This article introduces the global Women’s Safety Index (WSI), outlining its rationale, purpose, and potential applications. The Index consist of three dimensions: Equity, Protection, and Resources, identified as foundational to women’s safety. Key indicators within each dimension are selected based on theoretical relevance and empirical evidence. We detail the statistical methodology and framework used to construct the Index and present validation analyses demonstrating its ability to capture changes in women’s safety, particularly in response to external disruptions. The WSI is available on an interactive digital platform, enabling users to explore, visualize, and compare women’s safety data across regions and over time.

Why are contemporary central banks – institutions designed to be narrow, technical, and apolitical – suddenly publishing extensively on non-monetary topics? This research essay explores how knowledge production has become central banks’ primary tool for managing a fundamental tension: expanding the scope of their interventions while maintaining technocratic legitimacy. By analysing their knowledge production across two key domains – climate change and digital currencies – we identify two axes of ‘scientisation’: boundary-pushing/keeping; and proactive/reactive. This suggests scientisation can be seen as a strategic response to mandate uncertainty, transforming expert knowledge into both a vehicle for negotiating central banks’ political mandate and a shield against democratic accountability. The implications of our findings extend beyond central banks, speaking to fundamental questions over technocratic power in an era of perpetual crisis.

We are concerned with the nonlinear modelling of three-dimensional internal gravity waves in the lower atmosphere. A simplified configuration of density stratification is adopted, assuming that the atmosphere consists of two layers of uniform density with a sharp interface between the two bulk fluids. A time-dependent topography is considered to model a non-uniform, time-varying background current over variable terrain. Based on the Ablowitz–Fokas–Musslimani formulation for irrotational flows, both fully and weakly nonlinear long-wave isotropic models are derived in the Benjamin–Ono regime, where the upper layer is set to be semi-infinite. Two atmospheric gravity wave phenomena, motivated by satellite observations, are simulated using two modified numerical schemes to showcase the newly developed nonlinear models: the internal wave wake in the downwind zone behind a local topographic high and concentric ring waves, which appear as arched cloud formations along wave crests.

It has been widely suggested in recent years that exposure to and use of multiple languages can affect cognitive performance, with bilinguals frequently being argued to demonstrate superior cognitive performance to their monolingual peers. The current study investigates whether there are any effects of minimal exposure to second-language (L2) Welsh on the cognitive skills of English-speaking emergent bilingual primary school children in Wales. Participants were divided into two language groups based on their school year, with performance between monolingual (N = 25) and emergent bilingual (N = 38) children compared on a variety of executive function (EF) tasks. Results revealed superior performance for the bilingual children in Reception and Year 1 on all EF tasks aside from the Forward digit recall compared to monolingual peers, with no differences between groups in Year 2. This suggests that the cognitive benefits of bilingualism emerge at very early stages of second-language exposure.

This study examines how late adolescent Mandarin-English heritage speakers (HSs) process different types of Mandarin pronouns in real time and how individual differences in cognitive and experiential factors modulate this process. Using a web-based visual world eye-tracking paradigm, we tested the interpretation of pronominals (ta), simplex reflexives (ziji), and complex reflexives (taziji), which differ in their reliance on narrow syntax versus syntax-discourse-semantic integration. At the group level, taziji was interpreted locally, while ziji and ta were interpreted as referring to long-distance (LD) antecedents. Working memory and inhibition modulated the processing of ziji and ta, whereas only current heritage language (HL) exposure influenced the processing of taziji. These findings indicate that domain-general cognitive resources are recruited during the resolution of pronouns involving LD and interface-level dependencies, while narrow syntactic structures are more sensitive to variation in language exposure. The results point to structural asymmetries in how cognitive and experiential factors affect real-time HL pronoun resolution.

We investigated moral judgments about transgressions of social conventions and moral rules in two studies. In Experiment 1, we compared socially problematic juveniles from Youth Educational Centres (YEC, aged 14–18) with control juveniles from technical schools. Control juveniles judged moral transgressions as more severe than conventional transgressions, whereas YEC juveniles showed the opposite pattern. This reversal allowed for approximately 70% accurate classification of group membership. In Experiment 2, we tested whether the degree of moral-conventional differentiation predicted socialization outcomes in a general sample of secondary school students (N = 204). Students who more clearly differentiated moral transgressions from social convention violations on a goodness scale received higher teacher-assigned behavior grades. Reversal of normal moral-conventional differentiation predicts poor socialization in at-risk adolescents; within a general school sample, the strength of that differentiation predicts teacher-rated behavior.

