Search Results (961)

This paper analyses several mathematical games developed 50 years ago by Manfred Eigen and Ruthild Winkler in their famous book “Laws of the Game: How the Principles of Nature Govern Chance,” published for the first time in German in 1975. These games are intended to represent the essential aspects of chemical selection processes via symmetry breaking in biological systems. Special attention is paid to games that model biochemical kinetics, in which a chessboard is used to represent different types of substrates. The time-dependent statistical outcomes of several games are studied by Monte Carlo techniques. Analytical stochastic models applied to these games relate game rules to partial differential equation problems with appropriate initial and boundary conditions: rationalizing their outcomes, they confirm the intuitions of the original authors and add new insights. The potential impact of game-based models on current research on biological homochirality is discussed. Full article

Aiming at the wind-blown snow disasters plaguing tunnel portals along the China-Tajikistan Highway Phase II Project, this study optimizes the protective parameters of wind deflectors through numerical simulation to improve the disaster prevention efficiency of tunnel portals in alpine mountainous areas. Three core control parameters of wind deflectors, namely horizontal distance from the tunnel portal (L), plate inclination angle (β), and top installation height (h), were selected as the research objects. Single-factor numerical simulation scenarios were designed for each parameter, and an L9(3³) orthogonal test was further adopted to formulate 9 groups of multi-parameter combination scenarios, with the snow phase volume fraction at 35 m on the leeward side of the tunnel portal set as the core evaluation index. A computational fluid dynamics (CFD) model was established to systematically investigate the influence laws of each parameter on the wind field structure and snow drift deposition characteristics at tunnel portals and clarify the flow field response rules under different parameter configurations. Single-factor simulation results show that the wind deflector exerts distinct regulatory effects on the wind-snow flow field with different parameter settings: when L = 6 m, the disturbance zone of the wind deflector precisely covers the main wind flow development area in front of the tunnel portal, which effectively lifts the main incoming flow path, compresses the recirculation zone (length reduced from 45.8 m to 22.3 m), and reduces the settlement of snow particles, achieving the optimal comprehensive prevention effect; when β = 60°, the leeward wind speed at the tunnel portal is significantly increased to 10–12 m/s (from below 10 m/s), which effectively promotes the transport of snow particles and mitigates the accumulation risk, being the optimal inclination angle; when h = 2 m, the wind speed on both the windward and leeward sides of the tunnel portal is significantly improved, and the snow accumulation risk at the portal reaches the minimum. Orthogonal test results further quantify the influence degree of each parameter on the snow prevention effect, revealing that the horizontal distance from the tunnel portal is the most significant influencing factor. The optimal parameter combination of the wind deflector is determined as L = 6 m, β = 60°, and h = 2 m. Under this optimal combination, the snow phase volume fraction at 35 m on the leeward side of the tunnel portal is 0.0505, a 12.3% reduction compared with the non-deflector condition; the high-concentration snow accumulation zone is shifted 25 m leeward, and the high-value snow phase volume fraction area (>0.06) disappears completely, which can effectively alleviate the adverse impact of wind-blown snow disasters on the normal operation of tunnel portals. The research results reveal the regulation mechanism of wind deflector parameters on the wind-snow flow field at alpine tunnel portals and determine the optimal protective parameter combination, which can provide important theoretical reference and technical support for the prevention and control of wind-blown snow disasters at tunnel portals in similar alpine mountainous areas. Full article

Since 2017, more than a dozen civics institutes have been founded at America’s public universities, marking a renaissance in civic education. Grounded in the liberal arts, these institutes rightly restore the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake and reconnect citizens to the nation’s past. Yet liberal education requires assistance to help students navigate today’s data-driven republic, where questions of law and justice increasingly turn on the interpretation of evidence. This article proposes a balanced model for civics education—a “renewed civic pragmatism”—that unites the historical connectedness of liberal learning with the technical skills required for public life and the rule of law. In doing so, civics education recovers its role as a bridge between moral principle, empirical judgment, and the pursuit of justice under law. Full article

