This article delves into the emergence of Havana as site of refuge for exiles from the Greater Caribbean between approximately 1790 and 1810. It examines the institutional and political governance of relief to Spanish and foreign exiles in Havana, looking at the intricate intersection between notions of imperial relief, loyalty, and subjecthood. It scrutinises the confluence of two waves of exile migration to Havana from the island of Hispaniola, underscoring how both migratory flows were intricately linked and influenced one another. One involved the exile of French settlers from Saint-Domingue during the Haitian Revolution (1791–1804), while the other entailed the relocation of Spanish-speaking settlers from Santo Domingo following the Treaty of Basel (1795), which officially ceded the Spanish colony to the French Republic. Through the lens of relief policies, this article shows how colonial officials in Cuba aimed to present an imperial self-image of benevolence towards Spanish subjects and foreigners in exile who were perceived as loyal to the Spanish crown. Focusing on the category of emigrados, this article correspondingly highlights the instrumental use by these exiles of concepts of imperial loyalty and subjecthood, and their role in claiming special entitlements to material and financial assistance from Spanish colonial authorities.

Health technology assessment (HTA) is increasingly recognized as a critical tool for evidence-informed decision-making in Eastern Europe and Central Asia (EECA), a region characterized by substantial diversity in health system maturity, financial resources, and institutional capacities. Building on the previous Eurasian HTA Initiative conducted a decade earlier, this study aimed to update the regional assessment of HTA implementation, expand country representation, and identify evolving strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats affecting the advancement of HTA across the region. An online multilingual survey, informed by the original SWOT framework, was disseminated between August and October 2025 to experts from national authorities, HTA agencies, academia, and health sector stakeholders across eleven EECA countries. Twenty-two responses were analyzed descriptively. Key strengths included strong regional collaboration interest, growing availability of online HTA resources, and sustained global support. Major weaknesses centered on the limited trained HTA/EBM personnel and the absence of standardized national training programs. Opportunities reflected expanding interest in EBM, pressure from rising healthcare costs, and prospects for regional advocacy, educational exchanges, and international collaboration. Principal threats involved insufficient funding for capacity building, low policy-maker and clinician awareness, commercial influence from industry, and limited incentives for EBM uptake. Overall, respondents emphasized gradual progress in selected areas but persistent structural barriers requiring coordinated national and regional action.

The lowland tapir Tapirus terrestris is confined to South America and is categorized as Vulnerable on the IUCN Red List. The species was extinct in the state of Rio de Janeiro in Brazil by the early 20th century but during 2017–2021, 14 individuals from six captive groups were reintroduced through a soft release method in the Guapiaçu Ecological Reserve in the Atlantic Forest. The reintroduced population was continually monitored with camera traps during the pre-release acclimatization period and after release. The released tapirs decreased the proportion of diurnal activity but did not decrease daily activity levels. Their activity patterns differed between the acclimatization period and post-release, as well as between the dry and wet seasons, but there was no difference between the activity of males and females. The tapirs modified their activity patterns over the course of the reintroduction period, showing an increasing resemblance to the behaviour of wild populations.

The 2022 and 2025 floods in Pakistan forced more than 33 million people to flee from their homes, destroyed medical facilities across a large portion of Punjab, Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, Sindh, and Balochistan, and revealed major deficiencies in government management, healthcare systems, environmental protection, and climate preparedness. Pakistan emits <1% of worldwide greenhouse gases, yet remains among the most climate-sensitive nations, reflecting global inequities in climate impact. Floods destroyed basic health determinants, thus contributing to infectious disease epidemics, malnutrition, and mental health problems. To evaluate the short- and long-term flood impacts, this article applies the Disaster Management Cycle, along with the One Health, Planetary Health, and Doughnut Economy frameworks. The framework demonstrates the impact of floods on the health and healthcare system while simultaneously eroding the ecosystem and making the population more susceptible. The article identifies priorities for climate-adaptive health care infrastructure, environmental recovery, equity-centered disaster preparedness, and integration of One Health principles into medical education.

