The city-state (polis) is undoubtedly one of the most fundamental aspects of Greek history. John Ma’s book is a monumental study of the history of the Greek polis in the very long term.1 It starts from the collapse of the Bronze Age palaces around 1200 bce and takes the story to the end of ancient poleis around 600 ce; alongside the immense temporal extent, Ma impressively covers the whole of the Eastern Mediterranean. In my view, this is unquestionably the most significant contribution to the study of Greek history over the last two decades. It is the first attempt to focus the history of the polis not on the archaic and classical periods, but on the Hellenistic and early imperial poleis. The reason for this, and the most significant contribution of the book, is Ma’s concept of the ‘great convergence’: the spread across the eastern Mediterranean between 400–200 bce of a democratic model of the polis based on citizen equality, assemblies, the provision of public goods, and the disappearance of older models based on oligarchy and characterized by disenfranchised citizens, subject communities, and serf populations. At the same time, the dominance of large-scale geopolitical actors such as the Hellenistic kingdoms and later Rome put an end to the ‘Hundred Years War’ between 450–350 (another important conceptual innovation), in which dominant poleis tried to subjugate and conquer other poleis; after 350 bce, poleis’ attempts at expansion usually incorporated smaller communities on equal terms. The book is structured around the great convergence: earlier chapters examine the diverse world of the poleis before the convergence, while later chapters explore the transformation of the polis and its employment by the Roman Empire, once the Mediterranean stopped being a multipolar world. This very rich book functions both as an excellent survey of numerous Greek communities, as well as an impressive synthesis offering a new periodization of Greek history. It will undoubtedly generate major new debates among Greek historians, which are urgently needed in our field.

A local guideline for the management of patients hospitalized with skin and soft tissue infections was implemented at an academic, safety-net hospital. Immediate reductions in use of broad-spectrum antibiotics and durations of therapy were sustained over the subsequent 12 years.

In the wealth of literature on ethnic variation, ethnicity is often considered independently of other social characteristics. However, prioritizing ethnicity in this way risks overlooking the potential impact of other social factors. In this study, we demonstrate an intersection between ethnicity and social class based on a sociolinguistic corpus of Australian English, representing some of the country’s largest ethnic groups (Australians of Anglo-Celtic, Italian, Greek, and Chinese backgrounds), stratified according to age, gender, and social class. Rather than beginning with the social groupings, we first identify linguistic groupings to then consider how these groupings align with social dimensions. Cluster analyses of speaker random intercepts derived from independent regression analyses of 10 linguistic variables in recordings from 159 speakers reveal primary divisions for age, reflecting change over time, and secondary divisions for ethnicity in conjunction with social class, highlighting the interconnected nature of these social dimensions in linguistic variation.

The phylogenetic relationships among arthropods remain contentious because morphological studies face challenges in resolving certain branches. Particularly difficult are relationships within and between the stem arthropods, owing largely to too few well-preserved fossil representatives. Additional fossil evidence, particularly from exceptional deposits like the Silurian Waukesha Lagerstätte in Wisconsin, helps to bolster our views on the evolutionary history of arthropods by providing well-preserved examples of novel taxa that could fit between early diverging stem-arthropod clades and modern euarthropods, thus building possible bridges between the two. Formed in karstification-induced troughs of the Manistique Formation paleoslope, the Waukesha Lagerstätte preserves a unique biota of organisms from the Telychian Age, mostly through secondary precipitation of francolite. Perhaps most well known from this deposit are the many peculiar and enigmatic arthropod taxa that could help resolve early arthropod cladistic relationships. We add to the growing body of work on the diversity, phylogeny, and taxonomic descriptions of the Waukesha biota by detailing a previously unnamed bivalved arthropod, informally called ‘the butterfly animal’ in past literature—which we here designate as Papiliomaris kluessendorfae n. gen. n. sp. We also conducted a Bayesian phylogenetic analysis that placed several recently described Waukesha taxa as basal members of the ‘Mandibulate’ clade within the Euarthropoda.

UUID: http://zoobank.org/c1d6f1dc-d35f-420c-aa57-2c8983f9779e

There is a long-standing controversy in Greek History about whether the othismos, or ‘push’, of the hoplite phalanx mentioned by classical authors was real or metaphorical. Experimental archaeology – structural and finite element analysis with both physical reconstructions and computer modelling (presented non-technically here) – suggests that the archaic Greek hoplite panoply of bell cuirass, Corinthian helmet, and large bowl-shaped shield (aspis), which seems at first to present contradictory design choices, in fact offered important mechanical advantages under compressive force; that cuirass, helmet, and shield were designed or evolved to work together to allow the Greek warrior to survive and fight in a pushing mass of men without being crushed or asphyxiated. The hoplite othismos was, then, real and was presumably practised from the earliest era to which this equipment can be dated, the late eighth century bc.

