International law has been predominantly shaped by the West. Despite decolonization, insufficient attention has been paid to non-Western civilizations’ practices, including Asian civilizations. This article examines this insufficiency in relation to treaty interpretation and customary international law identification. To do so, it uses the notion of conscientious objection to military service as a case study. Despite particularly adverse state practice, chiefly in Asia, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) treaty body and UN organs began affirming in the 1990s that the Covenant includes a right to conscientious objection to military service. The first part analyzes whether such a right can be implied from the ICCPR, inter alia, by assessing the practice of Asian states. The second part endeavours to explain the gap between the international human rights machinery’s pronouncements and non-Western practice by discussing the Western-centrism and individual-centrism of interpretations adopted by human rights bodies and organs.

Middle aortic syndrome is rare cause of secondary hypertension, typically manifesting in childhood or early adolescence. It involves obstructive narrowing of the aorta, often occurring in the distal thoracic and abdominal aorta and its major branches. While the exact cause of middle aortic syndrome is not fully understood, it has been linked to hereditary genetic conditions such as Williams syndrome. This case report describes a 16-year-old female with Williams syndrome who presented with abdominal pain and hematochezia. CT angiography revealed moderate narrowing of the abdominal aorta, consistent with a diagnosis of middle aortic syndrome.

The Mental Health Bill, 2025, proposes to remove autism and learning disability from the scope of Section 3 of the Mental Health Act, 1983 (MHA). The present article represents a professional and carer consensus statement that raises concerns and identifies probable unintended consequences if this proposal becomes law. Our concerns relate to the lack of clear mandate for such proposals, conceptual inconsistency when considering other conditions that might give rise to a need for detention and the inconsistency in applying such changes to Part II of the MHA but not Part III. If the proposed changes become law, we anticipate that detentions would instead occur under the less safeguarded Deprivation of Liberty Safeguards framework, and that unmanaged risks will eventuate in behavioural consequences that will lead to more autistic people or those with a learning disability being sent to prison. Additionally, there is a concern that the proposed definitional breadth of autism and learning disability gives rise to a risk that people with other conditions may unintentionally be unable to be detained. We strongly urge the UK Parliament to amend this portion of the Bill prior to it becoming law.

The article, as an afterword to the special issue Navigating Post-Imperial Transitions, uses the story of a Transylvanian Romanian and Greek Catholic family, the Pordeas, as an example of several key themes of the articles: managing difference within and after the empire, concrete consequences of international arrangements, agency of individuals in the transition. The Pordeas’ extremely intense engagement and entanglement with the empire highlights that a key feature of imperial biographies, the skill of connecting milieus as a way of differentiated rule, was not limited to the high-ranking imperial bureaucrats; it was rather a knowledge important in lower educated strata of society. After 1918, within nation states that often consciously used techniques of imperial rule for their own consolidation, it opened upward mobility and sometimes global horizon for these people. However, the ability to create connections is just as important for any state facing internal difference as it was for empires, showing how much empire was created from below.

This ethnographic study examines literacy activities in a Tibetan-Canadian family, members of a heritage language community facing intergenerational language loss. Drawing from twelve months of video ethnography, as well as ethnographic interviews and participant observation, I show how children use sound, gesture, and objects to mediate a shared understanding of the Tibetan heritage language, despite the dominance of English in their spoken repertoires. Informed by anthropological methods of language socialization, I examine children’s multimodal articulations of metalinguistic knowledge to argue that literacy activities provide material anchors for Tibetan children to identify as heritage language speakers through a process that I term heritage language recognition—an interactive objectification of language as culture that does not rely on metapragmatic discourse. Analyses discuss heritage language recognition in conversational patterns of entextualization, demonstrating that metalinguistic knowledge can be located in young children’s multimodal repertoires. (Heritage languages, language socialization, literacy, metalinguistic knowledge, multimodality)

The spatial competition in the White Sea’s Halichondria panicea sponge was studied through a field experiment assessing growth in isogeneic and allogeneic sponge fragments of equal or different sizes. After 3 months and 1 year in seawater, growth was evaluated using ImageJ software on photographs. Intraspecific competition among allogeneic H. panicea individuals led to a decrease in relative growth, with the size of interacting individuals influencing competitive strategy. Optimal growth occurred when competitors were larger, minimal when sizes were equal, suggesting an alternative competitive strategy in the latter case. Competition between isogeneic individuals of H. panicea was weak or even absent; fusion of isogeneic fragments increased the growth intensity and substrate coverage by the sponge. Analysing the growth directions of sponges, we have found a phenomenon that may be interpreted as an attempt to ‘avoid’ physical contact with a competitor. In the neighbourhood with an allogeneic individual of larger or smaller size, the growth towards the competitor was lower than in other directions, regardless of whether the neighbouring individuals reached contact with each other or not. This may indicate that growth was redirected due to some distant communication mechanisms. The growth of allogeneic and isogeneic explants before contact occurred in a similar manner. Apparently, H. panicea cannot recognize the genetic nature of a competitor at a certain distance.

