This article examines how post-Soviet Azerbaijani literature redefined creative and narrative forms, challenging Soviet literary norms through experimentation and new modes of characterization. Following independence in 1991, Azerbaijani literature moved from the transitional, trauma-marked works of the 1990s to the pluralism and experimentation of the 2000s and, after 2020, toward a discourse of triumph. Writers such as Aziza Jafarzadeh, Huseyn Ibrahimov, Elchin Afandiyev, Anar, and Afag Masud employ non-linear structures, allegory, symbolism, and introspection to transform inherited Soviet forms into vehicles of cultural resistance. Drawing on postcolonial theory (Bakhtin, Bhabha, Spivak, and Annus) and close textual readings, this article situates Azerbaijani literature within broader Eurasian and postcolonial frameworks, demonstrating how creative characterization fosters new expressions of identity, memory, and cultural reimagining.

We introduce a data-driven approach to use language to reconstruct history, and apply the methodology to estimate the geographic origins of religious spread. To validate the approach, we use language data to estimate origins of Islam and Buddhism to within 500km of their true (and uncontested) origins. We then apply the methodology to the more complex (and contested) cases of Christianity, Judaism, and Hinduism. We show that language-based estimates, in these cases, are significantly more aligned with the origin of scripture than with the origin of the religion.

In 1770, the Rohilla chief Ḥāfiz̤ Raḥmat Ḵẖān wrote a text called Ḵẖulāṣat ul-Ansāb, focusing on the genealogical and ancestral history of the Rohilla Afghans. This article analyses the text as a glimpse into the emotions he went through—such as anxiety, uncertainty, confidence, determination, and strength—as the ruler of a small principality founded by a new political group in the competitive political milieu of eighteenth-century South Asia. It studies the textual expression of these emotions he experienced during a period that brought both challenges and opportunities for the Rohilla Afghans. It firstly shows how the text served as a means of creating unity among the Rohilla Afghans by elaborating an origin story, adapting them to new circumstances, and legitimising the emerging Rohilla state. Secondly, it discusses how Ḥāfiz̤ Raḥmat aimed to rectify the negative portrayals of the Afghans by Mughal chroniclers and enhance Afghan prestige in northern India by creating a haloed genealogy. Finally, it explains how the text claimed religious legitimacy for the Rohilla Afghans by linking them to the prophets, Muslim invaders of the past, and local religious figures. Overall, this textual analysis contributes to the historiography of eighteenth-century South Asia by studying the political anxieties associated with Rohilla Afghan state formation.

On August 22, 2019, several cloud-to-ground currents struck the top of the popular hiking mountain Giewont (Tatra Mountains, Poland). At the scene, first aid and evacuation were provided by mountain emergency rescue services. The injured patients received care and were initially stabilized at a local general hospital. Some of the victims were then relocated to other nearby hospitals, regional trauma centers, or regional burn centers. This study is a retrospective analysis of regional health system response. The official records of the disaster response from the institutions involved were examined. Surveys were conducted through interviews with mountain rescuers, coordinators, and other health care workers regarding interventions, triage, and communication during the disaster response. The analysis was conducted in accordance with the guidelines of the Medical Commission of the International Commission for Alpine Rescue (ICAR-MEDCOM). There were 134 people involved in accidents: four died at the scene, four were considered severely injured, 118 were moderately and mildly injured, and eight had no signs of injury. Mountain rescue services were able to evacuate and provide first aid to all victims within four hours after activation. Close cooperation among various institutions involved, including mountain emergency rescue services, hospitals, fire departments, dispatch centers, and Helicopter Emergency Medical Services (HEMS), is critical to the successful management of mass-casualty incidents (MCIs) in mountain areas. Effective triage algorithms and communication structures should be implemented.

Hinge epistemology’s main claim to fame lies with its purported advantages in dealing with the problem of radical skepticism. In this paper, I argue that two of its most prominent formulations, due to Annalisa Coliva and Duncan Pritchard, are unsuccessful. To the extent that hinge epistemology represents one of the most relevant options available to internalists to avoid skeptical collapse, the results of this discussion contribute to cast a grim light on the chances of a successful defense of internalist epistemic justification more in general.

What do we make of someone who claims not to believe something, and yet whose behaviours suggest belief – such as someone who claims not to believe in ghosts, yet refuses to walk through the graveyard at night, or someone who claims to know that they have switched off the oven, yet feels the need to go and check? Some have proposed treating cases like these in terms of states of ‘half belief’ or ‘in-between’ belief. We propose that sometimes these cases are best understood not as an epistemic matter concerning such compromised belief states, but rather as an aesthetic matter concerning imaginative states and what they enable us to appreciate about the actual world. Anxiety over the graveyard, or over the oven, can be characterised in terms of the explanatory structures the person is disposed to imagine – explanatory structures which the person knows are non-actual, but which would explain were the world to work differently. Overactive imagination is where one’s preoccupation with imagining a non-actual explanatory structure takes priority over things that it should not. Underactive imagination is where a person is insensitive to how aspects of the world support the imagining of non-actual explanatory structures.

We show the Harris–Viehmann conjecture under some Hodge–Newton reducibility condition for a generalisation of the diamond of a non-basic Rapoport–Zink space at infinite level, which appears as a cover of the non-semi-stable locus in the Hecke stack. We show also that the cohomology of the non-semi-stable locus with coefficients coming from a cuspidal Langlands parameter vanishes. As an application, we show the Hecke eigensheaf property in Fargues’ conjecture for cuspidal Langlands parameters in the $ {\mathrm {GL}}_2$-case.