Encoding only-type exclusive focus in discourse involves complex computation and integration of knowledge from multiple linguistic domains. We present a comprehensive analysis of syntactic, semantic, prosodic, and discourse contextual features of 864 utterances with only and its Mandarin equivalents zhi(you) produced by Mandarin–English bilingual preschoolers and matched monolinguals (age 2–6, Study 1), and by Mandarin-speaking parents (Study 2), all sampled from naturalistic interactions. The results revealed largely target-like syntactic positioning and semantic association of only and zhi(you) in both languages in the bilinguals, with cross-linguistic influence between only and zhi. Interestingly, the bilingual children, like their Mandarin monolingual peers, employed longer duration but not raised mean pitch to shift the prosodic stress to the intended focus, although both acoustic features, in addition to positional and contextual cues, were instantiated in the focus utterances in the Mandarin parental input, suggesting prolonged development in focus-prosody mapping in children independent of bilingualism.

Sulforaphane (SFN), a bioactive compound derived from glucoraphanin in cruciferous vegetables such as broccoli, has been extensively studied for its therapeutic potential across diverse disease categories. SFN exerts its effects through well-characterised pathways, including the Keap1/Nrf2 axis, which regulates phase II detoxification enzymes, and epigenetic mechanisms such as histone deacetylase inhibition. This review evaluates clinical trials registered on ClinicalTrials.gov, focusing on those using SFN or broccoli-derived extracts.

As a result, we identified 84 trials, of which 39 have been published. Results suggest SFN’s potential in regulating redox and inflammatory pathways, improving metabolic and cardiovascular outcomes, and exerting anti-cancer and neuroprotective effects. For healthy subjects, SFN enhanced detoxification and reduced inflammation. In cancer patients, SFN showed promise in early-stage prostate and breast cancer, particularly in GSTM1-positive individuals, but had limited effects in advanced cases. For brain disorders, SFN demonstrated symptomatic improvements in autism spectrum disorder and cognitive benefits in schizophrenia but lacked robust biomarker integration. SFN had minimal impact on respiratory diseases but showed supportive roles in allergic rhinitis therapy. Metabolic disease studies revealed glycaemic control improvements in type 2 diabetes but no benefits for hypertension. Approximately 50% of completed trials remain unpublished, raising concerns about publication bias. While published results highlight SFN’s therapeutic potential, limited sample sizes and inconsistent outcomes underscore the need for more extensive, stratified trials. This review emphasises the importance of integrating mechanistic insights and precision medicine approaches to maximise SFN’s clinical utility.

The International Association of Democratic Lawyers (IADL), founded in Paris in 1946 by a group of antifascist lawyers, has long been dismissed as a Soviet front organization. Yet, this characterization overlooks its complex and multifaceted history. This paper reassesses IADL’s first thirty years, exploring its origins, internal debates, and cross-border engagement. Drawing on archival records, this article argues that—despite a period of Communist influence—the IADL contributed to international legal and political discourse by advancing an original approach defined here as radical legal internationalism. Through this framework, IADL lawyers questioned Cold War ideological boundaries and brought into dialogue Communist, progressive, New Left, decolonial, and liberal rights traditions. The article also uncovers the IADL’s significant role in promoting international law and human rights through trial observation, UN advocacy, and missions of inquiry. In challenging the dominant account of the Left’s delayed and uneasy embrace of human rights, this article calls for a broader understanding of Cold War-era legal internationalism and highlights an alternative tradition of legal activism.

This paper presents the development and characterization of a wideband noise source, involving Commercial Off-The-Shelf components. The noise source relies on avalanche noise generation by driving the base-emitter junction of a packaged Si–Ge Heterojunction Bipolar Transistor into reverse breakdown. The paper discusses the noise source operation principle and its extensive characterization in both mm-Wave K band, as well as in C and X bands. Two prototypes were implemented without including output impedance matching, such as to preserve the wideband capabilities of the noise source. Performances were validated in terms of output Excess Noise Ratio (ENR), values reaching 10.8 dB were obtained for the K band at 6.71 mA breakdown current, in a 24–32 GHz bandwidth and $21-102^{\circ}\mathrm{C}$ device temperature excursion. A calibration model is also provided, which fits ENR fluctuations with an average error under 0.05 dB, when considering the maximum current and temperature excursions, as compared with 0.8 dB ENR drift reported for the non-calibrated source. The C and X band validation in 4–6 and 10–12 GHz frequency ranges highlights ENR reaching 25.6 and 22.6 dB, respectively, at 6.9 mA bias current.

