The lessons of ancient rhetoric teachers encompassed not only the art of effective content and delivery, but also the skill of utilizing gestures and facial expressions to maximize the emotional impact of speeches. In this study, we present the outcomes of an analysis examining the visibility of rhetorical hand gestures performed at the speaking platforms of the Forum Romanum during the Late Roman Republic and the reign of Augustus. We consider the visibility of gestures as a proxy for the capacity of the speaking platforms, enabling us to delve into the oratorical taskscape of the Forum Romanum and its transformations. The results not only relate to specific events but also illuminate general trends. Our analysis reveals that the changes in the built environment of the Forum between the Late Republican period (ca. 54 BCE) and Augustus’s era reduced the number of individuals able to perceive the speakers’ gestures. The same changes led to a greater spatial division between audiences at the various venues at the Forum, potentially explaining the shifts observed in the oratorical taskscape there. Our methodology has the potential to contribute to comprehensive analyses of public rituals and ceremonies regardless of their location in space or time.

This article is a comparative study of Fedor Dostoevskii and Martin Heidegger’s messianic nationalism as understood in terms of their conceptualization of primordialism and racial purity. It offers, and further invites, a critical lens especially on Dostoevskii’s prejudices, viewing them as systematic rather than isolated. This article endeavors to offer a comprehensive exploration of the novelist’s essentialist premises through Heidegger’s philosophical framework of similar views on the “other.” Both authors claim that certain “truths” could only spring from the people, whether narod or das Volk. I argue that Dostoevskii and Heidegger arrive at similar warped visions of national destiny due to their formulation of the so-called primordial “call of conscience” and its attachment to their preferred poets. The point of my interdisciplinary effort here is to demonstrate that their racial bias is not limited to incidental remarks but that these biases are deeply embedded in the authors’ broader intellectual projects.

Precision agriculture technology (PAT) is often viewed as a potential driver of future efficiency gains in farming. Using within-farm variation from an unbalanced panel of Kansas farms, this study examines the impact of PAT bundles on efficiency in generating gross revenue. On average, we find little evidence that these technologies improve efficiency. However, among less efficient farms, several bundles are linked to notable efficiency gains, underscoring the importance of accounting for farm heterogeneity.

Social media has become a strategic driver of sponsorship effectiveness in major sporting events. At the 2024 Paris Olympics, digital platforms transformed how sponsorship relationships are formed, sustained, and activated for audience engagement. Yet, the mechanisms through which social media management influences sponsorship outcomes remain underexplored. This study examines the mediating role between core sponsorship antecedents – sport involvement, event attachment, brand familiarity, and sponsor-event congruence – and engagement outcomes. A quantitative survey of 7,412 Greek spectators was analyzed using structural equation modeling to test the proposed framework integrating sponsorship management and digital strategy. Results confirm that social media substantially amplifies the impact of sponsorship factors, fostering stronger sponsor–spectator connections and enhancing sponsorship returns. This is the first empirical model to link social media usage as a mediating variable between sponsorship antecedents and engagement outcomes in the context of mega-events, with a focus on the Paris 2024 Olympics. The research contributes to theory by positioning social media as a critical mediator in sponsorship strategy and offers actionable insights for managers seeking to optimize sponsorship effectiveness across diverse cultural and event contexts.

Three early Imperial reliefs with architectural façades, found in Rome’s Via Lata and referred to as the Valle-Medici reliefs, include representations of the temples of Mars Ultor and the Magna Mater. A third relief showing a tetrastyle Ionic temple is identified here as the aedicula of Victoria Virgo, constructed between the temples of Victoria and the Magna Mater on the Palatine. All three reliefs belong to a monumental altar, similar in scale to the Ara Pacis, that included scenes of sacrifice in the Forum of Augustus and on the southwest Palatine. The figural pediment of the Ionic temple shows three scenes representing different moments in the Trojan War. The design was probably intended to complement the adjacent temple of Magna Mater, whose cult was closely connected to Rome’s Trojan ancestry.

Centring the voices of music professionals who labour offstage, including managers, live sound technicians, and festival organisers, this article critically examines gendered labour in the music industry, focussing on Belgium in the 2020s. This investigation of how intersectional gendered expectations are negotiated in musical workplaces identifies mechanisms of alienation, delegitimisation, and the sexualisation of labour that constrain professional agency. At the same time, the study finds resonances between the ways participants engage with mentorship and existing literature on such programmes, notably as professionals seek role models, navigate pay disparities, and plan improvements to training. The article theorises the function of mentorship as strategic response to structural precarity. By positioning human-scale festivals as pedagogical spaces, the study explores how underrepresented labourers navigate these environments in response to inequity. This research contributes to a qualitative understanding of how intersectional gendered workplace dynamics are experienced, contested, and reshaped in contemporary European music markets.

