bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Relic neutrino decay solution to the excess radio background
Authors: Bhupal Dev P.S. , Bari Pasquale Di , Martínez-Soler Ivan , Roshan Rishav
Published: April 2024

The excess radio background detected by ARCADE 2 represents a puzzle within the standard
cosmological model. There is no clear viable astrophysical solution, and therefore, it might
indicate the presence of new physics. Radiative decays of a relic neutrino ν_i (either i=1,
or i=2, or i=3) into a sterile neutrino ν_ s, assumed to be quasi-degenerate, provide
a solution that currently evades all constraints posed by different cosmological observations and
reproduces very well the ARCADE 2 data. We find a very good fit to the ARCADE 2 data with best
fit values τ_i = 1.46 × 10^21 s and Δ m_i = 4.0 × 10^-5
eV, where τ_i is the lifetime and Δ m_i is the mass difference between the
decaying active neutrino and the sterile neutrino. On the other hand, if relic neutrino decays do
not explain ARCADE 2 data, then these place a stringent constraint Δ m_i^3/2τ_i
≳ 2 × 10^14 eV^3/2 s in the range 1.4 × 10^-5 eV<Δ m_i < 2.5 × 10^-4 eV. The solution also predicts a stronger 21 cm
absorption global signal than the predicted one from the ΛCDM model, with a contrast
brightness temperature T_21 = -238^+21_-20 mK (99% C.L.) at redshift z≃
17. This is in mild tension with the even stronger signal found by the EDGES collaboration,
T_21 = - 500^+200_-500 mK, suggesting that this might have been overestimated,
possibly receiving a contribution from some unidentified foreground source.
Observational constraints on extended Proca-Nuevo gravity and cosmology
Authors: Anagnostopoulos Fotios K. , Saridakis Emmanuel N.
Published: April 2024

We confront massive Proca-Nuevo gravity with cosmological
observations. The former is a non-linear theory involving a massive spin-1
field, that can be extended incorporating operators of the Generalized Proca
class, and when coupled to gravity it can be covariantized in a way that
exhibits consistent and ghost-free cosmological solutions, without experiencing
instabilities and superluminalities at the perturbative level.
When applied at a cosmological framework it induces extra terms in the
Friedmann equations, however due to the special non-linear construction the
field is eliminated in favor of the Hubble function. Thus, the resulting
effective dark energy sector is dynamical, however it contains
the same number of free parameters with the ΛCDM concordance model.
We use data from Supernovae Ia (SNIa) and Cosmic Chronometers
(CC) observations and we construct the corresponding likelihood-contours for
the free parameters. Interestingly enough, application of various information
criteria, such as AIC, BIC and DIC, shows that the scenario of massive
Proca-Nuevo gravity, although having exactly the same number of free
parameters
with ΛCDM paradigm, it is more efficient in fitting the data.
Finally, the reconstructed dark-energy equation-of-state parameter
shows statistical compatibility
with the model-independent, data-driven reconstructed one.
Probing ultralight tensor dark matter with the stochastic gravitational-wave background from advanced LIGO and Virgo's first three observing runs
Authors: Guo Rong-Zhen , Jiang Yang , Huang Qing-Guo
Published: April 2024

Ultralight bosons are attractive dark-matter candidates and appear in various scenarios beyond standard model. They can induce superradiant instabilities around spinning black holes (BHs), extracting the energy and angular momentum from BHs, and then dissipate through monochromatic gravitational radiation, which become promising sources of gravitational wave detectors. In this letter, we focus on massive tensor fields coupled to BHs and compute the stochastic gravitational wave backgrounds emitted by these sources. We then undertake a search for this background within the data from LIGO/Virgo O1∼O3 runs. Our analysis reveals no discernible evidence of such signals, allowing us to impose stringent limits on the mass range of tensor bosons. Specifically, we exclude the existence of tensor bosons with masses ranging from 4.0 × 10-14 to 2.0 × 10-12 eV at 95% confidence level.
Triplet scalar flavored leptogenesis with spontaneous CP violation
Authors: Chongdar Sreerupa , Mishra Sasmita
Published: April 2024

The inclusion of two triplet scalars in the Standard Model (SM) enables to accommodate neutrino mass generation as well as baryogenesis through leptogenesis. One of the
essential ingredients of leptogenesis is the violation of
charge conjugation and parity (CP) symmetry in lepton number violating decays of the triplet scalars. We work on the promising sector of spontaneous CP violation (SCPV) which is manifested by the involvement of one scalar singlet and two scalar fields, added to the SM. The predictive
aspect of the model is accomplished by imposing A
4 × Z
4 symmetry which results in the traditional tribimaximal mixing pattern. With updated data on neutrino oscillation, we study the parameter space of the model.
The phase of the complex vacuum expectation value (VEV) of the singlet scalar acts as the common source of
CP violation in both low and high energy sectors.
Due to the flavor symmetry of the model, required baryon asymmetry cannot be accomplished via unflavored leptogenesis. In the temperature regime, [109, 1012] GeV when flavor effects become important in the study of leptogenesis, it is shown that baryogenesis is achievable. The rich flavor interplay is explored through the study of the density matrix equations. We also study the interplay of hierarchical branching ratios of the decay of the triplet scalars and SCPV phase to accommodate the required CP asymmetry to account for the final baryon asymmetry in the observational range. Considering all possible mass hierarchies among the triplet scalars, the flavor structure of the triplet Yukawa couplings results in different scales of leptogenesis.
Novel tests of gravity using nano-Hertz
stochastic gravitational-wave background signals
Authors: Cannizzaro Enrico , Franciolini Gabriele , Pani Paolo
Published: April 2024

