A significant impetus for the negotiation of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) was the impact of new technological and scientific developments on the law of the sea. Such developments have continued apace, raising the question of how UNCLOS continues to respond to new uses of, and threats to, the oceans. This article focuses on marine geoengineering as an emerging technological response to the climate emergency and its regulation by the specialised global dumping regime of the Convention on the Prevention of Marine Pollution by Dumping of Wastes and Other Matter and its Protocol within the general normative framework provided by UNCLOS. It demonstrates how responding to technological developments is hard-wired into the DNA of the law of the sea, and into UNCLOS in particular, which remains the foundation for the governance and management of new maritime technologies.

We present Evolutionary Map of the Universe Search Engine (EMUSE), a tool designed for searching specific radio sources within the extensive datasets of the Evolutionary Map of the Universe (EMU) survey, with potential applications to other Big Data challenges in astronomy. Built on a multimodal approach to radio source classification and retrieval, EMUSE fine-tunes the OpenCLIP model on curated radio galaxy datasets. Leveraging the power of foundation models, our work integrates visual and textual embeddings to enable efficient and flexible searches within large radio astronomical datasets. We fine-tune OpenCLIP using a dataset of 2 900 radio galaxies, encompassing various morphological classes, including FR-I, FR-II, FR-x, R-type, and other rare and peculiar sources. The model is optimised using adapter-based fine-tuning, ensuring computational efficiency while capturing the unique characteristics of radio sources. The fine-tuned model is then deployed in the EMUSE, allowing for seamless image and text-based queries over the EMU survey dataset. Our results demonstrate the model’s effectiveness in retrieving and classifying radio sources, particularly in recognising distinct morphological features. However, challenges remain in identifying rare or previously unseen radio sources, highlighting the need for expanded datasets and continuous refinement. This study showcases the potential of multimodal machine learning in radio astronomy, paving the way for more scalable and accurate search tools in the field. The search engine is accessible at https://askap-emuse.streamlit.app/ and can be used locally by cloning the repository at https://github.com/Nikhel1/EMUSE.

Since Russian President Vladimir Putin announced his support for a plan to recruit fighters from abroad to join the Russian army in early 2022, foreigners have fought in Ukraine as part of Russian forces. Many of these fighters are mercenaries in the commonly understood sense of that term. That is, they are fighters who have gone, intentionally, to fight for Russia in return for significant payment. Although these fighters have often found themselves in Ukraine with little to no training and without their promised salaries, this article is not primarily concerned with them. Instead, it is interested in those fighters who arrived in Russia without knowing that they would be sent to the conflict, or who did not know that they were going to Russia at all. The article argues that such ‘forced fighters’ who are misled or tricked into taking part in an armed conflict should be given protection beyond that given to other combatants, specifically that they should be offered repatriation to their countries of origin. It argues that international humanitarian law is unable to effectively capture the position of these fighters or provide adequate protection to them. It suggests, rather, that the law on modern slavery can provide a way to understand and reconceptualise the position of these fighters—as victims of servitude and human trafficking—and that this body of law can deliver the remedy of repatriation to them.

To this day, Wajid ‘Ali Shah (1822–1887), the last nawab of Awadh, is remembered either as a hedonist and political failure who was forced to surrender his kingdom to the British East India Company or as a musical genius and important patron of the arts. However, few accounts engage with his personal religiosity and public acts of Shī’ah piety. This article examines Wajid ‘Ali Shah’s own scholarship and poetry, and considers his mourning practices and investment in rites relating to Muharram. By focusing on the era of his exile in Calcutta (1856–1887), I explore how these rituals integrated the nawab into the public life of the city. More broadly, this article considers his court’s activities as a case study to explore the history of nineteenth-century Shī’ah sound art practices and examine how instrumentation, oratory, and processions were understood by contemporary Muslim scholars of religion, the arts, and music.

This article introduces the LGBTQ+ Special edition of PS. It traces major developments of queer scholarship in political science beginning with Kenneth Sherrill’s 1973 paper, “Leaders in the Gay Activist Movement: The Problem of Finding Followers,” which was the first paper presented at an APSA annual meeting on a queer topic. As part of the celebration of the fiftieth anniversary of Professor Sherrill’s first paper, this introduction describes the efforts scholars made in their work and in the American Political Science Association to legitimate LGBTQ+ scholarship during the past half decade.

We present a new camera-trap record of the Critically Endangered Chinese pangolin Manis pentadactyla in Vietnam, from a survey during January–November 2022 in Kon Ka Kinh National Park, Gia Lai Province. This record is c. 950 km south of the only other previous camera-trap records of the species in Vietnam. We obtained three camera-trap images of an individual M. pentadactyla at 1,600 m altitude, highlighting the potential importance of this Park for M. pentadactyla in Vietnam. We confirmed the identification through expert consultation and morphological analysis. This record suggests that the range of M. pentadactyla extends into central Vietnam. Further research and conservation efforts in Kon Ka Kinh National Park are required, to safeguard this enigmatic species and its habitat.

One of the 84 plant species endemic to Jeju Island, South Korea, is Salix blinii H. Lév. We surveyed its habitat to obtain quantitative information on the population demographics of S. blinii, and thus to re-evaluate its conservation status and recommend in situ conservation strategies. We recorded 365 individuals in three valleys, above 1,200 m, on Mt Halla, of which 34 were flowering individuals capable of sexual reproduction. Although the population size is limited, the high proportion of small individuals suggests ongoing recruitment. Vegetative reproduction is presumed to play an important role, as it does for other Salix species that grow in valleys or along intermittent streams. Salix blinii is currently categorized as Vulnerable, based on criterion D2, on the IUCN Red List, but we reassess it as Vulnerable based on criteria D1+2 based on the number of mature individuals recorded. Although Mt Halla is designated as multiple large protected areas, small-scale protected areas within these larger areas need to be designated for more effective in situ conservation of S. blinii.

