Abstract We study how citizens' right to directly decide on policies through popular initiatives affects the attractiveness of extreme candidates in representative elections. In our theoretical framework, single prominent policy issues on which individual voters hold extreme views get a large weight in their assessment of candidates, thereby favouring ideologically extreme ones. If citizens can decide the controversial policy issues separately on the ballot, then this decouples the issues from legislative politics, and moderate candidates become relatively more attractive to voters. We apply our theory to US state legislative elections, and find that ideologically extreme candidates receive significantly lower voter support in initiative than in non‐initiative states. This holds in particular for states with low qualification requirements for initiatives. In concurrent elections for the US House of Representatives, we do not observe this difference in the electoral success of extreme candidates between initiative and non‐initiative states. The effect seems to be partly mediated by lower campaign donations to extreme candidates.

ABSTRACT Smallholder sweet potato farmers in Papua New Guinea's Eastern Highlands Province (EHP) face challenges as they navigate social, economic, demographic, and environmental change. While they routinely adapt to weather variability and shifting markets, population growth is placing additional strain on an already finely balanced farming system. This study shows that farmers' decisions are shaped not only by agricultural considerations but also by the interconnectedness of social, economic, and biophysical factors, highlighting the risks of addressing single issues in isolation. Although agricultural intensification may be a necessary response to population pressures, it can come at a cost. Moving to a higher‐input approach can unsettle the smallholder farmer's system and risk undermining their resilience.

ABSTRACT Ethics consultation’s (EC) role in supporting healthcare professionals, patients, and families confronted by eating disorders (ED) is under-described in the literature. We used qualitative conceptual content analysis to characterize the ethical issues and contextual features of EC involving patients with Anorexia Nervosa (AN), Bulimia Nervosa (BN), Binge-Eating Disorder (BED), Avoidant Restrictive Food Intake Disorder (ARFID), or Other Specified Feeding or Eating Disorder (OSFED) and compared adult vs. pediatric settings at a single institution from 2015 to 2024. We identified 40 consultations (14 adult, 26 pediatric) for 25 patients (12 adult, 13 pediatric). Most were female (n = 18, 72%), White (n = 20, 80%), non-Hispanic (n = 23, 92%), and diagnosed with AN (n = 13, 52%); none were diagnosed with BED or OSFED. The primary ethical issue overall (n = 23, 57%) and in the pediatric setting (n = 20, 77%) was patient assent/treatment over objection. No single ethical issue was prominent in the adult setting. The most common contextual feature overall (n = 21, 52%) and within adult (n = 7, 50%) and pediatric (n = 14, 53%) settings was legal involvement. EC patterns suggest differences in ethical concerns based on setting and age; a tailored approach may be warranted. Our results raise concerns that EC is underutilized within subsets of the ED population, necessitating further research.

Abstract: This article directs attention to a short-lived Quaker literary annual, the Aurora Borealis . It was immediately successful on both sides of the Atlantic. However, its editors discontinued their work after a single issue when faced with the opposition of London publishers who saw it as a threat to their domination of the market. The article recovers the history of this unfamiliar volume using two archives located on different sides of the Atlantic. The literary ambitions of a group of Friends were channeled into the production of a publication that modeled itself on a highly popular secular genre while shaping it along denominational lines. The annual's producers borrowed from commercial techniques to advertise and produce a volume that was familiar but nonetheless distinctive due to its nonmetropolitan origins and its Quaker content. The article argues that the existence of the annual enables further speculation about other publishing ventures on both sides of the Atlantic that should be demanding our attention, reimagining the contours of Quaker literary history and transatlantic print.

Investor Crowding

Federated Learning (FL)-based modulation decoding enables collaborative learning across distributed Artificial Intelligence (AI)-powered modulational signal decoding models in large-scale wireless communication networks. Despite significant advancements, FL-based modulation decoding faces two primary challenges: (1) <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">Vulnerability to noisy environments</i> - Current studies often prioritize high-quality datasets during training to ensure model performance, which often results in overfitting since real-world signals involve a wide range of noise levels from various sources. (2) <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">Model divergence in non-Independent and Identically Distributed ( non-IID) environments</i> - The aggregation step in a conventional FL leads to divergence on a large federated scale, resulting in the loss of local-specific knowledge. Moreover, existing FL-based modulation decoding studies typically focus on a single non-IID issue, which limits their ability to generalize across large-scale heterogeneous settings. To address these challenges, we propose FedVaccine, a framework that enhances model generalization across diverse noise conditions and non-IID data environments. Instead of relying on high-quality datasets that risk overfitting, FedVaccine employs a harmonic noise resilience approach—akin to a vaccination effect—that deliberately exposes the model to controlled noise, identifying noise tolerance, regularizing training, and ensuring robust decoding performance across varying noise levels. Additionally, FedVaccine incorporates a Federated Split Learning approach to cumulatively update the global model, ensuring adaptive recalibration and mitigating the loss of local knowledge during aggregation. Furthermore, a localized support set is used to ensure effective personalization. Experimental results demonstrate that FedVaccine outperforms existing FL-based modulation classification models and other learning paradigms in both IID and non-IID scenarios using public datasets, showcasing its effectiveness in practical deployment scenarios across wireless networks.

