A clay from Weslatiya that is widely used in Tunisian ceramic production has abundant reserves but generates significant waste, posing environmental concerns if not handled appropriately. This study explores the valorization of this local clay by incorporating ceramic waste (chamotte) and quartz sand to produce eco-friendly materials, in line with sustainability and circular economy principles. X-ray diffraction and scanning electron microscopy analyses reveal that incorporating chamotte at levels exceeding 15% by weight improves the material’s properties. The Young’s modulus of the composite increases to 80 GPa, more than 2.5 times that of the basic clay. Chamotte can replace up to 30% of quartz sand without significantly affecting densification or porosity while preserving structural integrity. This approach offers flexibility in terms of material composition, enhancing performance and promoting sustainability by reusing waste materials for high-performance ceramics in industrial applications.

Recognizing the distributed nature of agency in human–AI interactions, this article proposes a framework for examining the power dynamics that undergird the use of generative AI (GenAI) for language learning. Drawing on Darvin and Norton’s model of investment, it adopts a critical sociomaterial lens to cast a light on the entanglement of bodies, objects and discourse in these interactions, while highlighting how issues of positioning, access to resources, and ideological reproduction emerge from this perspective. Human agency both interacts with and is constrained or amplified by the functionalities of GenAI. To invest in agentive GenAI practices that enable meaningful learning and the achievement of their own intentions, learners must not only recognize the power of GenAI to steer interactions and promote specific ways of thinking, but also resist fully delegating the production of meaning and texts to technology. Cultivating critical digital literacies that recognize how power operates in human-AI interactions is integral to fostering reflexive, inclusive and equitable language learning and teaching in the age of GenAI.

During the first half of the nineteenth century, Mid-Atlantic States expanded guardianship to include habitual drunkards. Legislators in Pennsylvania, New York, and New Jersey empowered courts to put habitual drunkards under guardianship, a legal status that stripped them of their rights to own property, enter into contracts, make wills, and, in some states, even vote. Amid the dramatic nineteenth-century expansion of male suffrage, the habitual drunkard signified a masculine failure of self-government that disqualified propertied men from the privileges of full citizenship. The struggle to define habitual drunkenness, detect the habitual drunkard, and put him under guardianship transformed the courtroom into an arena for contesting the thresholds of compulsion, policing respectable manhood, and drawing the borders of full citizenship in the nineteenth-century United States.

The Citizen Initiative (CI) in the context of the legislative process is now a common mechanism in different parts of Europe and Latin America. However, it is rarely used as a participatory formula in constitution-making processes. This article documents the case of the CI (Iniciativas Populares de Norma) in Chile’s two failed constitution-making processes between 2021 and 2023, during which more than a million people actively participated in its formulation. The Chilean case matters for comparative constitutional studies due to its innovative use of technology to advance forms of digital democracy and the demonstrable impact of the CI standards on both constitutional proposals, which were ultimately rejected in the final national referendums. We argue that despite these rejections, the CI as a participatory mechanism is likely to endure over time and in future constitution-making processes. The article provides a detailed study of the Chilean experience and seeks to draw lessons for other countries’ attempts at participatory constitutional reform.

Bentonite is mined globally for use in commercial and industrial applications. In these applications, smectite content and composition are the paramount factors of the bentonite material and control its properties. As bentonite composition and properties can vary significantly over a large mining district or within a single mine, quality control is required including: mineral composition, especially smectite content; cation exchange capacity (CEC); exchangeable cation composition; and smectite crystallochemical features. Differences in bentonite composition locally or over a spatial area stem from the different geological settings present throughout bentonitization. The study aims were to: (1) determine the layer charge (LC) variation of dioctahedral smectite over the Bavarian mining district and within individual mines in the area; and (2) assess the error in smectite content calculations based on CEC data resulting from the actual range of experimentally determined LC values. This information has been missing in the scientific literature, as previous LC methods were laborious or subject to assumptions, making a comprehensive study over a large spatial area impractical. This study employed the use of the recently developed efficient and precise spectroscopic ‘O-D method’, which enabled the LC measurement of 40 samples from eight mines in the Bavarian bentonite mining district, covering an area of 250 km2, within the North Alpine Foreland Basin. Results showed LC values calibrated against the alkylammonium method (LC (AAM)) generally ranged between 0.29 and 0.30 eq per formula unit (FU), with only 10% of samples showing LC values >0.31 eq/FU. This narrow LC range has positive implications for the accuracy of determining smectite content calculated from CEC data, during routine quality control of Bavarian and other bentonites. The average error of the CEC-based smectite contents resulting from LC variations was, on average, ±3 wt.%.

