The Digital Services Act (Regulation 2022/2065, “DSA”) creates a new national administrative authority to enforce the DSA across member states: the Digital Services Coordinator (“DSC”). DSCs perform a linchpin role in the DSA enforcement. DSCs have a number of tasks that interact with the content moderation process, such as certifying trusted flaggers or participating in drafting codes of conduct. They also have significant investigatory- and sanctioning powers to enforce the DSA vis-à-vis platforms, shaping content moderation processes and protecting users’ rights against platform misconduct. These interactions with content moderation affect users’ freedom of expression. This contribution scrutinises the role of the DSC in light of that freedom, describing how DSCs shape freedom of expression online through their powers in the DSA, and identifying instances where exercise of DSA powers can lead to different levels of protection for freedom of expression across Member States in the decentralised enforcement network. Finally, it proposes avenues in the DSA to anchor protection of freedom of expression in the application of the DSA by DSCs, through pursuing centralisation in cases with significant fundamental rights impact, and encouraging better usage of guideline competencies.

Student debt heavily shapes the life decisions and outlook of those living with it. This article examines the relationship between undergraduates’ views of President Joe Biden’s actions on student debt and their support for him in the 2024 election prior to his dropping out of the race. Using a representative survey from a large private university in the Northeast, we assess how student views of Biden’s handling of student loan relief correlated with voting intentions among registered student voters. Our analysis reveals that students who believed the Biden administration adequately addressed student debt were significantly more likely to support him compared to those who believed he had done too little. Additionally, our findings suggest that whereas increased student debt relief could have bolstered Biden’s support among liberal and very liberal students, its impact on moderate and conservative students was more limited. This study highlights the electoral implications of student debt relief policies, particularly in shaping young voters’ preferences, and it underscores the potential for targeted economic benefits to influence voter behavior in a highly polarized political environment.

We prove lower bounds on the density of regular minimal cones of dimension less than seven provided the complements of the cones are topologically nontrivial.

This article proposes a new approach for measuring the quality of answers in political question-and-answer sessions. We assess the quality of an answer based on how easily and accurately it can be recognized among a random set of candidate answers given the question’s text. This measure reflects the answer’s relevance and depth of engagement with the question. Drawing a parallel with semantic search, we can implement this approach by training a language model on the corpus of observed questions and answers without additional human-labeled data. We showcase and validate our methodology within the context of the Question Period in the Canadian House of Commons. Our analysis reveals that while some answers only have a weak semantic connection to questions, suggesting some evasion or obfuscation, they are generally at least moderately relevant, far exceeding what we would expect from random replies. We also find meaningful correlations between the quality of answers and the party affiliation of the members of Parliament asking the questions.

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 characterized, 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 yrs 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 characterize nanohertz gravitational waves 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 characterize the noise introduced by the dynamic inter-stellar ionised medium much better than the previous release thereby increasing sensitivity to any future gravitational wave search.

Potato (Solanum tuberosum L.) is crucial for food security in Rwanda, but its production growth has slowed. Improved potato varieties are urgently needed for Rwanda potato farmers. Crop breeding can effectively support smallholder farmers when it aligns with their environmental conditions and preferences. Additionally, integrating citizen science into variety development can enhance variety adoption and suitability for smallholder farmers. We assessed the insights from a crop trial following a triadic comparison of technology options (tricot) approach, linking the results with environmental, socio-economic, and on-station trial data. Under a tricot trial, 460 farmers tested eleven potato varieties, randomly allocated in incomplete blocks of three, allowing each farmer to test and compare three varieties. Biological data, reflecting breeding and variety genotypic values, were generated from multi-environmental tests conducted during 2018–2019 to evaluate the adaptability of new varieties. This research revealed that Rwandan farmers preferred the pre-1990 varieties (Cruza and Kirundo), while Gisubizo and Kazeneza, post-2018 varieties, were also considered competitive. Farmers’ preferences were influenced by diverse environmental and socio-economic conditions, with taste being crucial for home consumption and yield prioritized for market sales. Additionally, seasonal temperatures influenced the yield performance ranking of potato varieties across regions, while economic considerations and gender dynamics shaped different patterns of variety preferences. Despite challenges in aligning on-station and on-farm data, our integrated approach provides actionable insights for breeding programmes to develop potato varieties that better align with farmers’ needs, as well as environmental and socio-economic conditions. This innovative method can enhance breeding efficiency, variety adoption, and potato productivity, contributing to food security and agricultural sustainability.

