radio—Rádio Clube de Moçambique’s B-Station, broadcasting in English and Afrikaans—in colonial southern Mozambique. Drawing on 441 issues of Rádio Moçambique magazine (1935–1973) and interviews with announcers, directors, and musicians, it reconstructs the station’s history and production practices and examines its reception among Mozambican musicians through the lenses of modernity and cosmopolitanism. Often regarded as apolitical, LM Radio’s trajectory reveals a complex engagement with the Portuguese colonial project and urban youth culture. The article also considers how these dynamics inform postcolonial memory, highlighting media’s role in shaping colonial modernity in southern Africa.

We define a generic rigidity matroid for k-volumes of a simplicial complex in $\mathbb {R}^d$ and prove that for $2\leq k \leq d-1$ it has the same rank as the classical generic d-rigidity matroid on the same vertex set (namely, the case $k=1$). This is in contrast with the $k=d$ case, previously studied by Lubetzky and Peled, which presents a different behavior. We conjecture a characterization for the bases of this matroid in terms of d-rigidity of the $1$-skeleton of the complex and a combinatorial Hall condition on incidences of edges in k-faces.

With future intended human missions to Mars, it is crucial to understand the potential habitability of martian regolith both to support plant growth and to mitigate accidental release of organisms from habitats. We tested tardigrades, a group of valuable model organisms for animal development and survival of extreme conditions, as potential candidates for establishing functional soils on Mars. Tardigrades, in their dormant cryptobiosis state, are resistant to many conditions (radiation, desiccation, etc.) and, in their active state, are important primary consumers and predators within ecosystems. We examined the active states of two taxa (Ramazzottius cf. varieornatus and Hypsibius exemplaris) of tardigrades during short-term exposure to martian regolith simulants (MGS-1 and OUCM-1) representative of Mars. Numbers of active tardigrades in martian simulants showed marked declines over four days, while numbers in controls did not. A generalized linear regression model showed that time, simulant and species were significant predictors of active tardigrades. Martian simulants MGS-1 and OUCM-1 were both inhibitory to tardigrades, however OUCM-1 was less damaging with one population of tardigrades only minimally impacted. Furthermore, washing MGS-1 significantly reduced negative impacts. These data suggest that the specific chemical nature of the simulants is damaging (not pH or solute concentration). These experiments have ramifications for the choice of species for functional soils to support plants and humans on Mars and for the limitations of terrestrial life; however, more testing is necessary to fully understand the potential habitability and dangers of martian regolith.

Mediante el concepto de archivo sonoro global proponemos una perspectiva holística para abordar el estudio del universo sonoro al que se accede a través de Internet. Dicho concepto hace referencia a un reservorio de fijaciones sonoras en extremo heterogéneo, expansivo e inestable que alberga expresiones musicales, paisajes sonoros, sonidos del cuerpo humano, mensajes de voz generados con aplicaciones de mensajería instantánea, podcasts y muchos otros fenómenos sonoros. En el desarrollo del artículo describimos cómo y qué agentes alimentan ese archivo, dónde se encuentran alojadas las fijaciones que lo integran y cuáles son sus atributos centrales sobre la base de los conceptos de diversidad, expansividad, inestabilidad, modularidad e intermedialidad.1

Autoregressive language models generate text by predicting the next word from the preceding context. The regularities internalized from specific training data make this mechanism a useful proxy for historically situated readerly expectations, reflecting what earlier linguistic communities would find probable or meaningful. In this article, I pre-train a GPT model (223M parameters) on a broad corpus of Chinese texts (FineWeb Edu Chinese V2.1) and fine-tune it on the collected writings of Mao Zedong (1893–1976) to simulate the evolving linguistic landscape of post-1949 China. Identifying token sequences with the sharpest drops in perplexity – a measure of the model’s surprise – reveals the core phraseology of “Maospeak,” the militant language style that developed from Mao’s writings and pronouncements. A comparative analysis of modern Chinese fiction demonstrates how literature becomes unfamiliar to the fine-tuned model, generating perplexity spikes of increasing magnitude. The findings suggest a mechanism of attentional control: whereas propaganda backgrounds meaning through repetition (cognitive overfitting), literature foregrounds it through deviation (non-anomalous surprise). By visualizing token sequences as perplexity landscapes with peaks and valleys, the article reconceives style as a probabilistic phenomenon and showcases the potential of “cognitive stylometry” for literary theory and close reading .

Inequality is an inherent quality of society. This paper provides actuarial insights into the recognition, measurement, and consequences of inequality. Key underlying concepts are discussed, with an emphasis on the distinction between inequality of opportunity and inequality of outcome. To better design and maintain approaches and programmes that mitigate its adverse effects, it is important to understand its contributing causes. The paper outlines strategies for reflecting on and addressing inequality in actuarial practice. Actuaries are encouraged to work with policymakers, employers, providers, regulators, and individuals in the design and management of sustainable programmes to address some of the critical issues associated with inequality. These programmes can encourage more equal opportunities and protect against the adverse financial effects of outcomes.

This study examines the relationship between economic performance and citizens’ satisfaction with democracy (SWD), emphasizing the moderating role of clarity of responsibility (CoR)—the extent to which political institutions enable voters to identify who is accountable for policy outcomes. While prior research offers mixed empirical evidence on the economic determinants of SWD, we argue that this inconsistency can be explained by variation in institutional clarity. Drawing on insights from the economic voting literature, we develop a theoretical framework positing that the economy has a stronger impact on democratic satisfaction in contexts where responsibility is clearly assigned. Using cross-national data from 30 democracies over three decades, and a refined measure of CoR, we find that economic effects on SWD are significantly amplified in high-clarity systems. These findings highlight the importance of institutional context in shaping how citizens evaluate the functioning of democratic governance.

Societal concerns on the environmental impact of manufacturing activities in developing economies have intensified over the past decade. Open innovation (OI) has emerged as a promising approach to mitigate these adverse effects without compromising sustainable performance (SP). This primary aim of this study is to examine and evaluate the current state of research on OI and SP practices for further empirical studies in developing economies. Using the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses framework, we systematically reviewed and analysed 108 articles from Scopus, Web of Science, Google Scholar, and ScienceDirect databases related to OI and SP practices. Our study highlights significant knowledge gaps in the relationship between OI and SP in manufacturing, noting a predominant focus on developed countries. This research contributes to the existing literature by identifying critical contextual and theoretical gaps, providing valuable insights and theoretical implications for future OI and SP research agendas in developing countries.

This article examines legislative waffling behavior—where legislators reverse their position between bill sponsorship and floor voting—in the South Korean National Assembly from 2004 to 2020. Using multilevel logistic regression analysis of 21,292 bill-legislator observations across four legislative terms, we develop a novel theoretical framework that disaggregates waffling into three distinct strategic types: dissent (voting against), abstention, and no-show (strategic absence). Our findings challenge US-based theories by revealing that minority party members in Korea exhibit significantly higher rates of waffling across all types, with the effect particularly pronounced when bills are passed as chairman’s substitutes in majority-controlled committees. We demonstrate that ideologically extreme legislators are more prone to waffling, while main sponsors maintain greater consistency throughout the legislative process. The analysis of committee control structures reveals complex dynamics where minority party members face heightened waffling pressures even in committees they control, suggesting that formal institutional authority cannot fully overcome broader power imbalances in consensus-based systems. These findings highlight how Korea’s distinctive institutional features—including proportional distribution of committee chairs, mixed electoral system, and consensus-oriented legislative culture—create fundamentally different incentive structures for legislative behavior compared to majoritarian systems, underscoring the importance of developing context-specific theoretical frameworks for comparative legislative studies.