Rigid meromorphic cocycles are defined in the setting of orthogonal groups of arbitrary real signature and constructed in some instances via a p-adic analogue of Borcherds’ singular theta lift. The values of rigid meromorphic cocycles at special points of an associated p-adic symmetric space are then conjectured to belong to class fields of suitable global reflex fields, suggesting an eventual framework for explicit class field theory beyond the setting of CM fields explored in the treatise of Shimura and Taniyama.

This article addresses a critical research gap by investigating the link between social polarization and contemporary societal challenges, such as poverty and crime. Despite the existence of numerous studies describing the effects of income disparity, the role of social stratification in inducing delinquency and poorness in transitional economies has not received sufficient consideration. The author conducts an analysis of income inequality metrics (IIMs) across Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) nations, examining dependencies that provide a precise depiction of the correlation between socioeconomic disparity and urgent society’s problems. The study disclosed that the lowest proportion of the impoverished was observed in countries with a minimal income disparity, such as Belarus and Kazakhstan; in contrast, nations that exhibit a significant degree of income differentiation, such as Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, and Armenia, demonstrate the highest proportion of the impoverished. Following a linear regression approach, the study revealed a strong positive correlation between IIMs and crime rate. By shedding light on these dependencies, the article provides fresh insights into the dynamic relationship between major social problems in the CIS countries.

Despite numerous studies demonstrating a winner–loser gap in voter satisfaction with democracy, the temporal dynamics of its initial emergence remain poorly understood. This study introduces a new framework, distinguishing between short- and long-term effects. Short-term effects refer to immediate attitudinal shifts among winners and losers triggered directly by the establishment of the result. Meanwhile, long-term effects unfold gradually thereafter, through processes like cue-taking and motivated reasoning, polarizing voter attitudes over an extended period following the election. Leveraging survey data coincidentally collected during elections, the empirical analysis provides evidence for both effects. However, it is the long-term mechanisms that predominantly explain the gap’s emergence. Notably, in elections where a government transition occurred, a new gap did not materialize until a few weeks after the outcome solidified. These findings illustrate the temporal complexity of voter reactions, carrying significant implications for addressing challenges related to system support during election periods.

Recent research draws attention to parties’ reliance on group appeals. Such group appeals are a tool that parties and candidates use to strengthen the association between voters’ social group membership and their electoral support. However, what we know about the effects of such appeals on voters is mostly limited to class appeals. Using two survey experimental studies among British voters (N=1,500; N=3,200), we shed light on the generalizability of the effects of symbolic group appeals for other types of social groups. We show that group appeals based on class, place, education, age, gender, and ethnicity all shape candidate support. We also theorize that effects are conditioned by respondents’ strength of identity and their deservingness perceptions and show that the latter are key to explaining voters’ reactions to group appeals. These findings clarify the scope and conditions of group appeals’ effects and advance our understanding of group politics.

This article examines the heritagization of nuclear urbanity as a distinctive form of Soviet industrial urbanism. The research focuses on the satellite settlement of the Ignalina Nuclear Power Plant in Lithuania, which exemplifies the ‘presentism’ characteristic of Soviet heritage – an entanglement of multiple temporalities alongside goals of propaganda and preservation. We argue that local engagements with nuclear cultural heritage are rooted in the fact that commemorative practices were embedded from the inception of the atomic town’s development. This early transformation of nuclear urbanity into heritage ensured that the former Soviet atomic town preserved not only material traces but also a lasting infrastructure of social memory and urban imagery, mobilized by various actors for identity building and future negotiations.

We present a catalogue of 3 557 Double Radio sources associated with Active Galactic Nuclei (DRAGNs) from the First Pilot Survey of the Evolutionary Map of the Universe (EMU), observed at 944 MHz with the Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder (ASKAP) telescope, covering 270 deg$^{2}$. We have extracted and identified each source by eye, tagged it with a morphological type and measured its parameters. The resulting catalogue will be used in subsequent papers to explore the properties of these sources, to train machine-learning algorithms for the detection of these sources in larger fields, and to compare with the results of Citizen Science projects, with the ultimate goal of understanding the physical processes that drive DRAGNs. Compared with earlier, lower sensitivity, catalogues, we find more diffuse structure and a plethora of more complex structures, ranging from wings of radio emission on the side of the jets, to types of object which have not been seen in earlier observations. As well as the well-known FR1 and FR2 sources, we find significant numbers of rare types of radio source such as Hybrid Morphology Radio Sources and one-sided jets, as well as a wide range of bent-tail and head-tail sources.