Prison has long been recognized as a racialized institution in America, where race determines myriad aspects of life—from where individuals sleep to those with whom they live, eat, and socialize during incarceration. However, there is little evidence on how to effectively remediate prisons’ deep racial divisions—a question that is imperative given that interracial animus in prisons can be both a result and a determinant of racial conflict and violence. In this study, we argue that higher education in prison has significant potential to improve racial attitudes and foster racial integration by providing a “contrasting context” for interracial interaction in the classroom within an otherwise racially segregated institution. Using administrative data on college-level course completion, an original longitudinal survey of prison college students, and in-depth qualitative interviews with prison college alumni, we show evidence of shifts in racial attitudes and self-reported behavior as students move through their college career. Our results demonstrate the potential for prison higher education to shift race-based norms and offer a framework through which to analyze prison education that prioritizes outcomes of interest beyond recidivism.

The use of sodium channel blocker insecticides (SCBIs) has been one of the tools for managing the resistance of fall armyworm Spodoptera frugiperda (J.E. Smith, 1797) (Lepidoptera: Noctuidae) to insecticides. In this study, we selected resistant strains of S. frugiperda to the SCBIs indoxacarb (Indoxacarb-R) and metaflumizone (Metaflumizone-R), under laboratory conditions, to evaluate the inheritance of resistance, cross-resistance to insecticides targeting voltage-gated sodium channels, and verify the absence of the F1845Y and V1848I mutations. The LC50 values of the susceptible (SUS) and the Indoxacarb-R strains to indoxacarb were 3.72 and 114.43 µg mL−1 respectively, and for the SUS and the Metaflumizone-R strains to metaflumizone were 4.57 and 3,141.96 µg mL−1, respectively, with resistance ratios of approximately 30-fold to indoxacarb and >600-fold to metaflumizone. The resistance of S. frugiperda to both insecticides was characterised as autosomal, incompletely recessive, and polygenic. Cross-resistance between indoxacarb and metaflumizone was detected. Moreover, Indoxacarb-R and Metaflumizone-R strains showed lower susceptibility to the pyrethroid insecticide lambda-cyhalothrin, possibly due to multiple resistance. The partial sequencing of the S. frugiperda sodium channel gene did not confirm the association of F1845Y and V1848I mutations with S. frugiperda resistance to indoxacarb and metaflumizone. These results will be important for implementing proactive insect resistance management programmes to preserve the lifetime of SCBIs in controlling S. frugiperda.

In January 2019, Nigeria enacted the Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Act, which provides for a joint legal framework for both competition and consumer protection. This article examines the theoretical and practical rationale for integrating competition and consumer protection, recognizing that, while related, the two may pursue distinct goals and operate under different principles. It provides a lens to review the issues an African country faces following integration, especially in the broader normative discussion of the goals of competition law. Although there is literature investigating the integration of consumer protection and competition, there is still nothing that examines the place of consumer protection in the wider theoretical context of competition for developing countries, particularly how they balance efficiency with other goals of competition. The article also offers the first academic review of the five-year practice of competition law and its application in Nigeria.

Credibility and intent are important but imprecise legal categories that need to be assessed in criminal trials as neither common nor civil legal systems provide decision-makers with clear rules on how to evaluate them in practice. In this article, drawing on ethnographic data from trials and deliberations in Italian courts and prosecution offices, we discuss the emotive-cognitive dynamics at play in judges’ and prosecutors’ evaluations of credibility and intent, focusing on cases of murder, intimate partner violence and rape. Using sociological concepts of epistemic emotions, empathy, frame and legal encoding, we show that legal professionals use different reflexive practices to either avoid settling on feelings of certainty or overcome doubts when evaluating credibility and intent. Empathy emerges as a multifaceted tool that can either generate certainty or be used deliberately to instigate or overcome doubts. We contribute to the growing body of literature addressing the emotional dynamics of legal decision-making.