We study the long time dynamic properties of the nonlocal Kuramoto–Sivashinsky (KS) equation with multiplicative white noise. First, we consider the dynamic properties of the stochastic nonlocal KS equation via a transformation into the associated conjugated random differential equation. Next, we prove the existence and uniqueness of solution for the conjugated random differential equation in the theory of random dynamical systems. We also establish the existence and uniqueness of a random attractor for the stochastic nonlocal equation.

The relationship between Nepal and China during the 1910s to 1940s remains an underexplored topic. This article revisits this thirty-year period by examining Chinese knowledge production on Nepal as an early instance of inter-Asia engagement. First, it demonstrates how epistemological barriers – shaped by coloniality and asymmetrical worldviews – severely hindered direct Chinese understanding of Nepal, despite sustained intellectual efforts. It then interrogates the in-betweenness of this disconnection, arguing that these mediated engagements were not merely failures of direct contact. Instead, the article contends that the liminal, hybrid, and shifting nature of these mediated encounters enabled forms of subjectivity transference and affective affiliation that were productive in sustaining inter-Asian referencing. To support this claim, the article examines the writings of various Chinese political critics, officials, and diplomats on Nepal. Despite their limitations, these intellectual engagements are ultimately seen as productive. First, they expose the liminal, shifting, and dynamic nature of knowledge production, in contrast to the fixed forms associated with colonial epistemologies. Second, they enable forms of subjectivity transference that foster affective affiliations. They also offer renewed possibilities for understanding inter-Asian referencing as a methodological strategy for rethinking inter-Asian relationalities.

In this paper, we will investigate the following inequality

\begin{equation*}(a_{n+1}a_{n+2} - a_{n}a_{n+3})^2 -(a_{n+1}^2 -a_{n}a_{n+2})(a_{n+2}^2 - a_{n}a_{n+4}) \gt 0,\end{equation*}

which arises from the iterated Laguerre operator on functions. We will prove the sequence $\{a_n\}$ of a unified form given by Griffin, Ono, Rolen and Zagier asymptotically satisfies this inequality while the Maclaurin coefficients of the functions in Laguerre-Pólya class have not to possess this inequality. We also prove the companion version of this inequality. As a consequence, we show the Maclaurin coefficients of the Riemann Ξ-function asymptotically satisfy this property. Moreover, we make this approach effective and give the exact thresholds for the positivity of this inequalityfor the partition function, the overpartition function and the smallest part function.

Despite substantial corporate investment in mentorship, learning, and talent development, access to these knowledge sharing practices may be unequal. This could be due to structural prejudices that determine who receives mentorship, whose learning is prioritised, and how knowledge is shared in organisations. Philosophical business ethics research has primarily focused on speaker-directed epistemic injustice, where employees’ testimony is silenced or discredited. This article introduces hearer-directed epistemic injustice, a novel concept that highlights the wrong suffered by employees who are unjustly denied knowledge. Using Hidden Figures as a case, this article illustrates how testimonial oversimplification or omission can perpetuate structural inequalities in organisations. By extending Fricker’s theory of epistemic injustice, I argue that “speakers”—mentors, managers, finance professionals, and leaders—should actively foster virtuous knowledge sharing practices. This research contributes to business ethics by providing a conceptual framework for identifying hearer-directed epistemic injustice in organisations and ways to mitigate prejudice in organisational epistemic practices.

This paper assesses the effectiveness of current legal standards in resolving rights-based disputes arising from compulsory curricula in schools, an issue of growing significance as such teaching expands in the areas of sexuality, relationship and religious education. Focusing on Article 2 of Protocol 1 (P1-2) of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), it critiques the current reliance on the ‘objective, critical, and pluralistic’ (OCP) standard, examining its alignment with the core purpose of P1-2: preventing state monopolisation in education through safeguarding qualified parental choice. The analysis identifies shortcomings in P1-2 case law, particularly the subjective nature of determining when teaching is OCP, the negation of parental objections and the neglect of children’s rights in the assessment process. To address these issues, the paper proposes a revised review framework which prioritises a justification test that recognises parental concerns, reduces reliance on public interest justifications and acknowledges the legitimacy of children’s rights as grounds for limiting parental objections. The paper argues that this refined approach better aligns with the article’s foundational purpose whilst fostering an enlarged space for the balanced consideration of competing interests and rights in educational controversies.

Older people want to live at home for as long as possible and expect a system of care to enable this. This desire is also recognized in many national policies, where ageing in place with the support of informal caregivers is increasingly seen as a viable solution to institutional care. Despite this, refusal of such care at point of delivery can create further health issues for individuals as well as organizational challenges for care providers. This study aims to explore older people’s perceptions of why homecare is, or may be, refused. It builds on a quantitative study, where 18 per cent of instances of non-delivery of homecare in one major care provider in Scotland were categorized as ‘Service Refusal’. Data from a convenience sample of 17 people, aged 65 years and older, with experience of homecare, from the Greater Glasgow and Clyde area in Scotland, underwent framework analysis. In contrast to the quantitative study, this study uncovered an unexpected propensity for service acceptance; living at home was the presiding value and the main motivating factor to accept homecare, irrespective of its quality. This study provides a deeper understanding of the complexities of homecare from those who receive it, highlighting critical insights to inform governmental initiatives and homecare service providers. Allowing people to remain at home for as long as possible with appropriate and sustainable homecare should be central to national outcomes in Scotland, with the findings of this study also providing useful insights for homecare providers internationally.