The impact of multilingualism on executive functioning remains a topic of debate, with prior research suggesting minimal effects and limited real-world benefits. This study investigated whether multilingualism is related to performance and examined the role of formality in language acquisition (formal vs. informal) in modulating this relationship. A sample of 116 adults completed six working memory tasks and a language experience questionnaire, from which degree of multilingualism and formality of language acquisition were computed, using an entropy equation and a newly developed metric. Two different approaches were used to quantify formal and informal language learning: one that weighted language proficiencies using our new metric and another that categorized experiences using cut-off derived from such metric. The internal structure of measures underlying the working memory component was determined using principal component and parallel analyses, and regression models controlled for age, sex, and education. We found that a numerical-verbal working memory component explained 47.11% of the variance. No significant association emerged between overall multilingualism and working memory. However, at certain thresholds of the acquisition formality metric we developed, formal language acquisition was positively correlated with working memory, while informal acquisition was negatively related. Results support the idea that the relationship between multilingualism and working memory is nuanced, with formality of language acquisition modulating it. Future research should address the mechanisms underlying this complex relationship (e.g., causality, learning and memory mechanisms underlying formal versus informal learning and their relationship with executive function, etc.), and should consider acquisition formality as an important key variable in modulating multilingualism’s cognitive effects.

Wealth scholarship has increasingly examined subjective perceptions of rising wealth inequality, yet rarely how laypeople conceive of wealth itself or how these notions vary across national contexts. This matters because such conceptions shape how people perceive and evaluate inequality and related policies, while emerging from everyday experience rather than formal definitions. We conducted 42 focus groups with 286 participants in five countries with distinct macroeconomic and welfare regimes: Botswana, Brazil, Germany, South Africa, and the United States. Inductive thematic coding shows that lay notions of wealth are more diffuse than economist's definitions but structured by recurring patterns across countries. Participants frequently conflated wealth with income, included non-material elements, and defined wealth as a narrow band of high positive values rather than a continuous scale. They also distinguished between relatable, “ordinary” affluence and the incomprehensible wealth of the super-rich, while rarely referring to property relations or class. Definitions overlapped strongly across countries, with some variation in salient asset classes, perceived needs, and wealth’s capacity to grant access. We argue that these diffuse understandings not only complicate the measurement of perceived wealth inequality but may also hinder its contestation by obscuring its magnitude and structure.

A large body of research shows that compliance demands—administrative hassles and rules—impose learning, compliance, and psychological costs on individuals. Because costs are conceptualized as subjective, most studies rely on self reported measures. This article examines that approach by asking: To what extent do factors beyond compliance demands shape the subjective experience of administrative burdens? We argue that one factor, distinct from compliance demands, is the favorability of outcomes allocated by public organizations. We integrate outcome favorability into the administrative burden framework, proposing that 1) favorable outcomes reduce administrative burdens, as subjectively experienced and 2) favorable outcomes moderate the effect of compliance demands on the experience of administrative burdens. We test these expectations in two studies: an analysis of real-world interactions from the German Life Events Survey (n≈4,000) and a Danish survey experiment with randomized demands and outcomes (n=1,624). Both studies show that favorable outcomes reduce administrative burdens, as subjectively experienced, raising questions about how much self reported learning, compliance, and psychological costs reflect reactions to administrative requirements rather than other aspects of citizen-state interactions.

Large language models have become ubiquitous tools for knowledge work, education, and daily decision‑making. While they demonstrably improve efficiency, growing evidence reveals an erosion of metacognitive arbitration capacity: users increasingly offload thinking to AI, lose the capacity for sustained reasoning, and in some cases surrender their own judgment entirely. However, current research remains fragmented, lacking a unified mechanism that explains how these effects accumulate and why they appear resistant to simple countermeasures. We propose the Algorithmic Cognitive Atrophy Spiral (ACAS) — a three‑phase framework that distinguishes cognitive offloading (Phase 1) from cognitive dependency (Phase 2) from cognitive surrender (Phase 3). Drawing on recent empirical studies from Science, Nature, Nature Human Behaviour, and experimental psychology, we show that each phase is characterized by distinct cognitive and behavioral markers, and that the transition from one phase to the next is driven by a self‑reinforcing feedback loop: reduced cognitive friction → increased AI reliance → further atrophy of metacognitive monitoring → stronger preference for low‑effort AI confirmation. We further argue that the deepest barrier to intervention is not supply‑side (e.g., model alignment) but demand‑side: users actively prefer the cognitive comfort that AI provides, a preference that evolutionary and neurocognitive mechanisms make highly resistant to change. The ACAS framework offers testable predictions for future research and suggests that restoring cognitive sovereignty may require redesigning not only AI systems but also the incentive structures that shape how humans choose to think.

Reglas para entender cómo la IA agéntica redefine el liderazgo, transforma la toma de decisiones y obliga a las organizaciones a operar bajo nuevas reglas de valor, control y autonomía.

В статье рассматриваются теоретические и прикладные аспекты оценки рисков при операциях с ценными бумагами в условиях высокой рыночной волатильности. Актуальность темы обусловлена нестабильностью глобальных финансовых рынков, вызванной последствиями пандемии COVID-19, изменениями в монетарной политике и ростом инфляционных ожиданий. Проанализированы основные подходы к количественной оценке рыночных рисков, включая методы Value-at-Risk, Conditional Value-at-Risk, GARCH моделирование и стресс-тестирование. Представлена практическая апробация указанных методов на основе данных российского и зарубежного фондовых рынков за 2020 год. Выявлены ограничения традиционных моделей в фазах острого рыночного стресса и подтверждена эффективность комбинированных подходов, способных адаптироваться к нестабильной макроэкономической среде. Полученные результаты имеют прикладное значение для повышения точности оценки рисков и оптимизации инвестиционных стратегий в условиях высокой неопределённости.

