We introduce Voices of Civilizations, the first multilingual QA benchmark for evaluating audio LLMs' cultural comprehension on full-length music recordings. Covering 380 tracks across 38 languages, our automated pipeline yields 1,190 multiple-choice questions through four stages - each followed by manual verification: 1) compiling a representative music list; 2) generating cultural-background documents for each sample in the music list via LLMs; 3) extracting key attributes from those documents; and 4) constructing multiple-choice questions probing language, region associations, mood, and thematic content. We evaluate models under four conditions and report per-language accuracy. Our findings demonstrate that even state-of-the-art audio LLMs struggle to capture subtle cultural nuances without rich textual context and exhibit systematic biases in interpreting music from different cultural traditions. The dataset is publicly available on Hugging Face to foster culturally inclusive music understanding research.
Abstract The top-down method is widely used to estimate China’s CO2 emissions at the county level. However, studies have relied on a single indicator of regional total nighttime light brightness as an instrumental variable for prediction, leading to the assumption that there is a positive correlation between CO2 emissions and total nighttime light brightness in all regions within the same province. This assumption overlooks other heterogeneous relationships and does not correspond to reality. Therefore, this study constructed a dataset of potential feature variables based on multisource data (improved and calibrated nighttime light data, urban and rural human settlement data, and socioeconomic indicator data based on statistical yearbooks). After the main feature variables were identified, a hybrid regression algorithm combining deep neural networks and CatBoost was constructed to generate instrumental variable for predicting CO2 emissions. Compared with the total nighttime brightness, it has a stronger linear relationship with CO2 emissions. Using the top-down algorithm, we estimated China’s monthly CO2 emissions at the county level from 2013 to 2021. This dataset provides a solid foundation for predicting the achievement of China’s county-level “dual carbon” strategy. The methods used in this study can be generalized to other global regions.
Consider a complex random $n\times n$ matrix ${\bf X}_n=(x_{ij})_{n\times n}$, whose entries $x_{ij}$ are independent random variables with zero means and unit variances. It is well-known that Tao and Vu (Ann Probab 38: 2023-2065, 2010) resolved the circular law conjecture, establishing that if the $x_{ij}$'s are independent and identically distributed random variables with zero mean and unit variance, the empirical spectral distribution of $\frac{1}{\sqrt{n}}{\bf X}_n$ converges almost surely to the uniform distribution over the unit disk in the complex plane as $n \to \infty$. This paper demonstrates that the circular law still holds under the more general Lindeberg's condition: $$ \frac1{n^2}\sum_{i,j=1}^n\mathbb{E}|x_{ij}^2|I(|x_{ij}|>η\sqrt{n})\to 0,\mbox{as $n \to \infty$}. $$ This paper is a revisit of the proof procedure of the circular law by Bai in (Ann Probab 25: 494-529, 1997). The key breakthroughs in the paper are establishing a general strong law of large numbers under Lindeberg's condition and the uniform upper bound for the integral with respect to the smallest eigenvalues of random matrices. These advancements significantly streamline and clarify the proof of the circular law, offering a more direct and simplified approach than other existing methodologies.
Perkembangan teknologi telah mempengaruhi berbagai aspek. Salah satunya adalah berkembangnya kegiatan perdagangan yang dilakukan melalui sistem elektronik (e-commerce). Meskipun keberadaan e-commerce memberikan berbagai keuntungan dalam dunia perdagangan, namun e-commerce memiliki berbagai permasalahan seperti penjualan barang ilegal yang terjadi dalam platform marketplace, salah satu bentuk e-commerce. Salah satu barang ilegal yang marak beredar tersebut adalah ponsel (mobile phone). Berdasarkan hal tersebut, tulisan ini akan mengangkat permasalahan mengenai pengaturan hukum serta tanggung jawab platform marketplace dalam hal terjadinya penjualan ponsel ilegal. Dengan metode yuridis normatif, penulis melakukan analisis terhadap peraturan perundang-undangan, peraturan kebijakan, teori-teori terkait cyberspace, asas-asas penyelenggaraan e-commerce, serta prinsip pertanggungjawaban, yang mana menunjukkan platform marketplace sebagai penyelenggara sistem elektronik memiliki tanggung jawab hukum dalam hal adanya penjualan ponsel ilegal.
