Accurate crop growth models are essential for predicting yield and evaluating adaptation potentials under climate change. As one of Europe’s most important forage crops, silage maize (Zea mays L.) requires a model that captures genotype-specific growth traits and environmental variability. The current study presents HUME-Maize (Hannover University Modelling Environment), a new process-based model for silage maize, specifically adapted to conditions in Northern Europe. Model development relied on an extensive dataset from two field trials (2007–2008, 2021–2022) at five sites across Germany, involving two mid-early maize hybrids released 12 years apart. Calibration was based on the older hybrid and evaluated on both, testing the need for hybrid-specific parameter adjustments. Model scalability and predictive accuracy were assessed with a nationwide dataset covering 287 site-year combinations. The baseline model, parameterized using an older hybrid, reproduced biomass formation well (d = 0.98 and 0.95). Application to a newer hybrid without adjustment revealed systematic differences in leaf development and yield formation associated with breeding progress. Hybrid-specific adjustments of physiological traits, e.g. leaf growth rate, specific leaf area and radiation use efficiency, substantially improved model performance, reflecting the enhanced radiation use efficiency of the newer hybrid. On the national scale, the model achieved low prediction errors for final yield (16 % for the older and 21 % for the newer hybrid). Drought and nitrogen stress responses remain areas for refinement. HUME-Maize thus provides a robust framework for simulating hybrid-specific silage maize growth, supporting yield prediction and physiological analysis across hybrids and environments.

In this paper, we analyze the distribution of the total overlapping time spent with other customers in the $\mathrm{M}_\lambda/\mathrm{M}_\mu/1$ queue with First-Come First-Served service discipline. We show that the Laplace–Stieltjes transform of the overlapping time reduces to an incomplete gamma function representation. We also calculate the transform of the joint distribution of the overlapping time and the number of overlaps. In addition, we prove a heavy-traffic limit for the total overlapping time with scaling $1/(1-\rho)^2$ to a $\operatorname{Weibull}(1/2,1/\mu)$ random variable. Finally, for the $\mathrm{M}_{\lambda}/\mathrm{G}/1$ case, we derive the first two moments of the overlapping time.

Modern Western education has been criticised for its human-centred orientation and for legitimising the exploitation of nature, thereby contributing to the environmental crisis. This article responds by rethinking a specific Northern European strand of the Bildung tradition, namely the modern critical-constructive approach associated with Humboldt and Klafki, as a pedagogical framework concerned with how teaching and educational practices could and should support processes of self-formation. Drawing on reflections from an international Wild Pedagogies (WP) gathering in Sweden, we engage the WP concept of Nature as Co-Teacher to develop three re-imaginations of critical-constructive approaches to Bildung. First, we reimagine Bildung as dialogical co-development in a more-than-human world. Second, we reimagine Bildung as place-specific pedagogical practices oriented towards engagement with, in, and for the living world. Third, we reimagine Bildung within a nature-, place-, and life-centred horizon in which the living world provides the highest context of meaning and value. Together, these re-imaginations contribute to ongoing debates in Environmental and Sustainability Education and related fields about how pedagogical traditions can respond to the challenges of the Anthropocene.

This article examines how merchants in early modern Japan (1600–1868) created large-scale enterprises that contained multiple stores across several jurisdictions and employed hundreds of staff in the absence of formal legal institutions designed to facilitate the formation of complex businesses. It argues that early modern merchants made use of the household (ie) to construct fictive entities that looked, wrote, and acted like individual merchants on paper, but could be controlled by different people, divided into shares, and used to shield assets from claims by local creditors and rulers. Through the clever deployment of these fictive entities, merchants constructed expansive business empires. The article uses the archive of the Nakai Genzaemon, one of the period’s wealthiest merchants, to show how these entities worked, then compares the Nakai’s organization with other premodern businesses inside and outside of Japan. Based on this analysis, the conclusion offers a critique of institutional approaches to the study of economic and business history as well as suggestions toward a new understanding of the relationship between business, state, and society in early modern Japan.

