This paper analyzes the reuse of ancient tuff blocks in early medieval architecture in Rome, in both papal and private structures. The blocks are a well-known phenomenon, but they have not yet received any focused study. Short discussions in earlier scholarship have typically described them in utilitarian terms. I first identify a pattern of targeted reuse in papal building projects. I then argue that they would also have had symbolic value for an independent papacy wanting to display power. For later private builders, I propose that the blocks became prestige materials displayed on the houses of an ever-tightening aristocracy eager to be seen within some of the city's most important monumental spaces. I consider how the city's ancient monuments and their pieces were viewed in the early medieval period and how the blocks’ ancient contexts contributed to the symbolic value that I identify in them.

A wideband tunable balanced phase shifter is achieved by utilizing varactor-loaded coupled lines (VLCLs)-embedded multistage branch-line structure. The tunable phase shift with low in-band phase deviation is attributed to the regulation in phase shift of the VLCLs and the horizontal microstrip lines in series. The wideband differential-mode (DM) impedance matching and common-mode (CM) suppression are due to multiple DM transmission poles and CM transmission zeros, which are brought about by the cascade of VLCLs and a microstrip line with short-circuited stubs in the DM-equivalent circuit and open-circuited stubs in the CM-equivalent circuit, respectively. Compared with the state-of-the-art tunable balanced phase shifters, the proposed design not only has the advantages of wide operating bandwidth (BW) with low in-band phase deviation but also has low insertion loss and easily fabricated structure. Theoretical analysis and design procedure were conducted, resulting in a prototype covering the frequency of 1.8 GHz. This prototype offers a tunable phase shift capability ranging from 0° to 90°. The prototype exhibits an operating BW of 45%, with a maximum phase deviation of ±6°. It also achieves a 10 dB DM return loss and CM suppression, while maintaining a maximum insertion loss of 2.5 dB.

We give a $C^1$-perturbation technique for ejecting an a priori given finite set of periodic points preserving a given finite set of homo/heteroclinic intersections from a chain recurrence class of a periodic point. The technique is first stated under a simpler setting called a Markov iterated function system, a two-dimensional iterated function system in which the compositions are chosen in a Markovian way. Then we apply the result to the setting of three-dimensional partially hyperbolic diffeomorphisms.

In this article, I consider the cases of religious Moorean propositions of the form ‘d, but I don't believe that d’ and ‘d, but I believe that ~d’, where d is a religious dogma, proposition, or part of a creed. I argue that such propositions can be genuinely and rationally asserted and that this fact poses a problem for traditional analysis of religious assertion as an expression of faith and of religious faith as entailing belief. In the article, I explore the possibility of undermining these commonly held assumptions and argue that the assertability of religious Moorean propositions can be justified by an account of faith as an intention to form religious beliefs. In the end, I also consider the consequences of such a stance, especially concerning the debate on the ethics of religious belief and doxastic voluntarism.

Cardiac tumours are uncommon in the general population and even more so in the paediatric population. Here we present a case of an asymptomatic 7-year-old male with history of high-risk neuroblastoma who underwent 1-year post-treatment surveillance scan with an incidental finding of intracardiac lesion found to be an atrial myxoma.

Political polarization is one of the most discussed challenges facing contemporary democracies and is often associated with a broader epistemic crisis. While inspiring a large literature in political science, polarization’s epistemic problems also have significance for normative democratic theory, and this study develops a new approach aimed at understanding them. In contrast to prominent accounts from political psychology—group polarization theory and cultural cognition theory—which argue that polarization leads individuals to form unreliable political beliefs, this study focuses on system-level diversity. It argues that polarization’s epistemic harms are best located in its tendency to reduce the diversity of perspectives utilized in a democratic system and in how this weakens the system’s ability to identify and address problems of public concern. Understanding such harms is also argued to require a greater consideration of the political dynamics of polarization and issues of elite discourse, alongside political psychology.

This study challenges the conventional approach to the appropriate indicators of individual success in community courts (CCs) by exploring the different meanings that CC professionals ascribe to the term “success.” CCs conduct a non-adversarial process in which team members collaborate to provide a comprehensive rehabilitative intervention for recidivist participants. We conducted fifty-three in-depth interviews with CC personnel between 2016 and 2020. According to the interviewees, standard evaluation measures such as program completion, reduced recidivism, and systemic reduction of incarceration are necessary for evaluating these courts. Yet individual success is relative, subjective, multidimensional, and must be understood as a continuum. Therefore, it should also be measured by looking at significant processes of change that participants have undergone in various aspects of their lives. Study findings can be translated into measurable well-being indicators, moving the “what works” discourse forward to include more nuanced and diverse manifestations of success in studies evaluating specialized courts.