Gravity theories that modify General Relativity in the slow-motion regime can introduce nonperturbative corrections to the stochastic gravitational-wave background (SGWB) from supermassive black-hole binaries in the nano-Hertz band,
while not affecting the quadrupolar nature of the gravitational-wave radiation and remaining perturbative in the highly-relativistic regime, as to satisfy current post-Newtonian (PN) constraints. We present a model-agnostic formalism to map such theories into a modified tilt for the SGWB spectrum, showing that negative PN corrections (in particular -2PN) can alleviate the tension in the recent pulsar-timing-array data if the detected SGWB is interpreted as arising from supermassive binaries. Despite being preliminary, current data have already strong constraining power, for example they set a novel (conservative) upper bound on theories with time-varying Newton's constant (a -4PN correction) at least at the level of Ġ/G ≲ 10^-5 yr^-1 for redshift z=[0.1÷1]. We also show that NANOGrav data are best fitted by a broken power-law interpolating between a dominant -2PN or -3PN modification at low frequency, and the standard general-relativity scaling at high frequency. Nonetheless, a modified gravity explanation should be confronted with binary eccentricity, environmental effects, nonastrophysical origins of the signal, and scrutinized against statistical uncertainties. These novel tests of gravity will soon become more stringent when combining all pulsar-timing-array facilities and when collecting more data.
Using Schrödinger cat quantum state for detection of a given phase shift
Authors: Gorshenin V L
Published: April 2024

We show that injecting a light pulse prepared in the Shrödinger cat quantum state into the dark port of a two-arm interferometer, it is possible to detect a given phase shift unambiguously. The value of this phase shift is inversely proportional to the amplitudes of both the classical carrier light and the Shrödinger cat state. However, an unconventional detection procedure is required for this purpose. By measuring the number of photons at the output dark port, it is possible to detect the phase shift with a vanishing ‘false positive’ probability. The ‘false negative’ probability in this case decreases as the amplitude of the Schrödinger cat state increases and, for reasonable values of this amplitude, can be made less than about 0.1.
ICRH operations during the JET tritium and DTE2 campaigns
Authors: Jacquet P. , Dumortier P. , Lerche E. , Monakhov I. , Noble C. , Roberts J. , Sheikh H. , Goodyear A. , Balshaw N. , Ciric D. , Lobel R. , Lomas P. , Lowry C. , Rimini F. , Silburn S. , Horton L.
Published: April 2024

The JET-ILW pure tritium and deuterium–tritium (DTE2) experimental campaigns took place in 2021–2022. Tritium (T) and deuterium–tritium (D–T) operations present challenges not encountered in present day tokamaks (Horton et al 2016 Fusion Eng. Des.
109–111 925–36). This contribution focuses on ion cyclotron resonance heating (ICRH) operations in tritium and deuterium–tritium plasmas, starting with a summary of the program of improvements to the ICRH system which spanned a few years prior to these experiments. Procedures were implemented to address specific constraints from tritium and deuterium–tritium operations (tritium safety and reduced access to the RF generator area) and increase the system reliability and power availability during plasma pulses. Operation of the upgraded real time RF power control system that maximises the launched power while taking into account limitations from the system or antenna coupling is described. We also report on the result from dedicated pulses performed to assess the potential harmful impact of the 2nd harmonic tritium resonance in the plasma, close to the inner wall, when using the standard central hydrogen minority ICRH scheme. During DTE2, the ITER-like antenna was not used because water leaked from an in-vessel capacitor into the vessel on day-2 of the experimental campaign. The lessons learnt from this incident are highlighted. Finally, the ICRH plant adjustments required to safely perform ion cyclotron wall cleaning discharges are described.
Creation and manipulation of optical Meron topologies in tightly focused electromagnetic field
Authors: Lei Haomai , Luo Bin , Hu Jianfei , Wang Jiming , Wu Tong , Liu Youwen
Published: April 2024

