History effects play a significant role in determining the velocity in boundary layers with pressure gradients, complicating the identification of a velocity scaling. This work pivots away from traditional velocity analysis to focus on fluid acceleration in boundary layers with strong adverse pressure gradients. We draw parallels between the transport equation of the velocity in an equilibrium spatially evolving boundary layer and the transport equation of the fluid acceleration in temporally evolving boundary layers with pressure gradients, establishing an analogy between the two. To validate our analogy, we show that the laminar Stokes solution, which describes the flow immediately after the application of a pressure gradient force, is consistent with the present analogy. Furthermore, fluid acceleration exhibits a linear scaling in the wall layer and transitions to logarithmic scaling away from the wall after the initial period, mirroring the velocity in an equilibrium boundary layer, lending further support to the analogy. Finally, by integrating fluid acceleration, a velocity scaling is derived, which compares favourably with data as well.

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).

This study aimed to investigate the relationship between serum folate levels and the risk of psoriasis by integrating observational study with Mendelian Randomisation (MR) analysis. We firstly conducted an observational study using data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES). Subsequently, genetic instruments were selected for two-sample MR analyses to investigate the causal relationship between serum folate levels and the risk of psoriasis. The observational study showed no significant association between serum folate levels and psoriasis. In the fully adjusted model, neither serum folate level as a continuous variable (OR = 0·99, 95 % CI: 0·98, 1·00, P = 0·071) nor serum folate quartiles Q4 compared to Q1 (OR = 0·83, 95 % CI: 0·58, 1·19, P = 0·309) showed statistical significance. The MR analysis revealed that higher genetically predicted serum folate levels from Icelandic and Danish populations were significantly associated with a reduced risk of psoriasis (OR = 0·63, 95 % CI: 0·45, 0·88, P = 0·005). Similarly, higher genetically predicted serum folate levels from South Asian populations were significantly associated with a lower risk of psoriasis (OR = 0·84, 95 % CI: 0·72, 0·98, P = 0·025). Integrating observational study with MR analysis suggests that serum folate levels are protective factors against psoriasis, indicating that higher serum folate levels may help prevent the onset of the disease.

This study explores an interesting fluid–structure interaction scenario: the flow past a flexible filament fixed at two ends. The dynamic performance of the filament under various inclination angles ($\theta$) was numerically investigated using the immersed boundary method. The motion of the filament in the $\theta$–$Lr$ space was categorised into three flapping modes and two stationary modes, where $Lr$ is the ratio of filament length to the distance between its two ends. The flow fields for each mode and their transitions were introduced. A more in-depth analysis was carried out for flapping at a large angle (FLA mode), which is widely present in the $\theta$–$Lr$ space. The maximum width $W$ of the time-averaged shape of the filament has been shown to strongly correlate with the flapping frequency. After non-dimensionalising based on $W$, the flapping frequency shows little variation across different $Lr$ and $\theta$. Moreover, two types of lift variation process were also identified. Finally, the total lift, drag and lift-to-drag ratio of the system were studied. Short filaments, such as those with $Lr\leqslant 1.5$, were shown to significantly increase lift and the lift-to-drag ratio over a wide range of $\theta$ compared with a rigid plate. Flow field analysis concluded that the increases in pressure difference on both sides of the filament, along with the upper part of the flexible filament having a normal direction closer to the $y$ direction, were the primary reasons for the increase in lift and lift-to-drag ratio. This study can provide some guidance for the potential applications of flexible structures.

This article uses the career and writings of political philosopher Wu Teh-yao (1916-1994) to argue that Singapore in the 1970s–1980s embodied crucial aspects of conservatism as a modern, transnational ideological project in post-Second World War Asia. Wu opposed radicalism and was sceptical towards liberal democracy and Westernisation, all while promoting culture and tradition to legitimise a less-than-democratic political and social order. His worldview was shaped by a peripatetic life that spanned Asia and the United States and found expression in his propaganda work for the United Board for Christian Higher Education in Asia, presidency of Tunghai University, and, above all, contributions to nation building in Singapore. Indeed, during this period, no intellectual lent as much discursive and administrative support, in English and Chinese, to legitimising authoritarianism and social conservatism in the city-state. Both intellectual biography and social history of ideology, the article explains how Singapore represented the realisation of what we typically call ‘Asian Values’ and was embedded within a wider conservative ideoscape. It questions the conventional temporality and genealogy of Asian Values, arguing that they did not simply flow downwards from upon high, but were also produced and circulated by figures who operated between the state and public.

Conditional risk measures and their associated risk contribution measures are commonly employed in finance and actuarial science for evaluating systemic risk and quantifying the effects of risk interactions. This paper introduces various types of contribution ratio measures based on the multivariate conditional value-at-risk (MCoVaR), multivariate conditional expected shortfall (MCoES), and multivariate marginal mean excess (MMME) studied in [34] (Ortega-Jiménez, P., Sordo, M., & Suárez-Llorens, A. (2021). Stochastic orders and multivariate measures of risk contagion. Insurance: Mathematics and Economics, vol. 96, 199–207) and [11] (Das, B., & Fasen-Hartmann, V. (2018). Risk contagion under regular variation and asymptotic tail independence. Journal of Multivariate Analysis 165(1), 194–215) to assess the relative effects of a single risk when other risks in a group are in distress. The properties of these contribution risk measures are examined, and sufficient conditions for comparing these measures between two sets of random vectors are established using univariate and multivariate stochastic orders and statistically dependent notions. Numerical examples are presented to validate these conditions. Finally, a real dataset from the cryptocurrency market is used to analyze the spillover effects through our proposed contribution measures.

