This article examines the longevity of interpersonal ties in late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century Britain, and their impact on the structure of social networks incorporating individuals separated by rank. Using the example of a protracted patronage relationship involving the explorer James Cook, his family, and the wealthy naturalist and president of the Royal Society, Sir Joseph Banks, it shows how social ties formed in life continued to exert an influence on behaviour when a key member of a network was dead. Cook, who died in 1779, remained associated with Banks many years later, the consequence of a powerful and recognized bond combining qualities of friendship and patronage. This bond motivated appeals to Banks to assist Cook’s impoverished family, initiating an affair with which this article is concerned, and whose granular study illuminates the operation of genteel norms conditioning lasting interpersonal ties. In showing the representative value of this case, the article tracks actions motivated variously by friendship, kinship, and patronage, demonstrating how they unfolded across time and in surrogate fashion.

The conflict that erupted in Sudan in mid-April 2023 has had a profound impact on scholars, university staff, academic institutions, and academic freedom in the country. It also has had a deep impact on scholars displaced because of war or political repression since the 1990s, who now constitute a significant part of the Sudanese diaspora. The war has devastated the country’s population, landscape, services, and infrastructure, including both general and higher education sectors. In the half-decade that preceded the current conflict, Sudan witnessed an uprising in 2018, in which students, academics, and academic associations played an important role, followed by a short transitional period (2019–21) and a subsequent coup (2021). The latter consolidated the power of the army and its allies and narrowed the space for academic freedom that had expanded during and after the uprising. Although an incident that occurred at the University of Khartoum toward the end of 2025 shows that there may be a degree of freedom of intramural expression (the right to challenge the workings of the university), other events in Sudan suggest little respect for freedom of extramural expression (the right to engage in public expression without negative repercussions), because of the nature of governance arrangements, among other factors. This particularly affects academics and professionals currently in Sudan who call for peace.

The widespread use of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) has introduced significant security challenges, including unauthorised intrusions and privacy breaches. Conventional identification methods, such as radar and visual surveillance, often struggle to accurately distinguish between different UAV types or individual devices, limiting their effectiveness in countering these threats. To address these concerns, an enhanced empirical mode decomposition method has been developed. This method employs the Welch algorithm to extract power spectral density (PSD) features, which are then used to form the radio frequency fingerprint (RFF). Finally, a statistical classifier is employed to recognise and classify UAVs. The results of experimental studies indicate that this technique yields an average precision of 97% in binary classification (drone vs. no drone) and 84.7% in quaternary classifications (identifying four drone models). A comprehensive performance evaluation, conducted using confusion matrices and receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves, demonstrates that the classifier performs well across all categories, with low misclassification rates.

The maximum take-off weight (MTOW) affects many aspects of aircraft design, such as performance, stability and control. It is the first and most important design variable that affects numerous aircraft design decisions. Understanding how parametric changes to the major design variables would likely affect the MTOW in the early stages of the preliminary design phase is crucial. This research introduces a ground-breaking approach to precision weight estimation in light aircraft design. Employing a statistical approach, specifically multilinear regression alone and coupled with p-value analysis, the study focuses on predicting the MTOW using datasets from aircraft still ‘in production’ and/or ‘in service’. The aircraft are categorised by landing gear arrangement and number of engines. Eight crucial design parameters that influence aircraft weight are used to determine the empirical models. The developed models successfully predict the MTOW with an error of less than 5% and outperform existing weight estimation techniques, empowering designers to conduct parametric studies that include essential design parameters at the early stages of aircraft design. The proposed methodology represents a paradigm shift in the field, offering a reliable and practical means of achieving precision in light aircraft weight predictions.

This article critically examines the broad claims of the Antarctic Treaty Consultative Parties (ATCPs) that the Antarctic Treaty System (ATS) is the ‘competent’ and ‘comprehensive’ framework for governing marine biodiversity in the area covered by its constituent instruments, implying that the Agreement on the Conservation and Sustainable Use of Marine Biological Diversity of Areas Beyond National Jurisdiction (BBNJ Agreement) is therefore inapplicable within that same area under the ‘not undermine’ clause in its Article 5(2). Focusing on the specific topic of marine bioprospecting governance, our analysis breaks down ‘competence’ into spatial (where the ATS has legal authority to govern) and functional (the activities or subject matter it is empowered to regulate) dimensions and evaluates whether existing competences, as exercised, result in ‘comprehensive’ governance. We find the ATCPs’ claims to be legally and practically unsubstantiated to justify the complete or de facto exclusion of the BBNJ Agreement’s application in the area covered by the constituent instruments of the ATS: the jurisdictional competence of the ATS is fragmented, its functional competence is narrowly confined to the early, in situ dimensions of bioprospecting regulation, and its operational record of governing marine bioprospecting is negligible, relying on generic, non-tailored rules long recognized as inadequate. As such, the Antarctic marine bioprospecting case illustrates that a regime’s exclusionary claims regarding the BBNJ Agreement should be viewed with scepticism. Failing to do so may conceal the very gaps that the BBNJ Agreement was created to address.

