The authors in this special issue explore the ways in which chronotopes are often gendered and gender performance is chronotopic. Articles examine a diverse range of discourses—tradwives, Chinese beauty influencers, paleofantasy health trends, Kiowa War Mothers, and Swahili-language Islamic marital advice—and unpack the ways that notions of gender rely on particular constructions of the “here-and-now” in contrast to various “theres-and-thens.” As this special issue demonstrates, one is not just a gendered subject; one is a particular type of gendered subject, and those types are embedded in imagined times and places.

Under the migration of the proportionality doctrine to Asia, the dialogue and interaction between public law and private law have deepened and become more fruitful. The proportionality doctrine, usually accompanied by a general human-rights-limitation clause in the constitution, has made human rights reasoning come into the making of private law more directly and extensively. The proportionality principle also equips the judiciary with an analytical tool to assess the constitutionality of the state’s law or actions that limit the constitutional rights of involved parties.

This Article discusses the dialogue between public law and private law under the migration of the proportionality doctrine to several Asian jurisdictions, with a focus on Vietnam. The dialogue can be identified in three aspects: (i) dialogue as the impact of public law on private law; (ii) dialogue as the interaction between public law and private law; (iii) dialogue as the politico-legal interaction between lawmakers and courts. Among Asian jurisdictions, the Vietnamese legal system has arguably witnessed an inadvertent migration of the proportionality doctrine, and therefore provoking interesting and useful debates on the effect of constitutional rights in private law in both theoretical and practical aspects.

Artisanal-and-small-scale gold mining supports millions of livelihoods in the Global South but is the largest anthropogenic source of mercury emissions. Many initiatives promote mercury-free technologies that small miners could employ. Few document mercury impacts. We study an alternative: instead of processing themselves, small miners sell their ore to plants employing larger-scale, mercury-free technologies that also raise gold yields. Some ore-selling occurs without policy intervention, yet impacts on incomes and mercury use remain unclear. We assess ore-selling preferences of female waste-rock collectors (jancheras) in Ecuador, using a discrete-choice experiment. Results demonstrate that jancheras generally are open to ore-selling, yet often reject options similar to a recent pilot intervention. Offers that address formalization hurdles (invoicing), inabilities to meet quantity minima (given limits upon association, storage, and credit), and constraints on trust (including in plants’ ore testing) could increase adoption by tailoring related interventions to the preferences of and challenges for defined populations.

How do citizens evaluate lesbian and gay (LG) party leaders? While recent scholarship has provided a window into how individuals evaluate openly gay legislative candidates, few studies have examined voter evaluations of LG individuals in executive positions, where voters may have different expectations of political leaders. This study assesses public perceptions of LG party leaders, with a focus on leader deservingness, competency, and electoral viability. Results from a conjoint experiment in the United Kingdom indicate that LG leaders receive lower leadership evaluations than straight leaders on all dimensions. Additionally, we find that gay women and men face similar penalties. This finding holds regardless of the leader’s level of legislative experience. Thus, LG party leaders face a significant disadvantage compared to their straight counterparts when seeking the top position within their party.

How people experience their own ageing may impact how likely they are to remain engaged with life. This study examined (1) biologically based risk factors in the form of self-reported health and cognition, and (2) age-related stereotypes and frequency of perceived ageism as predictors of engagement with life and number of ‘close’ social connections in older adulthood. We aimed to move beyond studies focusing on direct links between ageism and psychosocial functioning by examining the extent to which ageism could act as a moderating factor, amplifying negative associations between established risk factors and engagement with life. Data were obtained from a community-based sample of 287 South Australians aged 65–103 years (M = 76.41, SD = 7.13; 54.4 per cent female) who participated in a telephone survey. Hierarchical multiple linear regressions were run using Stata v15.1. Overall, frequency of perceived ageism in this community sample was low. More positive age-related stereotypes were related to more ‘close’ social connections, but not greater engagement with life. Counter to expectations, an interaction of frequency of perceived ageism with health indicated that higher engagement with life was associated with more frequent perceived ageism, but only among those in poorer health. No other moderating effects were observed. The findings are discussed in terms of possible underlying mechanisms linking ageism, stereotypes and engagement, including the likelihood that our results in part reflect reverse causality, with those with both greater physical limitations and who remain broadly engaged being at greater risk of experiencing ageism.