Care homes are vulnerable to respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) outbreaks, with residents at risk of severe disease outcomes, though surveillance studies are lacking. In September 2024, RSV vaccination was introduced for adults in England aged 75–79 years, excluding most residents (median age 86 years). Between October 2024 and March 2025, we prospectively extracted information on RSV outbreaks in English care homes reported to UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA). Enhanced surveillance questionnaires (ESQs) were completed for a sample of outbreaks, including information on symptomatic residents, testing, and outcomes. Acute respiratory infection (ARI) cases were defined symptomatically, RSV cases based on test-positive RSV (≤5 residents tested per home), and RSV outbreaks as ARI outbreaks including ≥1 RSV case. We described outbreak trends, attack rates, hospitalizations, and deaths. Of 2419 ARI outbreaks in care homes, 222 (9%) were RSV outbreaks, with additional respiratory viruses identified in 69 (31%). Among 48 (22%) RSV outbreaks completing ESQs, the median ARI attack rate was 15% (IQR 10%–24%). Of 350 ARI cases, 32% (112) were confirmed RSV cases on routine testing, 20% (71) were hospitalized, and 6% (20) died. These findings demonstrate the vulnerability of care home residents to RSV infection, hospitalization, and death, which are potentially preventable through vaccination.

Whether the later Roman Empire ran short of precious or base metals, either at the level of the state or in private life, is a question that can only be answered in a tentative fashion. Surveying the period from the mid-2nd to the mid-7th c., this article weighs the difficulties presented by the full range of material and textual evidence, while attempting to establish a balance between all regions of the Roman world. It concludes by suggesting that there probably were indeed crises of metal production at certain periods, caused by the depletion of usable ores and hypothetically by a shortage of fuel.

Party youth wings (PYWs) are often portrayed as marginal actors within political parties, yet we know little about how they themselves pursue policy-seeking strategies inside their mother parties. This article presents a qualitative case study of PYWs in Germany, examining how German PYWs advance policy-related positions within their parties and how their strategic repertoires are shaped by organisational conditions. It develops a conceptual framework for analysing PYW policy-seeking strategies centred on three party-organisational dimensions: formal organisation, mobilisation potential, and leadership. Drawing on semi-structured interviews with selected PYW leaders across Germany and an analysis of official documents, the study compares different PYWs within a single national party system to explore how formal and informal channels for articulating youth interests are combined. Rather than assessing the effectiveness of these strategies, the study highlights how distinct organisational constellations are associated with different modes of policy-seeking within parties. The findings suggest that mobilisation capacity and leadership-based informal access feature prominently in PYWs’ strategic self-understandings, often taking precedence over formal participatory rights. While empirically grounded in the German case, the article contributes to research on intra-party democracy, youth representation, and party change by clarifying how PYWs navigate opportunities and constraints within party structures.

As sample sizes grow, scalability has become a central concern in the development of Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) methods. One general approach to this problem, exemplified by the popular stochastic gradient Langevin dynamics (SGLD) algorithm, is to use a small random subsample of the data at every time step. This paper shows that this approach often fails: while decreasing the sample size increases the speed of each MCMC step, for typical datasets this is balanced by a matching decrease in accuracy. This result complements recent work on lower bounds for subsampling MCMC by focusing on actual errors for SGLD, including non-reversible algorithms, and by giving assumptions that are comparatively easy to verify.

Timed to coincide with the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the Declaration of Independence that launched a revolution that created the United States of America, this series of articles complicates traditional narratives of this transformative event by situating it within a larger British world context.

Debates surrounding mandated instruction in the origin of the United States have reemerged in recent years. This article discusses teaching the Declaration of Independence as imperial history. It evaluates how mandates like the one in my state—Nevada—to teach “devotion to American institutions and ideals” through exploring “the origin and history” of Constitutional government have fared in the actual classroom. It considers the importance of embracing both the complexity and nuance of the story of the founding of the United States in today's divisive political climate.

Knowledge synthesis involves bringing together findings from individual research studies to answer a specific question or explore a particular topic, often at a global level. People with lived or living experience of health conditions or of accessing healthcare services (PWLE), such as patients and their families or friends, can provide valuable perspectives throughout this process. PWLE involvement can help shape the design and conduct of a knowledge synthesis to better reflect real-world concerns through a process called patient engagement. Patient engagement is the meaningful and active involvement of PWLE throughout the research process. While previous research shows that PWLE can contribute meaningfully when appropriate supports are in place, there is limited practical guidance on how to enact patient engagement in knowledge syntheses. This tutorial paper aims to guide researchers and PWLE who would like to engage in knowledge syntheses together. Building on existing research, our team (comprised of PWLE, researchers, and an academic librarian) shares lessons we have learned from working together throughout the stages of a knowledge synthesis. We present considerations for successful patient engagement when research teams are: (1) planning to engage, (2) recruiting PWLE, (3) establishing roles and rapport, (4) supporting capacity development, (5) conducting the knowledge synthesis, and (6) mobilizing findings. We also identify 12 common barriers to patient engagement and offer strategies to address them, alongside recommendations for integrating PWLE across every stage of the knowledge synthesis process.

