In From Survival Cannibalism to Climate Politics (2025) as well as in Law and Politics from the Sea (2024) Mann proposes the ‘commonist lifeboat’ as a political metaphor for the age of climate change. This response to Itamar Mann’s re-reading of Regina vs. Dudley and Stephens proposes a materialist reading of his political theory of the ‘commonist lifeboat’, arguing that the lifeboat may be a metaphorical and practical site from which alternatives to our current ways of doing and thinking about politics in times of climate crisis might emerge. The text brings Mann’s lifeboat into conversation with my own and other scholars’ work on radical vessels – historical and contemporary – in order to demonstrate and expand its analytical capacity as a more-than-metaphorical term. Building on Mann’s use of the lifeboat as a metaphor and a site of maritime custom, I propose to understand the ‘commonist lifeboat’ also as a material container that operates in a specific material environment: the sea. I argue that a focus on the materiality of the sea and of the lifeboat may point to political practice, community and customs yet to be invented, which may help us navigate the turbulent political environment of our time.

We give a simple diagrammatic proof of the Frobenius property for generic fibrations that does not depend on any additional structure on the interval object such as connections.

The global population is ageing rapidly, emphasising the need to understand the decision-making processes of older adults regarding potential care transitions. Gerontological research has focused on healthcare decisions, with less information on living situation choices of older adults. This review explored older adults’ experiences with their involvement in decision-making processes related to transitioning into care facilities in the United Kingdom. From a systematic search of articles, nine were reviewed using thematic narrative synthesis. Four themes with nine subthemes were identified: Involvement in decision-making (Exclusion of older adults, Usefulness of involvement), The necessity of moving (Triggers for moves, The role of family), Timely planning (Helpfulness of planning, Planning avoidance), and Factors for choosing a care home (Non-quality factors, Quality factors, Continuity of life). These themes highlighted the issue of inadequate involvement of older adults in decision-making, often resulting in negative consequences like regret and difficulty settling into new care settings. The necessity of moving arose from sudden events or increased support needs. Some older adults acknowledged the necessity due to declining health or to spare family burden, while relatives grappled emotionally, postponing the choice. Timely planning was found to be beneficial practically and emotionally, facilitating smoother transitions. However, participants would rarely plan and discuss such matters early. Older adults focused on personal experiences and trusted sources rather than publicly available information when considering Factors for choosing a care home. The findings show the need for greater inclusion of older adults in decisions related to their care and the importance of early planning and providing preferred types and formats of information to aid decisions. Future research should focus on a better understanding of older adults’ preferences for successful involvement in care decisions, with support and guidance for others involved in the decisions.

This article provides the general psychiatrist with a pragmatic guide to working confidently and productively in the emergency department (ED). The focus is on effectively navigating the distinctive physical environment, personnel, systems, time pressures, legal boundaries, special challenges and broad scope of practice applicable to this setting to maximally support both patients and staff. It brings to the reader’s attention special considerations at all stages of workflow, including pre-assessment preparations, the assessment process and ongoing planning. It considers common requests and the application of mental health law (in England and Wales) associated with both capacity assessment and involuntary care. Finally, it explores unique challenges associated with risk assessment, physical health advocacy and management of conflict in the ED setting. The specific systems described are those of the UK’s National Health Service, but the principles involved are universal.

Anticipating policy instrument preferences can be an important step in policy design to address pressing sustainability problems. But studying preferences for policy instruments is a difficult task because sustainability problems involve a non-negligible degree of trade-offs and uncertainty. We therefore study the role of actors’ underlying ideologies (policy core beliefs) and risk attitudes in forming their preferences for different instruments. Combining the advocacy coalition framework with multi-attribute utility theory, both ideologies and attitudes toward uncertain policy consequences can influence instrument preferences. So far, policy studies literature has paid little attention to trade-offs between policy core beliefs or risk attitudes. Using Bayesian regression models on data from actors in Swiss pesticide risk reduction policy, we found that attitudes toward trade-offs and risk are indeed relevant to explain preferences for different regulatory and market-based instruments addressing agricultural pesticide use. Therefore, when designing policies for sustainability problems, considering the relative importance of policy core beliefs for different actors can help to find effective and broadly supported solutions. In addition, risk attitudes should be considered when policy design involves more coercive and stimulative policy instruments.

Carbon capture technologies are considered essential for addressing global warming issues. To date, various capture technologies have been extensively investigated in the literature, both through experimental studies and simulations. This paper aims to briefly review the most recent advancements in the modeling of various CO2 capture processes. The progress in technologies, including chemical absorption, physical absorption, adsorption, membrane-based separation and chemical looping processes, is discussed. Existing evaluation results obtained from various simulation studies are summarized and compared. In addition to the advancements in each technology, the future research trends and the challenges that need to be addressed in the field of process modeling are identified.

Previous L1 syntactic processing studies have identified the crucial left frontotemporal network, whereas research on L2 syntactic processing has shown that learner factors, such as L2 proficiency and linguistic distance, can modulate the related networks. Here, we developed a function-word-based jabberwocky sentence reading paradigm to investigate the neural correlates underlying Chinese L2 syntactic processing. Twenty Chinese L2 Korean native speakers were recruited in this fMRI study. Chinese proficiency test scores and Chinese-Korean syntactic similarity scores were measured to quantify the learner factors, respectively. The imaging results revealed an effective left frontoparietal network involving superior parietal lobule (SPL), posterior inferior frontal gyrus (pIFG) and precentral gyrus (PreCG). Moreover, the signal intensity of SPL as well as the connectivity strength between SPL and PreCG significantly correlated with the learner factors. These findings shed light on the neurobiological relationships between L1 and L2 syntactic processing and on the modulation of L2 learner factors.