The chromosomal abnormalities (TS) also exhibit gonadal dysgenesis, which causes delayed puberty or failure, infertility, and premature ovarian failure (POF) in the majority of cases. 6RPL may be the result of fetal chromosomal trisomy in chromosome numbers 13, 18, 21, X, and Y, which are mostly identified and noted to be high with advanced maternal age. 7These chromosomal anomalies are not typically inherited from the parents; instead, they develop sporadically. 8There are many other factors that play an important role in recurrent miscarriage, such as advanced maternal age, cervical incompetence, placental abruption, maternal and paternal chromosomal abnormalities, and fetal aneuploidy. 9The major genetic factors are (1) structural and numerical chromosomal abnormalities, (2) inflammatory and autoimmune dysfunction, and IntroductIonRecurrent pregnancy loss (RPL) is characterized by the consecutive loss of two or more biochemically confirmed pregnancies before the 22-24 weeks of the gestational period. 1 Various factors can contribute to RPL, encompassing genetic abnormalities in the developing embryo, uterine structural irregularities, hormonal imbalances, autoimmune disorders, blood clotting disorders, infections, and specific medical conditions like polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) and raised blood sugar.Diagnostic procedures may involve a comprehensive review and collection of medical history, physical and biochemical examinations, hormonal assessment and identification of autoimmune or clotting disorders, detection of chromosomal abnormalities, imaging studies such as ultrasonography (USG) and hysterosalpingogram (HSG), as well as uterine cavity evaluation commonly by laparoscopic hysteroscopy. 2If hormonal imbalances are suspected, clinicians mostly recommend hormone supplementation such as progesterone during the early stages of pregnancy to maintain implantation in the first trimester of pregnancy. 3RPL may be classified into two different categories: primary RPL, which is when two or more pregnancies are lost in the early stage of pregnancy (20-24 weeks) without any live issue, and secondary RPL, when there is a single live issue followed by two or more pregnancy losses. 4 higher prevalence of mosaicism of X-chromosome aneuploidies has been found in individuals who had a previous history of RPL.In addition to the typical clinical characteristics of short stature, web neck, and cardiovascular and renal abnormalities, patients with classical Turner's syndrome experience more pregnancy losses in the early stage of pregnancy (20-24 weeks) without any live issues.

This review article details the current knowledge of nitronate monooxygenase (NMO) and nitroalkane oxidase (NAO) both of which detoxify organic nitro compounds. The chemical versatility of these molecules are first described by explaining why they are unusually strong carbon acids. This reactivity led to their widespread use in industry and inevitable release into the environment as pollution. Oxidation of nitro compounds is likely an adaptation of existing enzymatic activities to convert them into carbonyl compounds that can be broken down by normal metabolism. NMO has a marked preference for anionic nitronates while NAO exclusively utilizes neutral substrates. Kinetic studies demonstrating this fact are presented along with a detailed structural analysis to rationalize this observation. NMO uses a conserved histidined to electrostatically stabilize the carbanion formed from nitro compounds where as NAO has a negatively charged aspartate in the active site that repels anionic substrates. Details of the chemical mechanisms of each enzyme are presented showing that NMO uses a flavin radical during catalysis whereas NAO forms a covalent adduct between the cofactor and substrate. Information presented in this article is intended to shed light on two platforms that can be exploited for bioremediation to alleviate nitroalkane pollution.

