This article challenges the narrative of ubiquitous late medieval Christian anti-Judaism by presenting Pablo de Santa Maria’s remarkably nuanced portrayal of Judaism (c. 1400–1430). Pablo, the rabbi of Burgos who had become its bishop, lived and wrote at the intersection of Judaism and Christianity. While longstanding historiographical misconceptions about the nature of Pablo’s intellectual and pastoral project have stifled interest in Pablo’s prolific Latin writings, recently scholars like Yosi Yisraeli have argued that these Latin writings actually contain intellectual innovations of profound importance to the development of Christian Hebraism. This article reads Pablo’s Latin writings not primarily within the Christian intellectual tradition but rather as a response to the contemporary phenomenon of large-scale Jewish baptism. Pablo was seeking to negotiate the integration of these baptized Jews into Christianity, which required him to construct positive narratives about Judaism to dispute (or at least complicate) the prevalent negative narratives. More broadly, while recent scholarship has treated Christian narratives of Judaism as emanating from intra-Christian disputes, this article suggests Christian views of Judaism were in fact formed and contested through the persons and identities of baptized Jews.

This article argues that civil liability in EU digital regulation does more than enforce regulatory duties or compensate damage arising from regulatory breaches: it also produces governance effects by specifying regulatory duties and (re)allocating regulatory risks between market actors. Drawing on regulatory theory and examples from the case law of the Court of Justice and national courts in the fields of data protection, online platform regulation and competition law, the article demonstrates how these duty-specifying and risk-allocating effects emerge through the very structure of compensation claims: damage, unlawfulness and causation.

We propose an extension in which core knowledge – innate, skeletal, and abstract cognitive representations – shape “super attractors.” They shape our cognition and our communication with others. People choose actions based not only on what they feel is right but also on whether they think others will agree. We propose that universal priors shape the space of shared intuitions.

The magnetic confinement topologies potentially capable of macro-stability with core plasma pressure greatly exceeding the vacuum magnetic field pressure (or ‘$\beta \rightarrow \infty$’) are discussed. An emphasis is placed on application to magnetic fusion energy (MFE) given the perceived advantages. The particle loss rate from highly diamagnetic plasmas in open-field topologies is quantified, including a generalised model for the gas-dynamic regime. It is concluded that, regardless of the topology type, attractive fusion energy gain from such a system is impossible unless (i) the scrape-off-layer can be made much thinner than one thermal ion gyroradius through ambipolar effects, (ii) sufficient stability exists in the stochastic phase space of certain topologies so as to increase the average number of ion orbits before loss by $\sim$1000 times over the isotropic prediction or (iii) electrostatic or centrifugal effects are used to recover adiabatic confinement. Outside of MFE, high-$\beta$ topologies offer many alternative applications in plasma science. The required magnet bore to limit perpendicular particle loss in a point cusp is estimated. Additionally, the unique spherical multipole topology is reviewed and comments are made on the use of cusp topologies for ‘electromagnetic’ confinement efforts.

In this article, I elucidate Martin Luther King Jr.’s views on the value and function of democratic disappointment. First, disappointment is intrinsically valuable as a morally appropriate emotional response to frustrated desires and expectations. Second, it is instrumentally valuable as a necessary precondition for political action. I close by exploring King’s account of how to constructively channel disappointment into determined political action through song.

According to census data, the North-East of Scotland is one of the strongholds of the Scots language. However, its “Doric” dialect is undergoing change, with linguistic studies reporting a loss of traditional dialect features. This article focuses on Inverurie—a town whose population has increased almost threefold since the 1950s as it has become an important commuter hub for Aberdeen.

By comparing perceptions of older and younger speakers, the results of this study support accounts of a shift away from the region’s distinctive dialect, observed through weakening of the perceived urban/rural divide, youngsters’ lack of identification with traditional identity labels, and—most importantly—differing accuracy rates when geographically placing a speech sample from an older resident. Conversely, the fact that such results are not found among youngsters surveyed in some other North-East communities suggests that linguistic change may be afoot at different paces in different parts of the region.

