Mutational landscapes and functional insights in oral cancer and diabetes: A comparative perspective.

ABSTRACT This article develops a five-stage model of civilizational statehood to explain how actors in a stratified international system pursue status under conditions of material asymmetry and persistent non-recognition. The framework conceptualizes civilizational claims as sequential performances and examines how states mobilize symbolic repertoires to compensate for withheld recognition. Through a comparative analysis of Imperial Japan and AKP-era Turkey, the study demonstrates how structural subordination generates civilizational aspiration that manifests through claims to centrality and moral vocabularies of justice. However, the findings reveal that these ambitions rarely translate into durable authority. The analysis contrasts Imperial Japan’s rupture-oriented and coercive regional project, which collapsed under material overextension, with AKP-era Turkey’s hybrid and negotiated variant, constrained by economic fragility and geopolitical dependence. Collectively, the cases uncover a central paradox: civilizational projects born from constraint struggle to transcend the very structural conditions that produce them.

ABSTRACT Managing the COVID-19 pandemic required governments to act quickly with little input from legislatures, civil society, and citizens. This crisis created a critical opportunity for populists to fuel distrust in media, government, and science. Using digital media, they and other political leaders can communicate directly with citizens through websites and social media accounts. Furthermore, misinformation on social media circulating during the pandemic created further opportunities to generate support for populist ideas and motivate collective action in reaction to public health measures. This paper examines the roles of populist attitudes, direct online political sources, misinformation, and pandemic activism using a survey conducted in January and February 2023 in Germany, Canada, the UK, the US, and France. We find that perceived exposure to misinformation, self-assessed ability to detect misinformation, and sharing of misinformation positively correlate with populist attitudes and pandemic activism. Sharing misinformation relates to pandemic activism in all five countries and all ideological groups. Consuming direct online sources of information from candidates and parties, such as on websites and social media, is weakly related to populist attitudes but highly correlated with pandemic activism. Specifically, visiting candidates’ or parties’ websites significantly correlates with pandemic activism; this relationship is significant in all countries and ideological groups. Finally, we find a weak relationship between holding populist attitudes and participating in pandemic activism; this relationship is only significant in Canada, France, and Germany. We offer important insights into cross-national differences in pandemic activism. We conclude with a discussion of the implications of misinformation-motivated activism.

Single-cell and spatial transcriptomics have revolutionized studies of symbiotic nitrogen fixation by resolving cellular heterogeneity, spatial gene-expression, and regulatory dynamics within root nodules. Recent investigations in model legumes have revealed conserved and species-specific programs controlling immune recognition, nodule development, and nitrogen-fixation metabolism. Integrating these datasets with single-cell epigenomic profiles, such as chromatin accessibility and three-dimensional genome architecture, provides new insight into epigenetic mechanisms that regulate key symbiotic genes. Comparative single-cell analyses across legumes and non-legumes elucidate phenotypic diversity and core regulatory networks of symbiotic nitrogen fixation at the cellular level, offering critical frameworks for engineering this process in non-legume crops.

This article aims to provide a consolidated overview of the reporting obligations applicable to offshore electronic service suppliers and digital platforms within Korea’s VAT compliance framework. It examines the regime when platform operators may be treated as suppliers; clarifies the scope, triggering requirements and timeline; distinguishes B2C from B2B transactions; and explains the limited reverse-charge mechanism applicable to VAT-exempt recipients. The discussion also covers recent extensions of reporting duty to bulletin board services and offshore platforms that mediate services supplied by domestic sellers. Finally, the article offers a comparative perspective, highlighting areas of convergence and divergence with the European Union’s MOSS regime and deemed supplier rules.

War photography experienced its genesis during WWI, and by the time of WWII, it had become one of the most significant media and an important propagandistic weapon. Official propaganda images and pre-war conventions influenced the private photography of soldiers, which generally presented a less ideologically charged view on the war. Through the process of selection and composition, photo albums evolved into narrative spaces in which individual memories of the wars were constructed. In our article, we will investigate to what extent the conventions of private war photo albums evolved from an adventurous travelogue with touristic themes during WWI into a more straightforward documentation of brutal war events during WWII, and how this transformation manifested in private photo albums and reflects broader shifts in mentalities and ideological frameworks between these two periods. Our source material consists of private German photo albums from the Baltic Front during WWI (1914–1917), from the invasion of Poland (1939), and of Finnish Border Jaegers from the Finnish-Soviet Continuation War (1941–1944). This study contributes to a deeper understanding of the role of visual discourses in the reproduction of ideological narratives – a development that continues to be relevant in recent conflicts.

