The commodity frontiers framework describes well the movement of sugar cultivation across the Mediterranean, Atlantic, and Caribbean. But it is less effective when explaining the evolution of sugar in nineteenth-century Tamil Nadu. In Tamil Nadu, the high costs of cultivation discouraged many peasants and landowners from planting sugar cane. As a consequence, despite British pressure to plant more cane, there was little increase in the crop before the twentieth century. In Tamil Nadu, sugar made from palmyra juice was a viable and popular substitute for cane sugar and this further discouraged the expansion of cane cultivation. The jaggery made from palm juice satisfied the demand for sweetener from most consumers in the region. From the mid-nineteenth century, palm jaggery was the raw material for making white sugar and distilling arrack in the sugar mills that were built in the region. Regional conditions shaped the development of sugar cultivation and manufacturing in Tamil Nadu. It is not a story of interaction between the local and the global as is found in the commodity frontiers framework. The region is a scale of activity that possesses great explanatory power, as the case of nineteenth-century South India shows.

The Caribbean islands represent some of the most biologically diverse places on Earth, but much of that diversity is now at risk due to human impact. Larger islands in the Caribbean host more native species, but small islands still hold together a significant portion of the regional biota. Although our knowledge of extinct and extirpated taxa continues to improve, there are hundreds of islands, each with their own unique faunal histories from where there is little information about their ancient diversity. Sombrero is a very small island (0.38 km2) located within the limits between the Greater and Lesser Antilles and is largely barren of vegetation and freshwater. The island was extensively mined for bird guano in the 1800s, which profoundly altered its topography and fauna. Here, we describe a collection of microvertebrates recovered in 1964 from Sombrero, which documents an unexpectedly high number of colonization events and high extinction rate for this territory. The late Quaternary deposits from the island contain remains of five types of lizards, a snake, a tortoise, and an anuran that colonized the island once it became aerially exposed in the early Pleistocene. The ability for such a small, remote island to have eight colonizing taxa in < 2.5 Ma, provides support for the role that island hopping played in regional biodiversity in the Cenozoic (e.g., GAARlandia), even across small, barren islands. Furthermore, these fossils further show that large scale defaunation also affected vertebrate communities on very small islands in the Caribbean.

The proliferation of smartphone cameras and other portable recording devices has enabled the rise of so-called ‘copwatching’, people filming police-citizen encounters with the primary aim of increasing police accountability. Interactions between copwatchers and police officers generally take place under conditions of mutual mistrust and regularly lead to heated arguments over the recording activity and its precise modalities. Using conversation analysis, this article examines video recordings of encounters between police and copwatchers, focusing on how disalignment concerning the recording activity regularly manifests between them already during the opening phases of their interactions. We describe the interactional work that goes into organizing the pre-beginning and opening phases of these encounters and take stock of actions that recurrently engender disagreement and contention between law enforcement officers and videographers. Data come from recordings made by copwatchers and police officers’ body-worn cameras during public police operations in the US and the UK. (Conversation analysis, openings, police, copwatching, video recording, disalignment, disagreement)

History, for Hegel, is the history of the ‘spirit’. It is the history which the spirit itself creates and in which the spirit takes on an ‘objective’ shape in the world. The objectivity of what Hegel calls ‘objective spirit’ is realized in the form of world history. The term ‘world history’ refers less to the history of the whole world, and more to the historical sequence of ‘worlds’, or epochs. World and history thus have an asymmetrical relationship in the Hegelian understanding of ‘world history’: it is one history, which divides everything on earth into many worlds, into local and temporally limited world cultures. What makes it one history—what makes it unified—is the unitary concept of the spirit. The contributions brought together in this special issue discuss Hegel’s theory of world history, taking different approaches to the question of the relationship between the incomplete and the completed, between ‘actuality’ as a rational state and ‘existence’ as a reality that lacks rationality. In all texts, Hegel’s method of developing a philosophy of history represents a central problem.

In communities throughout Latin America, criminal organizations provide basic order and security. While multidisciplinary research on criminal governance (CG) has illuminated its dynamics in hundreds of site-specific studies, its extent remains understudied. We exploit novel, nationally representative survey data, validated against a compendium of qualitative sources, to estimate CG prevalence in 18 countries, and explore its correlates at multiple levels. Overall, 14% of respondents reported that local criminal groups provide order and/or reduce crime, corresponding to some 77–101 million Latin Americans experiencing CG. Counterintuitively, CG is positively correlated with both respondents’ perceptions of state governance quality and objective measures of local state presence. These descriptive results are consistent with multiple causal pathways, including case-specific findings that state presence—rather than absence—drives criminal governance. We offer suggestions for both more precise data collection on CG itself and, given its pervasiveness, its inclusion in broader research on economic development, demography, and politics.