Rapid molecular testing for antimicrobial resistance (AR) provides an indication of resistance faster than phenotypic antimicrobial susceptibility testing. We summarize the adoption of molecular testing for AR among US acute care hospitals and discuss the potential impact on National Healthcare Safety Network’s surveillance for AR.

The problem of unconceived alternatives poses a challenge to believing even our most successful scientific theories. Such theories are typically accepted because they explain the available evidence better than any known rival, but such ‘inference to the best explanation’ cannot reliably guide us to the truth unless the truth is among the set of possibilities we have considered. The problem of unconceived alternatives suggests that we have compelling historical grounds to doubt that this crucial condition is satisfied when we theorize about otherwise inaccessible natural domains. Because the historical evidence suggests there are probably many serious alternatives to our own foundational theories that remain presently unconceived despite being well-confirmed by the evidence we have, we should doubt that some of even our most successful scientific theories are in fact true or even close to the truth. After presenting this problem in its original scientific context, I go on to argue that it poses at least as compelling a challenge to our confidence in any particular conception of God and/or divinity. I draw some fairly radical further theological consequences, and I suggest that the problem may ultimately force us to embrace a far more epistemically humble appraisal of our knowledge of God and divinity itself.

This work explores the morphology and dynamical properties of cores within rich superclusters, highlighting their role as transitional structures in the large-scale structure of the Universe. Using projected and radial velocity distributions of member galaxies, we identify cores as dense structures that, despite being gravitationally bound, are not yet dynamically relaxed. However, they exhibit a tendency towards virialisation, evolving in a self-similar manner to massive galaxy clusters but on a larger scale. Morphological analysis reveals that cores are predominantly filamentary, reflecting quasi-linear formation processes consistent with the Zeldovich approximation. Our estimates of the entropy confirm their intermediate dynamical state, with relaxation levels varying across the sample. Mass estimates indicate efficient accretion processes, concentrating matter into gravitationally bound systems. We conclude that cores are important environments where galaxy evolution and hierarchical assembly occur, bridging the gap between supercluster-scale structures and virialised clusters.

The incorporation of technology, and more recently AI [Artificial Intelligence], into our everyday lives has been progressing at an unprecedented pace. Siri, Alexa, Cortana and various other digital assistants and chatbots populate our everyday interactions for most service-related matters. Acknowledging that technology, work, and social relations are deeply entangled with each other, this paper combines a literature review of anthropomorphisation of AI and emerging technology with a focus on gender and work, and empirical examples drawn from real-world applications and chatbots in the service industry in India, to critically analyse the gendering of technology. We unpack the tendency to ascribe a feminine identity to assistive technology and argue that gendering of emergent assistive technology is performative and relational. It materialises through particularistic manifestations drawing from the sociocultural context. Furthermore, this gendering of technology is co-constituted by the sexual division of labour and gendered norms of work.

The paper examines challenges in implementing interoperability requirements in digital markets. Designed to foster innovation and competition in retail payments, interoperability has been central to the EU’s open banking framework under the PSD2. It also plays a key role in the DMA, where interoperability requirements are aimed at supporting innovation and the framework’s goals of contestability and fairness. The paper identifies similarities between the PSD2 and DMA approaches to interoperability and outlines lessons DMA enforcers can learn from the implementation of open banking.

The ELI ERIC facility offers international users ultrashort laser sources via the ALPS facility focusing on few-cycle laser drivers for attosecond pulses, particle beams and ultrahigh intensity interactions. The HR1 system supports attosecond high harmonic generation (HHG) and time-resolved spectroscopy at 100 kHz. However, its high repetition rate, while aiding statistical analysis, poses thermal challenges and limits certain applications requiring lower repetition rates. To address this, the HR Alignment laser system was developed for the HHG beamline at the ELI-ALPS facility. This new system delivers sub-6 fs, 1 mJ pulses with a tunable repetition rate (from 10 Hz to 10 kHz) and carrier-envelope phase (CEP) stabilization. It utilizes an ytterbium-doped potassium gadolinium tungstate front-end, multi-pass cell compression, and chirped mirrors. Characterization confirms excellent energy and CEP stability (below 300 mrad), beam quality and temporal contrast, matching the HR1 laser’s performance. This compact, stable system provides high-flux attosecond generation for reaction microscopy enhancing ultrafast research in the ELI-ALPS facility.