This article investigates phonological complexity by using artificial neural network and Bayesian structural equation models to derive representations of phonological complexity from counts of the segments associated with particular features in languages’ phonemic inventories. These latent representations can then be used alongside principal component analysis to further analyse how interactions between phonological features affect overall complexity, and what phonological complexity patterns a model can detect in a phonological feature data set. The results indicate that the per-feature segment counts investigated tend to contribute positively to a language’s complexity, and that the latent complexity variables approximate a log-normal distribution. This implies that phonological complexifications co-occur with other complexifications diachronically while tending to be more constrained at the upper and lower ends of the complexity range.

Since 2017, the Samtskhe-Javakheti Project has identified about 168 archaeological sites in the highlands of southern Georgia and conducted excavations at Meghreki Fortress and Baraleti Natsargora. These sites reveal complex occupational sequences, fortification strategies and decorative practices, highlighting the region’s role as an interactive cultural frontier between highlands and steppes.

A comprehensive set of experiments were performed to document the separated flow over a three-dimensional (3-D) bump with the purpose of generating a benchmark experimental database useful in validating computational fluid dynamics flow simulations and improving model development. The emphasis of this manuscript is on the 3-D topographical and topological features of the separated flow that forms downstream of the bump and its sensitivity to upstream flow conditions. The bump model geometry was designed to provide well-defined and repeatable smooth-body flow separation conditions that were suitable for both experiments and simulations. The bump had a Gaussian streamwise profile with a constant maximum height equal to 8.5 % of its width over the central 60 % of its span. The remaining 40 % were outboard spanwise portions that gradually taper to zero using an error function profile to minimize tunnel sidewall boundary layer interaction effects. The model was immersed in a canonical turbulent boundary layer that was developed on a suspended flat plate in the Notre Dame Mach 0.6 closed-circuit wind tunnel. To document the effect of the incoming boundary layer thickness on the flow separation, the bump model could be located at two streamwise positions. The measurements of the flow separation region included fluorescent surface flow visualization, wall shear stress using oil-film interferometry, mean and dynamic surface pressure, hot-wire anemometry and planar and stereoscopic particle image velocimetry. It is shown that the surface flow separation topology is characterized by the `owl-face pattern of the first kind’. This flow topology consists of four singular points – two saddle points at the bump centrespan and two foci located at a spanwise-symmetric position. It is shown that the spanwise separation of the twin foci increases with Reynolds number indicating a corresponding increase in the spanwise extent of the flow separation. The two surface foci represent the footprint of vortices that lift off the ramp surface and form an arch vortex time-mean off-surface flow topology aft of the bump.

Antimicrobial stewardship (AMS) is central to antimicrobial resistance (AMR) control, yet its prioritization varies across Africa. We analyzed AMS components of five African National Action Plans on AMR against global and regional policy benchmarks, identifying areas of alignment and critical gaps that should inform future AMR strategies.

We present a neonate with a large vein of Galen malformation and an unusual drainage of the large vein returning blood from the upper half of the body into the right atrium (superior vena cava) into the left atrium. Remarkably, the infant showed no signs of cyanosis, heart failure, or pulmonary hypertension. We suggest this rare anomaly may have provided in-utero protection by offloading blood flow and reducing strain on the fetal heart and lungs.

Prefigurative law reform develops and experiments with ideas about radical legal change. But these ideas are vulnerable to being challenged, including for having failed and for being unreal. This article responds to such charges, drawing on utopian studies for a different account of failure and the not real. Its focus is a speculative legal proposal to “decertify” sex and gender so that they would no longer be assigned, obligatory aspects of legal personhood. The article explores the utopian dimensions of decertification alongside accusations that it is fictive, undesirable, and nonviable. Reading these charges through utopianism reduces their sting since failure and the not real become inevitable, even positive, qualities. At the same time, dichotomies of real/fictive, existent/non-existent, and achievable/unachievable do injustice to prefigurative legal proposals. This article therefore proposes an alternative frame that embraces failure and the not real while reaching beyond their limits: staying “in play.” This combines simulation, disorientation, and falling short with the ambition, hopefulness, and pleasures of utopian praxis. Sutured to a utopian impulse, in play emphasizes the importance of persistence for prefigurative proposals while recognizing that their form may fluctuate and change over time.

In this introduction, we briefly define Canadian philosophy and discuss its importance before introducing the authors who contributed to this special issue and their articles. The history of Canadian philosophy has been understudied, and there is a need for new philosophical work on the challenges facing Canada. Some articles collected in this special issue examine the history of philosophy in Canada, while others subject contemporary issues to philosophical analysis. The contributors to this special issue include Ian H. Angus, Robert Timko, Anna Brinkerhoff, Stefan Lukits, Charles Blattberg, Ronald A. Kuipers, Jérôme Gosselin-Tapp, Delphine T. Raymond, Frédérique Jean, Rémi Poiré, Matthew Robertson, Janet C. Wesselius, and R. Bruce Elder.