Abstract This article explores how contemporary Taiwanese Catholics materialize their faith within their homes. Based on ethnographic material collected from Catholic households in Northern Taiwan, it presents the diversity of religious items found in the homes of churchgoers, the organizational patterns of these artifacts, and the invisible relationships behind them. Moving beyond discussions of inculturation as a process of integration and of material religion as a question of semiotic ideologies, this article argues that Catholic items found in the privacy of Taiwanese homes allow their owners to deploy an array of multidimensional relationships, a form of Catholicity that cannot easily be reduced to a single issue. From the intimacy of home, Catholic items enable churchgoers to position themselves at the heart of a rich, personalized, and evolving network of glocal Catholicism, a material and domestic form of Catholicity which complements the institutional Church.

The numerous inhabited small islands of the Mediterranean basin are marginal geographic territories of high natural value. Historically, island communities have developed complex, poly-cultural agricultural systems, based on the use of native genetic resources and traditional ecological knowledge, to address the challenges linked to unfavorable climate, geology, and topography. However, economic, socio-demographic, and climatic factors have caused farmland abandonment, leading to soil and land degradation and to a decline in biodiversity and ecosystem services. Following the PRISMA guidelines, we conducted a systematic review to assess the state of scientific research with regard to agriculture on small Mediterranean islands. After screening records retrieved on Scopus, Web of Science, CABI, and Google Scholar, 167 articles published before July 2025 were included in the analysis. The articles covered 6 countries and 126 islands, with Greek and Italian islands being the most represented. Key topics included trajectories, drivers, and consequences of land use change, agrobiodiversity, and water resources. To complete the systematic review, 30 relevant EU-funded projects were identified and analyzed. Overall, the scientific research aimed at supporting agriculture on Mediterranean small islands tends to focus on a single issue or very few issues. However, we suggest that given the complexity of the drivers and consequences of farmland abandonment, more integrated approaches could have a greater impact. By providing a systematic overview of the current state of the research on agriculture on small Mediterranean islands, this review offers a solid basis for guiding ongoing and future research, actions, and policies aimed at building resilience in these fragile and endangered lands.

Support for families experiencing domestic violence and abuse (DVA), mental ill-health (MH) and substance misuse (SU) is often delivered in siloes, despite the frequent co-occurrence of these public health issues. Little evidence-based guidance exists on which interventions best support families experiencing a combination of these problems. Identifying intervention components with common impacts across parental DVA, MH and SU could inform policy and practice. We conducted an Intervention Components Analysis (ICA) to identify intervention components that have common impacts across parental DVA, MH and SU. We searched ten databases for randomised controlled trials of family-focused interventions targeting, and measuring an impact on, one or more of these issues. We developed an initial coding framework using open coding to guide the coding of subsequent studies. Descriptive analyses identified common components across target outcomes (DVA/MH/SU) and robust variance meta-regressions explored the relationship between intervention components and treatment effects. A Lived Experience Advisory Group informed our presentation and interpretation of the results. We identified 164 interventions: 40 focused on a combination of DVA, MH and SU and 124 addressed one issue alone. None of the 20 components identified were unique to any specific outcome and no single component was associated with meaningful improvement in outcomes. Interventions aiming to provide integrated support across outcomes were less successful at improving MH and SU outcomes than those targeting single issues. We found no evidence of commonly effective intervention components. Better alignment between components and underlying processes driving DVA/MH/SU, and alternative intervention designs, are needed.

Initially rooted in navigation, triangulation refers to determining an object's position from multiple reference points, as in maritime navigation. In research, this concept has been adapted to integrate diverse theoretical or methodological perspectives, providing multiple interpretations of a single research problem. This approach enables researchers to construct varied perspectives, enriching depth, credibility, and validity of findings. Scholars define triangulation as the application of multiple approaches to examine a single issue. This paper will provide various perspectives of methodological triangulation to the graduate students, particularly those in the early stages of their academic careers. It explores its historical evolution, conceptual foundations, primary classifications, and the practical applications of methodological triangulation. Additionally, it identifies the challenges associated with methodological triangulation and presents strategies to help young researchers effectively integrate the triangulation approach, thereby enhancing the quality of their mixed-method research. Furthermore, the findings of methodological triangulation are critically analyzed and discussed through selected examples from health and social sciences research (Mousazadeh et al., 2019; Egerod et al., 2020; Raymond et al., 2018), demonstrating its real-world relevance and guiding students in applying rigorous, multidimensional approaches to complex research problems.