Motivated by applications to underwater explosions and volcanic eruptions, this paper considers the evolution of an initial pressure disturbance in the ocean, including effects due to the dynamic and static compression of water and the free surface. In order to solve the equations of motion of a linear compressible ocean, a special inner product is introduced, which allows us to apply self-adjoint operator theory. What results is a Hilbert space in which the acoustic–gravity modes are orthogonal in the generalised sense. This allows the time-domain evolution of the free surface and subsurface pressure field resulting from an initial disturbance to be calculated. Our simulations show initial radial propagation of the pressure pulse and subsequent reflection from the water's surface and the rigid ocean floor, eventually leading to horizontal propagation away from the source point. The solutions with and without the inclusion of the static compression are compared, and the effect of static compression is shown to be small but not negligible.

Given that parliamentary democracies channel the preferences of their citizens through elected representatives, parliamentarians need to estimate the policy preferences of their electorate. We investigate how the gender of representatives influences this assessment for policies characterized as women’s issues. Building on theories of shared group experiences, gendered role expectations, and strategic behavior, we expect that, in comparison to their men colleagues, women representatives are better at estimating their party voters’ policy position when they are electorally vulnerable. Combining original survey data from political elites and voters in Germany and Switzerland, our estimation indicates that women representatives’ estimation of public opinion on women’s issues is not more accurate than that of their men colleagues. Yet, the perceptual accuracy of women representatives increases markedly if they are electorally vulnerable. Corroborating our theoretical expectations, a placebo test implies that our findings are specific to women’s issues.

The role of Law enforcement agencies (LEA) is significant in suicide prevention efforts as first responders. Nevertheless, no published study to date has systematically compiled the body of knowledge about suicide prevention efforts involving LEA. The current scoping review aims to methodically map and examine the peer-reviewed literature and grey literature on the role of LEA in suicide prevention. Electronic searches of the databases like Medline, PsycINFO, Google Scholar, Web of Science, Scopus, CINAHL and Google were conducted using a comprehensive search strategy to identify relevant resources. Grey literature was searched searches were undertaken on relevant databases and, as well as government and organisational websites. The reporting of the review followed the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses Extension for Scoping Reviews guidelines. The inclusion criteria comprised research articles, reports, and guidelines/policy documents on the role of law enforcement agencies (LEAs) in suicide prevention. Studies on prevalence, custodial settings, non-English publications, and reviews were excluded. Inclusion criteria comprised research articles, reports and guidelines/policy documents focusing on law enforcement’s role in suicide prevention. Studies focusing solely on prevalence or epidemiology, studies confined strictly to custodial settings, publications not in English and systematic reviews or meta-analyses were excluded. Out of 3,327 records screened, the full texts of 82 resources were included in the review. All the resources identified were categorised between peer-reviewed literature and grey literature. Resources were thematically categorised based on functional roles into- I. Strategic and System-Embedded Roles of LEA, II. Capacity Building and Training Oriented Engagements, III. Surveillance Reporting and Data Systems Role, IV. Community Facing and Preventive Engagement, and V. Means Restriction and Environmental Prevention Roles. The chronological development of the resources was inconsistent. Most resources were from high-income countries, focusing on the evaluation of training, capacity building programmes, surveillance initiatives and the exploration of varied roles of LEA across custodial, community and crisis settings and other interdisciplinary collaborations. Notably, the resources show increased disparity in quantity and research methodological approaches across geographies. The review highlights substantial heterogeneity and a limited resource base from low- and middle-income countries on the role of LEA in suicide prevention, with a dearth of structured, evidence-based, scalable models in these settings. These gaps point to an urgent need for locally relevant and cross-sectoral models that position law enforcement as integral partners in suicide prevention efforts, especially where these agencies play a major role as first responders.