The Cropping System CROPGRO-Perennial Forage Model (CROPGRO-PFM) within the Decision Support System for Agrotechnology Transfer (DSSAT) framework is among the few models that simulate and evaluate perennial forages. However, its application to systems in East Africa remains limited. To address this gap, this study aimed to assess the capability of the CROPGRO-PFM model to predict herbage yield and soil organic carbon (SOC) dynamics under Urochloa hybrid cv. Cayman and to evaluate herbage and SOC responses to varying manure application rates in Tanzania. Model calibration involved adjusting parameters related to soil water content and the fraction of SOC in the stable pool. The simulated herbage yield showed a good agreement with observed data, with the D-statistic ranging from 0.58 to 0.85, with no calibration required from previous genotype coefficients used for Urochloa’s. The model captured seasonal variations in herbage production, showing peak yields during the wet season and reduced yields during the dry season. However, accurately capturing SOC variability requires long-term data, while our study was limited to just three years.

Model application for 30 years across six sites revealed that a manure application rate of 10 t ha-1 led to SOC gains up to 0.7 Mg C ha-1 yr-1 and a 135% increase in herbage production. The results show the model’s potential application for simulating herbage yield and SOC under irrigation and manure management in East Africa.

Wearable devices placed in or around the ear, often referred to as hearables, are gaining attention as alternative tools for pseudo-continuous health monitoring. Among their several capabilities, hearables are primarily useful for monitoring brain activity electronically via electroencephalography (EEG), enabling noninvasive, long-term recording of neural signals (e.g., from the ear canal). In addition to EEG, hearables can monitor heart rate, oxygen saturation, and temperature, all while maintaining the comfort and discretion of everyday items like earplugs or headphones. This review explores recent progress in combining multiple sensors, leveraging artificial intelligence (AI), and developing novel materials that make hearables more accurate, practical, and comfortable. On-device AI enables real-time, personalized insights that can support therapeutic interventions for neurological disorders like epilepsy. We seek further improvements in design and materials beyond this proof-of-concept, including three-dimensional printing with flexible electrodes while maintaining the unique property of monolithic circuit integration during system printing. That helps devices conform even better to the ear’s anatomy for enhanced comfort and signal quality, while the rigidity of the main structure ensures a highly durable and reliable product suitable for everyday life. In particular, personalization through additive manufacturing enables custom-fitted hearables based on each user’s unique ear canal features, supporting long-term wearability and reliable EEG acquisition. This review also addresses key challenges like motion artifacts and miniaturization, and current strategies to overcome them. Overall, this review highlights hearables as a key emerging technology, especially for EEG-based brain monitoring, offering a personalized, continuous, and noninvasive approach to future healthcare.

Changing legal environments create new opportunities for legal mobilization by civil society groups. At stake is mobilization in Germany and Europe for the prosecution of agents of the Syrian Assad regime accused of committing core international crimes. Changes in the legal environment include the (a) spread of universal jurisdiction; (b) increasing use of “crimes against humanity”; (c) new prosecutorial and policing units specialized in core international crimes; and (d) new prosecutorial practices, such as structural investigations. Coinciding with an influx of Syrian refugees, these opportunities give rise to a collaborative network of (I)NGOs that feed witnesses and evidence into prosecutorial agencies. Interaction between agencies and (I)NGOs contributes to the transnational ordering of criminal law and constitutes a Prosecutorial-NGO (P-NGO) Complex. (I)NGOs finally diffuse court narratives to a broad audience and shape public knowledge of grave violations of human rights. We focus on the P-NGO Complex for the al-Khatib universal jurisdiction trial before the Higher Regional Court in Koblenz, Germany. Empirical tools include an analysis of (I)NGO network structures and websites, interviews with court observers, activists, and prosecutorial staff, and an analysis of media reporting.

In 2013, President Xi Jinping announced the ambitious Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), aimed at positioning China at the forefront of the global economy. Central to the BRI is the pursuit of energy security—a long-standing priority linked to diplomacy and essential for China’s continued growth. To meet its rising energy needs, China has launched numerous infrastructure development projects, with energy playing a key role within the broader BRI framework. Similarly, since the oil crisis of the 1970s, the European Union (EU) has prioritised energy security through investments in alternative energy sources and resource diversification. This article explores the shared interests of these two economic powers in securing and investing in alternative energy. It focuses on a central question: how might the BRI align with the EU’s Neighborhood Policy to strengthen energy independence across Eurasia and generate mutual benefit? This analysis examines both the challenges and the opportunities for collaboration and synergy.