Why do oil-dependent developing countries exhibit divergent responses to oil crises? This study employs a comparative case study approach and utilizes a ‘most similar system design’ to examine the varying state responses to the 1973 oil shock in Turkey and South Korea. While the former refrained from implementing radical short-term adjustment policies and reforms, the latter adopted proactive measures to mitigate the worsening impact of escalating oil prices. This research contends that the existing literature, which emphasizes distinctions in industrialization strategies and fiscal policies among developing nations, offers an incomplete explanation for the divergent reactions of states to external price shocks. Instead, the study proposes a sociological perspective, focusing on the influence of varying degrees of state autonomy and the characteristics of bureaucratic systems on the decision-making processes of states. The key finding suggests that while pre-crisis economic policies and industrialization strategies may limit the array of policy tools available to counteract the adverse effects of an oil crisis, the extent of state autonomy and the organization of the bureaucracy – whether adhering to Weberian or non-Weberian principles – impact the efficacy of these policy tools and the determination of decision-makers to act in the best interests of the long-term public good.

For any primitive substitution whose Perron eigenvalue is a Pisot unit, we construct a domain exchange that is measurably conjugate to the subshift. Additionally, we give a condition for the subshift to be a finite extension of a torus translation. For the particular case of weakly irreducible Pisot substitutions, we show that the subshift is either a finite extension of a torus translation or its eigenvalues are roots of unity. Furthermore, we provide an algorithm to compute eigenvalues of the subshift associated with any primitive pseudo-unimodular substitution.

Inflatable wings for UAVs are useful where storage space is a severe constraint. Literature in the field of inflatable wings often assumes an inflated aerofoil shape for various analyses. However, the flexible inflatable aerofoil fabric might deform to another equilibrium shape upon inflation. Hence accurate shape prediction of the inflated aerofoil is vital. Further, no standardised nomenclature or a process to convert a smooth aerofoil into its corresponding inflatable aerofoil counterpart is available. This paper analytically predicts the equilibrium shape of any inflatable aerofoil and validates the analytical prediction using non-linear finite element methods. Further, a scheme for the generation of two types of inflatable aerofoils is presented. Parameters such as the number and position of compartments and aerofoil length ratio (ALR) are identified as necessary to define the aerofoil’s shape fully. A process to minimise the deviation of the inflatable aerofoil from its original smooth aerofoil using particle swarm optimisation (PSO) is discussed. Research presented in this paper can help in performing various analyses on the actual equilibrium shape of the aerofoil.

Given a graph G without loops, the pseudograph associahedron PG is a smooth polytope, so there is a projective smooth toric variety XG corresponding to PG. Taking the real locus of XG, we have the projective smooth real toric variety $X^{\mathbb{R}}_G$. The integral cohomology groups of $X^{\mathbb{R}}_G$ can be computed by studying the topology of certain posets of even subgraphs of G; such a poset is neither pure nor shellable in general. We completely characterize the graphs whose posets of even subgraphs are always shellable. It follows that we get a family of projective smooth real toric varieties whose integral cohomology groups are torsion-free or have only 2-torsion.

Target date funds (TDFs) provide retirement investors, many of whom are unsophisticated or inattentive, with age-appropriate exposures to different asset classes like stocks and bonds. To maintain exposures, TDFs trade actively against market returns, buying stock funds when the stock market does poorly, and selling when the market does well (Parker et al., 2023, Journal of Finance). This paper shows that trading by TDFs was a significant stabilizing force in US equity markets during the unprecedented economic volatility of the COVID-19 pandemic period. Specifically, TDFs – now comprising a quarter of all 401(k) plan assets – caused significant contrarian investment flows across asset classes, flows that were not undone by enrollment of TDF investors or by discretionary actions by TDF managers. Mutual funds with large ownership by TDFs had more stable funding through the pandemic, and stocks that had greater indirect ownership by TDFs had lower co-movement with the market and lower volatility during the pandemic period.

This rejoinder responds to a commentary (Horak et al., 2023) on our article ‘De-Linking from Western Epistemologies: Using Guanxi-Type Relationships to Attract and Retain Hotel Guests in the Middle East' (2022). We thank the authors for engaging with our work and are grateful to the editor for the chance to respond. Firstly, we do not accept the central assertion that we imposed the Chinese concept of guanxi on a Middle Eastern context. Some aspects of guanxi extend beyond China, and we consider it part of our role as researchers to explore universal behavioral aspects that transcend specific cultural settings. While we described guanxi to introduce the variables, we drew a clear distinction between guanxi itself and guanxi-type relationships, and provided on page 859 an explicit statement about what we meant by the term ‘guanxi-type relationships’, i.e. the networks of interpersonal ties found in the Middle East. While this distinction could have been more clearly emphasized in places, we consider that the article as a whole made it abundantly clear.

Helicopter component load estimation can be achieved through a variety of machine learning techniques and algorithms. A range of ensemble integration techniques were investigated in order to leverage multiple machine learning models to estimate main rotor yoke loads from flight state and control system parameters. The techniques included simple averaging, weighted averaging and forward selection. Performance of the models was evaluated using four metrics: root mean squared error, correlation coefficient and the interquartile ranges of these two metrics. When compared, every ensemble outperformed the best individual model. The ensembles using forward selection achieved the best performance. The resulting output is more robust, more highly correlated and achieves lower error values as compared to the top individual models. While individual model outputs can vary significantly, confidence in their results can be greatly increased through the use of a diverse set of models and ensemble techniques.