This paper examines the impact of demographic change on political perceptions, specifically attitudes toward the January 6th attack on the U.S. Capitol. Utilizing data from the 2020 Collaborative Multiracial Post-Election Survey, we explore how changes in county-level nonwhite populations influence whether individuals label the event as a protest or an insurrection. Our findings reveal a curvilinear relationship: respondents in counties with moderate increases in nonwhite populations are more likely to view the event as an insurrection, while those in counties with substantial increases tend to see it as a protest. This pattern holds across racial groups but is primarily driven by respondents who did not vote for President Trump. The study shows the broader implications of demographic shifts on political stability and social cohesion, highlighting how changes in racial and ethnic composition shape interpretations of major political events. These insights are crucial for understanding voter behavior and political messaging in the 2024 presidential election.

Here we evaluate the skin coefficient of friction for steady turbulent radial wall jets across smooth and rough surfaces. Although the Colebrook equation has been used successfully for many decades to evaluate friction factors for flows through smooth and rough pipes, how roughness affects the skin friction coefficient for steady turbulent radial wall jets remains unclear. Here we explore a Colebrook-type equation for skin friction coefficients associated with single-phase turbulent radial wall jets arising from orthogonally impinging circular jets. The fully iterative solution, based on well-established concepts of turbulent wall-bounded flow, is presented along with a power-law approximation and a non-iterative approximation for the friction coefficient derived therefrom. We find the skin coefficient of friction defined on the peak radial velocity to be a function of position over rough but not smooth surfaces in contrast to pipe friction factors that remain independent of axial position. These results follow expected trends, explain prior heterogeneity in power-law expressions for the skin friction coefficient and have significant implications for the industrial use of jets in mixing vessels.

The Late Neolithic and Early Bronze Age (c. 2900–1600 bc) of Central Europe are characterized by burial practices that strongly differentiate between men and women through body placement and orientation in the grave, as well as through grave goods. The osteological sex estimation of the individuals from the cemeteries of Franzhausen I and Gemeinlebarn F corresponds to the gender expressed in the funerary practice in 98 per cent of cases. In this study, we investigate the remaining minority by applying ultra-high-performance liquid chromatography–high-resolution mass spectrometry (UHPLC-HRMS) to identify sex-specific peptides in the dental enamel of 34 individuals, for which the published osteological sex estimation did not fit the gendered burial practice. The results reveal sex estimation and transcription errors, demonstrating that the chromosomal sex of the individuals usually aligns with the gendered burial treatment. We found burials with internally inconsistent gendered patterns (‘mixed-message burials’), but there is no evidence to suggest that a biologically male individual was deliberately buried as a woman or a biologically female individual was buried as a man.

This article examines the complex dynamics between the intelligentsia and the broader population in the formation of national identity by looking at a case of intra-societal conflict. The article focuses on Western Belarus – the northern portion of the Polish-Soviet frontier in the interwar period – which was historically influenced by Polish, Belarusian, Lithuanian and Ukrainian cultures. In this region, the Belarusian intelligentsia's efforts to promote national enlightenment were initially met with scepticism and even hostility from the broader population. The discrepancy between the intelligentsia's self-perceived role as the nation's vanguard and society's apathy towards issues related to national identity led to internal conflict. Drawing upon Belarusian and Polish archival collections, the Belarusian interwar press and oral history interviews, the article offers an alternative understanding of the challenges associated with the process of nation-building in Eastern Europe in highlighting the often overlooked perspectives of the ordinary people who were at the centre of these intellectual endeavours.

Asian Americans are the fastest growing racial group in the US electorate, yet they are significantly under-represented in political office. How do predominantly immigrant groups like Asian Americans close this representation gap? We build on existing theories of minority representation and immigrant assimilation by highlighting the importance of a group’s political incorporation into American society. We argue that the representation of minority immigrant groups in political office requires social integration and the acquisition of civic resources, processes that can take considerable time. Using new data on Asian American state legislators spanning half a century, we find that immigration in prior decades is associated with greater political representation, while contemporaneous population size has either no independent impact or a negative one. Other indicators of immigrant social integration, including citizenship status, language ability, education, and income, also predict the likelihood of co-racial representation in political office. Our results suggest political representation gaps of immigrant groups narrow over time, though this may be a non-linear process. Our findings also imply that the least integrated members of immigrant groups are the most likely to be affected by representational deficits.

Bollywood films, the highly commercial films by Indian producers for Indian audiences, have always been Hindi-dominant, and despite the increased incorporation of English over time, the speech of urban elite main characters remains Hindi matrix. This is at odds with the code-switching patterns of urban elites in other Indian media, such as chat shows, and spoken conversation, where switching among such speakers is often English dominant. Young urban elites may use English in isolation; their Bollywood equivalents sometimes do so also, but always with standard syntax. In this article we show how for Bollywood films, English without code-switching typically occurs in the speech of anglicised minorities such as Goan Catholics; furthermore, their English is indexed by the morphosyntactic features of Indian English. This contrasts with usage outside film, where Indian English features have been shown to be broadly distributed. This conservatism of Bollywood speech reflects conflicting attitudes towards an endonormative variety of English within India.

After the two world wars, numerous Germans were forcibly removed or fled their homelands in eastern Europe, resettling in Germany. In both postwar periods, the Weimar Republic and the Federal Republic of Germany established compensation systems to indemnify the material losses and damages suffered by these refugees: the Gewaltschädengesetze (Violent Damages Laws) of 1921 and the Lastenausgleichsgesetz (Equalization of Burdens Law) of 1952. The article offers a unique comparative insight into the functioning of the two compensation mechanisms, examining six cases of applicants (or their heirs) who lost their homes twice in their lives and applied for compensation twice: first after the end of the First World War and then following the Second World War. The diachronic comparison reveals the complex nature of German national belonging, the persistence of the term Volksgemeinschaft in modern German history, and the role of class status in the context of compensation after both wars.

On 24 December 1871, Giuseppe Verdi’s opera Aida premiered in Cairo’s Khedivial Opera House. The Khedive of Egypt, Ismail, had commissioned Verdi to compose the opera as part of a larger program of urban renewal that had peaked with the Suez Canal’s inauguration in November 1869. Wide boulevards, landscaped gardens, and luxury hotels of iron, steel, and the improved glass of the nineteenth century modernized sections of Cairo and Alexandria. In anticipation of the many guests who planned to attend the canal’s inauguration, Ismail funded the construction of a road leading directly from Cairo to the pyramids and patronized the construction of a Khedivial Opera House.1

The anthropic principle (AP) states that “what we can expect to observe must be restricted by the conditions necessary for our presence as observers”. But the phrase “our presence as observers” cannot be uniquely interpreted in the context of the theories within which AP is meant to be understood and applied: namely, for effective theories. We thus describe and defend a reformulation of AP, which we dub the effective observation principle (EOP). EOP describes what we can expect to observe in physical settings by considering our ‘observational situation’ (and not, specifically, ‘observers’)—understood solely in terms of effective theories.