This study aims to examine the role of early signing input on the robust reliance on ASL basic word order by deaf adult ASL signers who are exposed to different types of signing (ASL versus signing systems, SS) by early childhood. We used a sentence-picture matching task involving transitive ASL sentences in subject–verb–object order with consistent or conflicting animacy cues. All signers with early ASL input (12 native signers, 12 non-native signers with early ASL) showed robust reliance on ASL word order and good bilingual skills, while 37.5% (6/16) non-native signers with early exposure to SS showed a weak representation of ASL basic word order along with lower bilingual proficiency. These results suggest that the critical period effects for syntactic development are not limited to severe deprivation but can also manifest when early language is insufficient. Early, rich, and consistent language input during early childhood is required for syntactic development.

Progressive parties often advocate pro-immigration policies but do not attract equal support from all immigrant groups. Why is this the case? This study examines immigrants’ support for green parties, a key progressive party family in Western Europe. Our findings reveal that immigrants from established democracies are more likely to support green parties compared to those from (post-)authoritarian regimes. We attribute this disparity to socialization: Individuals from established democracies, where post-materialist values and environmental politics are more prominent, are more attuned to green issues. This heightened salience influences their political preferences after migration. Using entropy balancing on cross-national European surveys, we document this green support gap and provide evidence for our proposed mechanism. These results inform debates on how political preferences travel across contexts and the socialization effects of political institutions.

The relationship between time and international law is intricate and multifaceted, long evading methodical analysis. However, recent years have seen a surge in scholarly efforts to address this relationship. Taking a broad view of this burgeoning literature, this article recounts the temporal assumptions, narratives, and dynamics at play in the international legal sphere, while highlighting their logics and limitations. In doing so, it develops a critical typology of international law’s temporalities, distinguishing between three overarching paradigms: modern, postmodern, and hypermodern. The modern temporal paradigm, commonly seen as dominating the discipline, views international law as progressing uniformly and linearly from a dark past toward a brighter present and future. In contrast, the postmodern paradigm challenges the modern narrative of universal progress over time, shifting the focus to the past and the ways in which international law allows past wrongs to reverberate into the present. While each of these paradigms serves important functions, the article argues that neither provides a sufficient framework for navigating international law in the current era of accelerated technological, social, and environmental change, where the future increasingly diverges from the known past and present. The article thus calls for greater incorporation into the discipline of a third, hypermodern temporal paradigm, which takes a sober look at the future and recalibrates international law’s temporal modalities in response to rapidly evolving and increasingly complex global challenges.

For Lebesgue generic $({x}_1,x_2)\in \mathbb {R}^2$, we investigate the distribution of small values of products $q\cdot \|qx_1\| \cdot \|qx_2\|$ with $q\in \mathbb {N}$, where $\|\cdot \|$ denotes the distance to the closest integer. The main result gives an asymptotic formula for the number of $1\le q< T$ such that

$$ \begin{align*}a <q\cdot \|qx_1\| \cdot \|qx_2\|\le b\quad \text{and} \quad \|qx_1\|, \|qx_2\|\le c \end{align*} $$

for given parameters $a,b, c$ satisfying certain growth conditions.

This article explores the changing trajectories of tawa’ifs—highly trained female performers of music and dance—in colonial North India, with a focus on their mobility and evolving patronage relationships. As British colonial policies and reformist moral discourses shattered long-standing networks of courtly support, tawa’ifs increasingly travelled between regional centres in search of livelihood and artistic relevance. Focusing on the princely state of Rampur, this study explores the complex interactions, power dynamics, and social hierarchies between Muslim female performers, middlemen, and elite patrons, particularly in the context of public festivals and fairs. Based on handwritten petitions, letters, and poems in Urdu and Persian, as well as vernacular print sources, the article argues that princely patronage was not static but adapted to the pressures of colonial modernity and wider pan-regional transformations. It also shows that post-1857 Lucknow remained a vital hub for recruitment, training, and trade. By tracing female performers across princely and colonial contexts, the article illuminates how their mobility and professional flexibility expanded alongside rising social stigmatisation and the intensifying conflation of courtesans with sex workers.