O Professor Paulo César Morceiro é doutor em Economia pela Faculdade de Economia, Administração, Contabilidade e Atuária da Universidade de São Paulo (FEA – USP). Bacharel em Ciências Econômicas e mestre em Economia Industrial pela Universidade Estadual Paulista “Júlio de Mesquita Filho” (UNESP). Trabalhou na Federação das Indústrias do Estado de São Paulo (FIESP) de 2011 a 2014 onde coordenou e integrou equipes responsáveis por diversos estudos técnicos e projetos com empresas e sindicatos associados. É pesquisador da Fundação Instituto de Pesquisas Econômicas (FIPE), pesquisador associado ao Núcleo de Estudos de Economia Regional e Urbana (NEREUS) da FEAUSP e pesquisador colaborador do Grupo de Estudos em Economia Industrial (GEEIN) da UNESP. Paulo Morceiro possui mais de dez anos de experiência na área de economia industrial e análise setorial. Autor do livro: “Desindustrialização na economia brasileira no período 2000-2011: abordagens e indicadores” de 2012 e de diversos artigos acadêmicos e de opinião sobre política industrial e desindustrialização no Brasil recente. Atualmente, Morceiro está como SARChl in Industrial Development na Universidade de Johanesburgo – África do Sul

Em 2021, quando estávamos em conversa com o editor da Argumentos: Revista do Departamento de Ciências Sociais da Unimontes, Gustavo Dias, para decidirmos sobre um dossiê especial dos 100 anos de Leonel Brizola, comentamos acerca da relevância de Brizola para a luta pela democratização do acesso à terra no Brasil. Brizola, até mesmo pelas suas origens e trajetória pessoal, teve grande proximidade com a luta dos trabalhadores rurais, promovendo e apoiando à organização dos camponeses e à Reforma Agrária durante seu mandato de governador do Rio Grande do Sul (1959 – 1963). Brizola incentivou e auxiliou o surgimento do Movimento dos Agricultores Sem Terra (Master) e criou o Instituto Gaúcho de Reforma Agrária (IGRA) um dos responsáveis, junto com o Conselho de Desenvolvimento do Estado (CDE), em executar os Projetos de Reforma Agrária e Desenvolvimento Econômico-Social (PRADE) no Rio Grande do Sul. Assim, durante nossa conversa, em 2021, comentamos que talvez sem Brizola um dos maiores e mais importantes movimentos sociais do Sul Global não existiria, o Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra (MST). O MST, na ocasião da morte de Brizola, soltou uma nota considerando o ex-governador do Rio Grande do Sul e do Rio de Janeiro em “avô” do Movimento (MST, 2004). Em diversas outras ocasiões, o MST prestou homenagens a Leonel Brizola e importantes ativistas do Movimento sempre demonstrou gratidão e admiração pelo “melhor governador de esquerda do Brasil” (STÉDILE, 2022). Então, quando estávamos deliberando para decidirmos quem iríamos entrevistar para o dossiê especial da Argumentos de 100 anos de Leonel Brizola, um nome foi unanimidade, o ativista do MST João Pedro Stédile.

Em 2021, quando estávamos em conversa com o editor da Argumentos: Revista do Departamento de Ciências Sociais da Unimontes, Gustavo Dias, para decidirmos sobre este dossiê especial dos 100 anos de Leonel Brizola, comentamos acerca da relevância de Brizola para a luta pela democratização do acesso à terra no Brasil. Brizola, até mesmo pelas suas origens e trajetória pessoal, teve grande proximidade com a luta dos trabalhadores rurais, promovendo e apoiando à organização dos camponeses e à Reforma Agrária durante seu mandato de governador do Rio Grande do Sul (1959 – 1963). Brizola incentivou e auxiliou o surgimento do Movimento dos Agricultores Sem Terra (Master) e criou o Instituto Gaúcho de Reforma Agrária (IGRA) um dos responsáveis, junto com o Conselho de Desenvolvimento do Estado (CDE), em executar os Projetos de Reforma Agrária e Desenvolvimento Econômico-social (PRADE) no Rio Grande do Sul. Assim, durante nossa conversa ano passado, comentamos que talvez sem Brizola um dos maiores e mais importantes movimentos sociais do Sul Global não existiria, o Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra (MST).

Richard Florida is one of the world’s leading urbanists. He is a researcher and professor, serving as University Professor and Director of Cities at the Martin Prosperity Institute at the University of Toronto, a Distinguished Fellow at New York University’s Schack Institute of Real Estate, and a Visiting Fellow at Florida International University. He is a writer and journalist, having penned several global best sellers, including the award winning The Rise of the Creative Class and his most recent book, The New Urban Crisis published in April 2017. He serves as senior editor for The Atlantic, where he co-founded and serves as Editor-at-Large for CityLab. He is an entrepreneur, as founder of the Creative Class Group which works closely with companies and governments worldwide. A 2013 MIT study named him the world’s most influential thought leader. And TIME magazine recognized his Twitter feed as one of the 140 most influential in the world. He previously taught at Carnegie Mellon, Ohio State University, and George Mason University, and has been a visiting professor at Harvard and MIT and Visiting Fellow at the Brookings Institution. He earned his Bachelor’s degree from Rutgers College and his Ph.D. from Columbia University. For more information about Richard Florida and his work: http://www.creativeclass.com/

O nosso primeiro encontro com Luiz Carlos Bresser-Pereira ocorreu durante o VII Latin American Advanced Programme on Rethinking Macro and Development Economics (LAPORDE). Este evento, realizado pelo Centro de Estudos do Novo Desenvolvimento (CND) da Escola de Economia de São Paulo da Fundação Getúlio Vargas (FGV/EESP), reuniu nomes de importância internacional para debater e refletir sobre Economia, Política e Sociedade no Desenvolvimento da América Latina, como: Ha-Joon Chang (Cambridge University), Gabriel Palma (Cambridge University), Jose Antonio Ocampo (Columbia University), Jan Krengel (Levy Institute) e Luiz Carlos Bresser-Pereira (FGV/EESP). A ocasião, portanto, foi uma excelente oportunidade de debates e de reflexões acerca do desenvolvimento econômico do Brasil e da América Latina. Além de possibilitar uma entrevista com Bresser-Pereira, um dos maiores expoentes do pensamento desenvolvimentista brasileiro. Aos 84 anos de idade, o economista, administrador de empresas, advogado, Ex-Ministro de Estado e Professor Emérito da FGV, Bresser-Pereira continua meditando e produzindo copiosamente sobre desenvolvimento econômico. Recentemente, Bresser-Pereira vem se dedicando à Teoria do Novo Desenvolvimentismo, assim, buscamos a partir dessa breve entrevista, concedida por e-mail em fevereiro de 2018, trazer um pouco das experiências, reflexões e teorias desse humanista brasileiro extremamente engajado e comprometido com a produção, divulgação e execução do saber econômico, político, social correlacionado ao desenvolvimento latino-americano.

