Does the presence of two or more transborder minorities alter the logic of nation-building and affect minority securitization? This article goes beyond the triadic nexus framework commonly applied to minorities caught between their home- and kin-states, proposing a complex lens for analyzing states with multiple ethnic minorities. Titular political elites dealing with multiple minorities assign them to contradictory frames to manage the challenging reality of ethnic demography and regional security. By framing one minority as a “model minority” — trustworthy and law-abiding — and another as a “fifth column” — threatening and disruptive – they accomplish two aims: (1) maintain the dominant status of the titular nation by discrediting minority claims for institutional changes, and (2) legitimize the differential treatment of minorities. Ethnic minorities’ responses to these frames vary from relative acquiescence to violent conflict. I explore why the initially excluded Poles have been recently accommodated in Lithuania, why the marginalized Uzbeks became targets of repression in the Kyrgyz Republic, and why the relatively accommodated Russian speakers, former colonizers, became framed as a security threat in Lithuania but not in the Kyrgyz Republic after the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Understanding how strategic framing advances nation-building offers generalizable insights on (de)securitization of ethnicity.

Reparations for African Americans reflect both material concerns aimed at eliminating the Black–White racial wealth gap and symbolic political aspirations, including the end of structural racism. But do material or symbolic considerations drive policy evaluations across racial and partisan divides? What knowledge and experiences undergird processes through which individuals weigh the symbolic importance of a policy against its actual benefits? Leveraging a set of forty-one in-depth interviews with Black and White residents of Evanston, Illinois—the first municipality in the United States to approve a publicly-funded reparations-related ordinance—we highlight a mechanism through which individuals develop their opinions about reparations: political socialization. Black interviewees linked their understanding of reparations to robust financial compensation while White Democrats viewed their support for Evanston’s policy as symbolic of their longstanding, affective commitments to racial equality. Drawing from these observations, we present a framework highlighting policy attributes that frame how different constituencies respond to reparations-related policies. We test this framework using a conjoint experiment about reparations policies fielded in the 2022 Cooperative Election Study. We find Americans—especially White Republicans—possess less familiarity about reparations and remain strongly opposed to these policies, regardless of the form they take. While White Democrats are more familiar with reparations and more supportive of policies mirroring Evanston’s, Black Americans—those who are most familiar with reparations—support direct cash payments regardless of their political identification.

A dimer model is a quiver with faces embedded in a surface. We define and investigate notions of consistency for dimer models on general surfaces with boundary which restrict to well-studied consistency conditions in the disk and torus case. We define weak consistency in terms of the associated dimer algebra and show that it is equivalent to the absence of bad configurations on the strand diagram. In the disk and torus case, weakly consistent models are nondegenerate, meaning that every arrow is contained in a perfect matching; this is not true for general surfaces. Strong consistency is defined to require weak consistency as well as nondegeneracy. We prove that the completed as well as the noncompleted dimer algebra of a strongly consistent dimer model are bimodule internally 3-Calabi-Yau with respect to their boundary idempotents. As a consequence, the Gorenstein-projective module category of the completed boundary algebra of suitable dimer models categorifies the cluster algebra given by their underlying quiver. We provide additional consequences of weak and strong consistency, including that one may reduce a strongly consistent dimer model by removing digons and that consistency behaves well under taking dimer submodels.

Impaired glycaemic control is a major risk factor for developing type 2 diabetes (T2D), a worldwide health epidemic intrinsically linked to diet and obesity. Whey proteins (WP) are increasingly popular supplements that are a rich source of branched-chain amino acids (BCAA), essential for muscle protein synthesis and metabolic regulation. In humans, fasting plasma concentrations of BCAA are maintained around 350 µM but become chronically elevated by 10–25% in persons with T2D. Little is known about whether BCAA from WP impacts circulating BCAA concentrations and contributes to this phenomenon. This narrative review used a systematic search approach with relevant keywords to identify evidence from randomised controlled trials in normoglycaemic humans and those with insulin resistance or T2D, on the effects of WP intake on plasma BCAA and glycaemic control. This review is, to the authors’ knowledge, the first to specifically examine the effects of WP intake on plasma BCAA concentrations in relation to glycaemic control. Whilst the majority of acute studies identified (n = 6) reported that WP consumption between 10 and 50 g significantly elevates postprandial BCAA and insulin responses (as evidenced by peak concentration and/or area under the curve), evidence from chronic studies (n = 3) report inconsistent findings on the impact of 9–51 g of WP/d on fasting BCAA and glycaemic control (for example, fasting glucose and insulin, insulin clearance). Findings from this literature review highlight the need for further studies that investigate the relationship between WP consumption with BCAA and glycaemic control, and to determine underlying mechanisms of action.

