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Abstract
Land–ocean interactions greatly impact the evolution of coastal life on earth. However, the ancient geological forces and genetic mechanisms that shaped evolutionary adaptations and allowed microorganisms to inhabit coastal brackish waters remain largely unexplored. In this study, we infer the evolutionary trajectory of the ubiquitous heterotrophic archaea Poseidoniales (Marine Group II archaea) presently occurring across global aquatic habitats. Our results show that their brackish subgroups had a single origination, dated to over 600 million years ago, through the inversion of the magnesium transport gene corA that conferred osmotic-stress tolerance. The subsequent loss and gain of corA were followed by genome-wide adjustment, characterized by a general two-step mode of selection in microbial speciation. The coastal family of Poseidoniales showed a rapid increase in the evolutionary rate during and in the aftermath of the Cryogenian Snowball Earth (∼700 million years ago), possibly in response to the enhanced phosphorus supply and the rise of algae. Our study highlights the close interplay between genetic changes and ecosystem evolution that boosted microbial diversification in the Neoproterozoic continental margins, where the Cambrian explosion of animals soon followed.

AbstractAlthough translation and commentary are often treated as distinct, separable activities in literary and intellectual history, the Persian tradition of Qur'an exegesis demonstrates that they are best understood in relation to each other. Introducing the concept of hyper-exegesis as a mode of interpretation that approximates translation, we examine the dialectical relationship between translation and commentary by focusing on how Persian exegetes have dealt with the so-called "disjointed letters" (ḥurūf muqaṭaʿāt). The disjointed letters inaugurate twenty-nine chapters (sūras) of the Qur'an. We show how six Persian translator-exegetes (the anonymous author of Tarjama-yi Tafsir-I Tabari, Isfarayini, Surabadi, Nasafi, Maybudi, and Razi) used commentary in response to their understanding of the Qur'an's inimitability. Persian translators' confrontation with the disjointed letters are presented here as a case study of the ways in which translatability and commentary overlap and enrich each other. As a contribution to translation studies and literary theory, this research reveals how untranslatability is situated at the core of the translational enterprise, and how commentary functions as a mode of translating the ineffable.

AbstractIn the mid-16th century, the Ottoman government sought to expand its tax revenue from Egypt through a controversial initiative to levy taxes on endowments (waqf). The controversy produced a diverse range of responses from Ottoman scholar-bureaucrats, such as Ebussuud Efendi, who supported the initiative; Egyptian scholars, including Ibn Nujaym and al-Ghayti, who opposed it; and the Ottoman governor, who worked to resolve it. Despite the opposing positions of the diverse actors, shariʿa served as the common medium for the articulation and negotiation of their opinions and helped produce a compromise that became foundational for the Ottoman tax regime in Egypt. In this episode, shariʿa constituted an instrument of governance. Such a role for shariʿa differs from its conception as an autonomous field of scholarly interpretation, or the understanding of it as an inclusive normative system encompassing rules emerging from both the interpretative activities of scholars and the definitive edicts and orders of rulers. Shariʿa did not constitute the endpoint of rulemaking; rather, it provided the shared language of terms and concepts through which different actors participated in the process of formulating rules.

AbstractIn many major cities, significant financial and physical capital has been spent constructing shopping centers. The high profitability of commercial construction has led many developers to build large luxury shopping malls. Adding amenities, such as cinemas, cafes, restaurants, food courts, amusement parks, galleries, and exhibitions, to these malls has increased their attractiveness. The COVID‐19 pandemic—which began in China in December 2019 before spreading worldwide—affected many areas of life, including people's shopping habits, especially in metropolitan areas. At the start of the pandemic, people were exhorted to maintain a social distance of 1.5 meters and avoid crowded environments as much as ppossible. These health guidelines resulted in the relatively long closure of shopping malls in cities. This study aims to investigate changes to people's shopping habits. It focuses on malls in Tehran and how the COVID‐19 pandemic impacted different groups of people's habits, as a way of understanding future use and development of urban areas. The required data were collected via a survey conducted in 2021 wherein 1,071 responses from different regions in Tehran were gathered and analyzed using descriptive analysis methods.

This study examines the social construction of masculinity within the Israeli society, focusing on the associations between masculine identity, prior military service, and current involvement in long-distance running. A 2-year ethnographic research design was utilized, involving two running groups, which incorporated participant observation, semi-structured interviews, and running websites. The findings shed light on the significance of military service experience and the utilization of military discourse as strategies employed by runners to navigate the challenges of long-distance running and to reinforce their masculine identity. Through an analysis of the runners' military discourse and behavior, it becomes evident that the integration of women into traditionally masculine domains of intense physical activity poses a threat to masculine dominance, eliciting various responses from men, such as intensified sports training and the use of sexist and aggressive language. These coping mechanisms contribute to the perpetuation of male dominance within the long-distance running sphere while simultaneously providing male runners with a pseudo-corrective experience associated with their personal history of non-combat military involvement.