We begin from the beginning, or rather from the Romans’ interest in origins: Raphael Schwitter offers a monumental synthesis of Roman antiquarianism from the second century bc to the third century ad.1 Rightly identifying such a study as a gap in the scholarship, Schwitter approaches the subject in a comprehensive fashion, starting with a substantial section of introductory material, including an intriguing case study of the way the Romans explained the origins of the use of coins, and some methodological thoughts on what it means to deal with fragmentary texts, followed by an overview of antiquarian writing in Greece, before moving on to the main part of his study: a systematic overview of the contents, literary formats, and scholarly methods of antiquarian writing in the second and early first centuries bc, the first century bc, and the imperial age. As Schwitter himself admits, many of his conclusions necessarily have to remain in the realm of speculation, due to the extremely fragmentary nature of the evidence, but he still achieves his aim: i.e. to show that antiquarianism is a pervasive phenomenon, rather than the mere symptom of a crisis, and that is does not stem from scholarly curiosity per se or the aim to entertain, but to gain orientation in the present by elucidating its connection with the past. Throughout, his focus is on antiquarian monographs, i.e. works more or less exclusively dedicated to antiquarian questions, comprising aetiology, genealogy, and etymology, but also their interaction, e.g. with poetic texts. Schwitter’s study shows impressively that antiquarian writing was a pervasive facet of Latin literature, with a first, still somewhat experimental, phase especially focused on specialized disciplines such as grammar and law, a surge in interest and a growing specialization and differentiation in the first century bc, and a growing trend towards compilation and new contextualization in the imperial age.

In 2008 the first annual Go Topless Day was organized in the US. In 2012 the #FreeTheNipple campaign was launched, prefacing Lina Esco’s 2014 film of the same name. Bruce Willis’ daughter Scout went shopping topless; Jean-Paul Gaultier sent a male and female model down the catwalk with their nipples on show and wearing the Free the Nipple slogan; and Miley Cyrus flashed Jimmy Kimmel. These movements argue, as they say on the tin, that it should be acceptable by legal and cultural norms for women to bare their breasts in public. The question is one of equality and bodily autonomy, and the movement is a way of making women’s voices heard. In our current fraught times, these voices are angry. At International Women’s Day just this year, women from the FEMEN activist group marched topless in Paris to protest against the ‘Fascist Epidemic’ (these words painted on their chests). In their mission statement, FEMEN declare that ‘Our Mission is Protest! Our Weapon are bare breasts’ – and they profess themselves to be a ‘modern incarnation of fearless and free Amazons’.

Targeted sprayers use artificial intelligence to enable on-the-go weed detection and herbicide application, reducing the need to spray entire fields with foliar herbicides. A targeted sprayer was evaluated for treating weeds in corn (Zea mays L.) and soybean [Glycine max (L.) Merr.] cropping systems in the Midwestern United States. Using a ONE SMART SPRAY sprayer, our objectives were to (1) evaluate the efficacy of different herbicide application programs; two-passes, spot-spray (SS) only, or simultaneous broadcast residual and SS foliar herbicides; (2) determine if weed detection thresholds influence weed control; and (3) determine the cost for each herbicide program compared to a traditional broadcast application. Field experiments were conducted in 2022 and 2023 near Manhattan, KS and in 2023 at Seymour, IL. Both green-on-brown (GOB; burndown applications) and green-on-green (GOG; in-crop applications) were applied. Main plot treatments consisted of four herbicide programs and the split-plot consisted of four weed detection thresholds: herbicide Efficacy, Balanced, Savings, and a Broadcast application. The percentage of area infested with weeds within each plot was estimated visually 42 days after the GOG application. A map was constructed using raw sprayer data to show when nozzles were turned on or off within a sub-plot, an “as-applied map”, and used to determine herbicide program costs based on the percentage of each plot area sprayed. Results indicated that herbicide programs with simultaneous broadcast and SS components, in many cases, resulted in similar area infested with weeds compared with broadcast applications with the same herbicide products. As expected, herbicide costs in SS applications were less than in broadcast applications. The ONE SMART SPRAY sprayer demonstrated potential to reduce herbicide input costs without compromising weed control.

