Recently, there have been several histories of the British Empire written through the lens of a single family. These works – which this review refers to as imperial family biographies – trace the activities, ideas, and/or connections of a group of individuals from the same family, usually spanning more than one generation, as they roved across the time and space of empire. They facilitate an understanding of a networked, informal British Empire, held together by personal bonds and material goods, and an imperial politics shaped by emotions, affections, and identities. Currently, imperial family biographies tend to prioritize asking what families can reveal about empire, rather than what empire can reveal about families; family networks are used as case studies, dictating the bounds of study and illustrating wider imperial themes. This review argues that this genre of history writing is most successful when families are interpreted as imperial agents that drove historical change, rather than merely conduits for individual action or means by which individuals were connected across empire. This can be achieved through a thorough engagement with the historiography on families and through centralizing concepts such as family identity, family culture, family structure, and family function.

Jabłonowski [‘On biquandle-based invariant of immersed surface-links, Yoshikawa oriented fifth move, and ribbon 2-knots’, Preprint, 2025, arXiv:2505.14724] proved that the knot quandles of Suciu’s n-knots, which share isomorphic knot groups, are mutually nonisomorphic, and Yasuda [‘Knot quandles distinguish Suciu’s ribbon knots’, Preprint, 2025, arXiv:2508.15129] later gave a different proof. We present yet another proof of this result by analysing the conjugacy classes of certain automorphisms of the free group of rank two.

This article examines the ethnic and gender quotas that have been applied to Burundi’s Constitutional Court since 2019. It shows that while gender quotas aim to make the court reflective or to remedy past injustices, ethnic quotas serve multiple roles: securing ethnic peace, de-escalating conflict or confirming power balances. Our analysis challenges scepticism about judicial quotas and independence, arguing that quotas do not inherently undermine legal merit, particularly when constitutional values are at stake. However, the position-sharing model poses risks to judicial independence, potentially diminishing court legitimacy. We highlight the complexities of combining ethnic and gender quotas, and we develop a typology of courts with such quotas, categorizing Burundi’s Constitutional Court as a blend of reflective, affirmative action, position-sharing and power-sharing. By examining Burundi’s experience, the article contributes to the debate on judicial quotas in segmented societies and the impact of identity-based representation on constitutional design, post-conflict governance and judicial independence.

In unstructured environments, Delta robots face challenges in achieving high vision-guided grasping precision due to dynamic lighting conditions and workpiece diversity. This paper designs an integrated solution that combines RGB-D multimodal learning with an enhanced Mask R-CNN framework. Initially, a dual-stream ResNet50-FPN backbone network is designed to achieve cross-modal adaptive alignment via hierarchical feature fusion. Subsequently, a depth-guided attention module is incorporated to bolster robustness against material ambiguity and reflective interference. Moreover, a dynamic depth estimation algorithm is employed to significantly improve target localization accuracy and stability. Finally, real-time trajectory tracking is realized by integrating PD control with Jacobian mapping. Experimental results validate the efficacy of the proposed method, offering an efficient and reliable approach for industrial robotic applications.

Half a century ago, Martin Shapiro discovered that European constitutional scholarship was stuck at a stage of ‘constitutional law without politics’, presenting the EU ‘as a juristic idea; the written constitution as a sacred text; the professional commentary as a legal truth; the case law as the inevitable working out of the … constitutional text; and the constitutional court as the disembodied voice of right reason’. Recent efforts to doctrinally construct the values in Article 2 TEU show that the mistakes identified by Shapiro persist to this day. This article examines the proposals for constructing Article 2 TEU by Armin von Bogdandy and Dimitri Spieker, and offers three criticisms: First, their doctrinal constructivism is ill-suited to constitutional reasoning. Second, their reasoning has evolved in a way that their work has become self-contradictory. Third and most importantly, especially due to the evolution of their thinking, their scholarship amounts to constitutionalism without principle. Not only does their work lack consistent principled foundations, it also neglects the principled choices underlying EU constitutional law. Moreover, as they do not maintain any critical distance to the CJEU, their work does not offer a principled basis for evaluating its case law. Finally, and most critically, the principles informing their arguments produce an increasingly undemocratic and unconstitutional view of EU law. To address these deficits, I revisit the call for a more contextualised study of European law made by its earliest proponents four decades ago, and demonstrate its continued relevance. Rather than pursuing institution building, EU constitutional scholarship should examine and critically interrogate the socio-political choices underlying the evolution of EU constitutional law.

