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Background Respectful maternity care (RMC) is essential to safe, dignified childbirth, yet women with disabilities in Nepal face unique barriers in accessing such care. Limited evidence exists on their experiences in relation to the White Ribbon Alliance’s RMC Charter. Objective To explore the lived experiences of women with disabilities regarding respectful maternity care in the semi-urban outskirts of Kathmandu, Nepal, and to identify priorities for improving maternity care. Methods A phenomenological study design was employed between April and May 2023. Data collection included 12 in-depth interviews with women with disabilities, 7 with healthcare providers, and 2 focus group discussions with 11 Female Community Health Volunteers. Interviews were audio-recorded, transcribed, translated into English, and thematically analyzed, guided by the RMC Charter. Results Women’s experiences varied widely. Negative accounts included disrespect, poor communication, compromised privacy, and structural barriers such as overcrowded facilities and lack of disability-friendly infrastructure. Economic constraints and transport challenges further limited timely access to care. Some providers perceived women with disabilities as having limited autonomy, though most women reported making their own healthcare decisions. Positive experiences included respectful communication, practical support, and personal assistance from providers. Conclusion Women with disabilities in the Kathmandu outskirts encounter disability-specific barriers to respectful maternity care, including provider attitudes, inadequate communication, and inaccessible facilities. We recommend integrating disability-focused RMC training into health professional curricula, investing in disability-friendly infrastructure, and adopting policies that safeguard privacy, dignity, and autonomy.

While most scholars argue that reducing fuel subsidies should be a policy priority, they also note that once subsidies are in place, many countries, including Indonesia, find it hard to reduce them. This paper examines the complexity of Indonesia’s fuel subsidy reforms from 1998 to 2019, investigating key actors and narratives that shave have their trajectory. It undertakes discourse analysis of purposively sampled news articles from two credible media outlets, reflecting the central role of media as an arena for policy debates in the Global South. It finds that Indonesia has been consistently locked in the ups and downs of fuel subsidy reforms, which are rife with economic and political tensions. This paper affirms that fuel subsidy reform in Indonesia, and elsewhere, is ultimately a complex political, not just technical, endeavour. Reform narratives of economic rationality and technical feasibility must be understood and navigated alongside social and religious beliefs, and political contestation. To this end, reform efforts will likely only succeed and be sustained if they are both embedded within broader social contracts that respect public and political sensitivities and also confront the long-term fiscal and environmental costs of inaction. Through focussing on discourse, this study offers a valuable political economy perspective on fuel subsidy reforms and insight for both scholars and policymakers on highly consequential faming discourses and conflicts.

Cortical circuits can flexibly change with experience and learning, but the effects on specific cell types, including distinct inhibitory types, are not well understood. Here we investigated how excitatory and VIP inhibitory cells in layer 2/3 of mouse visual cortex were impacted by visual experience in the context of a behavioral task. Mice learned a visual change detection task with a set of eight natural scene images. Subsequently, during 2-photon imaging experiments, mice performed the task with these familiar images and three sets of novel images. Strikingly, the temporal dynamics of VIP activity differed markedly between novel and familiar images: VIP cells were stimulus-driven by novel images but were suppressed by familiar stimuli and showed ramping activity when expected stimuli were omitted from a temporally predictable sequence. This prominent change in VIP activity suggests that these cells may adopt different modes of processing under novel versus familiar conditions.

The maintenance of short-term memories is critical for survival in a dynamically changing world. Previous studies suggest that this memory can be stored in the form of persistent neural activity or using a synaptic mechanism, such as with short-term plasticity. Here, we compare the predictions of these two mechanisms to neural and behavioral measurements in a visual change detection task. Mice were trained to respond to changes in a repeated sequence of natural images while neural activity was recorded using two-photon calcium imaging. We also trained two types of artificial neural networks on the same change detection task as the mice. Following fixed pre-processing using a pretrained convolutional neural network, either a recurrent neural network (RNN) or a feedforward neural network with short-term synaptic depression (STPNet) was trained to the same level of performance as the mice. While both networks are able to learn the task, the STPNet model contains units whose activity are more similar to the in vivo data and produces errors which are more similar to the mice. When images are omitted, an unexpected perturbation which was absent during training, mice often do not respond to the omission but are more likely to respond to the subsequent image. Unlike the RNN model, STPNet produces a similar pattern of behavior. These results suggest that simple neural adaptation mechanisms may serve as an important bottom-up memory signal in this task, which can be used by downstream areas in the decision-making process.

