This article examines writing about popular music which took place outside the academic sphere in the Czech nation after 1945. This is not just the usual magazine and book journalism. Owing to the censorship of all publishing entities by the state and the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia 1948–1989, alternative publishing platforms played a very important role in mediating the professional exchange of opinions and information on topics that were not preferred or even forbidden elsewhere. These included periodicals of various social organisations and interest institutions as well as privately produced and distributed printed matter and manuscripts. The article compares how these activities have evolved over time in the context of political change and reflects on the functions they have fulfilled in society.

This article examines Kazantzakis’ travel writing in his 1926 newspaper series on ‘the Land of Palestine’, which introduces Zionism, and in his posthumously published chapter ‘Jerusalem’ in Journeying (1961). Revisiting the relation between the two, I argue that each is to be seen as a distinct work. While free from the antisemitic sentiment of Venizelist circles, the Greek author's reportage has three important silences – and these are matched by a sweeping lack of scholarly interest in this material. This article hopes to generate renewed interest so that Kazantzakis’ 1926 reportage may help construe a more complex reception of Zionism in interwar Greece.

Let E be an elliptic curve defined over $\mathbb {Q}$ with good ordinary reduction at a prime $p\geq 5$ and let F be an imaginary quadratic field. Under appropriate assumptions, we show that the Pontryagin dual of the fine Mordell–Weil group of E over the $\mathbb {Z}_{p}^2$-extension of F is pseudo-null as a module over the Iwasawa algebra of the group $\mathbb {Z}_{p}^2$.

This paper revisits the usual narrative of Dāʾūd al-Qayṣarī's life, bringing to light evidence of his stay in Ilkhanid Tabriz. Recent studies mention a connection with Ilkhanid Iran, where he would have met his master ʿAbd al-Razzāq al-Qāshānī, but present no substantiated details as to when and where this happened and how these events fit in his life. A document held at the Bodleian, corroborated by evidence from other manuscripts, shows that the common narrative of Qayṣarī's life (in which links with Iran are almost entirely absent) is untenable, and presents evidence of Qayṣarī's presence in Ilkhanid Tabriz. These new elements invite us to revise our perception of Qayṣarī's oeuvre, in particular the idea that it was written under the auspices of the nascent Ottoman power, and further investigate the intellectual scene in Tabriz in the last years of the reign of Abu Saʿīd and of his vizier Ghiyāth al-Dīn.

The multi-robot path planning problem is an NP-hard problem. The coati optimization algorithm (COA) is a novel metaheuristic algorithm and has been successfully applied in many fields. To solve multi-robot path planning optimization problems, we embed two differential evolution (DE) strategies into COA, a self-adaptive differential evolution-based coati optimization algorithm (SDECOA) is proposed. Among these strategies, the proposed algorithm adaptively selects more suitable strategies for different problems, effectively balancing global and local search capabilities. To validate the algorithm’s effectiveness, we tested it on CEC2020 benchmark functions and 48 CEC2020 real-world constrained optimization problems. In the latter’s experiments, the algorithm proposed in this paper achieved the best overall results compared to the top five algorithms that won in the CEC2020 competition. Finally, we applied SDECOA to optimization multi-robot online path planning problem. Facing extreme environments with multiple static and dynamic obstacles of varying sizes, the SDECOA algorithm consistently outperformed some classical and state-of-the-art algorithms. Compared to DE and COA, the proposed algorithm achieved an average improvement of 46% and 50%, respectively. Through extensive experimental testing, it was confirmed that our proposed algorithm is highly competitive. The source code of the algorithm is accessible at: https://ww2.mathworks.cn/matlabcentral/fileexchange/164876-HDECOA.

We incorporate the liquidity trap and private behavioral preferences into a New Keynesian dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model to analyze fiscal multipliers. The results indicate that the influence of the liquidity trap on fiscal policy is driven by a combination of the interest rate transmission effect and the precautionary savings effect, showing a notable amplification of multipliers based on estimates from U.S. data. Furthermore, we examine two types of private behavioral preferences: habit formation and investor confidence. Habit formation significantly boosts short-term government spending multipliers while exhibiting diverse impacts on different types of taxation. Compared to superficial habits, deep habits result in flatter multiplier curves. Investor confidence, being highly sensitive to output fluctuations, enhances both spending and tax multipliers over the medium to long term. Additionally, the investor confidence channel slightly amplifies the expansionary effect of the liquidity trap on multipliers, contrasting with the impact of habit formation.

