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The narrative of The Americans weaves together a spy thriller and a family drama, though it drives home the inseparability of the political and the personal through the lives of the central characters, Philip and Elizabeth, a couple whose marriage is a cover for their work as Soviet spies. This chapter provides a queer reading of their marriage, drawing from the real history of the Cold War politics of sexuality that associated American values with the hetero- and gender normative, white, and middle-class nuclear family. In contrast, the Soviet Union was understood to have disrupted this natural order by installing the state as an overbearing patriarch. Philip and Elizabeth’s fictional cover as a nuclear family requires them to perform American marriage, family, and selfhood. In doing so, they reflect the centrality of the family in America’s Cold War self-image in which the family serves as the anchor of the American order, enabling economic and political self-sufficiency. Their performance of the family challenges our ability to differentiate between real, authentic family that can serve as the legitimate source of social reproduction and between the counterfeit, fake family that disrupts the social order. The queer family, refusing to be placed beyond realm of the political by the moral language of family values, subverts our ability to distinguish between genres since the family drama is already a political thriller.

By introducing Stacking algorithm to solve the underfitting problem caused by insufficient data in traditional machine learning, this paper provides a new solution to the cold start problem of entrepreneurial borrowing risk control.

The authors introduce semi-supervised learning and integrated learning into the field of migration learning, and innovatively propose the Stacking model migration learning, which can independently train models on entrepreneurial borrowing credit data, and then use the migration strategy itself as the learning object, and use the Stacking algorithm to combine the prediction results of the source domain model and the target domain model.

The effectiveness of the two migration learning models is evaluated with real data from an entrepreneurial borrowing. The algorithmic performance of the Stacking-based model migration learning is further improved compared to the benchmark model without migration learning techniques, with the model area under curve value rising to 0.8. Comparing the two migration learning models reveals that the model-based migration learning approach performs better. The reason for this is that the sample-based migration learning approach only eliminates the noisy samples that are relatively less similar to the entrepreneurial borrowing data. However, the calculation of similarity and the weighing of similarity are subjective, and there is no unified judgment standard and operation method, so there is no guarantee that the retained traditional credit samples have the same sample distribution and feature structure as the entrepreneurial borrowing data.

From a practical standpoint, on the one hand, it provides a new solution to the cold start problem of entrepreneurial borrowing risk control. The small number of labeled high-quality samples cannot support the learning and deployment of big data risk control models, which is the cold start problem of the entrepreneurial borrowing risk control system. By extending the training sample set with auxiliary domain data through suitable migration learning methods, the prediction performance of the model can be improved to a certain extent and more generalized laws can be learned.

This paper introduces the thought method of migration learning to the entrepreneurial borrowing scenario, provides a new solution to the cold start problem of the entrepreneurial borrowing risk control system and verifies the feasibility and effectiveness of the migration learning method applied in the risk control field through empirical data.

Factor investment is booming in global asset management, especially environmental, social, and governance (ESG), dividend yield, and volatility factors. In this chapter, we use data from the US securities market from 2003 to 2019 to predict dividends and volatility factors through machine learning and historical data–based methods. After that, we utilize particle swarm optimization to construct the Markowitz portfolio with limits on the number of assets and weight restrictions. The empirical results show that that the prediction ability using XGBoost is superior to the historical factor investment method. Moreover, the investment performance of our portfolio with ESG, high-yield, and low-volatility factors outperforms baseline methods, especially the S&P 500 ETF.

In this article, we use the film Bridge of Spies – which depicts the case of U-2 spy pilot Francis Gary Powers – and relevant primary sources, particularly Powers' letters from prison, to provide teachers with a case that can engage students with the complexity of the Cold War. Understanding USA–Russia relations is as important today as ever as we watch the tragedy unfold in Ukraine. Using primary sources to reflect on the Cold War can help secondary students understand the historical context of the war in Ukraine as well as how to evaluate and critique sources of information about the war.

The film and personal letters provide insights often not available or obvious when we focus on the political or military history of an event or time period. The Cold War is frequently defined by the rhetoric of the USA and Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) governments – but everyday people and citizens had a wider range of views and experiences. The film and letters bring out the humanity of the Cold War.

This article supports secondary teachers in incorporating film and primary sources as teaching tools to study the Cold War while more broadly thinking about these sources as ways to understand the past. The letters used, including those from U-2 spy pilot Francis Gary Powers, help us understand his time in a Soviet prison as well as the behind-the-scenes work to free him as part of a prisoner exchange.

The U-2 Incident and other events of the Cold War provide important context for understanding the Cold War-like tensions between the USA and Russia today. The distrust between these countries has a long history. However, documents like the film and letters discussed here show that there is much more to the bluster of political leaders and the military chess game. There is an important human element to these events and an impact on individuals who are much more than pawns in international diplomacy.

This chapter differentiates stress from generalized anxiety, discussing the nature and prevalence of each among college students. The chapter then delves into generalized anxiety in detail, covering instruments that measure generalized anxiety, cultural considerations associated with generalized anxiety and the causes, consequences, prevention and treatment of generalized anxiety among college students. The next section of the chapter focuses on social anxiety among college students, similarly addressing its defining characteristics, prevalence, cultural considerations, causes, consequences, prevention and treatment. The final section of the chapter follows a similar structure in discussing posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) among college students. Throughout the chapter, attention is devoted to neurotransmitters and brain structures that are involved in anxiety and its treatment through antianxiety medications. Case examples are used to help bring theoretical concepts and research findings to life.