Abstract The United Nations treaty body system, at present, suffers from at least two significant, systemic shortcomings: it fragments what ought to be interrelated and indivisible rights across different conventions and monitoring committees, and it has no power to implement recommendations against rights-violating states. These flaws have immediate and profound implications for human rights organizations, which, by strategic necessity, are required to file multiple, unique submissions, across multiple treaty bodies, in the hopes of raising awareness and generating change on a single, discrete instance of rights violation. To highlight the extent of this problem, this article focuses on a recent, emblematic case: Validity International’s campaign to expose appalling human rights violations against the residents of Topház Special Home in Hungary, which saw this single issue presented at least seven times before three treaty bodies over a seven-year period. The Topház case further serves as the basis for identifying lessons in effective treaty body advocacy for human rights organizations operating within this fractured system, and for discussing how the United Nations as an institution may resolve this problem through the creation of an integrated treaty body system.

The article reveals the main provisions of the European Social Charter (revised) 1996 and its interconnection with the European Social Charter 1961. The research methodology is based on general scientific and special methods of cognition. It is emphasised that Ukraine's integration into the European legal space and the fulfilment of its obligations under the Association Agreement with the European Union require the harmonisation of national legislation with European standards. Emphasis is placed on the forms of control over the fulfilment of obligations under the Charters, including the submission of national reports and the collective complaint procedure. Complaints must raise general issues regarding the incompatibility of a law or practice with one or more provisions of the Charters and cannot be submitted in relation to individual situations. The procedure for reporting by participating states on the implementation of the provisions of the Charters is defined. The latest changes in the rules for submitting national reports are noted. States Parties that have not adopted the collective complaint procedure report on one group of provisions every two years, while those that have adopted the procedure report every four years. Reports should focus on the situation at the time of submission, as well as on actions taken or planned to improve the situation, and include information on the legislative framework, measures taken, and relevant indicators. A limited number of target questions are determined in advance, which must be answered in the report and which relate only to provisions adopted by the state. Emphasis is placed on the advantages of ratifying the Additional Protocol, which provides for a collective complaint system, to which Ukraine has not yet acceded. The functions of the main supervisory bodies of the Charters – the European Committee of Social Rights, the Governmental Committee of the European Social Charter and the European Code of Social Security – are identified, as well as the role of the Committee of Ministers and the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe in the procedure for assessing the implementation of the Charters. Three main stages in the reporting procedure have been established: examination of reports on compliance/non-compliance with the Charters; adoption of conclusions (making recommendations if necessary); consideration of the recommendations made. Emphasis is placed on the mechanism for submitting comments on national reports (alternative reports), which may contain additional or alternative information on all issues raised in the national report, or comment on a single issue or information that is missing from the government report. The role of the Ukrainian Parliament Commissioner for Human Rights in the process of reporting on the implementation of the provisions of the Charters was highlighted.

Welcome to the second non-themed issue of the Review of Irish Studies in Europe (RISE) journal. As with our previous non-themed issue (5.2), this issue will evolve in the coming months to feature additional articles between now and the publication of our next issue 8.2 in Autumn/Winter 2025, rather than following the conventional print format of publishing an issue only when a sufficient number of articles have been peer-reviewed, revised and formatted. In this manner, we aim to bring new peer-reviewed research to our readers more quickly while featuring considerations of a range of topics relevant to Irish Studies within a single issue. RISE is dedicated to the publication of new and innovative research within and between the broad range of disciplines and areas engaged with Irish Studies, including Literature (in both English and Irish), History, Film &amp; Visual Culture, Politics, Translation Studies, Music Studies and the Social Sciences. We are grateful to all the contributors of articles and reviews to this issue and welcome further submissions (to rise@efacis.eu) for future non-themed issues.

Media representations of suffering are regularly critiqued for contributing to desensitization. Grounded in media studies, journalism studies, psychology, and political philosophy, I develop a solidarity framework for media practitioners who seek to resist the normalization of what they define as suffering due to social injustice. By concretizing people's immediate needs (moral solidarity), accounting for collective resistance already underway (political solidarity), and representing a pattern of suffering due to structures that transcend an isolated incident or single issue (social solidarity), this framework provides a way for media practitioners to challenge the minimization, isolation, and abstraction of social injustice that perpetuates suffering.

