In this research, we examine redistricting plan review by state supreme courts to determine what factors influence party-aligned voting in judicial decisions. We analyze whether judicial selection systems matter, as well as the ideological extremism of judges. Our judge-level data includes votes on redistricting cases heard across the American states from 1961 to 2022. We find that judges who are ideologically extreme are more likely to cast party-aligned votes, but only when selected by appointment with life tenure or by partisan elections.

The paleopedology of the world’s largest retrogressive thaw slump, Batagay, is understudied. Micromorphological and geochemical analysis reveal the properties of th host sediments and major pedogenic features. Epigenetic soil profiles of Marine Oxygen Isotope Stage (MIS) 7 (or older) and 5e are clearly distinguished and well developed due to favorable bioclimatic conditions for pedogenesis, probably similar to modern ones. The oldest unit contains a paleosol similar to a Histic Reductaquic Cryosol, indicating a peat-covered, boggy environment. The MIS 5e unit contains organic-rich Histic Spodic Cryosol with well-developed structure, formed during the interglacial optimum, which was relatively warm and presumably resembled modern bioclimatic conditions. MIS 4–3 deposits contains soil-like bodies enriched in coarse organogenic material resembling incipient Histic Reductaquic Cryosols. Interglacial/interstadial units contain micromorphological evidence of aggregate and pore formation, Fe-oxide and organic matter redistribution and clay accumulation. Stadial deposits show weakly expressed soil structure with uneven aggregates, cryogenic disintegration of plant detritus and rare evidence of accumulation of humic substances. Major elemental ratios indicate intensification of biochemical weathering in paleosols and soil-like bodies. Pedogenically reworked material of stadial sedimentary units with sporadic and incipient soil-like bodies provide a significant source for paleoenvironmental reconstruction of harsh Late Pleistocene environments.

A ruminant model, MINDY, was used to explore the impact of grazing patches of tannin-containing legumes on environmental impact of cows grazing on grass-dominated rangelands swards. MINDY was initialised as a pregnant beef cow grazing on a grass (Bromus biebersteinii; meadow brome-Control), with the addition of a patch with tannin-containing legumes (Lotus corniculatus-birdsfoot trefoil-Tre, or Onobrychis viciifolia-sainfoin-Sain). Twenty-five scenarios (treatments) were established as a product of frequency (weekly, fortnightly and monthly) and dietary proportions (0.05, 0.10, 0.15 and 0.20 of total forage allocation) of either Sain or Tre. Methane (CH4) production and nitrogen (N) excretion increased with legume availability. As legume proportion increased, dry matter intake (DMI), animal performance, CH4 production and urinary nitrogen (UN) excretion increased with a greater magnitude for Sain. Methane yield was lower than the Control at weekly allocation of legumes. Environmental costs in terms of CH4 emission increments per unit of production relative to Control were greater at monthly allocations when the levels of legumes in the diet were low (0.5–0.10). Legumes in the diet at 0.15–0.20 yielded the lowest costs regardless of frequency of allocation. Environmental costs in terms of UN increments per unit of production relative to Control were lowest at 0.15–0.20 of legumes in the diet regardless of frequency of allocation. This study suggests that strategic allocation of either sainfoin or birdsfoot trefoil when beef cattle graze grass-dominated rangelands swards can reduce environmental impact while increasing secondary production of the system at the same levels of resource allocation.

This study examines the mediating role of horizontal trust and collective resilience in the relationship between organizational justice and job performance at the team level based on the HEalthy & Resilient Organizations Model (HERO) (Salanova et al., 2012). The sample consisted of 927 workers grouped into 100 work teams belonging to seven healthcare centers in Spain. The relationships among organizational justice, horizontal trust, collective resilience, and perceived job performance of work teams were analyzed using structural equation modeling (SEM). The results revealed that the perceptions of justice and organizational trust positively impact job performance at the team level. Furthermore, the predictive role of horizontal trust in collective resilience was evidenced, with both variables mediating the relationship between the perception of justice and job performance of work teams. These findings underscore the significance of cultivating both horizontal trust and resilience in work teams, offering valuable insights for healthcare management and organizational psychology in highly complex environments such as healthcare organizations.