O presente artigo tem como objetivo analisar as potencialidades e os desafios da Economia Criativa para o desenvolvimento inclusivo e com sustentabilidade na América Latina, sobretudo em países com parque industrial diminuto. Para tanto, o texto está dividido em três partes. Na primeira, é apresentado o conceito de desenvolvimento econômico e sua evolução para o conceito de desenvolvimento sustentável. Na segunda parte, a pesquisa aprecia o campo da Economia Criativa e, na terceira seção, como ele pode contribuir para o desenvolvimento sustentável na América Latina. Os procedimentos técnicos metodológicos priorizados pelo artigo foram bibliográficos e documentais, trabalhando com fontes primárias e secundárias.

O presente artigo tem como objetivo pesquisar a situação do setor de Indústria Criativa nos países membros do Mercado Comum do Sul (Mercosul) no período que vai de 2012 a 2015. No que tange à metodologia, optou-se pela análise crítica de dados bibliográficos e documentais, trabalhando com estatísticas coletadas na UNCTAD, BID e FIRJAN e conceitos de Economia Criativa (EC) elaborados por autores renomados como Howkins, Florida e Throsby. O trabalho está dividido em duas partes: na primeira, apresenta-se a evolução operacional do conceito de EC e, na segunda, examinam-se os dados referentes ao setor da EC no Mercosul. A conclusão, comparando com outros países do mundo, é de que a EC é uma alternativa promissora de desenvolvimento econômico, porém ainda pouco explorada pelo Mercosul.

В статье рассматриваются вопросы внедрения риск-менеджмента на предприятиях малого и среднего бизнеса (МСП) в условиях современной экономики. Исследование включает анализ специфических трудностей, с которыми сталкиваются МСП в России, обусловленных как внутренними, так и внешними факторами. Особое внимание уделено процессу оценки рисков, включающему идентификацию и оценку вероятности возникновения и финансовых последствий рисков. Рассматриваются методологические подходы к интеграции риск-менеджмента в бизнес-процессы, а также использование инновационных технологий, таких как искусственный интеллект, блокчейн и интернет вещей (IoT), для повышения эффективности управления рисками. Также представлены практические рекомендации по внедрению риск-менеджмента на основе международного опыта.

В статье представлена авторская методика многофакторного стресс-тестирования, предназначенная для оценки рисков инвестиционных проектов в условиях высокой внешней и внутренней неопределенности. Методика охватывает пять ключевых направлений анализа: энергетическую эффективность, климатические факторы, цифровую трансформацию, внешнеэкономическую нестабильность и геополитические риски. Теоретико-методологическая основа подхода базируется на сценарном анализе с параметризацией предельных значений показателей. Применение методики позволяет проводить комплексную оценку устойчивости инвестиционных решений, уточнять финансовые параметры проектов и формировать эффективные сценарии адаптации к негативным воздействиям. Анализ международного опыта демонстрирует соответствие разработанного подхода современным глобальным тенденциям в области инвестиционного анализа. Практическая реализация методики подтверждена примерами использования в проектах малого и среднего бизнеса. Полученные результаты подтверждают прикладную ценность предложенного инструментария для повышения устойчивости и инвестиционной привлекательности проектов в условиях постпандемийной трансформации экономики.

Large language models (LLMs) are now widely used in software engineering, yet most evidence of their practical effect comes from corporate productivity studies or synthetic benchmarks. This paper offers a complementary view from the solo indie developer's perspective: a reflective case study of two complete, shipped iOS games developed in continuous pair-programming with an LLM-based coding assistant. Both games are aimed at communities that mainstream consumer software has long ignored. The Listening Maze is a spatial-audio echolocation maze for blind and low-vision players. Trace Memory Game is a memory-recall game built around brief-flash visual encoding and freehand redraw, positioned for daily cognitive engagement. We describe the development methodology, the four-step human-LLM loop used throughout, the resulting codebases, and what the experience implies for socially oriented software development by very small teams. We argue that LLM-assisted development reduces the cost of serving small, underserved audiences enough that a solo developer or a small academic team can now defend such products economically.

[The manuscript has been submitted to Human Nature.] Humans lack pronounced morphological (external) signs of ovulation, a fact that has given rise to numerous evolutionary hypotheses concerning the origin of this phenomenon. However, the existing hypotheses, subsumed under the term “concealed ovulation,” focus predominantly on the reduction of morphological signals and treat behavioral changes (such as continuous sexual receptivity) as a passive by-product of this reduction rather than as an independent channel of communication. As a result, classical hypotheses encounter internal contradictions when attempting to reconcile the concealment of ovulation with the formation of pair-bonds and male provisioning. Yet in primates, behavioral markers of fertility are no less important than morphological ones, and they possess fundamentally different properties — flexibility and the capacity for context-dependent modulation. This article proposes a new evolutionary hypothesis, according to which the key evolutionary event was not the concealment of ovulation but a redistribution of the signaling load: slow, inflexible morphological traits were reduced because fast, context-dependent behavioral markers acquired the ability to be activated outside the fertile window, enabling a woman to simulate ovulation in response to male resource investment. This mechanism — conditional sexual responsiveness — provides an internally consistent explanation for the formation of pair-bonds, the retention of the male partner, and the evolutionary stability of the “sex-for-resources” scheme, thereby resolving the logical contradictions of classical theories.

Severe childhood maltreatment is known to impair brain development. However, this longitudinal single case—conducted from a first‑person participant‑researcher perspective—provides evidence that an individual with extreme developmental trauma can achieve functional recovery without professional intervention. This study covers the participant’s life from birth to age 28, and the core recovery period begins with cognitive collapse at age 14 and ends with high functional recovery at age 28. This recovery is marked by the participant‑researcher’s ability to produce academic writing and integrate cross‑disciplinary theories (e.g., active inference) while preparing this manuscript. Consequently, this case proposes a concept of “trauma-type twice‑exceptionality”: a pattern in which extreme developmental trauma co‑occurs with high cognitive reserve, shaping a distinct recovery trajectory that existing models do not capture.

The rapid diffusion of artificial intelligence (AI) tools has transformed how entrepreneurs and small business owners operate, yet the psychological mechanisms through which AI adoption interacts with entrepreneurial self-efficacy (ESE) remain fragmented across disciplines. This paper presents a PRISMA 2020 systematic lit- erature review at the intersection of AI adoption and self-efficacy across small and medium enterprise (SME), entrepreneurship education program (EEP), and workplace contexts. A structured search of Scopus (2022–2026) using three construct-based query groups, combined with a multi-criteria quality filter spanning business (ABS 2+), social science (SJR top-1,000), and engineering venues (CORE A/A*, IEEE/ACM Transac- tions), yielded 1,410 initial records. After deduplication, quality filtering, and two-stage screening, 55 studies were included and synthesised via a structured concept matrix. Findings reveal that the majority of studies position AI as an antecedent of downstream outcomes rather than directly examining the AI–SE link, and that the field is theo- retically fragmented across 30+ frameworks with no dominant paradigm. The review contributes a consolidated cross-context evidence base and identifies the direct AI→SE pathway and the reverse SE→AI pathway as critically under-researched directions.

