This article examines the interrelations between the political economies of the Ottoman Empire and the administration of justice for European merchants in Ottoman cities during the seventeenth century. By focusing on the sultan’s court of justice, the Imperial Council (divan-ı hümayun), and the Venetian merchants who appealed to it, this piece illustrates how Ottoman commercial interests and political concerns influenced the production and application of Islamic law (Sharia) in Ottoman courts for European merchants. To promote international trade, Ottoman political and legal authorities introduced new norms and procedures in matters of legal evidence and court jurisdiction in commercial cases between Venetian and Ottoman subjects, and they encouraged settlements in favor of foreign merchants and Ottoman-Venetian trade. These politics of justice, I argue, demonstrate the dynamism of the Ottoman legal system in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, a period characterized by global commercial development and Ottoman military and political ascendancy in the Mediterranean.

During the first half of the 20th century, Brazilian Protestants turned to their pens and periodicals to defend the legitimacy and beneficial nature of their presence in a majority Catholic nation. This period—spanning Brazil’s first republic, Getúlio Vargas’s authoritarian Estado novo, and the developmentalist era of Juscelino Kubitschek (1956–1961)—witnessed several regime changes and new national constitutions. Amid these political shifts, the Brazilian Catholic church sought to increase its cultural and symbolic dominance in the country. Meanwhile, several Brazilian Protestant groups came together to form the Confederação Evangélica do Brasil (CEB) in 1934, both to coordinate Protestant educational and social work and defend freedom of Protestant religious expression. With their denominational roots in Brazil extending less than one hundred years and their ties to US mission boards making them appear suspiciously foreign, Brazilian Protestants vehemently defended their patriotism. Relying on the writings of many CEB leaders, the organization’s periodical Unum corpus, and biannual reports, I argue that the Brazilian ecumenical leaders used several strategies to create a rhetorical defense of Brazilian Protestant legitimacy. They expressed occasional appreciation for Brazilian Catholics, celebrated Brazilian Protestant history and public recognition of contemporary Brazilian Protestants, and stridently opposed Catholic attempts to achieve cultural or social dominance. I also argue that because they maintained a constant defensive posture, the Brazilian Protestant ecumenists of the 1930s–1950s embraced a vision of ecumenism that explicitly excluded Roman Catholicism.

Following recognition that our hospital had higher use of plasma metagenomic next-generation sequencing than our peers, we implemented a process for approval by infectious diseases before test collection. This intervention is calculated to result in a direct cost savings of $79,505–$84,057/year, driven mainly by reduced laboratory costs.

It is explained why relatively gas-poor ultra-diffuse galaxies (UDGs), a subset of IC 3475 galaxy types, do not have unexpectedly large sizes but large sizes that are in line with expectations from the curved size-luminosity relation defined by brighter early-type galaxies (ETGs). These UDGs extend the faint end of the (absolute magnitude, )-log(Sérsic index, n) and -(central surface brightness, µ0) relations defined by all ETGs, leading to the large effective half-light radii, Re, in these UDGs. It is detailed how the scatter in µ0, at a given , relates to variations in the galaxies’ values of n and effective surface brightness, µe. These variations map into changes in Re and produce the scatter about the -Re relation at fixed . Similarly, the scatter in , at fixed µ0 and n, can be mapped into changes in Re. The suggestion that there may be two types of relatively gas-poor UDGs appears ill-founded, arising from the scatter about the -µ0 relation. The increased scatter about the faint end of the -Re relation and the smaller scatter about -(isophotal radii, Riso) relations are explained. Artificial and potentially misleading size-luminosity relations for UDGs are also addressed. Finally, expected trends with dynamical mass, and evolutionary pathways towards relatively gas-rich galaxies, are briefly discussed. Hopefully, the understanding presented here will prove helpful for interpreting the many low surface brightness galaxies that the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope will detect.

The Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) was enacted to make information accessible to persons and organizations throughout the Federal Republic of Nigeria. Despite the importance of this piece of legislation in enhancing and facilitating access to government records and information, which hitherto were shrouded in secrecy, the smooth implementation of FOIA has been constrained by a number of factors. This study examines some of these challenges and underscores the need for education and public enlightenment as a panacea that could potentially address some of the challenges highlighted in this study.