The Water-Enhanced Turbofan is a promising aero engine propulsion concept that could reduce the climate impact of aviation significantly by combining the conventional Joule/Brayton cycle with a Clausius-Rankine steam cycle. One important component with a high impact on the overall performance is the condenser, a heat exchanger cooling the core exhaust for water recovery. The design conditions for the Water-Enhanced Turbofan condenser have not been analysed from a system perspective in previous studies. Therefore, these operating conditions, which can be decisive for the dimensioning of the condenser, are investigated in the present work. These operating conditions include ambient temperature variations, different cruise altitudes, maximum cruise thrust and contrail avoidance. A conceptual design engine model is set up in the Numerical Propulsion System Simulation (NPSS) framework, incorporating a multi-point design scheme. The heat exchangers are modelled using a neural network surrogate model. The results show a trade-off between engine fuel burn and the cold size frontal area of the condenser, the latter being an indication for the integrability. It is shown that high ambient temperatures pose a challenge to the condenser design, necessitating consideration of such operating conditions in new engine concepts based on heat exchange with the environment. The condenser designed for typical cruise at 15K above standard atmosphere at 35,000 ft cruise altitude, enables sustained water cycle operations down to 10,000 ft under standard day conditions. Additionally, the complete cruise segment of the design mission can be flown with sustained water cycle operations at 10K above standard atmosphere conditions. A positive side effect of the condenser sizing for hot day conditions is that the probability of contrail formation is reduced because the condenser design results in excess water recovery at colder ambient conditions.

Trilobites are among the most diverse of fossil invertebrates, and although they have been collected and studied for more than two centuries there is no sign that the discovery of new taxa is slowing down. The range and versatility of their morphologies continue to pose challenges to interpretation of their modes of life, while the appeal of well-preserved articulated specimens ensures that they are sought after by collectors as interested in their beauty as in their scientific importance. This issue of the Journal of Paleontology gathers together a selection of trilobite-focused papers exploring new discoveries and interpretations, and this introduction offers a few reflections on some of the issues they raise.

We show that for $5/6$-th of all primes p, Hilbert’s 10th problem is unsolvable for the ring of integers of $\mathbb {Q}(\zeta _3, \sqrt [3]{p})$. We also show that there is an infinite set S of square-free integers such that Hilbert’s 10th problem is unsolvable over the ring of integers of $\mathbb {Q}(\zeta _3, \sqrt {D}, \sqrt [3]{p})$ for every $D \in S$ and for every prime $p \equiv 2, 5\ \pmod 9$. We use the CM elliptic curves $y^2=x^3-432 D^2$ associated with the cube-sum problem, with D varying in suitable congruence class, in our proof.

This article investigates the life satisfaction consequences of migration through unique comparisons of “settler” migrants spanning three family generations and multiple European destinations with their “stayer” and “returnee” counterparts based in the origin country of Turkey. The data are drawn from 5,980 personal interviews conducted as part of the pioneering 2000 Families Survey. The results show that despite being monetarily the most impoverished across all destinations and generations studied, the settlers tend to be more satisfied with their lives than the “stayers” and the “returnees.” However, a downward trend is observed among younger generations, irrespective of their migration status and country context. The results confirm the significance of poverty and asset status for migrants’ and their descendants’ appraisal of life, as well as highlighting the independent effect of the context. Strikingly, however, those residing in countries with more generous welfare states proved not necessarily to be more satisfied.