This article explores Auto-Tune's importance to the production, perception and reception of trap music, a sub-genre of hip hop. Central to this exploration is the observation that Auto-Tuned trap vocals are readily audible as such because the software's pitch correction function is applied unnaturally quickly to the vocal audio signal, a feature herein termed ‘zero-onset Auto-Tune’. First, I posit that although Auto-Tune is ostensibly a pitch-correction device, its impact on vocal timbre is not well documented or understood. Second, I argue that Auto-Tune's recent importance as a creative tool in trap recasts it as an instrument. Third, I suggest that understanding Auto-Tune's repurposing as an instrument begets its situation in a lineage of technologies repurposed, adapted and embraced by the hip-hop community, including the turntable, digital sampler, and analogue mixer. And fourth, I propose that this repurposing surfaces in Auto-Tune's ability to facilitate emotiveness in trap vocals.

Prior studies report a decline in male twin live births during economically stressful periods, presumably owing to higher selection in utero against frail male gestations, yet no study has examined the natural corollary: whether provision of economic support increases rates of male twin births. We examined whether male twin live births increase following income gains from the Alaska Permanent Fund Dividend (PFD)—the longest running unconditional cash transfer program in the US. We obtained the monthly volume of male (and female) twin and singleton live births, from January 1980 to December 2019, from Alaska’s Department of Health. Data on PFD timing and payment amounts came from Alaska’s Department of Revenue. We used time-series analyses to gauge whether the odds of male twin live births increase within 2−6 months following PFD receipt, controlling for autocorrelation. Results suggest that for every $1000 increase in PFD payments, the odds of male twin live births increase by 0.002 (p < .05) three months following PFD disbursement. This corresponds with 50 additional (individual) male twin live births statistically attributable to the cumulative PFD amount disbursed over our study period. Income gains through the PFD may correspond with reduced male-specific selection in utero in Alaska.

A transverse ledge climbing robot inspired by athletic locomotion is a customized robot aiming to travel through horizontal ledges in vertical walls. Due to the safety issue and complex configurations in graspable ledges such as horizontal, inclined ledges, and gaps between ledges, existing well-known vision-based navigation methods suffering from occlusion problems may not be applicable to this special kind of application. This study develops a force feedback-based motion planning strategy for the robot to explore and make feasible grasping actions as it continuously travels through reachable ledges. A contact force detection algorithm developed using a momentum observer approach is implemented to estimate the contact force between the robot’s exploring hand and the ledge. Then, to minimize the detection errors due to dynamic model uncertainties and noises, a time-varying threshold is integrated. When the estimated contact force exceeds the threshold value, the robot control system feeds the estimated force into the admittance controller to revise the joint motion trajectories for a smooth transition. To handle the scenario of gaps between ledges, several ledge-searching algorithms are developed to allow the robot to grasp the next target ledge and safely overcome the gap transition. The effectiveness of the proposed motion planning and searching strategy has been justified by simulation, where the four-link transverse climbing robot successfully navigates through a set of obstacle scenarios modeled to approximate the actual environment. The performance of the developed grasping ledge searching methods for various obstacle characteristics has been evaluated.

This article draws on documentary texts from multilingual archives of early Islamic Central Asia to illustrate connections between the Arabic and Middle Iranian scribal world. Here, I contend that some lesser-known evidence from Sogdia contributes new elements to current debates on the contact between Arabic and Middle Iranian scribal traditions and provides a measure of “intensity” of Arab rule in the region more generally. In particular, ostraca from various Transoxanian administrative centers provide documentary confirmation that a class of biliterate Arabic-Sogdian scribes was active in the local bureaucracy as early as the mid-8th century. When viewed in dialogue with archives from coeval Iran and Iraq, the Transoxanian evidence helps lead to a more nuanced understanding of the so-called “Pahlavi diplomatic substrate” model.

We have developed an interactive system comprising a soft wearable robot hand and a wireless task board, facilitating the interaction between the hand and regular daily objects for task-oriented training in stroke rehabilitation. A ring-reinforced soft actuator (RSA) to accommodate different hand sizes and enable flexion and extension movements was introduced in this paper. Individually controlled finger actuators assist stroke patients during various grasping tasks. A wireless task board was developed to support the training, allowing for the placement of training objects and seamless interaction with the soft robotic hand. Evaluation with seven stroke subjects shows significant improvements in upper limb functions (FMA), hand-motor abilities (ARAT, BBT), and maximum grip strengths after 20 sessions of this task-oriented training. These improvements were observed to persist for at least 3 months post-training. The results demonstrate its potential to enhance stroke rehabilitation and promote hand-motor recovery. This lightweight, user-friendly interactive system facilitates frequent hand practice and easily integrates into regular rehabilitation therapy routines.