This paper investigates the impact of environmental regulations on inward foreign direct investment (FDI) using a novel index that distinguishes between the implementation and enforcement of environmental policy across 111 countries from 2001 to 2018. Leveraging bilateral FDI data and a structural gravity model, we find robust evidence of a Pollution Haven Effect: weaker environmental regulations in host countries are associated with higher levels of inward FDI. The effect is more pronounced in emerging markets and in environments with higher corruption. Importantly, we show that FDI responds more strongly to policy implementation, capturing formal regulatory commitment, than to enforcement, measured as deviations between predicted and actual emissions. In addition, bilateral FDI patterns are shaped by the environmental stringency gap between source and host countries, consistent with regulatory arbitrage behavior.

A pattern knot in a solid torus defines a self-map of the smooth knot concordance group. We prove that if the winding number of a pattern is even but not divisible by 8, then the corresponding map is not a homomorphism, thus partially establishing a conjecture of Hedden.

We determine explicit generators for the ring of modular forms associated with the moduli spaces of K3 surfaces with automorphism group $(\mathbb {Z}/2\mathbb {Z})^2$ and of Picard rank 13 and higher. The K3 surfaces in question carry a canonical Jacobian elliptic fibration and the modular form generators appear as coefficients in the Weierstrass-type equations describing these fibrations.

This study aimed to assess the relationship between selected parameters of nutritional status and the occurrence of frailty syndrome in older adults by analysing clinical and socio-demographic factors. Methods: The study included 150 community-dwelling participants aged > 60 years who were qualified in the medical centre. The following research tools were used: activity of daily living, instrumental activities of daily living, survey of health, aging, and retirement in Europe, geriatric depression scale, mini mental state examination (MMSE), anthropometric measurements, mini nutritional assessment (MNA), body composition measurements, and biochemical blood tests. Results: The study included 150 people over 60 years of age (mean age 76.2/SD 4.9), including 104 women and 46 men. Participants in the frail group were significantly older (KW-H: P < 0.001) and had a higher level of depression (P = 0.008), whereas on the MMSE scale, they achieved a lower result (P < 0.001) than those in the non-frail and pre-frail groups. People in the frail group had significantly lower levels of nutritional status (P < 0.001) according to the MNA scale, assessment of basic activities in everyday life (P = 0.005), complex activities of everyday life (P < 0.001), hand grip strength of the right hand (P = 0.038) and left hand (P = 0.028), and energy drop (P < 0.001). They were also characterised by difficulties walking (P < 0.001), less frequent physical activity (P < 0.001), loss of appetite (P < 0.001), and weight loss more often (P < 0.05). Conclusion: Advanced age, a greater number of diseases, worse functional and mental performance, and differences in nutritional status and body composition were observed in people with frailty syndrome.

It was proved in [11, J. Funct. Anal., 2020] that the Cauchy problem for some Oldroyd-B model is well-posed in $\dot{B}^{d/p-1}_{p,1}(\mathbb{R}^d) \times \dot{B}^{d/p}_{p,1}(\mathbb{R}^d)$ with $1\leq p \lt 2d$. In this paper, we prove that the Cauchy problem for the same Oldroyd-B model is ill-posed in $\dot{B}^{d/p-1}_{p,r}(\mathbb{R}^d) \times \dot{B}^{d/p}_{p,r}(\mathbb{R}^d)$ with $1\leq p\leq \infty$ and $1 \lt r\leq\infty$ due to the lack of continuous dependence of the solution.

Burgers equation is a classic model, which arises in numerous applications. At its very core, it is a simple conservation law, which serves as a toy model for various dynamics phenomena. In particular, it supports explicit heteroclinic solutions, both fronts and backs. Their stability has been studied in detail. There has been substantial interest in considering dispersive and/or diffusive modifications, which present novel dynamical paradigms in such a simple setting. More specifically, the KdV–Burgers model has been shown to support unique fronts (not all of them monotone!) with fixed values at $\pm \infty$. Many articles, among which [11], [9] and [10], have studied the question of stability of monotone (or close to monotone) fronts. In a breakthrough paper [2], the authors have extended these results in several different directions. They have considered a wider range of models. The fronts do not need to be monotone but are subject of a spectral condition instead. Most importantly, the method allows for large perturbations, as long as the heteroclinic conditions at $\pm \infty$ are met. That is, there is asymptotic attraction to the said fronts or equivalently the limit set consists of one point. The purpose of this paper is to extend the results of [2] by providing explicit algebraic rates of convergence as $t\to \infty$. We bootstrap these results from the results in [2] using additional energy estimates for two important examples, namely KdV–Burgers and the fractional Burgers problem. These rates are likely not optimal, but we conjecture that they are algebraic nonetheless.

