A patient with borderline left ventricle successfully underwent biventricular repair following a staged surgical approach to promote left ventricular growth. Despite initial concerns about left ventricle size, apex formation and adequate size of atrioventricular valve indicated potential for future growth. The patient demonstrated significant left ventricular growth, resulting in stable biventricular circulation and a favourable outcome over a three-year postoperative follow-up period.

Clinical Registration Number: Institutional Review Board of Osaka City General Hospital, number 1902139.

The Czechoslovak oppositional initiative Charter 77 produced dozens of documents on human rights between 1977 and 1992. Yet it never dedicated a separate document to women's rights, even if the issue of women's equality was well represented in global human rights discourse at the time. This article explores this absence in Charter 77's intellectual production. It analyses in detail several Charter documents and samizdat publications that touched upon issues of women's equality, showing that some Charter signatories were ready to acknowledge that the socialist state granted women formal equality, while suggesting that neither material conditions nor cultural norms provided full emancipation. However, a more prevalent critique marked the socialist agenda of women's emancipation as something that restricted women's individual freedom in their personal lives. I argue that in their legalistic approach, the Charter milieu largely lacked the conceptual tools to explore discrimination against women as the manifestation of the broader imbalance of power between men and women beyond the law.

The controllability of passive microparticles that are advected with the fluid flow generated by an actively controlled one is studied. The particles are assumed to be suspended in a viscous fluid and well separated so that the far-field Stokes flow solutions may be used to describe their interactions. Explicit elementary moves parametrized by an amplitude $\varepsilon >0$ are devised for the active particle. Applying concepts from geometric control theory, the leading-order resulting displacements of the passive particles in the limit $\varepsilon \to 0$ are used to propose strategies for moving one active particle and one or two passive particles, proving controllability in such systems. The leading-order (in $\varepsilon$) theoretical predictions of the particle displacements are compared with those obtained numerically and it is found that the discrepancy is small even when $\varepsilon \approx 1$. These results demonstrate the potential for a single actuated particle to perform complex micromanipulations of passive particles in a suspension.

Whether referendums, initiatives, and other mechanisms of direct democracy enhance representative systems is a matter of debate. Skeptics note—among other criticisms—that turnout tends to be low in referendums, often lower than in candidate elections in the same country. If citizens do not care enough to participate, how useful can these mechanisms be for improving the quality of democratic systems? We argue that low referendum turnout has as much to do with parties’ disincentives to mobilize voters as it does with voter disinterest. Prior research on political behavior in referendums has focused largely on Europe and assumes that voters view them as elections of lesser importance. By shifting focus to Latin America, we introduce more variation in the features of political parties that influence levels of turnout. We draw on cross-national evidence, qualitative research in Colombia, and quantitative analysis of municipal-level referendum voting behavior in Brazil. The key to understanding low voter turnout in these settings is the relatively weaker incentives that political parties have to turn out the vote when control over office is not at stake. We demonstrate that, in clientelistic systems, party operatives have particularly weak incentives to get their constituents out to the polls.

Designing effective language learning settings requires an understanding of the processes taking place in language learning and the way they interact. One important issue concerns the interaction between meaning and grammar. A number of studies have shown a beneficial effect of semantics in grammar learning. What is unclear, however, is how far this effect may be influenced by the presentation formats of the semantic content. In two experiments, participants performed rule search tasks on Latin sentences. In Experiment 1, we presented semantic information in the form of naturalistic photographs, whereas in Experiment 2, the semantic information was implemented by quasi-translations. The control groups did not receive any semantic information. Learning performance was assessed by a grammaticality-judgment task combined with a source-attributions task. In both experiments, participants in the with-semantics group outperformed the respective control groups. Yet, only in Experiment 1, participants report having more explicit than implicit knowledge. We argue that semantic information boosts the acquisition of grammatical structures regardless of the presentation format. Furthermore, we suggest that, consistent with multimedia learning theories, the pictorial presentation format of Experiment 1 helped to use working memory capacity efficiently, which may have led to the generation of more explicit knowledge.

Sudden cardiac death poses a significant risk in patients with surgically repaired tetralogy of Fallot. Despite extensive research, risk stratification practices vary. This study surveyed the Pediatric and Adult Congenital Electrophysiology Society to identify these differences. Results showed diverse practices in indications, methods, and interpretation of electrophysiology studies, highlighting a need for standardised algorithms to improve patient outcomes.