Dusty plasmas typically contain various species of dust particles, though most studies have focused on homogeneous systems. This paper investigates the propagation of dust acoustic waves in an inhomogeneous dusty plasma with an interface, analysing how plasma inhomogeneity influences wave behaviour. Using scattering and reductive perturbation methods, we show that both transmitted and reflected waves depend strongly on the mass ratio between regions. Dust acoustic waves cannot propagate through a dust lattice when the wavelength is smaller than the lattice constant. At a discontinuous interface, at least one transmitted solitary wave is generated, with its amplitude determined by the mass ratio, while at most one reflected solitary wave can exist. These results underscore the critical role of the mass ratio in wave propagation and suggest a method for estimating dust particle masses and properties by analysing the incident, transmitted and reflected waves.

Obesity, a global health issue, is associated with numerous diseases and has been shown to affect male reproductive health by inducing endocrine hormonal changes, chronic inflammation, oxidative stress and epigenetic alterations in reproductive cells. This study investigates the impact of obesity on testicular gene expression across mice, monkeys and humans, identifying 730 conserved testis-specific genes. High-fat diet-induced obesity upregulates GNG5, INHA, MSH5, SLC30A8 and SLC7A4 in testes, suggesting their potential as regulatory targets in testicular damage associated with obesity. Single-cell analysis reveals species-conserved expression patterns of SLC7A4 in Sertoli cells and SLC30A8 in SPG cells. It also confirmed that SLC30A8 and SLC7A4 were significantly upregulated in the testes of spontaneously obese mice. The findings highlight the potential of these genes as regulatory targets in obesity-related testicular dysfunction, providing insights into male reproductive health impairments caused by obesity.

In this article, motivated by the regularity theory of the solutions of doubly nonlinear parabolic partial differential equations, the authors introduce the off-diagonal two-weight version of the parabolic Muckenhoupt class with time lag. Then the authors introduce the uncentered parabolic fractional maximal operator with time lag and characterize its two-weighted boundedness (including the endpoint case) in terms of these weights under an additional mild assumption (which is not necessary for one-weight case). The most novelty of this article exists in that the authors further introduce a new parabolic shaped domain and its corresponding parabolic fractional integral with time lag and, moreover, applying the aforementioned (two-)weighted boundedness of the parabolic fractional maximal operator with time lag, the authors characterize the (two-)weighted boundedness (including the endpoint case) of these parabolic fractional integrals in terms of the off-diagonal (two-weight) parabolic Muckenhoupt class with time lag; as applications, the authors further establish a parabolic weighted Sobolev embedding and a priori estimate for the solution of the heat equation. The key tools to achieve these include the parabolic Calderón–Zygmund-type decomposition, the chaining argument, and the parabolic Welland inequality, which is obtained by making the utmost of the geometrical relation between the parabolic shaped domain and the parabolic rectangle.

The chemistry of combining the simulation hypothesis (which many believe to be a modern variation of skepticism) and manipulation arguments will be explored for the first time in this paper. I argue: If we take the possibility that we are now in a simulation seriously enough, then contrary to a common intuition, manipulation very likely does not undermine moral responsibility. To this goal, I first defend the structural isomorphism between simulation and manipulation: Provided such isomorphism, either both of them are compatible with moral responsibility, or none of them is. Later, I propose two kinds of reasons – i.e., the simulator-centric reason and the simulatee-centric reason – for why we have (genuine) moral responsibilities even if we are in a simulation. I close by addressing the significance of this paper in accounting for the relevance of artificial intelligence and its philosophy, in helping resolve a long-locked debate over free will, and in offering one reminder for moral responsibility specialists.

This essay argues that modes of conceptualizing global-local entanglements provide a useful lens for looking at the different ways Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) projects localize in BRI-host countries. The essay draws on recent work on George Ritzer to examine examples of BRI projects where global norms and practices are locally conceived and controlled, in contrast to other cases where the projects barely reflect local culture. Examples of Serbia and Hungary are provided to illuminate these points.

Despite being almost 4000m above sea level, cereal crops have been grown in the Ngari Prefecture on the Tibetan Plateau for thousands of years. Where and when domestic crop species adapted to high-altitude growing conditions is a matter of ongoing debate. Here, the authors present a new radiocarbon date from the Gepa serul cemetery, providing the earliest evidence of naked six-rowed barley in Tibet (c. 3500 BP). Evaluating the available evidence for barley cultivation and interregional connections in central Asia at this time, two hypotheses are considered—a generational advance with farmers migrating up river valleys or rapid, long-distance trade through mountain corridors.