New College

Peru had one of the highest COVID-19 mortality rates globally, with the largest region, Loreto, facing unique public health challenges. This survey investigated the changes in health care access, health beliefs, and the COVID-19 behavioral responses in these communities to improve pandemic resilience. The survey was conducted as part of routine data collection from 100 adults attending Project Amazonas mobile health clinics in April 2022 in seven villages along the Ampiyacu River in Loreto. Data on demographics, health care access, public health beliefs, and societal behavioral responses to COVID-19 were analyzed and compared with previous surveys from 1999 and 2012. Fifty-four percent of the respondents reported difficulty accessing medical care, primarily due to distance. Lifetime doctor consultations increased from those recorded in 2012 and 97% of those surveyed had received two doses of the COVID-19 vaccine. The majority of participants used both traditional and modern medicine, with 47% consulting a doctor and 7% visiting a shaman for COVID-19. This survey shows high vaccine uptake and adherence to preventive measures, such as mask-wearing and social distancing, with some variation by gender. However, challenges in health care access and the use of ineffective treatments suggest there are areas to improve pandemic resilience in these communities. Local clinic expansion and training of village health promoters using new digital resources could help with this effort.

Abstract Using a surface force balance, we measure the force between two crossed-cylinder electrodes for different electrolyte systems and different geometrical configurations under the influence of an AC field. When an AC field is applied to concentrated mixtures of an ionic liquid (IL) in a polar solvent, a force arises that is at least an order of magnitude larger and slower to reach steady state than the static response of the electrolyte. We demonstrate that this AC field effect persists in concentrated electrolytes beyond what has already been observed in pure ILs or aqueous electrolytes. Furthermore, we show that the magnitude of the electric field force response is dependent on the electrode radius of curvature. In experiments with pure ILs, a stronger force magnitude is observed for a smaller radius of curvature, implying that these interactions can be fine-tuned through geometrical design. These observations should guide the application of AC electric fields for the control of colloids and the design of passive control mechanisms in microfluidics and nanotribology.

Microservice architectures amplify the volume and complexity of security vulnerabilities, making it increasingly difficult for security and SRE teams to decide which services to patch, when to patch them, and how to coordinate patches under strict cost and availability constraints. Traditional prioritization schemes based on CVSS scores or static business criticality heuristics ignore inter-service dependencies, deployment topologies, and operational costs such as downtime, rollback risk, and engineering effort. In this paper, we propose M-VP2a microservice-oriented vulnerability patch planning framework that formulates patch scheduling as a cost-aware multi-agent reinforcement learning (MARL) problem. Each microservice is modeled as an autonomous agent that selects patching actions over time (e.g. patch now, defer, or batch with other changes), while a joint reward function balances security risk reduction, patching and downtime cost, and compliance with service-level objectives. The environment captures call-graph dependencies, cascading failure modes, and temporal exploit likelihood, enabling agents to learn coordination strategies that avoid risky simultaneous updates on tightly coupled services. We design a hierarchical actor–critic architecture with centralized training and decentralized execution, augmented with a risk-aware reward shaping mechanism to penalize unsafe patch combinations and SLA violations. Extensive simulation experiments on synthetic and real-world–inspired microservice topologies show that M-VP2 reduces expected breach risk and aggregate patching cost by up to double-digit percentages compared with CVSS-based heuristics, greedy risk–cost ranking, and single-agent RL baselines, while producing patch plans that are more stable, interpretable, and aligned with operational constraints.

Abstract “Divine action must be strictly ‘coincident’ with uninterrupted finite action”, is the theorem, inspired by reading Austin Farrer, that dominates Rowan Williams’ Christ the Heart of Creation. It asserts the unbroken integrity of creaturely action in the presence of divine action. I shall defend this theorem, while at the same time reading Austin Farrer in a different sense, questioning the role Williams assigns to it, as “crystallising the general language of metaphysics” and linking creation and Christology. Williams’s exposition of the theorem is guided by the principle that God cannot be “another item” in any list. But excessive reliance on this negative principle creates a problem for categories that will embrace divine and human agency relationally, especially the category of “person”, normally congenial to Williams. I argue that the coincidence‐theorem must be located within the doctrine of providence, which speaks of the conformity of divine action to the limits of creaturely experience, and that “coincidence” must be understood as “cooperative grace”.

Background: The advances in Modern medicine the development of renal calculi continues to be a source of concern for mankind, as there is no effective treatment for kidneys stones. Objective: The main objective of the study is to evaluate the anti-urolithiasis property of ethanolic extract of Luffa echinata fruit by invitro and in vivo methods in rats. Methodology: In male rats the renal calculi was caused by 0.75% ethylene glycol., the effect of ethanolic extract of Luffa echinata (ELE) was studied. ELE was given everyday orally at a dose of 50 and 100mg/kg respectively for 28 days to examine the activity against ethylene glycol, with cystone (750mg/kg) as a reference standard. urinary volume, Urinary pH, and Urinary ionic component such as Calcium, Phosphorous, Uric acid, and Magnesium. Biomarkers-BUN, Creatinine, and Uric acid, Concentration of Oxalate crystals and Citrate levels were estimated. Histopathological examinations were studied. Results: The ethylene glycol induction leads to urolithiasis by forming metabolites in liver and forming oxalate crystals as end product combining with calcium crystals leading to calcium oxalate crystals causing calcium hypercrystaluria and inflammation of loop of Henle, Luffa echinata plant extract blocks formation of oxalate crystals in liver, antioxidant and anti-inflammatory properties obtained in invitro and in vivo studied performed on rats, further confirmation histopathological findings assessed and concluded that ELE plant extract has antiurolithiatic properties.