In this paper I argue that the accepted reconstruction of Suetonius’ De viris illustribus has been shaped by unexamined assumptions that have been allowed to take on the appearance of fact. I begin by surveying the scholarly reconstruction of this work from the fifteenth century until today. I then examine two key underlying assumptions: that Suetonius planned and published his series of literary lives as a single compendious work and that it excluded men who were not writers or wrote in Greek; in both cases I propose alternative hypotheses. I lastly test these alternatives by sketching a new approach to a possible Suetonian book De philosophis. I conclude that the more we rid ourselves of a priori assumptions about De viris illustribus, the more clearly we can see that Suetonius’ interests and approach were remarkably consistent throughout all his lives.

We theoretically investigate the small-amplitude broadside oscillations of an annular disk within an unbounded fluid domain. Specifically, we formulate a semi-analytical framework to examine the effects of the oscillation frequency and pore radius on the disk’s added mass and damping coefficients. By leveraging the superposition principle, we decompose the complex original problem into two simpler ones. The force exerted on the disk by the fluid is linked to the solutions of these sub-problems through the reciprocal theorem; the first solution is readily available, while the second is derived asymptotically, assuming a small inner radius. Both solutions are evaluated by transforming dual integral equations into systems of algebraic equations, which are then solved numerically. Building on these solutions, we extract asymptotic expressions for the variations of the quantities of interest in the limits of low and high oscillatory Reynolds numbers. Notably, at high frequencies, we uncover a previously overlooked logarithmic term in the force coefficient expansions, absent in prior scaling analyses of oscillating solid (impermeable) disks. Our findings indicate that, when viscosity plays a dominant role, an annular (porous) disk behaves similarly to a solid one, with reductions in the force coefficients scaling with the cube of the pore radius. We also discover, perhaps surprisingly, that, as inertial effects intensify, the damping coefficient initially increases with the pore radius, reaches a maximum and subsequently declines as the disk’s inner hole enlarges further; at its peak, it can exceed the value for an equivalent solid disk by up to approximately 62 % in the asymptotic limit of extremely high oscillatory Reynolds number. Conversely, the added mass coefficient decreases monotonically with increasing porosity. The decay rate of the added mass in the inertial regime initially scales with the cube of the pore radius before transitioning to linear scaling when the pore radius is no longer extremely small. Although our analysis assumes a small pore radius, direct numerical simulations confirm that our asymptotic formulation remains accurate for inner-to-outer radius ratios up to at least $1/2$.

The paper examines the influence of stakes on knowledge attributions, building on the retraction-based experimental design introduced by Dinges and Zakkou. Experiment 1 replicates Dinges and Zakkou’s original findings and extends the research to third-person knowledge ascriptions. The results show that raising the stakes increases the percentage of retraction in both first- and third-person scenarios. Experiment 2 addresses potential concerns about the retraction-based design, specifically whether participants genuinely endorse the initial claim and the worry of scenario sceptics – participants who disagree with a knowledge attribution. Experiment 2 introduces a modification to the initial design by adding a knowledge-ascribing question. This addition makes the act of retraction more realistic. The results confirm that the stakes effect persists even in an improved design. I argue that these findings constitute a serious challenge to classic invariantism and a potential challenge to subject-sensitive invariantism. Their competitors – epistemic contextualism and relativism – seem to be in a better position, even though the retraction-based design at its current stage is unlikely to distinguish between these two.

Understanding the properties of lower-carbon concrete products is essential for their effective utilization. Insufficient empirical test data hinders practical adoption of these emerging products, and a lack of training data limits the effectiveness of current machine learning approaches for property prediction. This work employs a random forest machine learning model combined with a just-in-time approach, utilizing newly available data throughout the concrete lifecycle to enhance predictions of 28 and 56 day concrete strength. The machine learning hyperparameters and inputs are optimized through a novel unified metric that combines prediction accuracy and uncertainty estimates through the coefficient of determination and the distribution of uncertainty quality. This study concludes that optimizing solely for accuracy selects a different model than optimizing with the proposed unified accuracy and uncertainty metric. Experimental validation compares the 56-day strength of two previously unseen concrete mixes to the machine learning predictions. Even with the sparse dataset, predictions of 56-day strength for the two mixes were experimentally validated to within 90% confidence interval when using slump as an input and further improved by using 28-day strength.

European institutions are widely recognized as wielding regulatory power in a globalized market, exporting its standards across borders and between sectors. This paper asks what institutional dynamics catalyze European external regulatory impact on pharmaceutical governance in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). The research focuses on two European regulatory bodies, the European Medicines Agency (EMA) and the European Patent Office (EPO), and explores the dynamics of their technocratic outreach beyond European borders. We find that trust is a key underlying institutional dynamic facilitating some forms of European external relations. The agencies extend their influence through technical assistance, collaboration, and work-sharing with LMIC regulators, fostering a one-sided relationship of “technocratic trust.” This trust, reinforced by international regulatory frameworks that position the EMA and EPO as “trustworthy” regulators, enables these agencies to expand their regulatory influence beyond Europe. By critically examining the impact of this trust-building on LMICs’ regulatory autonomy, this research contributes to the broader discourse on European regulatory power in global health governance and highlights potential implications for pharmaceutical markets and access in LMICs.