In response to our critics, we clarify and defend key ideas in the report Open and Inclusive: Fair Processes for Financing Universal Health Coverage. First, we argue that procedural fairness has greater value than Dan Hausman allows. Second, we argue that the Report aligns with John Kinuthia's view that a knowledgeable public and a capable civil society, alongside good facilitation, are important for effective public deliberation. Moreover, we agree with Kinuthia that the Report's framework for procedural fairness applies not merely within the health sector, but also to the wider budget process. Third, we argue that while Dheepa Rajan and Benjamin Rouffy-Ly are right that robust processes for equal participation are often central to a fair process, sometimes improvements in other aspects of procedural fairness, such as transparency, can take priority over strengthening participation. Fourth, while we welcome Sara Bennett and Maria Merritt's fascinating use of the Report's principles of procedural fairness to assess the US President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, we argue that their application of the Report's principle of equality to development partners' decision-making requires further justification.

In the 1920s, Eastern European Jewish immigrants settled in Antwerp and became economically active in the diamond industry. While historians have focused on the role of Jewish commerce and the development of the diamond industry in Antwerp, the role of Jewish labour has been paid only scant attention. The current article focuses on the specific economic position of Eastern European Jewish immigrant diamond workers in Antwerp. It sheds light on the social and working conditions under which Jewish immigrants laboured. The reaction of Belgian diamond workers and their union towards the arrival of Jewish immigrants in the industry is also discussed. Special interest is accorded to the attempts of Jewish political parties and the Diamantbewerkersbond van België (ADB, General Diamond Workers Union of Belgium) to unionize the new arrivals. In this way, the article aims to contribute to a better understanding of the dynamics between immigrant labour, union organization, and (imported) political ideologies in the attempts to integrate foreign workers within the industry.

In response to the question ‘what is the place of universal, selective and indicated prevention strategies for depression and other mood disorders’ posed by Hickie et al. (2024) we examine the role of school-based strategies for universal and targeted (including selective and indicated) prevention of depression. Schools represent a unique opportunity for systematic evidence-based depression prevention, targeting key developmental risk periods before peak depression onset. However, the realisation of this potential has been challenging particularly for universal approaches. We summarise the evidence for each of these tiers of prevention, including recent large-scale trials of universal prevention in high-income countries. Targeted approaches show more consistent preventive effects on depression however hold significant implementation challenges in the school context. We provide recommendations about next steps for the field including a continuum of support across all levels of prevention outlined above and broadening current strategies to focus on the school contexts and structural factors in which prevention programs are delivered, as well as teacher mental health.

Let $E/\mathbb {Q}(T)$ be a nonisotrivial elliptic curve of rank r. A theorem due to Silverman [‘Heights and the specialization map for families of abelian varieties’, J. reine angew. Math. 342 (1983), 197–211] implies that the rank $r_t$ of the specialisation $E_t/\mathbb {Q}$ is at least r for all but finitely many $t \in \mathbb {Q}$. Moreover, it is conjectured that $r_t \leq r+2$, except for a set of density $0$. When $E/\mathbb {Q}(T)$ has a torsion point of order $2$, under an assumption on the discriminant of a Weierstrass equation for $E/\mathbb {Q}(T)$, we produce an upper bound for $r_t$ that is valid for infinitely many t. We also present two examples of nonisotrivial elliptic curves $E/\mathbb {Q}(T)$ such that $r_t \leq r+1$ for infinitely many t.

This article discusses a music treatise written in 1812 by the Catholic Armenian polymath Minas Bzhshkean (1777–1851). The article focuses on the historical and intellectual context in which the idea of notational reform emerged within the Armenian diaspora. Bzhshkean was born in the Ottoman Empire but educated at the Mekhitarist monastery of San Lazzaro in Venice, which was the leading intellectual centre of the Armenian Enlightenment. By discussing Bzhshkean’s use of sources from multiple cultural and intellectual traditions (including European authors such as Rousseau), the article provides a new perspective on music and Enlightenment in global context.

Knowledge of African history aptly suggests that the quest for political independence in the continent is generally driven by the idea that such independence leads to statehood. By statehood, here, I refer to the ability of a sovereign country to exercise effective control over its territory, govern its people, and engage in international relations. Yet, political independence in Africa seldom leads to statehood without the experience of internal conflicts such as coup d’état or civil war. The three reviewed books, The Politics of Fear in South Sudan: Generating Chaos, Creating Conflict by Daniel Akech Thiong, When Peace Kills Politics: International Intervention and Unending Wars in the Sudans by Sharath Srinivasan, and Leadership, Nation-Building and War in South Sudan: The Problems of Statehood and Collective Will by Sonja Theron, attempt to explain why the quest for statehood in Sudan and South Sudan is characterized by diverse forms of conflicts and how the seemingly unending conflicts could be resolved. While the primary focus of each of the books differ, their respective positions concerning the key factors and actors fueling and sustaining violent conflicts in both Sudan and South Sudan are complementary.