Sexual dimorphism, a widespread phenomenon, has been extensively researched in extant and fossil crustaceans. However, identifying sexual dimorphism in phyllocarid fossils preserved as isolated parts is often challenging, except in cases where the specimens are exceptionally well preserved, including those with soft tissues. This study proposes a novel approach by introducing the use of geometric morphometric techniques to identify sexual dimorphism in phyllocarid fossils based on carapace morphology. It presents a comprehensive re-analysis of Soomicaris ordosensis Liu et al., 2023a, carapaces from the Upper Ordovician in North China and Tarim Plates. Elliptic Fourier analysis was applied to quantify the size and shape variation in nearly 100 specimens. The results demonstrate the presence of significant sexual dimorphism in the length and shape of the S. ordosensis carapace. The carapace shape exhibited variation between the sexes: the posterodorsal margin of one group of carapaces gradually extends backward to form a posterodorsal spine; the carapaces of the other group have a convex posterior margin and lack a posterodorsal spine. Additionally, both types manifest an overall allometric growth pattern, albeit with distinct growth coefficients. Furthermore, the observed approximately 1:1 ratio between the two forms suggests that the population of S. ordosensis may have exhibited a dioecious mating system. Geometric morphometrics are a highly effective method for elucidating the subtle variations in the carapace morphology of S. ordosensis, thereby underscoring the cryptic dimorphism characteristics of fossil animals. This finding offers the first indirect evidence for egg-brooding behavior within the extinct order Archaeostraca.

Encouraging children’s sympathy (i.e., concern for others) across an array of social contexts is important for strengthening their prosocial responses to conflict and reducing aggression. We examined Canadian children’s (6, 9, and 12 years; N = 186; 50% girls and 50% boys) situational sympathetic responding following harm to victims, and how sympathy across contexts was linked to their aggressive behaviors (beyond dispositional sympathy). Children’s situational sympathy (sadness supported by moral reasoning) was measured in response to (un)provoked harm to hypothetical peers in vignettes. Parents reported on children’s proactive and reactive aggression. We also measured children’s dispositional sympathy via child- and parent-reports. Results showed that children felt stronger situational sympathy for victims of unprovoked harm than provoked harm, and only sympathy following unprovoked harm showed age-related increases. Above and beyond dispositional sympathy, lower situational sympathy in response to provoked harm was associated with higher reactive aggression. These findings demonstrate that children’s sympathy is dampened by a victim’s prior negative behavior – an emotional blunting effect that may have implications for their own retaliatory behavior.

The aim of the experiment reported in this research paper was to determine the influence of the bovine appeasing substance (BAS) on milk yield, energy metabolism, inflammation, and stress in cows during the transition period. Twenty-four multiparous Holstein cows (day 28 pre-partum to 21 postpartum) were distributed randomly into two groups: control (n = 12) and BAS (Secure Cattle®; n = 12). Each animal was administered 5 mL of the product on days 28 and 14 pre-partum and on the day of calving. The feed intake was assessed using automated, individual feeders and the milk yield was determined electronically. Six milk samples were obtained from each animal, which were analyzed for chemical composition and somatic cell count. Six blood samples were obtained per animal for future biochemical analyses (free fatty acids, beta hydroxybutyrate, cortisol, myeloperoxidase and paraoxonase 1). The statistical analyses were conducted with the JMP Pro 14 software, with P ≤ 0.05 being considered as statistical significance. BAS-treated cows showed higher milk yield than controls. Dry matter intake (DMI) during the pre- and postpartum periods was greater for the control than treated group. The BAS group exhibited reduced plasma cortisol postpartum. In conclusion, cows treated with BAS showed higher milk yield, lower DMI, and reduced plasma cortisol concentrations than controls.

Recent scholarship has emphasized methodological innovations to mitigate preference falsification in public opinion data, yet systematic scrutiny of bias in regression analyses remains limited. Drawing on analyses of political trust in China, we offer three key insights. First, determining the direction of social desirability bias in regression estimates—whether over- or underestimation—is challenging ex ante. Second, analyses of two nationally representative Chinese surveys, one incorporating a list experiment, cast doubt on the purported positive effect of social welfare expansion on political trust. Extending beyond social welfare and the Chinese case, we find similar biases when regressions rely on direct questions. Third, we show that certain identification strategies can partially mitigate regression bias when direct questions are unavoidable.

To reveal the influence laws of casing abradable coating wear on compressor aerodynamic performance, a numerical simulation study was conducted on the performance of Rotor 37 under high-speed scraping conditions with different hardness coating wear morphologies. The results show that compressor isentropic efficiency and outlet mass flow are sensitive to scraping-induced morphology changes. The medium-hardness coating causes the most significant performance degradation, with maximum reductions reaching 1.96% and 1.39%, respectively, while the pressure ratio shows little variation. Scraping grooves aggravate mixing losses between leading-edge (LE) leakage flow and mid-chord (MID) leakage flow. The tip leakage flow pushes suction-side separation vortices toward the main flow path. Under medium-hardness coating scraping conditions, the maximum entropy generation region affects up to 9.1% blade height and induces tip leakage vortex-shockwave interactions, resulting in substantial tip losses. The compressor aerodynamic performance is less affected by wear zone roughness, with the maximum isentropic efficiency reduction being only 0.31%. When wear zone roughness increases, near-wall turbulence fluctuations intensify and separation zones expand, causing flow structure changes in tip leakage paths and blade wake regions, which shifts the compressor aerodynamic characteristics toward lower flow rates. The study demonstrates that coating hardness alters leakage flow structures through wear morphology depth: medium-hardness coatings with the deepest wear grooves exhibit maximum performance deterioration, while high-hardness coatings show better wear resistance and performance maintenance.