The aim of this study was to evaluate the antifungal spectrum of activity, synergy, and mode of action of carboxy-terminally amidated antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) derived from tachyplesin-I (T-I) from the horseshoe crab Tachypleus tridentatus and a lysine-rich analogue of magainin-2 (MSI-94) from the clawed frog Xenopus laevis. In vitro antimicrobial tests against 17 fungal strains demonstrated that the modified AMPs exhibited broad antifungal activity, particularly against filamentous fungi and yeasts relevant to aquaculture and agriculture. Additive antimicrobial activity was observed with the combination of T-I and MSI-94 against Candida albicans and Rhodotorula mucilaginosa, indicating an enhancement of their antiyeast properties. Furthermore, we found that both peptides target the fungal cell surface, increasing membrane permeability and leading to cell death. Overall, our findings highlight the biotechnological potential of aquatic AMPs in developing novel antifungal therapeutics applicable across various fields.

The extracellular matrices, such as the haemolymph, in insects are at the centre of most physiological processes and are protected from oxidative stress by the extracellular antioxidant enzymes. In this study, we identified two secreted superoxide dismutase genes (PxSOD3 and PxSOD5) and investigated the oxidative stress induced by chlorpyrifos (CPF) in the aquatic insect Protohermes xanthodes (Megaloptera: Corydalidae). PxSOD3 and PxSOD5 contain the signal peptides at the N-terminus. Structure analysis revealed that PxSOD3 and PxSOD5 contain the conserved CuZn-SOD domain, which is mainly composed of β-sheets and has conserved copper and zinc binding sites. Both PxSOD3 and PxSOD5 are predicted to be soluble proteins located in the extracellular space. After exposure to different concentrations of sublethal CPF, MDA content in P. xanthodes larvae were increased in a dose-dependent manner; SOD and CAT activities were also higher in CPF-treated groups than that in the no CPF control, indicating that sublethal CPF induces oxidative stress in P. xanthodes larvae. Furthermore, PxSOD3 and PxSOD5 expression levels and haemolymph SOD activity in the larvae were downregulated by sublethal CPF at different concentrations. Our results suggest that the PxSOD3 and PxSOD5 are putative extracellular antioxidant enzymes that may play a role in maintaining the oxidative balance in the extracellular space. Sublethal CPF may induce oxidative stress in the extracellular space of P. xanthodes by reducing the gene expression and catalytic activity of extracellular SODs.

This article analyses the use of adversarial questions in oral hearings conducted by the Parole Board of England and Wales. This is important because the Board is supposed to use an inquisitorial approach to oral hearings, so adversarial questions are examples of where Parole Board members deviate from this norm. The article outlines the work of the Parole Board, the process for carrying out oral hearings and the recent move to increased remote hearings following the Covid-19 pandemic. Using conversation analysis, the research casts light on the relationship between mode of hearing (remote vs. in-person) and adversarial questions and how discourses of blame and responsibility operate in the production of these challenging question types. A chi-square test reveals that adversarial questions are statistically significantly more common in remote hearings, although they remain low in frequency. The article concludes with thoughts on why remote hearings are more conducive to adversarial questions. (Accounts, adversarial questioning, conversation analysis, parole, responsibility)*

The transition in welfare states from compensatory to service-oriented models also implies a shift of the locus of action from the state to local administrations. Cities in particular seek space within national bounds to devise their own policy solutions targeted to city-specific needs as a more responsive government layer, with the prospect of providing more targeted service provision on the basis of locality and proximity principles. Whether such social innovation potential is met depends on scope conditions, such as the learning environment, the design of the decentralisation and the capacity of cities to scale up smaller projects. In this paper, we trace the policy process around local social investment innovations in Amsterdam across three domains: addressing teacher shortages, combatting energy poverty and integrating the long-term unemployed into the labour market. In each of the domains, Amsterdam emerged as a frontrunner and innovator, instigating broader change. The city is at the frontier of societal change and acts as ‘a stopgap’, filling gaps left by national policy default. Overall, the case of Amsterdam shows the importance in adopting a multi-level perspective in studying new dynamics in welfare state transitions.

Exploring the minimum wage policy discontinuities at county borders, we find that minimum wage hikes induce industrial firms to pollute more and reduce their abatement efforts. State ownership mitigates these negative effects, suggesting its role in addressing externality. The adverse environmental impacts are attenuated by the staggered increase in pollution discharge fees across provinces. These effects are stronger for firms with higher minimum wage sensitivity, lower market power, and greater financial constraints, and for firms that are the subsidiaries of nonlisted companies. Overall, our findings highlight the unintended environmental consequences of labor market policies.