This study aims to estimate Pakistan’s export potential in new and existing export products, as well as their potential destination markets.

This study uses a nonparametric approach based on demand, supply and easiness factors for estimating export potential at disaggregated product and destination levels.

A significant number of new export products (extensive margin) and existing products (intensive margin) are identified that have export potential. The estimated unrealized export potential at extensive margins is $2bn and at intensive margins is $5bn. The range of new products included value-added products, semifinished products and intermediate products. Surprisingly, there is high potential to diversify in China and export existing products more intensively in the EU. Moreover, the potential at extensive margins is regional diverse compared to intensive margins.

The methodology used in this paper only provides export potential for short-to-medium term period because the global demand conditions are varying. Also, the mineral and resource-based products cannot be included in the analysis because their exports are heavily dependent on the availability of natural resources.

The findings have important policy implications in terms of providing guidelines for government policies related to industrial development, international trade and export promotion at the product and destination level. Overall, the study reveals that traditional sectors lack room for product diversification. As the existing export incentives favor major industries. To foster diversification, existing incentives must be redesigned to cover new products or sectors. Moreover, China has the greatest potential for product diversification, while Europe has the greatest potential to export current products more intensively. Further research is needed to simulate trade policy scenarios and estimate demand, supply and ease factors in export potential.

This study provides a unique perspective on export potential assessment at disaggregated product and destination levels, reinforcing the importance of redesigning trade policies and export incentives separately for export diversification.

This chapter provides a brief overview of community sanctions in Australia and examines the extent to which McNeill’s analysis in Pervasive Punishment (2019) is applicable in the Australian context. Two key issues in the Australian context are, firstly, state and territory-level variations within a federal political structure, and secondly, disproportionate Indigenous imprisonment and community sanction rates and the generally destructive impact of the criminal legal system on Indigenous communities and peoples. The chapter argues that developing a better agonistic politics around community sanctions requires descending from the broad level of historical and sociological analysis to examine state and territory-level variations in judicial and correctional structures, histories and cultures. Further, that Australian community sanctions cannot be understood without a primary focus on the differences between Indigenous and non-Indigenous rates, experiences and meaning. The key to addressing the destructive impact of criminal legal processes and practices on Indigenous peoples lies in developing Indigenous governance, empowerment, self-determination, sovereignty and nation-building. Two recent developments promoting Indigenous governance are examined: the Uluru Statement from the Heart and Justice Reinvestment projects initiated by First Nations communities, highlighting the importance of activism, contest and struggle by community organisations.

The role of caregivers and issues of parenting are controversial in research on disability. While appreciating the historical and political reasons to critique power relations in care systems and care relations, we argue that it is important to consider parents' and other caregivers' positions. A reconsideration provides insights into pervasive effects of ableism defining not only the individual child but parents and other relatives as well. We draw from extensive research on couples parenting a child with disability in Germany (Tröndle, 2022a). This study seeks to understand how parents of a child with disability cannot avoid understanding themselves as “special parents.” Through analyzing shared life stories of couples and individual biographies, the study reconstructs how identities evolve differently depending on their work-sharing arrangements. Based on our findings, the couples experience difficulties in maintaining dual employment arrangements. They become “unable” to step outside of the logic of welfare and health provision and structures of the labor market. Couples begin to explain their situation and the discrimination they experience by reflecting themselves as “special parents.” Heteronormative and ableist expectations hinder them in articulating resistance and gaining agency as allies of their children, facilitating positions of complicity. We argue that the approach suggested by this study – namely including the ambiguous situation of caregivers in Disability Studies – can encourage other researchers to consider othering and ableism of and by caregivers.

The aim of this study is to identify environmental, social and governance (ESG)-focused funds that can effectively uphold ethical principles while also delivering competitive financial returns by evaluating the performance of 24 well-established exchange-traded funds (ETFs). The study also compares the performance of four widely recognized ETFs representing NASDAQ (ticker: QQQ), S&P500 (SPY), Dow Jones (DIA) and Russell 2000 (IWM) with the sample of 24 ESG funds.

This paper utilizes four complementary measures, namely Sharpe, Sortino, Omega and Calmar ratios, to assess the risk-adjusted return performance of ETFs, with a particular emphasis on extreme downside risk.

The findings indicate that ESG-focused ETFs can predominantly outperform DIA and IWM in the last five years (1 November 2018–22 March 2023). However, when compared to QQQ and SPY, only ICLN, SUSA and DSI consistently delivered competitive risk-adjusted returns. The performance of DSI and SUSA is almost equivalent to QQQ and SPY even during the last ten years.

The paper conducts a risk-return analysis of alternative ESG investment funds, suggesting that not all ETFs are created equal and that careful selection is vital for achieving different investment objectives. It is imperative to recognize that past performance is not a reliable indicator of future outcomes, requiring consideration of other factors in the post-evaluation phase.

The study provides evidence to support the “doing well while doing good” hypothesis, indicating that competitive returns are achievable while also engaging in socially responsible investment.

This study fills a vital gap in the literature on ESG investment by highlighting that the choice of funds stands as the primary factor responsible for the conflicting findings by previous studies.