Product configuration is a successful application of answer set programming (ASP). However, challenges are still open for interactive systems to effectively guide users through the configuration process. The aim of our work is to provide an ASP-based solver for interactive configuration that can deal with large-scale industrial configuration problems and that supports intuitive user interfaces (UIs) via an application programming interface (API). In this paper, we focus on improving the performance of automatically completing a partial configuration. Our main contribution enhances the classical incremental approach for multi-shot solving by four different smart expansion functions. The core idea is to determine and add specific objects or associations to the partial configuration by exploiting cautious and brave consequences before checking for the existence of a complete configuration with the current objects in each iteration. This approach limits the number of costly unsatisfiability checks and reduces the search space, thereby improving solving performance. In addition, we present a UI that uses our API and is implemented in ASP.

Answer Set Programming (ASP) is a successful method for solving a range of real-world applications. Despite the availability of fast ASP solvers, computing answer sets demands significant computational resources, since the problem tackled is on the second level of the polynomial hierarchy. Answer set computation can be accelerated if the program is split into two disjoint parts, bottom and top. Thus, the bottom part is evaluated independently of the top part, and the results of the bottom part evaluation are used to simplify the top part. Lifschitz and Turner have introduced the concept of a splitting set, that is, a set of atoms that defines the splitting.

In a previous paper, the notion of g-splitting set, which generalize the concept of splitting sets for disjunctive logic programs, was introduced. In this paper, we further investigate the topic of splitting sets and g-splitting sets. We show that the set inclusion problem for splitting sets can be reduced to a classic Search Problem and solved in polynomial time. We also show that the task of computing g-splitting sets with desirable properties is relatively easy and straightforward. Finally, we show that stable models can be decomposed to models of rules inspired by g-splitting sets and models of the rest of the program. This interesting property can assist in incremental computation of stable models.

There is a marked tendency to view Latin America’s twentieth-century international history through the lens of US hegemony, and Europe has been particularly impacted by this historiographical trend. On the basis of a review of 41 articles published in The Americas over the past 81 years, this essay explores The Americas’ important role in promoting scholarship on the variety of connections between Latin America and Europe. By bringing together two temporal currents—the chronology of history and the chronology of historiography—it traces how scholarship on Latin America’s twentieth-century relationship with the wider world has evolved. During the Cold War years, the majority of articles focused on Latin America as an arena for great power/superpower rivalry, but from the end of the previous century, scholars publishing in the journal made increasing use of different scales of analysis to uncover the multidimensional flows across the Atlantic. Ultimately, work published in The Americas on twentieth-century transnational relations has shown that Latin America and Latin Americans are important actors on the global stage with significant agency in drawing upon separate international influences and alliances to best suit their own domestic purposes, sometimes with significant consequences for the wider world.

We prove that Brinkmann’s problems are decidable for endomorphisms of $F_n\times F_m$: given $(x,y),(z,w)\in F_n\times F_m$ and $\Phi \in \mathrm {End}(F_n\times F_m)$, it is decidable whether there is some $k\in \mathbb {N}$ such that $(x,y)\Phi ^k=(z,w)$ (or $(x,y)\Phi ^k\sim (z,w)$). We also prove decidability of a two-sided version of Brinkmann’s conjugacy problem for injective endomorphisms which, from the work of Logan, yields a solution to the conjugacy problem in ascending HNN-extensions of $F_n\times F_m$. Finally, we study the dynamics of automorphisms of $F_n\times F_m$ at the infinity, proving that that their dynamics at the infinity is asymptotically periodic, as occurs in the free and free-abelian times free cases.

Voters are frustrated by the influence of money in politics. They cannot be certain whether politicians follow the money or the will of the people. Disclosing side income may therefore serve as a means to increase trust in politicians. To investigate whether this mechanism works, we analyze data from a vignette survey experiment on parliamentarians’ side jobs with respondents from seven European countries (N $ \approx $ 14,100). Our results show that compared to parliamentarians who are unwilling to disclose their side income, transparent parliamentarians, even those with especially high extra-parliamentary earnings, are seen as more trustworthy and electable. We also find that voters rely on the combined information of the number and type of side jobs (companies versus public interest groups) when evaluating non-transparent parliamentarians. Furthermore, voters’ income, education level, and ideological leaning moderate their perceptions of (non-)transparent parliamentarians. Overall, our findings suggest that politicians’ disclosure of side income benefits representative democracy.