This study examines how everyday language functions not merely as a medium of communication, but as a structural mechanism of organizational control that shapes cognition, emotion, behavior, recognition, and cultural reproduction within workplaces. Previous studies on labeling theory, framing theory, speech act theory, meme theory, narrative theory, and organizational silence have largely developed as separate research traditions. However, limited attention has been paid to how these processes interact to constrain speakability and behavioral possibility in organizational environments. To address this gap, this paper introduces the concept of Label-Framing, defined as a mutually reinforcing process in which social labels and interpretive frames recursively stabilize meanings attached to persons, roles, and behaviors. Labels categorize individuals, while frames assign normative meanings to those categories. Through repeated organizational communication, Label-Framing shapes expectations regarding who may speak, how one should behave, which emotions are legitimate, and what actions become cognitively available or unavailable. The study argues that organizational control often operates not through explicit coercion, but through the internalization of repeated linguistic classifications. As Label-Framing intensifies, externally imposed labels may become integrated into self-description itself, transforming organizational discourse into a mechanism of self-regulation and adaptive silence. Drawing on anonymized comparative observations of contrasting communication environments within the same organization, the paper shows that high Label-Framing environments tend to produce self-censorship, silence, emotional homogenization, recognition dependency, and reduced cognitive flexibility. In contrast, low Label-Framing environments are more likely to sustain dialogue, humor, contextual interpretation, relational repair, and psychological safety. The analysis suggests that organizational culture is reproduced not only through formal systems or institutional rules, but also through repeated labels, frames, emotional expressions, and narratives. The theoretical contribution of this study is to reconceptualize organizational control as communicative stabilization rather than merely formal authority or institutional discipline. By integrating labeling, framing, speech acts, emotional memes, narrative reproduction, and organizational silence into a single communicative process, this paper offers a framework for understanding how language structures organizational reality. It also suggests that organizational reform requires not only institutional redesign, but critical reflection on which linguistic patterns, emotional expressions, and interpretive frameworks are repeatedly legitimized in everyday workplace communication.

Political polarization poses a growing global challenge, yet existing NLP approaches typically rely on indirect proxies such as toxicity or negative sentiment, which fail to capture identity-based antagonism that is central to polarizing discourse. We address this gap by conceptualizing identity-related polarization discourse as divisive language: language that explains political or social disagreement by attributing it to group-based identities. Building on this definition, we propose a staged training pipeline that uses large language models (LLMs) to generate definition-grounded supervision and progressively distills it into lightweight classifiers suitable for large-scale analysis. Experiments on social media data show that the resulting models substantially outperform zero-shot prompting and small-scale supervised baselines, while detecting forms of polarization that are not captured by toxicity- or sentiment-based methods. Our findings demonstrate that divisive language can be treated as a distinct, computable linguistic construct, enabling scalable and theoretically grounded analysis of political polarization.

Brainrot is a meme genre that collects the detritus of the internet, both aesthetically and intellectually speaking. It is a catch-all term for low-quality content that is produced online in an attempt to claim a stake in the attention economy. Slop is a term that has gained traction in the last year as a way to refer to the constant and overwhelming output of generative artificial intelligence (GenAI). Slop is engaged with lazily, sloppily and spontaneously, not created with the aim of embodying a particular aesthetic mode, but rather mimicking others. Recently, both terms have collided during the viral internet meme genre of “Italian Brainrot”. However, brainrot and slop stand in completely different aesthetic lineages and thus represent completely different modes of production and distribution. This article provides an analysis of the evolution of brainrot and slop as aesthetic phenomena by placing them in the context of meme culture and expanding on their role in the digital economy. It argues that the difference between brainrot and slop is crucial to make going forward, as we see more and more slop content being circulated by both platforms and users. Spam has become the key logic of production in this GenAI-fuelled slop economy, which threatens to flatten and homogenise cultural expression. Brainrot content in meme culture, however, is presented here as the antithesis of the slop economy due to its aesthetic creativity and ongoing acts of cultural remediation.

Synthetic data has recently been proposed as an alternate means of procuring data for training AI which dispenses with data work. However the labour required to produce it has not been studied. This paper does so by looking at the technical artist: a hybrid programmer and 3D artist recently brought into the AI industry from the games and film industry. I argue that technical art, in the synthetic data context, is data work but of an unfamiliar kind. I demonstrate this through a labour process analysis of procedural asset creation. I show that in the synthetic data context, technical art is governed by the goal of forcing generalization. I suggest that the concept of data work should not ossify to capture only its present state of collection and cleaning, but that a more mutable concept is necessary to track changes in the AI industry. While claims of data work’s coming disappearance are implausible, it seems unwise to overstate its permanency in its present state.

This paper theorizes Firework Dominance Illusion (FDI), a communication-based phenomenon in which the same harassment behavior is perceived as severe by affected parties on site but minimized by upper management because of hierarchical distance. Using the metaphor of aerial fireworks, the paper argues that harassment, like fireworks, is experienced differently depending on the observer’s position: from the ground, it is accompanied by sound, vibration, fear, and bodily impact, whereas from above it appears only as a small point of light. In workplace harassment, this difference produces a communicative distortion between those who experience intimidation, silence, exclusion, and information blocking, and those who interpret the same events as strict guidance, localized friction, or ordinary workplace management. The paper connects this model with research on organizational communication, employee voice and silence, psychological safety, abusive supervision, toxic leadership, sensemaking, and institutional responses to workplace conflict. It argues that recurrence prevention often fails because upper management receives only filtered or diminished signals from the ground-level workplace. Victim reports are therefore treated as subjective or emotional complaints, while the perpetrator’s competence, politeness toward superiors, and symbolic organizational value may be overestimated. By reframing workplace harassment as a problem of hierarchical communication and perceptual distortion, the paper explains why harm that is obvious at the ground level may remain underestimated at higher levels of the organization. The Firework Dominance Illusion model suggests that effective prevention requires not only fact-finding and individual correction, but also mechanisms for translating ground-level communicative experience into managerial understanding before silence, exclusion, and turnover reproduce the same harm.