Uncertainty-aware decision-making increasingly relies on multimodal sensing pipelines that must fuse correlated measurements, propagate uncertainty, and trigger reliable control actions. This study develops a unified mathematical framework for multimodal data fusion and Bayesian decision-making under uncertainty. The approach integrates adaptive Covariance Intersection (aCI) for correlation-robust sensor fusion, a Gaussian state–space backbone with Kalman filtering, heteroskedastic Bayesian regression with full posterior sampling via an affine-invariant MCMC sampler, and a Bayesian likelihood-ratio test (LRT) coupled to a risk-sensitive proportional–derivative (PD) control law. Theoretical guarantees are provided by bounding the state covariance under stability conditions, establishing convexity of the aCI weight optimization on the simplex, and deriving a Bayes-risk-optimal decision threshold for the LRT under symmetric Gaussian likelihoods. A proof-of-concept agro-environmental decision-support application is considered, where heterogeneous data streams (IoT soil sensors, meteorological stations, and drone-derived vegetation indices) are fused to generate early-warning alarms for crop stress and to adapt irrigation and fertilization inputs. The proposed pipeline reduces predictive variance and sharpens posterior credible intervals (up to 34% narrower 95% intervals and 44% lower NLL/Brier score under heteroskedastic modeling), while a Bayesian uncertainty-aware controller achieves 14.2% lower water usage and 35.5% fewer false stress alarms compared to a rule-based strategy. The framework is mathematically grounded yet domain-independent, providing a probabilistic pipeline that propagates uncertainty from raw multimodal data to operational control actions, and can be transferred beyond agriculture to robotics, signal processing, and environmental monitoring applications. Full article

Measuring the fatigue crack growth rate via the crack growth experiment (a-N curve) is labor-intensive and time-consuming. A machine learning interpolation–extrapolation strategy (MLIES) aimed at enhancing the prediction accuracy of small-data models has been proposed to accelerate fatigue testing. Two specific approaches are designed by transforming a-N curve data from N to ΔN and from a to Δa (S1)/Δa/ΔN (S2) to enrich the data volume and leverage the incremental information. Thus, a simple and fast-responding single-layer neural network model can be trained based on the early-stage data points from fatigue testing and accurately predict the remaining part of an a-N curve, thereby enhancing the experimental efficiency. Through exponential data expansion and data augmentation, the trained neural network model is able to learn the underlying rules governing crack growth directly from the experimental data, requiring no explicit analytical crack growth laws. The proposed MLIES was validated on fatigue tests for aluminum alloy and titanium alloy samples under different experimental parameters. Results demonstrate its effectiveness in reducing testing time/cost by 15–32% while achieving over 30% higher prediction accuracy for the a-N curve compared to a traditional machine learning modeling approach. Our research offers a data-driven recipe for accurate crack growth prediction and accelerated fatigue testing. Full article

Europe is warming faster than the global average, making climate change adaptation a central concern for urban policy and planning. This article develops and applies an analytical framework to assess the maturity of multilevel adaptation governance across European Union Member States as of 2025. Governance is operationalised through eight dimensions: (i) National Adaptation Strategies/Plans; (ii) Regional Adaptation Plans; (iii) Local Adaptation Plans; (iv) Sectoral Adaptation Plans; (v) integration in National Urban Policies; (vi) adaptive content in Long-Term Strategies; (vii) adaptation relevance in climate laws; and (viii) participation in the Covenant of Mayors. The results reveal pronounced heterogeneity: many Member States have up-to-date national strategies but display incomplete territorial diffusion, weak legal anchoring, or limited urban policy standards. By linking auditable rules to urban-facing instruments, this study offers a practical tool for benchmarking governance capacities, prioritising reforms, and tracking progress towards integrated, multilevel adaptation systems that support resilient urban development across the European Union. Full article

This paper conceptualizes institutional resilience as a core condition of democratic sustainability in post-transition Europe. Building on neo-institutionalist approaches and recent scholarship on democratic resilience, we argue that democracies endure when three capacities align: policy coherence, procedural legitimacy, and civic/monitory participation. Using a comparative, theory-guided design, we analyze Romania, Poland, Hungary, and Slovakia (2007–2025), triangulating V-Dem/Eurostat indicators with documentary evidence (EU Rule of Law reports, CEPEJ) and interpretive analysis. Romania illustrates “reactive resilience” anchored in judicial independence and civic vigilance; Slovakia shows “restorative resilience” after corruption scandals; Poland exhibits “societal compensatory resilience,” where civic mobilization offsets institutional regression; Hungary demonstrates “instrumental resilience without democracy,” combining administrative capacity with normative decay. We integrate these findings into a three-dimensional model—institutional, normative, and communicative—showing how feedback loops convert crisis into learning. The paper concludes that sustainable democracy depends less on constitutional design alone and more on the institutionalization of learning: redundant veto points, impartial procedures that generate trust, and a monitory public sphere that sustains continuous accountability. For EU policy, the shift from conditionality to capacity (e.g., RRF) can foster endogenous resilience when supranational norms are domestically internalized rather than externally imposed. Full article

