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Private goods for peace : economic provisions of peace agreements and the durability of peace
Get PDFFunding: The authors disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This research was funded by the Folke Bernadotte Academy (grant no. 21-00258).We consider how agreement terms create a national framework for development to address the root causes of conflict (public goods) and prevent recidivism through the economic reintegration of ex-combatants (private goods), thus offering agreement terms that are acceptable to both parties and enabling long-term peace. We argue that peace agreements that include promises of public goods, such as national development, and private goods, such as training opportunities and direct fund transfers to ex-combatants, are more capable of preventing violence resurgence. We examine variation in peace agreements contents and how these relate to the durability of peace using newly coded data on private goods. Using a series of Cox proportional hazard models, along with a variety of robustness checks to account for matching, placebo effects, selection bias and implementation factors, we offer evidence that peace agreement content has important implications for post-civil war outcomes. Our results suggest that agreements with provisions for fiscal federalism and for the economic reintegration of ex-combatants are more durable than those that do not. Moreover, contrary to expectations, most economic development promises do not affect the durability of peace.Peer reviewe
Does online information about hormone replacement therapy (or menopause hormone therapy) reflect indications from the British National Formulary and guidance from the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence : a cross-sectional study of UK media
Get PDFFunding: RMY was funded via a Laidlaw Scholarship (University of St Andrews). No specific funding was received for this work otherwise.Objectives To describe: (1) the most visible information (from individuals or organisations) on UK social media regarding hormone replacement therapy (HRT)/menopause hormone treatment for menopause; (2) claims made by these sources for HRT and testosterone outwith the indications specified by the British National Formulary (BNF) and the National Institute of Health and Care Excellence (NICE) (ie, vasomotor instability, vaginal dryness, low mood associated with the menopause and, for testosterone, low libido after treatment with HRT) and for use for the prevention of future ill health and (3) conflicts of interest of commentators. Design Cross-sectional study. Setting Online references to HRT, for use in menopause, in UK online media, comprising Facebook, Google, Instagram, TikTok and YouTube, 30 top ranked hits between 1 January 2022 and 1 June 2023 and Twitter (X) up to 1 May 2024. Methods Identification of the most visible information was performed via online searching with the term ‘HRT’ using incognito searches within each modality. Statements making claims were identified and analysed as to whether they were congruent with BNF and NICE advice on indications for use. Declarations of interest were extracted from the source or searched for if not apparent using a standardised search strategy. Data were entered into an Excel spreadsheet. Summary and descriptive statistics were used to summarise the results, including description of origin and types of claims, percentage of claims in agreement with NICE/BNF indications, relationship to financial interests and readership data, where available. Results 180 recommendations and/or claims for HRT were examined (30 from each of six platforms), made by professional individuals (53.4%), laypeople (41.7%) and patient, media and professional organisations (4.9%) completing the total. Overall, 67.2% of claims were outside of BNF/NICE recommendations. 139 (77.2%) were associated with a conflict of interest. In 117 cases, this was a conflict either directly or indirectly related to menopause, through provision of private practice, pharmaceutical industry funding or retail products marketed at the menopause. Conclusions Social media commonly contains claims for HRT outside BNF/NICE guidance. Conflicts of interest by commentators are also common, directly or indirectly related to menopause. Less than a quarter of media contained no commercial conflict. Policymakers should consider means to ensure that non-conflicted, evidence-based information is visible to professionals, patients and the public.Trial registration number Open Science Framework (https://osf.io/r7e5c/).Peer reviewe
The travels of Edward Falkener : a Victorian architect in Ottoman Anatolia
