In October 2023, the US withdrew its proposals on cross-border data flows at the World Trade Organization (WTO), reversing its long-held position on binding commitments against data localization. Concurrently, it has orchestrated the creation of several informal data governance initiatives, including the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework for Prosperity, which are all characterized by fluid commitments on data flows. This article demonstrates that the US’ turn toward informal data governance is influenced considerably by geoeconomic statecraft. Confronted with the prospect of China leveraging global data flows to undermine American interests, both in terms of national security and economic competitiveness, the US executive has sought to restrict outbound data flows. In parallel, it has developed informal, like-minded coalitions to promote norms around “trusted data flows,” that similarly restrict data collection by Chinese actors globally. Having withdrawn from formal WTO discussions on cross-border data, its informal initiatives give the US ample regulatory space to implement coercive domestic measures against Chinese actors. Informal initiatives simultaneously allow the US to develop norm-setting coalitions with states that may otherwise be wary of binding commitments on restrictive data flows. Drawing on an analysis of seven international data governance initiatives, alongside US domestic policies and official statements, we trace the US’ turn toward informality to its geoeconomic considerations. We contribute to theoretical debates on the evolution and shift in geoeconomic statecraft, particularly the shift away from formal sanctions-based regimes to informal agreements, as well as to the empirical literature on international cross-border data governance.
Abstract South Africa joined BRICS with the aim of benefiting from enhanced trade with the grouping, which encompasses four of the largest economies in the world. This article undertook an empirical review to determine an answer to the following research question (RQ): whether South Africa’s exports to the original four BRIC/BRICs member countries had grown and diversified following its membership over the first fourteen-year timeframe (2010–2024)? Across these, decline was identified in the findings, demonstrating that South Africa’s participation in the group has performed below its potential and stated rationale. The article notes a growing trade deficit and lack of industrialised imports from South Africa, especially when compared with the EU and the US. This is shown to be mainly due to South Africa’s asymmetrical openness towards the BRICs, including having the single-lowest tariff rates towards the other four members at 4.9 to 5.3%, while the next lowest BRICs’ general tariff is at 10.3%. Against these findings, the article makes the case for a BRICS Plus treaty in order to eliminate any tariff and non-tariff barriers, as well as formulate realistic expectations and obligations for internal cohesion and external engagement based on credible commitment.
Political institutions and public administration - Asia (Asian studies only), Economic growth, development, planning
Pedro H. Azevedo de Amorim, Satoshi Kura, Philip Saville
We give a denotational account of logical relations for call-by-push-value (CBPV) in the fibrational style of Hermida, Jacobs, Katsumata and others. Fibrations -- which axiomatise the usual notion of sets-with-relations -- provide a clean framework for constructing new, logical relations-style, models. Such models can then be used to study properties such as effect simulation. Extending this picture to CBPV is challenging: the models incorporate both adjunctions and enrichment, making the appropriate notion of fibration unclear. We handle this using 2-category theory. We identify an appropriate 2-category, and define CBPV fibrations to be fibrations internal to this 2-category which strictly preserve the CBPV semantics. Next, we develop the theory so it parallels the classical setting. We give versions of the codomain and subobject fibrations, and show that new models can be constructed from old ones by pullback. The resulting framework enables the construction of new, logical relations-style, models for CBPV. Finally, we demonstrate the utility of our approach with particular examples. These include a generalisation of Katsumata's $\top\top$-lifting to CBPV models, an effect simulation result, and a relative full completeness result for CBPV without sum types.
Samantha Chapin, Kenneth Stewart, Roxana Leontie
et al.
