Short-form video platforms have reshaped the practices of record companies and music streaming services, giving rise to new cross-audiovisual platform ecosystems. This article adopts the concept of the ‘platform adaptor’ to analyse how music industry practitioners and content producers in China have adjusted their production, distribution, and promotion strategies in response to the affordances of this emerging industrial ecosystem. It discusses the practices of staff who work with musicians to construct ‘hot songs’ (热歌) that can gain popularity across audiovisual platforms and music streaming services. Connecting theoretical ideas about affordance, platform ecologies, and adaptation, this article contributes to research on how cultural forms are ‘optimised’ to be more amenable to the requirements of platforms. The findings demonstrate that emotional encoding has become a pivotal mechanism through which musical commodities gain value as production processes increasingly conform to shareable short-form video formats within the platform economy.

Just before World War I, the Hudson’s Bay Company (HBC) geographically expanded its trade in the Canadian Arctic to derive profits from Arctic fox fur and secure its position in a global value chain (GVC) delivering fur to metropolitan consumers. The “problem of nature” challenged the company’s business venture. Furthermore, “nature” was made and remade by the HBC’s own capital investments. The fox trade itself changed human ecology. Technology transfers to Inuit modified their hunting regimes to increase the company’s returns of polar bear skins. Though these skins had high potential market value, modes of production introduced by the HBC to the Arctic precluded the company from sending high-quality products to metropolitan dressers. Within a changing Arctic human ecology, the HBC produced one highly valued commodity for the market while producing another from which it could derive only modest profit. The HBC’s fox and polar bear trade at the onset of the last century suggests ways that business empires can set off complex and unanticipated changes in human ecologies and, therefore, the dynamics of nature and business at their very peripheries.

This paper presents an effective approach to a compact antenna system incorporating a single artificial magnetic conductor (AMC), designed to operate in the GSM and WiFi frequency bands. The proposed system features a dual-band AMC single element measuring 60 × 60 mm2 with $\pm90^{\circ}$ bandwidths of 100 and 170 MHz. A comprehensive parametric study was conducted to optimize performance and determine the AMC phase while maintaining the compact size of the antenna system. Significant improvements in gain were observed, from −1.61 to 1.88 dBi at 0.9 GHz and from 3.33 to 5.66 dBi at 2.45 GHz. Additionally, the complete system achieves a compact electrical size of 0.18λ0 × 0.18λ0 × 0.048λ0, with an increased front-to-back ratio of 12.3 and 19.9 dB at both frequencies. Finally, measurements of the fabricated prototype show good agreement with the simulation results.

As intelligence technology advances, the boundaries between humans and machines blur, prompting questions regarding human identity and agency. While opera has traditionally explored such existential tensions, contemporary productions often emphasise technological narratives, potentially overshadowing human-centred perspectives. This article investigates music’s expressive potential to bridge these divergent viewpoints, positing it as a distinct form of ‘listening’ to and ‘knowing’ the world. Through a case study of Hao Weiya’s chamber opera AI Variation (2021), it probes how a musical approach communicates intricate ethical and existential questions posed by advancing AI technologies. The findings reveal that music’s non-linguistic nature creates an experiential space to explore, feel and contemplate human experiences. Orchestral voices craft sonic landscapes that invite contemplation on being and perception in an AI-driven world, and music conveys complexities beyond what words alone can express. The article illuminates how music contributes to a humanist response to technological advances, enriching cultural and philosophical discourse.

We address the anti-trans/queer panic integral to the ascendance of authoritarian politics in America and respond by calling on all political scientists to “queer” political science by undoing the cisheteronormativity of the discipline. We contend that this is not the special obligation of LGBTQ scholars but all political scientists. In this we follow Eve Sedgwick’s orientation away from a “minoritizing” to a “universalizing” epistemological perspective that situates this responsibility relative to resisting democratic decline.