The present article articulates and defends a version of constitutionalism that is only present in a few jurisdictions around the world: unwritten constitutionalism. Far from being irrelevant or unconnected, however, the operation of constitutionalism within unwritten constitutional settings has a great deal to offer to the theory and practice of constitutional studies. In doing so, we uphold the use of ‘written’ and ‘unwritten’ terminology, differentiate unwritten constitutionalism from other types of constitutionalism and argue that the insights of unwritten constitutionalism are crucial given the global turn to more authoritarian types of government. Examining some of the indicative features of unwritten constitutionalism, the article goes on to explore what lessons unwritten constitutionalism may be able to bring to written settings. By further unpacking the mystery of the unwritten constitution, we hope to make this unique form of constitutionalism more accessible and relevant to those that acknowledge constitutional text is not the end of the story.

This article examines the transformation of the Ottoman empire’s maritime boundary policies in the Red Sea during the early modern period. It focuses on the dual character of the Red Sea, as both a religious frontier safeguarding the Holy Cities and a strategic maritime corridor within global trade networks. Drawing on Ottoman and British archival sources, the study analyses the period from 1517 to 1798 in three distinct phases: a closed sea era shaped by the Portuguese threat (1517–1608); a phase of negotiation with friendly European actors (1608–36); and a period of controlled openness (1636–1798), in which limited access was granted to merchants recognised as müsteʾmin (protected foreigners). The article argues that Ottoman maritime sovereignty in the region was not exercised through absolute control, but through a flexible and negotiable mode of boundary management. This perspective offers a contribution to early modern debates on imperial border-making and sovereignty by revealing how empires balanced ideological commitments with economic pragmatism.

The present study aimed to evaluate the effect of N-acetylcysteine (NAC) on in vitro maturation (IVM) and in vitro embryo production in sheep. Cumulus–oocyte complexes (COCs) were collected and matured in vitro in a control medium or supplemented with different concentrations of NAC (1, 1.5 and 2.0 mM). After maturation, a subset of oocytes was used for morphological assessment and chromatin configuration analysis, as well as for evaluating intracellular levels of reactive oxygen species (ROS), glutathione (GSH), mitochondrial activity and DNA fragmentation using the TUNEL assay. Another subgroup of oocytes was subjected to in vitro fertilization (IVF), and the presumed zygotes were cultured in in vitro culture (IVC) medium to assess cleavage rates. Data were statistically analysed, considering significance at P < 0.05. The concentration of 1 mM NAC resulted in lower ROS levels compared to the control and 1.5 mM groups, in addition to reducing DNA fragmentation. No significant differences (P > 0.05) were observed in GSH levels or mitochondrial activity between treated and control groups. Furthermore, oocytes treated with 1 mM NAC showed higher cleavage rates compared to the other experimental groups. In conclusion, supplementation with 1 mM NAC improves oocyte quality and early embryonic development, as demonstrated by reduced oxidative stress and DNA fragmentation, resulting in increased cleavage rates.

Past research relates design creativity to “divergent thinking,” i.e., how well the concept space is explored during the early phase of design. Researchers have argued that generating several concepts would increase the chances of producing better design solutions. “Variety” is one of the parameters by which one can quantify the breadth of a concept space explored by the designers. It is useful to assess variety at the conceptual design stage because, at this stage, designers have the freedom to explore different solution principles so as to satisfy a design problem with substantially novel concepts. This article elaborates on and critically examines the existing variety metrics from the engineering design literature, discussing their limitations. A new distance-based variety metric is proposed, along with a prescriptive framework to support the assessment process. The framework measures the real-valued distance between two design concepts using any chosen representation of their underlying abstraction levels. The proposed framework is implemented in a software tool called “VariAnT.” Furthermore, the tool’s application is demonstrated through an illustrative example.