The US Naval Research Laboratory's (NRL's) Autonomous Planning In-space Assembly Reinforcement-learning free-flYer (APIARY) experiment pioneers the use of reinforcement learning (RL) for control of free-flying robots in the zero-gravity (zero-G) environment of space. On Tuesday, May 27th 2025 the APIARY team conducted the first ever, to our knowledge, RL control of a free-flyer in space using the NASA Astrobee robot on-board the International Space Station (ISS). A robust 6-degrees of freedom (DOF) control policy was trained using an actor-critic Proximal Policy Optimization (PPO) network within the NVIDIA Isaac Lab simulation environment, randomizing over goal poses and mass distributions to enhance robustness. This paper details the simulation testing, ground testing, and flight validation of this experiment. This on-orbit demonstration validates the transformative potential of RL for improving robotic autonomy, enabling rapid development and deployment (in minutes to hours) of tailored behaviors for space exploration, logistics, and real-time mission needs.
Jonghyeon Choi, Yeonjun Choi, Hyun-chul Kim
et al.
This paper systematically examines nation-level biases exhibited by Large Language Models (LLMs) within the domain of International Relations (IR). Leveraging historical records from the United Nations Security Council (UNSC), we developed a bias evaluation framework comprising three distinct tests to explore nation-level bias in various LLMs, with a particular focus on the five permanent members of the UNSC. Experimental results show that, even with the general bias patterns across models (e.g., favorable biases toward the western nations, and unfavorable biases toward Russia), these still vary based on the LLM. Notably, even within the same LLM, the direction and magnitude of bias for a nation change depending on the evaluation context. This observation suggests that LLM biases are fundamentally multidimensional, varying across models and tasks. We also observe that models with stronger reasoning abilities show reduced bias and better performance. Building on this finding, we introduce a debiasing framework that improves LLMs' factual reasoning combining Retrieval-Augmented Generation with Reflexion-based self-reflection techniques. Experiments show it effectively reduces nation-level bias, and improves performance, particularly in GPT-4o-mini and LLama-3.3-70B. Our findings emphasize the need to assess nation-level bias alongside performance when applying LLMs in the IR domain.
Effective information gathering and knowledge codification are pivotal for developing recommendation systems that promote circular economy practices. One promising approach involves the creation of a centralized knowledge repository cataloguing historical waste-to-resource transactions, which subsequently enables the generation of recommendations based on past successes. However, a significant barrier to constructing such a knowledge repository lies in the absence of a universally standardized framework for representing business activities across disparate geographical regions. To address this challenge, this paper leverages Large Language Models (LLMs) to classify textual data describing economic activities into the International Standard Industrial Classification (ISIC), a globally recognized economic activity classification framework. This approach enables any economic activity descriptions provided by businesses worldwide to be categorized into the unified ISIC standard, facilitating the creation of a centralized knowledge repository. Our approach achieves a 95% accuracy rate on a 182-label test dataset with fine-tuned GPT-2 model. This research contributes to the global endeavour of fostering sustainable circular economy practices by providing a standardized foundation for knowledge codification and recommendation systems deployable across regions.
The many initiatives on trustworthy AI result in a confusing and multipolar landscape that organizations operating within the fluid and complex international value chains must navigate in pursuing trustworthy AI. The EU's AI Act will now shift the focus of such organizations toward conformance with the technical requirements for regulatory compliance, for which the Act relies on Harmonized Standards. Though a high-level mapping to the Act's requirements will be part of such harmonization, determining the degree to which standards conformity delivers regulatory compliance with the AI Act remains a complex challenge. Variance and gaps in the definitions of concepts and how they are used in requirements between the Act and harmonized standards may impact the consistency of compliance claims across organizations, sectors, and applications. This may present regulatory uncertainty, especially for SMEs and public sector bodies relying on standards conformance rather than proprietary equivalents for developing and deploying compliant high-risk AI systems. To address this challenge, this paper offers a simple and repeatable mechanism for mapping the terms and requirements relevant to normative statements in regulations and standards, e.g., AI Act and ISO management system standards, texts into open knowledge graphs. This representation is used to assess the adequacy of standards conformance to regulatory compliance and thereby provide a basis for identifying areas where further technical consensus development in trustworthy AI value chains is required to achieve regulatory compliance.