The COVID-19 pandemic sparked what may be the largest number of oral history projects addressing a single public health issue. These collections range from brief informal efforts like those created in classrooms across the country to rigorous and formal projects led by institutions and those with expertise in oral history and archiving. The contribution of this article to existing methodological knowledge is that it brings an underutilized form of qualitative data—namely, COVID-19 oral history archives—into view for public health researchers and practitioners, and provides actionable guidance on using these data to address public health challenges. First, we orient readers to the range of existing COVID-19 archives, the questions they speak to and materials they include, and their current levels of accessibility. Second, we describe three ways that these archives might be used by the public health field to improve trustworthiness, preparedness, and health equity. These paths include: (1) Research: Using archives as a source of in-depth qualitative data on COVID-19 lived experiences to build contextualized understandings and refine ongoing emergency response and preparedness, (2) Teaching: Listening to archives as an opportunity for public health students to center the margins and strengthen emotional intelligence and empathy, and (3) Public Engagement: Creatively activating archives to deepen understanding of different truths and the different mindsets that shape our ability to achieve health equity. We anchor these paths with descriptions of how each might unfold based on existing work and/or models. Through these paths, we argue that oral history archives are a powerful resource for equitably and creatively addressing public health challenges.

While American magisterial teaching has continuously cast abortion as part of a consistent ethic covering a comprehensive and interrelated set of issues affecting human life and dignity, the teaching also entails a set of tensions between the single issue of abortion and the larger framework, and this has been resolved by insisting that the legality of abortion affects all other issues and so deserves special focus; this focus has played out in public policy with detrimental consequences. This essay argues that if the bishops’ goals truly are a reduction in abortions, the promotion of respect for life and human dignity, and the promulgation of a truly comprehensive and consistent ethic, then there must be a change in their approach. This change would consist of a focus on the unintended lethal impacts of illegality, more grassroots arguments aimed at changing cultural attitudes, and more support—in both rhetoric and action—for measures that work, including but not limited to the myriad levels of structural justice for the poor and women in particular. These actions would, in turn, reinforce the consistent ethic. Further, the bishops should disavow a single-issue approach and move toward an actually comprehensive approach to public policy.

Abstract For the quantum error correction (QEC) and noisy intermediate-scale quantum (NISQ) algorithms to function with high efficiency, the raw fidelity of quantum logic gates on physical qubits needs to satisfy strict requirement. The neutral atom quantum computing equipped with Rydberg blockade gates has made impressive progress recently, which makes it worthwhile to explore its potential in the two-qubit entangling gates, including Controlled-PHASE gate and in particular the CZ gate. Provided the quantum coherence is well preserved, improving the fidelity of Rydberg blockade gates calls for special mechanisms to deal with adverse effects caused by realistic experimental conditions. Here the heralded very-high-fidelity Rydberg blockade Controlled-PHASE gate is designed to address these issues, which contains self-correction and projection as the key steps. This trailblazing method builds upon the previously established buffer-atom-mediated gate framework, with a special form of symmetry under PT transformation playing a crucial role in the process. We further analyze the performance with respect to a few typical sources of imperfections. This procedure can also be regarded as quantum hardware error correction or mitigation. While this paper by itself does not cover every single subtle issue and still contains many over-simplifications, we find it reasonable to anticipate very-high-fidelity two-qubit quantum logic gate operated in the sense of heralded but probabilistic, whose gate error can reduce to the level of 10-4-10-6 or even lower with reasonably high possibilities.

Although the potential utility of large language models (LLMs) in medicine and healthcare is substantial, no assessment has been made to date of how GPs want LLMs to be applied in primary care, or of which issues GPs are most concerned about regarding the implementation of LLMs into their clinical practice. This study's objective was to generate preliminary evidence that answers these questions, which are relevant because GPs themselves will ultimately harness the power of LLMs in primary care. Non-probability sampling was utilised: GPs practicing in the UK and who were members of one of two Facebook groups (one containing a community of UK primary care staff, the other containing a community of GMC-registered doctors in the UK) were invited to complete an online survey, which ran from 06 to 13 November 2024. The survey received 113 responses, 107 of which were from GPs practicing in the UK. When LLM accuracy and safety were assumed to be guaranteed, broad enthusiasm for LLMs carrying out various nonclinical and clinical tasks in primary care was reported. The single nonclinical task and clinical task that respondents were most supportive of were the LLM listening to the consultation and writing notes in real-time for the GP to review, edit, and save (44.0%), and the LLM identifying outstanding clinical tasks and actioning them (51.0%), respectively. Respondents were concerned with a range of issues regarding LLMs being embedded into clinical systems, with patient safety being the most commonly reported single issue of concern (36.2%). This study has generated preliminary evidence that is of potential utility to those developing LLMs for use in primary care. Further research is required to expand this evidence base to further inform the development of these technologies, and to ensure they are acceptable to the GPs who will use them.