Despite his influence on those interested by leisure, Marx's own conception of leisure is rarely discussed. Insofar as it is, he is generally either thought to see leisure as free time or as indistinct from necessary labour in communist society. In this article, I suggest that by reading Capital and the Grundrisse through an Aristotelian lens, we can find a third potential conception of leisure in Marx, which shares three features in common with Aristotle's. Leisure is distinct from free time simpliciter, it is a “state-condition” people are in when they perform ends in themselves, and it is constitutive of the final end. I conclude that adopting a conception of leisure grounded in this Marxian conception could have implications for contemporary debates around free time and the value of leisure goods like arts and culture.

Sweden’s adoption of proportional representation (PR) is interesting because it involved static structural and institutional factors, well captured by variance-based left-threat thesis, and four temporal factors—sequencing, timing, historical change, and duration—that historical case studies highlight. We integrate these two sets of factors. We fuse the more static, temporally homogeneous world created by the left-threat thesis, that is well suited to explain cross-sectional variations, with the more dynamic, temporally heterogenous world presumed by the case studies that is attuned to temporal processes. It illustrates how comparative historical analysis (CHA) can translate temporal anomalies into generalizable temporal mechanisms and how nested analysis, together with causal graphs, provide helpful tools for updating theories. We ultimately employ an abductive approach that evaluates evidence not just for its inferential leverage of confirming theories but also for its inductive potential to generate new, more test-worthy hypotheses.

Otoliths are an excellent tool for analysing the pattern of habitat use between adults and juveniles and connectivity between fish populations. Larimus breviceps is a species belonging to the family Sciaenidae, which has an important role in the marine food chain, as it is one of the most abundant and frequent species in the bycatch of coastal shrimp fisheries in Brazil. The present study aimed at comparing the otolith shape of specimens collected in three different Brazilian coastal areas: Sergipe (SE), northeastern region; São Paulo (SP), southeastern region; and Paraná (PR), southern region. In a laboratory, 88 otoliths were extracted, photographed, and the contour was analysed by the wavelet method (32 from SE, 28 from SP, and 28 from PR). The otolith contours varied between sampling sites. Linear discriminant analysis correctly reclassified 60.23% otoliths by the sampled sites, with the best reclassifications occurring in SE (62.5%), followed by PR (60.71%) and SP (57.14%). Multivariate analysis of variance also evidenced significant differences in contours among the sampling sites (F = 2.3; P < 0.005). Thus, two morphotypes of otoliths were found for L. breviceps: one from Sergipe (northeastern Brazil) and the second one from southeastern–southern Brazil, indicating connectivity between the populations off São Paulo and Paraná, to be confirmed by future genetic studies.

The aim of this paper is to determine the asymptotic growth rate of the complexity function of cut-and-project sets in the non-abelian case. In the case of model sets of polytopal type in homogeneous two-step nilpotent Lie groups, we can establish that the complexity function asymptotically behaves like $r^{{\mathrm {homdim}}(G) \dim (H)}$. Further, we generalize the concept of acceptance domains to locally compact second countable groups.

A bandwidth expansion strategy for ultra-wideband power amplifiers (PAs) is presented in this letter by adopting a parallel impedance matching architecture. This design strategy can effectively reduce the impedance conversion ratio between the load and the target impedance of the PA, thereby providing a feasible solution for broadband impedance matching. Subsequently, a commercially available 10 W gallium nitride device and a two-stage Wilkinson power divider network are combined to achieve the verification of the proposed theory. The results of the measurement show that within the target frequency band of 0.9–3.9 GHz, 58.5–71.2% of the drain efficiency and 9.1–12 dB of gain can be achieved with a saturated output power of 39.1–42 dBm.

In 2016, the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) formally recognized the status of Hong Kong English (HKE) by adding 13 HKE words in its entries (Oxford English Dictionary [OED], n.d.-a). While this codification marks significant progress in the development of a language variety, there have been vigorous discussions within the local community about the legitimacy and representativeness of these selected words as HKE (Xu, 2019). As emphasized by Schneider (2007), acceptability and codification are both important criteria for language development. Therefore, this warrants a bottom-up approach to investigate the extent to which HKE words are accepted by the local community, so as to provide insights on how future HKE words can be better codified.

Extreme propensity scores arise in observational studies when treated and control units have very different characteristics. This is commonly referred to as limited overlap. In this paper, we propose a formal statistical test that helps assess the degree of limited overlap. Rejecting the null hypothesis in our test indicates either no or very mild degree of limited overlap and hence reassures that standard treatment effect estimators will be well behaved. One distinguishing feature of our test is that it only requires the use of a few extreme propensity scores, which is in stark contrast to other methods that require consistent estimates of some tail index. Without the need to extrapolate using observations far away from the tail, our procedure is expected to exhibit excellent size properties, a result that is also borne out in our simulation study.

The 2008 global financial crisis and its aftermath provided fertile soil for criticism of and alternatives to the international liberal order, including the rise of financial nationalism. Contemporary financial nationalism is a view of the world that is nationalist in its motivation for political action, financial in its policy focus, and illiberal in its conception of political economy. At the same time, it is fundamentally shaped by its emergence from within the international liberal order, which both constrains the policy options of financial nationalists and provides opportunities for them to draw on transnational financial resources and institutions to advance nationalist causes. This article offers a conceptual analysis of contemporary financial nationalism that explores its fundamental characteristics, explains what is distinctive about it, delineates its four major policy subtypes, identifies the resources and capabilities required to successfully engage in it, and discusses the implications of doing so. It aids researchers in thinking about financial nationalism’s internal workings across different contexts, in understanding why it has lasted as long and spread as far as it has, in considering how it may evolve, and in contemplating how it can affect domestic and international political economies.

