Within 18 months of its second consecutive general election (March 2018) as Italy's largest party, the valence populist 5-Star Movement (M5S) had dropped to polling 4th, halving its 30% + vote-share, behind parties of both the right and the left. In those 18-months, the party participated in two governments: one of the right and one of the centre-left. Two broad explanations for such decline are presented here: party credibility loss related to its (non)-ideological placement and penalties associated with incumbency. The former is predicted to lead those who initially supported the party to disengage from party preferences while the later is predicted to have respondents desert their preference for M5S to other parties. Using Italian panel survey data on partisan representation from March 2018 through September 2020, this manuscript identifies the opinions of those who those who deserted the party, those who disengaged from party preferences, and those who remained loyal to M5S. Descriptive analysis will first call attention to the differences between loyalists, deserters, the disengaged, and survey respondents more broadly. Multivariate analysis suggests the role of incumbency-based factors as an explanation for a decline in party support. The ideological position of the party (or being beyond left-and-right) had only a minor role. A discussion then focuses on the results of populists in power and the role of ideology in valence populism. Without an ideological core, once in power, voters punish (valence) populist party as they would any other, holding them to account for leadership and government performance.

This essay is part of an ongoing dialogue on INTERPOL’s role in international law and global governance. It argues that INTERPOL’s 2025 General Agreement on the Privileges and Immunities of the ICPO-INTERPOL (General Agreement)1 reflects a remarkable development in the multilateral recognition of international organizations.

INTERPOL is recognized as an international organization with legal personality, a permanent structure, and independent decision-making authority. Its operational core lies in facilitating international police cooperation, primarily through the exchange and processing of data related to criminal matters. The present essay develops a working concept of shared responsibility in this particular context.

Social networks influence health outcomes, yet declining health can also reshape social ties. While prior research has focused on constrained settings, the impact of health on social networks in fully voluntary contexts remains underexplored. This study examines the reciprocal relationship between health and social networks in voluntary settings, assessing whether previously observed patterns persist. We analyzed three-wave longitudinal whole network data from two voluntary clubs (N = 102, mean age = 54 years) in North-Rhine Westphalia, Germany, using Stochastic Actor-Oriented Models to distinguish between selection and influence effects across self-rated, mental, and physical health measures. Our analyses suggest diverging patterns observed in more constrained settings. We found no evidence of peer influence on health across any measures. While self-rated health showed some evidence of selection effects, social avoidance was limited to individuals with poor physical health. Notably, we found no evidence of withdrawal; instead, individuals with poorer health were more likely to nominate others in the network, suggesting they actively sought social connections as a compensatory strategy. These findings challenge existing assumptions about health-based network dynamics, emphasizing the need to reconsider how social networks function in voluntary contexts. Future research should explore how the degree of setting constraints shape health-related network dynamics.

This study examines the political economy of international trade and perpetual peace proposed by the agronomist Jean-Baptiste Rougier-Labergerie under the French Directory. Drawing on Rougier-Labergerie’s treatise on commerce and peace, this article shows how a political economy that was rooted in natural jurisprudence navigated the challenges of subsistence and war through turbulent times that extended beyond the Thermidor. Similar to eighteenth-century intellectuals who witnessed large-scale wars waged with public debt in the name of national interest, Rougier-Labergerie considered the possibility of peace and prosperity to be intricately linked to the question of commercial rivalry between nations. He thereby recognized the pressing need to mitigate—by different means from those deployed by the radicals of Year II—the jealousy of trade that plagued Europe in the 1790s. This examination provides a more nuanced dimension to the established categories in historical inquiries into the international political economy of the revolutionary period.

Personal experiences with public officials influence how those officials are perceived. We question whether these experiential effects extend to other officials. If people draw on what they know to make inferences about unfamiliar evaluative targets, then interactions with one actor may shape evaluations of other independent actors. Focusing on police and courts, analyses of data from two surveys reveal that personal interactions with public officials produce spillover effects on appraisals of officials in different sectors. The findings indicate that experiential spillover constitutes an underappreciated force in public opinion, one that operates outside the control of the actors being evaluated.