A trial involving two types of biochar was conducted in two greenhouse experimental runs in 2025 to determine weed control efficiencies of two pre-emergence herbicides (metribuzin and S-metolachlor) at respective label-recommended rates to control Palmer amaranth (Amaranthus palmeri S. Watson) and crowfootgrass [Dactyloctenium aegyptium (L.) Willd]. Plants were grown in a loamy soil amended with commercially available sugarcane and pinewood biochars (2 t ha-1). Complete control of both weeds was observed with the label-recommended doses of metribuzin and S-metolachlor in pinewood biochar-amended soils. Whereas in sugarcane (Saccharum officinale L.) biochar-amended soils, complete control of both weeds was achieved only with metribuzin at the label-recommended dose. The label-recommended dose of S-metolachlor provided nearly 47 and 74% control of A. palmeri and D. aegyptium, respectively, in sugarcane biochar-amended soils. Application of sugarcane biochar decreased the total residue of S-metolachlor as compared to soil with no or pinewood biochar and showed poor weed control efficiency (WCE). On day 7, nearly 3 and 24% germination for D. aegyptium and A. palmeri, respectively, were observed with S-metolachlor in sugarcane biochar-amended soils, whereas no germination was recorded in other treatments, which indicated biochar-herbicide-species specificity. Pearson correlation analysis showed negative associations between weed germination and soil herbicide residues across sampling times, though these relationships were not statistically significant (p > 0.05). Results from this greenhouse study indicated that commercial biochars from different raw materials could influence the WCE of pre-emergence herbicides even at a low biochar dose (2 t ha-1). Field evaluations are necessary to understand the weed control dynamics.

This study explores individual- and contextual-level determinants of volunteering and donating as two voluntary acts of philanthropy in 11 Arab Middle East and North African countries. Using multilevel binary logistic regression modeling, we analyze data from 18,818 Muslim respondents collected by the Arab Barometer in 2018–2019. Combining insights from global, Arab, and Muslim philanthropic studies on the one hand, and political sociology on the other, we test both globally comparative and context-specific hypotheses. Our findings reveal that the normative effects of Islam positively associate with donating money, whereas civic culture more strongly informs volunteering. However, the control variable, educational attainment, had the largest effect on both outcomes, which we link to resource theory and state-induced mandated volunteering among higher-educated youngsters. Our findings underscore the importance of both religious and civic influences operating at structural and cultural levels in shaping voluntary philanthropic behavior by Muslims in Arab countries.

With the evolution from 5G to 6G and the popularization of carrier aggregation technology, mobile terminal devices face challenges in miniaturizing multiplexers and handling concurrent signals across a wide-bandgap. This study proposes a numerical de-embedding design method. By precisely calculating and compensating for the parasitic loads, it achieves deterministic synthesis of matching networks. Based on this method, we designed and fabricated a monolithic integrated surface acoustic wave triplexer on a lithium tantalite on insulator (LTOI) substrate for dual-frequency GPS L1/L5 positioning and Bluetooth (BT) communication. To suppress a specific spurious mode on the LTOI substrate and improve the isolation, a notch inductor structure was embedded into the design. The monolithic integrated triplexer measures 2.5 mm × 2.0 mm × 0.6 mm after packaging. The insertion loss is less than 1.6 dB in both the L1 and L5 bands. In the BT band, the average loss within any 18 MHz range of the passband is below 2.5 dB. The return loss for all three channels is better than −10 dB, while the isolation between channels is maintained at ≈40 dB. The successful fabrication of this triplexer not only validates the design method but also demonstrates its potential for application in miniaturized wearable devices.

In this article, I consider Bernard Lonergan (1904–1984) and Max Horkheimer (1896–1973) on the topic of social decline, focusing on the relationship between what Lonergan called “conceptualism” and what Horkheier called “instrumental reason.” I will argue that conceptualism and instrumental reason are distinct conscious intentional phenomena that collude in generating social decline. For the sake of convenience and clarity, I will categorize (with some qualifications) this collusive relationship between conceptualism and instrumental reason as one of “elective affinity.” I will advance my argument, first, by articulating Lonergan’s critique of conceptualism in his Verbum articles. Next, I will turn to Horkheimer’s account and critique of instrumental reason. We will see a striking example of the convergence of conceptualism and instrumental reason in Louis Billot, SJ (1846–1931), a neo-Scholastic theologian and cardinal mentioned specifically by Lonergan and generically by Horkheimer. I will then locate conceptualism and instrumental reason within Lonergan’s theory of intentionality analysis, specifically the levels of consciousness, and will elaborate on their elective affinity. Finally, within the parameters of Lonergan’s account of social decline, I will outline how their collusion generates social decline.