The optical topology, which serves as a stable spatial electromagnetic structure, offers a new dimension for applications in the field of optical information processing, transmission, and storage. In recent years, there has been an increasing focus on these spatially structured light fields. By reversing the radiation of orthogonal dipole pairs, we propose an approach to generate Meron topologies within the focused light field while also investigating the evolution of the Meron structure along the longitudinal axis. Through introducing a dipole placed along the z-axis, we achieve precise positioning and fine adjustment of the topological center. The stability of Meron under a high numerical aperture objective lens (NA = 0.95) can be effectively demonstrated.
Bandgap variation in semiconductor thin films of the solid solution (CdTe)1-x(In2Te3)x deposited by RF sputtering
Authors: Meléndez-Lira Miguel , Jiménez-Sandoval Sergio , Zapata-Torres Martin , García-Sotelo Alejandra , Hernández Rodríguez Eric Noé , Hernández-Hernández Arturo
Published: April 2024

(CdTe)1-x(In2Te3)x films, with 0.1 ≤ x ≤ 1, were deposited by radio frequency sputtering on glass substrates employing different targets, prepared for each composition. The x-ray diffractograms were consistent with substitutional In incorporation into the CdTe lattice up to a value of x = 0.2. For higher In contents, the films presented structural disorder without reaching full amorphous characteristics. For x = 1, corresponding to In2Te3, preferential growth was observed. The bandgap of the solid solution varied between 1.46 and 1.2 eV, reaching a maximum of 1.58 eV for x = 0.3. For both end binary compounds the random incorporation of a third chemical element produced a significant broadening of the Raman modes consistent with a reduction of the lifetime of the optical phonons. The electrical resistivity was dependent on the Cd concentration reaching a minimum for x = 0.8.
Observation of topological hall effect and skyrmions in Pt/Co/Ir/Co/Pt system
Authors: Mohanty Shaktiranjan , Ojha Brindaban , Sharma Minaxi , Bedanta Subhankar
Published: April 2024

The interlayer exchange coupling (IEC) between two ferromagnetic (FM) layers separated by a non-magnetic (NM) spacer layer gives rise to different types of coupling with the variation of spacer layer thickness. When the NM is metallic, the IEC is attributed to the well-known Ruderman-Kittel-Kasuya-Yosida (RKKY) interaction which shows an oscillatory decaying nature with increasing thickness. Due to this, it is possible to tune the coupling between the two FM to be either ferromagnetic or antiferromagnetic. In this work we have studied a Pt/Co/Ir/Co/Pt system where the Co thickness has been taken in the strong perpendicular magnetic anisotropy regime which is much less than the spin reorientation transition thickness. By tuning the Ir thickness to 2.0 nm, a canted state of magnetization reversal in the system is observed which gives rise to a possibility of nucleating topologically non-trivial spin textures like skyrmions. Further, with the combination of transport and magnetic force microscopy (MFM) measurements, we have confirmed the presence of skyrmions in our system. These findings may be useful for potential applications in emerging spintronic and data storage technologies using skyrmions.
Application of fiber loop ringdown spectroscopy technique for a new approach to beta-amyloid monitoring for Alzheimer Disease’s early detection
Authors: Kaya Burak Malik , Oz Semih , Esenturk Okan
Published: April 2024

A novel fiber optic biosensor was purposed for a new approach to monitor amyloid beta protein fragment 1–42 (Aβ42) for Alzheimer’s Disease (AD) early detection. The sensor was fabricated by etching a part of fiber from single mode fiber loop in pure hydrofluoric acid solution and utilized as a Local Optical Refractometer (LOR) to monitor the change Aβ42 concentration in Artificial Cerebrospinal Fluid (ACSF). The Fiber Loop Ringdown Spectroscopy (FLRDS) technique is an ultra-sensitive measurement technique with low-cost, high sensitivity, real-time measurement, continuous measurement and portability features that was utilized with a fiber optic sensor for the first time for the detection of a biological signature in an ACSF environment. Here, the measurement is based on the total optical loss detection when specially fabricated sensor heads were immersed into ACSF solutions with and without different concentrations of Aβ42 biomarkers since the bulk refractive index change was performed. Baseline stability and the reference ring down times of the sensor head were measured in the air as 0.87% and 441.6 μs ± 3.9 μs, respectively. Afterward, the total optical loss of the system was measured when the sensor head was immersed in deionized water, ACSF solution, and ACSF solutions with Aβ42 in different concentrations. The lowest Aβ42 concentration of 2 ppm was detected by LOR. Results showed that LOR fabricated by single-mode fibers for FLRDS system design are promising candidates to be utilized as fiber optic biosensors after sensor head modification and have a high potential for early detection applications of not only AD but possibly also several fatal diseases such as diabetes and cancer.
Analysis of truncated structure flexible microstrip patch antenna on jute substrate for biomedical applications
Authors: Gour Sonam , Rathi Amit
Published: April 2024

In the present years, academic and scientific societies have given more attention to flexible technology. When antenna performance is very poor due to its surrounding environment, flexible antennas have become important. A flexible patch antenna is presented using a Jute fiber with improved performance. It is designed with jute substrate material and a copper conducting layer for ground and patch. A rectangular stripped structure has been used in the antenna for enhancing the parameters and optimisations. The antenna is designed at a resonating frequency of 2.45 GHz. The efficiency of the antenna is measured from return loss, directivity and gain. It can be used for military applications, ground radar position, search and rescue applications. It is capable of biomedical application due to its minimised SAR value. It is used due to its inexpensive cost and abundant availability of jute substrate.
Argumentation and Rhetoric
Authors: Kephart John
Published: April 2024