The globally Endangered Giant Nuthatch Sitta magna remains poorly studied, with key factors affecting its reproductive success remaining largely unknown. With forest loss as the primary threat to Giant Nuthatch, urgent action is needed to find possible avenues for habitat restoration. Here we investigated nesting survival and nest-site and nest-cavity characteristics at a site supporting the largest known global subpopulation in a 62 km2 landscape dominated by mature Pinus kesiya restoration plantings, a potential additional habitat for Giant Nuthatch in northern Thailand. Over three breeding seasons (2022–2024), we monitored 31 nests with 16 nests in plantation interiors and 15 nests in plantations close to villages and agricultural lands. The nesting period lasted about 43 days, with 11–15 days of incubation and 25–28 days with nestlings. We found that Giant Nuthatch primarily relied on available natural cavities, with an overall nesting success of ~25% (0.9686 ± 0.0079 [SE] daily survival rate). Daily survival rates were negatively affected by rainfall during cooler periods, while nests located in larger trees with a higher percentage of crown connectedness were associated with higher daily survival, likely due to better protection from severe weather conditions, such as rain combined with cooler temperatures. No significant differences were detected in daily survival between interior and edge nests, possibly reflecting lower abundance and diversity of nest predators in the more disturbed edge habitat. Although no strong preferences for specific cavity or nest-site characteristics were observed, nests tended to occur in cavities with greater horizontal depth and in flatter areas with a more open canopy. Our study represents the most comprehensive assessment of Giant Nuthatch nesting ecology, highlighting mature pine plantations as potential nesting habitat. These findings suggest that incorporating such plantations into conservation strategies may help sustain population viability, though further research is required on their long-term effectiveness.

This paper analyzes two ideal-type signaling interactions that are fundamental to international relations: reassurance and coercive bargaining. In reassurance, states attempt to signal that their goals are compatible in order to avoid conflict, whereas in coercive bargaining, they attempt to inflate the incompatibility of their goals in order to increase their negotiating leverage over a disputed asset. This article conceptualizes these two types of signaling interaction and delineates semi-overlapping conditions under which each obtains. It then identifies three ways in which credible signaling occurs differently in reassurance versus coercive bargaining. First, the directional effects of power shifts are reversed in each interaction, generating incentives for rising states to misrepresent in reassurance but not in bargaining. Second, whereas signals that are costless to honest, high-resolve senders are widely available in bargaining, the most prominent reassurance signals are typically costly even to honest senders with benign intentions. Third, it is often difficult to infer which issue area motivates senders’ behaviors in reassurance, whereas in bargaining senders have incentives to reveal which issues they prioritize. In combination, these distinctions suggest that reassurance is systematically more difficult than signaling high resolve.

Let $X_1,\ldots, X_n$ be independent integers distributed uniformly on [M], $M\ge 2$. A partition S of [n] into $\nu$ non-empty subsets $S_1,\ldots, S_{\nu}$ is called perfect if all $\nu$ values $\sum_{j\in S_{\alpha}}X_j$ are equal. For a perfect partition to exist, $\sum_j X_j$ has to be divisible by $\nu$. In 2001, for $\nu=2$, Christian Borgs, Jennifer Chayes, and the author proved that, conditioned on $\sum_j X_j$ being even, with high probability a perfect partition exists if $\kappa\;:\!=\; \lim {{n}/{\log M}}>{{1}/{\log 2}}$, and that with high probability no perfect partition exists if $\kappa<{{1}/{\log 2}}$. Responding to a question by George Varghese, we prove that for $\nu\ge 3$ with high probability no perfect partition exists if $\kappa<{{2}/{\log \nu}}$, which is twice as large as the naive threshold $1/\log 3$ for $\nu=3$. We identify the range of $\kappa$ where the expected number of perfect partitions is exponentially high. We show that for $\kappa> {{2(\nu-1)}/{\log[(1-2\nu^{-2})^{-1}]}}$ the total number of perfect partitions is exponentially high with probability $\gtrsim (1+\nu^2)^{-1}$, i.e. below $1/\nu$, the limiting probability that $\sum_j X_j$ is divisible by $\nu$.

This study investigates the use of topological data maps for extracting unique tropical cyclone (TC) wind field features. These maps are presented as graphs generated through a sequence of steps that filter, cluster, and identify data structure, and are used to characterize topological properties and shape in the data. The objective and scope of the method is explored through application to wind fields from the HURDAT2 data set, and its viability for detecting anomalous behavior in TCs is considered. We refer to the resulting graphs as wind field connectivity signatures (WFCS) or collective wind field connectivity map (CWFCM), depending on the data set. Our focus is Hurricane Sandy, where the method successfully identifies a complete 360-degree rotation of the high wind speed radii. This cyclical example of phase rotation of wind speed asymmetries corresponds to a distinct structural property of the graph. These methods have not been previously applied to wind field data and have only seen limited use in atmospheric sciences.

