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On Parliamentary Sovereignty: A Critique of the Hartian Defence
No full textThe classic understanding of parliamentary sovereignty (per Dicey) is that Parliament enjoys absolute legal authority. Call this the Orthodoxy. An important line of defence of the Orthodoxy—relied on by both classic writers like Wade, and contemporary writers like Ekins and Goldsworthy—is based on Hart’s idea of the rule of recognition: that parliamentary sovereignty is extant, as part of the rule of recognition underlying the United Kingdom’s (UK’s) legal order. Call this the Hartian Defence. Two propositions will be made in this article. First, the Hartian Defence fails on its own terms. For if its internal logic is faithfully followed, it will entail the conclusion that Parliament cannot—and could never have—enjoyed absolute legal authority, contra the Orthodoxy. Secondly, the failure of the Hartian Defence demonstrates a more general point about the Orthodoxy, even if it were defended by other means. It is that the Orthodoxy paints an impossible picture of the UK constitution, and is accordingly an undesirable academic theory.</p
“I would add”: Educational leaders’ understanding of SEL during a statewide community of practice
No full textPurpose: Specific social and emotional learning (SEL) programs have been found to promote a myriad of positive outcomes, but definitions of the broader concept of SEL are varied in its practice and scholarly usage. It is unclear whether recent conceptual expansions of SEL to include Systemic and Transformative approaches shape the understanding of SEL among educational leaders. Communities of Practice (CPs) may serve as a dynamic knowledge source for revealing and shifting educator understanding of SEL. Thus, in the present study we asked: (1) How do educational leaders define SEL?; and (2) In what ways did definitions of SEL evolve over the course of CPs? Methods: We analyzed open-ended survey responses from educational leaders at county offices of education (N = 46; 76% White, 65% women) at two time points. At Time 1, leaders defined SEL. After six monthly statewide SEL CPs, they were given the opportunity to update their definition. To analyze the data, we engaged in reflexive thematic analysis. Findings: At Time 1, educational leaders emphasized popularized competency-based SEL definitions, emphasized skills rather than systems, and described SEL as an individualistic rather than a civic intervention. At Time 2, many educational leaders shifted their definitions towards more systemic thinking and included more elements of equity. Implications: Exploring educational leaders’ definitions of SEL, and any shifts, may inform approaches to building the capacity of educational leaders to provide SEL implementation support and using CPs for spreading and shaping the ideas of Systemic SEL and Transformative SEL. </p
Expectation violations as an effective alternative to complex mentalizing in novel communication
Get PDFCommunicating without a shared language is often assumed to require cognitively demanding Theory of Mind reasoning. In this study, we tested whether a more parsimonious mechanism based on expectancy violations can achieve comparable performance. We tested this in the Tacit Communication Game, where we simulated Sender behavior using four computational models: the Surprise model based on expectancy violations and three levels of Theory of Mind. Human receivers interacted with each agent; we measured goal-identification accuracy and reaction times. The results show that Receivers paired with the Surprise model matched the accuracy of the most complex second level Theory of Mind agent and produced human-like message patterns. Models yielding higher accuracy also elicited faster responses, indicating lower cognitive load. These findings question the need for recursive mentalizing in unfamiliar interactions and highlight expectancy violation as a parsimonious route to efficient communication. published_or_final_versio
Nonpartisans hold the key: how proximity to utility scale renewable energy projects influences attitudes towards climate mitigation policy
Get PDFNot-in-my-backyard (NIMBY) literature notes public opposition to projects that impose local costs but generate public goods. However, whether NIMBY experience has spillover effects on support for related policy goals remains underexplored. As a typical case of NIMBYism, utility-scale renewable energy projects have faced significant local opposition across the U.S. In this paper, we investigate if an individual’s proximity to such projects correlates with their support for broader climate goals. Drawing on individual responses from three waves of cross-sectional U.S. Nationscape survey data (2019–2021), we constructed a comprehensive dataset by combining them with geocoded information on all utility-scale renewable energy projects for this period, as well as with county-level socioeconomic, political, and policy information. Our regression results show that proximity to wind or solar projects does not significantly influence climate policy preferences among Democrats or Republicans. However, for political Independents, living near wind turbines correlates with reduced opposition to climate policies, specifically large-scale investments for clean energy technology. These findings suggest that climate attitudes linked to renewable energy exposure are contingent on political affiliation. While strong partisans (Democrats and Republicans) remain unaffected by direct exposure to renewable energy projects, Independents—who are less anchored by partisan narratives—are more responsive to personal experience. Exposure to wind power does not necessarily create strong supporters for climate policy, but it shifts Independents away from outright opposition. The results highlight the necessity of more targeted approaches to expand public support for climate policies.published_or_final_versio
Confucianism and Democratic Constitutionalism in East Asia: Evaluating Confucian Democratic Perfectionism
No full textRecently, Sungmoon Kim developed a theory of what he calls “Confucian democratic perfectionism” aimed at combining Confucianism, public reason, and democracy for contemporary East Asian societies. The primary question guiding this article is whether Kim's promotion of Confucian values is justified by a normative commitment to democratic constitution-making. I see two specific difficulties with Kim's democratic constitution-making, with the second more serious than the first. First, in terms of theoretical identity, the Confucian values promoted through a public reason-based approach are not intelligible as Confucian. Second, Kim's democratic commitment is morally inadequate in two ways—it cannot make sense of substate peoples' right of self-determination within a singular notion of Confucian democracy, and further, a fallback on the right to democratic participation conflicts with more inclusive standards of popular sovereignty.</p
