bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Information propagation in Gaussian processes on multilayer networks
Authors: Nicoletti Giorgio , Busiello Daniel Maria 
Published: September 2024

Abstract
Complex systems with multiple processes evolving on different temporal scales are naturally described by multilayer networks, where each layer represents a different timescale. In this work, we show how the multilayer structure shapes the generation and propagation of information between layers. We derive a general decomposition of the multilayer probability for continuous stochastic processes described by Fokker–Planck operators. In particular, we focus on Gaussian processes, for which this solution can be obtained analytically. By explicitly computing the mutual information between the layers, we derive the fundamental principles that govern how information is propagated by the topology of the multilayer network. In particular, we unravel how edges between nodes in different layers affect their functional couplings. We find that interactions from fast to slow layers alone do not generate information, leaving the layers statistically independent even if they affect their dynamical evolution. On the other hand, interactions from slow to fast nodes lead to non-zero mutual information, which can then be propagated along specific paths of interactions between layers. We employ our results to study the interplay between information and stability, identifying the critical layers that drive information when pushed to the edge of stability. Our work generalizes previous results obtained in the context of discrete stochastic processes, allowing us to understand how the multilayer nature of complex systems affects their functional structure.
Deep learning phase retrieval in x-ray single-particle imaging for biological macromolecules
Authors: Bellisario Alfredo , Ekeberg Tomas 
Published: September 2024

Abstract
Phase retrieval is an important optimization problem that occurs, for example, in the analysis of coherent diffraction patterns from isolated proteins. All iterative algorithms employed for phase retrieval in this context require some a priori knowledge of the object, usually in the form of a support that describes the extent of the particle. Phase retrieval is a time-consuming task that can often fail, particularly if the support is too loose or of bad quality. This paper presents a neural network that can produce low-resolution estimates of the phased object in a fraction of the time it takes for a full phase retrieval. It can also successfully be used as support for further analysis. Our network is trained on simulated data from biological macromolecules and is thus tailored to the type of data seen in a typical CDI experiment. Other approaches to support finding require very accurate data without missing regions or the full phase-retrieval algorithm to be run for a long time. Our network could speed up offline analysis and provide real-time feedback during data collection.
Stable attractors for neural networks classification via ordinary differential equations (SA-nODE)
Authors: Marino Raffaele , Buffoni Lorenzo , Chicchi Lorenzo , Giambagli Lorenzo , Fanelli Duccio 
Published: September 2024

Abstract
A novel approach for supervised classification is presented which sits at the intersection of machine learning and dynamical systems theory. At variance with other methodologies that employ ordinary differential equations for classification purposes, the untrained model is a priori constructed to accommodate for a set of pre-assigned stationary stable attractors. Classifying amounts to steer the dynamics towards one of the planted attractors, depending on the specificity of the processed item supplied as an input. Asymptotically the system will hence converge on a specific point of the explored multi-dimensional space, flagging the category of the object to be eventually classified. Working in this context, the inherent ability to perform classification, as acquired ex post by the trained model, is ultimately reflected in the shaped basin of attractions associated to each of the target stable attractors. The performance of the proposed method is here challenged against simple toy models crafted for the purpose, as well as by resorting to well established reference standards. More precisely, we achieved an accuracy of

98.06
%

on the MNIST test set and 88.21% on the Fashion MNIST test set. Although this method does not reach the performance of state-of-the-art deep learning algorithms, it illustrates that continuous dynamical systems with closed analytical interaction terms can serve as high-performance classifiers.
Differentiated Integration in EU Foreign, Security, and Defence Policy
Authors: Mahnič Petra , de Elera Álvaro 
Published: September 2024

Abstract
The primary objective of the Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) (furthering convergence of Member States’ foreign policy preferences to project the united position of the European Union (EU) vis-à-vis third actors) makes this policy field not particularly suited for differentiation. This unsuitability is reinforced by the Treaty-based constraints linked to the use of differentiation mechanisms, as well as by possible jurisprudential limitations in the application of constructive abstention. The widespread use of political (non-legal) instruments—approved by consensus, and therefore not open to differentiation—to define and implement Union policy in the field further reduces the scope for differentiation. Differentiated integration proper can be observed only in the subfield of the Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP), which allows for presenting outside actors with a unified EU position while taking account of different capabilities of and contributions by the Member States. More differentiation could be introduced in CFSP, either by using more frequently legal acts instead of political acts, or by applying Treaty-based procedures to the approval of political acts. This would allow for doing away with consensus, and relying more on unanimity, coupled with constructive abstention, implying a change in the long-standing institutional culture linked to CFSP. Paradoxically perhaps for the politically sensitive area of foreign policy, Treaty-based procedures serve differentiation, and hence flexibility, better than the traditional political process.
Of Bits and Pieces of EU Law in Territories: The Many Shades of European Integration
Authors: Laulhé Shaelou Stéphanie , Kalaitzaki Katerina 
Published: September 2024

