The Berlin Conference (1884–85) is widely studied for its role in fuelling European imperialism and legitimising the scramble for Africa. However, its global impact beyond Europe and Africa has received little attention, with Latin America notably absent. This article examines how prominent diplomats from Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, and Mexico interpreted the proceedings. In their view, Europe’s renewed expansionism in Africa—combining private adventurism, colonisation enterprises, and imperial statecraft—resembled the great powers’ incursions into post-independence Latin America. They feared that new criteria for staking colonial claims would endanger their states’ sovereignty over vast, remote territories. Yet, while opposing intervention, these diplomats embraced civilisational thinking and state-building projects that echoed Eurocentric racial hierarchies. Their arguments reflected both resistance to imperialism and complicity in its logic. By tracing Berlin’s reverberations across multiple regions, this article highlights the broader repercussions of late nineteenth-century ‘high imperialism’ and reassesses the nature of Latin American anti-imperialism.

In the mid-nineteenth century—even as many European liberals took a “turn to empire”—Mexican President Benito Juárez and his supporters enunciated an anti-imperial, liberal vision for international politics. In the context of the French intervention, Mexican liberals rejected claims that Europe’s material progress conferred upon the continent a “civilizing mission” vis-à-vis the rest of the world. Reconfiguring liberal and republican scripts, juaristas proposed an order legitimated by popular sovereignty and based on equality among states, non-intervention, and republican fraternity. This article situates juarista liberal internationalism in its historical context and in light of recent debates over liberalism’s longstanding entanglements with empire. By uncovering this overlooked strand of anti-imperial liberalism from the periphery, this article helps to decenter debates on liberal political thought and liberalism’s international implications. The juaristas’ rejoinder, we argue, should be integral to constructing a more pluralist and global understanding of the lineages of liberal internationalism.

Previous investigations of goethite revealed a substantial variation of color and diffuse reflectance spectra (DRS) in the extended visible range (350–2200 nm). To better understand the causes of this variability and to assess the potential of DRS as a mineralogical tool, we investigated the DRS of pure and Al-substituted goethite, α-Fe1−xAlxOOH with x from 0 to 0.33, and mean crystal lengths (MCL) from 170 to 1800 nm. The strongly overlapping ligand field bands were extracted by fitting the single-electron transitions 6A1 → 4T1, 6A1 → 4T2, 6A1 → (4E; 4A1), and 6A1 → 4E(4D) as functions of the ligand field splitting energy, 10 Dq, and the interelectronic repulsion parameters, Racah-B and -C. With x increasing from 0 to 0.33, 6A1 → 4T1 decreased from 10,590 to 10,150 cm−1 (944 to 958 nm), and 6A1 → 4T2 decreased from 15,310 to 14,880 cm−1 (653 to 672 nm), while 10 Dq increased from 15,770 to 16,220 cm−1. From the change of 10 Dq we calculated a decrease of the Fe-(O,OH) distances from 202.0 to 200.9 pm (−0.5%). This decrease is smaller than the average decrease of all (Al,Fe)-(O,OH) distances (−1.8%) calculated from the change of the unit-cell lengths (UCL). That is, there remains a substantial difference in size between the larger Fe- and the smaller Al-occupied octahedra in the solid solution which may indicate the existence of diaspore clusters within the goethite structure. The increasing strain in the crystal structure due to the size mismatch and limited contractibility of the oxygen cage around Fe may be the primary reason for Al substitution being restricted to x < 0.33. The bands 6A1 → (4E; 4A1) and 6A1 → 4E(4D) did not shift, indicating a constant covalency of the Fe-(O,OH) bonds with B = 628 cm−1 and C = 5.5B. Whereas variation of band energies could be explained in terms of the Fe-(O,OH) ligand field, the variation of color and band intensities was mainly determined by crystal size. Although our study confirmed the potential of DRS for mineralogical investigations, there is still a gap between the fundamental theory and the explanation of some spectral features.

Electronic measurement systems in the THz frequency range are often bulky and expensive devices. While some compact single-chip systems operating in the high millimeter-wave frequency range have recently been published, compact measurement systems in the low THz frequency range are still rare. The emergence of new silicon-germanium (SiGe) semiconductor technologies allow the integration of system components, like oscillators, frequency multipliers, frequency dividers, and antennas, operating in the low THz frequency range, into a compact monolithic microwave integrated circuits (MMIC), which contains most components to implement a low-cost and compact frequency-modulated continuous-wave-radar transceiver. This article presents a single transceiver solution containing all necessary components. It introduces a $0.48\,\mathrm{THz}$ radar transceiver MMIC with a tuning range of $43\,\mathrm{GHz}$ and an output power of up to $-9.4\,\mathrm{dBm}$ in the SG13G3 $130\,\mathrm{nm}$ SiGe technology by IHP. The MMIC is complemented by a dielectric lens antenna design consisting of polytetrafluoroethylene, providing up to $39.3\,\mathrm d\mathrm B\mathrm i$ of directivity and half-power beam widths of 0.95∘ in transmit and receive direction. The suppression of clutter from unwanted targets deviating from antenna boresight more than 6∘ is higher than $24.6\,\mathrm d \mathrm B$ in E- and H-Plane.

