Bullying is a public health concern that results in diminished well-being for children and adolescents. One approach that lawmakers have taken to address bullying is enacting anti-bullying laws, which require school districts to establish bullying prevention policies. In this study, researchers used standard legal epidemiology methods to systematically retrieve and analyze anti-bullying laws in the United States (US). While they found that every US state and the District of Columbia has a school anti-bullying law, there is wide variation in their scope and requirements. Some jurisdictions specified requirements that school districts must implement in their anti-bullying policies, while others deferred policy enactment entirely to school districts. Given the differences in requirements and scoping afforded in anti-bullying laws, understanding the important components included in such policies can help provide policymakers and practitioners with information about bullying prevention strategies across jurisdictions.

Pollen morphology, viability and in vitro germination are vital parameters for taxonomic classification, hybridization, artificial pollination and improving seed set in crop breeding. In the present study, we investigated the pollen morphological characteristics of four marigold genotypes using scanning electron microscopy, assessed pollen viability using Alexander’s stain and acetocarmine and evaluated in vitro germination under a light microscope using media supplemented with varying concentrations of sucrose and polyethylene glycol (PEG). Pollen grains were medium-sized (25–50 µm) and exhibited suboblate to oblate-spheroidal shapes, with a polar/equatorial ratio ranging from 0.84 to 0.88. All genotypes displayed tricolporate pollen grains with three colpi and endoaperture, and their aperture lengths were between 3.88 and 4.90 µm. Significant genotypic differences were observed in pollen viability, with the highest values recorded in IIHRMY 1-4 (96.66 ± 0.34%) using acetocarmine and in IIHRMY 2-1 (96.42 ± 0.51%) using Alexander’s stain. The optimal germination medium contained 15% sucrose and 15% PEG, with IIHRMY 1-4 exhibiting the highest pollen germination rate (54.09 ± 1.15%), followed by IIHRMY 2-1 (47.05 ± 1.27%). These findings offer valuable insights for marigold breeding programmes, particularly in selecting genotypes for efficient cross-pollination and hybrid development.

Trisomy 21 is the most common chromosomal anomaly worldwide, and nearly half of the affected individuals are born with CHD, making cardiac complications a leading cause of morbidity and mortality in this population. Over the past century, the management of CHD in patients with Trisomy 21 has evolved dramatically, shaped by shifting societal attitudes, advances in diagnostic and surgical techniques, and landmark legal and ethical milestones. Historically, children with Trisomy 21 faced significant barriers to cardiac care, including delayed referrals and denial of surgical intervention, often rooted in discrimination rather than medical evidence. However, improvements in perioperative management and early surgical repair have led to survival outcomes for many forms of CHD that now approach those of the general population. Despite these advances, challenges persist, particularly in access to heart transplantation, where disparities in referral and eligibility remain. This review provides a historical overview of the evolution of CHD management in individuals with Trisomy 21, highlighting key medical, ethical, and societal developments that have shaped current standards of care.

Human-centric uncertainty remains one of the most persistent yet least quantified sources of risk in aviation maintenance. Although established safety frameworks such as SMS (safety management system), STAMP (Systems-Theoretic Accident Model and Processes), and FRAM (Functional Resonance Analysis Method) have advanced systemic oversight, they fall short in capturing the dynamic, context-dependent variability of human performance in real time. This study introduces the uncertainty quantification in aircraft maintenance (UQAM) framework – a novel, predictive safety tool designed to measure and manage operational uncertainty at the task level. The integrated uncertainty equation (IUE) is central to the model, a mathematical formulation that synthesises eight empirically derived uncertainty factors into a single, actionable score. Using a mixed-methods design, the research draws on thematic analysis of 49 semi-structured interviews with licensed maintenance engineers, followed by a 12-month field validation across four distinct maintenance tasks. Results demonstrate that the IUE effectively distinguishes between low, moderate and high-risk scenarios while remaining sensitive to procedural anomalies, diagnostic ambiguity and environmental complexity. Heatmap visualisations further enable supervisory teams to identify dominant uncertainty drivers and implement targeted interventions. UQAM enhances predictive governance, supports real-time decision-making and advances the evolution of next-generation safety systems in high-reliability aviation environments by embedding quantitative uncertainty metrics into existing safety architectures.