The study of argumentation is inherently interdisciplinary. Broad in scope, argumentation theory generally refers to descriptive and normative attempts to understand the products and processes of disagreement and the attempts by participants in argumentative discourse to make their standpoint prevail. Rhetoric, informal logic, pragma-dialectics, and other approaches to argumentation theory describe specific theoretical approaches to the study of argument. While there is some difference of opinion as to whether the focus should be on the arguments themselves, the process of their exchange, the procedure for making and evaluating arguments, or some combination of the three, as well as over what constitutes normatively good arguments or even what counts as an argument in the first place, the range of theories that fall under “argumentation” are motivated to understand what happens when differences of opinion come into conflict with one another. Rhetorical approaches initially focused on the role of argument in contingent situations where a rhetor appeals to an audience to change a behavior or belief, adopt a policy, or reason to consensus in a disagreement. Later developments critiqued the idea that all argument assumes an attempt at reasonable resolution obscures the value in dissensus and ignores that some arguments are advanced for the purpose of demonstrating support for a cause or political faction, to undermine an opponent’s position, or to frame the terms of a debate for one’s own advantage. While this may not be ethical or “productive” argumentation, rhetorical scholars consider such tactics important to understanding the rhetorical strategies of a speaker wishing to persuade an audience. Development of rhetorical argumentation saw: criticisms of science and academic inquiry as rhetorical; the importance of controversy in generating dissensus in challenging the norms of public deliberation; approaches to nondiscursive arguments such as visual, sound, spatial, and embodied argument; and the ways that postmodern, critical, feminist, and race-conscious theories’ challenges to epistemology and ontology refigured considerations of arguer/rhetor, text, persuasion, and audience. Four areas of development for the field are: carrying elements of argument into nondiscursive forms such as aesthetics and affect, digital media (including the role of technological infrastructure on argument), argument designed to evade consensus and reasonability, and further developments in cross-cultural perspectives in argument.
Two Millennia of Natural and Anthropogenic Changes of the Polish Baltic Coast
Authors: Osadczuk Andrzej , Borówka Ryszard Krzysztof , Dudzińska-Nowak Joanna
Published: April 2024

Changes of the coast are a net result of morphodynamic processes driven by changes in external conditions. Morphodynamics can be understood as feedback between shore topography and hydrodynamics, the latter including bedload transport, which alters the morphology of the coast.

The evolution of a marine coast can take various pathways depending on the time scale, shoreline length, geological setting, tectonic underpinnings, type and availability of sediments in the nearshore zone, sea level changes, intensity of waves and currents, and the influence of the adjacent land masses.

A spatio-temporal approach (processes of millennial, decadal, annual, and seasonal change) is particularly important for coastal areas built of erosion-prone, poorly consolidated glacial and postglacial deposits. This is the case of the southern Baltic Sea coast where the shore has been and continues to be impacted by geological processes, climatic factors, and anthropogenic activities. The processes involved are shaped primarily by external factors such as wind–wave action, currents, storm surges, precipitation, winter ice cover, and gravitational mass movements. The shoreline response to climate change depends on both the nature of the change and the coastal zone characteristics. Long-term climate changes result in sea level changes. The sea level rise resulting from global warming enhances coastal erosion, particularly where the shore is built by poorly consolidated rocks and deposits.

Coastal zones are usually very sensitive to all the external forces, therefore climate change will most likely be the strongest driver and will be the first to impinge on the coast, whereas the most distant changes in the oceans may produce effects delayed by decades or even centuries.
A History of Institutional Meteorology in the Philippines, 1865–1972
Authors: Alvarez Kerby C.
Published: April 2024

Meteorology, as a science that has colonial roots, was cleverly devised to advance and increase the capabilities of colonies to be more beneficial for the state and the public. Its character as a public science was a by-product of a profusion of necessities—commercial demands , disaster mitigation mechanism, and scholarly pursuits.

The Philippine experience in the development of meteorology is reflected in the institutional progress of the Observatorio Meteorológico de Manila (OMM) and the Philippine Weather Bureau (PWB). Originating as an atmospheric observation facility of the Jesuit professors at a burgeoning secondary school in Manila in 1865, it was absorbed and expanded by various state regimes in the Philippines for governmental programs and activities. The OMM’s and PWB’s scientific activities offered a form of public engagement and service under the pretext of various state projects instigated by the Spanish, American, and Japanese regimes, as well as the postwar-era Filipino governments. Essentially, these regimes used meteorological science to harness the benefits of modern weather forecasting to serve imperial programs in various fields—from trade, shipping, and agriculture to civilizational and war efforts. In congruence with the period of birth and formation of the Philippine nation, the institutional development of meteorological science accorded further intricacies to an already convoluted national narrative. The project of a state bureaucracy with proactive Filipino presence and participation coincided with the development of meteorology as a primordial agent of scientific development.
Civil-Military Relations in Asia: Between Democratization and Autocratization
Authors: Croissant Aurel
Published: April 2024