This article gives a structural-semiotic analysis of the comb sign (Sign 176 in Mahadevan's 1977 concordance) in the Indus script, and advances the methodological argument that semiotics constitutes a necessary complement to epigraphy in the study of undeciphered scripts. Epigraphy asks what a sign says in the language it encodes, on the other hand Semiotics asks what a sign does in the sign system, a question that can be answered without phonological decipherment. Drawing on Sampson (1985), Harris (1986, 2000), and Coulmas (1989), the article grounds this distinction theoretically and demonstrates it through three semiotic frameworks applied to the comb sign: Peirce’s triadic model of icon, index, and symbol; Saussure’s syntagmatic and paradigmatic analysis; and Barthes’ denotation, connotation, and myth. These frameworks support the hypothesis, first advanced by Mahadevan (1982, 2006, 2012), that Sign 176 probably functions as a referent category classifier, though the category it encodes could not be determined without decipherment. The contributions of this article are of theoretical and methodological nature. It is perhaps the first simultaneous application of all three classical semiotic frameworks to a single Indus sign. Secondly, only a few previous studies appear to have formulated explicitly the methodological complementarity of semiotics and epigraphy in Indus script research, this article advances that thesis in grounded form. It also tries to offer what appears to be probably the first structured cross-cultural comparative analysis of classifier sign function across the Egyptian, Mesopotamian, and Indus traditions on the basis of existing literature. Fourthly, it advances a new cross-linguistic cognitive motivation argument for the referent category classifier hypothesis. The article additionally suggests that the Indus sign system may have functioned as a professionally restricted administrative notation. No decipherment claims are advanced.

Problem. Standard approaches to civil society in post-Soviet hybrid regimes often reduce the civil field to registered non-commercial organizations, missing individual public actors and event-based mobilizations. The registry is then read as if it were a full picture of the civil field — a category error. Method. The article anatomizes the institutional mode of civic activity (one of three modes) in the Kazakhstan case. The evidence architecture is multi-layered: registry structure, formal connectedness, public visibility, and tax-payment trace, applied to the C1–C7 functional layers of the civil field. The analysis is supplemented by a 2021–2026 trajectory, publication-safe composite genre descriptions, and a transnational check across external source families. Distributed and emergent modes are treated in parallel pilots, outside the scope of this article. Results. Within the institutional mode, the analysis identifies a stable bifurcation between two sampling layers: a thin formal-associative core (D3 NPO-core, 17,786 organizations; covers the institutional projection of C1) and a thicker institutional boundary layer (D2 boundary, 5,548 organizations; partial coverage of C2). D2 boundary shows higher public visibility than D3 (41.67% vs. 25.56%; +16.11 pp; 95% screening interval [5.23; 26.99]) and a stronger tax-payment trace (37.56% vs. 17.38%). Thematically, D3 concentrates in the civic-associative cluster (82%); D2 boundary is compositionally specific: ~41% professional chambers and legal self-regulating organizations, ~23% private educational institutions, ~17% religious organizations. 40–46% of the infrastructure concentrates in three cities. The human-rights cluster shows anomalously low institutional visibility (25% vs. 62–100% elsewhere). The 2021–2026 trajectory shows uninterrupted growth of the payer-organization base (+14.98%), no visible administrative collapse in the January 2022 event window, and faster growth of the non-state civic segment than the state/public-sector segment (+18.01% vs. +8.83%). Claim ceilings. Claims are limited to the intersection of the institutional mode with C1/C2 (production core and organizational layer). The article does not describe the civil field exhaustively; makes no claims about influence, effectiveness, or foreign control; does not measure distributed or emergent activity; represents C3 (donor/financial), C5 (symbolic-media), and C6 (boundary/consultative) only through composite genre descriptions; covers C4 (legal/protective) only through a diagnostic sample; and represents C7 (transnational/diasporic) only through external-source visibility of C1/C2 organizations, not through the structure of transnational actors themselves. The anomalously low institutional visibility of the human-rights cluster may reflect displacement into other modes and requires separate verification. A full anatomy of the uncovered and diagnostically represented layers requires additional pilots.

Problem. Standard approaches to civil society in post-Soviet hybrid regimes often reduce the civil field to registered non-commercial organizations, missing individual public actors and event-based mobilizations. The registry is then read as if it were a full picture of the civil field — a category error. Method. The article anatomizes the institutional mode of civic activity (one of three modes) in the Kazakhstan case. The evidence architecture is multi-layered: registry structure, formal connectedness, public visibility, and tax-payment trace, applied to the C1–C7 functional layers of the civil field. The analysis is supplemented by a 2021–2026 trajectory, publication-safe composite genre descriptions, and a transnational check across external source families. Distributed and emergent modes are treated in parallel pilots, outside the scope of this article. Results. Within the institutional mode, the analysis identifies a stable bifurcation between two sampling layers: a thin formal-associative core (D3 NPO-core, 17,786 organizations; covers the institutional projection of C1) and a thicker institutional boundary layer (D2 boundary, 5,548 organizations; partial coverage of C2). D2 boundary shows higher public visibility than D3 (41.67% vs. 25.56%; +16.11 pp; 95% screening interval [5.23; 26.99]) and a stronger tax-payment trace (37.56% vs. 17.38%). Thematically, D3 concentrates in the civic-associative cluster (82%); D2 boundary is compositionally specific: ~41% professional chambers and legal self-regulating organizations, ~23% private educational institutions, ~17% religious organizations. 40–46% of the infrastructure concentrates in three cities. The human-rights cluster shows anomalously low institutional visibility (25% vs. 62–100% elsewhere). The 2021–2026 trajectory shows uninterrupted growth of the payer-organization base (+14.98%), no visible administrative collapse in the January 2022 event window, and faster growth of the non-state civic segment than the state/public-sector segment (+18.01% vs. +8.83%). Claim ceilings. Claims are limited to the intersection of the institutional mode with C1/C2 (production core and organizational layer). The article does not describe the civil field exhaustively; makes no claims about influence, effectiveness, or foreign control; does not measure distributed or emergent activity; represents C3 (donor/financial), C5 (symbolic-media), and C6 (boundary/consultative) only through composite genre descriptions; covers C4 (legal/protective) only through a diagnostic sample; and represents C7 (transnational/diasporic) only through external-source visibility of C1/C2 organizations, not through the structure of transnational actors themselves. The anomalously low institutional visibility of the human-rights cluster may reflect displacement into other modes and requires separate verification. A full anatomy of the uncovered and diagnostically represented layers requires additional pilots.

