Evaluation of genotypes is essential for assessing yield stability in organic farming, helping identify suitable cultivars for Punjab’s growers. This is particularly important given the harmful effects of intensive chemical use on soil and water quality, which drives the shift toward organic practices. Unlike conventional methods, organic farming relies on sustainable approaches such as crop rotation, green manure and bio-pesticides to promote agroecosystem health. The experiment was conducted during the Kharif seasons of 2020 and 2021 in a randomised complete block design at the Research Farm of the Punjab Agricultural University, Ludhiana, Punjab. Ten Basmati varieties, including Punjab Basmati 5, Punjab Basmati 4, Punjab Basmati 3, Punjab Basmati 2, Basmati 386, Basmati 370, CSR 30, Pusa Basmati 1121, Pusa Basmati 1509 and Pusa Basmati 1718, were assessed for the various yield-attributing parameters, such as effective tillers, number of grains per panicle, 1000-grain weight, grain yield, straw yield and total biomass. Pusa Basmati 1509 produced the highest grain yield (3.6 tonnes/ha), biomass yield (6.7 tonnes/ha) and harvest index (35.2 %) among all varieties followed by Punjab Basmati 4 and Pusa Basmati 1718. Net returns (INR 122,000 per ha) and benefit-cost ratio (B:C) (2.09) were the highest in Pusa Basmati 1121 because this cultivar fetches higher price in the market due to its superior aroma and cooking quality. The future research could delve into the organic cultivation practices specifically developed for these cultivars, contributing to the development of sustainable and resilient agriculture system in the region.

We present a method for imposing quasineutrality and, more generally, charge density conservation in the Vlasov–Poisson (VP) and Vlasov–Ampère (VA) systems, which describe electrostatic plasma dynamics, by applying the Dirac theory of constraints. Leveraging the Hamiltonian field formulations of the VP and VA models, we construct generalised Dirac brackets using the Dirac algorithm. The resulting constrained systems enforce charge density conservation, and consequently quasineutrality, given that the initial charge density is zero, through new advection terms in the Vlasov equations involving generalised-force terms, while the electric field is eliminated from the constrained Vlasov dynamics. To verify charge density conservation we conduct one-dimensional numerical experiments using a semi-Lagrangian method, demonstrating that the enforcement of the quasineutrality constraint significantly modifies the dynamics. This approach enables us to identify the forces required to enforce quasineutrality, offering a systematic way to assess the validity of the quasineutral approximation across different kinetic scales.

I present a new ontological argument that rests on two evaluative theses, both inspired by Anselm’s Proslogion 2. First, for any F and Q, it is no better for there to be an F, given Q, than it is for there to be something perfect. Second, it is better for there to be something perfect if there is such a thing than if there isn’t. It follows that there is something perfect. I examine these premises, consider some parodies, and suggest possible atheistic replies.

This article examines the replication of the Statue of Peace as a form of civic resistance and re-commemoration in response to the Japanese government’s efforts at de-commemoration. It advances three central arguments. First, replication functions as re-commemoration that resists state-led erasure of the “comfort women” memory. Second, this process constitutes a hauntological cycle, in which attempts to suppress unresolved memories only intensify their return. Third, both state and civic actors must embrace these haunting memories as enduring presences. The study draws on Derridean hauntology and case studies to support this framework.

In this study, we build on our previous work that examines the creative dancemaking collaboration between choreographers and arborist-dancers as they work together in rehearsals to create a performance featuring the workaday skillfulness of urban foresters. They face unique challenges and contingencies because to step into each other’s professional worlds requires a provisionally shared way of thinking that cuts across their diverse experiences; therefore, the two groups create external representations with their bodies (i.e., marking) to bridge epistemic divides. We extend our previous analysis of this microethnographic context—analyzing a routine where an arborist drives a loader truck to distribute mulch—by further demonstrating the semiotic purchase of Charles Goodwin’s interactional semiotics. Goodwin’s notion of “situated improvisation” is especially helpful for making sense of the embodied diagrams that emerge in marking together—a jointly crafted conceptual world makes perceptual experiences of both groups readable and deployable for dance creation.

In three-dimensional (3D) through-the-wall radar imaging, unknown wall parameters such as thickness and relative permittivity distort electromagnetic wave propagation, causing image defocusing and target displacement. Autofocusing is therefore essential, but conventional methods are computationally demanding due to two-dimensional (2D) searches over wall parameters and repeated reconstruction of full 3D images. To address this challenge efficiently, a slice-based 3D imaging strategy is adopted. Radar data are acquired along a linear aperture parallel to the wall at multiple heights. For each height, the collected measurements form a B-scan dataset, which is processed independently to reconstruct a 2D image slice. A computationally efficient two-step framework is proposed. First, the wall’s relative permittivity is estimated from the time-domain response of the B-scan at a selected height, and autofocusing is performed by varying only the wall thickness, reducing the conventional 2D search to a one-dimensional problem. Second, focused 2D image slices are reconstructed at all heights. The final 3D image of the concealed targets is obtained by superimposing these slices into a volumetric representation. The experimental results demonstrate that the proposed technique yields well-focused images while significantly reducing the computational cost.

