The openness of decision-makers to be influenced by and invest in proposals for policy reform is not constant. Timing is key, as are the diversity and depth of interests, levels of knowledge, and nature of the policy challenge itself; these can all affect how governments absorb information that might fall beyond the usual cost-benefit assessments of day-to-day policymaking. This essay explores how and when the policy environment provides opportunities to introduce a more nuanced discussion of competing moral values in migration governance and, critically, the new policy directions to which they might give rise. In doing so, it will utilize a range of examples from national, EU, and global debates of the past decade, to highlight moments when a dilemmas approach has been—or could have been—useful to effect policy change. Stressing ethical dilemmas can influence migration policymakers when the conditions are right.

Today’s controversies about territorial access and rights of refugees and the cohesion of the nation-state can be traced back to the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen and Kant’s ideas about hospitality. Seyla Benhabib has argued that the resulting dilemma can be softened and bridged through “democratic iterations,” and that the EU deliberation offers a suitable perspective. However, the complex construction of the EU asylum framework has led to a paradox of highly regulated rights and closed borders, and to disappointment and opposition. The sudden opening of borders and free choice for the Ukrainian victims of Russian aggression open a new perspective to address the dilemma, in line with EU principles of free choice and openness.

As governments prepare for the resumed session of the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee on Plastic Pollution (INC-5.2), the urgency of agreeing on a legally binding global plastics treaty is more pressing than ever. This editorial introduces a collection of letters calling for systemic, science-based, and justice-oriented approaches to plastic governance delivered through an ambitious and effective global plastics treaty. The letters span environmental, health, and social disciplines, and highlight the shortcomings of fragmented policy and assert the need for coordinated and binding action. The letters advocate for reducing plastic production, implementing restrictions on toxic chemicals, incorporating the structural inclusion of affected communities, and ensuring robust scientific oversight. Taken together, the collection of letters reflects the scientific and ethical imperatives to act decisively in shaping a transformative and enforceable plastics treaty.

Gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM) is a common medical condition during pregnancy and is linked to short- and long-term complications for both mothers and offspring. However, there is limited information regarding poor glycaemic control in Malaysia. This study aims to determine the predictors of poor glycaemic control among women with GDM and to explore women’s perceptions and experiences in self-managing glycaemic control. An explanatory sequential mixed methods study was conducted among women with GDM in Northern Terengganu. A proportional-to-size stratified sampling method was used in quantitative research to obtain 238 samples. Logistic regression was applied to determine associations between factors and poor glycaemic control. Then, purposive sampling was done in qualitative inquiry to obtain 12 samples. Thematic analysis was applied to identify recurring themes. The data from both quantitative and qualitative inquiry were then combined to answer research questions. Dietetic counselling (AOR = 2.95; 95% CI: 1.41, 6.17; p-value=0.004) and diet self-efficacy (AOR = 0.78; 95% CI: 0.61, 0.98; p-value=0.040) were associated with poor glycaemic control. Six themes that emerged from the interviews were: fear and worry; knowledge and motivation; dietary preferences and beliefs; family factors; occupational factors; and availability and affordability. The findings provide useful evidence for healthcare providers in delivering comprehensive health education and providing care for women with GDM.

Theories of liberal justice depend upon ideas of how much we can expect ordinary people to be motivated by the moral interests of others; there are limits to the motivational power of such notions as altruism and sympathy. This means, however, that the theories of justice we have may have difficulty in understanding how to rightly respond to the moral claims that might emerge in the face of widespread migration in response to climate change. This essay argues that liberal states may face a dilemma in response to this migration—one in which a state must do what cannot be justified toward either the migratory or the sedentary. This claim, further, might represent a new site of intergenerational injustice, in which future generations are given political problems to which our best theories of political justice can provide little assistance.

The basic principle of any version of insurance is the paradigm that exchanging risk by sharing it in a pool is beneficial for the participants. In case of independent risks with a finite mean, this is the case for risk-averse decision-makers. The situation may be very different in case of infinite mean models. In that case it is known that risk sharing may have a negative effect, which is sometimes called the nondiversification trap. This phenomenon is well known for infinite mean stable distributions. In a series of recent papers, similar results for infinite mean Pareto and Fréchet distributions have been obtained. We further investigate this property by showing that many of these results can be obtained as special cases of a simple result demonstrating that this holds for any distribution that is more skewed than a Cauchy distribution. We also relate this to the situation of deadly catastrophic risks, where we assume a positive probability for an infinite value. That case gives a very simple intuition why this phenomenon can occur for such catastrophic risks. We also mention several open problems and conjectures in this context.

Frailty in older adults with cancer is complex, evolving, and often overlooked in care. This qualitative study explored how frailty is experienced and reported using patient-reported outcome measures (PROMs) and visualized over time through journey maps. Eleven participants (65+) completed the Comprehensive Frailty Assessment Instrument (CFAI) and semi-structured interviews. Individual journey maps combined CFAI scores with personal narratives to track changes in physical, mental, and social aspects of frailty over time. While PROMs showed variability in frailty severity, narratives revealed discrepancies, such as low frailty scores despite significant treatment-related challenges. Fatigue, emotional distress, and isolation were common during treatment, with lasting impacts post-treatment. Findings suggest PROMs alone may not fully capture lived experience. Integrating narrative dialogue provides a more person-centred approach to frailty assessment and care planning.