COVID-19 triggered significant emotions and imagination, if not panic, about health and life worldwide as people's lives were suddenly uncertain. This scenario led some to assess their life circumstances as hopeless, while others continued to see hope on the horizon despite a dreadful disease, consequent lockdowns and especially social distancing. This paper explores African countries' experiences of hope and hopelessness at the onset of the pandemic from the perspective of 12 PhD students in Hong Kong. The students narrated that despite being hit moderately, their countries sat far behind richer ones in terms of the capacity to handle the epidemic effectively – which somewhat signalled the hopelessness students felt and imagined for such countries. However, their narrations also showed that hope was consequential in people's everyday responses to the socioeconomic effects of the virus. Their wishes, at the time, were that a vaccine would soon be found and extended to Africa, that Africans would realise the seriousness of the pandemic, and that they could be valuable sources of information and resources to their communities of upbringing.

Technological sovereignty has emerged as a prominent topic, with states positioning themselves to ensure security and economic competitiveness. However, German economic policy rarely involved strategic government interventions and industrial policies due to its deep-rooted adherence to ordoliberalism. In response to the influence of foreign big tech companies and growing economic competition from China, the German state is now formulating a strategic techno-industrial policy agenda, advocating interventions for the preservation of sovereignty. This article analyses the proposed agenda using an inductive process-tracing approach (Trampusch and Palier, 2016) and document analysis (Bowen, 2009) of strategy papers, policy documents and selected media reports. Drawing on the concepts of structural power (Strange, 2004 [1988]) and economic statecraft (Weiss and Thurbon, 2021), we argue that Germany's pursuit of technological sovereignty represents a distinctive form of (geo-)economically motivated statecraft, primarily directed at enhancing commercial competitiveness rather than prioritising security. However, we identify limitations to this approach where the regulatory regime and institutional legacy, both at the national and EU levels, impede strategic government interventions in the economy, thus constraining the pursuit of technological sovereignty.

AbstractThe advent of the COVID‐19 pandemic accelerated the need to conduct synchronous online instruction in which students and faculty were distributed geographically but aggregated digitally onto a single screen on a computer. This approach will likely persist into the future. Thus, a better understanding of how engagement approaches can be adapted to the synchronous online teaching environment is critical for future success. This research presents an experiment‐based investigation into the effectiveness of two often‐debated engagement approaches, namely, the camera‐on and the vote/chat approaches in a synchronous online learning environment. We found that using individual engagement methods, such as requiring cameras to be on or using the vote and chat functions to elicit student responses, improves learning outcomes. Surprisingly, the combined use of these methods hinders student learning, and they perform no better than the control group where no specific engagement methods were required. We posit that the reason for this result is that too much engagement increases total cognitive load to a point where it is detrimental to learning.

This article presents the results of content categorisation and measurement of the effects of YouTube videos released publicly by commercial entities during the pandemic. The videos in question contain inspirational content concerning prosocial behaviour in response to COVID-19 and are released through the big companies' official YouTube accounts. In the first study, the authors analysed the content of videos from various companies. While the videos encompassed different presentations of actions taken and messages expressing optimism, those that conveyed empathetic communication and human values were predominantly featured. We categorised the findings into action-oriented, human values–oriented and empathic-oriented content for the selection of videos in the subsequent study. In the subsequent experimental study, aimed at understanding the effects, we asked participants to watch and evaluate the videos selected from the initial study. The results demonstrated that empathic-oriented content had the highest impact on individuals, leading to increases in five measures of inspiration: aspiring to become a better person, engaging in acts of kindness towards others, seeking what truly matters in life, striving to live a more fulfilling life and aligning personal goals.

Abstract
The ability to monitor the response of metabolic enzymes to drug exposure in individuals is highly appealing and critical to personalized medicine. Although pharmacogenomics assesses genotypic differences, it does not report changes in metabolic enzyme activities due to environmental factors such as drug interactions. Here, we report a quantitative proteomics strategy to monitor drug metabolic pathways by profiling metabolic enzymes in circulating extracellular vesicles (EVs) upon drug exposure. Mass spectrometry (MS)-based measurement revealed that changes in metabolic enzyme abundance in EVs paralleled those in hepatic cells isolated from liver tissue. Coupling with multiplexed isotopic labeling, we temporally quantified 34 proteins involved in drug absorption, distribution, metabolism, and excretion (ADME) pathways. Out of 44 known ADME proteins in plasma EVs, previously annotated mouse cytochrome P450 3A11 (Cyp3a11), homolog to human CYP3A4, and uridine 5'-diphospho (UDP) glucuronosyltransferase 2A3 (Ugt2a3), increased upon daily rifampicin dosage. Dasatinib, a tyrosine kinase inhibitor to treat leukemia, also elevated Cyp3a11 levels in plasma EVs, but to a lesser extent. Altogether, this study demonstrates that measuring drug enzymes in circulating EVs as an effective surrogate is highly feasible and may transform today's drug discovery and development for personalized medicine.