Historically, conservation has focused on species, ecological communities, systems and processes, rather than on individual animals. Even among advocates for compassionate conservation, the focus on animal welfare or animal rights only relates to conservation activities. However, in recent years the idea of managing ecosystems primarily to improve wild animal welfare has been gaining traction among animal ethicists and animal welfare researchers. Managing ecosystems for animal welfare is generally antithetical to management to support ecological and evolutionary processes, since essential features of those processes, such as predation, privation and competition, are sources of animal suffering. Our aim in this paper is not to defend the proposal that ecosystem management should focus primarily on improving wild animal welfare. It is, rather, to situate this proposal in relation to concerns about wild animal welfare expressed by the public and conservation biologists; to connect it to the rise of subjectivist theories of animal welfare; to introduce the ethical arguments used to support elevating the importance of individual wild animals; to explain the advocacy context; to outline potential implications for conservation; and to review critiques of taking a wild animal welfare focus in ecosystem management.

According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s Sixth Assessment Report, sea-level rise will continue for thousands of years. Many small island States and low-lying coastal States are already experiencing sea-level rise together with landward regression of coastal areas. This raises several legal questions, such as whether States are obligated to revise existing baselines, outer limits of maritime zones and charts. This article examines the legal lacunae in the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) concerning the legal consequences of sea-level rise on baselines and maritime boundaries, including islands and archipelagos. It provides an overview of the work of the International Law Commission on sea-level rise in relation to international law. It traces the evolution of States’ views within the Sixth Committee between 2018 and 2024 and the UN, as well as the recent Advisory Opinions on climate change of the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea and the International Court of Justice. It concludes by noting how the legal lacunae in UNCLOS have been clarified, leaving to be determined the next steps in implementing the convergence of States’ interpretations of UNCLOS and customary international law in favour of preservation of baselines and maritime boundaries despite the physical effects of sea-level rise on coastlines.

This study reconstructs the numerological considerations behind a Judeo-Greek innovation in religious terminology, with a focus on its key element—Hellenization of the Hebrew name of God. It demonstrates that the Greek nomen sacrum can also be interpreted as a sacred number, a fact that directly infuses the otherwise broad term κύριος with numinosity. This observation carries multiple implications for understanding the phenomena of nomina sacra and “names-numbers” as well as other related topics, such as the emergence of Greek and Hebrew alphabetic numerals, early Jewish and Christian numeric symbolism, and early binitarian theology.

In 1804, an elder courtier named Ban’deyri Hasan Manikufaanu (1745–1807) chronicled the sea voyage of the sovereign of the Maldives, Sultan Muhammad Mueenuddeen I (r. 1799–1835). The purpose of the voyage was to visit the islands of Ari Atoll. Manikufaanu crafted 171 verses according to the rules of a Maldivian genre of poetry called raivaru. The work is known as Dhivehi Arumaadhu Raivaru (‘Raivaru that chronicled the journey of the Maldivian royal fleet’). In this article, I demonstrate how the verses provide a lens into early nineteenth-century Maldivian boat construction, court music, navigational routes, regnal travel, royal ensigns, sailing, and seamanship, all of which have not been sufficiently explored in Indian Ocean studies. In contrast to scholarship on travelogues that emphasises Muslim men’s experiences of heterotopia when they travelled across the Indian Ocean on steamships to maritime ports, this article centres on a provincial journey of a royal fleet of sailing ships taken by the sultan of the Maldives and other noblemen to visit Maldivian commonfolk who lived on islands that formed part of an atoll in the middle of the Indian Ocean.

The bush dog Speothos venaticus, a short-legged, medium-sized Neotropical canid, remains elusive despite its wide geographical range. We present the first documented occurrence of this species within Rio Doce State Park, Minas Gerais state, Brazil. This Park is a unique, well-preserved area with a diverse array of mammal species, a rarity in the fragmented Atlantic Forest. We recorded the bush dog after 7,744 camera-trap days near Lagoa dos Patos, one of the Park’s lakes. This new record is a significant range extension for the species within the Atlantic Forest of Minas Gerais state, as the nearest known record is c. 420 km to the south. The new record is the northernmost documented occurrence of the bush dog in the Brazilian Atlantic Forest. This finding is a significant addition to the Park’s mammalian carnivore community, and underscores its importance as high-quality habitat for rare species such as the bush dog, and its value for scientific research and biodiversity conservation.

Unbalanced bilinguals often exhibit reduced emotionality in their non-native language, although the underlying neural mechanisms remain poorly understood. This fMRI (functional magnetic resonance imaging) study investigated neural differences during a silent reading task where late Spanish–English bilinguals read happy, fearful and neutral fiction passages in their first (L1) and second (L2) languages. We observed a significant language-by-emotionality interaction in the left hippocampus while participants read fearful texts, indicating a stronger limbic system response in L1. Functional connectivity analyses revealed lower coupling between semantic (left anterior temporal lobe) and limbic (left amygdala) regions when reading fearful texts in L2, suggesting less integrated emotional processing. Overall, these findings show that emotional reading in unbalanced bilinguals is strongly influenced by language, with a higher emotional response and more integrated connectivity between semantic and affective areas in the native language.