Equitable access to medicines is vital for people with disabilities to receive effective, affordable, and quality treatment, helping preserve functionality, prevent further disability, and promote social and economic inclusion. This paper explores the specific medicine needs of people with disabilities in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), focusing on the European Union’s (EU) extraterritorial legal obligations under the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD). As the first regional international organization to accede to a UN human rights treaty, the EU offers a unique case for examining how international legal commitments extend beyond its borders. The paper outlines a legal framework based on the CRPD to assess the EU’s responsibilities for ensuring access to medicines globally. This framework is applied to two case studies: the EU’s internal joint COVID-19 vaccine procurement strategy and its external BioNTainer initiative for vaccine production in Africa under Team Europe. The analysis finds that the EU falls short of its CRPD obligations, particularly in areas of technology transfer and intellectual property sharing, which are essential for equitable global vaccine access. The paper concludes that the EU’s current actions do not fulfill its human rights commitments to people with disabilities in LMICs.

The concept of parity due to Fitzpatrick, Pejsachowicz and Rabier is a central tool in the abstract bifurcation theory of nonlinear Fredholm operators. In this paper, we relate the parity to the Evans function, which is widely used in the stability analysis for traveling wave solutions to evolutionary PDEs.

In contrast, we use Evans function as a flexible tool yielding general sufficient condition for local bifurcations of specific bounded entire solutions to (Carathéodory) differential equations. These bifurcations are intrinsically nonautonomous in the sense that the assumptions implying them cannot be fulfilled for autonomous or periodic temporal forcings. In addition, we demonstrate that Evans functions are strictly related to the dichotomy spectrum and hyperbolicity, which play a crucial role in studying the existence of bounded solutions on the whole real line and therefore the recent field of nonautonomous bifurcation theory. Finally, by means of non-trivial examples we illustrate the applicability of our methods.

Word processing during reading is known to be influenced by lexical features, especially word length, frequency, and predictability. This study examined the relative importance of these features in word processing during second language (L2) English reading. We used data from an eye-tracking corpus and applied a machine-learning approach to model word-level eye-tracking measures and identify key predictors. Predictors comprised several lexical features, including length, frequency, and predictability (e.g., surprisal). Additionally, sentence, passage, and reader characteristics were considered for comparison. The analysis found that word length was the most important variable across several eye-tracking measures. However, for certain measures, word frequency and predictability were more important than length, and in some cases, reader characteristics such as proficiency were more significant than lexical features. These findings highlight the complexity of word processing during reading, the shared processes between first language (L1) and L2 reading, and their potential to refine models of eye-movement control.

This study applies Bayesian chronological modeling to 16 new AMS radiocarbon dates on short-lived botanical remains and wood-charcoal recovered from the archaeological site Ahatsistari, a seventeenth-century Huron-Wendat village located in Simcoe County in Ontario, Canada. The modeled radiocarbon dates provide an independent time frame for understanding site phase and sequence, compatibility with historically documented events of a known date, and assessment of the socioeconomic and political influences affecting the composition of European trade good assemblages from different sites. We argue that Ahatsistari is likely Carhagouha, the principal village of the northern Attignawantan who were members of the Huron-Wendat Confederacy, and home to Samuel de Champlain and Joseph Le Caron from 1615 to 1616. In addition, Ahatsistari is contemporary with the archaeological site Warminster, which is believed to be Champlain’s Cahiagué. Radiocarbon dates from the archaeological sites of Ahatsistari, Warminster, and Ball are consistent with earlier suppositions for the beginning and end of Glass Bead Period 2 (AD 1600–1625), whereas differences in the composition of the glass trade bead assemblages speak to the prominent role of Ahatsistari in trade with the French and to variable trade relations among other early seventeenth-century Huron-Wendat villages.

The growing body of literature on corporate purpose has underscored its potential as a strategic driver for firms. However, its practical implementation remains challenging due to the concept’s multifaceted and often abstract nature. By reviewing 118 articles, this systematic literature review develops a process framework on how corporate purpose can be translated into concrete organizational strategies across three dimensions: antecedents, management, and consequences. Specifically, we identify the foundational conditions that shape a purpose statement in firms, examine how purpose is embedded and shared within them, and assess the multilevel outcomes of an effective purpose. The review highlights actionable levers to align purpose with strategy and practice, discussing how firms can implement their ‘reason why’. In doing so, the study provides contributions to better understand corporate purpose from both a theoretical and managerial perspective, within the broader field of strategic management.