This article maps and analyzes the presence and non-presence of four classes of fineware ceramics in Late Roman Spain. It begins by mapping each of the classes spatially, before comparing their relative frequency in 15 specially constructed regions. It shows the inverse relationship between the presence of African Red Slip Ware and its local Spanish imitators; it then posits possible routes for Gallic imports and demonstrates that eastern Mediterranean imports were primarily restricted to the coast. It then analyzes the chronological pattern of ARSW imports across five horizons, showing a decrease in the number of sites that received these African imports in the mid-5th c. (60%) and the mid-6th c. (40%), especially inland and in the Guadalquivir Valley. The late 5th and early 6th c. was a period of stability and even expansion. By the late 6th c., however, few residents of post-Roman Spain had access to Roman-style dinnerware.

Landscape evolution in karst terrains affects both subterranean and surface settings. For better understanding of controlling processes and connections between the two, multiple geochronometers were used to date sediments and speleothems in upper-level passages of Fitton Cave adjacent to the Buffalo River, northern Arkansas, within the southern Ozark Plateau. Burial cosmogenic-nuclide dating of coarse sediments indicates that gravel pulses washed into upper passages at 2.2 Ma and 1.25 Ma. These represent the oldest epigenetic cave deposits documented in this region. Associated sands and clay-rich sediments mostly have reversed magnetic polarity and thermally transferred optically stimulated luminescence dates of 1.2 to 1.0 Ma. Abandonment of these upper passages began before 0.72 Ma, when coarse sediment was deposited in a passage incised below older sediment. Maximum U-series dates of 0.7–0.4 Ma for flowstones capping clastic deposits mark the stabilization of older sediments and a change to vadose conditions that allowed post–0.4 Ma stalagmite growth. Resulting valley incision rates since 0.85 Ma are estimated at 27 m/Ma. Coarse cave-sediment pulses correlate to Laurentide glacial tills about 300 km to the north, suggesting climate influence on periglacial sediment production. Dated cave sediments also may correlate with undated older strath terraces preserved at similar heights above the Buffalo River.

The guidance law design is considered for an engagement scenario of a missile attacking an actively defended target. A three-player nonzero-sum differential game is formulated to describe players’ respective behaviours including the attacking missile’s evading the target’s defender and thereafter attacking the target, the target’s evading the attacking missile under the assistance of the defender, and the defender’s intercepting the attacking missile to assist the target evading the attacking missile. It is considered that the missile hits the target at a specific terminal angle to enhance the destructive effect by attacking the vulnerable regions of the target. The advantages of norm-bounded and linear quadratic differential game guidance laws are combined and the cost functions segmented by relative distances between the players are proposed. The equilibrium solutions of the nonzero-sum differential game are derived and used as the respective guidance laws of the players. Simulations in various engagement scenarios are conducted to verify the reliability and robustness of the design.

The pressure effects on the mixing fields of non-reacting and reacting jets in cross-flow are studied using large eddy simulation (LES). A hydrogen jet diluted with 30 % helium is injected perpendicularly into a cross-stream of air at four different pressures: 1, 4, 7 and 15 bar. The resulting interaction and the mixing fields under non-reacting and reacting conditions are simulated using LES. The subgrid scale combustion is modelled using a revised flamelet model for the partially premixed combustion. Good agreement of computed and measured velocity fields for reacting and non-reacting conditions is observed. Under non-reacting conditions, the mixing field shows no sensitivity to the pressure, whereas notable changes are observed for reacting conditions. The lifted flame at 1 bar moves upstream and attaches to the nozzle as the pressure is increased to 4 bar and remains so for the other elevated pressures because of the increasing burning mass flux with pressure. This attached flame suppresses the fuel–air mixing in the near-nozzle region. The premixed and non-premixed contributions to the overall heat release in the partially premixed combustion are analysed. The non-premixed contribution is generally low and occurs in the near-field region of the fuel jet through fuel-rich mixtures in the shear layer regions, and decreases substantially further with the increase in pressure. Hence, the predominant contributions are observed to come from premixed modes and these contributions increase with pressure.