This paper presents excavation results from Nyabusora, northern Tanzania, conducted by M. Posnansky and W.W. Bishop (1959) and M. Posnansky (1961). Only preliminary reports have previously been published. It synthesises the site’s history, incorporating previously unpublished analyses and information from Posnansky’s original field notes, and presents new 2014 field survey results and new archival research. Nyabusora holds particular significance as the only Early to Middle Stone Age (ESA/MSA) site in the region to have yielded both lithic and faunal remains, which gain new relevance in light of recent developments in ESA/MSA archaeology in eastern Africa. Nyabusora’s ‘Sangoan’ lithic assemblage is now largely decontextualised and associated finds have been lost, so this study presents the only available lithic and faunal analyses, alongside interpretations of the stratigraphic sequence and site. Such stratified assemblages are exceptionally rare and are generally attributed to the Middle Pleistocene. This research enhances understanding of Plio-Pleistocene landscape evolution in the Kagera River and western Lake Victoria-Nyanza Basin. It contributes important new data on ESA/MSA lithic variability and, via ongoing investigations by Basell within the Kagera catchment, offers huge potential for clarifying Middle Pleistocene palaeoenvironments.

This article explores how internally displaced persons (IDPs) in Benue State, Nigeria, reconfigure everyday life under conditions of governance deficits, insecurity and institutional neglect. Drawing on ethnographic research in Naka, Daudu II and Abagana camps, I examine how displaced populations mobilize social networks, religious ties, informal economies and everyday improvisations as infrastructural responses to life in displacement. Grounded in the theoretical frameworks of people as infrastructure and camps as urban political space, I situate IDP camps not as peripheral sites of humanitarian crisis but as laboratories of African urbanism. By foregrounding the ordinary – cooking, parenting, trading, negotiating aid – the article shows how IDPs enact governance from below, transforming camps into dynamic sites of infrastructural negotiation, resilience and survival. The study contributes to scholarship on urban governance and displacement by reframing camps as enduring socio-political spaces where infrastructure, power and agency are constantly reassembled.

This article analyzes how A. Dean Byrd, an assistant commissioner of LDS Social Services, advanced reparative therapy for Latter-day Saint (LDS) men at the turn of the twenty-first century. Byrd argued that Mormon men’s “unwanted same-sex attractions” stemmed from deficient gender identities that could be “repaired” by cultivating traditional masculinity. Rather than originating these ideas, he synthesized gender-essentialist themes from LDS pastoral discourse into a systematic therapeutic program grounded in the doctrine of eternal gender. Reading Byrd’s writings along the grain, this article shows how his model masculinized Mormon patriarchs while rendering women less visible as therapeutic subjects, framing conversion therapy in LDS contexts as a gendered project aimed at restoring male ecclesiastical authority. Byrd’s collaborations with Catholic and evangelical therapists through organizations such as the National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality further reveal reparative therapy as a shared gender ideology that united conservative Mormons with a broader family values coalition amid a moral panic over homosexuality. Yet Byrd’s distinctly Mormon cosmology exposed the limits of conservative Christian ecumenism. Situating Byrd at the intersection of LDS soteriology, gender, and the religious right, this article illuminates how one Mormon therapist participated in and unsettled the networks shaping late twentieth-century responses to queer belonging.

This paper provides a close reading of Phylarchus Fragment 44 (Ath. 4.20–1, 141F–42f) against the backdrop of the Hellenistic discourse of kingship, on the one hand, and the developments in the Spartan kings’ approach to monarchical rule, on the other. It argues that the characterisation of Cleomenes in Fragment 44 is rooted in a discourse on kingship that was contemporaneous with Phylarchus, and that his text’s prevailing theme is the king’s σωφροσύνη as opposed to ὕβρις.

As the use of carbon dioxide (CO2)-enhanced oil recovery continues, understanding its impacts on the in situ oil well microbial communities is important. In this study, we update the already substantial investigation into five oil wells of the Olla and Nebo Hemphill fields in the southeastern United States with metagenomics. The Olla field has undergone CO2 injection, whereas the Nebo Hemphill field has not. Under anoxic conditions in Nebo Hemphill, our data suggest that methanogenic archaea are in competition with fermentative bacteria for shared substrates, leading to reduced biogenic methane production. However, in the Olla wells that had introduced CO2, we find genomic evidence for the growth and replication of bacteria able to respire oxygen. Based on the co-occurrence and potential replication of methanogens in these wells, we hypothesise that there are still anoxic niches for methanogens. Oxygen-utilising microbes may utilise phenolic substrates, creating a situation where more material is available for anaerobic growth, counterintuitively increasing the capacity for methane production in these wells. Our data suggest that this consortium may be the reason that greater methanogenesis is seen in these CO2-affected wells, and we hypothesise that the gas injection may have had contaminating air. Therefore, using existing wells for processes such as enhanced oil recovery or carbon capture and storage will not only depend on well history and in situ conditions, but also on the development of in situ microbial networks within modified wells.

