This study outlines design principles for a generic thermal management system (TMS) using a multi-design point approach. Four TMS configurations were analysed for a regional turboprop and short-haul type aircraft, focusing on total system gross power as an indicator of cost and environmental impact. Mechanisms were introduced to prevent coolant freezing. Results highlight the puller fan configuration as the most beneficial, leveraging temperature differentials and using the Meredith effect for increased operating capability. The ram-air configuration is slightly more efficient than the puller fan configuration for regional aircraft, but only for high system efficiencies and with operational constraints (taxiing in hot day conditions). Dual fan configurations offer significant thrust but also increased mass. The dual fan configuration shows comparable total system gross power to the puller fan for short-haul aircraft in cruise conditions, but not for regional aircraft. The pusher fan is not optimal for both aircraft types since the radiator significantly increases the heat exchanger inlet temperature, which results in higher drawbacks in terms of mass and total system gross power. In conclusion, the study emphasises the necessity to consider all relevant effects in the TMS design, such as drag, mass and efficiency, to allow the design of an optimal overall system.

This paper presents a probabilistic model of loanword accentuation in Japanese, analysing a corpus of 3,017 English-based loanwords. Through corpus analysis and computational modelling, the study reveals that Japanese loanword accentuation involves two distinct types of faithfulness effects, alongside markedness effects. First, there is a significant influence of the stress patterns of English source words and the epenthetic status of loanword syllables. This challenges the common assumption that accents driven by faithfulness are merely sporadic exceptions, highlighting instead a probabilistic interplay between faithfulness and markedness. Second, this study uncovers faithfulness to Japanese speakers’ implicit knowledge of the English stress system. Rather than merely imitating the stress patterns of individual English words, Japanese speakers develop an internalised theory of the English stress system and mimic what they believe is the correct pronunciation according to their internalised theory.

We study a two-dimensional discounted optimal stopping zero-sum (or Dynkin) game related to perpetual redeemable convertible bonds expressed as game (or Israeli) options in a model of financial markets in which the behaviour of the ex-dividend price of a dividend-paying asset follows a generalized geometric Brownian motion. It is assumed that the dynamics of the random dividend rate of the asset paid to shareholders are described by the mean-reverting filtering estimate of an unobservable continuous-time Markov chain with two states. It is shown that the optimal exercise (conversion) and withdrawal (redemption) times forming a Nash equilibrium are the first times at which the asset price hits either lower or upper stochastic boundaries being monotone functions of the running value of the filtering estimate of the state of the chain. We rigorously prove that the optimal stopping boundaries are regular for the stopping region relative to the resulting two-dimensional diffusion process and that the value function is continuously differentiable with respect to the both variables. It is verified by means of a change-of-variable formula with local time on surfaces that the optimal stopping boundaries are determined as a unique solution to the associated coupled system of nonlinear Fredholm integral equations among the couples of continuous functions of bounded variation satisfying certain conditions. We also give a closed-form solution to the appropriate optimal stopping zero-sum game in the corresponding model with an observable continuous-time Markov chain.

Neodiplostomum vaucheri Dubois, 1983 is a digenean trematode originally described from the intestine of the woolly false vampire bat, Chrotopterus auritus (Peters, 1856), in the northwestern Peruvian Amazon. Decades later, it was also reported from the fringe-lipped bat, Trachops cirrhosis (Spix, 1823), in Ecuador. During a helminthological survey of phyllostomid bats at the Kawsay Biological Station in Madre de Dios, southeastern Peruvian Amazonia, specimens of Neodiplostomum Railliet, 1919 were recovered from the intestine of T. cirrhosus. Morphological comparisons with the holotype confirmed these specimens as conspecific with N. vaucheri. Phylogenetic inference supported the morphological identification, recovering the Peruvian isolate with an N. vaucheri isolate from another South American region within the same clade, with strong support (ML = 90; BI = 0.9587). The observed genetic divergence (4.47% under the Kimura two-parameter model and 4.27% based on uncorrected p-distances) in the partial cox1 sequence may indicate cryptic diversity, as previously noted in congeners. This represents the first integrative characterization of a digenean from a bat host in Peru, contributing to our understanding of parasite diversity in neotropical chiropterans. Furthermore, the use of third-generation sequencing technology (Oxford Nanopore) proved effective for generating reliable partial gene sequences, underscoring its applicability in molecular helminthology.