This study explores how the Academy Award for A Fantastic Woman facilitated the adoption of Chile's Gender Identity Law. Approved in 2018 after languishing for over five years in Congress, the law establishes individuals’ right to modify their national identification documents without the need to change their physical appearance or receive prior court authorisation. While trans rights activists extensively lobbied for a law that guaranteed access to gender marker changes, conservatives rejected the initiative, framing their opposition in terms of Christian values and against the ‘gender ideology’ that purportedly informed the bill. We argue that this backlash dissipated in the wake of the award. International recognition made support for trans rights temporarily a matter of national pride, thereby opening a window of opportunity for the approval of the law. The case of Chile's Gender Identity Law illustrates how international status cues can foster normative change by mobilising affect in domestic audiences. It contributes to recent debates on status and domestic political change, and the role that emotion and affect play in world politics.

Following up on a recent debate, we examined advice taking in dyads compared to individuals in a set of three studies (total N = 303 dyads and 194 individuals). Our first aim was to test the replicability of an important previous finding, namely that dyads heed advice less than individuals because they feel more confident in the accuracy of their initial judgments. Second, we aimed to explain dyads’ behavior based on three premises: first, that dyads understand that the added value of an outside opinion diminishes when the initial pre-advice judgment is made by two judges rather than one judge (given that the dyad members’ opinions are independent of each other); second, that they fail to recognize when the assumption of independence of opinions does not hold; and third, that the resistance to advice commonly observed in individuals persists in groups but is neither aggravated nor ameliorated by the group context. The results of our studies show consistently that previous findings on advice taking in dyads are replicable. They also support our hypothesis that groups exhibit a general tendency to heed advice less than individuals, irrespective of whether the accuracy of their initial judgments warrants this behavior. Finally, based on the three assumptions mentioned above, we were able to make accurate predictions about advice taking in dyads, prompting us to postulate a general model of advice taking in groups of arbitrary size.

Wind turbine towers are subjected to highly varying internal loads, characterized by large uncertainty. The uncertainty stems from many factors, including what the actual wind fields experienced over time will be, modeling uncertainties given the various operational states of the turbine with and without controller interaction, the influence of aerodynamic damping, and so forth. To monitor the true experienced loading and assess the fatigue, strain sensors can be installed at fatigue-critical locations on the turbine structure. A more cost-effective and practical solution is to predict the strain response of the structure based only on a number of acceleration measurements. In this contribution, an approach is followed where the dynamic strains in an existing onshore wind turbine tower are predicted using a Gaussian process latent force model. By employing this model, both the applied dynamic loading and strain response are estimated based on the acceleration data. The predicted dynamic strains are validated using strain gauges installed near the bottom of the tower. Fatigue is subsequently assessed by comparing the damage equivalent loads calculated with the predicted as opposed to the measured strains. The results confirm the usefulness of the method for continuous tracking of fatigue life consumption in onshore wind turbine towers.

International organizations come in many shapes and sizes. Within this institutional gamut, the multipurpose multilateral intergovernmental organization (MMIGO) plays a central role. This institutional form is often traced to the creation of the League of Nations, but in fact the first MMIGO emerged in the Western Hemisphere at the close of the nineteenth century. Originally modeled on a single-issue European public international union, the Commercial Bureau of the American Republics evolved into the multipurpose, multilateral Pan American Union (PAU). Contrary to prominent explanations of institutional genesis, the PAU's design did not result from functional needs nor from the blueprints of a hegemonic power. Advancing a recent synthesis between historical and rational institutionalism, we argue that the first MMIGO arose through a process of compensatory layering: a mechanism whereby a sequence of bargains over control and scope leads to gradual but transformative institutional change. We expect compensatory layering to occur when an organization is focal, power asymmetries among members of that organization are large, and preferences over institutional design diverge. Our empirical and theoretical contributions demonstrate the value a more global international relations (IR) perspective can bring to the study of institutional design. international relations (IR) scholars have long noted that international organizations provide smaller states with voice opportunities; our account suggests those spaces may be of smaller states’ own making.

What strategies will states pursue in managing their relations with more powerful neighbours? International Relations scholarship identifies a wide range of policy options open to “secondary states,” including soft balancing, bandwagoning and institutional binding. We provide a conceptual framework to distinguish between these similar and often conflated institutional strategies on the basis of two dimensions: threat perception and inclusiveness. We then apply this framework to the inter-American system. Analyzing original data on treaty action between 1946 and 2015, we find that secondary states’ adherence to multilateral agreements increases when the United States participates and when states do not perceive the hegemon to be a threat. These findings suggest that institutional binding captures the dynamics of inter-American cooperation more adequately than either soft balancing or bandwagoning: states balance against perceived threats but bind their friends.

The aim of this study was to evaluate a case-mix system to classify inpatients with mental disorders in Germany by means of self-report and expert-rated instruments. The use of case-mix systems enhances the transparency of performance and cost structure and can thus improve the quality of mental health care. We analysed a consecutive sample of 1677 inpatients with mental disorders from 11 hospitals using regression tree analysis. The model assigns patients to 17 groups, accounting for 17% of the variance for duration of stay. Patients with eating disorders had a longer duration of stay than patients with anxiety disorder, duration of mental illness of less than 3–5 years, lower levels of interpersonal problems and higher occupational position. The results showed that besides diagnosis, variables such as duration of illness and interpersonal problems are important for classifying inpatients with mental disorders. The results of the study should be critically reviewed regarding the empirical results of other studies and the appropriateness of case group concepts for inpatients with mental disorders.