We undertake a comprehensive investigation into the distribution of in situ stars within Milky Way-like galaxies, leveraging TNG50 simulations and comparing their predictions with data from the H3 survey. Our analysis reveals that 28% of galaxies demonstrate reasonable agreement with H3, while only 12% exhibit excellent alignment in their profiles, regardless of the specific spatial cut employed to define in situ stars. To uncover the underlying factors contributing to deviations between TNG50 and H3 distributions, we scrutinize correlation coefficients among internal drivers(e.g., virial radius, star formation rate [SFR]) and merger-related parameters (such as the effective mass-ratio, mean distance, average redshift, total number of mergers, average spin-ratio and maximum spin alignment between merging galaxies). Notably, we identify significant correlations between deviations from observational data and key parameters such as the median slope of virial radius, mean SFR values, and the rate of SFR change across different redshift scans. Furthermore, positive correlations emerge between deviations from observational data and parameters related to galaxy mergers. We validate these correlations using the Random Forest Regression method. Our findings underscore the invaluable insights provided by the H3 survey in unravelling the cosmic history of galaxies akin to the Milky Way, thereby advancing our understanding of galactic evolution and shedding light on the formation and evolution of Milky Way-like galaxies in cosmological simulations.

The World Cancer Research Fund and the American Institute for Cancer Research recommend a plant-based diet to cancer survivors, which may reduce chronic inflammation and excess adiposity associated with worse survival. We investigated associations of plant-based dietary patterns with inflammation biomarkers and body composition in the Pathways Study, in which 3659 women with breast cancer provided validated food frequency questionnaires approximately 2 months after diagnosis. We derived three plant-based diet indices: overall plant-based diet index (PDI), healthful plant-based diet index (hPDI) and unhealthful plant-based diet index (uPDI). We assayed circulating inflammation biomarkers related to systemic inflammation (high-sensitivity C-reactive protein [hsCRP]), pro-inflammatory cytokines (IL-1β, IL-6, IL-8, TNF-α) and anti-inflammatory cytokines (IL-4, IL-10, IL-13). We estimated areas (cm2) of muscle and visceral and subcutaneous adipose tissue (VAT and SAT) from computed tomography scans. Using multivariable linear regression, we calculated the differences in inflammation biomarkers and body composition for each index. Per 10-point increase for each index: hsCRP was significantly lower by 6·9 % (95 % CI 1·6%, 11·8%) for PDI and 9·0 % (95 % CI 4·9%, 12·8%) for hPDI but significantly higher by 5·4 % (95 % CI 0·5%, 10·5%) for uPDI, and VAT was significantly lower by 7·8 cm2 (95 % CI 2·0 cm2, 13·6 cm2) for PDI and 8·6 cm2 (95 % CI 4·1 cm2, 13·2 cm2) for hPDI but significantly higher by 6·2 cm2 (95 % CI 1·3 cm2, 11·1 cm2) for uPDI. No significant associations were observed for other inflammation biomarkers, muscle, or SAT. A plant-based diet, especially a healthful plant-based diet, may be associated with reduced inflammation and visceral adiposity among breast cancer survivors.

Emerging wildlife pathogens often display geographic variability due to landscape heterogeneity. Modeling approaches capable of learning complex, non-linear spatial dynamics of diseases are needed to rigorously assess and mitigate the effects of pathogens on wildlife health and biodiversity. We propose a novel machine learning (ML)-guided approach that leverages prior physical knowledge of ecological systems, using partial differential equations. We present our approach, taking advantage of the universal function approximation property of neural networks for flexible representation of the underlying dynamics of the geographic spread and growth of wildlife diseases. We demonstrate the benefits of our approach by comparing its forecasting power with commonly used methods and highlighting the obtained insights on disease dynamics. Additionally, we show the theoretical guarantees for the approximation error of our model. We illustrate the implementation of our ML-guided approach using data from white-nose syndrome (WNS) outbreaks in bat populations across the US. WNS is an infectious fungal disease responsible for significant declines in bat populations. Our results on WNS are useful for disease surveillance and bat conservation efforts. Our methods can be broadly used to assess the effects of environmental and anthropogenic drivers impacting wildlife health and biodiversity.