We consider a smooth fibration equipped with a flat complex vector bundle and a hypersurface cutting the fibration into two pieces. Our main result is a gluing formula relating the Bismut-Lott analytic torsion form of the whole fibration to that of each piece. This result solves a conjecture proposed at a conference in Göttingen in 2003. This result also leads to a higher Cheeger-Müller/Bismut-Zhang theorem. Our approach combines an adiabatic limit along the normal direction of the hypersurface and a Witten-type deformation on the flat vector bundle.

This article explores the economic and aesthetic dimensions of Resurrección María de Azkue’s (1864–1951) Basque operas, focusing on the tension between artistic ambition and financial constraints in the early twentieth-century Basque Country. Drawing on the example of the operas Ortzuri (1911) and Urlo (1914), this article explores how industrialisation and bourgeois interests influenced the definition of Basque opera. It also assesses the viability of this project by analysing its internal infrastructure, including the theatre landscape and repertoire, while underscoring the role of critics in shaping aesthetic norms for composers. By integrating both local and transnational perspectives, this article situates Azkue’s Basque operas within a broader context, relating it to contrasting models of modernity represented by Italian opera and Wagnerism, and demonstrating how peripheral regionalist and nationalist movements navigated these trends to try to assert a position of centrality.

Let $\Omega$ be a lattice in $\mathbb C$ with invariants $g_2,g_3$ and let $\wp(z), \zeta(z)$ be the associated Weierstrass elliptic and zeta functions, respectively. In this paper, we prove that if $\omega$ is any non-zero period of $\wp(z)$ and $u_1,u_2$ complex numbers such that $u_1,u_2, \omega$ are $\mathbb{Q}$-linearly independent with $({\mathbb{Z}} u_1+{\mathbb{Z}} u_2)\cap\Omega=(0),$ then at least two of the numbers

\begin{equation*}g_2,g_3,\omega, \eta,u_1,u_2,\wp(u_i),\zeta(u_i)~~(1\leq i\leq 2)\end{equation*}

$\mathbb{Q},$

$\eta$

$\zeta(z)$

$\omega.$

Volatile organic compounds (VOCs) pose risks to human health and the environment, making the development of efficient technologies to reduce their emissions a priority. Catalytic oxidation represents a simple, efficient and environmentally friendly method for eliminating VOCs. Herein, a spinel CuCo2O4/biochar/attapulgite (ATP) composite was successfully synthesized via a sol–gel method using waste walnut shell powder as both a complexing agent and a combustion promoter. The effect of the mass ratio on toluene degradation performance was systematically investigated. The results indicated that when the mass ratio of CuCo2O4/ATP to the biomass precursor was optimized to 1:4, the catalyst exhibited excellent catalytic oxidation performance for toluene degradation, achieving 99% conversion at 300°C along with high stability. The introduction of biochar induced the formation of abundant oxygen vacancies on the spinel surface and effectively suppressed the agglomeration of CuCo2O4 particles. Moreover, the rich functional groups on biochar improved toluene adsorption, favouring the subsequent catalytic oxidation. The current study offers a cost-effective strategy for VOC abatement by taking advantage of minerals and biomass.

Drawing on foundational work in the history of emotions, this article explores the significance of evangelical children’s search for salvation in postwar America. Reading midcentury denominational publications and children’s letters through an affective lens, this article asks how emotion, not merely belief, made evangelical childhoods. As evangelical communities passed down a conversion script teaching their children what to feel and how to feel it, kids found themselves caught between the horrors of the bomb, traditions that invoked religious fear, and the gathering force of therapeutic psychology that sought to cultivate feelings of well-being. While evangelical adults imagined that kids who lacked assurance of salvation were experiencing a problem of belief, I argue that children’s doubts exposed tensions inherent in the emotional script of conversion. These enduring tensions took on new significance in the age of the therapeutic, as the pursuit of inner peace emerged as a challenger to more transcendent claims of salvation as peace with God. Thus, even as the children of the 1950s and 1960s tried their best to follow a tried-and-true conversion script, their search for proper feelings recast the meaning of salvation itself and subtly aligned evangelicalism with the new therapeutic self of postwar America.