Understanding the evolution of the cosmic star formation rate density (SFRD) is key to uncovering how the Universe arrived at its present state. This paper presents a novel and efficient method to estimate the local SFRD, which uses supervised machine learning to first identify a population of star-forming galaxies (SFGs). Next, star-formation rates (SFRs) are determined using the 1.4-GHz radio-continuum emission detected by the Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder (ASKAP). Specifically, a gradient-boosted decision tree model was imple-mented to classify extragalactic sources from the Beck et al. (2022) catalogue as either galaxies or quasars using RACS-mid and WISE photometry. The full sample, consisting of 389,392 sources, was partitioned into a 70%-15%-15% split for training, validating, and testing. The optimised model achieved a weighted F1 score of 0.93 and an accuracy of 0.94 on the test dataset, ultimately classifying 336,674 sources as galaxies and 52,718 sources as quasars. Using the resulting z <0.1 depth-matched galaxy sample and the photometric redshift predictions from Beck et al. (2022), a modified 1.4-GHz SFR calibration was determined, yielding a local, completeness-corrected, z < 0.1 SFRD of (1.4 ± 0.5) × 10−2 M⊙ yr−1 Mpc−3 using 11,293 sources. This value is consistent with previous results. Thus, this study demonstrates the feasibility of using supervised learning to identify large populations of SFGs in order to investigate the SFRD evolution. This presents an exciting prospect for future, deeper surveys such as EMU, which will enable the cosmic SFRD to be probed out to higher redshifts.

Street-level scholarship has increasingly turned to how organizations and frontline providers respond to crisis. Yet crises evolve, and street-level organizations may vary in how they relate to state entities that coordinate crisis response efforts. Drawing on an ethnographic case study of the homelessness criminalization crisis in Austin, Texas, this article shows how the rise and rapid implementation of a punitive approach, focused on removing visible encampments, intensified crisis acuity, which increased provider ambiguity, fractured coordination, and exacerbated harm. Public providers, closely tied to the city, could at times mitigate harm for people in visible encampments but risked complicity as police enforcement rapidly escalated. In contrast, nonprofit providers were separate from city efforts and focused on the most vulnerable, yet their separation paradoxically limited their ability to influence outcomes or reduce harm. Drawing on nonprofit studies’ focus on public–nonprofit differences and social work’s critique of state-provider entanglements under conditions of criminalization, these findings show how intensifying crisis acuity and differential organizational-state relationships shape frontline adaptation and coordination. Criminalizing homelessness harms homeless individuals and the service systems designed to support them, underscoring tradeoffs in both public provision and government–nonprofit collaboration.

How do foreign investors respond to domestic electoral politics? A political investment cycle dynamic predicts investments increase before elections while an uncertainty and delay hypothesis anticipates investment declines in advance of elections. This study adjudicates these competing expectations, arguing that foreign firms locate their investments based, in part, on electoral predictability. We theorize that firms prefer to invest in locations holding clear-winner elections, and avoid close-call elections, where the outcome is uncertain. We test this theory in the context of U.S. congressional elections, arguing that legislators provide access to public resources, policy influence, and coordination across levels of government, and therefore investors benefit from stable representation. Using geolocated data on greenfield foreign direct investment (FDI) announcements in the United States from 2003 to 2017, we find that FDI announcements rise significantly in election years—but only in districts with clear-winner elections. Mediation analysis shows that increased federal appropriations partly explain this pattern, consistent with our argument that electoral predictability enhances firms’ ability to secure political support. These findings reveal a political bias in global capital allocation: politically monopolistic districts attract more investment, while vibrant electoral competition deters it—raising fundamental concerns about the interplay between democracy and money.

Cereal rye (Secale cereale L.) cover crop provides a multitude of benefits, including soil conservation and weed suppression. Cereal rye biomass is positively correlated with weed suppression; however, high biomass is not always feasible. The weed-suppression potential of cereal rye grown under conditions that do not support high biomass is unknown. In such cases, other mechanisms, such as reduced soil temperature and nutrient depletion, may contribute to weed suppression. The objective of this study is to determine the impact of cereal rye biomass levels on soil water, temperature, nutrients, and, in turn, weed emergence patterns. Cereal rye was planted at four seeding rates (0, 20, 40, and 80 kg ha-1) and terminated at three timings (6, 4, and 2 weeks before planting cotton). Soil water and temperature were continuously monitored using automatic sensors. Soil nutrient content was analyzed from samples taken before cereal rye planting and at each termination timing. Weed seedling emergence was assessed throughout the summer. Cover crop termination timing had a greater influence on biomass production than seeding rate; delaying termination by four weeks resulted in 70 to 150% more biomass. High cereal rye biomass levels reduced maximum soil surface (0-10 cm) temperature by up to 7 C and thermal amplitude by 10 C before crop planting. Cereal rye significantly reduced soil nitrogen content but had minimal effect on phosphorus and potassium. A minimum biomass production of 2 t ha-1 is necessary for 30-50% weed suppression, whereas moderate (2 to 4 t ha-1) and high biomass levels (6000 kg ha-1) provided 60-70% and >90% weed suppression, respectively. The time for 50% weed seedling emergence was delayed by 18 days under high cereal rye biomass compared to fallow. Overall, our findings indicate that cereal rye suppresses weeds through multiple mechanisms, explaining suppression even at low biomass levels.