The purpose of this article is to explore the solutions of the following nonlinear partial differential equations:

\begin{equation*}\mathcal{P}_1(u)^2+\mathcal{P}_2(u)^2=e^{g}\end{equation*}

and

\begin{equation*}\mathcal{P}_1(u)^2+2\alpha \mathcal{P}_1(u)\mathcal{P}_2(u)+\mathcal{P}_2(u)^2=e^{g},\end{equation*}

where $\alpha^2\in \mathbb{C}\setminus\{0,1\}$, g(z) is a polynomial, $a_j,b_j,c_j(j=1,2)$ are constants in $\mathbb{C}$, and

\begin{equation*}\mathcal{P}_1(u)=a_1 u+b_1 u_{z_1}+c_1u_{z_2}\quad \text{and} \quad \mathcal {P}_2(u)=a_2 u+b_2u_{z_1}+c_2u_{z_2}.\end{equation*}

The description of the existence conditions and the forms of the solutions for the above partial differential equations demonstrate that our results improve and generalise the previous results given by Saleeby, Cao and Xu. Moreover, some of our examples corresponding to every case in our theorems reveal the significant difference in the order of solutions for equations from a single variable to several variables.

A diversity of management and environmental factors influence weed seedbank community composition, yet the conditions under which each of these factors is an important driver of the weed seedbank are poorly understood. To investigate this relationship, we used a series of univariate and multivariate analyses to test associations between soil health, nematode community composition parameters, and the composition of the weed seedbank at 59 agricultural sites in the Prince Edward Island Soil Quality Monitoring (PEI SQM) Network spanning a range of land-use intensities and using potato (Solanum tuberosum L.) production systems as a case study. Land-use intensity is a nonstandard term that refers to increasing agricultural activity, including tillage and use of synthetic inputs to sustain high crop yield. Sites were classified into low, medium, and high land-use intensity categories based on frequency of potato cultivation in the past 10 yr. A total of 36 different weed species were found across all sites, and while neither seedbank density nor species richness was influenced by land-use intensity, community assemblage was. Seedbank communities at low land-use intensity sites were largely associated with grass weeds and other weakly competitive species, positively correlated with soil CO2 respiration and nematode community richness and diversity, and negatively correlated with the carbon to nitrogen ratio. In contrast, seedbank communities at medium and high land-use intensity sites were similar and composed of many highly competitive weedy species and correlated with the frequency of potato in the rotation and soil N and K, two commonly used soil fertility inputs. The absence of common agricultural weed species at low land-use intensity sites filtered by soil edaphic factors and abundance of neutral species despite past history of annual cropping suggest that these sites are not refuges for these species and may present a template for the design of weed seed–suppressive soils.

For time series with high temporal correlation, the empirical process converges rather slowly to its limiting distribution. Many statistics in change-point analysis, goodness-of-fit testing, and uncertainty quantification admit a representation as functionals of the empirical process and therefore inherit its slow convergence. As a result, inference based on the asymptotic distribution of those quantities is significantly affected by relatively small sample sizes. We assess the quality of higher-order approximations (HOAs) of the empirical process by deriving the asymptotic distribution of the corresponding error terms. Based on the limiting distribution of the higher-order terms, we propose a novel approach to calculate confidence intervals for statistical quantities such as the median. In a simulation study, we compare coverage rates and lengths of these confidence intervals with those based on the asymptotic distribution of the empirical process and highlight some benefits of HOAs of the empirical process.

This paper presents a novel design of quad-band rat-race couplers (RRCs) based on a modified T-shaped structure (MTSS). Two coupled lines are incorporated into the conventional dual-band T-shaped structure to create the MTSS, making it equivalent to a quarter-wavelength transmission line at four operating bands. The ABCD matrix method is applied to analyze the quad-band MTSS, deriving closed-form equations for calculating parameters of the structure. Then, a conventional RRC is separated into quarter-wavelength transmission lines, which are replaced by the proposed MTSS. To validate the design method, a quad-band RRC operating at 0.6, 1.196, 1.853, and 2.45 GHz is designed, fabricated, and tested. Simulation and experimental results demonstrate excellent agreement with theoretical prediction. The measured results show that input return loss exceeds 21.75 dB, isolation is greater than 21.6 dB, and insertion loss is less than 4.4 dB at all four operating frequencies. Phase deviations observed from the measured in-phase and out-phase responses are within 0o ± 4.6o and 180o ± 6.7o, respectively. Compared to most previously reported quad-band RRCs, the proposed circuit features a simple design and offers superior performance in isolation, return loss, and insertion loss.

It has long been recognized that Sartre’s description of “being-in-itself” in the Introduction to Being and Nothingness (B&N) is reminiscent of Eleatic monism, the view traditionally attributed to Parmenides on which there is only one mind-independent entity, which is undifferentiated and atemporal. I reconstruct two arguments from premises Sartre endorses in B&N for Eleatic monism. These arguments are interesting not only because they give new life to an old reading of B&N, but also because there has recently been a revival of interest in monism in analytic metaphysics.