Get PDFFunding: This work was completed during a period of research funded by the Leverhulme Trust, ECF-2024-520.In recent scholarship on the Ottoman Mediterranean, it has become commonplace to challenge narratives of heroic discovery and cultural superiority expounded in publications by European travellers. Rather than taking a polished, published account as its starting point, this paper discusses the travels of Edward Falkener (1814–96), a lesser-known Victorian architect and writer whose extensive tour around Anatolia (1844–5) was never communicated to a broader audience. If Falkener is remembered today, it is usually as the author of the first anglophone monograph on ancient Ephesus and editor of the first British academic journal devoted to classical art and architecture. This paper reviews Falkener’s career, but instead of these publications, the focus is on his remarkable personal archive of diaries, sketchbooks, watercolours, contracts and notes for an incomplete book about his tour of Anatolia. Drawing on this collection, it explores his fluctuating interests in heritage from different periods of Anatolia’s history and well-documented interactions with a variety of local actors who helped or hindered his meandering tour. Representing the first attempt to study Falkener’s journey, this paper explores the utility of his archive for understanding the challenges and contingencies of Victorian travel in the Ottoman Empire.Peer reviewe
Synergistic effect of VS2/MoS2 as an electrocatalyst for accelerating polysulfide conversion of lithium–sulfur batteries
Get PDFFunding: This study was supported by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) Canada under the CREATE grant and the Digital Research Alliance of Canada.The shuttle effect of soluble lithium polysulfides (LiPSs) poses a formidable challenge that severely compromises the electrochemical performance of lithium–sulfur (Li–S) batteries. This study introduces a unique lamellar stacked VS2/MoS2 nanoflower structure, prepared using a simple one-step hydrothermal synthesis method, to reduce the polysulfide shuttle effect in Li–S batteries. VS2/MoS2 synergistically boosts LiPS conversion, combining VS2’s high conductivity with the catalytic activity of MoS2, as confirmed by density functional theory (DFT) calculations. Electrochemical testing demonstrated excellent performance for VS2/MoS2@S cathodes. It delivers an initial discharge-specific capacity of 1353 mAh g–1 at 0.1 C, and at 1 C, the capacity remains as high as 925 mAh g–1. At 0.2 C, the initial discharge-specific capacity is 1299 mAh g–1, and the capacity retention rate reaches 55% after 500 cycles. This study provides valuable insights into designing and engineering high-performance heterostructures to enhance the adsorption of LiPSs and improve the reaction kinetics in Li–S batteries.Peer reviewe
On the number of subdirect products involving semigroups of integers and natural numbers
Get PDFFunding: The third author acknowledges support from EPSRC EP/V003224/1.In this paper, we extend a recent result that for the (additive) semigroup of positive integers ℕ, there are continuum many subdirect products of ℕ × ℕ up to isomorphism. We prove that for U, V each one of ℤ (the group of integers), ℕ0 (the monoid of non-negative integers), or ℕ, the direct product U × V contains continuum many (semigroup) subdirect products up to isomorphism.Peer reviewe
Impact of Asian summer monsoon on the 2021 Pacific Northwest heatwave : can It? did It?
Get PDFFunding: This work is funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (U2342212 and 42375066).This study examines the role of Asian summer monsoon in the unprecedented 2021 Pacific Northwest (PNW) heatwave. We address this by separating it into two relevant but independent questions: Can monsoon activity observed prior to the event impact PNW climate, and did it specifically impact the 2021 PNW heatwave? Based on observational diagnostics, numerical experiments, and subseasonal-to-seasonal (S2S) forecasts, our results consistently indicate although the monsoon activity can exert a cooling effect on the PNW, on average, it had a warming influence in the specific case of 2021 and thus contributed to the heatwave that summer. The contrasting answers to the “can it” and “did it” questions highlight how background flow and specific forcing pattern during the event can modulate—or even reverse—the expected impact. We advocate future work exploring the link between large-scale climatic drivers and extremes should be undertaken in an event-specific context to better understand these relationships.Peer reviewe
Saturated carbazole-embedded BN-aromatic systems as narrowband sky-blue emitters