This paper applies Structure-Preserving Doubling Algorithms (SDAs) to solve the matrix quadratic that underlies linear DSGE models. We present and compare two SDAs to other competing methods—the QZ method, a Newton algorithm, and an iterative Bernoulli approach—as well as linking them to the cyclic and logarithmic reduction algorithms included in Dynare. Our evaluation, conducted across 142 models from the Macroeconomic Model Data Base and multiple parameterizations of the Smets and Wouters (2007) model, demonstrates that SDAs generally provide more accurate solutions in less time than QZ. We also establish their theoretical convergence properties and robustness to initialization issues. The SDAs perform particularly well in refining solutions provided by other methods and for large models.

This study presents a surrogate-model-assisted Quasi-Newton optimisation framework for simultaneously improving the aerodynamic performance and radar stealth characteristics of an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV). High-fidelity computational fluid dynamics (CFD) and computational electromagnetics (CEM) simulations are integrated through surrogate models generated via a face-centred central composite design within a design of experiments framework. Quadratic polynomial response surface equations are constructed for key aerodynamic and radar cross-section (RCS) metrics, enabling analytical gradient evaluation. A gradient-based quasi-Newton method with Broyden–Fletcher–Goldfarb–Shanno Hessian updates is employed to minimise a scalarised objective function combining normalised maximum lift coefficient, overall RCS and frontal RCS. Constraints are imposed on the lift-to-drag ratio ($L/D \geq 10$) and static longitudinal stability (${C_{m0}} \geq 0$). Analytical derivatives from the response surface equations (RSEs) eliminate the need for direct numerical differentiation of CFD/CEM outputs, reducing computational cost and eliminating simulation noise. An interior-point sequential quadratic programming strategy is used to ensure satisfaction of nonlinear constraints during the optimisation process. The optimised UAV design demonstrates a $12{\rm{\% }}$ increase in maximum lift coefficient and a $30{\rm{\% }}$ reduction in both overall and frontal RCS compared to the baseline configuration. The results are confirmed through high-fidelity CFD and RCS simulations and are further validated experimentally in an anechoic chamber, with close agreement across all measured frequencies. The proposed methodology provides an efficient and experimentally verified approach for integrated aerodynamic and stealth optimisation in UAV design.

Plasminogen is an inactive protease in milk, which can be activated to plasmin. Whole milk contains fat and in response to lipase activity, free fatty acids are released. Free fatty acids are not known to act as an activator for plasminogen. The aim of this study was to determine whether commercial bovine plasminogen could be activated to plasmin by commercial free fatty acids present in milk, and also to determine if plasminogen activators to plasmin are present in abnormal milk using milk agar plates and the Merck protease assay. Fatty acids and activators present in abnormal milk had the ability to activate plasminogen to plasmin, which could, after weeks, harm milk protein stability during extended storage time (ultra-high temperature milk). The milk agar plate technique containing plasminogen could detect plasmin activators present in abnormal milk. This can act as an indicator of high-risk milk being used within the ultra-high temperature milk industry.

Neonatal pulmonary artery thromboembolism is a rare, life-threatening condition associated with diagnostic and therapeutic challenges. Early diagnosis and intervention are critical to mitigate high morbidity and mortality. Our case underscores the importance of considering neonatal pulmonary artery thromboembolism in the differential diagnosis of a full-term neonate with unexplained acute respiratory distress and highlights a successful management approach in the absence of formal guidelines.