International human rights law (IHRL) provides extensive protections for the living, but little in the way of direct protections for the dead. International humanitarian law (IHL) has more detailed protections for the dead, but is only triggered during armed conflicts. At first glance, this seems to create a protection gap for the dead during peacetime. This article explores how the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) creates a connection between IHL, IHRL and transitional justice to fill in this perceived gap in protections for the dead. While the CRPD does not explicitly address the dead, IHL contains several specific rules to guide how dead bodies are to be handled. When read together with the CRPD framework, these rules provide ample guidance on the treatment of individuals with disabilities after death. Some IHL protections of the dead extend temporally beyond the conflict, when transitional justice mechanisms should be in play, although neither the CRPD nor IHL address with any specificity how the five pillars of transitional justice – truth, justice, reparation, memorialization and guarantees of non-recurrence – might apply in relation to IHL rules regarding dead bodies. Nonetheless, Article 11 of the CRPD forges a bidirectional link to IHL protections and obligations supporting transitional justice. Accordingly, there is a legal framework for examining the interrelationships between rules in the CRPD, IHL and human rights law writ large, and for how we think about dead bodies under the various regimes of international law. Each ought to inform the others if the implications of CRPD Article 11 are to be fully realized and the siloing and fragmentation of international law avoided.

The Indian Pulsar Timing Array (InPTA) employs unique features of the upgraded Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope (uGMRT) to monitor dozens of the International Pulsar Timing Array (IPTA) millisecond pulsars (MSPs), simultaneously in the 300–500 MHz and the 1260–1460 MHz bands. This dual-band approach ensures that any frequency-dependent delays are accurately characterised, significantly improving the timing precision for pulsar observations, which is crucial for pulsar timing arrays. We present details of InPTA’s second data release that involves 7 yr of data on 27 IPTA MSPs. This includes sub-banded times of arrival (ToAs), dispersion measures (DM), and initial timing ephemerides for our MSPs. A part of this dataset, originally released in InPTA’s first data release, is being incorporated into IPTA’s third data release, which is expected to detect and characterise nanohertz gravitational waves (GWs) in the coming years. The entire dataset is reprocessed in this second data release providing some of the highest precision DM estimates so far and interesting solar wind-related DM variations in some pulsars. This is likely to characterise the noise introduced by the dynamic inter-stellar ionised medium much better than the previous release thereby increasing sensitivity to any future GW search.

The current study characterized voice onset time (VOT) and vowel onset fundamental frequency (F0) in the production of three Vietnamese alveolar stops (i.e. /t̪ʰ/, /t/, and /d/) by monolingual Vietnamese children and adults. Eighty Vietnamese children aged 3–7 years and 16 adults aged 22–44 years participated in this study. Unlike speakers of other languages with a three-way voicing contrast, Vietnamese children were able to produce distinct categories for the three Vietnamese stop categories by 3 years of age. However, differences in vowel onset F0 among the three voicing categories were not significant in any age group. These findings enhance our understanding of how Vietnamese children acquire three-way voicing contrast in stop production and offer broader insights into stop consonant acquisition across languages.

