Bullying among girls is often subtle and relational, which can go unnoticed by parents, teachers and healthcare professionals. This article explores how covert aggression – such as social exclusion, gossip and emotional manipulation – can cause profound psychological harm to targeted girls, many of whom may not even realise they are being bullied. Through an analysis of defining attributes of girl-to-girl bullying and general implications for mental health, this article aims to highlight the importance of early identification and treatment. The article also points out how social patterns of bullying found predominantly in girls’ social circles carry over well into adulthood, emerging in the work environment, social circles and cyberspace. Focused on practical application, this educational paper aims to enhance clinicians’, caregivers’ and teachers’ recognition of relational aggression, develop collaborative approaches to prevention and facilitate useful interventions for those affected. Ultimately, increased sensitivity to subtle bullying has the power to reduce subsequent harm and result in healthier social contexts.

Kwalitatieve interviews onder 100 verdachten in Nederlandse strafzaken bieden inzicht in de vraag of ervaren procedurele rechtvaardigheid ertoe doet voor verdachten en, zo ja, welke componenten van procedurele rechtvaardigheid voor hen van belang zijn. Het epistemologische vertrekpunt van dit onderzoek verschilt van de kwantitatieve studies die het onderzoeksveld domineren, doordat dit onderzoek nagaat welke componenten van procedurele rechtvaardigheid respondenten eventueel zelf ter sprake brengen in plaats van respondenten te vragen naar vooraf bepaalde componenten van procedurele rechtvaardigheid. De grote meerderheid van de respondenten bracht zelf kwesties ter sprake die met procedurele rechtvaardigheid te maken hebben. Zes componenten vormden de kern van hun rechtvaardigheidspercepties: (1) informatie waarop beslissingen zijn gebaseerd, (2) bejegening, (3) gepaste aandacht, (4) neutraliteit, (5) inspraak en (6) zorgvuldigheid. Hoewel deze componenten overeenkomen met de literatuur over procedurele rechtvaardigheid, noemden respondenten sommige componenten vaker – en andere juist minder vaak – dan men op basis van de literatuur zou verwachten. In het bijzonder speelt neutraliteit een belangrijke rol in de Nederlandse rechtbankcontext die hier werd onderzocht.

Appeals to “decolonize” now range widely, from decolonizing the university to decolonizing Russia. This article poses the question of what work the concept of decolonization can and cannot do. It underscores how much can be learned about how decolonization came about if one explores the different goals that activists sought in their time. It suggests that if instead of looking for a colonial “legacy,” we explore historical trajectories of colonization and decolonization, we can reveal how political, economic, and social structures in both ex-colonies and ex-metropoles were shaped and reshaped over time. Finally, it brings into conversation with the literature on the decolonization of the empires of Western European states more recent scholarship on Russia and the Soviet Union, pointing to different forms of imperial rule and imperial collapse and also to the possibility of “reimperialization,” of reconstituting empire in new contexts.

The development of externalizing behavior in young children is shaped by the complex interaction of temperament, neural mechanisms, and environmental factors. This study explored how child frontal alpha asymmetry (FAA) and child negative affect jointly moderate the relationship between mindful parenting and child externalizing behavior. The sample, drawn from families in the Netherlands, included reports from 128 mothers and 103 partners on mindful parenting, and on children’s negative affect and externalizing behavior. FAA was measured in 95 four-year-old children during an EEG session while they watched an animated video. Results indicated that children with high negative affect and greater left-sided FAA displayed the most externalizing behavior when maternal mindful parenting was low, but the least when mindful parenting was high. In contrast, no significant effects were found for children with lower negative affect or in partner-reported data. These findings suggest that children with both high negative affect and greater left-sided FAA are more sensitive to the quality of mindful parenting, particularly from mothers, aligning with the environmental sensitivity framework. Future research should replicate these findings, ideally in a larger sample, and further examine the long-term, cumulative impact of FAA and negative affect on the development of behavioral problems.

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.

A brief introduction to this special issue on theme of experimental philosophy of religion—the project of taking the tools and resources of the human sciences and bringing them to bear on important issues within philosophy of religion, toward philosophical ends.

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.