The manuscript is devoted to the boundary behavior of mappings with bounded and finite distortion. We consider mappings of domains of the Euclidean space that satisfy weighted Poletsky inequality. Assume that, the definition domain is finitely connected on its boundary and, in addition, on the set of all points which are pre-images of the cluster set of this boundary. Then the specified mappings have a continuous boundary extension provided that the majorant in the Poletsky inequality satisfies some integral divergence condition, or has a finite mean oscillation at every boundary point.

The Canada-wide Early Learning and Child Care Plan promises to help low-income parents, especially women, participate in the economy. But even under this plan, care will be too expensive for many families. Several provinces offer targeted subsidies to reduce fees—unfortunately, these benefits are often hard to access and their popularity with voters is unclear. Using a pre-registered survey experiment (N=821), this research note investigates support for a hypothetical child care supplement to help low-income families. Overall, we find strong support for such an initiative, but little enthusiasm to pay for it through new income taxes. We then manipulate the ease of accessing this benefit. We find little evidence that burdensome child care benefits are more popular than easily accessible benefits. If anything, burdensome benefits reduce support. We then briefly consider how partisanship influences support. We conclude with timely recommendations for government and discuss the need for accessible child care benefits.

This study examines Nigeria’s National Information Technology Development Agency Code of Practice for Interactive Computer Service Platforms as one of Africa’s first push towards digital and social media co-regulation. Already established as a regulatory practice in Europe, co-regulation emphasises the need to impose duties of care on platforms and hold them, instead of users, accountable for safe online experiences. It is markedly different from the prior (and existing) regulatory paradigm in Nigeria, which is based on direct user regulation. By analysing the Code of Practice, therefore, this study considers what Nigeria’s radical turn towards co-regulation means for digital policy and social media regulation in relation to standards, information-gathering, and enforcement. It further sheds light on what co-regulation entails for digital regulatory practice in the wider African context, particularly in terms of the balance of power realities between Global North platforms and Global South countries.

A través del lente de la conciencia jurídica, este trabajo analiza la insatisfacción institucional en el marco de un profundo escepticismo hacia las instituciones formales, particularmente en el contexto de la sociedad chilena post-Octubre de 2019. El artículo busca investigar la relación entre la expresión de una profunda antipatía hacia el estado y la postura que los individuos manifiestan con respecto a la legalidad. El trabajo reporta los hallazgos derivados de 12 grupos focales categorizados por edad, género, y locación. Encontramos que, a pesar de los sentimientos negativos prevalentes que albergan las personas hacia estas instituciones, los participantes continúan usando el lenguaje del derecho, expresando su insatisfacción como derechos formales frustrados o por una falta de aplicación de la ley con respecto a las élites corruptas. Concluimos que la existencia de una brecha entre las expectativas normativas y el agudo rechazo por su incumplimiento por parte de actores institucionales abre una estructura de oportunidades para la emergencia de formas más autoritarias de poder estatal.

The recovery of soldiers’ remains has been a major concern of the US military since the mid-nineteenth century. However, military defeats during the Cold War left the remains of US soldiers unattended for decades, which diminished the odds of their identification and created ambiguities about their fates. After the Vietnam War, some statespersons and soldiers’ families alleged that many missing soldiers had not been killed, but rather detained by the enemy and abandoned by US authorities. The US military strove to recover and identify as many missing soldiers as possible to debunk these allegations. Existing forensic methods failed to provide definitive conclusions, straining the relationship between the military and the American public. Consequently, the military turned to DNA profiling to identify missing personnel. Technical limitations and US society’s lingering distrust of authorities turned DNA profiling into a new battleground between the US military and prisoners of war/missing in action (POW/MIA) families. Despite the promise DNA technology seemed to offer for remains’ identification, this article argues that its success was reliant on POW/MIA families’ attitudes towards the military and politics, who demanded much more than identified remains as a means of achieving closure.

This paper critically assesses Rizzo and Whitman’s theory of inclusive rationality in light of the ongoing cross-disciplinary debate about rationality, welfare analyses and policy evaluation. The paper aims to provide three main contributions to this debate. First, it explicates the relation between the consistency conditions presupposed by standard axiomatic conceptions of rationality and the standards of rationality presupposed by Rizzo and Whitman’s theory of inclusive rationality. Second, it provides a qualified defence of the consistency conditions presupposed by standard axiomatic conceptions of rationality against the main criticisms put forward by Rizzo and Whitman. And third, it identifies and discusses specific strengths and weaknesses of Rizzo and Whitman’s theory of inclusive rationality in the context of welfare analyses and policy evaluation.

