This study investigates the impact of environmental factors and genotype-by-environment interactions (GEI) on the expression of maydis leaf blight (MLB) resistance in a diverse maize germplasm comprising 359 genotypes. Extensive field trials were conducted, involving artificial inoculations and disease scoring across two locations over two years. Using genotype and genotype–environment (GGE) biplot analysis based on the site regression model (SREG), we identified stable MLB-resistant 10 donors with consistent genotypic responses. These inbred lines, which consistently exhibited disease scores of ⩽3 across locations, are recommended as potential parents for breeding MLB-resistant varieties. Furthermore, the identification of a non-crossover interaction and high correlations among testing locations allowed us to define a single mega-environment for the initial screening of MLB resistance in a large set of maize germplasm. This study suggests that initial screenings can be efficiently conducted in one representative location, with validation of resistant lines at multiple sites during advanced breeding stages. This approach optimizes the use of land, labour and resources in MLB resistance testing.

During World War II, the German theologian Paul Tillich, then a professor at Union Theological Seminary, partnered with the United States’ organization Voice of America to deliver over 100 religious addresses in the German language into his homeland. In these broadcasts, Tillich utilized the Lutheran categories of Law and Gospel to identify and discuss the sins of the Nazis (and Hitler in particular) and to remind the German population that there was still hope in redemption. Remarkably, well before the war's end, Tillich argued for German collective guilt and the need for the atonement and expiation of the German people. He continually warned them of impending judgment and inescapable punishment – both human and divine – as the Allies advanced on the battlefield in a race toward Berlin. Yet Tillich often tempered this focus on judgment with an emphasis on the Gospel, the certain hope Germans have in God's salvation. This prism of Law and Gospel pervades the religious addresses. I will place these broadcasts in the context of the war, the wartime work of Voice in America, and what we know of other religious addresses delivered over the airwaves to Nazi Germany, to reveal how Tillich preached resistance to Nazi Germany.

This article explores three instances of the looping effect by studying colonial resistance in the Moluccas in 1817. It focuses on the relations between Dutch colonial officials and the sultan of Ternate in the North Moluccas, and between Dutch officials and the regents of Ambon in the Central Moluccas. The first instance of the looping effect revolves around how Ambonese regents, who adhered to Calvinism, used Christian principles to contest Dutch rule within the Moluccas. This became evident in 1817 when a revolt broke out against the reestablishment of Dutch rule within the Moluccas. The leaders of this revolt used religious precepts of Calvinism, previously introduced by the Dutch, to argue that the reestablishment of Dutch rule should be rejected. The article continues with a second instance of the looping effect, reconstructing how Ambonese rulers used instructions issued by the colonial state in 1818 to mitigate claims from the colonial government. Finally, a third instance of the looping effect can be perceived in how the sultan of Ternate used contracts, signed with the Dutch colonial state in 1817, to request Dutch military assistance against internal uprisings and thereby increased his authority throughout the region.

We are the living. We find ourselves in a mess that is sometimes called the ‘Anthropocene’. This is a mess that has been hidden, ignored, neglected through a narrative of progress, consumption, linearity, categorisation, control, prosperity, rationality. To respond to this narrative, we employ ‘mess-making’ as a force for resistance. We rethink our more-than-human relations by concepting with mess to invigorate, agitate and provoke. Employing Haraway’s (2008) ‘messmates’, we conceptualise how ‘we’ as ecosystems of thriving life forms are constantly living, learning and dying together and need to find new ways to co-research with/in/for more-than-human methodologies. These, we suggest, are inherently messy. The paper is organised in a nonconventional way in that it is mostly created by more-than-human narratives gathered from two doctoral post-qualitative inquiries exploring play in an urban forest school in London and animal-child relations in a wall-less school in Bali. We explore how mess-making is both generative and challenging as data emerge in dynamic and exciting ways. With this messy turn, we illuminate potential for educational futures that support multispecies flourishing.

Over the past decade, recording technologies have enabled organized activists and ordinary residents to capture and circulate videos of police misconduct. Existing research focuses primarily, however, on organized activists who rely on formal training programs to record police behaviors. If formal programs train organized activists to capture police abuses on camera, how then do ordinary residents determine when they should record police behavior? Drawing on in-depth interviews with Black men who live in a Southside Chicago neighborhood, this study finds that residents’ recurrent interactions with police enable them to interpret officers’ words and actions as symbols of police misconduct, which, in subsequent exchanges, serve as signals to record events with their cellphones – what I term “camera cues.” Camera cues facilitate situated conceptions of legal authority that trigger residents’ distrust of police, reflecting the micro-dynamic connections between individuals’ legal consciousness and legal cynicism. Equipped with cellphones, residents scrutinize officers’ outward displays and police–citizen interactions to challenge police misconduct. While recording police behavior makes it possible at least occasionally to resist the dominance of legal authority, doing so often involves additional risks, including the destruction of their cellphones, verbal and physical threats, and arrests.