This article examines populist challenges to democracy and liberalism in contemporary Europe through the eyes of populist opponents. It does not assume that populist parties necessarily threaten liberal democracy but shows that, for many, fear of this threat is a mobilizing force. Content analysis of data on justifications of initiatives opposing populist parties in Hungary, Poland, Germany, Spain, Italy, Sweden and Denmark examines the prevalence of opposition frames defining populism as ‘democratic illiberalism’ or as a ‘threat to liberal democracy’, and demonizing, delegitimizing ‘anti-populist’ frames. Analysis shows the Populism as Democratic Illiberalism and Anti-Populist opposition frames were more prevalent than the Populism as Threat to Liberal Democracy frame. It further shows that populist success in hybrid democracies could be an explanation for the higher prevalence of the Democratic Illiberalism frame in some cases, and that ideological illiberalism and the polarizing practice of cooperation with populist parties in government could explain the higher prevalence of the Anti-Populist frame.

Using institutional conversation analysis, this article develops an account of the organisation of other-language recalibration repair in broadcast news interviews in Rwanda. Initial observation shows that the structure of other-language recalibration repair is significantly reduced compared to that of repair in everyday conversation. The study argues that this difference is due to the interactional use of the repair practice. To develop this argument, the article draws on the well-documented fact that, in institutional talk, repair can be deployed to serve relevant institutional goals. Analysis of the data not only confirms that, in broadcast news interviews in Rwanda, other-language recalibration is used as a device for relating to the overhearing audience, but it also reveals that this interactional use is consequential to the shape of the repair practice. Notably, analysis reveals that the structure of the repair practice is even more reduced than it was initially thought to be. (News interviews, other-language recalibration, repair, overhearing audience, structural organisation)*

This article introduces the blueprint model of production (BMP), which characterises the phonetics–phonology interface in terms of typed functions. The standard modular feed-forward view to the interface is that the phonetic form of a lexical item is the output of a phonetic module which takes the output of a phonological module as its input. The central idea of the BMP is that the phonetic form is instead the output of a higher-order phonetics function which takes the phonological function as one of multiple inputs. We explain how understanding the production process this way can account for systematic fine-grained variation in phonetic forms while maintaining a discrete phonological grammar. We present one possible instantiation of the model that simulates incomplete neutralisation, some cases of near-merger, and variation in homophone duration. Consequently, these types of systematic fine-grained phonetic patterns do not necessarily provide evidence against discrete, symbolic phonology.

Due to the nascency of synthetically derived biological systems, there is a need to develop protocols for safety and security management. These protocols can be adapted from existing safety and security protocols (e.g., Biosafety Level Classification of biological agents) as well as NASA’s and ESA’s planetary protection guidelines. Currently, NASA is preparing for its first sample return mission from Mars including determining how to manage the types of hazards that may be returned to Earth. Synthetic biology can look to risk management practices from related disciplines, and NASA can look to its established protocols from lunar exploration as it strives to minimize Mars sample return bio-risk. Notably, the biosafety concerns of synthetic cell research are very similar to those of planetary back-contamination from extraterrestrial samples. Thus, the measures taken to limit planetary back-contamination can serve to help develop biosafety protocols for synthetic cell research. We summarize existing tools used in planetary protection that can be repurposed to establish protocols for synthetic cell safety and security.

L-theanine, an amino acid found in tea; and caffeine, found in tea and coffee, are claimed to enhance attention. We conducted a double-blind, placebo-controlled, counterbalanced, two-way crossover trial to determine the acute effects of a high-dose L-theanine-caffeine combination on neurobehavioural (reaction time) and neurophysiological [P3b cognitive event-related potential (ERP)] measures of selective attention in acutely sleep-deprived healthy adults. Thirty-seven overnight sleep-deprived healthy adults (aged 22-30 years, 21 men) completed a computerised traffic-scene-related visual stimulus discrimination task before and 50 minutes after ingesting 200 mg L-theanine-160 mg caffeine combination, or a placebo. The task involved selectively responding to imminent accident scenes (20% probability) while ignoring randomly intermixed, more frequent safe scenes (80% probability). A 32-channel EEG was recorded concurrently to derive ERPs. The L-theanine-caffeine combination significantly improved the hit rate (P = 0.02) and target-distractor discriminability (P = 0.047), compared to the placebo. Although both L-theanine-caffeine combination (△ = 52.08 ms, P < 0.0001) and placebo (△ = 13.97 ms, P = 0.024) improved reaction time to accident scenes, the pre-post-dose reaction time improvement of the L-theanine-caffeine combination was significantly greater than that of placebo (△ = 38.1 ms, P = 0.003). Compared to the placebo, the L-theanine-caffeine combination significantly increased the amplitudes and reduced the latencies of P3b ERP component. Our findings suggest that L-theanine-caffeine combination improves the accuracy and speed of deploying selective attention to traffic scenarios in sleep-deprived individuals. This improvement is brought about by greater and faster neural resource allocation in the attentional networks of the brain.