Earth oven baking pits are common occurrences within the Indigenous archaeological record of North America, yet archaeologists have paid minimal attention to evaluating how earth oven technology varies over the long term. The extensively sampled record of thermal features from Wyoming represents a unique opportunity to evaluate changes in earth oven technology through time and consider how earth ovens relate to other facets of Indigenous land use and subsistence strategies. This article is based on a sample of nearly 1,300 radiocarbon-dated features dating from 11,000 to 4000 cal BP. It evaluates diachronic shifts in feature morphology from the Early through Middle Holocene. Major changes in earth ovens include increasing size and the use of cook stone, first after 10,000 cal BP and then after 7500 cal BP. The observed variation indicates that Indigenous peoples adapted their cooking technology to address changes in types and quantities of resources processed, as well as changing requirements of the overall adaptive system. Recognizing how the diversity of thermal features and earth ovens change through time and across space allows researchers to ask more specific questions about Indigenous cooking technology, subsistence resources, and the role(s) these features played within broader lifeways.

Changes like the shift of tropical forests into savannah in the Amazon highlight the potential for deforestation to drive ecosystems past potentially irreversible tipping points. Reforestation may avert or delay tipping points, but its success depends on the degree to which secondary and primary forests are substitutes in the production of ecosystem services. This article explores how deforestation, reforestation and substitutability between forest types affect the likelihood that a forest system will cross a tipping point. Efforts to ensure that secondary forests better mimic primary forests only yield a small improvement in terms of delaying ecosystem collapse. The most significant effects on tipping points arise from an increase in the relative costs of clearing primary forests or a decrease in the costs of protecting land tenure in secondary forests. Our results highlight the importance of the latter, which are often ignored as a policy target, to reduce the risk of ecosystem collapse.

Historical reconstruction studies are important for understanding the evolutionary mechanisms associated with different parasite-host systems. Platyhelminths of the classes Monopisthocotyla and Polyopisthocotyla (formerly Monogenoidea or Monogenea) have proven to be excellent models for historical reconstruction studies due to their exceptional parasite specificity, suggesting that cospeciation events are the main pattern observed in these parasite-host systems (i.e., codivergence). However, recent studies indicate that not only cospeciation but also duplication, host-switch, and loss (extinction) events are necessary to explain the historical association patterns between monopisthocotylan lineages and their hosts. In the present study, we describe four new species of Urocleidoides parasitizing the gills of Characiformes and Gymnotiformes hosts from the coastal drainages of the eastern Brazilian Amazon. We also used a cophylogenetic approach to investigate the coevolutionary relationships between Urocleidoides species and their characiform hosts to determine which coevolutionary events are acting to diversify the parasites. To achieve our goal, we used Jane to estimate coevolutionary scenarios and PACo to assess the cophylogenetic signal and phylogenetic congruence between parasite and host phylogenies. The comparison between the parasite phylogeny, based on partial sequences of the 28S rDNA gene, and the host phylogeny, inferred from concatenated partial sequences of the RAG1, RAG2, Cytb, and COI genes, revealed a high degree of topological congruence between them. Our results indicate a mixed evolutionary scenario, where cospeciation played an important role but was accompanied by significant loss events, failure to diverge and host-switch, suggesting that the diversification of Urocleidoides in Characiformes did not occur in a restricted way but with episodes of adaptation and possible colonization of new hosts over time.

Let $(R, \mathfrak{m})$ be a d-dimensional Noetherian local ring that is formally equidimensional, and let M be an arbitrary R-submodule of the free module $F = R^p$ with an analytic spread $s:=s(M)$. In this work, inspired by Herzog-Puthenpurakal-Verma in [10], we show the existence of a unique largest R-module Mk with $\ell_R(M_{k}/M) \lt \infty$ and $M\subseteq M_{s}\subseteq\cdots\subseteq M_{1}\subseteq M_{0}\subseteq q(M),$ such that $\deg(P_{M_{k}/M}(n)) \lt s-k,$ where q(M) is the relative integral closure of $M,$ defined by $q(M):=\overline{M}\cap M^{sat},$ where $M^{sat}=\cup_{n\geqslant 1}(M:_F\mathfrak{m}^n)$ is the saturation of M. We also provide a structure theorem for these modules. Furthermore, we establish the existence of coefficient modules between $I(M)M$ and M, where I(M) denotes the 0th Fitting ideal of $F/M$, and discuss their structural properties. Finally, we present some applications and discuss some properties.

Addiction was considered ‘alien to Socialism’. At least, that was the narrative upheld by the socialist East German state, which thus followed the traditional argumentation of socialist and social democratic movements since the turn of the century. While the state clung to this ideological claim, the consumption and abuse of beer, spirits, and benzodiazepines continued to increase. However, there was never a central strategy for the treatment and prevention of addiction in the German Democratic Republic (GDR). The hesitation and ignorance of the state authorities created a vacuum that was filled by local initiatives and expert discussions aimed at improving the situation of people with addictions. In this article, I analyse the introduction of new treatment methods in a psychiatric hospital in the GDR and show that doctors, psychologists, patients, and local officials had certain freedoms to test new approaches, many of which originated in the West. Even though they had to adapt concepts such as the ‘therapeutic communities’ of British reformer Maxwell Jones to the specific socialist and East German context to avoid restrictions by state authorities, the Berlin Wall did not prevent the transfer of knowledge. This article, therefore, paints a nuanced picture of the therapeutic methods used to treat people with addiction in the GDR. From condemning individuals as outcasts of socialist society for socially deviant drinking behaviour and relying exclusively on aversion therapy and moral accusations, there was a shift towards a mixture of treatments that became increasingly specialised and individualised, especially in the 1970s and 1980s, comparable to Western standards.