Piano Fingering and the Embodied Expression of Bodily Effort
No full textThis study investigates the role of piano fingering in expressing embodied effort in Beethoven’s piano works. By analyzing the use of fingering in scale passages, this research highlights the importance of performers’ physical engagement in generating musical meaning. The examination of didactic treatises, per- forming editions, and recorded performances serves as a means for understanding embodied expression in music. In doing so, this study suggests that piano fingering offers a converging point for theoretical, historical, and empirical perspectives, fostering a more comprehensive understanding of the embodied music experience.</p
Exploring How Programming Supports a Student’s Spatial Reasoning and Understanding of Quadratic Growth
No full textIn the context of the rapidly evolving artificial intelligence era, educational researchers are increasingly exploring the integration of programming tools into mathematics classrooms. However, most studies usually focus on the impact of programming on mathematics learning outcomes and attitudes, and only a few studies focus on how programming affects students’ mathematical reasoning processes. This study aims to fill this gap by investigating how engagement in a programming environment influences a student’s mathematical reasoning processes, particularly in the context of understanding the second difference of quadratic growth. One seventh-grade student completed the task in two semi-structured interviews, one in a paper-based setting and the other using Scratch. This study used open coding to analyze the student’s reasoning process. The findings suggest that, for the student in this study, the programming environment appeared to help restructure and optimize his spatial reasoning, enabling him to explicitly identify the source of the second difference. This study demonstrates the potential of programming as a technological tool to facilitate students’ mathematical reasoning and informs how teachers can design function-related tasks in programming environments.</p
Noise-agnostic quantum error mitigation with data augmented neural models
Get PDFQuantum error mitigation, a data processing technique for recovering the statistics of target processes from their noisy version, is a crucial task for near-term quantum technologies. Most existing methods require prior knowledge of the noise model or the noise parameters. Deep neural networks have the potential to lift this requirement, but current models require training data produced by ideal processes in the absence of noise. Here we build a neural model that achieves quantum error mitigation without any prior knowledge of the noise and without training on noise-free data. To achieve this feature, we introduce a quantum augmentation technique for error mitigation. Our approach applies to quantum circuits and to the dynamics of many-body and continuous-variable quantum systems, accommodating various types of noise models. We demonstrate its effectiveness by testing it both on simulated noisy circuits and on real quantum hardware.published_or_final_versio
Breaking the trade-off between capacity, stability, and selectivity for electrochemical lithium extraction via a dual-ion doping strategy
No full textWith the rapid expansion of electric vehicle markets, the efficient selective extraction of lithium from salt lakes is critical to addressing the supply-demand gap. Against this backdrop, hybrid capacitive deionization (HCDI) technology has drawn tremendous interest in lithium extraction owing to superior selectivity and low pollution. However, conventional Li+-extraction electrodes still face significant challenges in balancing electrosorption capacity, stability, and selectivity. This work proposed a dual-ion doping strategy to achieve Fe3+ and Cl− co-doped Li3V2(PO4)3 (FC-LVP), aimed at enhancing the electrochemical lithium extraction performance of LVP electrode. The 0.15FC-LVP electrode exhibited an ultra-high specific capacity of 415.5 F g−1, a maximum electrosorption capacity of 19.1 mg g−1, and an electrosorption capacity retention of 79 % after 100 cycles. Furthermore, exceptional Li+ selectivity coefficients of 610.6 and 343 are achieved in simulated salt solutions with Mg/Li and Na/Li molar ratios of 60:1 and 45:1, respectively. The electrochemical behavior, in-situ X-ray diffraction (XRD) analysis, and an evaluation of actual brine sourced from Xizang, China, collectively demonstrate the feasibility of the 0.15FC-LVP for lithium extraction. Theoretical calculations reveal that the Fe and Cl co-doping improves the structural stability and electrochemical activity of LVP by lowering the formation energy and band gap. This work presents a novel approach for designing HCDI electrodes with high stability, capacity, and selectivity in extracting lithium from salt lake
East by Southeast: Hong Kong in the Decolonising Pacific
No full textThis essay seeks to complicate Hong Kong's seemingly common-sensical geographical identity as an East Asian—specifically, Chinese—metropolis through a contrapuntal mapping of its historical connections with Southeast Asia. It takes seriously the role that this supposedly hinterland region played in catalysing urban transformations in the colony-turned-SAR. Building on work that theorises Hong Kong as a “non-sovereign” site for the everyday workings of US empire, I explore how the colony's relationship with Southeast Asia was reshaped by the central role that it played in securing the transcolonial logistics of the Vietnam War. Through a close reading of the archival record, I show how the US military-industrial complex used Hong Kong as an offshore hub for supporting the logistics of soldiering life. In addition to hosting US soldiers on rest and recuperation (R&R) leave, Hong Kong helped secure the financial logistics of counterinsurgency. These logistical entanglements remained important in the afterwar moment, when Hong Kong experienced a mass arrival of refugees from Vietnam. Saddled with the logistical burden of caring for these refugees, colonial officials gradually leveraged this “surplus population” to address labour shortages around the city. When read together, these contrapuntal mappings of logistical power clarify how Hong Kong's relationship with Southeast Asia has always been shaped by asymmetrical infrastructures of outsourced industrial production, racialised indenture, and economic unfreedom.</p