This article adopts an integrated practice-led and practice-based methodology, framed through an essayistic approach to comics-based research, using our own artistic practices, one from Serbia and one from India, as case studies. Through works addressing the fall of democratic values, memories of conflicts, rise of nationalism, and ecological devastation, we examine how urgency shapes creation, reflection, and the mediation of memory in comics-making. Rather than a reactionary impulse, we conceptualize urgency as a relational and iterative condition that unfolds through political-ethical, epistemic, and aesthetic dimensions, and one that structures how artists act, think, and draw in response to crises. In our practices, drawing functions as both an act of remembering and a form of thinking: essayistic comics-making materializes a dialogue between immediacy and reflection, as well as between lived experience and its critical rearticulation. We argue that through this interplay, comics-making becomes a mode of situated knowledge production, where memory, testimony, and critique are interwoven. The essayistic form enables urgency to be inhabited rather than merely depicted, turning the creative process itself into a reflective space of resistance and inquiry. By tracing how these dynamics operate within specific socio-political contexts, this paper expands the understanding of comics-making as a medium of embodied memory and a method of research that translates lived urgency into thought and form.

A microstrip low-pass filter with sharp roll-off and excellent suppression in both the near- and far-stopbands is proposed. The design incorporates a stepped-impedance hairpin-type resonator (SIHTR) along with a pair of asymmetric T-shaped resonators (TSRs). While the SIHTR offers a tunable 3 dB cutoff frequency and roll-off rate (ROR), its near-stopband suppression degrades at higher ROR values. To address this limitation and further extend the stopband bandwidth, two TSRs with distinct resonant frequencies are positioned at the input and output ports. By fixing their resonant frequencies and fine-tuning their stopband characteristics, the overall suppression bandwidth and stopband attenuation are significantly enhanced. The proposed filter features a compact layout, high selectivity, a wide stopband, and excellent out-of-band suppression performance. Measured results demonstrate an insertion loss of less than 1 dB and a return loss of greater than 15.1 dB in the passband from DC to 7.5 GHz. The 3 dB cutoff frequency is 8.23 GHz, and the transition band is 34.58 dB/GHz from -3dB to -40dB. In the stopband, attenuation exceeds 31.5 dB across the frequency range from 9.17 GHz to 40 GHz.

The papers in this volume point to an analysis of synaesthesia which is not merely grounded in firstness, the free unconstrained play of fancy, cross-modal iconism, and metaphoric slippage of adjectives randomly from one body to another, but to the way synaesthesia is transitive, grounded in affective encounters between bodies (secondness), leaping from one body to another related body, involving indexicality, metonyms, hence “synaesthetic encounters.”

The exhibition False Witnesses (Shuhud al-Zur) by Dia al-Azzawi at Saleh Barakat Gallery in Beirut, from September 11 to October 31, 2025, is the kind of show one usually would only see at a museum (Figures 1, 2). It consists of several large-scale works that invite an almost immersive viewing experience, in which seeing requires physical movement and the artwork dominates the perceptual space of the viewer. The works offer a critical reflection on power and violence in Iraq over the past two decades.

Philanthropic organizations, as crucial intermediaries between the government and society, significantly contribute to public service delivery. This study examines how organizational features influence their effectiveness, especially exploring the impact of professional capacity and organizational resources. Based on the panel data of 259 philanthropic organizations in Shanghai from 2010 to 2022, we use two-way fixed effects models to examine the impact of professional capacity, financial scale, and annual income on public service delivery, as measured by the number of charitable projects, project expenditures, and the number of beneficiaries. The finding shows that professional capacity notably improves public service delivery. We also find that financial scale moderates the relationship, while annual income mediates it. The results advocate that policies should facilitate capacity building and resource support altogether to maximize philanthropic organizations’ contributions to public service delivery.

This article examines efforts to remake the European economy in the late twentieth century through innovations in organized business and industrial policy. By narrating the development of the “Big 12 Roundtable” and the European Strategic Program on Research in Information Technology (ESPRIT) in the 1970s and 1980s, we show how the executive institution of the European Commission responded to global competitive pressures by creating “business forums”—groups of business elites organized by policymakers to serve as policy consultants—and by developing extensive technology and research programs to support the development of European technology firms. We then trace how the Big 12 Roundtable laid the foundation for other business forums, including the European Round Table of Industrialists (ERT), and how ESPRIT paved the way for the framework programs that have been hallmarks of European industrial policy and investment in research and development for half a century. Consequently, this article expands the business historical genealogy of organized business in Europe and contributes a new history of European industrial policy.