In March 1645, a large number of Potiguara people from various regions of north-eastern Brazil gathered in the aldeamento (Indigenous settlements under colonial control or supervision) of Tapesserica on Itamaracá. The primary objectives of the assembly included the establishment of Indigenous câmaras (municipal councils) and deliberations on the law of native freedom. Notably, in this period, some Indigenous people in Brazil were still held as slaves in territories under Dutch jurisdiction. The Tapesserica Assembly produced a remonstrance (‘remonstrantie’), which was delivered to the Dutch government in Recife by the Potiguara. This article scrutinises the Potiguara Assembly, the earliest recorded Indigenous assembly in Brazil, and reconstructs its connections to Indigenous political culture predating the European arrival in Brazil. It explores the Indigenous perspective on the Dutch–Portuguese wars and demonstrates the role of the Potiguara as historical agents, navigating the complexities of conflict and decision-making processes that ultimately shaped their destiny.

A new species of Loimos MacCallum, 1917 is described more than half a century after the last species was described in 1972. The new species was collected from the gills of Rhizoprionodon taylori (Ogilby, 1915) off the Central Queensland coast, Australia, and is the first Loimos species and the first representative of the Loimoinae Price, 1936 known from Oceania. A detailed morphological description and 28S rDNA molecular sequences are provided for the new species. In the molecular phylogeny based on available 28S rDNA sequences for relevant Monocotylidae, the new species grouped together with the only other Loimos sequence available in GenBank, that of the nonugen Loimos sp. from China (OM060238), sister to Loimosina wilsoni Manter, 1944. The estimated genetic divergence between the new species and the nonugen Loimos sp. sequence is low, between 0.0452 and 0.0737, suggesting that the nonugen sequence may represent the new species, or a very closely related congener. Host identity was confirmed by comparing COI sequences with those of known sharks in GenBank. We also provide the first 12S and 16S molecular sequences for this shark species.

In this article, I argue for a “multifunctional account” of political feasibility and against recent attempts by several theorists to defend accounts of political feasibility that reduce feasibility judgments to a single function. According to the view I defend, political feasibility can (and should) serve multiple useful functions in our political deliberative practices. This pluralist and context-dependent approach allows us to retain the insights provided by various monofunctional accounts, while avoiding the limitations of each.

We investigate the evolution of active galactic nucleus jets on kiloparsec-scales due to their interaction with the clumpy interstellar medium (ISM) of the host galaxy and, subsequently, the surrounding circumgalactic environment. Hydrodynamic simulations of this jet–environment interaction are presented for a range of jet kinetic powers, peak densities of the multiphase ISM, and scale radii of the larger-scale environment – characteristic of either a galaxy cluster or poor group. Synthetic radio images are generated by considering the combination of synchrotron radiation from the jet plasma and free-free absorption from the multiphase ISM. We find that jet propagation is slowed by interactions with a few very dense clouds in the host galaxy ISM, producing asymmetries in lobe length and brightness which persist to scales of tens of kpc for poor group environments. The classification of kiloparsec-scale jets is highly dependent on surface brightness sensitivity and resolution. Our simulations of young active sources can appear as restarted sources, showing double-double lobe morphology, high core prominence (CP $\gt 0.1$), and the expected radio spectra for both the inner- and outer-lobe components. We qualitatively reproduce the observed inverse correlation between peak frequency and source size and find that the peak frequency of the integrated radio spectrum depends on ISM density but not the jet power. Spectral turnover in resolved young radio sources therefore provides a new probe of the ISM.

Cattle (Bos spp.) grazing on weed–mixed forage biomass may potentially spread weed seeds, leading to plant invasions across pasturelands. Understanding the possibility and intensity of this spread is crucial for developing effective weed control methods in grazed areas. This research undertook an in vitro experiment to evaluate the germination and survival of five dominant weed species in the southern United States [Palmer amaranth (Amaranthus palmeri S. Watson), yellow foxtail [Setaria pumila (Poir.) Roem. & Schult.], johnsongrass [Sorghum halepense (L.) Pers.], field bindweed (Convolvulus arvensis L.) and pitted morningglory (Ipomoea lacunosa L.)] upon incubation in rumen fluid for eight time periods (0, 4, 8, 12, 24, 24, 48, 72, and 96 h). For the 96-h treatment, a full Tilley and Terry procedure was applied after 48 h for stopping fermentation, followed by incubation for another 48 h simulating abomasum digestion. Seed germination, upon incubation, varied significantly among weed species, with I. lacunosa reaching zero germination after only 24 h of incubation, whereas A. palmeri and S. halepense retained up to 3% germination even after 96 h of incubation. The hard seed coats of A. palmeri and S. halepense likely made them highly resistant, whereas the I. lacunosa seed coat became easily permeable and ruptured under rumen fluid incubation. This suggests that cattle grazing can selectively affect seed distribution and invasiveness of weeds in grazed grasslands and rangelands, including the designated invasive and noxious weed species. As grazing is a significant component in animal husbandry, a major economic sector in the U.S. South, our research provides important insights into the potential role of grazing as a dispersal mechanism for some of the troublesome arable weeds in the United States. The results offer opportunities for devising customized feeding and grazing practices combined with timely removal of weeds in grazeable lands at the pre-flowering stage for effective containment of weeds.