Abstract
This chapter argues that the concept of EU membership and the principle of adherence to the EU acquis have taken on renewed dimensions during the last decades of the ‘ever-closer Union’. Despite the more ‘traditional’ opt-outs from particular areas or policies, specific territories internal or external to the Union exceptionally remain de facto and/or de jure integrated in various EU policies. The existing multi-shaded integration of Member State territories is a testimony that EU membership may involve greater complexity for some Member States than others, while new challenges may arise in the context of the re(definition) of EU membership, possible withdrawals, or future enlargements, further blurring the lines of European integration in multiple directions. In this context, the chapter provides a comparative analysis of specific parts and/or territories of Member States currently subject to renewed interest in their (non-)integration processes, from exceptional/permanent derogations to temporary regimes and vice versa. In order to shed some light on the whereabouts of these territories in the path of European integration currently unfolding, the chapter discusses their complex relationships with EU law, identifying common grounds and differences, as well as the post-Brexit implications on these relationships. In Europe, these territories include Greenland and, on the Island of Cyprus, the areas beyond the effective control of the government of the Republic of Cyprus (RoC), as well as the Sovereign Base Areas (SBAs), in addition to parts of the UK territory currently subject to further variations in European integration, namely Northern Ireland (NI) and Gibraltar.
Permanent Derogations and Transitional Arrangements for New Member States: Accession Condictiones Sine Quibus Non
Authors: Łazowski Adam 
Published: September 2024

Abstract
Accession to the European Union (EU) is a complex and multifaced exercise requiring immeasurable amounts of preparatory work. After all, the EU is nothing akin to a golf club where participation merely requires payment of fees and some rudimentary knowledge of the game. By joining the EU, newcomers become a part of the unique legal system, the customs union, and the internal market it provides for. Not surprisingly, accession to the EU brings benefits but also comes with inherent challenges and ever-growing levels of differentiation. With this in mind it is easy to understand why, from the first enlargement onwards, consecutive waves of new accessions have been based on a plethora of transitional arrangements. This has included, for instance, transition periods during which certain pieces of EU acquis do not apply in or to the entrants. Such temporary regimes, while serving their purpose, have also created additional layers of diversity, and have contributed to the shaping of an EU of different speeds. This chapter offers a comprehensive insight into different types of temporal mechanisms envisaged in all seven accession treaties concluded thus far.
Caught in the Balance: Consequences of Associated Membership over Time
Authors: Kühn Nadja S , Trondal Jarle 
Published: September 2024

Abstract
Debates on different forms and types of association have been a persistent theme within Europe. This has accelerated particularly in the aftermath of the 2016 Brexit referendum. This study contributes to the debate on external differentiated integration by investigating the case of Norway to highlight the implications of associated membership in an extreme case of high integration without formal membership of the EU. Theoretically, the chapter establishes that domestic-level organizational factors may contribute to enhancing cooperation and conflict across national borders. Drawing on a comprehensive longitudinal dataset consisting of a large-N questionnaire study among Norwegian government officials at three points in time, the study finds that the EU contributes to a self-reinforcing administrative bias and that associated EU membership tends to reinforce a politico-administrative gap that expands over time.
External Differentiated Integration: The Modalities of Turkey’s Opting into the European Union
Authors: Müftüler-Baç Meltem 
Published: September 2024

Abstract
Turkey’s future with the European Union (EU) has never looked so uncertain. Turkey’s relations with the EU are at a stalemate, with accession negotiations effectively frozen. Yet, Turkey and the EU have a high degree of functional cooperation, whereby Turkey complies with the EU acquis. Turkey has opted into the EU acquis in multiple policy areas, where its voluntary compliance prior to, or as an alternative to, accession, could be conceptualized as external differentiated integration. Turkey adjusts itself to the EU rules on foreign policy, Customs Union, the Schengen regime, and development policy, to name just a few. This chapter looks at the varying degrees of Turkish compliance with the EU acquis, and proposes that Turkey will remain an integral part of European integration.
Aligning Election Law
Authors: Stephanopoulos Nicholas O 
Published: September 2024