This longitudinal survey examined the effect of the National Healthcare Safety Network’s (NHSN) recently updated Clostridioides difficile test method definition on reporting of hospital-onset C. difficile. Among six hospitals with ≥ 5 years of data available, the updated NHSN definition was associated with improved concordance between predicted versus reported cases.

Ferroåkermanite, Ca2FeSi2O7 – a new member of the melilite group, has been found in coarse-grained kirschsteinite-bearing paralava in the Hatrurim Basin outcrop between the Zohar and Halamish Wadies of the Hatrurim Complex in Israel. Ferroåkermanite rarely forms single subhedral light-yellow crystals up to 30–50 μm in size with a prismatic habit. The most common are irregular grains, aggregates and intergrowths with gehlenite or ferroåkermanite crystals with perovskite inclusions. The mineral is transparent, exhibits vitreous lustre and has a distinct cleavage on (001). It is non-fluorescent, brittle and has a conchoidal fracture, a Mohs hardness of ∼4.5–5 and a calculated density of 3.20 g/cm3. Ferroåkermanite is uniaxial (–), ω = 1.652(3) and ε = 1.643(3) (λ = 589 nm), and exhibits a visible pleochroism from light-yellow (ω) to intense yellow (ε). The empirical formula of ferroåkermanite calculated on the basis of 7 O is (Ca1.77Na0.18Sr0.02Ba0.02K0.02)Σ2.01(Fe2+0.68Al0.28Mg0.04)Σ1.00(Si1.93Al0.07)Σ2.00O7. The chemical data obtained confirm the presence of ferroåkermanite–gehlenite solid solution (Fe2+ + Si4+ ↔ 2Al3+) in the studied rock, which was verified by Raman spectroscopy investigation. The crystal structure of the new mineral was refined to R = 0.0617 in the space group P$\overline4$21m with the following unit-cell parameters a = 7.7813(7) Å, c = 5.0114(5) Å, V = 303.43(6) Å3, Z = 2. Ferroåkermanite has a melilite-type structure with layers consisting of (Si2O7)6– disilicate units and (Fe2+O4)6– tetrahedra intercalated by layers formed of eightfold-coordinated Ca atoms. Moreover, the T1 site in the holotype specimen shows a mixed occupancy refined to 0.63(3) Fe2+ and 0.37(3) Al. The presence of rock-forming minerals such as gehlenite or rankinite suggests that the paralava analysed formed under high-temperature conditions, confirming that the new mineral ferroåkermanite is indeed a high-temperature phase. Furthermore, the presence of Fe2+-bearing phases, such as kirschsteinite, ferroåkermanite, chromite, ulvöspinel and bennesherite indicates the reduced conditions.

We apply a synthesis review to revisit the concept, measurement, and operationalisation of social inclusion and exclusion in the context of comparative social policy, integrating the vast literature on the concepts, with the aim of elucidating a clearer understanding of the concepts for use by scholars and policymakers around the planet. In turn, we outline the conceptual development of the concepts, how they have been operationalised through social policy, and how they have been measured at the national and individual levels. Through our review, we identify limitations in extant conceptualisation and measurement approaches and suggest directions for refining conceptual and measurement frameworks to enhance their utility in social inclusion policy, emphasising the concepts’ multidimensional, multilevel, dynamic, and relational essence and highlighting their connection to related concepts such as social capital, social integration, and social citizenship.

We give a notion of boundary pair $(\mathcal{B}_-,\mathcal{B}_+)$ for measured groupoids which generalizes the one introduced by Bader and Furman [BF14] for locally compact groups. In the case of a semidirect groupoid $\mathcal{G}=\Gamma \ltimes X$ obtained by a probability measure preserving action $\Gamma \curvearrowright X$ of a locally compact group, we show that a boundary pair is exactly $(B_- \times X, B_+ \times X)$, where $(B_-,B_+)$ is a boundary pair for $\Gamma$. For any measured groupoid $(\mathcal{G},\nu )$, we prove that the Poisson boundaries associated to the Markov operators generated by a probability measure equivalent to $\nu$ provide other examples of our definition. Following Bader and Furman [BF], we define algebraic representability for an ergodic groupoid $(\mathcal{G},\nu )$. In this way, given any measurable representation $\rho \,:\,\mathcal{G} \rightarrow H$ into the $\kappa$-points of an algebraic $\kappa$-group $\mathbf{H}$, we obtain $\rho$-equivariant maps $\mathcal{B}_\pm \rightarrow H/L_\pm$, where $L_\pm =\mathbf{L}_\pm (\kappa )$ for some $\kappa$-subgroups $\mathbf{L}_\pm \lt \mathbf{H}$. In the particular case when $\kappa =\mathbb{R}$ and $\rho$ is Zariski dense, we show that $L_\pm$ must be minimal parabolic subgroups.