New cosmogenic 10Be exposure ages and a proglacial lake sediment archive provide the first record of local ice cover following the deglaciation of the Cordilleran Ice Sheet (CIS) in southeast Alaska. Exposure ages from Necker Bay corroborate existing evidence for a CIS deglaciation age of ∼15–14 ka from the outer coast of Baranof Island. We date retreat farther inland on the western and eastern flanks of the island to the Early Holocene, providing evidence for an ice cap persisting on Baranof Island ∼3 ka after CIS retreat. Baranof Lake sediment cores document continued local ice cover until ∼10.4 ka, after which glaciers receded to their Holocene minima until ∼8 ka. Glaciers grew through the remainder of the Holocene, reaching their maxima during the last millennium before retreating rapidly during the last century. Remote sensing analysis of glacial change around Baranof Lake from 1948 to 2023 CE shows that the rate of glacier area loss increased by an order of magnitude after 1986 CE, from −0.03 km2/yr to −0.29 km2/yr. This trend in glacier area loss is reflected across Alaska and western Canada, highlighting the sensitivity of Beringian glaciers to climate changes and the significant contribution they will make to sea-level rise this century.

To facilitate the rapid approximate prediction of the oscillation characteristics of a fluidic oscillator featuring a mixing chamber and two feedback channels, this study develops a nonlinear reduced-order model based on its underlying oscillation mechanism. By analysing the horizontal momentum of fluid parcels in the main jet, the feedback mechanism and jet attachment within the mixing chamber are separately modelled, resulting in a reduced-order equation analogous to the van der Pol equation. The model parameters are categorised into two types: shape parameters, which are derived directly from the oscillator geometry, and characteristic parameters, which are obtained from simulations or experimental data. Based on the reduced-order model, a theoretical formula of the Strouhal number (St) is proposed for fluidic oscillators with a mixing chamber and dual-feedback channels. This formula predicts St values of approximately 0.0150 and 0.0189 for typical curved and angled fluidic oscillators, respectively, showing close agreement with experimental values of 0.015 and 0.019, respectively. It also accurately captures the linear relationship between frequency and jet velocity under incompressible conditions. In addition, the model satisfactorily predicted the variation in the jet sweeping angle over time. This study offers further insights into the oscillation mechanism of fluidic oscillators and establishes a foundation for developing more accurate reduced-order models in the future.

Light pollution – the use of artificial lighting at night (ALAN) – is a growing environmental problem. This article focuses on how the European Union (EU) governs light pollution. A few key points are made. At first glance, the regulatory situation appears to be straightforward: there is no explicit EU governance in this area, as no regulation has been adopted with specific targets to mitigate light pollution. Yet, many EU instruments indirectly affect the growth of light pollution without mentioning the term by name. This article discusses specific examples from the EU Habitats Directive and the Energy Labelling Regulation, amongst others. On the basis of these examples, the article argues that this web of instruments, when considered together, can be conceptualized as ‘shadow’ governance. It concludes that unless light is shed on regulatory spillovers, the current EU regulatory framework will continue to worsen, rather than address, light pollution.

Cryptoassets, while viewed by many as a significant innovation in the banking and investment industry, present exigent risks to investors, markets and possibly the financial system itself. Can these risks be managed appropriately using securities regulation? This article argues that securities regulation is appropriate to regulate a popular kind of cryptoasset, utility tokens, given the similarities between utility token risks and those found in traditional securities markets. This analysis begins to point to a consistent global regulatory response to cryptoasset regulation and has implications for future cryptoassets and financial innovation more generally.

While prior research has established how people read in non-interactive media, little is known about the reading process in interactive multimedia such as video games. In this exploratory eye-tracking study, two levels of reading demand (high vs. low) were created during gameplay. Ninety-eight participants were randomly assigned to play a video game with either an English (L1; low reading demand) or an unintelligible foreign-language (FL; high reading demand) soundtrack. At the subtitle level, the FL group (vs. the L1 group) had higher dwell time percentages, more fixations, higher regression rates, and longer mean fixation durations. No group differences were found in saccade lengths. At the word level, the FL group skipped fewer words. An interaction was found between reading demand and word frequency, where the magnitude of skipping lower-frequency words (vs. higher-frequency words) was smaller in the FL group. Gaze duration showed a significant word frequency effect only. The FL group had longer total fixation time on words, and no interaction was found. These results showed that the FL group (vs. the L1 group) experienced greater processing efforts, as reflected in increased fixation-based measures and regressions. The current study provided empirical insights into task-driven reading in interactive multimedia.

The Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale (EPDS) has been translated into over 60 languages, and for 40 years this 10-item EPDS has remained unchanged. Meanwhile many societies during these decades have undergone cultural changes, including the use of language, the development of more diverse family structures and increased access to social media and now artificial intelligence. Perhaps an EPDS-R (revised) is now needed, and now is the time for action? The challenges that must be overcome to create a revised EPDS are the subject of this Guest Editorial, which also describes its origins in Edinburgh almost 50 years ago.