The swift proliferation of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and algorithmic technologies in the criminal justice system and legal profession is apparent worldwide. Machine learning algorithms are currently impacting sentencing determinations in multiple jurisdictions globally. Artificial intelligence, in contrast to the organic intelligence of humans and animals, possesses the ability to learn, adapt, and evolve through the assimilation of knowledge and new information. AI software can independently learn and enhance its performance based on the data it acquires. These algorithms can identify trends, elaborate on them, and discover more effective methods for executing specific activities via automation. Human fallibility necessitates the integration of AI as an essential instrument in judicial decision-making, especially in criminal sentencing, thereby aiding judges in achieving more precise and efficient outcomes, which permits them to concentrate on other matters. This paper assesses the application of artificial intelligence in criminal sentencing within the judicial system from a comparative standpoint. A mixed-method approach was utilised, integrating qualitative and quantitative techniques for data collecting, encompassing in-person interviews and surveys. The research demonstrated that AI systems can swiftly analyse extensive amounts of legal language, facilitating tasks such as transcription, document summarisation, and legal research. AI employs diverse algorithms to address a multitude of problems through pattern recognition and the execution of precise instructions. Through the analysis of huge datasets, AI can deliver impartial recommendations, resulting in more uniform sentence outcomes for analogous situations. Artificial intelligence can evaluate an offender's likelihood of recidivism by analysing variables such as age and educational background, thereby aiding courts in making educated sentence decisions. The study indicated that the risks and obstacles linked to AI in sentencing encompass prejudice amplification, potential coercion of judges to conform to AI suggestions, and ethical issues related to transparency and human rights. To alleviate these hazards, transparency mandates are crucial for enabling judges to comprehend the elements evaluated by AI systems. Stringent data-quality criteria must be established to avert the recurrence of inequitable sentencing practices. Proactive supervision and regulation of AI are essential, accompanied by rigorous legislation overseeing the design and development of algorithms. Consistent auditing, targeted AI training, and instruction for judges and legal practitioners are essential for the proper integration of AI in the criminal justice system..

This article examines the early conscientious objection to military service by Jehovah's Witnesses in Spain during the Civil War (1936–9) and the first two decades of Franco's dictatorship (1939–59). While previous scholarship has primarily focused on secular and political forms of objection arising in the 1970s, this study foregrounds an earlier, religiously motivated resistance that has remained largely undocumented. Drawing on military records, oral testimonies, and denominational religious publications, the article reconstructs the moral reasoning, legal consequences, and lived experiences of ten Jehovah's Witness objectors. It identifies two key phases: isolated wartime refusals under conditions of extreme repression, including the execution of one objector, and a renewed pattern of objection in the 1950s, marked by imprisonment, psychiatric diagnoses and chained sentencing. The analysis is further situated within a comparative international perspective, contrasting the Spanish case with other national experiences in both democratic and authoritarian contexts. The findings demonstrate that religious conscience played a significant role in shaping early conscientious objection and non-violent dissent in Spain. The study contributes to the historiography of civil resistance, religious persecution and human rights under authoritarian regimes, calling for broader integration of religious actors into the analysis of pacifist movements in twentieth-century Europe.

Global warming has significantly intensified the risks of summer heatwaves, making outdoor thermal comfort during extreme heat periods a critical research focus. Under centralized rural village reconstruction policies, traditional settlements are being replaced by regularized modern communities characterized by new materials and standardized layouts. However, the impact of these morphological transitions on the micro-scale thermal environment remains under-researched, with a notable lack of comparative perspectives between traditional organic and modern standardized typologies. This study identifies six representative zones based on spatial configuration. By integrating UAV photogrammetry (Pix4Dmapper v4.5), AutoCAD 2019, and QGIS (v3.22), morphological characteristics were quantified, followed by microclimate simulations using ENVI-met v5.9. The results reveal that while peak daytime Physiological Equivalent Temperature (PET) in the standardized zones (49.2–51.8 °C) is slightly lower than in traditional zones (53.5–55.2 °C), a phenomenon of thermal homogenization emerges in the former. Specifically, values in standardized zones are highly concentrated around the median (53.5 °C), contributing to a significant upward trend in the minimum PET values, with nearly all sampling points exceeding 47.0 °C. Quantitative analysis identifies green coverage and perviousness as primary cooling drivers, while spatial openness and imperviousness promote thermal homogenization. In contrast, traditional zones retain critical cool refuges due to their spatial heterogeneity. This research provides an empirical foundation and quantitative reference for understanding the thermal performance differences across different rural spatial typologies. The findings offer insights for planners to optimize street layouts and shading strategies, ultimately mitigating heat stress and fostering climate-resilient modern countryside development.

eConsult in Infectious Diseases: A Narrative Review.