The class of all $\ast $-continuous Kleene algebras, whose description includes an infinitary condition on the iteration operator, plays an important role in computer science. The complexity of reasoning in such algebras—ranging from the equational theory to the Horn one, with restricted fragments of the latter in between—was analyzed by Kozen (2002). This paper deals with similar problems for $\ast $-continuous residuated Kleene lattices, also called $\ast $-continuous action lattices, where the product operation is augmented by residuals. We prove that, in the presence of residuals, the fragment of the corresponding Horn theory with $\ast $-free hypotheses has the same complexity as the $\omega ^\omega $ iteration of the halting problem, and hence is properly hyperarithmetical. We also prove that if only commutativity conditions are allowed as hypotheses, then the complexity drops down to $\Pi ^0_1$ (i.e., the complement of the halting problem), which is the same as that for $\ast $-continuous Kleene algebras. In fact, we get stronger upper bound results: the fragments under consideration are translated into suitable fragments of infinitary action logic with exponentiation, and our upper bounds are obtained for the latter ones.

This Profile looks at two technologies that were developed to make source texts in the original Greek, Latin and, indeed, any language directly accessible to audiences who have not yet studied – and may never study – the language itself: (1) translations aligned at the word and phrase level with the original text and (2) rich linguistic annotations explaining the part of speech, regularised dictionary form and syntactic function of each word in a corpus (typically called treebanks, because the syntactic structure is commonly visualised as an inverted tree).

We report the first non-indigenous dottyback Pseudochromis persicus record in the Mediterranean Sea. A single individual was documented several times at the same location on October 2024 in Bat Galim reef, a shallow rocky shelf of Rosh Carmel underwater ridge on the northern coast of Israel. This record represents the first sighting of Pseudochromidae, a family native to the Indo-Pacific Ocean, in the Mediterranean Sea. It is also the first record of P. persicus beyond its native range in the Persian Gulf and the Arabian Sea.

In this article, we focus on the Cauchy problem of the three-dimensional generalized incompressible micropolar system in critical Fourier–Besov–Morrey spaces. By using the Fourier localization argument and the Littlewood–Paley theory, we get the local well-posedness results and global well-posedness results with small initial data belonging to the critical Fourier–Besov–Morrey spaces.

The virtual model control (VMC) method establishes a direct correlation model between the end-effector and the main body by selecting appropriate virtual mechanical components. This approach facilitates direct force control while circumventing the necessity for complex dynamic modeling. However, the simplification inherent in this modeling can result in inaccuracies in the calculation of joint driving torques, ultimately diminishing control precision. Moreover, VMC typically depends on predefined models for control, which constrains its adaptability in dynamically complex environments and under varying movement conditions. To address these limitations, this paper proposes the BP-VMC method, which is based on a backpropagation neural network (BPNN). Initially, a quadruped robot model was established through kinematic analysis. Subsequently, a decomposed VMC model was developed, and BPNN was introduced to facilitate the adaptive tuning of virtual parameters. This approach resulted in the creation of a virtual mechanical component model with adaptive capabilities, compensating for errors arising from simplified modeling. Finally, a simulation control system was constructed based on the BP-VMC control framework to validate the optimization of control performance. Simulation experiments demonstrated that, in comparison to traditional VMC methods, the BP-VMC method exhibits enhanced control accuracy and stability, achieving a 30% reduction in trajectory tracking error, a 40% reduction in velocity tracking error, and a 20–30% improvement in instability indices across various working conditions. This evidence underscores the BP-VMC method’s robust adaptability in dynamic environments.

We prove that a homomorphism between free groups of finite rank equipped with the bi-invariant word metrics associated with finite generating sets is a quasi-isometry if and only if it is an isomorphism.

Let $C_{\varphi }$ be a composition operator on the Bergman space $A^2$ of the unit disc. A well-known problem asks whether the condition $\int _D\big ({1-|z|^2\over 1-|\varphi (z)|^2}\big )^pd\lambda (z) < \infty $ is equivalent to the membership of $C_\varphi $ in the Schatten class ${\mathcal {C}}_p$, $1 < p < \infty $. This was settled in the negative for the case $2 < p < \infty $ in [3]. When $2 < p < \infty $, this condition is not sufficient for $C_\varphi \in {\mathcal {C}}_p$. In this article, we take up the case $1 < p < 2$. We show that when $1 < p < 2$, this condition is not necessary for $C_\varphi \in {\mathcal {C}}_p$.