Buddhism has long maintained a fine tradition of establishing and preserving a hyper-stable institutional order. Historically, the Vinaya served as the institutional literature for the monasteries, but it gradually evolved into a sacred symbol of the public identity of the monks and became an object of scholastic study. Subsequently, as part of the internal monastic system, the rules governing monks transferred from being overseen by the Three Monastic Supervisors 三綱制—comprising an Elder (Sthavira), an Administrator (Vihārasvāmin), and a Discipline Master (Karmadāna)—to the Conglin system, a major innovation of Chinese Buddhism. However, the Conglin system, with more than a thousand years of history, had not experienced any major reforms. At the same time, it has also become an institutional culture within Chinese Buddhism, imbued with sacred symbolic significance. The excessive concentration of power inherent in the Conglin system, along with the lack of oversight over certain office-holding monks, represents a notable flaw within this system. The social environment of the time compelled Chinese Buddhism to adjust and reform its internal institutional construction. Only by developing institutions that align with both the vinaya and secular law; while embodying the Buddhist ideals of equality and fairness, could Chinese Buddhism remain in harmony with its era. Full article

This article presents a historiographical survey of scholarship on Islamic law and legal authority in Central/Inner Asia under Russian Imperial rule. It analyzes the debates, paradigms and assumptions that have dominated the field up to the present. The binaries that have dominated the field—between cooperation and insulation, rupture and continuity—disguise the complex legal history of the region. The historiography has shifted to emphasize a more pluralistic legal landscape, shaped by imperial intervention, local custom, practical considerations, and agency of ordinary Muslims. I suggest that by integrating a variety of sources, both archival and Islamic, scholars can take a bolder anthropological turn to develop new directions in historiography that will involve studying the lived experiences of legal actors and ordinary Muslims, gendered dimensions of legal practice, the meanings of socio-legal institutions, and the daily interaction between religious scholars and their communities. Full article

This paper does not aim to prove new mathematical theorems or claim a fundamental unification of physics and information, but rather to provide a new pedagogical framework for interpreting foundational results in algorithmic information theory. Our focus is on understanding the profound connection between entropy and Kolmogorov complexity. We achieve this by applying these concepts to a physical model. Our work is centered on the distinction, first articulated by Boltzmann, between observable low-complexity macrostates and unobservable high-complexity microstates. We re-examine the known relationships linking complexity and probability, as detailed in works like Li and Vitányi’s An Introduction to Kolmogorov Complexity and Its Applications. Our contribution is to explicitly identify the abstract complexity of a probability distribution $\mathrm{K}\left(\rho \right)$ with the concrete physical complexity of a macrostate $\mathrm{K}\left(M\right)$. Using this framework, we explore the “Not Alone” principle, which states that a high-complexity microstate must belong to a large cluster of peers sharing the same simple properties. We show how this result is a natural consequence of our physical framework, thus providing a clear intuitive model for understanding how algorithmic information imposes structural constraints on physical systems. We end by exploring concrete properties in physics, resolving a few apparent paradoxes, and revealing how these laws are the statistical consequences of simple rules. Full article

Green fintech merges sustainable finance with data-intensive innovation, but national translations of EU rules can create regulatory risk. This study examines how such risk manifests in Central Europe and which policy tools mitigate it. We develop a three-dimension framework—regulatory clarity and scope, supervisory consistency, and innovation facilitation—and apply a comparative qualitative design to Hungary, Slovakia, Czechia, and Poland. Using a common EU baseline, we compile coded national snapshots from primary legal texts, supervisory documents, and recent scholarship. Results show material cross-country variation in labelling practice, soft-law use, and testing infrastructure: Hungary combines central-bank green programmes with an innovation hub/sandbox; Slovakia aligns with ESMA and runs hub/sandbox, though the green-fintech pipeline is nascent; Czechia applies a principles-based safe harbour and lacks a national sandbox; and Poland relies on a virtual sandbox and binding interpretations with limited soft law. These choices shape approval timelines, retail penetration, and cross-border portability of green-labelled products. We conclude with a policy toolkit: labelling convergence or explicit safe harbours, a cross-border sandbox federation, ESRS/ESAP-ready proportionate disclosures, consolidation of recurring interpretations into soft law, investment in suptech for green-claims analytics, and inclusion metrics in sandbox selection. Full article