Philosophers have spilled much ink over the discovery of ideas in the classical “context of discovery”. However, there has been little engagement with the question of what constitutes a discovery of “things in the world”. A much-overlooked answer to this question is provided by T.S. Kuhn. In this paper, I show that discoveries awarded with a Nobel Prize in Physics in the past 53 years accord with a basic premise of Kuhn's account and his distinction between two types of natural kind discoveries. I also draw normative conclusions for credit attribution in science.

Widowers make occasional appearances in Icelandic sagas of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries and—even though Old Norse did not even have a word for them—they exhibit some distinctive behavioral patterns. This article uses the framework of bereavement studies to examine the interplay of gender, affect, and small-scale politics in the wake of the loss of a wife. It proposes two archetypes of dysfunctional bereaved husband, observable in the medieval Norse world which the sagas describe (ca. 800–1300): the widower on the warpath and the widower on the bridal path. Both followed cultural scripts for widowers’ conduct, but did so imperfectly, in a manner that exposes their society’s constructions of masculinity, its prescriptive family codes, and the clandestine channels linking private emotional turmoil with public socio-political disruption. My typology of maladjusted Norse widowers offers heuristic tools for further study of bereaved husbands in other periods and places, as well as for comparison with bereaved wives and with men in other life-stages.

In the current study, Hebrew norms were collected for a set of 320 colored realistic pictures. Interestingly, participants were adult speakers of Hebrew as a first-language (L1) or as a second-language (L2, native Arabic speakers). Thus, both L1 and L2 norming were compiled. For each picture, participants typed its name, and then rated its visual complexity, familiarity, and typicality on scales of 1–7. To establish the predictive utility of the norms, we examined timed picture-naming performance on a subset of 135 items of the normed pictures. Two groups of participants with Hebrew as an L1 (native Hebrew speakers) or as an L2 (native Arabic speakers), were asked to name each picture as quickly and accurately as possible and their reaction times (RT) and accuracy were recorded. Results showed that norms collected from L1 speakers significantly predicted L1 participants’ picture naming RT and accuracy while controlling for objective lexical characteristics (frequency and length), validating the usefulness of the norms. Critically, these same norms were inefficient in predicting L2 picture naming performance. However, norms collected from L2 speakers were significant predictors of L2 picture naming performance. The study, therefore, carries important general implications for L2 production research based on picture naming tasks.

The article aims to shed new light on the voices of bereaved benefactors: slaves, freedmen and freedwomen, who are often marginalized in literary and monumental sources, by exploring a series of unpublished funerary inscriptions from Rome, currently in storage at the Museo Nazionale Romano. Editions of the text, translations and commentaries have been produced by young scholars from the British School at Rome (former participants of the BSR Postgraduate Course in Epigraphy). Their entries, edited by Abigail Graham (Institute for Classical Studies, University of London, British School at Rome) and Silvia Orlandi (La Sapienza, President of the Association Internationale d’ Epigraphie Grecque et Latine), are an exciting and unique opportunity to view inscriptions through a different lens: from scholars with diverse backgrounds and interests (history, archaeology, epigraphy, as well as linguistics), including postgraduates and academics. Careful consideration of text, appearance and context presents an array of voices and audiences as well as poignant messages that transcend time and space through a common experience: grief. By incorporating interdisciplinary scholars in the editorial process, we aim to provide and promote uniquely accessible epigraphic discussions that reflect the broader impact and significance of epitaphs as texts, images and emotive experiences.

