The arrest and prosecution of Nissan executive Carlos Ghosn, together with his dramatic flight from Japan, have focused unprecedented attention on Japan's criminal justice system. This article employs comparison with the United States to examine issues in Japanese criminal justice highlighted by the Ghosn case. The criminal charges and procedures used in Ghosn's case illustrate several serious weaknesses in Japanese criminal justice—including the problems of prolonged detention and interrogation without a defense attorney that have been characterized as “hostage justice.” But in comparative perspective, the criminal justice systems in Japan and the U. S. have some striking similarities. Most notably, both systems rely on coercive means to obtain admissions of guilt, and both systems have high conviction rates. The American counterpart to Japan's use of high-pressure tactics to obtain confessions is a system of plea bargaining in which prosecutors use the threat of a large “trial tax” (a longer sentence for defendants who insist upon their right to a trial and are then convicted) to obtain guilty pleas. An apples-to-apples comparison also indicates that Japan's “99% conviction rate” is not the extreme outlier that it is often said to be. Commentary on Ghosn's case emphasized the weaknesses in Japanese criminal justice. Those weaknesses are real and important, but by many criteria, such as crime and incarceration rates, Japan outperforms the U.S. As for Ghosn's case in particular, this article explores four scenarios of what might have happened to him if his case had occurred in the U.S. It is not obvious that he would have fared better under American law, nor is it obvious that justice would have been better realized.

This paper reports an expansion of the English as a second language (L2) component of the Multilingual Eye Movement Corpus (MECO L2), an international database of eye movements during text reading. While the previous Wave 1 of the MECO project (Kuperman et al., 2023) contained English as a L2 reading data from readers with 12 different first language (L1) backgrounds, the newly collected dataset adds eye-tracking data on English text reading from 13 distinct L1 backgrounds (N = 660) as well as participants’ scores on component skills of English proficiency and information about their demographics and language background and use. The paper reports reliability estimates, descriptive statistics, and correlational analyses as means to validate the expansion dataset. Consistent with prior literature and the MECO Wave 1, trends in the MECO Wave 2 data include a weak correlation between reading comprehension and oculomotor measures of reading fluency and a greater L1-L2 contrast in reading fluency than reading comprehension. Jointly with Wave 1, the MECO project includes English reading data from more than 1,200 readers representing a diversity of native writing systems (logographic, abjad, abugida, and alphabetic) and 19 distinct L1 backgrounds. We provide multiple pointers to new venues of how L2 reading researchers can mine this rich publicly available dataset.

The present study examined several distinct indicators of regulation (i.e., task-based executive function, surveyed child effortful control, and surveyed household chaos) as moderators of longitudinal bidirectional links between developmental changes in harsh parenting (HP) and child externalizing behaviors (EXT) from age 9 to 14 years. The sample included 311 children (50.4% female; 111 White or European American; 97 Hispanic or Latino; 103 Black or African American). We conducted cross-lagged panel analyses and utilized multiple reporters (mother, father, and child). Regarding bidirectionality between HP and EXT, findings were mixed depending on informant, but overall more child effects than parent effects or bidirectional effects emerged. Child and household regulation moderated certain effects, providing initial evidence of the potential role of regulations in bidirectional links between HP and EXT. The present study adds impetus to considering child self-regulation and household chaos as critical features influencing the bidirectional link between parenting and child functioning.

Quantum field theory predicts a nonlinear response of the vacuum to strong electromagnetic fields of macroscopic extent. This fundamental tenet has remained experimentally challenging and is yet to be tested in the laboratory. A particularly distinct signature of the resulting optical activity of the quantum vacuum is vacuum birefringence. This offers an excellent opportunity for a precision test of nonlinear quantum electrodynamics in an uncharted parameter regime. Recently, the operation of the high-intensity Relativistic Laser at the X-ray Free Electron Laser provided by the Helmholtz International Beamline for Extreme Fields has been inaugurated at the High Energy Density scientific instrument of the European X-ray Free Electron Laser. We make the case that this worldwide unique combination of an X-ray free-electron laser and an ultra-intense near-infrared laser together with recent advances in high-precision X-ray polarimetry, refinements of prospective discovery scenarios and progress in their accurate theoretical modelling have set the stage for performing an actual discovery experiment of quantum vacuum nonlinearity.

We examined the association between influenza vaccination policies at acute care hospitals and influenza vaccination coverage among healthcare personnel for the 2021–22 influenza season. Mandatory vaccination and masking for unvaccinated personnel were associated with increased odds of vaccination. Hospital employees had higher vaccination coverage than licensed independent practitioners.

The Physician-Scientist Trainee Diversity Summit, hosted by the American Physician Scientists Association and the Burroughs Wellcome Fund, was conceived in 2019 with the mission of developing strategic plans to diversify the physician-scientist community using human-centered design thinking. In June 2024, the second iteration of this conference was held in Raleigh, North Carolina, and brought together a network of scientific and medical organizations to discuss issues of justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion facing physician-scientist trainees. This article summarizes the progress made from the first meeting, the proceedings of the 2024 Summit, and a thematic analysis of the recent meeting, offering tangible solutions to the physician-scientist community for supporting diversity and accessibility.

Members of the genus Actinia are familiar members of rocky shore communities across much of the world. However, to date, no Actinia species have been reported from the North American continent. Here, we report Actinia from an approximately 22 km length of the New Jersey, US shoreline, where it was first discovered in 2021. Morphology and DNA barcoding data (mitochondrial cytochrome c oxidase I and nuclear internal transcribed spacer) indicate that these populations are Actinia equina. The presence of these populations close to major ports in New Jersey, New York, and Philadelphia suggests a probable introduction from shipping activities.

