A broadband ±45° dual-polarized base-station antenna based on crossed-dipoles with parasitic elements has been presented in this study. This antenna consists of printed dipoles fed by integrated baluns, parasitic elements, and a ground plane below them. As a result of using parasitic elements on the dipoles and creating a suitable coupling between them, the antenna’s impedance bandwidth has been improved, and its dimensions have been reduced. The experimental results show that the proposed antenna can cover the frequency band of 1.58–2.73 GHz with |S11| < −15 dB and isolation better than 17 dB. The measured peak gain for the proposed antenna in the frequency band is reported as 7.8 dB. Also, the antenna’s half-power beamwidth equals 62.15° ± 1.45°. The proposed antenna is fabricated with overall dimensions of 0.67λ0 × 0.67λ0 × 0.17λ0 and has been measured in the antenna laboratory.

Since 1974, two out of every five constitutions (40.3%) were prepared via processes that included public consultation. The reasons for adopting these participatory mechanisms, however, are largely unexplored. I argue that public consultation is a tool for elite contestation of power. Introducing an original dataset of public consultations in constitution-making processes from 1974–2021 (n = 300), I find that in democracies, factional majorities and newcomer elites use public consultation to legitimate a break from the status quo. In autocracies, governing coalitions that depend on performance and enjoy greater party institutionalization push for public consultation to preserve favorable power-sharing arrangements.

International courts are increasingly serving as bulwarks of democracy. These courts, however, often depend on the cooperation of the very governments they seek to hold accountable, exposing them to potential retaliation for attempting to constrain their behavior. As governments’ response to adverse decision-making is often conditional on public support, we explore whether citizens actually support international courts’ judicial power over questions of democracy. We argue that citizens’ support for this form of judicial power depends on their democratic values and their desire for institutional checks and balances against the executive. Furthermore, we contest that this support is conditional on partisanship, with this relationship holding for opposition partisans while government partisans are generally opposed to international courts’ judicial power. We support our expectations using original survey data collected from Hungary before their 2022 national legislative elections, and examining citizens’ support for judicial power for the Court of Justice of the European Union.

An awareness of the controversy surrounding Strauss pervades Namazi's work. His apologia is a labor of love: erudite, painstaking, uncompromising. Namazi highlights Strauss's contribution to Islamic political thought and argues for the continued relevance of the Straussian approach. There is much to recommend in the book but I restrict myself to what I take to be its more problematic aspects.

Numerous studies highlight the adverse impacts of agriculture on farmland biodiversity. Balancing increased agricultural production along with biodiversity conservation is a critical global challenge, especially in India. Amphibians and reptiles face the greatest threats from agriculture. This perspective article highlights the need to conserve amphibian and reptile diversity in farmlands, presenting evidence of their decline and emphasizing their ecological importance. It calls for forward-looking research and policies to combat unprecedented biodiversity loss. Furthermore, I propose strategies aimed at redesigning agricultural landscapes to transition towards ecological intensification, thereby maintaining productivity and profitability while safeguarding biodiversity and regenerating rather than undermining the ecological processes that sustain food production. As agricultural intensification increases, it should be aligned with nature, leveraging biodiversity to sustain ecological functions rather than replacing them.

How can citizens in authoritarian regimes exercise oversight of the legal system? I examine police and court monitoring, bottom-up oversight activities popular in pre-war Russia (2012–2022). Monitoring pushes the state to honor commitments it has made in its own laws, taking advantage of the authoritarian state’s need for information and legitimacy. Yet monitoring activities are not just about improving the state’s performance. Using interviews, participant observation and document analysis of monitoring campaigns in pre-war Russia, I argue that monitoring can empower citizens in a profoundly disempowering environment, perhaps its most important legacy in a closing authoritarian space.

This study investigates whether lower self-regulation (SR) facets are risk factors for internalizing symptoms (vulnerability models), consequences of these symptoms (scar models), or develop along the same continuum and thus share common causes (spectrum models) during middle childhood. To analyze these models simultaneously, a random intercept cross-lagged panel model was estimated using Mplus. Data were assessed at three measurement time points in a community-based sample of N = 1657 (52.2% female) children in Germany, aged 6–13. Internalizing symptoms were measured via parent report by the emotional problems scale of the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire. Seven SR facets were assessed behaviorally, via parent report and teacher report. At the within-person level, internalizing symptoms were concurrently associated with emotional reactivity at all measurement time points, while no cross-lagged paths reached significance. At the between-person level, internalizing symptoms were associated with working memory updating (r = −.29, p < .001), inhibitory control (r = −.29, p < .001), planning behavior (r = −.49, p < .001), and emotional reactivity (r = .59, p < .001). As internalizing symptoms and SR facets were primarily associated at the between-person level, the results lend support to spectrum models suggesting common causes of internalizing symptoms and impaired SR.