This article analyzes historical claims about the Quyllurit’i pilgrimage (Cuzco, Peru). First, it discusses its relationship to Inka rituals and the Tupac Amaru rebellion. It shows that the way the rebellion affected the Ocongate church in 1782 was crucial for the later inscription of 1783 as the year of the pilgrimage’s miracle. It then analyzes how the conflicts between the Ocongate merchants and the hacienda Lauramarca over the commercialization of colono alpaca wool in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries are related to the creation of the first written account of the pilgrimage’s origins. This account was written in 1932, using the local archive shaped by the Great Rebellion, but without any evidence of anything that happened in 1783 in what is now the Quyllurit’i shrine. As the pilgrimage expanded beyond Ocongate, scholars who studied the pilgrimage in the 1970s used this first account to hypothesize its relationship to the Great Rebellion within tropes of indigenous cultural authenticity, continuity, and resistance.

Studies on magistracies have emerged as a solid and important trend in the scholarship on the Roman Republic over the last quarter of a century, and have enabled important connections between institutional history, prosopography, and the exploration of political practice and culture. There are at least three recent additions to this distinguished body of work. Grégory Ioannidopoulos has written a full-scale treatment of the quaestorship, which appears a mere five years after the monograph on the same topic by F. Pina Polo and A. Díaz Fernández.1 While overlaps in coverage and argument are inevitable, there are also significant differences. Ioannidopoulos does not include a prosopography, but focuses at length on terminological issues. The whole first part is taken up by a discussion of the titulature of quaestors, and the focus then turns to the systematic treatment of the ‘institution’ (the function of the college, the rules on eligibility, the election process, and so forth) and the powers it entailed at Rome and overseas. The outcome is an impressively full and thorough treatment, which warrants as close attention as its predecessor, and will be profitably consulted side by side with it. Its central ambition is to elucidate a number of important issues of public law; the remit of the discussion is wider, though, and encompasses the contribution of the quaestorship to the development of the empire as well as issues of political practice and culture; the treatment of the bond between promagistrates and quaestors, necessitudo (pp. 633–3) is especially rewarding.

Benthic gastropods are not commonly useful for biostratigraphic zonation. The gastropod genus Plocezyga is abundant throughout the marine units of the Desmoinesian through Virgilian Pennsylvanian strata in the United States. The protoconch of Plocezyga gives evidence that it had a planktonic time within its life cycle, which would give it a wider regional distribution. It has been found that Plocezyga is able to biostratigraphically zone the Pennsylvanian of the United States by use of first-occurrence range zones. The upper Atokan stage through the Virgilian Stage can be zoned using of the first occurrences of Plocezyga conica, P. excellens, P. ampla new species, P. costata, P. subquadrata, P. ornata, P. acuminata, P. obscura, and P. procera new species. The lower and upper boundary of the Desmoinesian as well as the lower boundary of the Missourian Stage are defined by these gastropod zones. Six new species are proposed: Plocezgya ampla from upper Desmoinesian units; Gamizyga lenterotunda from Missourian units; and Plocezyga pingurestis, Plocezyga procera, Cyclozyga promohumera, and Cyclozyga diversarevolvi from Virgilian units.

UUID: http://zoobank.org/d070c5ad-b65f-4ab1-842f-36058704a335

From August 2021 to July 2024, a teaching hospital in the DC area experienced a considerable increase in hospital-acquired (HA) Candida auris cases. This project identified possible contributing factors and implemented targeted interventions, which helped reduce the monthly HA case rate and likelihood of an outbreak.

At times of political catastrophe, what spaces remain for disenfranchised voices? This essay explores an early seventeenth-century compendium of urban folksongs, compiled by Feng Menglong (1574–1646), to explore a new kind of political action outside the institutions of the state—the act of transmission, that is, the recording of materials from the past or present for the moral cultivation of posterity. When Feng inserts non-elite voices into this process by recording and transmitting their poetry in a textual record that takes account of their regional and oral features, inflected by differences of class and gender, his act is both inclusive and meaningfully political. Feng’s act of transmission sustains voices—including those of the marginalized—whose circumstances otherwise render them precarious. Transmission thus draws attention to the forward-looking acts that can shape future practice and theory, on the basis of the very voices being obstructed by the mainstream realities of their time.