Money laundering poses a serious threat to financial stability and requires effective national frameworks for prevention. This study investigates how the quality of legal and institutional frameworks affects the effectiveness of national anti-money laundering (AML) systems and their implications for financial risk management. We conducted an empirical analysis of 132 jurisdictions in 2024 using the Basel AML Index (AMLI) and the WJP Rule of Law Index (RLI). The Random Forest method was employed to model the relationship between rule-of-law indicators and AML risk levels. Findings reveal a significant inverse relationship between rule-of-law indicators and AML risk levels, with an overall classification accuracy of 69.6%. The model performed best for low-risk countries (precision 75%, recall 92.31%), moderately for medium-risk countries (precision 65.22%, recall 78.95%), but failed to identify high-risk jurisdictions, suggesting a legal institutional “threshold” necessary for effective AML functioning. Key predictors included protection of fundamental rights and mechanisms for civil oversight, with strong negative correlations between AML risk and criminal justice impartiality (−0.35), civil justice fairness (−0.35), and equality before the law (−0.41). These results show that legal factors strongly affect AML risk and can guide regulators in improving risk-based standards, enhancing regulatory certainty, and managing financial risk. Full article

This study evaluates the effectiveness of Jordan’s judiciary in overseeing electoral appeals within the framework of a constitutional monarchy. Adopting a mixed-methods approach, it combines doctrinal legal analysis of key constitutional provisions and Election Law No. 4 of 2022 with a comparative examination of electoral adjudication in Tunisia, Egypt, and Lebanon. The study is further strengthened by a structured content analysis of 120 appellate rulings issued between 2015 and 2023 and by qualitative insights drawn from anonymized interviews with judicial personnel engaged in electoral dispute resolution. Although Jordan’s legal framework formally empowers the judiciary to adjudicate electoral disputes, five structural limitations persist: narrow standing rules, rigid evidentiary thresholds, judicial reluctance to exercise investigatory powers, opaque reasoning in judgments, and the absence of specialized electoral courts. These constraints reflect systemic tensions between formal judicial independence and the realities of constrained discretion in hybrid regimes. An empirical analysis of 127 Jordanian electoral appeal cases from 2013 to 2020 reveals that a mere 7% of disputed electoral outcomes were overturned, whereas 73% of allegations were disregarded due to insufficient evidence. Furthermore, it is noteworthy that only 31% of rulings were publicly accessible, in stark contrast to the 89% accessibility rate observed in Tunisia. By identifying and addressing these systemic limitations, the study contributes to ongoing discourse on institutional reform and democratic resilience. In doing so, it underscores the importance of robust electoral justice mechanisms for sustaining public trust, rule of law, and inclusive governance—principles central to political and institutional sustainability as reflected in Sustainable Development Goal 16. Full article

A considerable portion of the Armenian population living in the Armenian highland and the South Caucasian region was subject to the Iranian dynasties of the Safavids, Afsharids and Qajars in the period from the 16th till the beginning of the 19th centuries. The rulers of Iran often initiated and stimulated processes of conversion to Shi̒i Islam among its subjects with the purpose of increasing the religious and cultural homogeneity of the society. Apart from some forced methods of conversion applied by different rulers of Iran, there existed a number of factors stimulating the conversion of Christian Armenians and their assimilation in Iran in the early modern period. After a review over the various factors stimulating this process, author focuses on the law of Shi̒i Islam practiced in the hereditary matters of Armenians since the 1620s. It became a major factor leading to the conversion of Christian Armenians not only in the inner provinces of Iran but also in their native settlements in the regions of South Caucasus and Anatolia subordinated to the rule of Iranian states. The article considers the consequences of the implementation of this law for the Armenians living under the rule of Iran, as well as the ways they used to avoid the claims of their relatives who had adopted Islam and to bypass its harmful effects. The data and information of the contemporary sources have also allowed us to reveal the legal ways used by the Armenians during the purchase and transmission of property in order to protect it from various encroachments of their Muslim relatives. The article elucidates likewise the attempts of the leaders of the Armenian Church to withstand the harm caused by the implementation of the law and stop it with royal decrees. Full article

The existence of a legal framework for Artificial Intelligence systems is of great importance for the growth and development of this advanced technology, especially given the growing sense of legal insecurity that may arise from potential irreparable harm. Therefore, the issue of legal liability for AI systems is one of the most critical legal topics that should receive the attention of legal literature. This paper critically examines the tempting analogy between the liability of custodians and the liability of operators of AI systems under UAE law. This paper seeks to address this legal gap, by offering suggestions and sharing examples of the legal requirements necessary to establish appropriate liability rules for AI. This legal gap can be filled by improving the provisions of custodian liability in UAE law. Our analysis focuses on three main concerns: (i) proposing an expansion of the concept of thingness; (ii) discussing the challenges of applying legal custodianship; and (iii) concluding that autonomous AI systems are inherently dangerous. In this context, it is particularly important to analyse the specific aspects that should be taken into consideration when operating advanced AI systems, which include mandatory registration and insurance. The article concludes that applying the custodian liability provisions to the operators of AI systems ensures the protection of third parties from potential damage on one hand. On the other hand, the specific regulations governing the operation of these AI systems encourage investment in this vital field. Full article