In this paper, we propose using Learning from Answer Sets to approximate black-box models, such as Neural Networks (NN), in the specific case of learning user preferences. We specifically explore the use of ILASP (Inductive Learning of Answer Set Programs) to approximate preference learning systems through weak constraints. We have created a dataset on user preferences over a set of recipes, which is used to train the NNs that we aim to approximate with ILASP. Our experiments investigate ILASP both as a global and a local approximator of the NNs. These experiments address the challenge of approximating NNs working on increasingly high-dimensional feature spaces while achieving appropriate fidelity on the target model and limiting the increase in computational time. To handle this challenge, we propose a preprocessing step that exploits Principal Component Analysis to reduce the dataset’s dimensionality while keeping our explanations transparent.

Under consideration for publication in Theory and Practice of Logic Programming (TPLP).

Recent evidence suggests that oligarchs hold disproportionate influence over electoral representative institutions and limit people’s participation in both formal and informal spaces of democratic politics. Drawing on phenomenology, I develop the concept of oligarchic fatigue to describe the political exhaustion that arises when people’s attempts to engage in democratic practices are obstructed by oligarchic domination. Oligarchic fatigue materializes through two analytically distinct mechanisms: people experience fatigue either (1) when they actively participate within formal political spaces, but their options for participation are constrained due to oligarchic control over political institutions; or (2) when their political participation is deemed illegitimate and functionally denied by oligarchy. The corrective to oligarchic fatigue, I contend, is a renewed focus on political freedom as a constitutive element of democratic innovations and anti-oligarchic institutional design.

Effective soil nutrient management remains a critical determinant of agricultural profitability among smallholder farmers. This research evaluates the economic viability of fertilizer trials for teff and sorghum crops under different landscape positions in the dryland areas of northeastern Ethiopia. The study employed a randomized complete block design (RCBD) comprising nine treatments across three districts. Data from 855 experimental plots were analysed using a linear mixed-effects model (LMEM) across the slope gradients of foot slope, mid slopes, and hill slopes. Partial budget analysis, value-to-cost ratios (VCRs), and sensitivity analysis were employed to evaluate the economic feasibility of nutrients. The result from the LMEM revealed that fertilizer treatments, crop type, and slope position significantly affect net benefits. The results also showed that profitability declined progressively from the foot slope to the mid slope and further to the hill slope. The mixed model results indicated that the NP fertilizer has substantially increased net benefits relative to other treatments. Moreover, the partial budget, VCR, and sensitivity analyses also confirmed that NP fertilizer produced the highest economic return for both crops. A sensitivity analysis further confirmed the robustness of the NP fertilizer under the price fluctuation scenarios of inputs (fertilizer and both crops). Therefore, the NP is an economically viable fertilizer for both teff and sorghum producers. Strategic soil and nutrient management practices tailored to different landscape positions will further enhance farm profitability in the study areas.

The main goal of this article is to examine how vanishing norms have freed presidents of both major political parties to abuse their clemency power to pursue their own personal interests rather than the traditional purposes of mercy or serving the public interest. In the piece, I look more closely at the pardon power in practice, considering vanishing norms related to both mass pardons and individual pardons over the last half century. I explain how certain clemency decisions helped clear room for controversial clemency decisions by our most recent three presidents, and how their actions will likely continue to undermine norms and make clemency even more of a political tool in the future.

Projections of health/social care spending highlight risks to future fiscal sustainability. This concern is based, in part, on six assumptions, which we argue are uncertain: (1). Populations will continue to age; (2). Health is a function of age; (3). Health/social care need is driven by health; (4). Health/social care spending is driven by need; (5). Inequalities are unimportant; (6). Increasing dependency ratios risk fiscal sustainability. We propose three hypotheses which reframe the debate: (1). Health/social care spending primarily results from political decisions on supply; (2). Prevention policies alone are unlikely to reduce fiscal pressures; (3). Fiscal sustainability is best achieved by combining prevention with decommodification and ‘realistic medicine’.