Obesity is a multifactorial pathophysiological condition with an imbalance in biochemical, immunochemical, redox status and genetic parameters values. We aimed to estimate the connection between relative leucocyte telomere lengths (rLTL) – biomarker of cellular ageing with metabolic and redox status biomarkers values in a group of obese and lean children. The study includes 110 obese and 42 lean children and adolescents, both sexes. The results suggested that rLTL are significantly shorter in obese, compared with lean group (P < 0·01). Negative correlation of rLTL with total oxidant status (TOS) (Spearman’s ρ = –0·365, P < 0·001) as well as with C-reactive protein (Spearman’s ρ = –0·363, P < 0·001) were observed. Principal component analysis (PCA) extracted three distinct factors (i.e. principal components) entitled as: prooxidant factor with 35 % of total variability; antioxidant factor with 30 % of total variability and lipid antioxidant – biological ageing factor with 12 % of the total variability. The most important predictor of BMI > 30 kg/m2 according to logistic regression analysis was PCA-derived antioxidant factor’s score (OR: 1·66, 95th Cl 1·05–2·6, P = 0·029). PCA analysis confirmed that oxidative stress importance in biological ageing is caused by obesity and its multiple consequences related to prooxidants augmentation and antioxidants exhaustion and gave us clear signs of disturbed cellular homoeostasis deepness, even before any overt disease occurrence.

We show that properties of pairs of finite, positive, and regular Borel measures on the complex unit circle such as domination, absolute continuity, and singularity can be completely described in terms of containment and intersection of their reproducing kernel Hilbert spaces of “Cauchy transforms” in the complex unit disk. This leads to a new construction of the classical Lebesgue decomposition and proof of the Radon–Nikodym theorem using reproducing kernel theory and functional analysis.

In the wake of Brexit, how has the framing of the EU and independence evolved among regionalist parties in the devolved regions of the UK? The effects of a multilevel structure such as the EU on regionalist parties has been examined, yet European disintegration is novel and thus yet to be fully explored. Has the framing of the EU by these parties shifted, and if so, how? In this article, I analyze 19 regionalist party manifestos between 2011 and 2022 through the lens of rational choice and discursive institutionalism to examine the effects of Brexit on the framing of the EU. At a rhetorical level, these parties have engaged in the subsuming of the EU, rhetorically tying their independence or enhanced autonomy to Brexit. Sinn Féin, Scottish Nationalist Party, and Plaid Cymru have used the critical juncture of Brexit to incorporate the EU into their regionalist rhetoric. By examining the effects of European disintegration on regionalist political parties, we can better understand the role that current events play in the fluidity of party positions as presented in manifestos.

Egor Lazarev has offered us a book of uncommon ambition and erudition. At its core, State-Building as Lawfare: Custom, Sharia, and State Law in Postwar Chechnya explores how elites and ordinary citizens pursue their interests by weighing the costs and benefits of using alternative legal frameworks in postwar Chechnya. By describing how politicians encourage nonstate legal remedies to build political coalitions—and how everyday Chechens engage in forum shopping when trying to manage their own legal issues—Lazarev teaches us about the challenges associated with the extension of state legal institutions in the wake of prolonged, nationalist conflict. Although Lazarev treats his exploration of legal pluralism as the theoretical framing for the book, such a reading belies what I view as his primary empirical contribution: a meticulous exploration of gender politics in the North Caucasus. In this review, I describe Lazarev’s arguments about elite and citizen legal strategies, discuss his understanding of gender disputes in a postconflict Muslim society, and offer a provocation for future research that would situate the study of Chechnya in a broader literature on autocratic politics.

This article presents the development of a robot capable of modifying its size through a wheel reconfiguration strategy. The reconfigurable wheel design is based on a four-bar retractable mechanism that achieves variation of the effective radius of the wheel. A reconfiguration index is introduced based on the number of retractable mechanisms that predicts the radius of configuration according to the number of mechanisms implemented in the wheel. The kinematics of the retractable mechanism is studied to determine the theoretical reconfiguration radius during the transformation process, it is also evaluated numerically with the help of the GeoGebra software, and it is validated experimentally by image analysis using the Tracker software. The transformation process of the robot is investigated through an analysis of forces that consider the wheel in contact with the obstacle, the calculation of the wheel torque and the height of the obstacle to be overcome are presented. On the other hand, the experimental validation of the robot reconfiguration process is presented through the percentage of success shown by the robot to overcome obstacles of 50, 75, 100 and 125 mm. In addition, measurements of energy consumption during the transformation process are reported. Reconfigurable wheels, capable of adapting their size, offer innovative solutions to various challenges across different applications such as robotic exploration and search and rescue missions to industrial settings. Some key issues that these wheels can address include terrain adaptability enhancing a robot’s mobility over uneven surfaces, or obstacles; enhanced robotic design; cost-effective design; space efficiency; and versatility in applications.

While the first decade of the 21st century witnessed an unprecedented level of popularity in English across China, the last ten years have seen a fall in the status of English and a meteoric rise of the importance of the Chinese language and culture in the education system (Feng & Adamson, 2019; Pan & Wang, 2024). The changed status of English was exemplified in the 2017 English curriculum standards (2017 ECS) for senior high school students (aged 16–18). A few years after the implementation of this curriculum, this paper explores how teachers and students perceive the changed status of English as prescribed in the 2017 ECS, and what this means for the role of English as a ‘global language’ in China.