This article critically examines the evolution and potential of domestic trade barrier procedures in the US, EU, and China. Emblematic of this mechanism is US Section 301. Aimed at facilitating market access, these procedures function as tools of unilateralism and strategic leverage. Employing qualitative and comparative methods, the analysis explores their use in handling private complaints and combating adverse trade practices, highlighting a trend of ‘normative realignment’ in the deployment of these procedures. Once focused on resolving private grievances, such procedures are now increasingly playing a role in securing national interests. This shift marks a departure from traditional international cooperation, reflecting a recalibration of trade policies. Against the backgroup of growing encystment of unilateralism, the article argues that domestic trade barrier procedures could be adapted to address the demands of the current global economic environment. The article posits that, if executed properly, domestic trade barrier procedures may serve as a buffer mechanism vis-a-vis the tectonic shifts in economic order. In doing so, the article envisions a new generation of domestic trade barrier procedural frameworks.

The number of women on high courts across the globe has been steadily increasing. Recent estimates found that women now make up 61% of the judiciary in European countries (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development 2019). The large number of women now serving in judicial positions has resulted in a changing demographic makeup of courts. While the majority might think this is a step forward for diverse representation, there is ultimately a dichotomy between judicial accountability that comes as a result of increased diversity in descriptive representation and judicial independence. Given this dichotomy, along with the increase in women on courts, it follows that the public’s perceptions of courts’ independence has the potential to change. We explore this phenomenon by asking the following question: How does the presence of women on high courts impact perceptions of judicial independence among the public? Using survey data gathered from respondents in twenty-seven European countries from 2016 to 2022, we examine how the dynamics of an increasing number of women on high courts alters the public’s perceptions on the level of independence of the court in their country. We draw from literature on judicial independence as well as women political elites and corruption. Importantly, we document that increasing the percentage of women on courts results in higher perceptions of judicial independence for women. Overall, our findings highlight important trends regarding gender diversity in political institutions and how changes in descriptive characteristics shape perceptions of judicial independence.

We investigate the tower spectrum in the generalized Baire space, i.e., the set of lengths of towers in $\kappa ^\kappa $. We show that both small and large tower spectra at all regular cardinals simultaneously are consistent. Furthermore, based on previous work by Bağ, the first author and Friedman, we prove that globally, a small tower spectrum is consistent with an arbitrarily large spectrum of maximal almost disjoint families. Finally, we show that any non-trivial upper bound on the tower spectrum in $\kappa ^\kappa $ is consistent.

This paper studies the dynamic interactions between the money supply and the shape of the yield curve in the context of a regime-switching latent factor model. Estimates show that the money supply has important implications for the level, slope, and curvature of the yield curve. Moreover, the Divisia aggregates can provide more information than simple-sum aggregates based on parameter estimates and impulse response functions in understanding the dynamics of the yield curve. The favored broad Divisia aggregate could especially be associated with changes in the yield curve’s level, slope, and curvature over the business cycle. Therefore, this paper highlights the important role of Divisia aggregates in the linkage between financial markets and monetary policy.

We first derive Alber’s equation for the Wigner distribution function using the fourth-order nonlinear Schrödinger equation, and on the basis of this equation we next analyse the stability of the narrowband approximation of the Joint North Sea Wave Project spectrum. Therefore, one interesting result of this study concerns the effect of modulational instability obtained from the fourth-order nonlinear Schrödinger equation. The analysis is restricted to one horizontal direction, parallel to the direction of wave motion, to take advantage of potential flow theory. We find that shear currents considerably modify the instability behaviours of weakly nonlinear waves. The key point of this study is that the present fourth-order analysis shows considerable deviations in the modulational instability properties from the third-order analysis and reduces the growth rate of instability. Moreover, we present here a connection between the random and deterministic properties of a random wavetrain for vanishing spectrum bandwidth.