Weed-induced nutrient competition represents a major limitation on yield and quality in organic wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) cultivation. This study evaluated the effects of wide-range sowing on root-driven nutrient competition dynamics between wheat (‘Yongliang 4’) and weeds. A 2-yr experiment (2019 to 2020) in Bayannur, Inner Mongolia, compared three treatments: wide-range uniform sowing (W0), 7-cm wide-range sowing (W7), and conventional drilling sowing (CK). The study measured grain yield and protein content, root traits, and the dynamic changes in nutrient accumulation of organic wheat and field weeds, analyzing the nutrient competition levels and their responses to the different sowing methods. The 2-yr data demonstrated that both W0 and W7 treatments significantly enhanced grain yield in organic wheat compared with CK, with yield increments of 28.2% and 15.1%, respectively. Compared with CK, the W0 treatment significantly improved root system development and nutrient uptake. Throughout various growth stages (at 60, 85, and 100 d after sowing), the average root length, surface area, volume, and weight density within the 0- to 80-cm soil profile increased more than 13.8%, 24.5%, 14.1%, and 19.2%, respectively, under W0 treatment. Concurrently, nitrogen (N), phosphorus (P), and potassium (K) uptake in wheat plants under W0 treatment showed enhancements greater than 34.6%, 39.5%, and 39.6% compared with CK. In contrast to the enhanced nutrient uptake in wheat, both experimental treatments significantly suppressed weed nutrient uptake. The W0 treatment reduced N, P, and K uptake in weeds by 55.9%, 57.9%, and 51.9%, respectively, while the W7 treatment decreased these parameters by 40.1%, 39.8%, and 40.2%, respectively. The wide-range sowing pattern particularly enhanced the nutrient competitiveness of organic wheat, with this competitive advantage becoming more pronounced during later growth stages. Statistical analyses revealed significant positive correlations between grain yield/protein content and root morphological parameters, as well as plant nutrient uptake. Conversely, significant negative correlations were observed between wheat productivity parameters and weed nutrient uptake, suggesting effective resource competition by the wheat plants under modified cultivation practices. In conclusion, wide-range sowing cultivation improves the nutrient competition ability of organic wheat through enhancing root traits, thereby suppressing weed access to nutrient resources and ultimately increasing both yield and grain quality of organic wheat.

Direct collocation (DC) methods are utilized for addressing trajectory optimization challenges in robotics due to their ability to generate dynamically consistent solutions. However, in the cable-driven robotic systems, where tension constraints impose kinodynamic restrictions, maintaining accuracy becomes significantly complex. This article addresses robot tensionability and proposes a method to overcome the limitations. A DC method is proposed to minimize the actuator force rate in a trajectory planning problem for a designed cable-driven parallel robot. The system comprises a 3-cable parallel mechanism with a central spine to counteract the end-effector’s weight and enhance tensionability. Integrating a pneumatic cylinder into the system that supports trajectory planning implementation is essential to minimize jerky motions. The DC method is applied through the proposed quadratic programming approach and benchmarked against existing packages to achieve and compare the resulting smoother trajectory. The numerical results demonstrate that the proposed method significantly reduces computation cost and enhances accuracy. Experimental data corroborate the simulation results, validating the method’s efficacy.

Periodic water waves of permanent form travelling at constant speed, the so-called Stokes waves, are studied in water of fixed finite depth using methods previously used in water of infinite depth. We apply our methods to waves of varying steepness over a range of fixed depths in order to determine how a number of physical quantities related to the waves change as the steepness of the waves increases. Finally, we examine the complex singularities outside of their domain of definition when the waves are considered as a function of a conformal variable.

We study the continuum limit of the motion of agents in the plane driven by competing short-range repulsion and long-range attractive forces. At a critical parameter value, we find destabilization of a trivial branch of uniformly distributed solutions and analyse bifurcating solutions. Curiously, the bifurcating branch is vertical, leading to a reversible, non-hysteretic phase transition. Near the bifurcation point, we demonstrate scaling laws for the size of vacuum regions, which can form fissures or bubbles. We also study the effect of small noise and the eventual topological transition from vacuum bubbles to isolated particle clusters.

Laser-driven plasma wakefield acceleration (LWFA) offers exceptionally high acceleration gradients and can produce high-brightness electron beams. However, the laser-to-electron energy conversion efficiency typically remains limited to a few percent. Theoretically, the self-mode transition from LWFA to beam-driven plasma wakefield acceleration (PWFA) provides a pathway for fully utilizing the laser energy. Here, we demonstrate the single-stage LPWFA (hybrid LWFA–PWFA) scheme, validated through comparative experiments using a 300 TW tightly focused laser interacting with sub-critical density nitrogen gas targets. The experiments produce an electron beam with charge of approximately 31 nC above 6 MeV and approximately 116 nC above 2 MeV. The laser-to-electron energy conversion efficiency is approximately 6.1% (>6 MeV) and 16.4% (>2 MeV), respectively. Particle-in-cell simulations confirm that the single-stage LPWFA mechanism depletes the laser energy and enables continual electron injection. This high-charge, multi-MeV electron beam has great value in the generation of high-brightness $\unicode{x3b3}$-rays and high-flux neutron sources.