Get PDFFunding: This project has been funded by the European Union Horizon 2021 research and innovation programme under grant agreement no. 101073045 (TADFsolutions). We thank the EPSRC for support (EP/ X026175/1, EP/W015137/1, EP/R00188X/1, EP/W007517/1, and EP/ Z535291/1).Due to their rigid structure and short-range charge transfer emissive excited states, multiresonant thermally activated delayed fluorescence (MR-TADF) emitters provide exceptional color purity due to their narrowband emission. Many examples are based on nitrogen/boron-doped polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons. The emission color is in part modulated by the strength of the donor heterocycle. In an effort to shift the emission to the blue, we explore in this study the partial saturation of the carbazole donor. We designed four emitters- tButHCzB , DtButHCzB , SpAc-tButHCzB , and SpAc-DtButHCzB featuring tetrahydrocarbazole donor moieties, which disrupt the planarity and reduce the conjugation length. Theoretical calculations predict moderate singlet–triplet excited-state energy gaps (ΔEST = 250–270 meV) and low-lying T2 and T3 states, suggesting that these compounds should exhibit TADF. In toluene, the four compounds emit in the sky-blue region (λPL = 476–480 nm), with narrow full-width at half-maximum (FWHM) values (18–21 nm) and high photoluminescence quantum yields (ΦPL) of 86–91%. In 1 wt% doped films in mCP, however, their ΦPL drops to between 40–45% and their emission slightly red-shifts to λPL of 483–491 nm. Temperature-dependent time-resolved PL measurements confirm that these compounds exhibit TADF. This study offers valuable insights into a region of chemical space scantly explored in MR-TADF emitter design.Peer reviewe
Vatican Museums' accessibility practices for blind and partially sighted (BPS) visitors : a case study
Get PDFThe Vatican Museums (also referred to as “VM”) are the repositories of one of the world’s most remarkable and varied art collections. The relative responsibilities and challenges are plenty: the many visitors pose a significant threat to the conservation of artworks, but communicating and safeguarding the works of art is even more challenging when opening the museum collections to a Blind and Partially Sighted (referred in the article as BPS) audience. The Vatican Museums’ accessibility practices, some of which aimed at providing support to the experience of visually impaired visitors, have been developed via foresight, international vision, strong partnerships, and efficient resource allocation. The present article describes the strategies adopted by the Vatican Museums involving accessibility for BPS audiences. It examines the extent of existing measures and how they align with the "best practices" necessary to grant access to facilities and valuable information. The analysis has been carried out through first-hand observations performed during the internship period the author spent at the Vatican Museums. Finally, the article examines the educational techniques involving some of the items included in the haptic itinerary offered by the Vatican Museum, with references to applied neuroscientific research in relation to tactile perception and Museum Sciences.Peer reviewe
Family background and college major choice : evidence on major earnings growth
Get PDFExpected earnings matter for college major choices, and majors differ in both their average earnings and the age profile of their earnings. We show that students’ family background is strongly related to the earnings paths of the major they choose. Students with more educated parents, especially those who have graduate degrees, choose majors with lower early-career earnings but much stronger earnings growth. They are also less likely to choose safe majors with little early-career earnings or unemployment downside. These effects seem driven by students with more educated parents’ propensity to eventually attend graduate school and increase later earnings, but not by the propensity to attend graduate school immediately after college, meaning these students are earning less in the years after college. Parental income has a weaker relationship with major choice and may operate partially through the type of institution the student attends.Peer reviewe
Unpossessed evidence revisited : our options are limited
Get PDFSeveral influential thought experiments from Harman 1973 purport to show that unpossessed evidence can undermine knowledge. Recently, some epistemologists have appealed to these thought experiments in defense of a logically stronger thesis: unpossessed evidence can defeat justification. But these appeals fail to appreciate that Harman himself thought of his examples as Gettier cases, and so would have rejected this strengthening of his thesis. On the contrary, he would have held that while unpossessed evidence can undermine knowledge, it leaves justification intact. In this paper I seek to undermine the viability of Harman’s position. If this is correct, contemporary epistemology faces a choice: either we reject that unpossessed evidence in Harman-style cases bears on knowledge at all, or else we must allow that it undermines knowledge by defeating justification. The former option must explain why Harman’s thought experiments elicit strong ‘no knowledge’ intuitions; the latter option embraces a minority view about the bearing of social expectations on the assessment of knowledge and justification (= the doctrine of normative defeat).Peer reviewe
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