There are broad concerns about the societal impacts of social media, motivating widespread research on online social phenomena. However, such research is increasingly reliant on sampled datasets, and the extent to which research using sampled data can reliably reproduce findings obtained from complete datasets is unclear. Focusing on the intersection of social media and political communication - where reliable results are especially critical - here, we investigate how sampling strategies affect estimates of political polarization and news diet credibility on Twitter/X and Reddit, two of the most commonly studied platforms. First, we show that political content is only a small subset of overall platform activity. Second, we show that large random samples can reliably measure social network polarization, but that smaller samples exhibit systematic bias and are often inconsistent. Finally, we show that engagement-weighted sampling distorts estimates of misinformation prevalence, but in an unpredictable manner which varies across platforms. Our findings underscore the risks of drawing conclusions from incomplete social media data. We argue that policy makers must urgently address this challenge, and call for the European Union's Digital Services Act to ensure that researchers have access to comprehensive social media datasets, not limited topic-specific samples, in order to ensure that social media research is accurate and informative.

Debates about generative artificial intelligence in higher education often frame AI-assisted scholarship as a problem of academic integrity, authorship, and intellectual authenticity. This article argues that such debates frequently rest on a fantasy of unassisted scholarship: the assumption that legitimate academic work should be produced through largely autonomous cognition. Drawing on distributed cognition, academic writing studies, disability studies, and structural accounts of inequality, the article argues that scholarship has always been scaffolded by cognitive, linguistic, relational, and institutional supports that are unevenly distributed across the academic field. Generative AI makes assistance newly visible, exposing asymmetries in who can refuse AI without penalty. The article introduces the concept of the unequal right to refuse and develops a scaffolding/substitution distinction for evaluating AI use in higher education. It argues for academic integrity policies that distinguish accountable assistance from outsourced intellectual labor while attending to unequal scholarly conditions.

We propose that entropy-based multigroup segregation indices: Theil information theory index (nominal outcomes), the ordinal information theory index (ordinal outcomes), and the rank-order information theory index (continuous outcomes), possess additive factor decomposability. When the predictor is a joint variable formed by crossing several categorical dimensions, the overall association can be partitioned into the unique contribution of each dimension (via Shapley values) and all interaction contributions. The proof rests on expressing each index as normalized mutual information and applying the chain rule, the inclusion–exclusion expansion, and the Shapley value from cooperative game theory. This finding allows comparative, intersectional, and temporal analyses that standard regression models usually cannot provide. We illustrate the method by decomposing the association between smoking behavior and the joint predictor race × education × gender using nationally representative U.S. data (1996–2019).

Applied research is essential for translating scientific discoveries into practical industrial solutions. This brief examines how Guangdong’s New Research and Development Institutes (NRDIs) offer lessons for Brazil’s EMBRAPII model. Despite operating in different political economies, both systems face analogous challenges: ensuring research responds to industrial demand, financing mid-TRL development, and creating structures that reward application alongside publication. NRDIs are defined by their market orientation, hybrid funding models, and institutional autonomy. Through “innovation platforms” with local governments, they coordinate research, commercialisation, enterprise incubation, and talent cultivation into an integrated ecosystem. EMBRAPII’s tripartite co-financing model has demonstrated impact—68.2% of supported projects lead to innovations—but structural challenges persist. This brief argues that Guangdong’s experience offers Brazil specific, actionable pathways: more struc?tured industry-driven agenda setting, independent legal entity intermediaries, deeper integration with finance and talent policy, and investment in shared mid-TRL infrastructure. The window of opportunity is open, and the institutional foundations exist.

Background Parkinson’s disease and related disorders (PDRD) are progressive, complex conditions characterised by high symptom burden, multimorbidity and increased frailty, contributing to substantial healthcare use. National policy developments in the UK emphasise integrated, timely and community‑based care, including proactive identification of palliative needs. However, workforce shortages and long waiting times challenge delivery of responsive Parkinson’s services. The North Bristol NHS Trust’s Parkinson’s Hub was developed to provide responsive, coordinated, cross sector support for people with PDRD experiencing rapid deterioration or unmet palliative needs. This study explores how the Hub operates in practice and how patients, carers and clinicians experience this new model of care. Methods An ethnographic study was conducted involving 106 hours of observations of Hub clinics and multidisciplinary team (MDT) meetings, alongside semi‑structured interviews with 11 patients, 9 unpaid carers and 13 clinicians. A reflexive thematic approach was taken to analyse fieldnotes and interview transcripts. Results We developed three themes relevant to how the Hub functioned and was experienced. (1) Navigating uncertainty: multidisciplinary input and extended clinic appointments facilitated building a holistic understanding of patients, better enabling joined-up care and providing reassurance to families facing complex, unpredictable challenges. (2) Accessing support: weekly rapid‑access clinics and MDT meetings facilitated timely responses to deterioration and efficient cross‑sector communication for referrals and treatment. However, access was dependent on patients’ awareness of services and administrative capacity (e.g., delays in clinic letters). (3) Building and sustaining the Hub: MDT meetings fostered strong collaborative relationships, shared learning and improved clinician confidence in managing complex comorbidity. However, reliance on clinician motivation and unfunded time combined with increasing workload posed risks to long‑term sustainability. Conclusions The Parkinson’s Hub provides a responsive, integrated model of care that helps address key shortcomings in standard PDRD services. Its multidisciplinary, cross‑sector approach aligns closely with national priorities to shift care towards the community and improve the identification and management of palliative needs. Sustaining the model and implementing in other settings will require stable funding, strengthened community workforce capacity and attention to equity of access.

Studies of democratic backsliding suggest that political elites can, but often fail to, serve as "democratic gatekeepers" by punishing autocratic colleagues to protect democracy. While there is a substantial body of literature examining voters' preferences for democracy and their reactions to democratic violations by elites, we know less about elites' preferences for democratic gatekeeping in contemporary democracies. We develop a theory of democratic gatekeeping among political elites in democracies, examining the practice within and between parties. We tested the implications of this theory in pre-registered survey experiments targeting approximately 8,000 national and local elected representatives and party officials in Norway. We then compared the results to those of a survey of citizens. Through various experimental approaches, we uncover the gatekeeping preferences of Norwegian political elites when exposed to anti-democratic party colleagues and political parties as potential coalition partners.

