Medical device innovation is key to advancing healthcare and fostering economic development. As the global medical technology market expands, the capacity of regions and countries to attract and support innovation has become increasingly significant. This article examines the growing perception that China is becoming a more attractive environment for medical device development than Europe, focusing on key regulatory differences that may influence this shift. It compares the hierarchical structure of legislation, regulatory oversight bodies, and classification procedures, particularly for emerging technologies like artificial intelligence (AI). For instance, while Europe’s decentralised system of notified bodies offers developers flexibility, China’s centralised regulatory agencies and more adaptable classification system – alongside the absence of stringent AI-specific regulations like the EU’s AI Act – may present a different set of trade-offs and facilitate faster market entry for innovative technologies. Despite these differences, the paper argues that regulation alone does not fully explain China’s rising attractiveness. Other contributing factors, such as its vast market size, significant government support, and broader R&D policies, must also be considered. The analysis concludes that while regulatory structures are influential, they represent just one component of a multifaceted ecosystem that shapes the global geography of medical device innovation.

Sacrificing own resources to punish norm violators is often regarded an altruistic act, promoting cooperation and fairness within social groups. However, recent studies highlight difficulties in interpreting third-party punishment as a prosocial and cooperative signal. Moving beyond abstract, decontextualized settings typically employed in economic game paradigms, we aimed to better understand the appraisal of observed punishment and punishers in real-world situations. To this end, we created and validated 24 written vignettes of everyday-life scenarios depicting interactions between a perpetrator, a victim, and a punisher. Across two preregistered experiments, we systematically manipulated key aspects of third-party punishment: transgression type and punishment type (property-oriented, corporal, or psychological; Experiment 1; N = 48) and punishment severity (weak or strong; Experiment 2; N = 50). Participants rated punishment adequacy and the punisher’s warmth, competence, and suitability as an interaction partner, whether as a friend or team leader. Results indicated preferences for psychological punishments, punishments that aligned with transgression type, and less severe punishments. Our findings support the notion that punishment is an ambiguous issue and reveal important contextual factors that contribute to its evaluation as a useful social strategy.

This scoping review provides an overview of the impact of fruit and vegetable (FAV) consumption on cognitive function in adolescents and young adults between January 2014 and February 2024. A comprehensive search across six databases, CINAHL, PubMed-MEDLINE, ProQuest, Web of Science, Scopus, and Embase, identified 5,181 articles, of which six met the inclusion criteria after deduplication and screening. This scoping review focused on individuals aged 11–35 years in schools, colleges, universities, and communities. Following a descriptive and narrative synthesis of the data, tables and figures were used to present the findings. Across the six included studies, most consistently demonstrated a positive association between higher fruit and vegetable (FAV) intake and improved cognitive performance among adolescents and young adults. This association was evident in both cross-sectional and longitudinal studies, with stronger effects observed for whole fruits and vegetables high in fibre and polyphenols. Cognitive domains positively impacted included psychomotor speed, memory, attention, and mood. However, findings varied by type of food and cognitive domain; while whole FAVs were generally beneficial, results for fruit juice were mixed—some studies showed acute benefits. Differences in study designs, dietary assessment tools, and cognitive measures contributed to variability. Despite these inconsistencies, the overall trend supports a beneficial role of FAV consumption in promoting cognitive health during adolescence and early adulthood. This review demonstrates that increased fruit and vegetable consumption is consistently linked to improved cognitive function in adolescents and young adults. However, further research is needed to establish its long-term effects on cognitive ageing and disease prevention

This article explores the variation surrounding the semi-modals be going to and gonna. While gonna is frequently mentioned alongside be going to, it remains under-described in traditional grammars and academic literature. However, recent studies within Construction Grammar suggest that gonna may represent an independent construction, prompting a reconsideration of other variants within the be going to / gonna paradigm such as gon and imma, which appear to derive directly from gonna and no longer from be going to. In light of recent work, what have traditionally been regarded as mere ‘phonetic realizations’ or ‘orthographic variants’ may in fact play a more significant role in the formation and definition of constructions, raising questions about the structure of constructional networks. This article analyzes the immediate syntactic environment of the variants to account for both the variation of forms and the status of such forms. The study is conducted using two corpora that are particularly prone to showing linguistic innovations and language change: a spontaneous spoken corpus and a web corpus. Findings indicate that shorter variants often involve elision of be and that gonna is more grammaticalized than going to, based on the types of verbs they precede.

This paper builds on a thought experiment by Professor Harry van Buren, asking what might emerge if the Business and Human Rights field took a temporary ‘break’ from the UN Guiding Principles (UNGPs). It critically analyzes how the UNGPs’ pragmatic and consensus-oriented design, while instrumental in institutionalizing the field, has also shifted its normative orientation. The paper argues that the increasing dominance of procedural pragmatism has led to compliance-driven approaches that risk displacing more justice-oriented, participatory visions of accountability. In response, the paper aims to contribute to potential reimagining of the field outside of the confines of the UNGPs by offering an alternative pathway grounded in Critical Dialogic Accounting and Accountability, Worker-driven Social Responsibility, and prefigurative politics. The paper concludes with a reflection that the future of BHR depends not just on expanding the implementation of existing norms but on rethinking what accountability can look like when built from below.

We investigate the long-time asymptotic behavior of solutions to the Cauchy problem for the KdV equation, focusing on the evolution of the radiant wave associated with a Wigner–von Neumann (WvN) resonance induced by the initial data (potential). A WvN resonance refers to an energy level where the potential exhibits zero transmission (complete reflection). The corresponding Jost solution at such energy becomes singular, and in the NLS context, this is referred to as a spectral singularity. A WvN resonance represents a long-range phenomenon, often introducing significant challenges, such as an infinite negative spectrum, when employing the inverse scattering transform (IST). To avoid some of these issues, we consider a restricted class of initial data that generates a WvN resonance but for which the IST framework can be suitably adapted. For this class of potentials, we demonstrate that each WvN resonance produces a distinct asymptotic regime – termed the resonance regime – characterized by a slower decay rate for large time compared to the radiant waves associated with short-range initial data.

Religious and ethnic communities have long helped people cope with risks. Does state-provided welfare substitute for ethnicity-based social insurance? If so, does it improve intergroup relations? Ethnicity-based insurance operates through reciprocity and solidarity, requiring social investment in in-group ties. This limits the formation of out-group ties, exacerbating ethnic divisions. Welfare reduces dependence on the ethnic group, allowing individuals to form productive out-group ties and increasing intergroup integration. I test this argument in caste networks in India. I leverage panel data on household loans to show that an income support program reduced within-caste borrowing by 38.5%. Using survey data from 3,020 households, I show that welfare enhanced intercaste ties, mainly in areas with lower caste-based land inequality. I draw on 56 qualitative interviews to document how caste-based social insurance exacerbates social segregation, and why intercaste ties increase with lower group inequality. These findings illuminate the persistence and demise of ethnic divisions.