Do self-imposed short-selling bans stabilise markets or impair them? We study the 1930 restrictions on non-mining shares introduced by the self-regulated Sydney (SSX) and Melbourne (MSX) exchanges one day apart. Using hand-collected daily quotes and trades for four weeks around the bans, we estimate difference-in-differences models by exchange and by listing status, and stratify firms by pre-ban liquidity and returns. Bid–ask spreads widen overall, most for initially illiquid firms and on SSX, while MSX effects are weaker, consistent with brief cross-venue substitution. Trading volumes adjust unevenly, with notable contractions among high-volume non-mining and dual listed firms. Returns show no systematic impact, although relative gains accrued to high-return non-mining firms on SSX. Overall, the bans introduced new frictions in liquidity and participation without providing broad price support. Our results underscore the limited effectiveness of self-regulated short-selling restrictions and offer historical insights for today’s self-regulated markets such as cryptocurrency and over-the-counter trading.

Since October 2023, residents of Gaza have been subjected to artificial intelligence (AI) target-generation systems by Israel. This article scrutinises the deployment of these technologies through an understanding of Israel’s settler-colonial project, racial-capitalist economy, and delineation of occupied Palestinian territories as carceral geographies. Drawing on the work of Andy Clarno, which demonstrates how Israel’s decreasing reliance on Palestinian labour made them inessential to exploitation, this article argues that Palestinians are valuable to Israel for another purpose: experimentation. For over fifty years, Palestinians have been rendered as test subjects for the development of surveillance and warfare technologies, in what Antony Lowenstein calls “the Palestine Laboratory.” AI introduces a dual paradigm where both Palestinian lives and deaths are turned into sites of data dispossession. This duality demands keeping Palestinians alive to generate constantly updating data for the lethal algorithmic systems that target them, while their deaths generate further data to refine and market those systems as “battle-tested.” The article describes this state as an algorithmic death-world, adapted from Achille Mbembe’s conception of necropolitics. This article concludes that as Israel exports its lethal AI technologies globally, it also exports a model of racialised disposability.

We show that, under certain assumptions, strongly finitary enriched monads are given by discrete enriched Lawvere theories. On the other hand, monads given by discrete enriched Lawvere theories preserve surjections.

This paper presents a novel artificial intelligence-based autopilot control system designed for the Cessna Citation X (CCX) aircraft longitudinal motion during cruise. In this control methodology, the unknown aircraft dynamics in the state-space representations of each vertical speed (VS) mode and altitude hold (AH) mode were approximated by two multiplayer fuzzy recurrent neural networks (MFRNNs) trained online using a novel approach based on particle swarm optimisation and backpropagation algorithms. These MFRNNs were used with two sliding mode controllers to guarantee the robustness of both VS and AH modes. In addition, a novel fuzzy logic-based transition algorithm was proposed to efficiently switch the controller between these autopilot modes. The performance of the controllers was evaluated with a nonlinear simulation platform developed for the CCX based on data from a Level D research aircraft flight simulator certified by the FAA. The system stability and robustness were proved by the Lyapunov theorem. The simulation, tested under 925 flight conditions, demonstrated the controllers exceptional tracking capability in a variety of uncertainties, including turbulent and non-turbulent flight scenarios. In addition, the design ensured that the smoothness of the control input signals was maintained in order to preserve the mechanical integrity of the elevator actuation system.

This article considers international standards of indigenous self-determination and self-governance rights exercised through establishment of indigenous representative institutions. In doing so, this article examines necessary processes of engagement a State should implement, that includes Indigenous people in the design, development, and maintenance of their own representative institutions so that they can function effectively. This article also considers how national indigenous representative institutions have been established and maintained in Australia and Canada given both chosen jurisdictions share similar colonial experiences yet have different formal legislative arrangements in place for Indigenous institutional representation at a national level. It then considers how, given their differing circumstances, those institutions in each jurisdiction work effectively and in partnership with the State. Ultimately, this article canvasses both the advances and limitations that Indigenous peoples of Australia and Canada have experienced with seeking to legislatively implement internationally recognised Indigenous rights within their State’s legal system. In doing so, this article seeks to highlight the lessons that can be learned from both jurisdictions’ experiences and emphasise the importance of achieving better outcomes for Indigenous peoples through a state’s implementation and support of self-governance and self-determination rights.