Higher education is confronting a pedagogical disruption it did not have time to prepare for: the rapid mainstreaming of generative AI in student learning. This has created an urgent need for design frameworks that include student voice and can be reliably used by faculty for designing AI-infused learning experiences and verifying that they work. This multi-site, mixed methods study, conducted across four SUNY campuses, developed and piloted the Systematic Infusion of AI in Teaching – the SIAT framework, to address this need. SIAT integrates three components: a learning-centered design approach, a pedagogical partnership process in which enrolled student partners refine assignments through structured SWOT analysis, and an assessment model targeting AI literacy, learning, and teaching experience, and disciplinary outcomes. The pilot engaged 27 faculty, 315 students at pre-test, and 75 student pedagogical partners. Results strongly supported both the framework and its instruments. Exploratory factor analysis of the AI Literacy Survey produced a robust three-factor structure that replicated across pre-test (KMO = .955; 62.2% variance) and post-test (KMO = .87; 63.1% variance) administrations. The three factors—Functional AI Literacy (how AI works), Rhetorical/Application Literacy (how to use AI strategically), and Critical AI Literacy (when, whether, and why)—map onto established literacy theory and demonstrated excellent reliability (α ≥ .85 across all populations and administrations). Both students and faculty made statistically significant pre-post gains on every dimension. Students showed medium overall effects (d = 0.62, p < .001); faculty showed large effects (d = 1.12, p < .001), with Functional Knowledge gains particularly pronounced (d = 1.27). The Student Experience Survey yielded a parallel three-factor structure (74.1% variance explained): Usability (M = 4.33), Learning Experience and Engagement (M = 3.97), and Content Quality and Usefulness (M = 3.83), all with α > .92. Course-level grade comparisons and faculty reflections showed no negative effect on student performance and, in several cases, modest improvement. One finding warrants particular attention. Items expressing skepticism, concern, and wariness about AI loaded coherently on the Critical AI Literacy factor as positive indicators of evaluative thinking—not as negative attitudes requiring reverse coding. This result reframes critical awareness as an essential AI literacy competency rather than as resistance to be overcome. Taken together, the findings establish SIAT as a replicable framework for AI integration and support a parsimonious three-tier model of AI literacy with direct implications for assessment and instruction.

Abstract The Enhanced Games (TEG), which emerged in 2023 and held its inaugural competition in Las Vegas in May 2026, constitutes one of the most contested institutional ventures in contemporary sport. Drawing on the concepts of the attention economy, institutional legitimation, counterpublics and spectacle theory, this article offers a systematic communication studies analysis of TEG’s media strategy. It identifies four mutually reinforcing mechanisms: a segmented podcast presence operating as a gatekeeper-bypassing legitimation device; the ideological content embedded in platform selection; algorithmically optimised content design coupled with an ephemeral communicative logic; and the construction of a total media spectacle around the inaugural Las Vegas event. The analysis further identifies a structurally significant internal contradiction: the organisation’s rhetorical reliance on Asian doping controversies as evidence of anti-doping hypocrisy sits in unexplained tension with its complete absence from Asian streaming platforms. The article situates TEG within a broader pattern of venture-capital-funded sport disruption and argues that the project’s media strategy represents a coherent, if internally contradictory, attempt to construct an alternative sporting canon — one that exploits the logic of the attention economy, the ideological segmentation of contemporary platform spaces, and the ongoing transformation of generational sport consumption. The lessons for media studies and sport communication scholarship extend beyond the TEG case.

How do ordinary citizens react to dramatic diplomatic events? We propose public reactions to such dramatic global events are initially significantly driven by ‘bottom up’ dynamics rooted in personality traits and emotion. Over time, these personality-driven effects diminish, and ‘top down’ elite cues and strategic calculus persist as drivers. We examine the unexpected, dramatic 28 February 2025 Oval Office confrontation between US president Donald Trump and Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy and its effects on German public support for arming Ukraine. We consider this a ‘hard’ test, as Ukraine policy has been one of the foremost policy issues in Germany for years, with strongly entrenched partisan positions. We use detailed two-wave panel data collected before and after the confrontation (N = 7,768 respondents in a rolling cross-section). Across estimation strategies, we find that the confrontation indeed caused a swift increase in mean support for arms deliveries to Ukraine (+0.22–0.27 SD). We show that this effect persisted for at least four weeks with no clear signs of diminishing. We find an ‘empathy effect,’ with respondents with higher levels of agreeableness reacting more strongly. This conditional effect receded over time, suggesting that ‘bottom up’ (personality-driven) and ‘top down’ (elite cueing) dynamics may unfold differently over time following extreme events. This provides empirical evidence for individual-level traits as important drivers not only of baseline foreign policy preferences, but also of changes in preferences. The study gives us a more dynamic understanding of how personality – especially agreeableness – drives individual responses to dramatic global events.

Research on corporate landlords has largely focused on large-scale institutional investors. But most of the corporatization of landlords over the past two decades has been the explosion of the Limited Liability Company (LLC), popular for large and small landlords alike because it is cheap to establish, provides relative anonymity, and shields larger business and personal assets from the litigation and financial risks of any individual property. Eviction data are a useful resource to study the shift towards LLCs in the rental market, especially among landlords operating in relatively low-income neighborhoods. In this study, we examine how eviction filing activity has shifted to LLCs using plaintiff names from 47 million eviction filings from 2000-2023. In 2000, non-LLC corporations and unincorporated filers were responsible for 96% of all eviction filings. But by 2023, the LLC share of filings increased from 4% to 41%, surpassing non-LLC corporations in 2022 to become the most common type of filer. While eviction filing has shifted to LLCs in all states, for some the shift has been particularly stark; for example, the LLC share of filings in Arizona increased from 3% to 66% between 2000-2023. In some states the shift to LLC filers has occurred alongside a decrease in filings from non-LLC corporations (e.g., Arizona), whereas in other states the decrease has been among unincorporated filers (e.g., New York). We discuss policy implications and what the shift towards LLC filers means for tenants, city governments, and legal accountability.