Household air pollution (HAP) presents numerous health challenges. The association between HAP and sleep problems has not been extensively studied. This paper examined the effect of HAP due to solid fuel use on sleep problems among older adults in India. Data from the initial phase of the Longitudinal Aging Study in India, which included 51,060 individuals aged 50 years and older, was utilised. Sleep problems were defined as experiencing difficulty falling asleep, waking up during the night, or waking up too early at least five times per week and were classified as a binary variable. Exposure to HAP was defined as the use of solid fuel for household purposes. Multivariate logistic regression was employed to assess the association, and additionally, interaction analysis was conducted to explore the potential moderating effects of age, gender, and residence on this association. The prevalence of sleep problems among older adults was around 12.7%. Sleep problems were higher among older adults who used solid fuel for cooking (OR = 1.25; 95% CI: 1.17, 1.33) and other purposes (OR = 1.13; 95% CI: 1.06, 1.20) in the adjusted model. The place of cooking, ventilation, and type of stove played a significant role in the association between solid fuel use and sleep problems. Individuals over 65, females, and those residing in rural areas were particularly vulnerable to sleep problems due to HAP exposure. The findings highlight the importance of reducing HAP exposure by transitioning to clean fuels as a public health priority within initiatives aimed at promoting healthy aging.

This paper aims to explore human beings as language animals, examining how language shapes them in the lifeworld. Biosemiotics and anthroposemiotics are both geared toward studying the relations between life and the environment. This paper thus concerns the semiotics of naming, exploring naming as meaning-making activity based on the interrelation of language and narrative. There are two ways of looking at the language functions in the act of naming. One is “languaging,” which is geared toward producing intimacy with the surrounding world in nature by naming things to establish a relationship with them. The other is “narrating,” which generates a dialogic relationship with fellow human beings by storytelling based on existence and place. This enables humans to cultivate the selves through semiotic cultural activity. Thus, I shall elaborate the semiotic process in naming and narrating things, which leads to culture-making activity, by analyzing the place Ieodo off the south coast of Korea within the biosemiotic perspective which connects language and cognition with the narrative world for culture-making activity.

John Harris has made many seminal contributions to bioethics. Two of these are in the ethics of resource allocation. Firstly, he proposed the “fair innings argument” which was the first sufficientarian approach to distributive justice. Resources should be provided to ensure people have a fair innings—when Harris first wrote this, around 70 years of life, but perhaps now 80. Secondly, Harris famously advanced the egalitarian position in response to utilitarian approaches to allocation (such as maximizing Quality Adjusted Life Years [QALYs]) that what people want is the greatest chance of the longest, best quality life for themselves, and justice requires treating these claims equally. Harris thus proposed both sufficientarian and egalitarian approaches. This chapter compares these approaches with utilitarian and contractualist approaches and provides a methodology for deciding among these (Collective Reflective Equilibrium). This methodology is applied to the allocation of ventilators in the pandemic (as an example) and an ethical algorithm for their deployment created. This paper describes the concept of algorithmic bioethics as a way of addressing pluralism of values and context specificity of moral judgment and policy, and addressing complex ethics.

The merchant and art agent Philipp Hainhofer (1578–1647) is best known for his extraordinary art cabinets. Collaborating closely with neighbouring Augsburg artisans, Hainhofer worked to compile, collate, and market these visually and materially astounding collections to a range of elite patrons. His first commission, the Pomeranian Cabinet, was for Duke Philipp of Pomerania-Stettin in 1610, and took around seven years to complete. This article adopts a body-centred approach, arguing that in doing so, new light is shed on the ways period actors enacted their relationships with materials, objects, and other bodies. It uncovers the process through which the body of the art-lover was constructed, convening with those engaged in a shared material community through the lens of health and bodily entanglements. Hainhofer, as a merchant, diplomat, and secret agent, occupied a dubious position. Through the staging of the shared, art-loving body, he was able to create and sustain friendships, while simultaneously raising the status of the merchant through his material identification with these practices.