Since the 1980s opera and fashion directors have earnestly explored the potential for symbiotic relationships as a way to sustain performance institutions and showcase forward-thinking approaches to operatic works, as evidenced by collaborations between the creative directors of Missoni, Versace, Fendi and Armani with La Scala, the Metropolitan Opera and the Royal Opera House. In addition, fashion companies such as Dolce&Gabbana have found inspiration from opera’s long and celebrated histories within Italy, using operatic works as a platform for haute couture runway design.

This article studies three projects from Maison Valentino which are among the most recent fashionable forays into the genre of opera. In addition to collaborating on the 2016 production of La traviata with the Teatro dell’Opera di Roma, Valentino highlighted operatic heroines on the runway in 2014, and in 2018 created a collection inspired by Maria Callas, who inspired a number of repertorial revivals in the twentieth century. Valentino’s sartorial re-imaginings of nineteenth-century operatic culture on the stage and runway – achieved in both instances through incarnations of Callas – have sought to position Italian operatic history as a practical aspect of contemporary material culture. By showcasing the economic, political and social ramifications of Valentino’s collaborative efforts, I show how the company’s reformulations of operatic materials have impacted both conventional and unconventional structures of contemporary performance.

How and why is comparative law and society imperative to legal education? In the 21st century, legal education displays a paradox: despite the rise of Asia economically, socially and politically, the study of comparative law rarely includes Asian laws outside of law schools in Asia. In this article, I contribute to the debate over legal education by arguing for the imperative of comparative law and society, and its benefits for law students. I examine how law schools commit practically to comparative law and society by hiring scholars with relevant expertise and offering such subjects. I illustrate this commitment with a case study of Asian legal studies in Australia over the past seven decades (1960s-2020s). I find that Asian legal studies remains concentrated at a handful of law schools, resulting in a problem I describe as the ‘Asian Century gap’ in legal education. Closing this gap requires a renewed commitment to the study of comparative law and society as Asian legal studies through hiring choices and subject offerings. Such a commitment is necessary to ensure that our law students gain the benefits that an education in comparative law and society has to offer.

Standard portfolio-choice models treat cash as fungible. Using positions and transfer records for 46,016 Chinese investors, we show that brokerage cash is nonfungible and that cash-source effects refresh and decay. We label inflows from savings transfers as “cold” and trading-recycled funds as “hot” and construct a cash-temperature measure tracking these dynamics. Investors allocate colder cash to safer stocks, controlling for gains and losses, trading intensity, and rebalancing. Quasi-experimental variation from China’s 2016 IPO reform supports a causal interpretation. A preregistered experiment links cold framing to loss aversion; a model with temperature-dependent sensitivity to gains and losses rationalizes the evidence.

This paper elucidates the firm and corporation’s institutional coevolution via the firm-corporation linkage debate between legal institutionalism (LI) and world power system theory (WPS). To drive a sustainability transition, it proposes ‘regenerative characteristics’ – extending multidomain, multitemporal, and ecosystem characteristics. Employing a transdisciplinary approach, the study synthesises LI’s ‘emergentist’ and WPS’s ‘separation’ views through comparative institutional analysis (CIA). Integrating corporate actor theory with an Ostromian perspective, it extends CIA to identify position as the generative mechanism linking micro-level actions to macro-level institutions. Theoretically, law structures coevolutionary governance, joint production demands an agreement of joint responsibility, and ‘negotiated governance’ emphasises capability evolution. Rejecting shareholder primacy, policies must tie legal recognition to external responsibilities, foster education for moral judgement, and incentivise regenerative characteristics. Ultimately, negotiated governance transforms the firm-corporation linkage into a responsible constituent of the global commons.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, many governments recommended quarantine to those who had close contact with infected individuals. We conducted a large-scale retrospective survey to study the consequences of such quarantine for labor outcomes. A sizable fraction of quarantined workers experienced reductions in hours worked and earnings, not only during quarantine but also after quarantine. Even uninfected workers experienced negative labor impacts, likely capturing the pure effects of quarantine independent of the effects of COVID-19 symptoms. Non-regular workers and workers without remote work options were more negatively affected by quarantine. We estimate that the quarantine resulted in a large reduction in the aggregate hours and that the reduction is mainly due to the scarring effects.