Anaesthesia methods play a crucial role in ensuring the integrity of the animal during experimental studies. This study investigates the impact of two anaesthesia methods, CO₂ and cold treatment, on an insect antennal response to synthetic alarm pheromone compounds. Adult worker hornets were anesthetised, and their antennae excised and tested using an electroantennography set-up with controlled stimulation of alarm pheromone components. Results showed that CO₂-anesthetised hornets exhibited robust antennal responses, while cold-anesthetised individuals displayed none. This result suggests that freezing may impair the functionality of olfactory receptors. In contrast, CO₂ anaesthesia preserves receptor integrity, offering reliable and interpretable results. This study highlights the importance of selecting appropriate anaesthesia techniques to avoid artefacts in insect sensory physiology research and underscores the ecological relevance of studying Vespa velutina nigrithorax alarm signalling.

The current administration has disproportionately targeted transgender, nonbinary, and gender nonconforming people, despite accounting for less than 1% of the population (Jones, 2024). Though there has been a flurry of executive orders issued restricting the rights of this population, Executive Order 14168 (i.e., Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government) and Executive Order 14151 (Ending Radical and Wasteful Government DEI Programs and Preferencing) are likely to be particularly impactful for workplaces. This is because Executive Order 14168 challenges the existing federal protections of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 extended through Bostock v. Clayton County (2020), by declaring sex as binary and biological and denying the existence of transgender people. In addition, EO14151 eliminates federal diversity, equity, and inclusion programs and practices, which limits organizational practices and policies that might otherwise create inclusive and equitable environments for transgender employees. Therefore, this policy brief aims to discuss these executive orders, the existing protections they aim to alter, and the potential implications for transgender employees, organizations, and industrial-organizational professionals.

We consider the Perron–Frobenius operator defined on the space of functions of bounded variation for the beta-map $\tau _\beta (x)=\beta x$ (mod $1$) for $\beta \in (1,\infty )$, and investigate its isolated eigenvalues except $1$, called non-leading eigenvalues in this paper. We show that the set of $\beta $ such that the corresponding Perron–Frobenius operator has at least one non-leading eigenvalue is open and dense in $(1,\infty )$. Furthermore, we establish the Hölder continuity of each non-leading eigenvalue as a function of $\beta $ and show in particular that it is continuous but non-differentiable, whose analogue was conjectured by Flatto, Lagarias and Poonen in [The zeta function of the beta transformation. Ergod. Th. & Dynam. Sys. 14 (1994), 237–266]. In addition, for an eigenfunctional of the Perron–Frobenius operator corresponding to an isolated eigenvalue, we give an explicit formula for the value of the functional applied to the indicator function of every interval. As its application, we provide three results related to non-leading eigenvalues, one of which states that an eigenfunctional corresponding to a non-leading eigenvalue cannot be expressed by any complex measure on the interval, which is in contrast to the case of the leading eigenvalue $1$.

Increasing senior leadership diversity and decentralizing decision-making have become imperatives for many organizations, supported by a growing normative literature. However, mixed empirical evidence suggests that these may hinder the decision-making processes required to deliver value to firms and their stakeholders. We argue that diversity and decentralization should instead be viewed as means of organizing towards these ends, and theorize the conditions under which they may harm performance – specifically, the nature of the knowledge problems faced by leaders. Analyzing a 19-year panel of 922 U.S. firms, we find that diversity and decentralization are associated with stronger financial and market performance in uncertain environments but become liabilities under ambiguity, where speed and strategic clarity are critical and homogeneous, centralized leadership is more effective. Stakeholder outcomes are similarly affected, particularly employee wellbeing and ethical political activity. These findings challenge normative claims, with implications for theory, proscriptions, and practice.

We strengthen known results on Diophantine approximation with restricted denominators by presenting a new quantitative Schmidt-type theorem that applies to denominators growing much more slowly than in previous works. In particular, we can handle sequences of denominators with polynomial growth and Rajchmann measures exhibiting arbitrary slow decay, allowing several applications. For instance, our results yield non-trivial lower bounds on the Hausdorff dimensions of intersections of two sets of inhomogeneously well-approximable numbers (each with restricted denominators) and enable the construction of Salem subsets of well-approximable numbers of arbitrary Hausdorff dimension.