If A and B are subsets of an abelian group, their sumset is $A+B:=\{a+b:a\in A, b\in B\}$. We study sumsets in discrete abelian groups, where at least one summand has positive upper Banach density.

Jin proved in [27] that if A and B are sets of integers having positive upper Banach density, then $A+B$ is piecewise syndetic. Bergelson, Furstenberg, and Weiss [4] improved the conclusion to “$A+B$ is piecewise Bohr.” In [2] this was shown to be qualitatively optimal, in the sense that if $C\subseteq \mathbb Z$ is piecewise Bohr, then there are $A, B\subseteq \mathbb Z$ having positive upper Banach density such that $A+B\subseteq C$.

We improve these results by establishing a strong correspondence between sumsets in discrete abelian groups, level sets of convolutions in compact abelian groups, and sumsets in compact abelian groups. Our proofs avoid measure preserving dynamics and nonstandard analysis, and our results apply to discrete abelian groups of any cardinality.

How does technological change affect social policy preferences? We advance this lively debate by focusing on the role of dual vocational education and training (VET). Existing literature would lead us to expect that dual VET increases demand for compensatory social policy and magnifies the effect of automation risk on such demands. In contrast, we contend that dual VET weakens demand for compensatory social policy through three non-mutually exclusive mechanisms that we refer to as (i) material self-interest; (ii) workplace socialization; and (iii) skill certification. We further hypothesize that dual VET mitigates the association between automation risk and social policy preferences. Analyzing cross-national individual data from the European Social Survey and national-level data on education systems, we find strong evidence for our argument. The paper advances the debate on social policy preferences in the age of automation and sheds new light on the relationship between skill formation and social policy preferences.

The roots of the concept of human dignity have habitually been traced back to Immanuel Kant. However, recent scholarship suggests that this might be a false parentage, and feminist theorists have long criticized the gendered nature of Kantian dignity. This paper suggests looking to another thinker for the origins of human dignity: Mary Wollstonecraft. Wollstonecraft’s notion of dignity more closely resembles present currents of thought about the concept and offers a sterner defence of moral equality for women as well as men. To demonstrate this, the paper first analyses what Wollstonecraft understood by the term “dignity,” and then explores the wider role that it played in her thought, and especially her analysis of the French Revolution.

The Agreement between the Council of Europe and Ukraine establishes a Special Tribunal to prosecute individuals bearing the greatest responsibility for the crime of aggression against Ukraine. Adopted in June 2025, the treaty-based tribunal responds to Russia’s use of force beginning in 2014 and escalating in 2022. The Tribunal’s Statute explicitly removes head of state immunity, ensuring that senior leaders may face prosecution. Jurisdiction is limited to aggression as defined by UN General Assembly Resolution 3314. The institutional framework includes chambers, a prosecutor’s office, and a registry, with robust fair trial guarantees. This represents a significant development in international criminal justice and accountability for leadership crimes.

This study presents a corpus-based analysis of the verb blîven in combination with the present participle and the infinitive in Middle Low German (thirteenth–seventeenth century), with the goal of identifying the aspectual and semantic properties of these constructions. In contrast to previous research, which focused primarily on the verbs wērden and wēsen or relied on limited textual material, the present study draws on a broader corpus, allowing for a more comprehensive assessment of usage patterns across different periods and genres.

The analysis shows that blîven in combination with a present participle or an infinitive can express both mutative and nonmutative meanings, with the nonmutative interpretation clearly predominating regardless of form. The study further explores how the aspectual interaction between blîven and the nonfinite verb influences the overall interpretation of the construction.

The semantic patterns observed for blîven are compared with those found in wērden and wēsen + present participle constructions, revealing significant semantic convergence among Middle Low German predicative structures. These findings contribute to a deeper understanding of the development and aspectual behavior of periphrastic constructions in the historical Germanic languages.*

The current study examines the effect of talker identity and linguistic experience on the perception of novel speech patterns by English speakers, focusing on vowel insertion in Korean-accented English. Experiment 1 shows that English speakers with no experience of living in Korea identify English words with vowel insertion as valid words more frequently throughout the experiment only when the talker is described as Korean, but not when the talker is American or Mexican. In Experiment 2, we find similar results with English speakers living in Korea, who provide more word responses to vowel-inserted English words in the Korean talker condition but not the American talker condition. Comparing Experiment 1 and Experiment 2, participants living in Korea show a greater preference for the inserted vowel that is similar to the one found in Korean-accented English ([ʊ]) over the control vowel ([ɪ]), as well as faster adaptation to this type. These results suggest that both talker identity and previous exposure to an accent influence how listeners perceive and adapt to foreign-accented speech, consistent with exemplar models of speech perception.