In "Homfly polynomial via an invariant of colored plane graphs", Murakami, Ohtsuki, and Yamada provide a state-sum description of the level $n$ Jones polynomial of an oriented link in terms of a suitable braided monoidal category whose morphisms are $\mathbb{Q}[q,q^{-1}]$-linear combinations of oriented trivalent planar graphs, and give a corresponding description for the HOMFLY-PT polynomial. We extend this construction and express the Khovanov-Rozansky homology of an oriented link in terms of a combinatorially defined category whose morphisms are equivalence classes of formal complexes of (formal direct sums of shifted) oriented trivalent plane graphs. By working combinatorially, one avoids many of the computational difficulties involved in the matrix factorization computations of the original Khovanov-Rozansky formulation: one systematically uses combinatorial relations satisfied by these matrix factorizations to simplify the computation at a level that is easily handled. By using this technique, we are able to provide a computation of the level $n$ Khovanov-Rozansky invariant of the 2-strand braid link with $k$ crossings, for arbitrary $n$ and $k$, confirming and extending previous results and conjectural predictions by Anokhina-Morozov, Beliakova-Putyra-Wehrli, Carqueville-Murfet, Dolotin-Morozov, Gukov-Iqbal-Kozcaz-Vafa, Nizami-Munir-Sohail-Usman, and Rasmussen.
Masitha Tismananda Kumala, Ria Tri Vinata, Titik Suharti
et al.
Sustainable development is realized in various sectors, including marine and fisheries. Fishermen are the main pillars in advancing the marine and fisheries sector. The welfare of fishermen in Indonesia is not as good as Indonesia’s ambitions in promoting the marine and fisheries sector. One of the Human Rights, namely the right to a decent and prosperous life, still needs to be felt by most small-scale or artisanal fishermen. The purpose of this research is to find a direction for fisheries and marine policies that can protect the human rights of fishermen to realize sustainable development in Indonesia’s marine and fisheries sector. The paper explore two legal issues: Indonesian fishermen’s human rights problems and protecting Indonesian fishermen’s human rights to sustainable development realization in Indonesia’s marine and fisheries sector. Indonesian fishermen’s human rights problems are the right to have a decent and prosperous life, to receive proper and fair treatment in work relations, to obtain legal protection, not to be tortured and enslaved, and the right to adjust the occupation identity written in the National Identification Card (NIC) for the female fishermen. Protecting Indonesian fishermen’s human rights cannot be realized without international cooperation with other states because many Indonesian fishermen work in foreign-flagged vessels. The working conditions in which the majority of fishermen in Indonesia operate, specifically in countries such as China, South Korea, and Taiwan, do not align with several international agreements aimed at safeguarding the rights of fishermen. Finally, the article considers establishing international cooperation between Indonesia and related states to protect fishermen’s human rights.
Abd Azis, Muhammad Fadilah Aziz, Mutiarah Azizah Dyah Pramesti
et al.
Many reports in the mass media regarding the humanitarian crisis caused by economic and political instability in West Africa continued to become headlines that were widely discussed throughout 2019. The saying "there will be no smoke if there is no fire" also applies to the situation in West Africa. This crisis happened due to several reasons such as the increase in armed conflict crises, civil war, authoritarian leaders, and rebellions carried out by extremist groups. Instead of offering significant solutions to end the crisis, the government as a key actor sometimes even becomes the root cause of the conflict. Consequently, the situation triggered several civil society grassroots movements in various countries in West Africa. One of the global civil society movements that later emerged was The West Africa Network for Peacebuilding (WANEP). This research aims to look further at how WANEP worked in responding to the instability in West Africa in 2019. In looking at the role of WANEP, the Neo Kantian approach is used as the basis perspective in understanding the global civil society movements in peacebuilding attempts. The method used in this study is a qualitative method by analyzing data sources from official reports and previous studies, which are relevant to answering the research question. It is found that WANEP had initiated and was involved in many capacity-building efforts to educate the people and minimize the impacts of the crisis.