The developmental states of Asia—South Korea, Taiwan, and Singapore—have been widely recognized for their successful COVID-19 governance. However, despite these successes, a closer examination reveals significant differences in their strategic responses and the medical resources mobilized. This article explains the different governance approaches taken by the three developmental states. We argue that the pre-crisis industrial coordination capacity of each developmental state plays a crucial role in determining both whether and which medical resources can be mobilized during emergencies. Through comparative case studies and within-case process tracing, we demonstrate how pre-established industry-level coordination capacities enabled Korea, Taiwan, and Singapore to strategically prioritize the production and mobilization of test kits, masks, and vaccines, respectively, especially in the initial phase of the pandemic. This article emphasizes that a country’s domestic production capacity, an often-overlooked institutional factor, can facilitate a more efficient response in a short period of time and significantly strengthen crisis management efforts.

China is well known for providing official data, but how to treat these data is a longstanding debate among China scholars. This paper advances understandings of how to interpret Chinese official statistics about the internet. Using standards for evaluating surveys in the social sciences, we systematically compare official data from the China Network Information Center (CNNIC), which is under the supervision of China’s main regulator of internet policy, with the China Internet Survey 2018 (CIS), which is, to our knowledge, the first nationally representative survey on internet use in China. Using three examples, we illustrate how methodological differences in sampling design and measurement can lead to vastly different conclusions about key indicators of internet use in mainland China, including the percentage of internet users, their regional and urban–rural digital divide, and the percentage of specific social media platforms. We discuss the challenges of survey work on internet use in China and offer recommendations on how to interpret official statistics, especially in light of the limitations researchers face when conducting face-to-face surveys in China.

This paper examines the social meanings embedded in Japanese melodramas produced since the 1990s and their use by the public for comfort and healing in an attempt to deal with declining confidence, both personal and national, in the wake of the burst of the bubble economy. It notes, further, how the Japanese media has used similar tropes in an effort to rebuild morale in the aftermath of the March 11 earthquake.

In the Heisei Era (1989-) Japan has experienced numerous crises, ranging from political, financial, and social turmoil to natural disasters, inviting comparison with the turbulent early decades of Showa (1926-1989) history. In the face of calamity, however, the Japanese people have repeatedly surprised the world with their resilience and stoicism, and some would say, new forms of resistance to state and corporate power. In this special issue we reflect on the meaning of “natural disaster” and its interface with human action. When humans come into play, mishandling of a situation creates disasters. To what extent can it be said that the crises discussed here, some of the Major crises that Japan faced during the long twentieth century, can be attributed to human errors? How has knowledge of these crises affected the credibility of authorities both state and corporate in the wake of 3.11?

Insufficient sleep’s impact on cognitive and emotional function is well-documented, but its effects on social functioning remain understudied. This research investigates the influence of depressive symptoms on the relationship between sleep deprivation (SD) and social decision-making. Forty-two young adults were randomly assigned to either the SD or sleep control (SC) group. The SD group stayed awake in the laboratory, while the SC group had a normal night’s sleep at home. During the subsequent morning, participants completed a Trust Game (TG) in which a higher monetary offer distributed by them indicated more trust toward their partners. They also completed an Ultimatum Game (UG) in which a higher acceptance rate indicated more rational decision-making. The results revealed that depressive symptoms significantly moderated the effect of SD on trust in the TG. However, there was no interaction between group and depressive symptoms found in predicting acceptance rates in the UG. This study demonstrates that individuals with higher levels of depressive symptoms display less trust after SD, highlighting the role of depressive symptoms in modulating the impact of SD on social decision-making. Future research should explore sleep-related interventions targeting the psychosocial dysfunctions of individuals with depression.