Drawing on ethnic boundary‐making literature, this study investigates how Korean newspapers and readers adjusted their ethnic boundaries towards Asian migrants in response to the evolving phases of the COVID‐19 pandemic. We analyzed the extent and nature of coverage in five major newspapers on anti‐Asian racism in the US published between January 1 and May 24, 2020, along with associated reader comments. During the maintenance phase, marked by persistent concerns about the resurgence of infections, we observed the highest number of articles and the most significant disparities between the media's portrayal and reader reactions. Contrary to the newspapers, readers perceived the racist threat faced by Asian migrants differently depending on the pandemic circumstances, displaying a more flexible boundary‐making. Despite the general description of Asian diasporas as "innocent comrades" in newspapers, readers viewed the Chinese and Korean diasporas as "blameworthy foreigners," regarding them as potential threats to the nation. We discuss factors and conditions that might have influenced the formation of transborder ethnic boundaries among Korean newspapers and the public.

The Stimulus-Organism-Response (SOR) theory, introduced by Mehrabian and Russell in 1974, has become a dominant theoretical model in the service industry to determine consumer behaviour. However, systematic reviews and meta-analyses of the theory are rare, and most research produces only empirical data. This research paper aims to compile and analyse research articles that have applied the SOR theory within the healthcare sector over the past five years to measure the model's effect and relevancy. The paper establishes a consistent method of compiling past papers from online databases, and only research papers cited under the SOR theory in the healthcare sector are analysed. The study finds that the SOR model is commonly used alongside other theories, such as Flow Theory and Theory of Reasoned Actions, and can be deemed generalizable to the service industry regardless of the industry. However, the paper has limitations, such as the overgeneralization of the collection of SOR papers without a specific scope, and future research could improve the results by carrying out a meta-analysis to further determine the overall model's reliability.

AbstractIn the popular and academic literature on the problems of the so-called attention economy, the cost of attention grabbing, sustaining, and immersing digital medias has been addressed as if it touched all people equally. In this paper I ask whether everyone has the same resources to respond to the recent changes in their stimulus environments caused by the attention economy. I argue that there are not only differences but disparities between people in their responses to the recent, significant increase in the degree and persuasiveness of digital distraction. I point toward individual variance in an agent's top-down and bottom-up attention regulation, and to further inequality-exacerbating variance in active participation on the internet and in regulating reward-seeking behaviors on the internet. Individual differences in these areas amount to disparities because they have been found to be connected to socioeconomic background factors. I argue that disparities in responding to digital distraction threaten fair equality of opportunity when it comes to digital distraction in the classroom and that they may lead to an unequal contribution of achievements that require complex cognition by people from lower socioeconomic backgrounds.

In 2021, the South African Monitoring and Evaluation Association facilitated an evaluation hackathon that engaged diverse stakeholders in co-creation processes to develop practical solutions to address complex problems facing the monitoring and evaluation sector. The event catalysed broad-based ownership and enabled the South African Monitoring and Evaluation Association to coordinate the creative energy, commitment and resources of its members, government and other partners to achieve outcomes that would not be possible to achieve otherwise. The article analyses the co-creation approach adopted for the hackathon across four phases, namely initiation, process design/planning, co-design and development and application/follow-up. A retrospective analysis of the process and results identified eight key elements that enabled or impeded the successful completion of hackathon outputs and their conversion into useful products. These elements are facilitative leadership, purposive stakeholder selection, a well-delimited task, preparation, process facilitation, a valued product, voluntary contributions and further capacity. The lessons learnt provide useful insight for future efforts to generate localised, contextualised responses to evaluation problems.

In this article, I develop a critique of the forms of differential vulnerability produced by biopolitical technologies of power which became particularly salient during the COVID-19 pandemic. First, I address some conceptual and methodological questions linked to Foucault's work on biopolitics, and I argue that one of his most promising insights is the claim that biopolitics necessarily entails a politics of differential vulnerability. I then develop an immanent critique of this politics of differential vulnerability and show that it should be construed as a form of injustice. Finally, I argue that some of the most fundamental human rights can be conceived as 'biopolitical rights', that is, as rights whose normativity stems from the biopolitical mechanisms of power that manage our biological lives. I conclude by suggesting that a critical theory of biopolitical rights constitutes an effective strategic response to the current injustices created – before, during and after the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic – by the biopolitical production of the differential exposure of citizens to health, social and environmental risks.