From the 1890s to the 1920s across the American Midwest, newspapers reported arrests and altercations in ‘Cocaine Alleys’. Not all of these arrests involved people under the influence of drugs, but the term nevertheless became a non-geographic cultural construct highlighting readers’ fears about racialized drug use. By describing low-income Black women as ‘queens’ central to these spaces, newspapers mingled gender, race, criminality and drug use. The ‘Cocaine Alley Queen’ stereotype applied to Black women obscured the reality of White women’s greater propensity to recreational and medical narcotic addiction. As Black migrants moved from Southern states to Northern Midwestern industrialized cities, this reporting trend appeared in cities with higher Black populations than the state average. Newspapers created an intersectional, geographic identity that collected fears and stereotypes about drug use and Black communities when narcotics were accessible, and reformers sought to discipline Black, urban, female working-class bodies and impose middle-class behaviours on them.

Sepsis affects 50 million people globally, contributing to 20 % of all deaths and significantly increasing healthcare costs due to intensive care needs. Although the role of n-3 fatty acids in reducing sepsis mortality remains debated, recent studies suggest their potential in modulating immune responses and improving outcomes. This umbrella review aims to clarify the benefits of n-3 supplementation on mortality rate, length of intensive care unit (ICU) stays and days on mechanical ventilation in patients with sepsis. Following Cochrane and Grading of Recommendations Assessment, Development, and Evaluation (GRADE) methodologies, a systematic search was conducted across multiple databases up to February 2025. After independent screening, data extraction and critical appraisal, meta-analyses were reassessed using the DerSimonian and Laird model. Evidence was graded using the GRADE approach, categorising outcomes based on strength and quality. A comprehensive search identified 934 records, of which thirty-four randomised controlled trials (RCT) from twenty-one systematic reviews and meta-analyses focused on n-3 supplementation in sepsis patients. n-3 significantly reduced mortality (risk ratio: 0·79, 95 % CI 0·69, 0·90), length of ICU stays (mean difference (MD): −3·6 d, 95 % CI −4·39, −2·81) and ventilation days (MD: −2·86 d, 95 % CI −4·46, −1·26). Parenteral nutrition showed slightly better outcomes than enteral nutrition, and EPA and DHA provided superior results compared with mixed oils. These findings suggest n-3 supplementation could improve mortality, ICU stays and ventilator dependency in patients with sepsis. However, the certainty of the evidence ranges from low to very low, emphasising the need for further high-quality RCT to validate these benefits. Also, clinicians should prescribe n-3 supplements cautiously in this regard.

In the summer of 1924, a young Neapolitan scholar, Mario di Martino Fusco, claimed to have discovered the long-lost 107 books of Livy’s Ab Urbe Condita, sparking an international media frenzy. Announced prematurely by his supposed ally, Francesco Ribezzo, the claim captivated the scholarly world until it was definitively debunked. Drawing on a wide range of contemporary newspaper reports and scholarly reactions, this article reconstructs the unfolding of the Livy delusion: from Martino’s initial assertion, through journalistic hysteria and academic opportunism, to the final official inquiry revealing a misreading of a fourteenth-century reference. The episode not only ruined Martino’s career but also exposed the vulnerabilities of scholarly ambition, press sensationalism and nationalist rivalries in Fascist Italy. It remains one of the most extraordinary cases of literary delusion in classical scholarship, illustrating both the enduring allure of lost texts and the dangers of credulity and pride.

This article examines how the labor and community structures of female skin-divers, the Japanese ama and Korean haenyeo, believed to exemplify the primitive ability to adapt to extreme climates, became staple research subjects for global adaptation-resilience science. In the context of development studies, adaptation-resilience discourse has been seen as reflecting the emergence of neoliberal governmentality. In contrast, this article frames adaptation-resilience as a reactionary technological response that emerges in times of scarcity and crisis. This article demonstrates how the discourse can be traced back to interwar Japanese physiologists, who saw themselves as rescuing Japan from the ills of modernity through a socio-biological development program that drew on the diver’s adaptability as a means to create subjects not only capable of surviving extreme deprivation but willing to do so in the service of the community and the state. These scientists and their research were taken up uncritically in the postwar by international science and development organizations, who found in them a shared vision of a labor-intensive and low ecological impact model of community-rooted development that offered a sustainable and healthier alternative to capitalism, one that could help humanity overcome crises of modern excess such as climate change. However, sustainability meant the valorization of absolute austerity as a development goal, ruling out relief for suffering marginalized populations. This article therefore suggests that resiliency-based development entraps its subjects in a regime of self-exploitation that forces them into a constant state of emergency, paradoxically deepening their vulnerability in the process.