We investigate whether election results are associated with emotional reactions among voters across democracies and under what conditions these responses are more intense. Building on recent work in comparative politics, we theorize that emotional intensity is stronger after elections involving populist candidates and highly polarized parties. We test these expectations with a big-data analysis of emotional reactions on parties’ Facebook posts during 29 presidential elections in 26 democracies. The results show that ideological polarization of political parties might intensify emotional reactions, but there is no clear relationship with the presence of populist candidates.

Indigenous Peoples are disproportionately impacted at every stage of the plastic lifecycle, from the extraction of the fossil fuel feedstock and plastic production, to the widespread dispersal of maco-, micro- and nanoplastics in the natural environment. They face many barriers to their participation in UN processes and must constantly push for their rights to be upheld and for their full and effective participation to be secured. This constant basic struggle for Indigenous rights and participation can consume all the energy and efforts of Indigenous delegates in UN processes at the expense of all the other important knowledge and messages they carry from their communities and nations to address the very real and serious harms that have been inflicted on their territories and all the life within it. Negotiators at INC-5.2 have a great responsibility to address this serious global crisis, while being reminded that Indigenous Peoples, who are on the frontlines of the plastic pollution crisis, must be equal participants as experts of their own knowledge and science and participate in the process as rightsholders in all decision-making that affects them.

The cyclicity and Koblitz conjectures ask about the distribution of primes of cyclic and prime-order reduction, respectively, for elliptic curves over $\mathbb {Q}$. In 1976, Serre gave a conditional proof of the cyclicity conjecture, but the Koblitz conjecture (refined by Zywina in 2011) remains open. The conjectures are now known unconditionally “on average” due to work of Banks–Shparlinski and Balog–Cojocaru–David. Recently, there has been a growing interest in the cyclicity conjecture for primes in arithmetic progressions (AP), with relevant work by Akbal–Güloğlu and Wong. In this article, we adapt Zywina’s method to formulate the Koblitz conjecture for AP and refine a theorem of Jones to establish results on the moments of the constants in both the cyclicity and Koblitz conjectures for AP. In doing so, we uncover a somewhat counterintuitive phenomenon: On average, these two constants are oppositely biased over congruence classes. Finally, in an accompanying repository, we give Magma code for computing the constants discussed in this article.

We prove a functional transcendence theorem for the integrals of algebraic forms in families of algebraic varieties. This allows us to prove a geometric version of André’s generalization of the Grothendieck period conjecture, which we state using the formalism of Nori motives.

More precisely, we prove a version of the Ax–Schanuel conjecture for the comparison between the flat and algebraic coordinates of an arbitrary admissible graded polarizable variation of integral mixed Hodge structures. This can be seen as a generalization of the recent Ax–Schanuel theorems of [13, 18] for mixed period maps.

Aims: Specialist eating disorder units (SEDUs) are unique among psychiatric units, in that there is a high incidence of electrolyte derangements due to the pathophysiology of refeeding. This requires careful monitoring of blood parameters with frequent venepuncture which often can be difficult due to strict mealtimes and post meal supervision as well as required group attendance in the SEDU.

Audit data demonstrated that the medical team spent about 3 hours every day and therefore 15 hours per week attempting to obtain blood samples from patients due to inefficient processes. Patients were often unavailable due to other commitments and so a maximum of 4 blood tests were obtained each day.

The primary aim of the project was to reduce the amount of time spent obtaining blood samples on the SEDU. Our secondary aims were to reduce patient uncertainty around venepuncture and to improve patient satisfaction.

Methods: A ‘phlebotomy clinic’ was implemented twice a week to replace daily venepuncture. The clinic was made up of 5-minute appointments and scheduled based on the published weekly ward schedule to avoid any protected mealtimes and group activities. The clinics took place at the start of the week to allow more time for results to be analysed and actioned.

Universal consent was gained from our patient group by discussion at the community meeting. It was agreed that a list of appointments would be published on the notice board and patients would be reminded about the clinic at morning check in.

The amount of time spent obtaining blood samples was self-reported by doctors at the end of the week and patient satisfaction was graded using a qualitative questionnaire.

Results: Implementation of the phlebotomy clinic saved 13 hours of time per week. Over three separate phlebotomy clinics, the average time spent obtaining blood samples was 35 minutes with 25 minutes of admin time and an average of 6 blood samples were taken at each clinic. Patient adherence to appointment times varied between clinics with a range of 66–100% adherence and this impacted the efficiency of the clinic. Patient questionnaires demonstrated that 100% of patients preferred the new format.

Conclusion: We concluded that the implementation of a formal ‘phlebotomy clinic’ significantly improved efficiency of venepuncture on the SEDU allowing more time to be spent engaging in other aspects of patient care. In addition, patient satisfaction improved and we believe that this in turn can greatly benefit the therapeutic relationship.