Budgets of turbulent kinetic energy (TKE) and turbulent potential energy (TPE) at different scales $\ell$ in sheared, stably stratified turbulence are analysed using a filtering approach. Competing effects in the flow are considered, along with the physical mechanisms governing the energy fluxes between scales, and the budgets are used to analyse data from direct numerical simulation at buoyancy Reynolds number $Re_b=O(100)$. The mean TKE exceeds the TPE by an order of magnitude at the large scales, with the difference reducing as $\ell$ is decreased. At larger scales, buoyancy is never observed to be positive, with buoyancy always converting TKE to TPE. As $\ell$ is decreased, the probability of locally convecting regions increases, though it remains small at scales down to the Ozmidov scale. The TKE and TPE fluxes between scales are both downscale on average, and their instantaneous values are correlated positively, but not strongly so, and this occurs due to the different physical mechanisms that govern these fluxes. Moreover, the contributions to these fluxes arising from the sub-grid fields are shown to be significant, in addition to the filtered scale contributions associated with the processes of strain self-amplification, vortex stretching and density gradient amplification. Probability density functions (PDFs) of the $Q,R$ invariants of the filtered velocity gradient are considered and show that as $\ell$ increases, the sheared-drop shape of the PDF becomes less pronounced and the PDF becomes more symmetric about $R=0$.

I am grateful to Professor Mathew John for his deep and rigorous engagement with A People's Constitution: The Everyday Life of Law in the Indian Republic, and to the editors of this journal for giving me the opportunity to be in dialogue with some of the questions he raises.

The main goal of the field of neuromorphic computing is to build machines that emulate aspects of the brain in its ability to perform complex tasks in parallel and with great energy efficiency. Thanks to new computing architectures, these machines could revolutionize high-performance computing and find applications to perform local, low-energy computing for sensors and robots. The use of organic and soft materials in neuromorphic computing is appealing in many respects, for instance, because it allows better integration with living matter to seamlessly meld sensing with signal processing, and ultimately, stimulation in a closed-feedback loop. Indeed, not only can the mechanical properties of organic materials match those of tissue, but also, the working mechanisms of these devices involving ions, in addition to electrons, are compatible with human physiology. Another advantage of organic materials is the potential to introduce novel fabrication techniques relying on additive manufacturing amenable to one-of-a-kind form factors. This field is still nascent, therefore many concepts are still being proposed, without a clear winner. Furthermore, the field of application of organic neuromorphics, where bioinspiration and biointegration are extremely appealing, calls for a co-design approach from materials to systems.

Cows have been the subject of political petitioning in South Asia for over a hundred years. This article examines the changing relationship between communities and the state in India through the transformation of petitioning practices—from ‘monster’ petitions, to postcard campaigns and constitutional writs—by the proponents and opponents of the cow protection movement from the late nineteenth century through to the first decades of independence. The article shows that, instead of disciplining and formalizing popular politics, petitioning provides channels for mobilization and disruption. As Hindus and Muslims engaged in competitive petitioning to rally a public, persuade the executive, or litigate through the courts, the question of cow slaughter was recast from one of community representation to religious belief, to property rights, to federalism, and, finally, questions of national economic development. In the absence of representative government in colonial India, Hindus for cow protection generated massive petitions which argued that they represented popular democratic will. Despite the lack of a constitution, Muslim petitioners sought to establish a judicially enforceable framework to protect their right to cow slaughter. Independence, which brought both democracy and a written constitution, caused a fundamental break with older claims and forms of petitioning, and led to both Hindus and Muslims seeking to settle the debate through writ petitions before constitutional courts.

On 4 May 2014, as a tumultuous general election in India drew to a close, the Indian Express newspaper published a column by Tavleen Singh, with the headline ‘No more petitioners: no more petitioners’. The column went on to quote P. Chidambaran, the outgoing finance minister of the defeated Congress government, who diagnosed a historical shift in the mentality of the Indian electorate. ‘India has moved on,’ Chidambaran was reported as saying, ‘from a petitioner society to an aspirational one. Treating people as petitioners is a mistake . . . even the poor demand a better life and are no longer resigned to their fate.’ In India, the column argued, ‘poor people’ now had ‘middle class aspirations’, desiring ‘jobs and development’ rather than ‘charity’ and that this was a major reason for the success of Narendra Modi and his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in the 2014 elections. To be a ‘petitioner’, in this analysis, was to be ground down by poverty and resignation, and dependent on the ‘charity’ of others. It was a passing historical condition, a sign of underdevelopment that could be sloughed off by the sudden awakening across society of ‘middle class aspirations’.

In early 1943, Lord Wilfred Green, the Master of Rolls and the head of the Chancery Division of the British judiciary, authored a secret memorandum proposing that the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council become a “peripatetic court” that would travel throughout the British Empire. This article explores the origins and politics of this proposal to provide a critical re-description of the role of the Privy Council and the circulation of law within the British Empire.

It was a hot afternoon on 10 April 1950, in the town of Chapra in the eastern Indian province of Bihar. As most people had retired indoors to avoid the heat, the women's clothing store run by Kedar Nath had suddenly become a hive of activity. His munib (accountant) had gone home early on receiving news of the sudden illness of his son, and his shop had been visited by the local Magistrate and the Deputy Superintendent of Police, the leading figures in the district administration. The Magistrate, Mr S. K Ghatak, ordered Kedar Nath to open up his stores and make his registers available, and in this process discovered that Nath had twenty-five more saris than were accounted for in the stock register. Kedar Nath's relation protested that the saris had been bought that very morning, and that his munib's unexpected absence had resulted in the stocks not being updated immediately. The district officials were not convinced and Kedar Nath was arrested for not having proper accounts of the clothes in his stock. The district court convicted Kedar Nath for violating the terms of Bihar Cotton, Cloth and Yarn (Control Order) 1948, and the Essential Supplies (Temporary Powers) Act 1946 (ESA), and sentenced him to a fine and a month of rigorous imprisonment.

On June 27, 1940, Vera Tiscenko, a Polish actress formerly with the Moscow Arts Theatre, “of her own free will and after due deliberation” embraced the Islamic faith at the Nakoda Mosque at 19 Chowringee Road, Calcutta. Vera Tiscenko's journey from Moscow to colonial Calcutta was a long and tortuous one. Fleeing the country after the revolution, Vera settled in Berlin where she married a Russian émigré, Eugene Tiscenko. Over the next few years they moved across Europe from Nazi Berlin to civil war Spain and finally settled in Mussolini's Rome, where Vera gave birth to a son, Oleg. In 1938, Eugene Tiscenko went to Edinburgh to qualify for a British medical degree, while Vera and her son left Rome for Calcutta after being invited by Professor Shahid Suhrawardy, her former director at the Moscow Arts Theatre. The reason for the separation between the couple remains unclear. Chief Justice Derbyshire was to speculate that Eugene Tiscenko might have intended to settle somewhere in British India after qualifying, but Vera herself admitted that the marriage had been unhappy. Finding “relief and solace in the teachings of Islam,” she cabled her husband the news of her conversion and requested that he accept the Islamic faith. Eugene Tiscenko replied that his religious convictions were unshakable and “refused absolutely” to change his faith.