In low- and middle-income countries like Sierra Leone, there is a significant gap in the treatment of perinatal mental health disorders such as anxiety, depression and somatization. This study explored the feasibility, acceptability and preliminary effectiveness of a culturally adapted Problem-Solving Therapy – Friendship Bench Intervention (PST-FBI) delivered by nonspecialists, mother-to-mother support groups (MMSGs), to perinatal women experiencing psychological distress. MMSGs provide 4 weeks of home-based, individual PST-FBI, followed by a peer-led group session called col at sacul (circle of serenity). The intervention targeted peri-urban pregnant women and new mothers screened for psychological distress. This was a two-armed, pre–post, waitlist-controlled study that employed the Sierra Leone Perinatal Psychological Distress Scale (SLPPDS) to screen and measure their outcomes. Feasibility and acceptability were examined through in-depth interviews using the Consolidated Framework for Implementation Research, analyzed thematically, while preliminary effectiveness was evaluated with chi-squared analysis for categorical and t-test for continuous variables. Twenty of the 25 women completed all four PST-FBI sessions delivered by five MMSGs. The individual PST and the peer-led session were viewed as beneficial for problem-sharing and skill building. The SLPPDS scores significantly dropped by 58.9% (17.1–8.4) in the intervention group, while the control group showed a 31.6% (18.0–12.3) decrease. The intervention’s effect size was d = 0.40 (p < 0.05). The MMSG-led PST-FBI, including the col at sacul session, proved feasible, acceptable and with preliminary effectiveness in improving the mental health of peri-urban pregnant women and new mothers in Sierra Leone. Further randomized-controlled trials are recommended before nationwide implementation.

Migrants encounter multiple challenges, such as learning new languages and adapting to a new life. While digital technologies help them learn, limited research has been conducted on their digital skills development. In this article, we report on migrants’ digital skills development while learning language through culture using a web app developed by an EU-funded project that aimed to promote social cohesion through a two-way exchange of knowledge and skills. Forty-six migrant and 43 home community members in Finland, Spain, Türkiye, and the UK participated in intercultural and intergenerational pairs to engage with and co-create interactive digital cultural activities in multiple languages. Participants’ digital, linguistic and cultural gains were measured before and after the workshops. We report on participants’ digital skills, measured by a digital competence self-assessment tool developed based on DigComp, and interviews with the participants. Quantitative data were analysed using descriptive and inferential statistics. Qualitative data were analysed deductively using the categories of the DigComp framework. Findings indicate statistically significant improvement in migrants’ self-reported digital skills. Highest gains were in the competency area of digital content creation. Comparison of migrants’ digital skill development with that of home community members did not show any statistically significant differences, supporting our argument against the deficiency perspective towards migrant populations. Interview data suggested overall positive evaluations and highlighted the role of the web app instructions for content creation. We conclude with suggestions for further research and argue for inclusive pedagogies, emphasising how both community members learned from and with each other during the workshops.

This study examines how the managerial interpretation of incentive arrangement affects corporate engagement in social areas, as reflected in corporate social performance, from two interrelated perspectives: the political influence view and the normative agency view. Building the theoretical framework on state-owned enterprise (SOE) executives' dual-career tracks perspective, we contend that economic factors (performance decline and relative pay gap) and political factors (socialist imprints and political career horizon) could divergently reshape the interpretation of incentive arrangement on corporate social performance. Using ‘Pay Ceiling Order’ as a quasi-natural experiment context, a secondary analysis, and a controlled experiment reveal that compensation restriction on top executives causes a decrease in corporate social performance. This relationship is weakened when there are stronger socialist imprints inherited by a focal firm and when the executives have a longer political prospect. In contrast, the relationship is strengthened when firms face severe performance declines and when the executives' compensation is relatively lower than peers. The findings show that compensation is an indispensable incentive joining with political and economic factors, enabling SOEs to engage in social areas. We discuss the implications of understanding top executive incentives with incentive arrangements and how the government purpose influences top executive responses to compensation incentive in ways that matter for long-term social value.

Not only has Wolff–Parkinson–White syndrome been associated with congenital cardiac abnormalities and cardiomyopathies, but familial clustering of Wolff–Parkinson–White syndrome has also been reported. Despite these well-known associations, direct genetic aetiology is rarely implicated in patients with Wolff–Parkinson–White syndrome. We report a 17-year-old girl with Wolff–Parkinson–White syndrome and left ventricular non-compaction cardiomyopathy due to a rare genetic variant in PR-domain containing protein 16. The report is supplemented by a comprehensive review of literature on association between PRDM16, left ventricular non-compaction and Wolff–Parkinson–White syndrome.