Las Sentencias del Tribunal Constitucional 19/2023 y 44/2023 tienen un nexo común argumental que viene a constituir su principal ratio decidendi, consistente en la creación de un nuevo derecho fundamental de autodeterminación para decidir sobre la propia muerte y sobre la interrupción voluntaria del embarazo,
que pasan a constituir nuevos derechos fundamentales a la eutanasia y al aborto, integrándolos en el derecho a la integridad física y moral (art. 15 CE), limitando así la libertad de configuración del legislador respecto de los mismos. El activismo judicial desplegado en esta operación no puede dejar de suscitar una gran perplejidad. El hasta ahora considerado «principio» de la dignidad de la persona y del libre desarrollo de la personalidad (art. 10.1 CE), en virtud de esta innovadora jurisprudencia, deja de operar como tal para convertirse, no ya en un «principio general de libertad», cuestión que distaría incluso de ser pacífica en la doctrina, sino en un verdadero «derecho fundamental general de libertad», en definitiva, como norma de clausura del sistema de libertades públicas. A diferencia de la regulación en derecho constitucional alemán, inspirador del Anteproyecto de la ponencia constitucional en España, en que el libre desarrollo de la personalidad constituye un derecho fundamental, también norma de clausura, con unos límites bien establecidos por la jurisprudencia del Tribunal de Karlsruhe, ni la dicción literal, ni la sistemática de la Constitución española permite una incorporación acrítica de la construcción alemana, ni su empleo por parte del Tribunal Constitucional español ha sido, en esta última jurisprudencia...
Law in general. Comparative and uniform law. Jurisprudence, International relations
Introduction. The light played a big role in Byzantine culture. It was an integral part of the original architectural, artistic and symbolic design of the temple. For additional lighting inside the temple, polycandyla, lampadophoroi and candlesticks were used. Lighting devices are depicted on Byzantine mosaics, frescoes, icons, textiles and in manuscripts. Information about lighting devices is also contained in the typicons. Method. In 1930 and 2019–2021, during the excavations of the basilica erected by the Byzantines at the end of the 6th century on the Eski-Kermen plateau, fragments of Byzantine bronze candlesticks and a polycandylon were found. Their study is important for the reconstruction of the interior decoration of the once rich main city temple. Analysis and Results. These candlesticks and a polycandylon are only a small part of the lighting equipment of the main basilica of the city on the Eski-Kermen plateau. The considered lamps give an idea of the complex of church lighting, which was known only by mentions in monastic inventory inventories and typicons of the late 11th – 13th centuries. The increase in the value of candles in the artificial lighting of churches is a characteristic feature of the Komnenos period, which is intensified under the Palaiologoi. Apparently, a new set of lamps began to be used in the main basilica after its reconstruction.
History of Russia. Soviet Union. Former Soviet Republics, International relations
Galina Mikhaylovna Danilova-Volkovskaya, Alexander Arkadyevitch Begak
This paper presents the investigations of innovation nanocomposite material to increase structural strength, reduce weight and provide radio transparency in unmanned aircraft vehicles. The method of the of creation of polymer nanocomposite that consists of thermosetting plastics matrix and complex fillers: of natural silica and carbon multi-layer nanotubes was designed.
El artículo trata el tema de la (muy activa) política exterior de México en torno a la regulación de las armas de fuego y la falta de cumplimiento interno de varios de los tratados que la cancillería impulsa en foros multilaterales alrededor de este tema. Como hipótesis principal, se propone que la brecha entre la política exterior activa y la falta de medidas a nivel interno se explica por la resistencia de actores internos y la ausencia de una política de Estado articulada y coherente en torno a las armas a nivel federal. Si bien la cancillería ha adoptado una política activista y protagónica sobre el tema, ésta se inscribe más bien en la tradición diplomática que favorece el desarme, la no proliferación y la solución pacífica de los conflictos. Se argumenta que las recientes acciones diplomáticas que han respondido al tráfico ilícito de armas han sido iniciativas aisladas de la cancillería. Además de contribuir a la literatura sobre la interacción entre la política exterior y la política interna en torno a las armas de fuego (tema que ha recibido atención insuficiente), el propósito de este texto es presentar un análisis integral de la política del Estado mexicano sobre este tema, incluyendo sus contradicciones y áreas de oportunidad.