The civil-military relations of many Asian countries are subjectto important changes. In authoritarian, democratized, and autocratizing countries in South, Southeast and Northeast Asia, praetorianism—once prevalent in the region—has been in decline since the late 1980s, though it is still relevant in a number of countries. The erosion of praetorianism is mainly a consequence of the Asian-Pacific wave of democratization from the mid-1980s to the early 2000s. Democratic liberalization and transition had a positive impact on political control, military effectiveness and civilian supremacy in many transitional democracies. Since the late 2000s, however, the region has experienced a pronounced trend in autocratization or democratic backsliding. While endogenous modes of democratic weakening and termination , especially incumbent-driven executive aggrandizement,are dominant in post–Cold War Asia-Pacific, open-ended and promissory military coups are also very important. In many countries, soldiers either supported civilian efforts at democratic backsliding and autocratic consolidation. In other cases, they stood by while autocratization played out. Three key variables, combined, can account for the different roles of militaries in episodes of autocratization. The first one is the existence of a strong political organization which can be used by the incumbent executive to organize and mobilize political support and which can counterweight the political power of the military organization and its elites. The second factor concerns the existence of perceived threats to the organizational interests of a military. The third factor concerns strong praetorian legacies. The role that military officers and their organizations play in such episodes of democratic backsliding and autocratic hardening are important for the future trajectories of democracy, autocracy and civil-military relations. .
Interconnected Asian History and “Open” World Orders
Authors: Pardesi Manjeet S.
Published: April 2024

Historical Asia was an interconnected system of “open” world orders. This is a crucial theoretical takeaway for International Relations (IR) theory from historical Asia. In other words, there has never been one single order covering all of Asia or any of its subregions. There were multiple, unevenly overlapping orders in historical Asia. This perspective, which is rooted in the global historical approach to IR, challenges the Eurocentric notion of the “containerized” version of Asian regional worlds and world orders that only came into meaningful contact with each other because of the early modern European expansion. At the same time, this global and historical perspective also challenges all essentialist views of the East Asian past that characterize that part of the world as living in splendid Sinocentric isolation for thousands of years until China and East Asia were “opened up” by the West. Two crucial periods and processes of Asian history show the deep and transformative impact of the entanglements between South Asia and East Asia for Asian world orders: the Indic-Buddhist impact on China in the 1st millennium (and into the early centuries of the 2nd millennium), and the role of India in the so-called opening up of China by the West in the 19th and 20th centuries.

These processes provide two crucial insights. First, historical East Asia was not a China-centered system for 2,000 years. The Buddhist impact on China had a profound impact on both the Chinese worldview and the world order(s) that existed in (East) Asia. More specifically, the Buddhist interconnections across Asia demonstrate that the “international” (or the global) was larger than East Asia, and that China and its eastern neighbors knew that too. Second, and relatedly, pre-European East Asia was not a “closed” system. While the expansion of Europe may have “opened up” China and East Asia in the 19th century, this represented the “opening up” of that part of the world for the West, and not because East Asia lived in Sinocentric isolation from the rest of Asia. Furthermore, Indian resources played a fundamental role in that Sino-Western encounter, thereby demonstrating the interconnectedness of the world orders of South and East Asia. Asia and its subregions defy singular and all-encompassing orders, and Asian history points toward a plurality of open and overlapping orders. Notably, the emerging regional orders in Asia are also pointing toward such a configuration. Asia is not one, but Asia is not disconnected either.
Law Enforcement and Public Health
Authors: Bartkowiak-Théron Isabelle
Published: April 2024

The law enforcement and public health (LEPH) movement is an emerging area of practice and scholarship that aims to consolidate responses and research addressing a range of complex issues relating to areas of crime and deviance that are deeply rooted in public ill-health. Despite recent growth in political, professional, and academic interest, LEPH collaborations are not new. However, LEPH collaborative problem-solving and the associated delivery of support services to the communityremain difficult to implement, sustain, and evaluate. LEPH is a promising platform from which to view systemic change unfold, and its future appears to be increasingly important given the current calls for the abolishment or defunding of the police, with the accompanying recommendation to re-fund public health services. The opportunities for shared practices and language, as well as the debates around disciplinary remits (particularly how these remits necessarily overlap in practice), focus on how vulnerable people can benefit from the articulation or integration of joined support services in health and criminal justice. Collaborative endeavors in LEPH are not only desirable but also necessary to effectively address the significant overlapping issues presented to police and public health agencies. In a context of global public dissatisfaction with the public sector and the entrenchment of inequality and deprivation, LEPH efforts may offer the next best step to address the ways in which communities have been disadvantaged by inflexibly siloed areas of government.
Law Enforcement
Authors: Nurse Angus
Published: April 2024