Food production represents a complex sustainability challenge, including climate change and freshwater scarcity. In order to promote the incorporation of sustainable prepared protein dishes into the agrifood market, this study aims to assess the environmental performance of three different burgers: a beef burger, a plant-based burger (soy, beans, and rice), and a hybrid burger (50–50 composition) by comparing the water use and the CO2 emissions relative to their nutritional value. The environmental indicators used to perform the current study were the water footprint, the carbon footprint (CF), and their respective nutritional productivity indexes (considering fats, proteins, and carbohydrates). The water needed to produce the beef burger was 1.8 times greater than the quantity needed to produce the hybrid burger, and 21 times greater in the case of the plant-based one. In turn, regarding the CF, the beef burger emitted approximately 2 times more kgCO2e along the supply chain when compared with the hybrid burger, and 13 times more than the plant-based one. However, because the meat burger comes from cattle raised on grasslands, the greenhouse gas emissions are likely lower than those from other, less sustainable forms of beef production. The plant-based burger was, therefore, more sustainable in terms of water use and carbon emissions relative to the nutrition productivity index than the meat and hybrid options.

According to modal panentheism, God encompasses all possible worlds, and a substantial number of concrete possible worlds exist. This article builds on previous work that has grounded modal panentheism in perfect-being theology, which holds that God possesses all great-making properties to the highest possible degree. These great-making properties are said to include power, knowledge, consciousness, goodness, and encompassment.

To date, scholarly discussion on modal panentheism has focused exclusively on divine goodness and encompassment. The aim of this article is to explore modal panentheism with respect to divine power, knowledge, and consciousness. By extending the existing discussion beyond goodness and encompassment, I hope to show how modal panentheism can offer coherent accounts of the divine attributes. In doing so, I develop and address numerous problems. These include the problem of distinct perspectives, the problem of contradictory perspectives, the problem of divine unity, the problem of contradictory indexicals, the problem of evil knowledge, and the problem of evil powers. I argue that none of these challenges are insurmountable.

The view that emerges is a coherent and highly promising concept of God that is not at a significant disadvantage relative to traditional theism.

Clostridioides difficile infection (CDI) guidelines advise against repeat testing within 7 days. This retrospective study identified factors associated with 7-day repeat testing. Attending physicians (aOR = 0.67) and advanced practice practitioners (aOR = 0.61) ordered fewer repeat tests compared to residents. Further research is necessary to address inappropriate repeat testing.

This article explores the role of the Vatican and Catholic aid agencies in resettling European displaced victims of war in the aftermath of the Second World War, contributing to the field of refugee history and humanitarian studies. Focusing on the entanglements between Catholic humanitarians and UN agencies such as UNRRA and IRO, it shows how controlling mobility and managing population movements became a central part of the Vatican’s agenda and paved the way to greater involvement of the Catholic Church in the post-war reconstruction. In doing so, the essay intersects primary sources (predominantly from the Vatican and US Catholic archives) and different historiographical debates, with the aim of nuancing our understanding of post-war ‘refugeedom’ and the emergence of the ‘Cold War West’.

We followed up on previous results showing increased cheating under the threat of potential losses compared to the promise of equivalent gains, as well as inconsistent findings in this literature. Our studies used diverse paradigms, including random number reporting, binary number reporting, performance-level reporting, and reliance on illicit resources. In seven studies of online workers (n = 3,803), we found that participants tended to cheat, though the effect size of cheating (Cohen’s d) varied from 0.14 to 1.18 in different settings. However, in all studied paradigms, we observed no significant effect of gain and loss framing, with an overall effect size of d = 0.004, and with the variance in different studies accounted for by sampling error. Examining the moderating effect of stake size did not yield significant findings. At the individual level, higher cheating was predicted by loss aversion, but, on average, participants did not exhibit loss aversion for the obtained incentives. Thus, we cannot overrule the possibility that the inconsistencies in the literature might simply be due to sampling noise around an extremely small (or zero) effect.