This article examines the Canada-United States Safe Third Country Agreement (STCA) in relation to a growing literature on bureaucrats’ role in immigration policy making, while challenging interpretations of the agreement as a “Europeanization” of Canadian policy. Canada is a prototypical liberal “migration state” that balances economic considerations, national security, rights and broader cultural concerns through its immigration regime. We open the “black box” of the state to examine how bureaucratic decision making informed the development of Canada’s asylum system. Drawing on interviews, archival materials and government documents, we show bureaucrats simultaneously sought to manage asylum backlogs and ensure compliance with international obligations while countering advocacy group opposition. The STCA reflects a uniquely Canadian approach to balancing competing imperatives in refugee policy, highlighting the role of bureaucrats in shaping immigration policy within domestic and international constraints. This research contributes to understanding the historical development of migration control policies in liberal democracies.

On October 21, 2022, the Spanish Competition Agency (CNMC) sanctioned the North American pharmaceutical company Merck Sharp & Dohme for abuse of a dominant position. The practice for which it was finally sanctioned consisted of the adoption of a strategy aimed at delaying and making it difficult for another company to enter the Spanish medicines market in order to protect sales for a product marketed exclusively by that company and for which had a patent. This paper analyzes this resolution in an attempt to delimit the difference between the legitimate exercise of the right to effective judicial protection and its abuse.

This article examines transnational appeals for humanitarian intervention to the League of Nations and the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in the aftermath of the First World War, focusing on conflicts in Ireland, Montenegro and the Rif (Morocco). It analyses how participants and international organisations strategically framed these conflicts, often shifting between designations of ‘civil war’ and ‘imperial war’ to solicit or deflect intervention on humanitarian grounds. Despite public expectations placed on the ICRC and League both organisations were reluctant to intervene against imperial powers, prioritising maintaining the international order over investigating insurgents’ claims. Though insurgents appealed through the rhetoric of ‘humanity’, this was a selective category, reinforcing existing racial and religious hierarchies in Europe. By analysing these conflicts together this article demonstrates that ‘civil war’ was not a fixed category but a fluid and contested concept, instrumentally deployed in the dialogue between belligerents, international organisations and imperial powers.

A finite-time adaptive composite integral sliding mode control strategy based on a fast finite-time observer is proposed for trajectory tracking of the Stewart parallel robot, considering unmodeled uncertainties and external disturbances. First, a global finite-time converging sliding mode surface composed of intermediate variables and integral terms is established to eliminate steady-state tracking errors. Next, a fast finite-time extended state observer is designed to compensate for uncertainties and external disturbances, improving the robustness of the control system. Finally, based on this, a finite-time sliding mode control rate is designed. The gain value is adjusted through an adaptive reaching law to reduce sliding mode chattering, and global finite-time convergence of the system is theoretically proven using Lyapunov theory. Experimental verification shows that the proposed control strategy has stronger robustness to uncertainties and external disturbances, faster error convergence, less chattering, and higher stability accuracy.

This study examines how to counter the legalization of proceeds from illicit drug trafficking in the context of Kazakhstan’s digitalizing economy. It analyses industry reports and applies Walker’s gravity formula and a related conceptual model. Such proceeds account for 2 to 5% of annual gross domestic profit globally, highlighting a serious economic issue. In Kazakhstan, this problem is intensified by the country’s location on major drug trafficking routes and insufficient alignment of its financial sector with international standards for monitoring financial transactions. The risks are worsened by the anonymity and speed of digital tools, which hinder the detection and blocking of suspicious activity. Criminals exploit digital technologies – such as debit cards, peer-to-peer platforms and privacy coins – to launder illicit funds. To combat this, the study recommends using big-data analytics to detect risks, machine learning to respond to them, international cooperation to establish transaction standards, and continuous monitoring to ensure compliance. Implementing these measures will require multi-sectoral reforms and coordinated efforts across public administration.