Law enforcement can be considered in both the “narrow” sense of the policing and enforcement of law and a wider sense of the maintenance of order and reinforcement of societal rules and dominant ideologies. The maintenance of social order, protection of citizens, and prevention of and redress for harms against citizens, property, and nonhuman nature are heavily reliant on law enforcement. Effective criminal justice is arguably dependent on law enforcement as a dominant feature of criminal justice systems that adopt the notion of punishment as a tool of social control. Societal construction of harm and the definition of unacceptable behavior often manifests itself in laws, rules, and regulations that serve as both control mechanisms and expressions of societal norms. Where societal rules, in the form of laws and regulations, are broken, effective law enforcement is essential both to demonstrate societal disapproval of the “deviant” behavior and to provide for social sanction through appropriate redress and retributive justice mechanisms. Accordingly, law enforcement and policing are inextricably linked in the context of providing a means through which serious social harms can be dealt with.

But law enforcement goes far beyond policing, both conceptually and with respect to the mechanisms that are deployed to express society’s disapproval and ultimately secure redress. In a narrow sense, policing can be defined as that which the police (or recognized policing agencies) carry out. This often centers around enforcement of the criminal law and a detection, investigation, and apprehension model inextricably linked to ideas of retributive justice. By contrast, law enforcement is broader, involves civil and criminal justice agencies, and can incorporate administrative and regulatory law mechanisms and even alternative dispute resolution as a means of resolving disputes and ensuring appropriate redress. Thus, law enforcement can also extend beyond the confines of retributive criminal justice to incorporate restorative and rehabilitative justice mechanisms to encourage compliance.
Challenging the Nature—Culture Binary Through Urban Environmental Education
Authors: Hecht Marijke
Published: April 2024

Environmental conditions facing our local and global communities in the early 21st-century demand an urgent shift in education toward fostering healthy multispecies communities through stronger relationships between human and more-than-human beings. Environmental education, which has long pushed for interdisciplinary pedagogies that connect people and place, is well positioned to serve this aim. However, for the field to continue to develop and meet the challenges of the 21st century, it needs to address its roots as an outgrowth of science education where entrenched Eurocentric perspectives, such as human exceptionalism and the persistence of a nature–culture binary, are pervasive. These perspectives contribute significantly to the ongoing extraction of natural resources and degradation of habitats, which are tied to pressing environmental issues such as climate change and biodiversity loss. For environmental education to effectively impact learning in ways that lead toward a lasting protection of people and the planet, the field must be more critical of its roots and practices. Urban environmental education, which takes place where the majority of people live globally and in landscapes where humans and more-than-human beings are in close proximity, has the potential to challenge existing practices and continue to grow the field. Rethinking the nature–culture binary and the insistence on human exceptionalism are necessary for transformational improvements to the local landscape and planetary health. Two existing approaches that can support field-level change are critical place-based and Indigenous L/land-based pedagogies, which are drawn from different traditions but both support the transformation of relations between human and more-than-human beings. However, this requires an interrogation of if and/or how non-Indigenous scholars might take up Indigenous philosophies and pedagogies respectfully and ethically.
Feminist Student Movement in Japan 1945–1975
Authors: Vittinghoff Anna
Published: April 2024

Contrary to the common notion that depicts Japanese postwar student activism, and leftist activism more broadly, as being predominantly male, female activists within these movements played more than just supporting roles. Upon closer inspection of modern Japanese history, it becomes evident that female students were integral to and contributed in multiple ways to campus-based activism across Japan, ultimately pushing the liberatory discourse beyond schools, colleges, and universities into everyday life in the 1970s. During Japan’s nation-building project of the prewar period, sex-segregated education was a direct expression of the binary division of the site of activity between men and women. However, in the postwar period the introduction of coeducation and the subsequent student movement ultimately formed the hotbed for the women’s liberation movement of the early 1970s and the fundamental challenge it posed to the masculine bias of modern Japanese society. The experiences of female student activists across Japan were an important catalyst for feminist movements of the following decades because they not only highlighted the gendered discrimination of postwar Japanese society but also the necessity of an intersectional analysis of the systems of power at play.
History of Malawi
Authors: Power Joey
Published: April 2024

The boundaries of Malawi in the early 21st century are rooted in European imperial expansion of the late 19th century and the establishment of the British Central African Protectorate (1891–1907) and, later, the Nyasaland (1907–1964) Protectorate. In 1953, Nyasaland was merged with Northern and Southern Rhodesia to constitute the Central African Federation. African opposition to this led to violent disturbances in 1953 and 1959. A state of emergency was declared in March of 1959 and the Nyasaland African Congress (NAC), the largest African political party in the protectorate, was banned and many of its leaders detained. The NAC was replaced by the Malawi Congress Party (MCP) during the state of emergency. The state of emergency ended in June of 1960 and party leader Dr. Hastings Kamuzu Banda led the MCP to a territorial election victory in 1961. Vows to end the “stupid federation” were realized in 1963 with the secession of Nyasaland from it. Nyasaland became the independent state of Malawi in July 1964 under an MCP-majority government.