The role of capital in measuring resilience is investigated. Focusing on the current short-run and potential long-run growth paths of the economic system, we propose new indexes to separately measure adaptability and resistance to shocks, which are the essence of a system’s resilience. Capital dynamics during the transition and along the balanced growth path are used here instead of employment to represent the evolution of the size and composition of the economy. Our indexes measure adaptability and resistance by comparing the two capital growth rates. They are built by mimicking the average and variance of the difference in growth rates. In this new setting, investment and depreciation flows play an important role in explaining what the partial index of adaptability reveals. The available data on the USA and Spanish capital allow us to empirically compute the indexes and draw conclusions about their ability to resist shocks and absorb their effects. We conclude that the US economy is more adaptable and has a greater capacity to absorb impacts than the Spanish economy, but it is less resistant to disturbances.

In contrast to a view of secrecy as a tool of statecraft, where the game of ‘covering/uncovering’ dominates as the central way of interpreting secrecy’s power, we set out ‘secrecy games’ as an approach for understanding secrecy’s power and influence. To do so, we offer a set of three games to illustrate the more varied ways that secrecy operates and draw attention to the ways in which non-state actors use secrecy and shape its effects. In particular, we offer an analysis of: (1) the secrecy games of tunnelling in the Israeli–Palestinian conflict and the role of mobility as part of secrecy; (2) the secrecy game of camouflage and how stowaways blend in to facilitate access to global shipping routes; and (3) the secrecy game of maze-running and maze-making within urban warfare. Drawing these together, we show how secrecy involves a wider set of actors, practices, and associated knowledge-(un)making strategies than currently understood within International Relations. In turn, this expanded understanding of secrecy helps to make sense of the more complex ways in which secrecy is presented, used, resisted, and transformed – including and especially as a force that limits sovereign power – and, therefore, as central to what shapes global politics.

Mythimna separata (Lepidoptera: Noctuidae) is an omnivorous pest that poses a great threat to food security. Insect antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) are small peptides that are important effector molecules of innate immunity. Here, we investigated the role of the AMP cecropin B in the growth, development, and immunity of M. separata. The gene encoding M. separata cecropin B (MscecropinB) was cloned. The expression of MscecropinB was determined in different developmental stages and tissues of M. separata. It was highest in the prepupal stage, followed by the pupal stage. Among larval stages, the highest expression was observed in the fourth instar. Tissue expression analysis of fourth instar larvae showed that MscecropinB was highly expressed in the fat body and haemolymph. An increase in population density led to upregulation of MscecropinB expression. MscecropinB expression was also upregulated by the infection of third and fourth instar M. separata with Beauveria bassiana or Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt). RNA interference (RNAi) targeting MscecropinB inhibited the emergence rate and fecundity of M. separata, and resulted in an increased sensitivity to B. bassiana and Bt. The mortality of M. separata larvae was significantly higher in pathogen plus RNAi-treated M. separata than in controls treated with pathogens only. Our findings indicate that MscecropinB functions in the eclosion and fecundity of M. separata and plays an important role in resistance to infection by B. bassiana and Bt.

The aim of the study was to compare the relative gene expression of Haemonchus contortus P-glycoprotein genes (Hco-pgp) between fourth (L4), infective (L3), and transitory infective (xL3) larval stages as laboratory models to study ivermectin (IVM) resistance. The H. contortus resistant to IVM (IVMr) and susceptible to IVM (IVMs) strains were used to develop xL3 in vitro culture and to infect Meriones unguiculatus (gerbils) to collect L4 stages. Morphometric differences were evaluated from 25 individuals of H. contortus from each strain. Relative gene expression from xL3 and L4 was determined between comparison of IVMr stages and from IVMr vs IVMs stages. Seven Hco-pgp genes (1, 2, 3, 4, 9, 10, and 16) were analysed by RT-qPCR using L3 stage as control group, per strain, and GAPDH and β-tubulin as constitutive genes. Morphological changes were confirmed between xL3 and L4 developing oral shape, oesophagus, and intestinal tube. In addition, the body length and width showed statistical differences (p < 0.05). The Hco-pgp1, 2, 3, and 4 genes (p < 0.05) were upregulated from 7.1- to 463.82-fold changes between IVMr stages, and Hco-pgp9 (13.12-fold) and Hco-pgp10 (13.56-fold) genes showed differences between L4 and xL3, respectively. The comparative study between IVMr vs IVMs strains associated to xL3 and L4 displayed significant upregulation for most of the Hco-pgp genes among 4.89–188.71 fold-change. In conclusion, these results suggest the use of H. contortus xL3 and L4 as suitable laboratory models to study IVMr associated with Hco-pgp genes to contribute to the understanding of anthelmintic resistance.