Native boxwood across Europe has been destroyed by the invasive moth Cydalima perspectalis. To date, climatic conditions and natural enemies have not been able to contain the pests. Increases in temperature due to climate change (CC) may affect insect development and voltinism, with species-specific effects. Its spread across European countries indicates that the expansion of C. perspectalis is not limited by cold winters. However, in southern Europe, rising maximum temperatures can affect pests and their host plants. Despite this, the effects of high temperatures on herbivorous pests have been studied far less extensively than those of low temperatures. Our results show that elevated temperatures accelerate egg development but prolong larval development, reduce adult longevity and fertility, and substantially increase mortality across the egg, larval, and pupal stages. These findings indicate that spring–summer temperatures in the Mediterranean Basin are approaching the upper thermal limits of this species and that further warming is unlikely to facilitate its expansion in this region. Although high temperatures did not reduce diapause induction, they increased larval mortality, and field monitoring showed that altitude, more than thermal time, dominated the patterns of first-flight emergence. Habitat orientation (North or South) may further mediate pest–host coexistence. Overall, this study contributes to the literature by clarifying how this pest responds to the warming conditions associated with CC in southern Europe.

We present a general analysis of a densely interleaved array (DIA) transmitter, which can transmit two independent beams with the same polarization at closely spaced frequencies from the same aperture. We use standard array theory to show that the array factor and bandwidth of the DIA remain comparable to those of a uniform linear array (ULA). The analysis also reveals that the effective isotropic radiated power (EIRP) of the DIA is 3 dB lower than that of a ULA; however, the two beams can be combined into one, which results in an EIRP increase of 3 dB over the same ULA. We validate the theory by building a DIA demonstrator consisting of two 8-element ULAs of reflector-backed dipoles, which have been interleaved with one another with quarter-wavelength spacing, having the same polarization, and two dummy elements on either end. Half of the dipoles operate at 2.39 GHz and the other half at 2.41 GHz. Even with increased mutual coupling between the antenna elements, the active interaction between the two tones does not generate significant mixing products. The DIA offers good versatility and allows for free-space power combining, which can effectively reduce the output power requirements of the transmitting (TX) amplifiers.

How do democratic institutions develop during episodes of liberalization in autocracies? Existing research has theorized about the long process of institutional change that makes up regime transitions, but existing quantitative methods are not equipped to analyze these multi-stage patterns of development across many variables. In this research note, we introduce a new methodology, Analysis of Chains (AOC), that allows for such analysis. Unlike previous methodologies, AOC identifies long patterns of simultaneous changes across numerous dichotomous, ordinal, and/or continuous variables. To demonstrate the utility of this method, we use AOC to catalog chains of institutional development across 47 indicators of democracy in 377 episodes of liberalization from 1900 to 2021. In addition to generating a descriptive account of the multi-step processes of regime change in each of these episodes, this innovative approach yields two general findings for transitology research. First, the results show that institutions related to elections and freedom of association are the most common elements of democracy to develop earlier during democratization episodes. Second, there is limited correlation between the order of institutional development and successful transition to democracy. Overall, the research note makes critical methodological and empirical contributions to research on democratic transitions.

The U.S. Supreme Court’s ambiguous institutional position—insulated from external pressures yet retaining important linkages with elected officials—complicates how the public assigns responsibility for its decisions. Using a survey experiment that shows respondents information about Dobbs, we explore how messages that politicize or depoliticize the Court affect responsibility attribution for Court decisions. We find that politicizing the Court increases responsibility attribution towards President Trump, and that this effect is conditioned by party cues. We explore downstream effects on evaluations of political actors, but do not find conclusive evidence. We argue that these findings have important implications for democratic accountability.