Focusing on intellectual property rights (IPRs) and their role in global access to vaccines during the COVID-19 pandemic, this article argues that key aspects of the current institutional system align towards delivering individualistic state/regional/rightsholders priorities in the use of IPRs over pandemic health technologies. This played a key role in the vaccine nationalism and global vaccine inequity that emerged during the pandemic. It critically analyzes the IPR provisions within the World Health Organisation’s Pandemic Agreement and negotiation process. It argues that nationalistic/individualistic approaches toward the use of IPRs over health technologies also permeate such contexts. The final text of the Agreement leaves considerable discretion to states around IPRs, and much will depend on how it is implemented in practice. For effective future pandemic preparedness around how IPRs are used over health technologies, this article argues that a deeper bottom-up institutional change is needed — one which offers nuanced strategies to balance the potential incentivization role of IPRs with the implications certain uses of IPRs can have on access to downstream health technologies. A key element of this change is embedding a greater recognition of the range of resources provided by entities (e.g. funders, biobanks, and universities) necessary in the successful development of health technologies, including in pandemic contexts. Such entities should leverage these resources, including by attaching contractual conditions to access these, which mandate avenues for downstream access to pandemic health technologies. In the longer term such approaches could be part of a broader institutional change, which prioritises global collective health needs in pandemics.

The appointment of federal examiners under the 1965 Voting Rights Act, a novel administrative authority that Congress granted to the Justice Department to enforce voter registration of black southerners, was largely limited to jurisdictions in which the department had already pursued federal litigation under the previous Civil Rights Acts. Out of procedural concerns, the attorneys of the Department's Civil Rights Division became increasingly path-dependent in their enforcement activities as they concentrated bureaucratic resources in three of the volatile southern states. They left the remainder of the south that experienced comparable incidents of authoritarian repression and violence with little to no federal intervention. These findings are presented with geospatial illustrations to reveal the limitations in the territorial reach of federal law enforcement. I argue that the circumspection was caused by the department's continued reliance on litigation as a benchmark for establishing the existence of racial discrimination. Both the signed complaints from the local black citizens and the President's political deference to the southern Democrats in Congress had little influence on the department's decisions for appointing examiners.

Some victims of sexual violence fight back, seriously harming their abusers as a way of taking power or exacting retribution. Although violence always raises moral questions, there is nevertheless something impressive about those whose actions succeed in posing a formidable challenge to their oppression. The aim of this paper is to offer two ways of thinking about the ethical value of such non-ideal acts of resistance. First, violent resistance may allow victims to maintain ground projects that are being undermined by their abusers. Second, violent resistance may display what I call the virtue of audacious integrity—a willingness to take moral risks, that is, to act in ways that may arouse severe moral censure, in order to uphold one’s values. Both explanations illustrate that victims of sexual abuse may choose to engage in violent resistance for a variety of ethical reasons, including but not limited to paradigmatic moral considerations.

Cocoa production is highly variable and shows low yields globally, but the drivers of this variation are poorly understood. Climate has been proposed as one of the main drivers, but within-tree competition for resources and disease may also influence the number of cocoa pods produced. In addition, the relative importance of climate and within-tree competition for resources remains unknown. We evaluated the effects of climate, within-tree competition, and disease on cocoa pod dynamics in Ghana and assessed the relative importance of climate and within-tree competition. We monitored cocoa pod dynamics during three years for 1472 trees at 96 farms across Ghana. Counts of pods of different sizes were carried out every six weeks. Climate effects were evaluated based on monthly precipitation and temperature, including lag effects. Effects of within-tree resource competition on pod production were tested by assessing the effect of the number of larger-sized pods on a cocoa tree on the number of pods in smaller size classes using generalised linear mixed-effects models accounting for zero inflation. We consistently found that climate was a stronger driver of pod production than within-tree competition. Across size classes, the climatic conditions experienced at the time of fruit set had the strongest effect on the number of pods. For most pod size classes, both higher temperature and, unexpectedly, higher precipitation negatively influenced pod number. A larger number of large and mature pods negatively affected the number of cherelles (smallest pods), indicating within-tree competition among pods. This suggests that cocoa trees prioritise sustaining pods in larger sizes over producing new ones, for instance, through mechanisms like cherelle wilt. Our results suggest that higher precipitation increased the incidence of fungal diseases and indirectly reduced the number of pods produced. Thus, a combination of lagged climate effects and within-tree competition and disease drives the dynamics and development of pods on cocoa trees. Our results show that lagged climate effects should be considered for adaptation measures to climatic conditions (and climate change) and for determining the best timing for disease management interventions. These results help in understanding cocoa production dynamics and are important for yield and disease modelling.