Visual cortex is organized into discrete sub-regions or areas that are arranged into a hierarchy and serves different functions in the processing of visual information. In retinotopic maps of mouse cortex, there appear to be substantial mouse-to-mouse differences in visual area location, size and shape. Here we quantify the biological variation in the size, shape and locations of 11 visual areas in the mouse, after separating biological variation and measurement noise. We find that there is biological variation in the locations and sizes of visual areas.

Conflict, postconflict settings, and other risky research sites are important with wide-ranging policy implications. Microlevel, field-based research lends critical insights to how conflicts work and the mechanisms behind macrolevel correlations that underpin quantitative political science. This article identifies how the risks associated with conflict and postconflict contexts influence researchers’ choices by theorizing the existence of distinct adaptive strategies. Specifically, researchers facing elevated risk generally manage it through three main strategies: outsourcing risk, avoiding risk, and internalizing risk. We argue that these strategies systematically shape and circumscribe outputs. We conclude by discussing how the relationship between risky fieldwork and what we know about conflict is poorly acknowledged. Thinking about how we manage risk should play a larger role in both our preparation for and interpretation of research, particularly in conflict and postconflict contexts.

Over the last decade, the bottom-of-the-pyramid (BoP) approach has gained prominence as a tool of \"inclusive\" capitalism in sub-Saharan Africa. This approach reframes development as a seamless outcome of core business activities, one that can ameliorate poverty by bringing much-needed products and services to the poor and generating employment opportunities for informal and subsistence workers as \"micro-entrepreneurs.\" Yet while transnational capital has set its sights on Africa's \"underserved\" yet potentially buoyant markets, BoP initiatives do more than seize upon the entrepreneurial talent and aspirations of Africa's informal economies. This article argues, rather, that these initiatives create BoP economies through a set of market technologies, practices, and discourses that render the spaces and actors at the bottom of the pyramid knowable, calculable, and predictable to global business. The article describes how these technologies extend new forms of market governance over the informal poor, reconfiguring their habits, social practices, and economic strategies under the banner of poverty reduction. Au cours des dix dernières années, une approche dite \"par le bas\" a gagné de l'importance comme outil dans l'expansion d'un capitalisme \"inclusif\" en Afrique sub-saharienne. Cette approche recadre la notion de développement comme un aboutissement naturel d'activités commerciales essentielles, pouvant améliorer le niveau de pauvreté en apportant des produits et des services de nécessité aux gens dans le besoin et en employant des ouvriers du secteur informel et de subsistance comme \"micro-entrepreneurs.\" Cependant, alors que la capitale transnationale s'intéresse aux marchés \"sous-exploités\" quoique prometteurs, les initiatives du Bas de la Pyramide (BOP) font plus que profiter des talents entrepreneuriaux et des aspirations des économies informelles africaines. Cet article soutient que bien au contraire, ces initiatives créent les économies BOP à travers un certain nombre de technologies de vente, de pratiques établies, et de discours qui permettent de connaître les espaces et les acteurs du BOP, de les quantifier et de les prédire pour les besoins du marché mondial. Cet article décrit comment ces technologies, pour réduire la pauvreté, mettent de nouvelles formes de gouvernance du marché à la portée des plus démunis, faisant ainsi évoluer leurs habitudes, leurs configurations sociales et leurs stratégies économiques.