Abstract
This book argues that alignment between governmental outputs and popular preferences should be a tenet of the law of democracy. Alignment is a core democratic value. Yet it isn’t appreciated by election law scholarship, much of which focuses on other democratic goals. Nor do the courts consider alignment when deciding election law cases. In fact, the Roberts Court has undermined alignment at almost every turn. And in part because of these rulings, modern American politics is marred by pervasive misalignment. If alignment were recognized as a legal and political principle, it could function as a sword or as a shield. As a sword, alignment would be wielded offensively to strike down misaligning electoral practices (or not to enact them in the first place). As a shield, alignment would be deployed defensively to justify aligning electoral practices (in litigation or in public discourse). The federal courts could be a valuable ally in the struggle for alignment. Unfortunately, the Roberts Court has been a foe rather than a friend, declining to invalidate many misaligning policies and nullifying several aligning ones. Fortunately, federal litigation isn’t the only route to a more aligned political system. Congress could pass a range of potent aligning laws. So could state legislatures. State courts are also more promising venues, relative to their federal counterparts, because they adhere to a democracy principle unfamiliar to federal law. Last but not least, the people themselves could pursue alignment on their own, through either direct democracy or wholly private activity.
The Law of Alignment
Authors: Stephanopoulos Nicholas O 
Published: September 2024

Abstract
This chapter argues that the usual modes of interpretation permit the judicial recognition of alignment as a constitutional value. The constitutional text repeatedly (albeit implicitly) refers to alignment. Prominent drafters like Madison and Bingham believed that the document they shaped embraced alignment. Alignment arises over and over in the Supreme Court’s case law, especially in the decisions of the Warren Court. And if anything, all these arguments for alignment’s constitutionalization are stronger at the state level. To implement doctrinally alignment as a shield, courts would hardly have to lift a finger. They would just have to acknowledge alignment as a valid interest if and when a jurisdiction asserted it. On the other hand, a new legal theory would be necessary for alignment to work as a sword. That theory should incorporate both the empirically demonstrable effects of challenged policies and the extent to which the policies serve other legitimate goals.
Redistricting
Authors: Stephanopoulos Nicholas O 
Published: September 2024

Abstract
This chapter applies the alignment framework to redistricting. In a system of single-member districts, there may be no electoral policy with as much aligning—and misaligning—potential as the configuration of district boundaries. District maps determine how votes are aggregated and then converted into legislative seats. If district maps produce jurisdiction-wide partisan misalignment, that distortion extends to representation and policy. District maps also generally don’t need to produce jurisdiction-wide partisan misalignment. In most cases, the application of traditional criteria in a given political geographic context is compatible with unbiased plans. Accordingly, for courts concerned about alignment, there are few targets riper than highly skewed maps. Courts, however, aren’t the only relevant actors here. Misalignment from redistricting can also be curbed by the adoption of independent commissions and the use of criteria barring lines from being drawn with partisan intent and/or partisan effect. And vote aggregation isn’t the only mechanism through which redistricting affects alignment. When individual districts are designed pursuant to traditional criteria, voters know more about, and can mobilize more easily against, their legislators, who are thus induced to provide more congruent representation. For judicial and nonjudicial actors alike, then, the aligning ideal is an unbiased plan composed of districts conforming to traditional criteria.
The Voting Rights Act
Authors: Stephanopoulos Nicholas O 
Published: September 2024

Abstract
This chapter considers the relationship between alignment and the Voting Rights Act (VRA). The VRA hopes to realize several values: minority participation, minority representation, and, to a lesser extent, governmental responsiveness to minority concerns. These are deeply resonant values, but they’re also plainly distinct from alignment. This distinctness makes it possible for the pursuit of the VRA’s goals to facilitate, to be irrelevant to, or to impede the quest for alignment. A common claim is that the VRA’s aim of greater minority representation does conflict with closer alignment. But this “perverse effects” thesis is refuted both by historical data about the district plans that states did enact and by computer simulations of the maps they could have drawn. The thesis also errs by ignoring the partisanship of the redistricting authority and the varying behavior of White voters. As for the VRA’s objective of greater minority participation, scholars haven’t previously tied it to alignment and ex ante reasoning suggests several possible relationships. Of these potential links, one is most supported by the available empirical evidence: the happy story where minority members’ more active political involvement isn’t misaligning, or neutral in its aligning impact, but rather affirmatively aligning.
Campaign Finance
Authors: Stephanopoulos Nicholas O 
Published: September 2024

