For a p-permutation equivalence between two block algebras of finite groups, we introduce new square diagrams that link the p-permutation equivalence via the Brauer construction to local equivalences between stabilizers of corresponding Brauer pairs. These diagrams can be viewed as lifts of the square diagrams in the definition of isotypies. The proof of the commutativity requires new technical tools, namely a formula for how taking fixed points commutes with extended tensor products of finite sets with group actions and how the Brauer construction commutes with taking extended tensor products of p-permutation modules. These fundamental formulas, generalizing earlier results by Boltje-Danz and by Boltje-Perepelitsky, should be of independent interest.
Research Findings: Executive Function (EF) skills undergo rapid development in early childhood and play a crucial role in academic success. This research investigated levels of children's EF across two samples of children from Iran (Mage = 5.80 years; N = 291, 39% girls) and the United States (Mage = 6.15 years; N = 304, 49% girls). It also examined the concurrent associations between EF skills and children's age, gender, and parental education and explored the relation between EF skills and early academic performance in both samples. Results indicated that Iranian children exhibited significantly lower EF levels than their U.S. counterparts. Older children demonstrated higher EF skills than younger children in the Iranian sample, but there was no significant association between age and EF in the U.S. sample. There were no gender differences in EF performance in either sample. Maternal education, but not paternal education, was significantly correlated with children's EF in both Iran and the U.S. Furthermore, children with higher EF showed better academic skills, with a stronger association between EF and math across both samples. Practice or Policy: The results provide valuable insights into universal and culturally specific aspects of EF development and its links to individual factors and academic performance.
This study examined the effectiveness and implementation of a school-based humane education program designed to promote socio-emotional and ecological competencies among elementary school students in China. A 12-lesson curriculum integrating human, environmental, and animal themes was developed through a three-phase process and delivered by in-service teachers. Quantitative data were collected from 378 students using pre- and post-intervention surveys that assessed environmental and animal knowledge, connectedness with nature and animals, environmental attitudes, empathy, perceived social support, and well-being. Qualitative data were obtained through open-ended questionnaires completed by 16 teachers. Results showed that students in the intervention group demonstrated significantly greater improvements across all variables than the control group. Teachers reported noticeable developments in students' pro-environmental and prosocial behaviors. Together, the findings suggest that humane education can effectively foster socio-emotional and ecological competencies. The study contributes theoretical insights into how humane education can be integrated within environmental and sustainability education.
Grounding the physical materialities of the 'natural' environment in social relations of power and lived identities has become vital in geographic scholarship. Using a Critical Physical Geography lens, this paper demonstrates how the physical materialities of soil fertility are filtered through the politics of water and gender in two irrigation valleys in semiarid Ghana. Through laboratory analysis of soil samples, in-depth interviews and focus group discussions, we make two key contributions to Critical Physical Geography scholarship. First, we show how water and gender politics shape the spatial pattern of soil chemical properties along irrigation canals. Second, by examining soil fertility within broader socio-biochemical processes, we contest sanitised views of nature and draw attention to the connections between the physiographic and sociographic paradigms in geography. Overall, we argue that critical physical geography scholarship could be further enriched by attending more seriously to the gendered politics of resource access and control.
The rapid growth of artificial intelligence (AI) reflects its widespread adoption across various industries and occupations. Yet, much of the discourse still conceptualizes AI narrowly as a property of computational machinery. Within marketing and service scholarship, such mechanistic framings obscure the relational and systemic dimensions of intelligence that become salient in AI-enabled service interactions. Drawing on service-dominant (S-D) logic, this paper reconceptualizes intelligence as an emergent property of adaptive, self-organizing service ecosystems, foregrounding the systemic processes and relational configurations through which actors and their capacities take form. As intelligent technologies become increasingly entangled in service exchange, they render more visible and consequential the ongoing interactions through which human and non-human actors are co-constituted, underscoring the need for a clearer relational-ontological grounding of S-D logic. We conceptualize adaptation and intelligence as a generative duality: adaptation captures the adjustments enacted within a service ecosystem, whereas intelligence denotes the systemic capacity enabling those adjustments through feedback, learning, and institutional co-evolution. This perspective strengthens S-D logic's relational foundations by showing that AI exemplifies-rather than disrupts-the emergent, relational processes through which service ecosystems coordinate, evolve, and create value.
