Quantitative easing (QE) has been a favourite tool of central banks in their post-financial crisis monetary policy apparatus. Social science literature has interpreted QE as a shift away from performative governance characterising pre-crisis monetary policy. With reference to the Bank of England’s experience, I offer a reinterpretation of QE as a performative intervention in the conditions of financial markets, as an attempt to alter the state of financial markets away from dysfunctionality and towards efficiency. I claim that, following the financial crisis, the model of complete and efficient markets – a mainstay in central banking prior to the crisis – was transformed from a real-world approximation to a ‘performative object’ to be achieved. In deploying the balance sheet, central banks attempt to performatively enact complete and efficient markets. The article rejects the claim of discontinuity between pre-crisis and post-crisis monetary policy, arguing that QE is a continuation of inflation targeting though with important innovations. While pre-crisis performativity relied on central bankers’ communicative framing of market expectations, QE is performative via the ontological shaping of financial markets, driven by epistemic models. The article relies on a set of 51 interviews with central bankers and financial market participants and a corpus of documents.

The aardvark (Oryecteropus afer) is a fossorial species with a widespread distribution across sub-Saharan Africa. It leaves distinctive tracks and traces of its presence, including large burrows. However, despite a substantial body fossil record, few trace fossils registered by aardvarks have been described. Its distribution range in southern Africa during historic and prehistoric times was probably broadly similar to that of today, with the addition of the currently submerged Palaeo-Agulhas Plain during much of the Pleistocene. Five new trace fossil sites have been identified in Pleistocene aeolianites on the Cape coast and are here interpreted with varying degrees of confidence as large burrows that were made by aardvarks. In addition, a possible aardvark tracksite has been identified. Together these add to the sparse paleoichnological evidence of aardvarks and add to the global ichnological record of large vertebrate burrows. While at this point the evidence does not warrant the proposal of new ichnotaxa, the findings may act to spur further identification of fossilized traces of aardvarks and other fossorial species on the Cape coast and beyond.

We advance a novel approach to gender inclusive language, showing how it can be used in perinatal and postnatal care. Existing attempts to use language inclusive of trans and non-binary parents have faced objections, prompting calls to use trans-exclusionary “sexed” language as a default (Gribble et al. 2022). We show that these objections attach only to some unsatisfactory attempts at inclusive language. We articulate the moral and communicative goals at stake, and then work through a range of examples to show that no single linguistic strategy can meet these goals in all contexts. A pluralistic approach is needed. Our pluralistic approach draws on gender neutral, gender additive, and second-person locutions, as well as taking advantage of the possibility for multiple targeted communications. Moreover, this pluralistic approach highlights the gaps in research and understanding needed to ensure substantively inclusive care in future.

In low- and middle-income countries, fewer than 1 in 10 people with mental health conditions are estimated to be accurately diagnosed in primary care. This is despite more than 90 countries providing mental health training for primary healthcare workers in the past two decades. The lack of accurate diagnoses is a major bottleneck to reducing the global mental health treatment gap. In this commentary, we argue that current research practices are insufficient to generate the evidence needed to improve diagnostic accuracy. Research studies commonly determine accurate diagnosis by relying on self-report tools such as the Patient Health Questionnaire-9. This is problematic because self-report tools often overestimate prevalence, primarily due to their high rates of false positives. Moreover, nearly all studies on detection focus solely on depression, not taking into account the spectrum of conditions on which primary healthcare workers are being trained. Single condition self-report tools fail to discriminate among different types of mental health conditions, leading to a heterogeneous group of conditions masked under a single scale. As an alternative path forward, we propose improving research on diagnostic accuracy to better evaluate the reach of mental health service delivery in primary care. We recommend evaluating multiple conditions, statistically adjusting prevalence estimates generated from self-report tools, and consistently using structured clinical interviews as a gold standard. We propose clinically meaningful detection as ‘good-enough’ diagnoses incorporating multiple conditions accounting for context, health system and types of interventions available. Clinically meaningful identification can be operationalized differently across settings based on what level of diagnostic specificity is needed to select from available treatments. Rethinking research strategies to evaluate accuracy of diagnosis is vital to improve training, supervision and delivery of mental health services around the world.

This article examines the role played by comic books in justifying the Korean War to adolescent readers in the United States. Specifically, it argues that romance comics—perhaps the most widely read youth publications of the early 1950s—helped to prepare teenaged girls for the trials and tribulations that an emerging Cold War would entail. Love-themed comic books dealt with issues like dating and marriage at a time of mass mobilization and international political emergency, and in doing so, attempted to redefine the meaning of courtship and sexual maturity during a new era of permanent national security crisis. By studying this enormously influential literary genre, we gain important insight into both the popular cultural dimension of a “forgotten war,” as well as a richer appreciation of the ways in which girls have been asked to make their own sacrifices on the altar of American military preparedness.

The Geneva Declaration on Human Rights at Sea is a recent initiative of the non-governmental organization (NGO), Human Rights at Sea, and provides an opportunity to examine how an NGO-led initiative may contribute to international law-making. This article compares the Geneva Declaration to other NGO-led endeavours that resulted in the adoption of international treaties, including the Ottawa Convention, Cluster Munitions Convention, and Nuclear Weapon Ban Treaty. It also assesses how NGOs may contribute to the development of informal agreements that influence state decision-making. In doing so, the discussion draws on interviews with the drafters of the Geneva Declaration to further assess the possible trajectory of the instrument in international law-making. The experience of Human Rights at Sea in developing the Geneva Declaration provides a striking example of the current potential and limits of civil society actors in international law-making.

Hydrodynamic consequences of using simpler geometric shapes to represent coral canopies are examined through a laboratory study. A canopy composed of cylinders is compared with a canopy composed of 3-D-printed, scaled down coral heads in a recirculating flume. Vertical velocity profiles are measured at four horizontal locations for each canopy type, and mean velocity and turbulence statistics are compared both within and above the canopy. A narrow, defined wake on the scale of the canopy element is present behind the cylinder canopy elements that is absent in the coral canopy. There is also a peak in shear stress at the top of the cylinder canopy, likely due to the sharp edge at the top of the cylinder. Above the canopy, however, turbulence statistics and friction velocities behave similarly for both canopy types. Therefore, the results indicate we may reasonably get coral reef drag estimates from canopies with simpler geometric surrogates, especially when the mean free-stream and within-canopy flow speeds are matched to environmental conditions.