This Article contributes toward the growing body of literature addressing the burgeoning gap between normative and empirical accounts of constitutional change in the constitutional order of the European Union. It does so by shining a light on how the European Parliament, acting through its unilateral procedural rule making powers, has managed to wield its limited formal constitutional clout to alter the balance of powers between the core Union institutions, and to define its own role in the development of the political component to the EU’s constitutional culture. Given the European Parliament cannot be dissolved, and given there is at least the potential for such rule making power to be put to unconstitutional ends, the Article also considers the extent to which judicial oversight of this particular form of informal constitutional change is possible, and the form it may take should the validity of a particular procedural rule be challenged.

Saflufenacil, a protoporphyrinogen oxidase (PPO)-inhibiting herbicide, has been reformulated as a microencapsulation for preemergence and postemergence applications in corn, with the primary purpose of the encapsulation to reduce the risk of corn injury from foliar applications. Field experiments on corn were conducted in 2023, 2024, and 2025 to evaluate the efficacy of encapsulated saflufenacil alone and in the formulated premixture with pyroxasulfone for residual broadleaf weed control and crop injury. Applications of encapsulated saflufenacil across a dose range resulted in incomplete control (less than 60%) of giant ragweed. Combinations of the encapsulated saflufenacil + pyroxasulfone premixture with atrazine were efficacious in controlling giant ragweed up to 28 days after planting (DAP), but efficacy declined sharply by 42 DAP. The reduced efficacy on giant ragweed was attributed to a lack of activating rainfall for the encapsulated saflufenacil. Conversely, encapsulated saflufenacil applications, with or without pyroxasulfone, were highly efficacious (83 to 99% control) on the small-seeded broadleaf species waterhemp and common lambsquarters. Furthermore, the most extensive weed control with encapsulated saflufenacil resulted from sequential applications (PRE/POST) of residual herbicide. Overall, encapsulated saflufenacil was effective in controlling small-seeded broadleaf weeds until a POST application was performed. However, additional herbicides in a mixture may be needed to manage large-seeded broadleaf species, such as giant ragweed. Regardless of the target species, management of problematic, herbicide-resistant weeds with encapsulated saflufenacil should focus on combinations with other effective herbicides in both PRE and POST applications, in addition to other weed control tactics.

Plasma in axisymmetric mirror traps is unstable versus flute-like modes if no stabilising measures are taken. Instead of stability it is also possible to aim at suppressing the convective transverse transport generated by unstable modes. A ‘vortex confinement’ scheme of this type is utilised in current operation regimes of the Gas-Dynamic Trap in Novosibirsk Bagryansky et al.(2011 Fusion Sci. Technol., vol. 59, pp. 31–35). The relevant model Beklemishev et al. (2010Fusion Sci. Technol., vol. 57, pp. 351–360) describes the effect as due to nonlinear interaction of the flute modes with the background sheared rotation induced by plasma biasing via end plates and limiters. The rigid $m=1$ mode is saturated only due to current dissipation at the end plates, i.e. the partial line tying. The original model assumes flat radial profiles of plasma density and electron temperature, neglecting possible centrifugal and electron-temperature effects. These sources of instability are added to the original framework using a single scalar forming its hybrid extension. Efficiency of the biasing scheme for nonlinear suppression of flute-like convection is shown to depend primarely on spatial positions of biased facility elements, rather than on additional sources of instability.

Noun (N) and Adjective (A) are distinct word classes but share certain features. Some noun uses share more features with how adjectives are used, thus contributing (over time) to a shift from N to A. There is evidence that the use of nouns as adjectives is on the increase (Denison 2013). Earlier work (De Smet 2012) shows key and fun taking different paths shifting to A, apparently because the former is a count and the latter a noncount noun. This article provides a type-based study on the N>A shift during the Late Modern English period on the basis of data from the Oxford English Dictionary and diachronic corpora. Complementing previous research, we address the question of which functional slot (premodifying or predicative) dominates the N>A shift and whether countability of nouns plays an important role. Our findings challenge the view that there is a connection between countability of the nouns in question and the path of the N>A shift. A case study on genius, a noun that is both count and noncount, provides additional quantitative and qualitative analysis of the N>A shift.

The Kurdistan Region of Iraq (KRI) is a semi-autonomous region within the federal Iraq, governed by its own regional government. The Ministry of Health (MoH) is responsible for overseeing healthcare services and their regulation. The region, categorised within Iraq, is a low- and middle-income, conflict-affected geography with a long history of violence endured by the Kurdish population. The region has no dedicated mental health budget, and the number of mental health professionals is limited despite a high prevalence of mental disorders. Service organisation remains constrained by uneven access, limited standardisation of care pathways, and gaps in governance and regulation.

We study the problem of continuity of derivations over Banach algebras. More specifically, we consider derivations over a class of Banach algebras that contain dense “$C^*$-like” subalgebras. The results we prove are then applied to $L^p$-crossed products and symmetrized $L^p$-crossed products. For example, it follows that every derivation over the $L^p$-crossed product $F^p(G,X,\alpha )$ is continuous, provided that G is infinite, finitely generated, has polynomial growth, and acts freely on the compact Hausdorff space X.