Gait analysis is a fundamental tool in biomechanics and rehabilitation, as it evaluates human movements’ kinematic and kinetic behavior. For this reason, high-precision devices have been developed. However, these require controlled environments, which generates a deficiency in the capacity of studies related to gait analysis in outdoor and indoor scenarios. Therefore, this article describes the development and testing of a wearable system to measure gait cycle kinematic and kinetic parameters. The methodology for the development of the system includes the assembly of modules with commercial surface electromyography (sEMG) sensors and inertial measurement sensors, as well as the use of instrumented insoles with force-resistive sensors, and the design of the software to acquire, process, visualize, and store the data. The system design considers portability, rechargeable battery power supply, wireless communication, acquisition speed suitable for kinematic and kinetic signals, and compact size. Also, it allows simultaneous assessment of sEMG activity, hip and knee joint angles, and plantar pressure distribution, using a wireless connection via Wi-Fi and user datagram protocol for data transmission with a synchronization accuracy of 576 μs, data loss of 0.8%, and autonomy of 167 min of continuous operation, enabling uninterrupted data acquisition for gait analysis. To demonstrate its performance, the system was tested on 10 subjects without any neuromusculoskeletal pathology in indoor and outdoor environments, evaluating relevant parameters that facilitate a comprehensive analysis of gait in various contexts. The system offers a reliable, versatile, and affordable alternative for gait assessment in outdoor and indoor environments.

Bootstrap current plays a crucial role in the equilibrium of magnetically confined plasmas, particularly in quasi-symmetric stellarators and in tokamaks, where it can represent bulk of the electric current density. Accurate modeling of this current is essential for understanding the magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) equilibrium and stability of these configurations. This study expands the modeling capabilities of M3D-C1, an extended-MHD code, by implementing self-consistent physics models for bootstrap current. It employs two analytical frameworks: a generalized Sauter model (Sauter et al. 1999 Phys. Plasmas vol. 6, no. 7, pp. 2834–2839), and a revised Sauter-like model (Redl et al. 2021 Phys. Plasmas vol. 28, no. 2, pp. 022502). The isomorphism described by Landreman et al. (2022 Phys. Rev. Lett. vol. 128, pp. 035001) is employed to apply these models to quasi-symmetric stellarators. The implementation in M3D-C1 is benchmarked against neoclassical codes, including NEO, XGCa and SFINCS, showing excellent agreement. These improvements allow M3D-C1 to self-consistently calculate the neoclassical contributions to plasma current in axisymmetric and quasi-symmetric configurations, providing a more accurate representation of the plasma behavior in these configurations. A workflow for evaluating the neoclassical transport using SFINCS with arbitrary toroidal equilibria calculated using M3D-C1 is also presented. This workflow enables a quantitative evaluation of the error in the Sauter-like model in cases that deviate from axi- or quasi-symmetry (e.g. through the development of an MHD instability).

Previous work had shown that multilingual preschool children are better at interpreting deictic gestures than their monolingual peers. The present study examines whether this multilingual effect persists beyond preschool age and whether it extends to iconic (i.e., representing the referent) and conventional (i.e., holding an arbitrary meaning) gestures. A total of N = 105 children (aged 3 to 8), varying in their balance of exposure to more than one language since birth, completed a gamified gesture comprehension task. The three gesture types were presented in four communicative conditions, namely (1) alone, with (2) reinforcing or (3) supplementing speech, compared to (4) speech produced alone. Analyses revealed that children with greater balance in their multilingual exposure understood significantly more speechless iconic gestures than children with less balanced multilingual exposure. Findings align with previous work and theoretical frameworks, indicating that multilingual exposure enhances children’s sensitivity to non-verbal communicative cues.