Within months of independence, the government and party unity were rocked by a “cabinet crisis” in which key ministers differed with Dr. Banda over foreign policy and domestic politics. Many key leaders resigned or were dismissed and thereafter left the country. This initiated a thirty-year period of autocratic rule that only ended in the early 1990s as a result of internal protest and international financial pressure. A 1993 referendum prompted a return to multiparty governance, and the 1994 elections led to the ouster of the MCP/Banda regime. Since then, Malawi has maintained a multiparty political structure, albeit with enduring challenges wrought by colonial and autocratic legacies.
Addis Ababa
Authors: Benti Getahun
Published: April 2024

Addis Ababa was founded as a military garrison in 1887 by the Amhara king and later Emperor Menilek II of Ethiopia. Its foundation was the result of a long historical process in which Christian Ethiopia (then known as Abyssinia) expanded southward, culminating in large-scale conquest and the creation of the largest empire in the region in the last decade of the 19th century. Located at the center of Menilek’s empire, Addis Ababa quickly grew into a vibrant political, economic, and administrative center. Its closeness to the resources of the conquered regions, the diplomatic recognition the country earned after the Battle of Adwa in 1896, and the city’s connection to the sea by railway in 1917 turned Addis Ababa into the largest city in the Horn of Africa. Addis Ababa brought people of different ethnic groups together, the Amhara as conquerors and the rest as subjects of that conquest. Having removed the Indigenous Oromo people, Menilek allotted their land to his fellow-Amhara followers, who created segregated settlements, which the Italians dismantled during their occupation, 1936–1941. The Italians conducted the first project of modern urban planning and erected new buildings, built new roads, created separate urban quarters, and changed the physical structure of the city. The city grew beyond its capacity, and subsequent postwar plans (1956, 1986, and 2014), which attempted to strictly control the city’s growth, were of little effect in this regard. Addis Ababa continued to be where all national activities and services—economic, social, administrative, health, educational—were concentrated, which led to inward migration. Several international organizations and agencies, including the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa, opened their headquarters in Addis Ababa, which enhanced the city’s status. As a result of all these historical developments, Ethiopians have mixed feelings about Addis Ababa; some see it as a symbol of victory and power, others as a symbol of subjugation and deprivation, while yet others see it as a symbol of modernity and as a melting pot.
Political History of Cameroon
Authors: Mbah Emmanuel M.
Published: April 2024

First visited by the Portuguese in the 1500s, Cameroon was eventually colonized first by the Germans from 1884 to 1916 and later by the French and British until independence in 1960 and 1961. The division of the former German colony between the French and the British after Germany’s defeat during World War I laid the foundation for a complex postindependence history of Cameroon. This complexity, chaperoned by two presidents, has witnessed a trajectory that starts with a federation and continues with Cameroon becoming a republic that was increasingly challenged by separatists of the former British section. External challenges from a war with Nigeria over Bakassi as well as conflicts with Boko Haram have only made the process of nation-building more complexed.
Tsitsi Dangarembga
Authors: Gulick Anne
Published: April 2024

Tsitsi Dangarembga is Zimbabwe’s first Black female novelist and is now one of the most well-known writers in the canons of Zimbabwean, anglophone African, and postcolonial women’s literature. Her 1988 Nervous Conditions has become one of the most widely read and widely taught novels in the African literary canon. Dangarembga’s published literary works include one play (She No Longer Weeps, 1987), three novels (Nervous Conditions, 1988; The Book of Not, 2006; and This Mournable Body, 2018), two short stories (“The Letter,” 1985; and “Jana Dives,” 2022), and one essay collection (Black and Female: Essays, 2022). Nervous Conditions won the 1989 Commonwealth Writers Prize (Africa Region); This Mournable Body was short-listed for the Booker Prize in 2020, and since then Dangarembga has won the 2021 German Publishers and Booksellers Association’s Peace Prize, the 2021 PEN Pinter Prize, and the 2022 Windham Campbell Literature Prize for fiction. Dangarembga is also one of Zimbabwe’s most prominent filmmakers. The owner of her own production company, Nyerai Films, she has written, directed, or produced over twenty films, including Everyone’s Child (1996), On the Border (2000), Hard Earth: Land Rights in Zimbabwe (2001), Kare Kare Zvako: Mother’s Day (2004), High Hopes (2010), and I Want a Wedding Dress (2010).

While all of Dangarembga’s published work casts a critical eye on postindependence Zimbabwean nationalism and government policy, she gained international visibility as a political activist in July 2020, when she was arrested for participating in a demonstration against the government’s persecution and arrest of journalist Hopewell Chin’ono. Dangarembga was convicted of inciting public violence in 2022; in 2023, that conviction was overturned. In 2021, she received the PEN International award for Freedom of Expression. In 2022–2023, she served as a Radcliffe Fellow at the Harvard Radcliffe Institute in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
European Slaves in North Africa and North African Slaves in Europe from the Early Modern Period to the 1820s
Authors: Oualdi M'hamed
Published: April 2024

Men and women were victims of slavery and captivity in the Mediterranean beginning in the 8th century, from the earliest clashes between Islam and Christianity. The enslavement of populations captured from ships or living in coastal regions expanded during the 16th century during battles between the Spanish Habsburg empire and the Ottoman Empire. It grew further over the course of the 17th century as a result of raids led by Muslim and Christian corsairs (privateers).