Pens for farmed mink (Neogale vison) commonly include separate nesting areas to provide privacy and warmth in the perinatal period. However, standard bedding materials may not be sufficient to allow intrinsically motivated nest-building behaviours in dams. Further, these materials may not produce optimal nest structures for the rearing of kits. In the present study, we provided extra, relatively high-quality nest-building materials and a chewable sisal rope enrichment for mink dams in the perinatal period (a group enriched at whelping; EW). The effects of these enrichments on various measures of welfare and maternal behaviour were compared to those of mink dams in standard housing (SH) and mink dams whose kits were enriched later in development (EK). EW dams performed less stereotypic behaviour and built higher quality nests than dams of other housing conditions, although dams’ basal faecal cortisol metabolite levels (FCM) were not affected. The stress responsiveness of these dams’ offspring was later assessed by sampling FCM before and after a handling event, however, this event did not appear to induce a measurable stress response and thus no conclusions could be drawn regarding effects of perinatal enrichment on HPA-axis development. Overall, provision of higher quality nest-building materials and a chewable rope enrichment benefited dam stereotypic behaviour and nest building in the perinatal period. We present suggestions for future studies to further investigate whether perinatal enrichment can impact maternal care and offspring HPA-axis development in mink.

This study examines the landmark rulings in the “BBI Case”, adjudicated successively by the High Court, Court of Appeal, and Supreme Court of Kenya, from the perspective of comparative political process theory [“CPPT”]. The BBI case involved a constitutional challenge to a set of seventy-four proposed constitutional amendments to the Constitution of Kenya, 2010. It raised a host of issues, ranging from the applicability of the basic structure doctrine, the role of the President in initiating constitutional change, Presidential immunity, and Fourth Branch institutions, among others. This paper analyses two crucial issues in the case: the articulation – for the first time in its history – of a process-oriented basic structure doctrine, by the High Court and the Court of Appeal; and the concurrent holding of the High Court, the Court of Appeal, and the Supreme Court prohibiting the President of Kenya from initiating a constitutional amendment through the “popular initiative” route. It argues that on these issues, the Kenyan courts’ reasoning constitutes a creative, unique, and valuable contribution to CPPT, in the context of constitutional change. When faced with the possibility of abusive amendments within the framework of a two-tiered amendment process, the Kenyan courts responded by setting out rigorous procedural constraints upon the amendment power. As a corollary, the role of the judiciary under this approach is not to invalidate or veto abusive constitutional amendments, but to ensure that they pass through a substantive, rich, and deep process of public participation.

We take a deep dive into the sponsorship and cosponsorship activity of Republicans in the US House of Representatives from 1993–2014 to examine how ideology and gender influence the policy priorities of Republican legislators on issues associated with women, as well as on the party-owned issue of tax policy. We expect that Republican women are cross-pressured since assumptions about their policy expertise as women conflict with the policy reputation of the Republican Party. As a result, Republican women’s policy choices are impacted by their ideology in a way that is different from their male counterparts. Moreover, our analysis of which members’ bills move through the legislative process demonstrates that beyond their own policy preferences, women are strategic party actors. Thus, women are only more likely to see action on their women-focused and anti-abortion proposals, the two areas that define the partisan divide over women’s place in society.

In terms of foreign relations, ancient Libya is regularly tied to Egypt and Egyptology. It is rarely linked to Mesopotamia, the other great river-based civilization of the region. Nevertheless, there are a number of people with Libyan names mentioned in Assyrian-Babylonian texts. Proceeding from the premise that it is relevant to talk of a Libyan ethnicity also in this period of intermingling of Egyptians and Libyans and that personal names are meaningful and express identity on the part of the name giver, the people with Libyan names in question are presented and discussed from various biographic and demographic viewpoints in the present article.

Information is provided to navigators through advanced onboard navigation equipment, such as the electronic chart display and information system (ECDIS), radar and the automatic identification system (AIS). However, maritime accidents still occur, especially in coastal and inland water where many navigational dangers exist. The recent artificial intelligence (AI) technology is actively applied in navigation fields, such as collision avoidance and ship detection. However, utilising the aids to navigation (AtoN) system requires more engagement and further exploration. The AtoN system provides critical navigation information by marking the navigation hazards, such as shallow water areas and wrecks, and visually marking narrow passageways. The prime function of the AtoN can be enhanced by applying AI technology, particularly deep learning technology. With the help of this technology, an algorithm could be constructed to detect AtoN in coastal and inland waters and utilise the detected AtoN to create a safety function to supplement watchkeepers using recent navigation equipment.

In September 2023, the trial at Stockholm District Court against Orrön Energy (previously Lundin Energy) and two corporate directors for complicity in war crimes in Sudan between 1999 and 2003, started. The Lundin case is part of a trend of attempts to hold corporations criminally accountable for their alleged involvement in serious human rights abuses and provides a unique opportunity to assess the possibilities of such attempts in relation to the rights of the victims. This article analyzes how human rights obligations and the objectives of reparations for victims are satisfied by Swedish law and practice in the Lundin trial. It shows that while the law allows victims participating in trial to put forward civil claims, it denies this right to the large number of victims not participating, and the decision early in the Lundin proceedings to separate damage claims from the criminal trial has left the participating victims effectively denied reparations.

We extend the notion of ascent-compatibility from symmetric groups to all Coxeter groups, thereby providing a type-independent framework for constructing families of modules of $0$-Hecke algebras. We apply this framework in type B to give representation–theoretic interpretations of a number of noteworthy families of type-B quasisymmetric functions. Next, we construct modules of the type-B $0$-Hecke algebra corresponding to type-B analogs of Schur functions and introduce a type-B analog of Schur Q-functions; we prove that these shifted domino functions expand positively in the type-B peak functions. We define a type-B analog of the $0$-Hecke–Clifford algebra, and we use this to provide representation–theoretic interpretations for both the type-B peak functions and the shifted domino functions. We consider the modules of this algebra induced from type-B $0$-Hecke modules constructed via ascent-compatibility and prove a general formula, in terms of type-B peak functions, for the type-B quasisymmetric characteristics of the restrictions of these modules.