Since the 1990s, the Pro-Life Alliance of Gays and Lesbians (PLAGAL) has positioned sexual minorities and fetuses as alike in struggle. The lesbian, gay, and bisexual members of this relatively small organization argued that tolerance and inclusivity of their positionality were strategically beneficial to both the gay rights and antiabortion movements. Ultimately, PLAGAL failed to convince many of the “legitimacy” of their campaigns, and was repeatedly expelled from both right-to-life rallies and Pride marches. This notwithstanding, PLAGAL organizing reveals much about (the limits of) identity politics and the relationship of different social and political movements in this turbulent decade.

Copepods of the genus Pennella parasitize a wide range of marine animals, including cetaceans, teleosts, and cephalopods worldwide. Their taxonomy is unclear, as there is incongruence between morphological and genetic data and incomplete species coverage. This study provides new morphological and genetic (COI) data from 23 specimens of Pennella cf. filosa (syn. P. balaenoptera) from western Mediterranean whales and a swordfish. First, their position in the phylogeny of Pennella was assessed and species delimitation revisited using all available Pennella COI sequences (n = 189), obtained from Mediterranean and north Pacific specimens from 18 host species (including multiple cetaceans and teleosts). Second, it was investigated whether the geographic location, degree of host vagility, or host taxonomic identity help explain genetic differentiation. Five distinct haplotype groups with varying genetic divergence were distinguished. Although the presence of sibling species cannot be ruled out, species delimitation methods could not find interspecific genetic differences, leaving the taxonomy of the genus unresolved. The observed genetic differentiation could not be attributed to geography or host type. This suggests that members of the genus Pennella show low specificity for definitive hosts and interoceanic dispersal mediated by some vagile definitive hosts. The use of more genetic markers for addressing these questions in the future is encouraged.

Widening and diversifying trade networks are often cited among the boom and bust of Bronze and Iron Age worlds. The great distances that goods could travel during these periods are exemplified here as the authors describe the spectroscopic identification of Baltic amber beads in an Iron Age cremation grave at Hama in Syria. Yet these beads are not unique in the Near Eastern record; as the authors show, comparable finds and references to amber or amber hues in contemporaneous texts illustrate the high social and economic value of resinous substances—a value based on perceptions of their distant origin.

This paper presents a study of the effects of the durability and level of energy storage technology on energy management strategies and the performance of hybrid electric turboprops. The results highlight the key role of battery energy density on the durability of the battery pack and the viability of the concept of hybrid electric aircraft. Additionally, the trade-off between zero-day environmental compatibility and battery lifetime is identified, caused by the size of the pack. The effective energy density would decrease with the aging of the cells, leaving a significant inert mass and increasing fuel consumption. Optimal energy management strategies are suggested in light of this new information. Higher specific energy of the pack would mitigate this aspect, along with a reduction in fuel consumption and ${\rm{N}}{{\rm{O}}_{\rm{x}}}$ emissions. Indeed, the improvement of environmental compatibility was found to be nonlinear with a positive rate, suggesting high returns in investing in great improvements in energy density over a gradual increase. This result relates to the results of the statistical technological forecast presented in this study, which, without an increase in funding, predicts the availability of the specific energy required to match the fuel-only baseline in the 2040–2050 decade.

Using the syntactic priming paradigm, this study investigated abstract syntactic knowledge of Chinese transitive structures (i.e., subject-verb-object [SVO], BA, and BEI) in deaf children with cochlear implants (CIs). Specifically, we focused on the differences in the development of various syntactic structures (within CI children and compared with their typically hearing children) and the possible individual differences during this process. Results showed that both CI and hearing children exhibited structural priming for all syntactic structures (i.e., SVO, SbaOV structure [agent-patient ordering], and ObeiSV structure [patient-agent ordering]) after comprehending and repeating the prime sentence regardless of verb repetition. However, verb repetition induced an intense abstract priming effect in CI children but not hearing children, with the lexical boost effect more significant for SVO and BA structures. In addition, CI children’s working memory capability modulated the production of the BA structure but not SVO and BEI structures.

Oversight, scholars argue, allows Congress to control the executive agents it empowers to implement law. Yet the tools of oversight are rather limited and debate continues as to how much influence oversight provides. How well can members of Congress motivate bureaucratic performance? To measure the efficacy of oversight, we create a new dataset matching oversight efforts to a bureaucratic deficiency Congress has sought to reduce since the early 2000s: improperly made payments to contractors and clients. We estimate the effect of congressional hearings, one of the most important tools of congressional oversight, as well as correspondence, appropriation committee reports, statutes, and executive action. We find that hearings lead to subsequent declines in improper payments. The magnitude of the effect, however, is small relative to the scope of the problem, suggesting strong limits on the efficacy of oversight. Our findings imply that America’s elected officials struggle to effectively manage implementation of policy.