We study the value of foreign judges and foreign case citations for emerging courts in postcolonial democracies, with a specific focus on the Hong Kong Court of Final Appeals (HKCFA). The HKCFA, Hong Kong’s highest appellate court since the transfer of its sovereignty to China, features foreign judges as full members of the court. Using a novel dataset of all publicly available HKCFA decisions from 1997 to 2020, we show that there is a significantly higher number of foreign case citations in cases where foreign judges have participated. Further analyses show that this correlation is stronger where the Hong Kong government is a disputing party, and more specifically, where the court rules in favor of the Hong Kong government. The findings are consistent with the possibility that foreign judges’ expertise in foreign case law is relevant for upholding the perception of the court’s independence from the executive branch. This explanation is in line with existing theories on the role of foreign judges on domestic courts.

Echocardiographic Z-score models play a crucial role in defining cardiac pathology in paediatric patients. There are multiple models that practitioners utilize in the United States without guiding principles to standardize their use. Discrepant interpretations can occur depending on the model chosen, even if standardized Z-score cutoffs are applied. In this study, a survey was developed to assess pediatric cardiologists’ use of Z-score systems when evaluating and treating patients with isolated bicuspid aortic valve. The majority of respondents reported using Z-score cutoffs to evaluate the degree of aortic root and ascending aorta dilation. For the aortic root, mild, moderate, and severe dilation averaged at 2.13 (SD = 0.32), 3.59 (SD = 0.49), and 5.11 (SD = 0.84), respectively. Similar cutoffs were reported for determining ascending aorta dilation. A large proportion of respondents primarily used the Boston system (36%, 18/50) or Boston and Pediatric Heart Network systems together (36%, 18/50). There were also differences in management decisions, such as implementing competitive sports restrictions, based on Z-scores and the 2015 Task Force 7 Bethesda exercise guidelines. These survey results demonstrate variability that exists among paediatric cardiologists in their use of Z-scores for describing aortic root and ascending aorta dilation in patients with isolated bicuspid aortic valve and suggests the need for implementation of national guidelines for Z-score usage.

This article examines the discursive contestation of Alash movement narratives in post-1991 Kazakhstan by studying overlapping and diverse official and non-official narratives. By surveying textual content and conducting interviews with those who carry these narratives, including textbook authors, the article reveals that while both official and unofficial narratives converge on the subject of statehood for the Alash movement, the non-official narratives and textbook authors use its legacy to express dissatisfaction with post-1991 developments in Kazakhstan. This study sheds light on the differing perspectives and debates surrounding the Alash movement’s legacy in shaping post–1991 Kazakhstani society and politics.

One of the chief debates in the academic study of transhumanism is whether or not this emergent movement that advocates for the technological overcoming of the limits of humanity should be considered religious in nature. This question stems from the fact that, while the vast majority of transhumanists explicitly reject established religion, elements of transhumanism seem strikingly similar to Christian eschatology. This article explores this question by asking how the ontology of an avowedly religious transhumanist movement, the Mormon Transhumanist Association, differs from the informatic ontology identified in secular transhumanism. It shows how contemporary Mormon Transhumanist imaginings of various forms of technological resurrection are informed by the infrastructure and materialist ontology associated with the Mormon practice of “Proxy baptisms” (otherwise known as baptisms for the dead) and other initiatory rituals conducted by proxy on behalf of the deceased. This influence suggests that, at least in this case, there are identifiable differences between secular transhumanism and religious transhumanism that complicate any easy reading of secular transhumanism as being crypto-religion.

In this paper, we explore the optimal risk sharing problem in the context of peer-to-peer insurance. Using the criterion of minimizing total variance, we find that the optimal risk sharing strategy should take a linear form. Although linear risk sharing strategies have been examined in the literature, our study uncovers a significant finding: to minimize total variance, the linear strategy should be applied to the residual risks rather than the original risks, as commonly adopted in existing studies. By comparing with the existing models, we demonstrate the advantage of the linear residual risk sharing model in variance reduction and robustness. Furthermore, we develop and study a number of new models by incorporating some constraints, to reflect desirable properties required by the market. With those constraints, the optimal strategies turn out to favor market development, such as incentivize participation and guarantee fairness. A relevant model is considered at last, which establishes the connection among multiple optimization problems and provides insights on how to extend the models into a more general setup.