Medieval Roman frontier management remains understudied, and only rarely have digital humanities methods been applied to it. This article examines a moment in Roman–Fatimid imperial competition in Syria in the early 1030s by using Geographic Information Systems (GIS) analysis. The Syrian Coastal Mountains south of Antioch were the location of a failed Roman attempt to establish Naṣr ibn Musharraf as a client. As relations broke down, he sought Fatimid support. The brief ensuing conflict is revelatory of long-term patterns in frontier management, while spatial analysis within a GIS framework provides insight into the role of geomorphology in how these events unfolded.

English prosody conveys grammatical structure, word meaning, and pragmatic information. However, research on second language (L2) acquisition has primarily focused on segmental properties of speech, with relatively less attention to prosody. We present the English Prosody Dataset to facilitate research on the acquisition and use of English prosody. The dataset includes contrastive examples of three prosodic features: phrase boundary, disambiguating syntactic dependencies; contrastive focus, disambiguating key information within a phrase; and lexical stress, disambiguating word sense through syllabic emphasis, all recorded by three female and three male voice actors speaking Standard Southern British English. Researchers can tailor experiments by selecting stimuli isolating individual acoustic dimensions (e.g., pitch and duration) and by adjusting perceptual difficulty using samples with reduced acoustic information. The dataset also provides acoustically unmanipulated recordings and sentence lists that can be used to develop naturalistic comprehension paradigms or to elicit speech.

We show that the quasilinear Schrödinger equation $-\epsilon ^{2}\Delta u + Q(x)u -\Delta (u^{2})u= h(u)$ in $\mathbb{R}^{N}$ has $\wp$ solutions related to the $\wp$ global minima of the potential $Q$. We work with the Nehari manifold associated with the energy functional. We evaluate the energy of the solutions to distinguish them from each other.

The onset of an illness has the potential to induce profound changes in a person’s life. However, being diagnosed with a physical illness may not carry the same impact as being diagnosed with a mental health disorder. Among them, psychotic disorders exhibit the highest level of social stigma and acceptance challenges, along with compromised social functioning, diminished quality of life, and disruptions in personal, social, and vocational domains. The Impact of Illness Scale (IIS) measures how an illness has adversely affected a person’s life as perceived by that person. This study aimed to assess the psychometric properties of the IIS in a sample of 141 people with a first episode of psychosis (FEP) (mean age 35.7 years, 51.8% female). The study explored the factor structure, internal consistency, convergent and discriminant validity, and temporal stability of the IIS. The confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) model showed an excellent fit of the data, confirming a one-factor structure, internal solid consistency (McDonald’s ω = .95; Cronbach’s α = .94), theoretically coherent convergent and discriminant validity with measures of internalized stigma, negative beliefs, symptoms of psychosis and general psychopathology symptoms, and moderate test–retest reliability. Overall, these findings support the IIS as a reliable and valid tool for assessing the subjective impact of psychosis, offering clinical and research utility for understanding patient experiences beyond symptom severity.

Models of visual word recognition in Latin script assume rapid abstraction of letter identities from perceptual features, reflected in the absence of visual similarity effects for pseudowords (e.g., viotin and viocin yield similar response times in lexical decision). Whether this principle extends to Arabic-derived scripts remains unclear because visual similarity in Arabic can be confounded with preservation of consonantal root structure in a Semitic language. We examined this issue in Persian, an Indo-European language written in an Arabic-derived script that preserves dot-based letter contrasts but lacks Semitic root-based morphology. In two lexical decision experiments, pseudowords were formed by replacing one internal letter in words with (1) a visually similar letter (e.g., موسیفی /musifi/ [base word: موسیقی /musiqi/, music]), (2) a visually dissimilar letter preserving ligation (موسیلی /musili/) or (3) a visually dissimilar letter altering ligation (موسیزی /musizi/). Experiment 1 presented the stimulus until response, whereas Experiment 2 limited presentation to 200 ms. Response times were slower for visually similar pseudowords than for visually dissimilar pseudowords preserving ligation, and the two visually dissimilar conditions did not differ reliably. These findings support the view that lexical access in Arabic-derived scripts operates over abstract letter identities, while dot-based visual similarity can produce a processing cost.