Five types of protein precipitate can be obtained in the course of whey and its concentrates separation, which, in turn, are divided into precipitates derived from cheese and curd whey. The main factors affecting the moisture content in the sediment are: structural properties, the magnitude of the centrifugal sealing pressure, separation temperature and compaction time. As shown by studies of sediment samples obtained during the separation of whey and its concentrates, their structural properties are quite similar. The properties of various protein sediments were experimentally determined: the dependence of humidity on sealing pressure, the influence of strain rate on the coefficient of effective viscosity valuation. The data obtained can be used for mathematical modeling of the centrifugal unloading of sediment. An experimental modeling of the sediment behavior on the conical surface of the slurry space was carried out, on the basis of which the limiting angle of inclination of the conical surfaces of the drum (slurry space, plates, etc.) to the horizontal line was determined. This result should also be taken into account for design of the separator drums for whey and its concentrates. The data obtained can be used for special whey separators elements design.
The secessions of Slovenia and Croatia – two interrelated and interdependent processes – put an end to the existence of the socialist federal Yugoslavia. The article examines the mutual influence of the identity transformations of the Slovenes and Croats in the second half of the 1980s – early 1990s and the disintegration of the SFRY. Historical and cultural background, the influence of socio-political conditions and the purposeful efforts of key actors to transform identities are analyzed. It is shown that the main vector of changes in the identity of Slovenes and Croats in the second half of the 1980s – early 1990s favored secessions, but they were not predetermined. The influence of external factors was very strong, including, firstly, changes in the political landscape of Serbia and their echoes in the structures of power at the federal level, and, secondly, the approaching collapse of the political regime in the USSR and other countries of Eastern Europe, and also the end of the Cold War. The actions of political leaders were of particular importance for the transformations in the sphere of identity. Thanks to their efforts, the secessionist strategies strongly affected the identities of Slovenes and Croats. But in Croatia, with the coming to power of F. Tudjman and the Croatian Democratic Union, practically the entire system of government bodies began to function in the regime of a “nationalizing state” (R. Brubaker).
Tomaz Espósito Neto, Camilo Pereira Carneiro Filho, Fernando Jose Ludwig
et al.
Entrevista com o Ministro Celso Luiz Nunes Amorim para a Revista Monções.
São trabalhados temas diversos sobre Política Externa Brasileira, Defesa, Fronteiras e Direitos Humanos
International relations, Colonies and colonization. Emigration and immigration. International migration
The growing integration processes in the Eurasian space confirm the geopolitical place and role of this region in modern international relations. Thus it becomes more important to understand the basic postulates of the Eurasianism concept for the development of national and geopolitical interests of Russia, as well as to study the process of evolution of the main provisions of classical Eurasianism in the foundations of modern Russian neo-Eurasianism, as well as to determine the main stages of this process.The work is based on the analysis of publications of Russian neo-Eurasianism representatives, scientific works of foreign and domestic researchers of this phenomenon in the Russian political discourse.The geopolitical vector of the Eurasian concept is becoming the most relevant at the present stage in the context of increased interest in the geopolitical discourse and research of interaction, the “clash of civilizations”.For the modern Russian political discourse, the Eurasian theme has become one of the most promising foreign policy vectors. At present, we can observe how the theoretical concept of classic Eurasianism is reflected in Russia’s foreign policy. The Eurasian project began to be implemented from theory into political practice.
Natural language understanding's relation extraction makes innovative and encouraging novel business concepts possible and facilitates new digitilized decision-making processes. Current approaches allow the extraction of relations with a fixed number of entities as attributes. Extracting relations with an arbitrary amount of attributes requires complex systems and costly relation-trigger annotations to assist these systems. We introduce multi-attribute relation extraction (MARE) as an assumption-less problem formulation with two approaches, facilitating an explicit mapping from business use cases to the data annotations. Avoiding elaborated annotation constraints simplifies the application of relation extraction approaches. The evaluation compares our models to current state-of-the-art event extraction and binary relation extraction methods. Our approaches show improvement compared to these on the extraction of general multi-attribute relations.