Excessive car ownership in cities has led to issues including congestion, air pollution and resource consumption. This paper investigates the impact of rail transit openings on automobile purchases in China based on detailed car sales data during 2013–2015 and using two-way fixed effects panel models. Our study reveals an average decrease of 2.27 per cent in car sales due to rail transit openings. Further analyses of cars with different fuel economy reveal stronger effects on fuel-efficient cars, indicating larger substitution elasticity between public transportation and driving for people with less income. Results also show the negative impact of rail transit openings is larger in cities with more developed economies, higher public revenue, larger population, bigger area and fewer buses. The decline in car sales translates into savings of 7.9 billion liters of gasoline and a reduction of about 20.3 million tons in life-cycle carbon emissions.

We focus on the existence of ground state solutions to the following class of elliptic equations

\begin{equation*}-\Delta_{\mathbb{B}^N} u+V(x)u=f(u) \quad \hbox{in} \quad \mathbb{B}^N,\end{equation*}

where $\mathbb{B}^N$ is the disc model of the Hyperbolic space and $\Delta_{\mathbb{B}^N}$ denotes the Laplace–Beltrami operator with $N \geq 2$, $V:\mathbb{B}^N \to \mathbb{R}$ and $f:\mathbb{R} \to \mathbb{R}$ are continuous functions that satisfy some technical conditions. With different types of the potential V, by introducing some new tricks handling the hurdle that the Hyperbolic space is not a compact manifold, we are able to obtain at least a positive ground state solution using variational methods.

As some applications for the methods adopted above, we derive the existence of normalized solutions to the elliptic problems

\begin{equation*}\left\{\begin{aligned}&-\Delta_{\mathbb{B}^N} u+V(x)u=\mu u+f(u) \quad \hbox{in} \quad \mathbb{B}^N,\\&\int_{\mathbb{B}^N}|u|^{2}\,dV_{{\mathbb{B}^N}}=a^{2},\end{aligned}\right.\end{equation*}

where a > 0, $\mu\in \mathbb{R}$ is an unknown parameter that appears as a Lagrange multiplier and f is a continuous function that fulfils the L2-subcritical or L2-supercritical growth. We do believe that it seems the first results to deal with normalized solutions for the Schrödinger equations in the Hyperbolic space.

Despite recent advances in the scholarship of history and architectural history, the practice of urban slavery is distinctly understudied in North American archaeology in contrast to plantation archaeologies. This is due largely to the fundamental challenge of investigating urban households, where many individuals of differing social and economic status (free and unfree, Black and white) occupy the same limited space and dispose of their refuse in shared locations, thereby contributing to a highly mixed archaeological record that is difficult—if not impossible—to parse. However, when the researcher pivots to imagining individual entanglements within a shared material world, new interpretations emerge in the noise and dissonance of urban life. This article considers the narratives of three enslaved individuals (two men and one woman) who lived and labored at 87 Church Street in Charleston, South Carolina, during the eighteenth century. Although this is an illuminating approach, traversing archival (archaeological) silences and highlighting individual lives and worlds in the archaeological record demands considerable interpretive caution and care.

The prominence and significance of research on specific learning differences (SpLDs) in language learning, teaching, assessment, and teacher education have substantially increased in the past ten years, which justifies the need to review the findings of studies conducted in recent years. The growth of the field also requires that the scope of the review is extended to research in the area of L2 assessment and teacher education. In our paper, we first offer a short discussion of different views of disability and inclusion and a succinct summary of the definitions of SpLDs. We then summarize recent research developments in five main areas: (1) the impact of SpLDs on L2 learning and achievement, (2) the identification of SpLDs in multilingual contexts, (3) teaching techniques and programmes in supporting language learners with SpLDs, (4) assessing the second language competence of test-takers with SpLDs, and (5) raising language teachers’ awareness and knowledge of SpLDs.

In our conclusion, we highlight the implications of recent scholarship in this field for language teaching and testing, teacher education, and suggest further research directions.