ABSTRACT Digital mediation is the context in which we propose to look at the aspirational lives of young women in Asia’s neoliberal cities. However, this context emerges out of longer histories of social change through which gendered modernities have taken shape. Modernity within non-Western contexts, we propose, unfolds in uneven and distinctive ways, whether the society in question has been formally colonised or not. To understand contemporary transformations, we need to grasp the dynamics of what we could call the national-modern (a modernity with national or quasi-national features) as they shape our four cities. As female selves re-make themselves today through education, consumption and labour, they draw on much longer histories inter-referenced by our research. These are histories of how the discourses of nation and modernity are entwined with the re-shaping of gender and sexuality nineteenth and early twentieth century debates around culture, tradition and modernity crucially hinge on the “woman question” that this essay discusses in comparative perspective and brings into the present day via the formation of nation-states in the post-colonial world. And today, as older pathways of social reproduction are transformed through neoliberal restructuring, new ideas of selfhood and subjectivity generate states of uncertainty, risk and ambiguity that highlight the production of aspirational selves.

ABSTRACT This article investigates the relationship between the Italian President of the Republic (PoR) and technocratic governments, focusing on the Monti and Draghi cabinets. We develop the concept of ‘presidentialising technocracy’ to capture how external shocks and declining partisan capacity transform technocratic cabinets into instruments of presidential authority, and on this basis propose a typology of technocratic governments according to the degree of presidential influence in government formation and policy-making. Empirically, the study combines process tracing of political and institutional crises with Quantitative Narrative Analysis (QNA) and Social Network Analysis (SNA) of nearly 6000 semantic events (Subject – Verb – Object triplets) extracted from the official diaries of Presidents Napolitano and Mattarella. The findings classify both cabinets as presidential technocratic governments, showing that crises can expand presidential discretion in the cases examined and tend to enable the Head of State to shape formation of the executive and its agenda, as reflected in policy trajectories. In comparative perspective, the Italian case raises the question of whether presidentialised technocracy under crisis conditions should be regarded as an anomaly, an outlier, or an early sign of broader transformations in parliamentary regimes.

Do congruence estimates derived from different sources converge? A growing number of scholars are studying party–voter congruence in a comparative perspective, increasingly focusing on specific issues that depart from the general left–right dimension. When doing so, however, they often encounter a missing-data problem: Researchers must combine citizen preferences and party positions derived from distinct sources, frequently presenting different question formats, wordings, and scales. This exacerbates perceptual biases and requires demanding assumptions regarding the common understanding of issues between voters and experts. While multiple techniques have been proposed to address these issues, they remain burdensome and rarely used. Consequently, this article focuses on the most widely employed approaches to estimating party–voter issue congruence. I confront measures constructed by matching European Election Study voter preferences with expert (Chapel Hill Expert Survey) and Euromanifesto party position estimates against those generated by voting advice applications (VAAs)—specifically the euandi dataset—which present the benefit of measuring parties and voters on the same scale, with the same wording. Focusing on 60 party–voter dyads across 12 Western European countries in 2014, the results indicate clear divergence between estimates derived from manifesto data and those from VAAs. Correlations between VAAs and experts are consistently positive and significant, though moderate. These estimates do not seem to be driven by different sampling methods or quality filtering. Finally, an exploratory analysis on the sources of divergence finds that manifesto length, expert uncertainty, and party newness help explain some of the differences between congruence estimates.

Trade openness in economic performance: a comparative perspective of the world integration blocs

Abstract Hydrologic models often exhibit inaccuracies in representing key hydrological fluxes due to uncertainties arising from the necessary simplification of complex processes and input data. Soil databases, commonly used in hydrological models, vary in format, resolution, and parameter range, leading to diverse approaches for generating soil inputs in process-based models. This study employs both linear (FOSM) and non-linear (iES) methods to quantify parameter and prediction uncertainty. A comparative perspective on how these approaches reflect uncertainty when using different soil databases is provided. The study area is the Mohaka catchment with an area of 2,428 km 2 , situated within the Hawke’s Bay Region of New Zealand. Four different soil databases were used in this study (FSL, S-map, HWSD, and ISRIC) with different spatial resolutions and the number of soil units covering the catchment. Although similar model evaluation metrics were obtained for streamflow simulation using the different soil databases, flow prediction uncertainty varied significantly for average, low, and high flows. For example, low and high flow predictions showed particularly high uncertainties for the global, low-resolution ISRIC database. Conversely, the local soil database S-map produced the lowest uncertainty range for low and high flow conditions. These findings highlight that while different soil databases may yield similar performance statistics during calibration, selecting those that minimise variance in key predictions can improve the reliability of model predictions. The findings emphasise the importance of selecting an appropriate soil database to enhance model reliability for the purpose under consideration.