The author underlines that the formation of the legal concept of «war crimes» is connected with the formation of international humanitarian law from the middle of the 19th century. It is now generally recognized that the fundamental international documents defining the formal legal nature of war crimes are: the Geneva Conventions for the Protection of Victims of the War (1949) and their Additional Protocols (1977); a number of conventions banning the use of certain methods and means of warfare; «establishing» documents of modern bodies of international criminal justice. Decisions of the Nuremberg and Tokyo Tribunals, as well as international tribunals for Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia, are also of particular importance for understanding war crimes. According to the author, in modern Russian doctrine, despite the terminological difference, there is a certain semantic unity in the understanding of the term «war crimes». At the same time, the principles of international humanitarian law are proposed as the basis for the definition of this term (humanity, limiting the warring parties in choosing means and methods of conducting military operations, protecting civilians and civil objects during armed conflicts of an international and non-international nature). However, as most Russian authors emphasize, a war crime, which was initially a violation of international humanitarian law, implies the individual criminal responsibility of the person who committed it. The modern foreign doctrine also states that the term «war crimes» is often used in different and conflicting meanings. However, foreign authors are increasingly using a «narrow» definition: a war crime is a violation of international humanitarian law, entailing criminal liability. The author notes that the question of the applicability of the international legal definition of «war crimes» in the national criminal law system is debated in Russian and foreign doctrine. This thesis is especially important for states not participating in the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, but for which the rules of customary international law are binding. As a result, the author concludes that the modern Russian and foreign doctrine is characterized by a fundamentally similar understanding of the term «war crime» in international criminal law.
Law, History of scholarship and learning. The humanities
Questions of guilt of the individual, the reasons causing his guilty behavior and also negative consequences of these processes are a subject of consideration not only within the framework of psychological and philosophical science, but in law as well. In the period of the developed Roman Law particular importance was attached to existence of guilt in actions of a person and the position according to which «without guilt there is no responsibility», the representing relevance to this day was approved as an axiom. It is no secret that the research of questions of genesis of guilt reveals the regularity consisting that it (guilt) is inseparably linked with other legal category - responsibility. The question of a concept both civil responsibility, and one of its elements - guilt, is a subject of scientiic discussions in present-day legal sources. Proceeding from this context and also impossibility within one scientific article to reflect all process of genesis, the problem categories stated above, the article studies legal aspects of responsibility and its elements created in civil law of the Soviet period. Within this work opinions of scientists concerning approaches in formulation of responsibility are given, new deinitions as a result of the legal analysis of responsibility as legal category are offered. The work represents further development of single aspects of a dissertation research of the author on the subject «Guilt as a responsibility condition in the Russian civil law».
Law, History of scholarship and learning. The humanities
El presente ensayo contiene un diagnóstico y una propuesta sobre las convenciones procesales en el proceso civil peruano. Comienza con una aproximación histórica a los orígenes del Código Procesal Civil peruano de 1993, mostrando que esta legislación tiene sus raíces en un modelo en el que el juez tiene grandes poderes y los de las partes fueron claramente recortados. Continúa con un esfuerzo interpretativo para permitir las convenciones procesales (basado en el derecho fundamental a la libertad contractual) y concluye con una breve exposición en el Proyecto de Nuevo Código Procesal Civil sobre este tema.
Enforcement, considered as a component part of the civil process, must provide the participants with the guarantees they benefit from at the trial stage, obviously, adapted to the context and specificity of this procedure. The enforcement appeal represents the legal mechanism through which both the creditor and the debtor can submit to the analysis of the court, more precisely, the enforcement court, the irregularities produced in this procedural stage. The assignment of the claim that is the object of the forced execution produces specific effects in this procedural stage considering also the special regulations existing in this matter, determined by the specifics of the enforceable title underlying the request for enforcement. Taking into account the fact that the assignment of the claim determines the change of the creditor's person, it is understandable that the effects produced are major for the debtor, but also for the forced execution, viewed as a whole. Next, the institution of the assignment of the debt, as it is regulated by the Romanian Civil Code, will be briefly presented, but also its effects, in forced execution, by reference to the time when the assignment takes place and by reference to the notification or non-notification of the debtor regarding the assignment, in one of the ways provided by law.
In this article, we consider computing expectations w.r.t. probability measures which are subject to discretization error. Examples include partially observed diffusion processes or inverse problems, where one may have to discretize time and/or space, in order to practically work with the probability of interest. Given access only to these discretizations, we consider the construction of unbiased Monte Carlo estimators of expectations w.r.t. such target probability distributions. It is shown how to obtain such estimators using a novel adaptation of randomization schemes and Markov simulation methods. Under appropriate assumptions, these estimators possess finite variance and finite expected cost. There are two important consequences of this approach: (i) unbiased inference is achieved at the canonical complexity rate, and (ii) the resulting estimators can be generated independently, thereby allowing strong scaling to arbitrarily many parallel processors. Several algorithms are presented, and applied to some examples of Bayesian inference problems, with both simulated and real observed data.