We classify all Polish semigroup topologies on the symmetric inverse monoid $I_{\mathbb N}$ on the natural numbers $\mathbb N$. This result answers a question of Elliott et al. There are countably infinitely many such topologies. Under containment, these Polish semigroup topologies form a join-semilattice with infinite descending chains, no infinite ascending chains, and arbitrarily large finite anti-chains. Also, we show that the monoid $I_{\mathbb N}$ endowed with any second countable $T_1$ semigroup topology is homeomorphic to the Baire space $\mathbb N^{\mathbb N}$.

Building on a recent construction of Plebanek and Salguero-Alarcón, which solved the Complemented Subspace Problem for $C(K)$-spaces, and the subsequent work of De Hevia, Martínez-Cervantes, Salguero-Alarcón, and Tradacete solving the Complemented Subspace Problem for Banach lattices, we show that the class of Banach lattices is not primary. Specifically, we exhibit a compact Hausdorff space L such that $C(L) \simeq X \oplus \tilde {X}$ and neither X nor $\tilde {X}$ is isomorphic to a Banach lattice. In particular, it also follows that the class of $C(K)$-spaces is not primary.

This research note critically examines the structural failures of Mexico’s post-2000 democratic transition, arguing that the rise of illiberal populism under the National Regeneration Movement (Morena) is not the cause but the consequence of a stalled and superficial democratization process. While formal electoral procedures were strengthened, underlying issues such as state capture, elite dominance, widespread corruption, and socioeconomic exclusion remained unaddressed. By reducing democracy to procedural minimalism, political elites failed to deliver substantive democratic outcomes, eroding institutional legitimacy, and fueling public disillusionment.

The creation of a Slovak literary standard to serve as a “national language” can be analyzed not only as part of intellectual history but also as part of the social history of rising literacy: a demographically significant population trained to write according to any particular literary standard forms a social interest group generating ethnolinguistic nationalism. Textbooks are interesting sources for both approaches. Focusing on the 1850s as a key moment in the history of Habsburg educational policy, this paper examines four Slovak grammar books written in the aftermath of the 1848 Revolution. While the ideal of a “Slovak language” was gaining ground, the continued heterogeneity of literary practices and the persistence of Czech teaching materials suggest that a uniquely Slovak social interest group was much slower to form.

Writing from Australia, where acute climate crisis intersects with enduring colonial legacies, in this article we present our ongoing investigation into how environmental changes reshape scientific, literary-cultural, and philosophical discourses, while foregrounding the underutilized potential of humanities. We argue that humanities frameworks provide essential tools to address the current climate inaction by deconstructing the foundational discourses of Western culture that reinforce that inaction. Among the interrelated discourses we consider under our model, this article focuses on the relationship between the “invulnerable” body and human and non-human bodies made vulnerable by the power dynamics and material conditions of climate crisis. Through case studies of Noongar artist-writer Claire Coleman’s science fiction novel, Terra Nullius (2017) and Ellen van Neerven’s narrative “Water” (from Heat and Light, 2014), we demonstrate how literary narratives dismantle dominant symbolic regimes to foster more effective engagements with climate crisis. Our analysis ultimately gestures towards the urgent and growing corpus of Australian speculative fiction that explores these critical themes.

The eastern Ordos Basin is situated in a transitional zone between the stable Ordos craton and an adjacent active orogenic belt. Episodic tectonic uplift and subsequent cooling of the eastern Ordos Basin since the Mesozoic have been spatially and temporally heterogeneous, with uplift and cooling commencing earlier in the central and northern segments than in the south. To constrain the differential tectono-thermal history of the eastern region, apatite fission-track analyses were carried out on Upper Palaeozoic samples from distinct tectonic units, and new data are presented. The results identify four discrete episodes of rapid exhumation at 110 Ma, 70 Ma, 50 Ma, and 30 Ma, confirming a heterogeneous uplift and exhumation history of the region since the Early Cretaceous. The Eastern Ordos has experienced three phases of uplift. North-south thermal histories differ significantly: the south shows later, rapid cooling (50 m/Ma, 110–90 Ma), while the north shows earlier, slower exhumation (25 m/Ma, 130–90 Ma). Since 30 Ma, the southern area experienced accelerated uplift, contrasting with the moderate exhumation observed in the north and centre. We infer that differential tectonic uplift, exhumation, and the cooling process are coupled to underlying mantle dynamics, which have resulted in the complex structure of the eastern basin. This research provides significant implications for reconstructing the divergent thermal evolution pathways of its various tectonic units.

South Africa is the most unequal society in the world, and this is exacerbated by the enduring legacy of apartheid. Policy and statutory interventions have been introduced to address inequality, albeit with minimal success. This article argues that the persistence of inequality necessitates a more profound normative recalibration within corporate law. It proposes incorporating the values of transformative constitutionalism, distributive justice and Ubuntu into corporate law, conceptualized as transformative corporate law. This reorientation enhances the enlightened shareholder value (ESV) model by shifting its emphasis from a predominantly shareholder-centric focus towards a more inclusive stakeholder model. The article situates shareholder primacy as occupying “the right”, stakeholderism “the left” and the ESV model “the centre” of the corporate governance spectrum. South Africa’s extreme inequality demands a paradigm shift that moves decisively towards the centre-left, a position embedded in the African philosophy of Ubuntu and termed the “progressive ESV” model in this article.