This article highlights the contribution of randomized, quantitative sampling techniques to answering qualitative questions posed by the study. In short it asks: what qualitative insights do we derive from quantitative sampling processes? Rather than simply being a means to an end, I argue the sampling process itself generated data. More specifically, seeking out more than 220 geographically dispersed individuals, selected though a randomized cluster sample, resulted in the identification of relationship patterns, highlighted extant resistance-era hierarchies and patronage networks, as well as necessitated deeper, critical engagement with the sampling framework. While this discussion is focused on the study of former resistance members in Timor-Leste, these methodological insights are broadly relevant to researchers using mixed methods to study former combatants or other networked social movements.

The anatomical and functional architecture of the human brain is mainly determined by prenatal transcriptional processes. We describe an anatomically comprehensive atlas of the mid-gestational human brain, including de novo reference atlases, in situ hybridization, ultra-high-resolution magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and microarray analysis on highly discrete laser-microdissected brain regions. In developing cerebral cortex, transcriptional differences are found between different proliferative and post-mitotic layers, wherein laminar signatures reflect cellular composition and developmental processes. Cytoarchitectural differences between human and mouse have molecular correlates, including species differences in gene expression in subplate, although surprisingly we find minimal differences between the inner and outer subventricular zones even though the outer zone is expanded in humans. Both germinal and post-mitotic cortical layers exhibit fronto-temporal gradients, with particular enrichment in the frontal lobe. Finally, many neurodevelopmental disorder and human-evolution-related genes show patterned expression, potentially underlying unique features of human cortical formation. These data provide a rich, freely-accessible resource for understanding human brain development. A spatially resolved transcriptional atlas of the mid-gestational developing human brain has been created using laser-capture microdissection and microarray technology, providing a comprehensive reference resource which also enables new hypotheses about the nature of human brain evolution and the origins of neurodevelopmental disorders. New whole-brain mapping resources With President Barack Obama's BRAIN (Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies) initiative now entering year two, this issue of Nature presents two landmark papers that mobilize 'big science' resources to the cause. Hongkui Zeng and colleagues present the first brain-wide, mesoscale connectome for a mammalian species — the laboratory mouse — based on cell-type-specific tracing of axonal projections. The wiring diagram of a complete nervous system has long been available for a small roundworm, but neuronal connectivity data for larger animals has been patchy until now. The new three-dimensional Allen Mouse Brain Connectivity Atlas is a whole-brain connectivity matrix that will provide insights into how brain regions communicate. Much of the data generated in this project will be of relevance to investigations of neural networks in humans and should help to further our understanding of human brain connectivity and its involvement in brain disorders. In a separate report Ed Lein and colleagues present a transcriptional atlas of the mid-gestational human brain at high spatial resolution, based on laser microdissection and DNA microarray technology. The structure and function of the human brain is largely determined by prenatal transcriptional processes that initiate gene expression, but our understanding of the developing brain has been limited. The new data set reveals transcriptional signatures for developmental processes associated with the massive expansion of neocortex during human evolution, and suggests new cortical germinal zones or postmitotic neurons as sites of dynamic expression for many genes associated with neurological or psychiatric disorders.

There has been increasing practical and scholarly interest in the engagement of universities with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). However, there has been limited examination of international university collaborations focusing on the SDGs and how they become embedded within universities. Addressing this need, this article explores the experiences of three members of the Reach Alliance a consortium of eight higher education institutions from around the globe. Reach supports students and faculty mentors to study how critical interventions can be made accessible to those who are the hardest to reach. This work aligns with SDG 4 (Quality Education), as well as SDG 17 (Partnership for the Goals) and the Goal’s second universal value of leave no one behind. This commitment to connecting education and societal engagement resonates with Goddard et al.’s work on the civic university as both “globally competitive and locally engaged” (2012: 43). This article focuses on University College London (UK), Ashesi University (Ghana), and Tecnológico de Monterrey (Mexico), selected for their diverse structures and geographies. For each case, we examine how the Reach Alliance initiative has been institutionally embedded, as well as the role of local and global partnerships in making the case for supporting Reach. We find that Reach’s organisation as an international network has encouraged its adoption by host institutions. The initiative’s emphasis on both local concerns as well as the global goal and networks has also resonated with host institutions. This article will be of interest to those working in sustainability and higher education when considering strategies for introducing or increasing SDG-focussed research and teaching.