Transnational cultural encounters between Africa and China, such as Chinese artist Pu Yingwei’s exploration of Kenya’s dam infrastructure and the reception of French-Senegalese director Mati Diop’s film Dahomey on African artifact repatriation among Chinese youth, generate new sites of knowledge circulation and epistemic inquiry. These exchanges exemplify an approach of “reflexivity,” which emphasizes critical reflection on one’s own positionality, research processes, and the broader conditions shaping knowledge production. Oriented toward mutual reference and epistemic affinity between Asia and Africa, this approach promotes a relational mode of knowledge-making attentive to both shared historical legacies and existing structural disparities.

In this paper, a passive, chipless ${2 \times 2}$ RFID tag array designed on a thin polyimide substrate is proposed for a wearable application. The radiating element comprises a star-shaped multi-ring structure enclosed in a square folded split ring. Requirement of compactness in wearables gives rise to electromagnetic interference (EMI) due to close coupling between the tag elements, which deteriorates the performance of the RFID system and requires mitigation of the EMI. In the present work, the coupling is analyzed extensively for two separate cases: when all array elements are of the same size and when they are of two different sizes, to investigate both inbound and outbound EMI scenarios. The orientation of each tag element with specific configuration is examined to achieve minimum coupling and to gain a larger read range, an important parameter in the design of passive RFID tags. Furthermore, specific absorption rate analysis confirms the safety and suitability of the design for on-body applications. The prototype model of the proposed configuration is developed, measured, and compared with the simulation results. A good agreement between the simulation and measured results confirms its suitability for compact wearable applications.

Members of the majority party in Congress sometimes vote against bills that they prefer over the status quo. We estimate a model of congressional roll-call voting that allows for this kind of non-ideological protest voting. We find that protest voting has significant implications for roll-call-based estimates of ideology and other analyses that rely upon them. For example, a traditional item response theory model curiously identifies members of the Squad as relatively moderate Democrats, but our protest-voting-adjusted scores identify them as the most liberal members of Congress. We also find that previous studies may have underestimated responsiveness, the effects of ideology in elections, the utility of non-roll-call-based measures of ideology, and the increase in congressional polarization. Although the implications for most substantive applications are likely modest, our analyses suggest that future researchers can better measure legislative ideology by accounting for a small number of non-ideological votes.

NEURAL MATERIALS (2024) is a live AV show created by SONAMB (Vicky Clarke). The project represents a collaboration between Vicky Clarke, visual artist Sean Clarke, and industry partner Bela, a company specialising in hardware with interactive sensors for music-making. The AV show utilises a new performance system incorporating a hybrid set-up in combination with both a sound sculpture and the output of a machine learning model trained on a ‘post-industrial’ sonic dataset. The dataset renders in sound Manchester’s industrial past and present through field recordings of cotton mills, the canal network and the electromagnetic resonances of a newly gentrified city centre. This article analyses NEURAL MATERIALS as musical composition, live AV show and a demonstration of creative audio-generative AI, linking the work to scholarly and compositional legacies of Sonic Materialism and musique concrète. By combining documentation analysis and performance analysis, I interrogate how sound’s indexical properties are transformed via machine learning (ML) processes, questioning whether machines are able to evoke a sense of space or heritage. Ultimately, I contend that such audio-generative systems have the capacity to reshape our perception of industrial histories, technologies and future sonic realities, indexing sociohistorical cues that are reactivated at the point of listening.

Metaphors abound for mycorrhiza in both science and fiction. From the “wood wide web” to “mother trees,” “social networks” to “neurological networks,” analogies expand and transform public understanding of the complex and elusive interactions between plants and fungi occurring under our feet in forest ecosystems. However, the line between metaphor and the more-than-metaphorical, fact and fiction, is not always clear, causing heated debates about the role of metaphor in the scientific imagination and science communication. As a mycologist and literary scholar, we enact an interdisciplinary symbiosis inspired by mycorrhiza themselves to explore the mycorrhizal metaphors in the past decade, which are entangling and enriching both science and fiction, from Tade Thompson’s Rosewater (2016) to Merlin Sheldrake’s Entangled Life (2020), Richard Powers’s The Overstory (2018) to Suzanne Simard’s Finding the Mother Tree (2021). We reaffirm the fundamental value of metaphors in how scientists and nonscientists alike seek to understand fungi in a world increasingly fascinated by and dependent upon them.