Abstract
This chapter applies the alignment framework to campaign finance. This is the only area examined by this book where partisan alignment is an inapt aim. This is primarily because of intense disagreement about the right hypothetical benchmark with which to compare actual election outcomes, and secondarily because of Supreme Court decisions deeming partisan alignment an illegitimate state interest in this context. The Court has also rejected several other rationales for campaign finance regulation: preventing the distortion of election outcomes, avoiding undue influence corruption, and pursuing any kind of equality. However, the promotion of representational or policy alignment is conceptually distinct from all these precluded interests. At most, some of these interests may be aligning mechanisms, not alignment itself. Turning from theory to practice, the essential fact is that, in modern American politics, some sources of campaign funding tend to worsen, while others tend to improve, representational and policy alignment. Individuals above all, as well as ideological organizations and labor unions, are usually misaligning campaign funders. On the other hand, the resources of business groups and political parties exert an aligning influence for the most part. This typology of campaign funders determines which campaign finance laws are aligning—and so could be justified on this basis in legal or political debates—and which ones aren’t. Measures that restrict ideologically extreme individual funders, make the individual donor pool more representative of the entire electorate, or subsidize comparatively centrist parties, lead to better alignment. But policies that cap the contributions of relatively moderate political action committees or parties, or that link public financing to the choices of polarized individual donors, are misaligning.
Nonelectoral Domains
Authors: Stephanopoulos Nicholas O 
Published: September 2024

Abstract
This exploratory chapter considers how the alignment framework might be extended outside election law. There’s nothing that limits the applicability of alignment to the electoral context. The constitutional text, the Framers’ original intent, Supreme Court precedent, state constitutional law—all these forms of reasoning support the recognition of alignment as a compelling principle across all of public law. However, while a large literature probes the aligning implications of electoral regulations, much less work addresses the impact of nonelectoral rules on alignment. From this small set of studies, a number of policies stand out as potentially aligning: Changes to the legislative process that empower the chamber majority (and disempower the majority party). Other tweaks to the structure of government like increasing legislative professionalism, eliminating term limits, dividing executive authority, and allowing direct democracy. Actions that raise the intensity and quality of media coverage, thereby better informing voters about issues, candidates, and parties. Laws that boost union membership and so create a counterweight to the political power of corporations and wealthy individuals. And redistribution from these moneyed interests to people at the bottom and middle of the income distribution, which is simultaneously depolarizing and aligning. To be clear, this is just a partial list. There could be many more steps (not yet confirmed by empirical analysis) the government could take to bolster alignment. But even this incomplete tally is enough to show that alignment can be furthered meaningfully through nonelectoral means.
Conclusion
Authors: Stephanopoulos Nicholas O 
Published: September 2024

Abstract
The conclusion briefly revisits each of the book’s twelve chapters and applies their central points to a new case study: Wisconsin’s political system. A state like Wisconsin is a better case study than the national political system of the United States, some of whose misalignment is the result of hardwired features beyond the book’s scope. Maybe the most interesting lesson from Wisconsin is that even while the Supreme Court actively worsens misalignment in the state and Congress does little to help, several state actors—especially the governor and the state supreme court—are taking substantial aligning steps.
Praise, Fictions, and Beyond
Authors: Galligan D J 
Published: September 2024

Abstract
Chapter II praises Hume’s understanding of constitutional order, to which opinion is the foundation. Distinction is made between ideas implicit in social relations and discourse, and normative ideals or prescriptions. Ideas of Hobbes, Locke, and Hume are contrasted, the concepts of fictions and abstractions are introduced, consent has a leading role, followed by concepts of representation, sovereignty, and the people. The nature and social function of fictions and abstractions are explained, the pervasiveness examined in law and in life, and in constitutional discourse. The chapter concludes with an introduction to the process of establishing a constitutional order and the expectations and participation of the people in it.
The People Ruling Themselves: I
Authors: Galligan D J 
Published: September 2024

Abstract
Chapter XII begins with a model of self-rule and the values of self-rule. Relationship between liberty and self-rule; centrality of liberty, valued as a quality of personhood and as an instrument in promoting both individual and collective well-being. This chapter assesses liberty in relation to other social goods, and examines the viability of the people ruling themselves. The Italian city-states from the twelfth and fifteenth centuries show the aspirations and ambiguities, complexities and dangers of attempts at self-rule. Despite their eventual decline, the experience of the city-states had an influence on the formation of later constitutional discourse. The 1776 Constitution of Pennsylvania provides a case study of self-rule, the criticisms, and the early collapse.
The People Ruling Themselves: II
Authors: Galligan D J 
Published: September 2024

Abstract
Chapter XIII builds on the model of self-rule: uncovers the social foundations; examines the practical processes of self-rule, liberty at the base; liberty of both intrinsic and instrumental within social interactions. The value is assessed of citizens controlling their affairs rather than being governed by a few. It shows the complexities of collective decision-making and the limitations. The instabilities of self-rule are described. The concept of sociability is introduced to understand the elements of effective governance and self-rule, emphasising cooperation, mutual respect, and common good pursuit. The common assumption of citizenship is questioned, the case made for engagement as both feasible and beneficial for achieving true self-rule.