The plaza is one of the most important elements of the built environment for bringing people together in the Pueblo World of the US Southwest. Yet, the myriad ways in which plazas were designed and used vary greatly through time. Although plazas have been significant components of Ancestral Pueblo site layouts for hundreds of years, nearly every research study has been based on the enclosed plazas of the Pueblo IV period. In this article, we evaluate variation in 861 plazas from the Pueblo World dating from AD 800 to 1550. Our analysis of settlement size, plaza area, and degrees of plaza accessibility demonstrates that the spacious plazas emblematic of the Pueblo IV period were built to accommodate more people than the resident population, suggesting the origins of the feast-day-type ceremonialism seen in contemporary Pueblo communities. Our analysis suggests that this is a relatively recent phenomenon, because plazas in earlier Chaco great house communities were built to be more exclusionary, and thus activities held within them were more restricted.

It is now generally accepted that human rights law applies at sea, yet uncertainty remains as to how it operates within the maritime domain. The United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea contains few references to the treatment of individuals and many of the central concepts of the law of the sea that are reflected in it—such as functional zones of maritime jurisdiction, flag State jurisdiction and the freedoms of the seas—present challenges to the effective application of human rights law. Moreover, human rights law was developed with a terrestrial focus, making its application at sea equally problematic. This article argues that before practical solutions can be proposed to address this conflict of regimes, it needs to be recognised that human rights law does not apply at sea in the same way that it applies on land: the practical realities of the maritime environment shape the scope and content of rights. It argues that there is a need to clarify what constitutes a genuine human rights issue in the maritime domain, distinguishing these from other forms of poor treatment or regulatory non-compliance. It examines how the law of the sea and human rights law might interact more effectively, considering both conceptual and contextual adjustments necessary for realistic and enforceable protection of human rights in the maritime domain.

The papers in this special themed section reflect on, explore, and analyse national and local government policy responses to the recent pandemic between 2020 and 2022, and the short- and longer-term impacts on human security for different groups of people and places, with a particular focus on the UK and Korea. Drawing on an integrated critical human security and state capacity approach and qualitative methodology, they contribute to and further develop debates on the social policy responses to the pandemic and their scarring effects. They also highlight the key role that a state capacity for human security approach can play in promoting inclusive risk governance, recognising and addressing constellations of vulnerability, risk and insecurity, and highlighting the rapid and uneven distribution of the benefits of digital technologies and its potential from compromising as well as enhancing human security.

This study examined the use and satisfaction levels of State Law Advisors regarding online legal databases at the Research Centre in the Department of International Relations and Cooperation (DIRCO) in Pretoria, South Africa. The study sought to evaluate the effectiveness of digital platforms in facilitating legal research and decision-making processes. Data were collected via structured interviews with State Law Advisors, who function as primary legal experts in matters of international law. The findings reveal that although State Law Advisors recognize the efficiency and convenience of online legal databases, various challenges hinder their optimal use. Identified key issues include restricted after-hours access, dependence on librarians for database retrieval, insufficient mobile optimization, and a limited understanding of advanced search functionalities. Enhancements to infrastructure were recommended by respondents, specifically the provision of dedicated computers within the Research Centre and remote access through personal devices, especially for individuals working late or travelling internationally. Additionally, there was a significant demand for the incorporation of more specialized international law databases to address the specific research needs of State Law Advisors. The findings underscore the necessity for enhanced digital accessibility, focused user training, and increased resource availability to bolster legal advisory functions and effectively support South Africa’s international engagements.

Designing and developing smart antennas with adaptive radiation characteristics is an integral part for present-day communication systems. The versatile capabilities of Time-modulated fourth-dimensional (4D) antenna arrays can provide that crucial adaptability if properly designed. This work discusses an effective analysis of 4D antenna arrays to achieve less-attenuating radiation patterns with simultaneously suppressed sidelobe and sidebands. The 4D arrays offer an additional benefit over standard arrays in the sense that the requisite amplitude tapering to lower the undesired radiations can be accomplished by controlling only the switch ON times of the radiating elements instead of using attenuators. The idea of splitting pulses by keeping the total switch ON durations constant, is exploited here as an additional degree of freedom for beamforming of all the radiation patterns. The unwanted radiations in terms of sidelobes as well as sideband radiations (SRs) at the fundamental and harmonic frequencies, respectively are simultaneously minimized to improve the radiation efficiencies of the 4D array. To address the conflicting aims for the synthesis of radiation patterns, a wavelet-mutation based heuristic method is also proposed. The multi-objective problem in hand is modulated in to a single objective cost function as minimization problem. The proposed outcomes are reported and compared with other state of the art works related to the same domain. Furthermore, a detailed statistical analysis is also provided to identify the strengths and weaknesses of the proposed approach.

The history of the laws of war is an increasingly popular research field of international law. Claire Vergerio’s book War, States, and International Order: Alberico Gentili and the Foundational Myth of the Laws of War is a good-read in this regard. It provides a critical analysis of how 19th-century international lawyers misread and reinterpreted the writings of the 16th-century Italian jurist Alberico Gentili to establish the modern sovereign state as the sole legitimate subject of the laws of war. In this review essay, I offer a critical reading of War, States and International Order, positioning its intervention in the context of broader scholarly debates.