Rift Valley fever (RVF) is a concern in East and Central Africa, particularly following periods of heavy rainfall and flooding. However no human outbreaks have been reported in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). To assess whether this reflects a true absence of virus circulation, we estimated RVF seroprevalence in Goma (eastern DRC) and examined context-specific risk factors, comparing the findings with data from outbreak-prone countries. A two-year longitudinal study, across six health facilities in DRC, Kenya and Uganda, enrolled febrile subjects aged ≥10 years. Human serum samples were analyzed for RVF virus and anti-RVF antibodies. Demographic, behavioral, occupational and environmental factors were evaluated. 4,806 participants were enrolled: 1,370 (28.5%) DRC, 1,468 (30.6%) Kenya and 1,968 (40.9%) Uganda. 253 participants (5.3%) tested positive for RVF by serological and/or molecular assays: 19 (1.4%) DRC, 29 (2.0%) Kenya and 205 (10.4%) Uganda (p < 0.001). Only in Uganda, subjects tested positive for RVF virus by PCR (10 subjects, 0.5%). Occupations and activities involving contact with livestock, predominated in Kenya and Uganda, whereas handling of raw meat was most common in DRC. No specific occupations or activities were significantly associated with RVF exposure in DRC while several significant factors were identified for Kenya and Uganda. Multivariate analysis across all three countries showed that being from Uganda, male, over 20 years of age, employed as butcher or crop farmer and engaging in animal-related activities, were independently associated with RVF positivity, as was contact with sheep. Despite a prevailing sense that RVF transmission does not occur in DRC, we found a seroprevalence of 1.4%, comparable to Kenya where RVF is well documented. Further research targeting high-risk human and animal populations in DRC is warranted. A One Health approach will contribute to defining the ecology of local transmission of RVF in DRC.

Artificial Intelligence Trust and Service Quality in Higher Education: A Comparative Student's Perspective

Tailoring carbon-based nanozymes without metal cofactors: Design principles and applications across therapeutics and sensing.

ABSTRACT This article is essentially a bio-bibliographic reflection on the interactions I have had jointly with the Association of Borderlands Studies(ABS) and its Journal of Borderlands Studies(JBS) over the past four decades of sustained publication of the journal. It is submitted in response to the call for papers by the co-editors for a special forty-year anniversary issue of the journal. The highpoint is not just on the significant impact of the ABS and the JBS on my widely acclaimed academic career as pioneer in Comparative African History and Borderlands Studies. Of similar import has been the uniquely important feedback of the career history itself on the phenomenal institutional growth and development of the JBS and parent ABS, each and both,from modest beginnings as local initiatives of the US-Mexico borderlands research community: the ABS in 1976 and the JBS ten years later, in 1986.

Abstract International market selection involves multiple decision-making factors, whose understanding is crucial for business success in the era of globalization. In this sense, the aim of this study is to assess the relevance of some international market selection criteria from a comparative academic perspective between Colombian and Ecuadorian professors, building upon previous research on international market selection criteria. Similarly, a quantitative method was used in this research; in this case the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) was applied to 30 international business expert professors from Colombia and Ecuador. The analysis considered five general factors (Costs, Logistics, Trade Barriers, Economics, and Cultural Environment) and 23 specific sub-factors, evaluated through paired comparisons using a 1–9 scale. A geometric mean was employed to consolidate expert judgments. This research shows Colombian professors prioritized Logistics (0.2377) and Trade Barriers (0.2226), while Ecuadorian professors emphasized Trade Barriers (0.2369) and Logistics (0.2200). Country risk was identified as the most relevant sub-factor by both groups, with weights of 0.1045 and 0.0849 respectively. Cultural Environment and Costs received the lowest ratings in both countries. Therefore, the study reveals significant similarities in academic perceptions between both countries, prioritizing aspects related to medium and long-term business risks over traditionally considered factors such as costs, contributing to the existing literature on international market selection criteria assessment.