The article examines intellectual and political debates on human rights that took place between the European Economic Community (EEC) and the Africa, Caribbean and the Pacific Group of Countries (ACP) in the context of the Lomé Convention between 1988 and 1991. In this period, the debate between the two groups exploded and resulted in intellectual compromises, and had significant political consequences for the practical implementation of Lomé. Drawing on recently declassified archival material from the Historical Archives of the European Union, as well as periodicals and archival materials from the United Kingdom and France, the article traces the intellectual and political evolution of the issue of human rights in between the global north and global south. As a development cooperation agreement, Lomé provided a space for representatives of the EEC and the ACP to advance and negotiate their own understandings of human rights, particularly their supposed universality and their connection to development.

The current study represents the second phase of developing the Yangtze Finless Porpoise Welfare Assessment Protocol (YFP-WAP), guided by the Five Domains model (FDM). Based on previously validated indicators, it aimed to create a scoring system to quantify welfare states. Application of the FDM grading system to the YFP-WAF revealed that indicators with higher scores influenced overall outcomes disproportionately, highlighting limitations in the original approach. As a result, a new scoring system was developed to ensure a more balanced contribution from all indicators across domains. The scoring system allows the separate quantification of welfare enhancement and compromise to prevent compensation between positive and negative experiences. It employs the sum of numerical values for each indicator, along with a percentage-based normalisation system to account for variations in indicator numbers across domains, ensuring balanced contributions to final welfare scores. In addition, a preliminary ‘Critical Scoring’ tool was created, which prioritises key indicators to identify urgent welfare issues before full assessment. Through the implementation of a standardised, transparent, and adaptable scoring method, the YFP-WAP aims to support individual-level welfare monitoring to improve the living conditions of captive porpoises and facilitate interventions for ex situ breeding programmes of YFP, and other closely related species. Despite challenges associated with fully capturing the complexity of welfare dynamics, this framework offers a practical and scientifically grounded approach for the assessment of the welfare of Yangtze finless porpoises (Neophocaena asiaeorientalis asiaeorientalis) under human care, that can also be applied or adapted to other cetacean species.

Since the 1990s, Chinese parents of people with intellectual and developmental disabilities (PWIDD) have been founding rehabilitation service non-governmental organizations (NGOs) to fill the social welfare gaps in disability services in their local areas. More recently, however, a new form of mutual aid organization – the parent organization, which focuses on family empowerment and advocacy – has emerged and diffused trans-locally, along with two national networks’ organizational incubation initiatives. Following an institutional approach to organizational studies and drawing on ethnographic fieldwork conducted between 2019 to 2023, this study traces the trans-local expansion of this novel organizational form in the emerging field of Chinese NGOs. We argue that parent organizations strategically orchestrate a form of institutional work – network entrepreneurship – characterized by three organizational processes: vertical connections between national networks and local member organizations, horizontal interactions among senior and new parent organizers, and the creative translation and adaptation of local parent organizations. Together, these three processes facilitate the trans-local diffusion of organizational resources, identity, ideas and practices. The findings make theoretical contributions by highlighting the institutional implications of peer organization networks, especially through the emerging subject position of “parent of PWIDD,” in the incubation and diffusion of a novel organizational form trans-locally.

Islands have a disproportionate role – as strategic locations, as imaginative or symbolic locales, as extractive zones and as ecological bellwethers – in oceanic imperial histories. They were and are places of ‘great practical use and metaphorical power’. And yet Newfoundland was seen (and continues to be seen) as marginal and peripheral, even if the biomass that was pulled out of its ocean fed – quite literally – a global network of exploitation. This article uses four overlapping maps to tell four overlapping stories: James Cook’s circumnavigation of the island in 1763–8; Lt David Buchan’s trek into the interior to contact the Beothuk in 1811 and 1820; William Eppes Cormack and Joseph Sylvester’s trek across the island in 1822; and finally, a series of story-maps created by Shanawdithit, who is apocryphally known as ‘the last of the Beothuk’. In doing so, it draws in Indigenous ‘storywork’ and cartographic histories and makes a case for storytelling as powerful methodology for examining overlooked colonial histories. These maps and stories highlight the complexity of encounter with a place rather than a coherence of colonial ideologies. Through the stories these maps help me tell, I hope to show how the peripheries of some people’s empires were the centres of other people’s worlds.