Young people who are neither in employment nor in education or training (NEET) are at risk of long-term exclusion and poorer wellbeing. Besides individual costs and adverse later life consequences, NEET can impose significant societal costs, making it a major public policy concern and an important indicator of social exclusion. Using high-quality register data on Finnish birth cohorts born between 1987 and 1992, we compared the risk of being NEET at ages 21–27 amongst those born with very low birth weight (VLBW, < 1500 g), low birth weight (LBW, 1500–2499 g) and normal birth weight (NBW). We further studied whether the effects of birth weight on NEET were moderated by parental socioeconomic status (SES), measured as maternal education. To address potential confounding due to unobserved characteristics, we employed Poisson regression with sibling fixed effects. Results indicated that LBW was associated with an increased incidence rate ratio (IRR) of 1.26 (95% CI 1.15–1.38) and VLBW with an IRR of 2.02 (95% CI 1.66–2.40) for NEET status, compared with NBW. The relationship between birth weight and NEET did not vary by parental SES. Findings underline the importance of early health in contributing to the risk of NEET, regardless of parental SES.

Academic and judicial discussions about the preparatory works of treaties are usually focused on the definition of travaux and the circumstances in which such materials may be relied upon to interpret an international agreement. By contrast, little has been said about how the travaux themselves should be interpreted. This article attempts to fill this gap, through an analysis of international case law and scholarship from which a list of seven relevant factors to elucidate travaux can be drawn.

The Senior LGBTQI+ Coordinator at the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) led the Agency’s work on LGBTQI+ issues, integrating LGBTQI+ people across all inclusive development programs, policies, research, and training. The position was created in 2014 during the administration of Barack Obama to ensure that the promotion and protection of LGBTQI+ rights were fully incorporated into all aspects of USAID’s work. Jay Gilliam (JG) was appointed during the Joe Biden administration as the second Senior LGBTQI+ Coordinator, as the position remained vacant during the first Donald Trump administration. In 2025, Trump dismantled the entire Agency, including the LGBTQI+ portfolio. This is a slightly edited version of an interview that took place with Mona Lena Krook (MLK) via Zoom on January 28, 2026.

This article applies mathematical knot theory to the study of Andean khipus—knotted cord records, widely known for their use by the Inka empire (ca. AD 1400–1532). Despite more than 100 years of extensive study, a comprehensive understanding of the relationships and properties of different khipu knots has yet to be established. Addressing this gap, this article formalizes khipu knot relationships through the lens of mathematical knot theory, focusing on (1) common khipu knot variations that lead to misidentifications, (2) potential insights into khipu construction and data-encoding processes, and (3) the functional properties that certain knot variations offered to khipukamayuqs (khipu specialists). This article highlights the importance of recognizing topologically equivalent knots, which are visually distinct yet are structurally identical, and explores how variations of the same knot type could be used to encode or modify meaning. Notably, it reveals that several common knot forms can be transformed into visually distinct variations or other common forms without untying them, offering new perspectives on the versatility and complexity of khipus and knotted objects more broadly.

Persons with mental illnesses may experience stigma from their immediate family members in addition to other forms of stigma. The researchers used semi-structured interviews to investigate the experiences of familial mental illness stigma among 15 people diagnosed with mental illnesses in a mid-sized city in Canada. Five themes that spoke to participants’ experiences of familial mental illness stigma and ways to reduce it were identified by the investigators. The themes included: diagnosis as a ‘double-edged sword,’ potential familial isolation, familial stigma as societal stigma localized, stories of acceptance and support, and confronting potential familial mental illness stigma. Participants’ narratives indicate that familial mental illness stigma is rooted in the broader social or public stigma, which sees its way into familial relations as well. This stigma takes various forms, including relationship bias or unfair treatment, breakdown in romantic relationships, loss of status, verbal and emotional abuse, exclusion from decision-making, and alienation within their immediate and extended families. Familial mental illness stigma experiences negatively impact participant’s psychological well-being and personal empowerment. However, participants also shared ways that family members create supportive environments or actively confront or prevent stigma. Overall, this study has contributed to knowledge on mental illness stigma, particularly familial mental illness stigma from the perspective of participants living with a mental illness in a high-income country. Suggestions for future research include a focus on strategies to prevent ongoing familial mental illness stigma, and large-scale studies to explore familial mental illness stigma to understand why families might themselves at times perpetrate stigma.