The operating goals of family firms (FFs) typically include building both economic and socioemotional wealth. Innovation is increasingly recognized as a key source for the development and growth of family firms. From the multiple dimensions of socioemotional wealth (SEW), this research has focused on how family influences a particular type of innovation – green innovation – in family firms. Using 5,071 observations from among the listed firms in Taiwan over an eight-year period (2014–2021), we examined the relationships between FFs and green innovation. The results indicate that FFs are more likely to develop green innovation than their nonfamily counterparts. In particular, there are complicated effects within different types of FFs – control deviation family firms (CDFFs).

Classic arguments about federalist governance emphasize an informational or learning role for decentralizing policy authority, but in practice, ideological outcomes frequently motivate this choice. We examine the role of ideology in the allocation of policy-making power by modeling a two-period interaction between an elected central executive and two local governments. Decentralization reduces the executive’s ability to set policy and control externalities but potentially insures against future policy reversals. In this environment, partial decentralization is a common outcome. Complete decentralization arises when executives are unlikely to be re-elected, party polarization is high, and institutional hurdles to policy-making are significant. These results help to clarify existing cross-national empirical findings on the determinants of centralization.

Contrafreeloading (CFL) refers to animals’ tendency to prefer obtaining food through effort rather than accessing food that is freely available. Researchers have proposed various hypotheses to explain this intriguing phenomenon, but few studies have provided a comprehensive analysis of the factors influencing this behaviour. In this study, we observed the choice of alternative food containers in budgerigars (Melopsittacus undulatus) to investigate their CFL tendencies and the effects of pre-training, food deprivation, and effort required on the CFL tasks. The results showed that budgerigars did not exhibit significant difference in their first choices or the time interacting with less challenging versus more challenging food containers. Moreover, when evaluating each budgerigar’s CFL level, only half of them were identified as strong contrafreeloaders. Thus, we suggest that budgerigars exhibit an intermediate CFL level that lies somewhere between a strong tendency and the absence of such behaviour. Furthermore, we also found that food-deprived budgerigars tended to select less challenging food containers, and pre-trained budgerigars were more likely to choose highly challenging food containers than moderately challenging food containers, which means that the requirement of only a reasonable effort (access to food from moderately challenging food containers in this study) and the experience of pre-training act to enhance their CFL levels, whereas the requirement of greater effort and the experience of food deprivation act to decrease their CFL levels. Studying animal CFL can help understand why animals choose to expend effort to obtain food rather than accessing it for free, and it also has implications for setting feeding environments to enhance the animal welfare of captive and domesticated animals.

The aerodynamic deformation and breakup of wall-attached droplets in axisymmetric stagnation flow are investigated experimentally. A vertical shock tube is used to generate the shock wave accompanying the post-wave airflow, and the axisymmetric stagnation flow is formed through the impingement of an air stream on a solid wall. For the wall-attached droplets with initially hemispherical profile, four typical droplet deformation and breakup modes can be identified with the continuous increase of the droplet local Weber number, which are the vibrating mode, the compressing mode, the sheet thinning mode and the shear-induced entrainment mode. Quantitative analyses of droplet evolution dynamics are also conducted for the compressing mode and the sheet thinning mode, and the significant differences of air flow separation at the droplet lateral surface between these two modes are revealed. The potential flow model and the energy conservation model are further developed to predict the entire droplet deformation processes. The vibrating frequency and amplitude of droplets under the vibrating mode are predicted by a spring-mass model, and the surface perturbation wavelengths of droplets under the shear-induced entrainment mode are estimated based on the dispersion relation of Kelvin–Helmholtz instability. This work is proposed to give potential guidance for regulating the aerodynamic fragmentation of wall-attached droplets in practical engineering applications.

Recent surveys have shown that over 90% of Japanese have a negative view of China and the Chinese people. This tendency appears to have become more pronounced since the beginning of Abe Shinzō's second term as prime minister in December 2012. It also coincides with greater and greater numbers of Chinese visiting Japan as tourists and consumers. This paper investigates portrayals of the Chinese people in Japanese media to identify positive and negative representations and to see if these correlate with the results of surveys of attitudes among the general population.