This article explores the role of the European Convention on Human Rights in addressing the issue of attacks on civic space, but also the potential effects of shrinking civic space on Strasbourg’s work. First, an overview of the notions of civil society and civic space is given, linking these concepts to democracy and human rights. Subsequently, the formal and informal roles for civil society in the judicial decision-making are discussed. Finally, the substantive protection offered to civil society and civic space under the ECHR and the case-law of the European Court of Human Rights is analysed. This article argues that the differentiations in theory on the varying contributions of civil society to democracy and human rights are to a large extent reflected in Strasbourg jurisprudence. Even more importantly, the ECHR system and civil society benefit from each other. This is why the current attacks on civic space are not just a problem for civil society itself, but also for the work of the European Court: it is submitted that a shrinking of civic space can also negatively affect the Strasbourg system, as the two are intertwined to a considerable extent.
Received: 06 July 2019
Accepted: 10 October 2019
Published online: 20 December 2019
Jurisprudence. Philosophy and theory of law, Comparative law. International uniform law
The Fourier law of heat conduction describes heat diffusion in macroscopic systems. This physical law has been experimentally tested for a large class of physical systems. A natural question is to know whether it can be derived from the microscopic models using the fundamental laws of mechanics.
By comparing cumulative linear mass profiles of 12 Gould Belt molecular clouds within 500 pc, we study how the linear mass distributions of molecular clouds vary with the angles between the molecular cloud long axes and the directions of the local magnetic fields (cloud-field direction offsets). We find that molecular clouds with the long axes perpendicular to the magnetic field directions show more even distributions of the linear mass. The result supports that magnetic field orientations can affect the fragmentation of molecular clouds (Li et al. 2017).
The article is devoted to the analysis of the legal regulation of mediation in
criminal cases in Kazakhstan. Kazakhstan began to shift towards the use of alternative
methods of criminal law conflicts in connection with the humanization of criminal policy.
It was not so long ago. Since 2011, Kazakhstan has legislatively secured the possibility of
using alternative methods for resolving conflicts in various spheres (family, civil, labor
and other legal relationships). The consolidation of mediation in the legislation of the
Republic of Kazakhstan occurred solely on the basis of studying the experience of other
states. The nature of mediation was taken into account, and, first of all, its voluntariness,
the independence in choosing the option of resolving a legal conflict. It is by virtue of
this that the application of mediation became possible not only in civil-law conflicts, but
also in criminal ones. While Kazakhstan’s practice of applying mediation into criminal
cases has been developing relatively recently, it requires its improvement on a number
of issues – training of mediators, procedural regulation, payment for mediator services,
and others. Mediation entered the criminal procedural practice of application rather more
ideologically with shortcomings of its clear procedural regulation. The number of civil
cases considered by Kazakh courts using mediation significantly exceeds the number
of criminal cases since 2011, when mediation was introduced. This fact attracts special
attention and testifies the unpopularity of mediation as a mean of resolving criminal legal
conflict among citizens. Under the new acting Criminal Code of the Republic of Kazakhstan,
mediation has become one of the grounds for exemption from criminal liability. Based on
the analysis of the current Kazakhstan’s legislation regulating the use of mediation in
criminal cases, the shortcomings of this legislation have been identified, proposals for its
improvement have been formulated, which can strengthen the protection of the rights of
the victim, and expand the use of criminal mediation.