We have conducted a widefield, wideband, snapshot survey using the Australian SKA Pathfinder (ASKAP) referred to as the Rapid ASKAP Continuum Survey (RACS). RACS covers ≈ 90% of the sky, with multiple observing epochs in three frequency bands sampling the ASKAP frequency range of 700–1 800 MHz. This paper describes the third major epoch at 1 655.5 MHz, RACS-high, and the subsequent imaging and catalogue data release. The RACS-high observations at 1 655.5MHz are otherwise similar to the previously released RACS-mid (at 1367.5 MHz), and were calibrated and imaged with minimal changes. From the 1 493 images covering the sky up to declination ≈ +48°, we present a catalogue of 2 677 509 radio sources. The catalogue is constructed from images with a median root-mean-square noise of ≈ 195 μJy PSF−1 (point-spread function) and a median angular resolution of 11″. 8 × 8″. 1. The overall reliability of the catalogue is estimated to be 99.18 %, and we find a decrease in reliability as angular resolution improves. We estimate the brightness scale to be accurate to 10 %, and the astrometric accuracy to be within ≈ 0″. 6 in right ascension and ≈ 0″. 7 in declination after correction of a systematic declination-dependent offset. All data products from RACS-high, including calibrated visibility datasets, images from individual observations, full-sensitivity mosaics, and the all-sky catalogue are available at the CSIRO ASKAP Science Data Archive.

We present the first results from a new backend on the Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder, the Commensal Realtime ASKAP Fast Transient COherent (CRACO) upgrade. CRACO records millisecond time resolution visibility data, and searches for dispersed fast transient signals including fast radio bursts (FRB), pulsars, and ultra-long period objects (ULPO). With the visibility data, CRACO can localise the transient events to arcsecond-level precision after the detection. Here, we describe the CRACO system and report the result from a sky survey carried out by CRACO at 110-ms resolution during its commissioning phase. During the survey, CRACO detected two FRBs (including one discovered solely with CRACO, FRB 20231027A), reported more precise localisations for four pulsars, discovered two new RRATs, and detected one known ULPO, GPM J1839 $-$10, through its sub-pulse structure. We present a sensitivity calibration of CRACO, finding that it achieves the expected sensitivity of 11.6 Jy ms to bursts of 110 ms duration or less. CRACO is currently running at a 13.8 ms time resolution and aims at a 1.7 ms time resolution before the end of 2024. The planned CRACO has an expected sensitivity of 1.5 Jy ms to bursts of 1.7 ms duration or less and can detect $10\times$ more FRBs than the current CRAFT incoherent sum system (i.e. 0.5 $-$2 localised FRBs per day), enabling us to better constrain the models for FRBs and use them as cosmological probes.

African yam bean (AYB) is an underutilized legume with significant potential for food security in sub-Saharan Africa, yet limited research exists on optimizing its seed yield through selective breeding. In this study, the seed yield (SY) performance and relative importance of some yield-related traits on SY in AYB were assessed. One hundred and ninety-six accessions of AYB were evaluated for 2 years in three agro-ecologies of Nigeria. The experimental design was a 14 × 14 lattice design with three replicates. Data were recorded on SY and 13 SY-related traits. Positive significant genotypic correlations were found between SY and 11 of these traits. Pod length (PL) had a negative significant relationship (rg = −0.44**) with SY. Path coefficient analysis identified days to maturity (DM), pod weight (PW), shelling percentage (SP), number of seeds per pod (NSPD), 100-seed weight (HSW) and seed thickness (ST) as traits with positive direct effects on SY. The additive main effect and multiplicative interaction analysis revealed highly significant accession, environment, accession × environment interaction and interaction principal components effects for SY. Accessions TSs-119, TSs-101, 138A, TSs-4, TSs-157A and TSs-61 were identified as superior and stable, and should be considered for further breeding purposes. Selection criteria for improved SY in AYB should include DM, PW, SP, NSPD, HSW and ST. The identified stable, high-yielding accessions and key yield-related traits provide a framework for accelerating AYB improvement across diverse agro-ecologies.

With wide-field phased array feed technology, the Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder (ASKAP) is ideally suited to search for seemingly rare radio transient sources that are difficult to discover previous-generation narrow-field telescopes. The Commensal Real-time ASKAP Fast Transient (CRAFT) Survey Science Project has developed instrumentation to continuously search for fast radio transients (duration ≲ 1 second) with ASKAP, with a particular focus on finding and localising Fast Radio Bursts (FRBs). Since 2018, the CRAFT survey has been searching for FRBs and other fast transients by incoherently adding the intensities received by individual ASKAP antennas, and then correcting for the impact of frequency dispersion on these short-duration signals in the resultant incoherent sum (ICS) in real-time. This low-latency detection enables the triggering of voltage buffers, which facilitates the localisation of the transient source and the study of spectro-polarimetric properties at high time resolution. Here we report the sample of 43 FRBs discovered in this CRAFT/ICS survey to date. This includes 22 FRBs that had not previously been reported: 16 FRBs localised by ASKAP to. ≲ 1 arcsec and 6 FRBs localised to ∼ 10 arcmin. Of the new arcsecond-localised FRBs, we have identified and characterised host galaxies (and measured redshifts) for 11. The median of all 30 measured host redshifts from the survey to date is z = 0.23. We summarise results from the searches, in particular those contributing to our understanding of the burst progenitors and emission mechanisms, and on the use of bursts as probes of intervening media. We conclude by foreshadowing future FRB surveys with ASKAP using a coherent detection system that is currently being commissioned. This will increase the burst detection rate by a factor of approximately ten and also the distance to which ASKAP can localise FRBs.