This article engages health humanities scholarship that approaches biomedical knowledge as cultural and pedagogical, and that treats patient experience, clinician reports, medical images, and other quotidian patient and/or health-provider texts as interpretive sites. This work fleshes out the intelligibility of patient voices as constitutive of a cartography of presence. Drawing on queer theory and the onco-humanities, I argue that clinical cancer settings operate through choreographies that both organize bodies and feature tactical refusals. Autobiographical experience rendered as pathography—often dismissed as anecdotal—is approached here as research evidence and as animating practices of resistance within regimes of biomedical authority. Methodologically, the article juxtaposes close readings of two sets of artifacts: (1) Tactic, the first widely broadcast cancer-focused educational television series (produced by the American Cancer Society and NBC) and (2) a hauntological archive summoned from my 2025 to 2026 Stage IV lung cancer documents; a constellation of clinical and autobiographical traces—fieldnotes, clinical care-provider reports, and medical images. Read together, these materials reveal how cancer—reimagined as an “epidemic of signification”—has long functioned as a pedagogical project aimed at managing uncertainty, disciplining affect, and sustaining optimism as a mode of governance. By placing a contemporary patient-curated archive in dialogue with mid-century public cancer pedagogy, the article traces queer pedagogical practices that rewrite the normative from cancer’s margins. It advances the concept of tactical choreographies to name how cancer patients inhabit, reroute, and on occasion, refuse the pedagogical demands of medicine under conditions of institutional invisibility, necropolitical abjection, and state violence.

A new study of the trial of Jesus of Nazareth urges that we turn our attention to the broader imperial context of the trial. Jesus made the local elites in charge of the Roman Empire deeply uncomfortable, and their status as elites - rather than their religion - best explains their response to his ministry.

Let v(k) be the smallest integer larger than 1 that does not occur among the denominators in any identity of the form

\begin{align*}1=\frac1{n_1}+\cdots+\frac1{n_k},\end{align*}

$1 \leq n_1\lt\cdots\lt n_k$

$v(k)\gg k!$

$c\gt0$

\begin{align*}v(k)\ge e^{c k^2}\end{align*}

To guarantee the safety and stability of cable-driven continuum robots (CDCRs) in multi-obstacle scenarios, this paper proposes a novel trajectory planning and tracking framework that integrates an artificial potential field (APF) based model predictive control (MPC) with a two-layer B-spline trajectory optimization framework. APF is incorporated as a penalty term in the objective function to enhance trajectory safety. Additionally, an improved whale optimization algorithm (IWOA) is introduced to circumvent the local optimal trap of MPC. Particularly, to improve tracking accuracy and stability, a two-layer B-spline optimization framework is proposed to enhance the smoothness of the planned trajectory. Simulation and experimental results show that the designed trajectory planning and tracking algorithm can generate collision-free trajectories and achieve high tracking accuracy in multi-obstacle environments.

Democracy today means liberal democracy. Exclusively. And ‘the crisis of liberal democracy is not necessarily a crisis of democracy as such’. This is the starting point of Philip Manow’s new book, Unter Beobachtung. Die Bestimmung der liberalen Demokratie und ihrer Freunde (‘Under Surveillance. Defining liberal democracy and its friends’). The German political scientist contends that through the new, exclusive understanding of democracy as liberal democracy, politics has been ‘suffocated’, and this largely contributed to the success of populism. In this review I argue that the populist promise for the rebirth of politics is dishonest, and I point to an underestimated consequence of liberal depoliticisation: rights inflation.

How is an off-the-books exchange governed under strong formal regulation? This article answers this question through a mechanism-based reanalysis of 216 interviews conducted in Amsterdam and Rotterdam in 1997–1999, focusing on 46 traceable cases of undeclared or informally compensated activity. Treating the corpus as a historical welfare-state baseline, not evidence of current prevalence, this article shows that informal exchange was governed at the transaction level through three linked mechanisms. Moral norms distinguished necessity-based side activities from abusive undeclared work; trust relations filtered access to low-visibility opportunities; and community-based enforcement stabilised repeated exchange through reputation, reciprocity, monitoring, and selective exclusion. These mechanisms mattered where formal work was blocked, weakly rewarding, administratively risky, or incompatible with care obligations. This article contributes to institutional economics by specifying how informal institutions shape the legitimacy, accessibility, durability, scale, and visibility of exchange under strong formal regulation.