The population status of Adélie penguins (Pygoscelis adeliae) on the Antarctic Peninsula highlights opportunities for the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR) to address uncertainty more directly and effectively in its conservation efforts. The heightened uncertainty posed by climate change is testing CCAMLR’s commitment to balancing science and international cooperation in decision-making. Uncertainty underpins some of the justification to postpone reaching a consensus on the establishment of Marine Protected Areas, leaving Adélie penguins vulnerable to change. Two key opportunities to adapt current management approaches emerge: 1) reduce uncertainty by systematically identifying knowledge gaps within CCAMLR’s processes; and 2) integrate uncertainty more explicitly into decisions through a standardized approach to assessing and communicating it.

McEuen Cave (AZ W:13:6 (ASM)) is a large bedrock rockshelter located within an andesitic rocky ash flow tuff/ignimbrite within the Bureau of Land Management’s Fishhooks Wilderness Area near Fort Thomas, Arizona. Exceptional preservation at the site has produced an extensive assemblage of perishable artifacts, including a tremendous quantity of cultigen remains radiocarbon dated between 3600 BP and 1250 BP. In this paper, we provide the results of a new radiocarbon dating effort aimed at identifying additional early Silverbell Interval cultigens and clarifying the intensity and persistence of Early Agricultural Period occupation. Our goal is to better understand the age and extent of early cultivation activities within this high-elevation wilderness and contextualize the remains from this site with the more thoroughly understood co-eval Early Agricultural Period villages evidenced along major riverways such as the San Pedro and Santa Cruz in southern Arizona. [Spanish language abstract: La cueva McEuen (AZ W:13:6 (ASM)) es un gran refugio rocoso de lecho rocoso ubicado dentro de una toba/ignimbrita de flujo de cenizas rocosas andesíticas dentro del área silvestre Fishhooks de la Oficina de Administración de Tierras cerca de Fort Thomas, Arizona. La preservación excepcional en el sitio ha producido un extenso conjunto de artefactos perecederos, incluyendo una tremenda cantidad de restos de cultígenos fechados por radiocarbono entre 3600 BP y 1250 BP. En este documento, proporcionamos los resultados de un nuevo esfuerzo de datación por radiocarbono destinado a identificar cultígenos adicionales del Arcaico tardío-medio y aclarar la intensidad y persistencia de la ocupación del Período Agrícola Temprano. Nuestro objetivo es comprender mejor la edad y el alcance de las actividades de cultivo tempranas dentro de este desierto de gran altitud y contextualizar los restos de este sitio con las aldeas coeval del Período Agrícola Temprano mejor entendidas evidenciadas a lo largo de las principales vías fluviales como el San Pedro y el Santa Cruz en el sur de Arizona.]

Cross-country regressions suggest that protectionism supported industrialization. I leverage novel and highly granular data covering Swedish manufacturing firms to estimate the impact of Sweden’s shift toward protectionism after 1891 on establishment-level development. Using mainly two-way fixed effects regressions, I show that tariff increases had a heterogeneous impact across establishments: initially low-productivity establishments increased their productivity, while initially high-productivity establishments experienced a relative decline. I suggest that tariffs differentially shaped the incentives of managers in low- and high-productivity establishments to innovate and (re)organize production. Consistent with modern trade theory, heterogeneous establishment-level dynamics underlie a potential tariff-growth paradox.

This paper investigates the emergence, development and creative potential of three-dimensional musical scores, examining their transformation from physical layered media to contemporary mixed reality implementations. Through analysis of key historical works and recent technological innovations, it explores how depth and spatial materiality in musical notation create new possibilities for compositional organisation, performance practice and aesthetic expression. The study examines pioneering works utilising transparent overlays and physical depth by composers such as Cage and Takemitsu, before analysing contemporary applications in augmented and virtual reality environments that enable dynamic, interactive score generation and networked performance possibilities. Drawing on phenomenological perspectives and spatial theory, the research demonstrates how three-dimensional scores challenge traditional temporal-spatial relationships in musical notation while suggesting new frameworks for understanding musical structure and interpretation. Technical affordances and limitations of current mixed reality platforms are evaluated, alongside consideration of their implications for future developments in notation and composition. The paper argues that while three-dimensional scores offer compelling new creative possibilities, their successful implementation requires both technological expertise and collaborative approaches that may reshape traditional models of compositional practice.