The paper set out to answer how logics of racialisation and racism operate in the EU’s documents on anti-racism particularly in relation to Roma community, arguing that these policies paradoxically reproduce the racialisation they aim to dismantle. While the European Union frames racism—especially antigypsyism—as a matter of societal attitudes, the analysis demonstrates that EU institutions themselves continue to contribute to structural racism through policy language and implementation. Drawing on Critical Race Theory and Critical Romani Studies the paper employs critical discourse analysis to reveal patterns of deflection, denial, and distancing within key EU documents. It shows how Roma are constructed as a racialised “other,” often aligned with other marginalised groups in ways that reinforce exclusion. By foregrounding institutional responsibility, the paper challenges dominant narratives that externalise racism and highlights how EU frameworks sustain racism, ultimately undermining their stated commitment to anti-racism and equality.

We study the probability that an AR(1) Markov chain $X_{n+1}=aX_n+\xi _{n+1}$, where $a\in (0,1)$ is a constant, stays non-negative for a long time. We find the exact asymptotics of this probability and the weak limit of $X_n$ conditioned to stay non-negative, assuming that the independent and identically distributed innovations $\xi _n$ take only two values $\pm 1$ and $a \le \tfrac 23$. This limiting distribution is quasi-stationary. It has no atoms and is singular with respect to the Lebesgue measure when $\tfrac 12< a \le \tfrac 23$, except for the case when $a=\tfrac 23$ and $\mathbb P(\xi _n=1)=\tfrac 12$, where this distribution is uniform on the interval $[0,3]$. This is similar to the properties of Bernoulli convolutions. For $0 < a \le \tfrac 12$, the situation is much simpler and the limiting distribution is a $\delta $-measure. To prove these results, we uncover a close connection between $X_n$ killed at exiting $[0, \infty )$ and the classical dynamical system defined by the piecewise linear mapping $x \mapsto x/a + 1/2\ \pmod 1$. Namely, the trajectory of this system started at $X_n$ deterministically recovers the values of the killed chain in reversed time. We use this fact to construct a suitable Banach space, where the transition operator of the killed chain has the compactness properties that allow us to apply a conventional argument of the Perron–Frobenius type.

Early-season crop yield loss frequently occurs even when resources are abundant, challenging traditional resource-based models of crop–weed competition. Drawing on decades of research on the critical period for weed control, this review highlights evidence that brief exposure of crop seedlings to neighboring weeds can trigger rapid and irreversible reductions in yield potential through resource-independent mechanisms. Central to these processes are weed-induced changes in light spectral quality, particularly reduced red:far-red (R:FR) ratios, which activate the phytochrome-mediated shade avoidance syndrome (SAS). These responses alter morphology, biomass allocation, canopy architecture, photosynthetic capacity, redox homeostasis, defense signaling, and nitrogen metabolism. Low R:FR light induces persistent photosynthetic and metabolic constraints, increases reactive oxygen species (ROS) signaling, suppresses jasmonic acid- and salicylic acid-mediated defenses, and modifies nitrate assimilation and root traits in species- and genotype-dependent manners. Collectively, weed-derived signals during early crop development can lead to lasting physiological reprogramming. Integrating light-mediated signaling with metabolic, defense, epigenetic, and lncRNA-mediated pathways provides a mechanistic framework for understanding yield loss and identifies potential targets for enhancing crop competitiveness and resilience in weed-infested agroecosystems.

Structural equation modeling (SEM) is a flexible statistical technique with multiple applications, including behavioral genetics and social sciences. Building on the original design of the umx package, which improved accessibility to OpenMx by specifying a concise syntax, umx v4.5 extends functionality for longitudinal and causal twin designs while improving interoperability with graphical modeling tools such as Onyx. New capabilities include: classic and modern cross-lagged panel models; Mendelian Randomization Direction-of-Causation (MR-DoC) twin models incorporating polygenic scores as instruments; support for definition variables directly in umxRAM(); a workflow for importing paths from Ωnyx; a dedicated function for incorporating censored variables’ data into models, particularly valuable in biomarker research; improved covariate placeholder handling for definition variables; sex-limitation modeling across five twin groups, accommodating quantitative and qualitative sex differences; and covariate residualization in wide- or long-format data. These new functionalities accelerate reproducible, reliable, publication-ready twin and family modeling, and integrated journal-quality reporting, thereby lowering barriers to genetic epidemiological analyses

From 1950 to 1963, over 200,000 international military officers trained in the continental United States through the Military Assistance Program (MAP). This article examines how military “study abroad” was pivotal to Cold War cultural diplomacy and empire building. Beyond transferring military skills, military study abroad sought to transform the worldviews of officers from South Korea, Taiwan, Japan, and other Asian nations through immersion in American life. U.S. programs relied on the gendered labor of American women to curate an idealized vision of suburban domesticity and liberal democracy, while attempting to insulate officers from the ills of 1950s American society. Asian officers also navigated and bucked official expectations, reacting to the quality of their training, race relations, and cultural friction. Military study abroad thus illuminates the complexities of U.S. global power: ambitious in scope and far reaching, yet vulnerable to the dynamics of unpredictable everyday encounters between the foreign and the domestic.