We consider radially symmetric solutions of the degenerate Keller–Segel system

\begin{align*}\begin{cases}\partial_t u=\nabla\cdot (u^{m-1}\nabla u - u\nabla v),\\0=\Delta v -\mu +u,\quad\mu =\frac{1}{|\Omega|}\int_\Omega u,\end{cases}\end{align*}

in balls $\Omega\subset\mathbb R^n$, $n\ge 1$, where m > 1 is arbitrary. Our main result states that the initial evolution of the positivity set of u is essentially determined by the shape of the (nonnegative, radially symmetric, Hölder continuous) initial data u0 near the boundary of its support $\overline{B_{r_1}(0)}\subsetneq\Omega$: It shrinks for sufficiently flat and expands for sufficiently steep u0. More precisely, there exists an explicit constant $A_{\mathrm{crit}} \in (0, \infty)$ (depending only on $m, n, R, r_1$ and $\int_\Omega u_0$) such that if $u_0(x)\le A(r_1-|x|)^\frac{1}{m-1}$ for all $|x|\in(r_0, r_1)$ and some $r_0\in(0,r_1)$ and $A \lt A_{\mathrm{crit}}$ then there are T > 0 and ζ > 0 such that $\sup\{\, |x| \mid x \in \operatorname{supp} u(\cdot, t)\,\}\le r_1 -\zeta t$ for all $t\in(0, T)$, while if $u_0(x)\ge A(r_1-|x|)^\frac{1}{m-1}$ for all $|x|\in(r_0, r_1)$ and some $r_0 \in (0, r_1)$ and $A \gt A_{\mathrm{crit}}$ then we can find T > 0 and ζ > 0 such that $\sup\{\, |x| \mid x \in \operatorname{supp} u(\cdot, t)\,\}\ge r_1 +\zeta t$ for all $t\in(0, T)$.

Affective polarization among citizens is often attributed to the harsh rhetoric and personal attacks that politicians direct at one another. However, the influence of elite rhetoric on affective polarization may work in both directions. We theorize that politicians can reduce affective polarization by making positive or respectful statements about their political opponents. A preregistered survey experiment with 2,000 citizens provides strong support for this expectation. Politicians’ congenial messages about their opponents significantly reduce affective polarization on two distinct measures. Specifically, the experimental treatments reduce citizens’ negative emotions toward outpartisans, as well as their desire to socially distance themselves from such outpartisans. The depolarizing effect of such messages does not depend on the political alignment of either the politician or the citizen, nor does it necessarily require high levels of political trust.

Gallium nitride technology takes advantage of the survivability for low-noise applications, while SiGe and GaAs technologies are recognized for the better noise figure (NF). In this paper, the technique for implementing inductive source degenerated HEMTs in all the stages to have a better NF is combined with a technique of high value gate bias resistor (RGB) to improve survivability. Moreover, this work includes the dependence of the reverse recovery time on different values of RGB with respect to the trap phenomenon and the RC time constant. The designed low-noise amplifier (LNA) achieves an NF better than 1.4 dB for 7.5–11.5 GHz, OIP3 up to 33 dBm, input reflection coefficient better than −8.4 dB, and output reflection coefficient better than −11.1 dB. NF has a minimum of 1.15 dB at 9.9 GHz. The small-signal gain of LNA is better than 15.3 dB in the whole frequency band, and the output power at 1 dB gain compression is 23 dBm at 11.5 GHz. LNA survives an input stress level of up to 39 dBm. The dimensions of the designed LNA MMIC are 2.9 mm × 1.3 mm.

Why do governments ban some extremist organisations and not others? To answer this question, this article investigates the banning of far-right groups in Germany, the archetype of ‘militant democracy’, where there are laws and institutions that protect a state’s democratic order through selective and qualified restrictions of certain political rights. The study draws on data about far-right organisations mentioned in federal security agency reports since 1990. Two-step fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (QCA) reveals that situations of high far-right visibility are necessary to take banning action. Within such situations, there are four sufficient combinations of organisational conditions that lead to banning action: Germany has imposed bans on neo-Nazi groups, longstanding organisational hubs in the far-right scene, aggressive militant organisations, and neo-Nazi sham parties. Two follow-on case studies identify related causal mechanisms underlying these sufficiency patterns. The article shows that Germany’s militant democracy practices are not applied as a matter of principle to every far-right organisation susceptible to a ban, but rather are used more pragmatically. This pragmatic approach implies that state actors should be especially attentive to the efficacy of using bans to disrupt and diminish extremist threats. Although there is some evidence of state actors considering efficacy, there are also indications that banning is sometimes a tool of politics rather than a targeted response to threats.

Support for fundamental political rights is a defining feature of liberal democracy. Crises may undermine citizen support for these rights. Yet, existing research does not often distinguish support for ‘illiberal’ policies that encroach on fundamental political rights from other ‘intrusive’ crisis policy responses. By conducting a series of well-powered, preregistered conjoint and vignette experiments in the US and the UK during the height of the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, we examine the extent to which citizens are willing to support policies that violate liberal democratic rights in a crisis as well as intrusive policies. Our results suggest that support for liberal democratic rights is quite robust, although endorsements by an in-group party or trusted expert can increase support for illiberal policies. Overall, we find noteworthy resistance to illiberal policy measures, such as postponing elections and banning protests, indicating popular commitment to liberal democratic norms.