We present the first radio–continuum detection of the circumstellar shell around the well-known WN8 type Wolf-Rayet star WR16 at 943.5 MHz using the Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder (ASKAP) Evolutionary Map of the Universe (EMU) survey. At this frequency, the shell has a measured flux density of 72.2$\pm$7.2 mJy. Using previous Australia Telescope Compact Array (ATCA) measurements at 2.4, 4.8, and 8.64 GHz, as well as the Evolutionary Map of the Universe (EMU) observations of the star itself, we determine a spectral index of $\alpha\,=\,+0.74\pm0.02$, indicating thermal emission. We propose that the shell and star both exhibit thermal emission, supported by the its appearance in near-infrared and H$\alpha$ observations. The latest Gaia parallax is used to determine a distance of 2.28$\pm$0.09 kpc. This star is well known for its surrounding circular nebulosity, and using the distance and an angular diameter of $8.^{\prime}42$, we determine the shell size to be 5.57$\pm$0.22 pc. We use the Gaia proper motion (PM) of WR16 to determine peculiar velocities of the star as $V_{\alpha}(pec) =$ –45.3$\pm$5.4 km s$^{-1}$ and $V_{\delta}(pec) =$ 22.8$\pm$4.7 km s$^{-1}$, which indicates that the star is moving in a north-west direction, and translates to a peculiar tangential velocity to be 50.7$\pm$6.9 km s$^{-1}$. We also use these proper motion (PM) to determine the shell’s origin, estimate an age of $\sim 9500\pm 1300$ yr, and determine its average expansion velocity to be $280\pm40$ km s$^{-1}$. This average expansion velocity suggests that the previous transitional phase is a Luminous Blue Variable (LBV) phase, rather than a Red Super Giant (RSG) phase. We also use the measured flux at 943.5 MHz to determine a mass-loss rate of $1.753\times 10^{-5}\,{\rm M}_\odot\,$yr$^{-1}$, and use this to determine a lower-limit on ionising photons of $N_{UV} \gt 1.406\times 10^{47}\,\textit{s}^{-1}$.

In Iceland, sheltered rocky intertidal zones like Breiðafjörður bay are dominated by monospecific stands of Ascophyllum nodosum, providing key habitats for marine organisms. Increasing demand for A. nodosum has led to its commercial exploitation, yet impacts on fish assemblages remain poorly known. Using a novel multi-mesh netting approach, we characterised seasonal patterns in fish composition, abundance, size structure, age, and diet. Additionally, to assess the local effects of seaweed harvesting, commercial harvesting was conducted, with comparisons being made between treatment and control unharvested areas during different seasons. Nine fish species were identified, with Pollachius virens, Myoxocephalus scorpius, and Gadus morhua being the most common. Fish abundance peaked in summer, and declined the following spring, suggesting cohort turnover with juvenile gadoids relying on these habitats as nurseries. P. virens showed increased length through seasons, whereas no trends in length or abundance were observed for M. scorpius. Effects of seaweed harvesting were minimal, although fish diversity was slightly higher and G. morhua significantly larger in control plots. Stomach contents exhibited a greater diversity of prey types in harvested sites, suggesting potential impacts on trophic dynamics. These findings underscore the importance of A. nodosum-dominated habitats as nursery grounds for commercially valuable gadoids and highlight the need for a precautionary approach to seaweed harvesting to maintain ecosystem health.