This article examines the experience and transformation of the late Yuan Huizhou scholar Zhao Pang (1319–1369) during the transition from the Yuan dynasty to the Ming. In contrast to his reputation as a reclusive scholar devoted to his studies of the classics, and to later appraisals that viewed him as a Yuan “remnant,” Zhao actively engaged with the transition as it happened in his home region. Recovering this history from the writings in his collected works, this article reveals his attitude toward the powers that governed Huizhou in this period and shows both how his attitude remained consistent and how it changed. In place of the framework of loyalty and dynastic identity, this article proposes that local literati like Zhao Pang are better interpreted through local realities, and put in the context of the forms of literati writing and political participation that developed in the specific political system of the Yuan.

Since the early 1980s, the Supreme Court of India has recognised a wide catalogue of unenumerated rights as functional extensions of the right to life stipulated in Article 21 of the Constitution of India, including a right to shelter. For the most part, the right has meant unenforceable state duties and access to Francesco administrative justice under Article 32 of the Constitution, in ways that substantively deviate from the standards envisaged under Article 11(1) of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, and which find a paradigmatic example of constitutionalisation in Section 26 of the Constitution of South Africa. This relatively uncontested understanding of the right is, however, complicated by a line of High Court decisions, most notably Sudama Singh and Ajay Maken, which heavily rely on international human rights standards and South African constitutional jurisprudence to expand the procedural guarantees afforded in forced evictions. Far from being a general trend, this interpretative approach has the merit of exposing key deficiencies in the traditional right to shelter approach and creatively counterweighing the otherwise constitutionally pre-eminent unconditional prohibition of encroachments on public land.

This paper considers option valuation under finite mixture models in a discrete-time economy. Specifically, the Esscher transform is employed to select a pricing kernel. Novel finite mixture models with negative-shifted Gamma and negative-shifted inverse Gaussian distributions are developed. A hybrid finite mixture model that allows different parametric forms for component distributions is introduced to incorporate model uncertainty. An empirical characteristic function estimation method is employed to estimate the finite mixture models. Closed-form pricing formulas for a European call option are obtained for some finite mixture models. Empirical examples using data on the Bitcoin-USD prices are provided to illustrate an application of the proposed models to value Bitcoin options.

In the seventeenth century, Chinese philologists rejected imperial orthodoxy and sought to return to the ways of antiquity through textual criticism; they described their approach using a first century phrase: “Seeking Truth from Facts” (shishi qiushi, 實事求是). Two centuries later, Mao Zedong appropriated this phrase to encapsulate his approach towards revolutionary work, which privileged the first-hand investigation of local socioeconomic conditions. In between these episodes, shishi qiushi was found in automobile advertisements, missionary translations, and on the gates of Confucian academies. Since the 1700s, Chinese intellectuals have found shishi qiushi strangely alluring, and employed the phrase to describe their intellectual and moral commitments. To explain this longevity, this article provides a genealogy of shishi qiushi and argues that the phrase came to be associated with the epistemic values of reflexivity, expertise, and syncretism. These qualities became valued by Chinese intellectuals as they navigated a rapidly changing world.

We report a nearly complete mitochondrial genome (mitogenome) of Echinostoma caproni (Egyptian isolate), which was reassembled and thoroughly annotated from whole-genome sequencing data available from Sequence Read Archive (accession No. ERS055227). Although a mitogenome of E. caproni has previously been deposited in GenBank (accession No. AP017706), it represents a partial sequence lacking the transfer RNA (tRNA)-Ser2 and possessing only a short non-coding region. In contrast, the newly reconstructed mitogenome in this study is 14,549 bp in length and comprises 12 protein-coding genes, 22 tRNA genes, 2 ribosomal RNA genes, and a 1,256 bp non-coding region containing 4 repeat units. The annotated sequence has been deposited in the Third Party Annotation database in GenBank (accession No. BK071757). Phylogenetic inference based on mitogenomic data indicates that E. caproni is closely related to E. miyagawai strains. This improved mitogenome provides a reliable genomic resource for comparative mitogenomic analyses and phylogenetic studies within the family Echinostomatidae.

Canadian political scientists have often taken a normative approach to political institutions like the constitution, the electoral system, and Parliament. An assumption that institutional reform can itself be a solution to political problems is also reflected in general public commentary and at times has been openly encouraged and supported by the Canadian state itself. This approach has many strengths but also deficiencies, particularly the degree to which it replicates existing understandings of the state, focused on the distribution of power among white men. The study of political institutions in Canada must continue growing to incorporate and integrate a greater diversity of perspectives, including interrogating and challenging their very foundations.

This article provides a general asymptotic theory for mildly explosive autoregression. We confirm that Cauchy limit theory remains invariant across a broad range of error processes, including general linear processes with martingale difference innovations, stationary causal processes, and nonlinear autoregressive time series, such as threshold autoregressive and bilinear models. Our results unify the Cauchy limit theory for long memory, short memory, and anti-persistent innovations within a single framework. Notably, we demonstrate that in the presence of anti-persistent innovations, the Cauchy limit theory may be violated when the regression coefficient approaches the local-to-unity range. Additionally, we explore extensions to models with varying drift, which is of significant interest in its own right.

In this paper, we present an ultra-fast technique for brain tumor detection in microwave brain imaging systems based on compressive sensing (CS). To achieve this, we designed an elliptical array-based microwave imaging system by simulating sixteen elements of modified bowtie antennas in the CST medium around a multi-layer head phantom. Additionally, we designed an appropriate matching medium to radiate in the desired band from 1 to 4 GHz. The algorithm section of our technique involves pre-processing steps for calibration, a processing step to create a two-dimensional image of the received signals, and a post-processing step for CS. In the processing section, we used a confocal image-reconstructing method based on delay and sum and delay, multiply, and sum beam-forming algorithms. Finally, we applied a new CS technique that includes an L1-norm convex optimization method to reconstruct low-dimension images from the original reconstructed images. We present simulated results to validate the effectiveness of our proposed method for precisely localizing the tumor target in a human full head phantom. The simulated results demonstrate that by using our proposed CS method, the image reconstruction processing time decreased to 63% and the compressed image size reduced to 25% of the original image.

Let C and W be two sets of integers. If $C+W=\mathbb {Z}$, then C is called an additive complement to W. We further call C a minimal additive complement to W if no proper subset of C is an additive complement to W. Answering a problem of Nathanson in part, we give sufficient conditions to show that W has no minimal additive complements. Our result extends a result of Chen and Yang [‘On a problem of Nathanson related to minimal additive complements’, SIAM J. Discrete Math. 26 (2012), 1532–1536].

The 2025 International Court of Justice Advisory Opinion on Obligations of States in respect of Climate Change constitutes a diligent and reasoned exposition of the main bodies of international law on climate change. The Court read this law harmoniously and clearly identified States’ obligations as well as the legal consequences of breach. Under both treaty and customary international law, States must act with due diligence and do their utmost to mitigate climate change, including through action on fossil fuel production and consumption. The Court confirmed that the law of State responsibility applies if States fail to fulfil their obligations, and sketches a pathway for establishing causation of harm that would become relevant if reparation were sought.

This article examines the key dimensions of the Advisory Opinion, including the applicable law identified by the Court and its analysis of State responsibility, informing readers of the Court’s main findings and their consequences. It also puts forward a few reflections, including on the Advisory Opinion’s emphasis on international cooperation and finance flows, the Court’s views on sea-level rise and self-determination, the role of science in the Advisory Opinion and what the Court left for the future.

A short reflection on the singular career of the legal historian Stanley Katz.