During the early modern period, both Maghrebi and European captives sent letters to their families and to their rulers, as well as petitions to local authorities who kept them enslaved. Europeans published accounts of captivity and redemption. Using these sources and diplomatic ones, historians have estimated that there were as many as 1.25 million Christian captives in the Maghreb between 1530 and 1780 and as many as 2.5 million total captives of various origins in Europe between 1500 and 1800.

On both coasts of the Mediterranean, Maghrebi and European captives organized themselves according to kinship, their specific origin, their belonging to a state, and their religion: Catholic missionary priests supervised their flocks, while enslaved Muslims relied on the literacy of judges (men with legal knowledge, known as cadis in Arabic) to help guide their community. Protestants and Jews also had their organizations for ransoming.

These communities of slaves and captives disappeared slowly from both sides of the Mediterranean. This process began in the late 17th century and went further in middle of the 18th century, when Christian and Muslim powers signed new peace treaties and liberated their respective captives. By the end of the 18th century, French revolutionary troops liberated the Maghrebi captives in the Italian lands that they were occupying. After Lord Edward Pellew, 1st Viscount Exmouth’s expedition in 1816, European powers liberated a large number of Europeans in the Maghreb.
Women in the Central African Republic
Authors: Fandos-Rius Juan
Published: April 2024

Throughout history, women in the Central African Republic (CAR) have never escaped from the control of men. For women the daily routine of life was for the most part highly demanding and full of worries and frustrations and alleviation of any of these was rarely a priority among any ethno-cultural communities in the country. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries the CAR was drawn into the world economy and traditional societies succumbed to the pressure of European colonization. The acculturation process to European-dominant norms also affected Central African women in all domains (work, social, familial, religious, economic, political, and concerning way of life.) Only in the 1960s were the first women able to take responsibility for their own lives, but real women’s equality and inclusion at all levels came much later, where it has done so at all. Since the mid-1990s recurrent political crises and social distress has resulted in a nearly complete reversal of the achievements made by prior generations of women in the CAR.
Women in Djibouti
Authors: Saïd Chiré Amina
Published: April 2024

Social changes in Djibouti—from prehistoric times, through the colonial era, and into independence—have repercussions on the status of women. Despite the willingness of Djiboutian authorities and the efforts they have made, the economic and political promotion of women in the Republic of Djibouti has produced mixed results. The cultural context of Djibouti, dominated by patriarchal values, explains the top-down nature of policies designed to promote women, their poor economic and political underpinnings, the profile of women called upon to show female political leadership, and the structural and situational constraints at the root of women’s limited political engagement. Knowledge of the general cultural and historical context is necessary to understand this history. A qualitative analysis of public policies designed to empower Djiboutian women in the 21st century measures the progress made and identify the obstacles encountered.
Freedom Suits in the Ibero-Atlantic World
Authors: Nogueira da Silva Cristina , Dias Paes Mariana
Published: April 2024

Throughout the period when slavery was a legally sanctioned institution in the Atlantic and Mediterranean worlds (c. 1500–c. 1888), Africans and their descendants in Europe, Africa, and the Americas approached courts and other institutions to claim their entire or partial freedom. Known as “freedom suits,” these lawsuits allow access to their conceptions of freedom and justice. Mobilizing a common normative framework, enslaved individuals advanced their own interpretations regarding norms that governed slavery and freedom. This common framework, however, acquired specific meanings in different regions, depending on the configuration of the relationship between slave and owner as well as on the agency of the enslaved themselves. Enslaved women and men advanced numerous arguments in courts, but their chances of success varied widely. In the long term, these lawsuits were fundamental in determining the directions that the institution of slavery took in the Ibero-Atlantic world.
Social Media Images as Digital Sources for West African Urban History
Authors: Yékú James
Published: April 2024

The web has become an important source for understanding the African past. As African cultural and historical records become digital, they specifically invite an intellectual scrutiny of the nature of digital sources of West African urban history. And with more historical scholarship in Africa responding to digitized and born-digital sources, there is an appreciation of how digital infrastructure shapes many aspects of historical study, including the historical development of cities and how urban subjects make sense of the complexities of their urban identities. In this article, social media–based digital projects that are focused on images and other regimes of visuality and that function as public humanities scholarship are recruited to make the case for photographic images from the participatory web as primary sources of African history. While not discountenancing the continued value of printed work and the traditional archive, West African urban history becomes focalized through digital platforms and methods of visual history that foreground African voices and their insights into the historical evolution of West African cites and their urban subjectivities.