This research offers a novel AI solution for detecting data consistency checking and schema evolution problems in SQL to migrations in the cloud. The solution utilizes machine learning models to execute data integrity and schema change discovery in migrations. The significant findings report that the proposed model has a 17–22% better discovery than traditional means and that data consistency defects by up to 9%. The model is also effective in reducing migration time and, thus, efficient for large migrations. These findings illustrate the application of AI-powered solutions in optimizing migration efficiency and trustworthiness to enable businesses to migrate legacy SQL databases to the cloud. However, the model’s need for quality tagged data sets and scalability in accommodating large and diverse data sets is to be examined. Future research can focus on deep learning approaches, multi-cloud support, and real-world application testing to enable flexibility and performance. This research provides a foundation for developing cloud database migration technology to achieve more efficient and error-free migrations.

Coaching is increasingly used to benefit doctors' professional development. This scoping review summarises the current state of the evidence relating to workplace leadership coaching for qualified doctors. A rapid scoping review was conducted, informed by Joanna Briggs' Institute guidelines, with protocol designed a priori. Medline, Embase and APA PsycInfo were searched for relevant articles. Search results were screened for inclusion in duplicate. Data were synthesised descriptively and thematically, mapping the existing research and identifying knowledge gaps. A total of 5307 articles were screened, and 94 met the inclusion criteria. 15 (16%) articles were classified under 'leadership training needs assessments', 15 (16%) under 'evaluations of leadership development interventions with coaching', 18 (19%) under 'evaluations of leadership coaching interventions', 1 (1%) specifically evaluated a team leader coaching training programme, 37 (40%) were commentaries, 1 (1%) was a research protocol and 7 (7%) were reviews.The studies were positive about the role of coaching in medical leadership development and as a skill for doctors to develop. The use of the term 'coaching' was often conflated with the term 'mentoring'. Most intervention articles mentioned coaches' qualifications or training. Only three used coaches with internationally recognised accreditation qualifications, and the majority used 'faculty coaches'. Most of the coaching components of leadership interventions, reviews and commentaries included in our review were considered successful. Coaching appears to be increasingly requested as an intervention for leadership development and identified as a training need for medical leaders.

ABSTRACT In this study, we attempt to examine how transparency in the financial sector (financial sector transparency or FST) moderates the increasing effect of fiscal expenditure on government debts using 23 African economies over a 16‐year period [Correction made on 28 November 2025, after first online publication: ‘or FST’ was added to the parentheses in this sentence.]. The study employs two‐step dynamic GMM panel models with additional controls for year and country effects. The results show that (i) FST and fiscal expenditure both increase government debts, but the combined effect of these two offers a synergetic‐reducing effect on government debts, (ii) economies with transparent financial sector systems are able to effectively suppress the increasing effect of fiscal expenditure on government debts, and (iii) the increasing effect of expenditure is evident in both transparent and opaque financial sector economies, though the increasing effect of fiscal expenditure is lower in transparent financial sector systems in Africa. These results highlight the important but unexplored government debt‐reducing effect of FST through fiscal expenditure, implying that policymakers can rely on FST to tame the increasing effect of fiscal expenditure on government debts while enacting laws and policies to expand the depth and coverage of FST to harness the government debt‐reducing effect of FST through fiscal expenditure. Related Articles Adegboye, Alex, Kofo Adegboye, Uwalomwa Uwuigbe, Stephen Ojeka, and Eyitemi Fasanu. 2023. “Taxation, Democracy, and Inequality in Sub‐Saharan Africa: Relevant Linkages for Sustainable Development Goals.” Politics & Policy 51(4): 696–722. https://doi.org/10.1111/polp.12547 . Asongu, Simplice, and Nicholas M. Odhiambo. 2023. “The Effect of Inequality on Poverty and Severity of Poverty in Sub‐Saharan Africa: The Role of Financial Development Institutions.” Politics & Policy 51(5): 898–918. https://doi.org/10.1111/polp.12558 . Byaro, Mwoya, Nicholaus Ngowi, and Anicet Rwezaula. 2024. “Do higher government spending, financial development, and trade reduce income inequality in low‐income countries? A Bayesian perspective.” Politics & Policy 52(3): 500‐519. https://doi.org/10.1111/polp.12600 .

Knowledge of the potential degradation products of active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) is of major interest for the development and approval of new drugs. Therefore, methodologies for the time-efficient and precise prediction of degradation products and pathways are of great importance. Traditional degradation assessments typically involve solution-based forced degradations under acidic, basic, thermal, or photolytic conditions. However, such conditions often fail to accurately replicate degradation pathways relevant to solid-state formulations. A promising addition to the established solvent-based approaches are forced degradation processes in the solid-state using mechanochemistry. The newly developed methodologies enable a time-efficient and accurate simulation of degradation pathways under mild reaction conditions in the solid-state. Herein, the general principles of forced mechanochemical degradations will be discussed on the basis of published case studies involving marketed drugs.