In this article, we completely describe the numerical range of Toeplitz operators on weighted Bergman spaces with harmonic symbol. We also characterize the numerical range of weighted composition operators on weighted Bergman spaces and classify some sets which are the numerical range of composition operators. We investigate the inclusion of zero in the numerical range, and compute the radius of circular and elliptical disk contained in the numerical range of weighted composition operators on weighted Bergman spaces.

A 2009 article of Allcock and Vaaler explored the $\mathbb {Q}$-vector space $\mathcal {G} := \overline {\mathbb {Q}}^\times /{\overline {\mathbb {Q}}^\times _{\mathrm {tors}}}$, showing how to represent it as part of a function space on the places of $\overline {\mathbb {Q}}$. We establish a representation theorem for the $\mathbb {R}$-vector space of $\mathbb {Q}$-linear maps from $\mathcal {G}$ to $\mathbb {R}$, enabling us to classify extensions to $\mathcal {G}$ of completely additive arithmetic functions. We further outline a strategy to construct $\mathbb {Q}$-linear maps from $\mathcal {G}$ to $\mathbb {Q}$, i.e., elements of the algebraic dual of $\mathcal {G}$. Our results make heavy use of Dirichlet’s S-unit Theorem as well as a measure-like object called a consistent map, first introduced by the author in previous work.

This paper examines whether political connections can protect firms from losses resulting from a government’s adverse policies. I explore this question in the context of Argentina’s partial nationalization of publicly traded firms in 2008–2011, resulting from the counter-reform of the country’s pension system. I find that partially nationalized firms in Argentina incurred much greater losses than firms in a control group. Among the partially nationalized firms, those with political connections were hurt less than non-connected firms. However, political connections lost all their value in firms where the government acquired a very large ownership stake. I also find that foreign ownership offered firms no protection against losses stemming from partial nationalization. These results suggest that in an unfavorable policy environment, firms may not be able to fully rely on political connections for protection.

This article examines the interrelations between the political economies of the Ottoman Empire and the administration of justice for European merchants in Ottoman cities during the seventeenth century. By focusing on the sultan’s court of justice, the Imperial Council (divan-ı hümayun), and the Venetian merchants who appealed to it, this piece illustrates how Ottoman commercial interests and political concerns influenced the production and application of Islamic law (Sharia) in Ottoman courts for European merchants. To promote international trade, Ottoman political and legal authorities introduced new norms and procedures in matters of legal evidence and court jurisdiction in commercial cases between Venetian and Ottoman subjects, and they encouraged settlements in favor of foreign merchants and Ottoman-Venetian trade. These politics of justice, I argue, demonstrate the dynamism of the Ottoman legal system in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, a period characterized by global commercial development and Ottoman military and political ascendancy in the Mediterranean.

Following recognition that our hospital had higher use of plasma metagenomic next-generation sequencing than our peers, we implemented a process for approval by infectious diseases before test collection. This intervention is calculated to result in a direct cost savings of $79,505–$84,057/year, driven mainly by reduced laboratory costs.

It is explained why relatively gas-poor ultra-diffuse galaxies (UDGs), a subset of IC 3475 galaxy types, do not have unexpectedly large sizes but large sizes that are in line with expectations from the curved size-luminosity relation defined by brighter early-type galaxies (ETGs). These UDGs extend the faint end of the (absolute magnitude, $\mathfrak{M}$)-log(Sérsic index, n) and $\mathfrak{M}$-(central surface brightness, $\mu_\textrm{0}$) relations defined by ETGs, leading to the large effective half-light radii, $R_\textrm{e}$, in these UDGs. It is detailed how the scatter in $\mu_\textrm{0}$, at a given $\mathfrak{M}$, relates to variations in the galaxies’ values of n and effective surface brightness, $\mu_\textrm{e}$. These variations map into changes in $R_\textrm{e}$ and produce the scatter about the $\mathfrak{M}$-$R_\textrm{e}$ relation at fixed $\mathfrak{M}$. Similarly, the scatter in $\mathfrak{M}$, at fixed $\mu_\textrm{0}$ and n, can be mapped into changes in $R_\textrm{e}$. The suggestion that there may be two types of relatively gas-poor UDGs appears ill-founded, arising from the scatter about the $\mathfrak{M}$-$\mu_\textrm{0}$ relation. The increased scatter about the faint end of the $\mathfrak{M}$-$R_\textrm{e}$ relation and the smaller scatter about $\mathfrak{M}$-(isophotal radii, $R_\textrm{iso}$) relations are explained. Artificial and potentially misleading size-luminosity relations for UDGs are also addressed. Finally, expected trends with dynamical mass and evolutionary pathways towards relatively gas-rich galaxies are briefly discussed. Hopefully, the understanding presented here will prove helpful for interpreting the many low surface brightness galaxies that the Legacy Survey of Space and Time will detect.

The Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) was enacted to make information accessible to persons and organizations throughout the Federal Republic of Nigeria. Despite the importance of this piece of legislation in enhancing and facilitating access to government records and information, which hitherto were shrouded in secrecy, the smooth implementation of FOIA has been constrained by a number of factors. This study examines some of these challenges and underscores the need for education and public enlightenment as a panacea that could potentially address some of the challenges highlighted in this study.

According to modal panentheism, God encompasses all possible worlds, and a substantial number of concrete possible worlds exist. This article builds on previous work that has grounded modal panentheism in perfect-being theology, which holds that God possesses all great-making properties to the highest possible degree. These great-making properties are said to include power, knowledge, consciousness, goodness, and encompassment.

To date, scholarly discussion on modal panentheism has focused exclusively on divine goodness and encompassment. The aim of this article is to explore modal panentheism with respect to divine power, knowledge, and consciousness. By extending the existing discussion beyond goodness and encompassment, I hope to show how modal panentheism can offer coherent accounts of the divine attributes. In doing so, I develop and address numerous problems. These include the problem of distinct perspectives, the problem of contradictory perspectives, the problem of divine unity, the problem of contradictory indexicals, the problem of evil knowledge, and the problem of evil powers. I argue that none of these challenges are insurmountable.

The view that emerges is a coherent and highly promising concept of God that is not at a significant disadvantage relative to traditional theism.

Clostridioides difficile infection (CDI) guidelines advise against repeat testing within 7 days. This retrospective study identified factors associated with 7-day repeat testing. Attending physicians (aOR = 0.67) and advanced practice practitioners (aOR = 0.61) ordered fewer repeat tests compared to residents. Further research is necessary to address inappropriate repeat testing.

This article explores the role of the Vatican and Catholic aid agencies in resettling European displaced victims of war in the aftermath of the Second World War, contributing to the field of refugee history and humanitarian studies. Focusing on the entanglements between Catholic humanitarians and UN agencies such as UNRRA and IRO, it shows how controlling mobility and managing population movements became a central part of the Vatican’s agenda and paved the way to greater involvement of the Catholic Church in the post-war reconstruction. In doing so, the essay intersects primary sources (predominantly from the Vatican and US Catholic archives) and different historiographical debates, with the aim of nuancing our understanding of post-war ‘refugeedom’ and the emergence of the ‘Cold War West’.

We followed up on previous results showing increased cheating under the threat of potential losses compared to the promise of equivalent gains, as well as inconsistent findings in this literature. Our studies used diverse paradigms, including random number reporting, binary number reporting, performance-level reporting, and reliance on illicit resources. In seven studies of online workers (n = 3,803), we found that participants tended to cheat, though the effect size of cheating (Cohen’s d) varied from 0.14 to 1.18 in different settings. However, in all studied paradigms, we observed no significant effect of gain and loss framing, with an overall effect size of d = 0.004, and with the variance in different studies accounted for by sampling error. Examining the moderating effect of stake size did not yield significant findings. At the individual level, higher cheating was predicted by loss aversion, but, on average, participants did not exhibit loss aversion for the obtained incentives. Thus, we cannot overrule the possibility that the inconsistencies in the literature might simply be due to sampling noise around an extremely small (or zero) effect.