<p class="NoSpacing">În articolul de față ne-am propus să analizăm cele mai importante aspecte ale procedurii succesorale notariale. Abordând acest subiect, am constatat că în literatura de specialitate și în legislația națională nu și-au găsit o analiză detaliată problemele complexe cu care se confruntă notarii în activitatea lor ce vine să asigure realizarea drepturilor și libertăților persoanelor fizice și juridice, în scopul garantării siguranței și echilibrului circuitului civil. În cadrul studiului de fațâ am încercat să nu ne depărtăm de aspectele practice ale procedurii succesorale. Rolul notarului e în primul rând de a fi aproape de cetățean. Considerăm că dacă notarul își îndeplinește competențele pe care legiuitorul i le-a conferit prin Legea cu privire la notariat, prin Codul civil, prin Constituție și prin alte legi, el se face util societății, statului și cetățenilor și va putea să-și desfășoare mulțumitor activitatea, desigur proporțional cu mersul general al vieții politice, sociale și economice a statului Republica Moldova.</p><p class="NoSpacing"><strong>THE PLACE AND MOMENTS OF NOTARIAL SUCCESSION PROCEDURE</strong></p><p class="1">In analyzing this topic, we intend to elaborate a study of the most important moments of the notarial succession procedure. Taking into account that this problem has not been found in the literature and in the national legislation and is not scattered, I have found that the problems faced by the notaries in their daily activities, which come to ensure the realization of the rights and the freedoms of individuals and legal entities, all of these actions being made in order to guarantee the safety and balance of the civil circuit. We have tried, in the present study, not to distance ourselves from the practical aspects with which the notary meets daily in the succession proceedings. The role of the notary is primarily to be close to the citizen. We consider that if each notary fulfills the powers that the legislator gave us through the Law of Notary, the Civil Code, the Constitution, and other laws, it is useful to society, state and citizens and will be able to carry out thankful its activity, of course, commensurate with the general course of the political, social and economic life of the Republic of Moldova.</p>
"Code is law" refers to the idea that, with the advent of digital technology, code has progressively established itself as the predominant way to regulate the behavior of Internet users. Yet, while computer code can enforce rules more efficiently than legal code, it also comes with a series of limitations, mostly because it is difficult to transpose the ambiguity and flexibility of legal rules into a formalized language which can be interpreted by a machine. With the advent of blockchain technology and associated smart contracts, code is assuming an even stronger role in regulating people's interactions over the Internet, as many contractual transactions get transposed into smart contract code. In this paper, we describe the shift from the traditional notion of "code is law" (i.e. code having the effect of law) to the new conception of "law is code" (i.e. law being defined as code).
Perusahaan merupakan salah satu bagian penting dalam menyelesaikan masalah kesejahteraan sebagaimana Undang-Undang Penanaman Modal yang meminta perusahaan berkomitmen untuk berperan serta dalam pembangunan ekonomi guna meningkatkan kualitas hidup dan lingkungan yang bermanfaat melalui tanggung jawab sosial perusahaan. Pelaksanaan tanggung jawab sosial perusahaan hadir sebagai jawaban atas tuntutan etika bisnis, hukum dan publik yang ditujukan kepada perusahaan. Penelitian ini akan mengkaji peran perusahaan dalam melaksanakan tanggung jawab sosial sebagai upaya pengentasan kemiskinan di Indonesia serta pelaksanaan tanggung jawab sosial perusahaan berdasarkan Undang-Undang yang berlaku dengan menggunakan metode penelitian yuridis normatif dengan pendekatan undang-undang (statute approach). Penelitian ini akan memberikan gambaran mengenai peran perusahaan terhadap pengentasan kemiskinan serta akan menyimpulkan pelaksanaan tanggung jawab sosial perusahaan.
Guilherme Domingos de Luca, Teófilo Marcelo de Arêa Leão Júnior
O trabalho em questão busca analisar o Direito à moradia sob a ótica do Programa “Minha Casa, Minha Vida”. Demonstrará as ações do Estado visando a Regularização Fundiária, em face do interesse social no combate ao déficit imobiliário, além de analisar as hipóteses de perda do imóvel. O objetivo geral do estudo é compreender se há efetividade no direito à moradia a partir da vinculação ao Programa “Minha Casa, Minha Vida”, instituído pelo advento da Lei n° 11.977/09. De forma específica, o objetivo será entender o direito do indivíduo em adquirir novo imóvel, mesmo que em determinado momento teve de dispor de outro imóvel adquirido pelo Programa em questão. Trata-se de uma pesquisa pautada no método de investigação dedutivo, cujos procedimentos técnicos adotados foram livros, doutrinas, leis e jurisprudência. Com efeito, parte-se de um estudo bibliográfico e jurídico, para a posterior abordagem do atual contexto legislativo brasileiro mediante a adoção de um ponto de partida constitucional.
It is now well established empirically that financial price changes are distributed according to a power law, with cubic exponent. This is a fascinating regularity, as it holds for various classes of securities, on various markets, and on various time scales. The universality of this law suggests that there must be some basic, general and stable mechanism behind it. The standard (neoclassical) paradigm implies no such mechanism. Agent-based models of financial markets, on the other hand, exhibit realistic price changes, but they involve relatively complicated, and often mathematically intractable, mechanisms. This paper identifies a simple principle behind the power law: the feedback intrinsic to the very idea of speculation, namely buying when one expects a price rise (and selling when one expects a price fall). By this feedback, price changes follow a random coefficient autoregressive process, and therefore they have a power law by Kesten theorem.