We prove a large deviation principle for the slow-fast rough differential equations (RDEs) under the controlled rough path (RP) framework. The driver RPs are lifted from the mixed fractional Brownian motion (FBM) with Hurst parameter $H\in (1/3,1/2)$. Our approach is based on the continuity of the solution mapping and the variational framework for mixed FBM. By utilizing the variational representation, our problem is transformed into a qualitative property of the controlled system. In particular, the fast RDE coincides with Itô stochastic differential equation (SDE) almost surely, which possesses a unique invariant probability measure with frozen slow component. We then demonstrate the weak convergence of the controlled slow component by averaging with respect to the invariant measure of the fast equation and exploiting the continuity of the solution mapping.

Leadership emergence is fraught with pervasive gender stereotypes, and women remain underrepresented in senior leadership roles, particularly in healthcare organisations. We apply ecological systems theory to explain how environmental factors enable or inhibit women’s leadership emergence in healthcare settings. We interviewed 17 senior female leaders in the Australian healthcare sector to explore how gender-related perceptions affected their leadership journeys. Five themes emerged that challenge existing narratives: men supported women’s advancement; women impeded other women’s progress; vulnerability was a leadership strength; ambitious women were ostracised; and women were ‘given’ leadership opportunities rather than actively pursuing them. By situating these findings within the ecological systems theory framework, we highlight the interplay of individual and contextual influences across ecosystem levels. Our study offers a novel perspective on gender stereotypes in leadership emergence, advancing ecological systems theory by extending it into a new field. We provide recommendations at individual, organisational, community, and societal levels to empower women leaders.

This paper considers the large N limit of Wilson loops for the two-dimensional Euclidean Yang–Mills measure on all orientable compact surfaces of genus larger or equal to $1$, with a structure group given by a classical compact matrix Lie group. Our main theorem shows the convergence of all Wilson loops in probability, given that it holds true on a restricted class of loops, obtained as a modification of geodesic paths. Combined with the result of [20], a corollary is the convergence of all Wilson loops on the torus. Unlike the sphere case, we show that the limiting object is remarkably expressed thanks to the master field on the plane defined in [3, 39], and we conjecture that this phenomenon is also valid for all surfaces of higher genus. We prove that this conjecture holds true whenever it does for the restricted class of loops of the main theorem. Our result on the torus justifies the introduction of an interpolation between free and classical convolution of probability measures, defined with the free unitary Brownian motion but differing from t-freeness of [5] that was defined in terms of the liberation process of Voiculescu [67]. In contrast to [20], our main tool is a fine use of Makeenko–Migdal equations, proving uniqueness of their solution under suitable assumptions, and generalising the arguments of [21, 33].

Returning from a four-month tour in America, the Romanian historian Nicolae Iorga (1871–1940) stopped for a few days in Switzerland, on his way home. On May 7, 1930, he gave a lecture in Bern on medieval peasants and their struggle for freedom in the 14th century. Peasants against feudal armies inspired memories from America. However, Iorga, who was at the time preoccupied with questions of world history and comparative research, did not simply associate the War of Independence with the victory of the Swiss “peasants” at Sempach against Duke Leopold III of Tyrol. He drew a parallel between the military success of the Eidgenossen of 1386 and the defeat inflicted 56 years earlier upon the king of Hungary, Charles I, by Romanian peasants. The battle, on the 600th anniversary of which Iorga delivered his lecture, was illustrated in the Hungarian Illuminated Chronicle. The Romanian historian was convinced that the illustrator had been an eyewitness or, at least, somebody informed by a participant. There is no mention of peasants in the text of the Chronicle, but on the basis of the last illuminations in the manuscript, Iorga thought he could recognize the dress of the Romanian peasants of his own time: the woolen hat (căciulă, a sort of Phrygian cap); the long, braided hair; the leather jacket doubled with wool; the leggings; and the leather sandals (opinci). The Romanians fought like peasants as well: they cut trees in the forest, which they then pushed over King Charles and his heavy cavalry. Iorga did not find this detail either in the text or in the illuminations of the Hungarian Chronicle. He got it from the Chronicle of the Prussian Land by Peter of Dusburg, although that source is not mentioned in the lecture.