Survival sex is prevalent in conflict-affected settings, yet humanitarian actors’ understanding of the structural inequalities driving such exchanges remains limited. Stigma and discriminatory attitudes among practitioners continue to shape humanitarian responses, resulting in the exclusion of those engaged in survival sex from assistance and protection. This article examines how prevailing narratives have reduced survival sex to dichotomous categories of sex work or sexual violence, overlooking the systemic dimensions of what is best described as a coping mechanism. After defining survival sex, it analyzes the root causes of the phenomenon through wider scholarship on transactional sex. Based on secondary sources and the author’s operational experience addressing gendered harm in humanitarian settings, the article examines how survival sex impacts individuals, families and communities. The author concludes by providing recommendations for how humanitarian actors can enhance protection for persons engaged in survival sex through broader stigma reduction efforts.

Glufosinate-ammonium (GA) has been widely used in Midwest fields, and in recent years a growing number of failures to control waterhemp [Amaranthus tuberculatus (Moq.) Sauer] have raised concerns about the evolution of resistance. The goal of this study was to investigate four cases of suspected resistance to GA in A. tuberculatus from Illinois using greenhouse, field, and transcriptomics studies. Greenhouse dose-response experiments revealed resistance ratios ranging from 2.2- to 3.4-fold based on survival and 1.3- to 2.8-fold based on biomass relative to a susceptible population. A subsequent field study where one of the populations originated confirmed that twenty percent of treated plants survived the labeled GA field-recommended rate. Screening with other herbicide site-of-action groups revealed that most populations showed reduced sensitivity to atrazine, glyphosate, and imazethapyr, surviving up to three times the field-recommended rates, and to a lesser extent, lactofen and fomesafen. Transcriptomic analysis of plants surviving GA revealed no resistance-associated mutations or differential transcript abundance in the plastidic and cytosolic isoforms of glutamine synthetase. Among the four suspected resistant populations, there were 182 genes differentially expressed relative to two susceptible populations. Different sets of genes were differentially expressed among the populations studied, with only one gene (upregulated relative to two susceptible populations) shared among all four. Many of the differentially expressed genes, including cytochrome P450s, glutathione S-transferases, glycosyltransferases, transporters, and transcriptional regulators, are commonly associated with metabolic resistance. Gene ontology enrichment analyses indicated significant overrepresentation of stress response, defense regulation, and secondary metabolism categories across the populations. Together, these findings provide evidence for the evolution of GA resistance in populations of A. tuberculatus in Illinois. While more in-depth studies are needed to fully characterize the underlying mechanisms, the consistent differential expression of metabolism-related genes and no indication of target-site mechanisms points to a potential metabolic basis for resistance.

This study is concerned with Albanian children speaking a nonstandard dialect who learn Standard Albanian (SA) in primary school. Our main research question is whether the phonetic characteristics of these children’s first dialect are influenced by their learning of SA. We followed longitudinally 48 children in 1st, 2nd, and 5th grades (24 girls, 24 boys, 6–11 years old), some of whom grew up in a village, the others in a city. A picture-naming task was used to record four vowel features of interest, which were analyzed acoustically, then statistically with distributional regression models and generalized additive models. We found evidence that the children’s first dialect was affected by SA, suggesting that by 5th grade, they were not fully proficient at distinguishing between the two systems. The four analyzed features followed different developmental trajectories, similar to adults acquiring a second dialect, and similar to feature selectivity observed in language change.

This article examines how, since the late 1980s, Hong Kong directors have reimagined China’s western frontiers in the wuxia genre through collaborations with the mainland amid a process of deepening cross-border integration. To contextualize these representations for English-language readers, this study employs a comparative lens. It first examines the cultural and historical significance of the American Old West and China’s premodern western borderlands and then analyzes how Hong Kong wuxia filmmakers construct particular forms of nationalism through mythic depictions of geopolitical peripheries in dialogue with Hollywood Westerns’ frontier portrayals. The analysis reveals that, as Hong Kong directors’ mainland coproduction has increasingly integrated into China’s film industry and cultural discourse, their depiction of frontier space has gradually shifted from an extralegal, anti-authoritarian martial world of cultural ambivalence and abstract nationalism – echoing the anti-establishment ethos characteristic of revisionist Hollywood Westerns – toward a symbol of state-centered nationalism and global cultural outreach, paralleling the golden-age Hollywood Western’s construction of the American frontier as a unified national myth reinforcing U.S. exceptionalism.

This article addresses sonic experimentalism in Latin America from a critical perspective based on a review of artistic projects that have been active in recent years in different countries of the region. Its main objective is to discuss whether there are features that can be conceived as characteristic of Latin American sonic experimentalism, whether it is relevant to define issues that affect the people and communities that practice it in a cross-cutting manner, and, if so, whether it is feasible to talk about strategies that bring together people and groups who, although they work in different countries and conditions, consider themselves as part of the same community. Through the three axes chosen to structure this article (sonority, technology, and collaborative platforms), several aspects will be addressed that link a significant number of sound and experimental music artists in different locations within the territory in question. This will lead to a discussion about identity expressed in sound practices, using a cultural studies approach. By foregrounding voices that “ruin the algorithm” of coloniality, this research enriches Latin American sound studies debates and seeks to contribute to the study of experimentalism in the Global South.