Mental health disorders (MHD) have increased significantly among children and youth. They are shown to be more common among children of low socioeconomic background and are associated with worse educational and labour market performance later in life. In this study, our primary objective is to investigate how childhood MHD measured at age 11–15 is associated with educational outcomes along the educational path as well as earnings at age 30, and the extent to which the associations are attenuated when controlling for academic achievement and later mental health. Secondly, we investigate whether the relationship is moderated by parental education and family income. Using rich longitudinal register data of the full population in Finland and sibling fixed effects models, we show that childhood MHD is associated with poorer educational outcomes at each step and lower earnings in early adulthood. The family moderation effects suggest that children of higher SES families face a larger penalty associated with MHD. The study contributes to the existing literature on social selection in health inequalities, accumulation of disadvantages over the life course, and sociological theories on intergenerational mechanisms. The strong negative consequences of early MHD on educational outcomes calls for more effective measures to prevent MHD, provide health services to those with MHD, and perhaps most realistically support those with MHD in schools and later education. Mental illness is likely to cause accumulation of disadvantage over the life course and is therefore an important aspect to understand individual disadvantage as well as social inequality.

Children and adolescents are separated from their primary attachment relationships every day by child-welfare authorities, courts, immigration enforcement, and carceral systems acting with helpful intent. The placement-type effect on the general health and mortality literature is now well-documented, with a six-country meta-analysis of 3.2 million individuals reporting a pooled all-cause adult mortality hazard ratio of 2.21 (95% CI 1.62 to 3.02) and roughly tripled suicide risk among care-experienced adults. The companion Pale Blue Reproductive Health and Mortality Gradient paper (2026) documents a female-specific reproductive-health and maternal-mortality burden inside that signal, with Manitoba register evidence showing all-cause mortality at three to four times the rate of comparable peers among mothers whose children are taken into care, and Danish national-register evidence showing adjusted hazard ratios for early-adult mortality of 3.4 for males and 4.7 for females. Both signals assume a developmental-biological mechanism. The temporal structure of that mechanism, when in development the harm is set and when repair becomes possible, has not been brought together in one place for the practitioners and policymakers who hold the placement decision.

Parenting leave policies play a crucial role in enabling children to grow up in economically secure, family-based care environments during the earliest and most sensitive stages of life. The first 1,000 days, from conception to a child’s second birthday, represent a critical developmental window in which early relationships, emotional regulation, health, and developmental trajectories are shaped. Yet parenting leave has too often been understood primarily as a labour market instrument or as support for parents, rather than as a policy that directly affects children’s rights, well-being, and life chances. This White Paper addresses this imbalance by reviewing parenting leave policies across Europe from a child-centred and child-rights perspective.

Objectives: The coach-created motivational climate is essential for shaping athletes’ performance, as well as their motivational and social experiences. Despite coaches’ crucial role and the complex demands of rhythmic gymnastics, fragmentary research on the motivational climate in this sport limits our understanding of how athletes perceive the climate and its relationship to athletes’ outcomes. Therefore, this study aimed to investigate the perceptions of the coach-created motivational climate and its relationship with athletes’ motivational and social outcomes in rhythmic gymnastics. Sample and settings: Eighty-eight competitive rhythmic gymnasts completed an online survey that included standardised questionnaires on engagement, team cohesion, and the five dimensions of the empowering and disempowering motivational climate. Hypotheses: We predicted that an empowering coach-created climate would be associated with greater engagement and team cohesion among gymnasts. Statistical analyses: Correlations and multiple linear regressions were conducted to explore the associations between the motivational climate dimensions and athletes’ engagement and team cohesion. Results: Engagement and team cohesion were both positively associated with autonomy-supportive, socially-supportive, and task-involving climates, and negatively associated with ego-involving and controlling climates. Stepwise regression indicated that autonomy-supportive and task-involving climates emerged as the main positive factors in athletes' engagement and team cohesion, both explaining over 44% of the observed variance. These findings align with previous literature, highlighting the importance of an empowering coaching climate. Limitations: The study’s cross-sectional, self-report design and omitted questions may limit interpretation and generalisability. Findings should be interpreted as exploratory.

This article explores how urban tourism in Budapest, Prague, and Warsaw curates, presents, and contextualises the communist past through depictions of everyday life in museums and walking tours. Utilising the framework of slow memory, the research shifts analytical attention from “eventful” and “sited” historical ruptures to the “non-event” nature of mundane routines and domestic objects. The study argues that these ordinary facets of life function as sedimented memories, gradually accruing through daily practice and shaping contemporary urban identities in ways that monumental history often overlooks. The analysis contrasts two distinct modes of memory representation: (1) museums, which provide structured, artefact-centric narratives that often frame history through institutionalised “routing points,” and (2) walking tours, which offer mobile, experiential engagements that transform the city itself into a living museum. Through a comparative qualitative study of sites, namely the Budapest Retro Interactive Museum, Prague’s Museum of Communism, and Warsaw’s Life Under Communism Museum, the research highlights a persistent tension between commercialised “retro-nostalgia” and critical, sustained reflection. Ultimately, the article demonstrates how these diverse tourism modalities navigate the boundaries between remembrance and commodification, revealing that the residues of the communist era remain deeply embedded in the social and architectural fabric of modern European capitals. By foregrounding the “ordinary” within historical discourse, the research provides a framework for understanding urban identity as a process of quiet sustenance, where history is integrated into the very texture of contemporary life.

Electric vehicles are starting to enter the market in Kenya in the context of micro-mobility and could be an effective solution for decarbonising the growing motorcycle taxi sector and reducing its wider transport and environmental impacts. As the policy development in Kenya is in its early stages, this paper explores policy gaps supporting the transition to electric mobility in the motorcycle taxi sector. From stakeholders’ focus groups and workshops, socio-economic and environmental benefits and barriers have been identified. Main benefits comprise operational cost savings, operators’ well-being and tackling air pollution, while barriers include upfront costs of both operators and start-ups, awareness among operators, charging infrastructure, battery standards and e-waste processes. The paper provides a set of policy recommendations, stressing the need for inclusive processes that consider motorcycle taxi operators as major stakeholders of policy development and mechanisms to understand how this transition accommodates the sector’s needs over time.

The history of autism scholarship is traditionally narrated as a sequence of progressive clinical discoveries. The argument advanced here proposes an alternative genealogical framework, tracing how the pathology paradigm reproduces itself independently of its scientific validity through mechanisms of institutional inheritance. Informed by epistemic injustice theory and the DisCrit framework, the analysis demonstrates how early bidirectional understandings of autistic traits were actively displaced by five historical nodes of clinical authority: Kanner, Bettelheim, Asperger, Lovaas, and Autism Speaks. To explain the durability of this deficit-based orientation across paradigmatic shifts, the analysis introduces a transmission model comprising three recursive structures: interpretive prefiguration, credential monopolization, and administrative sedimentation. Together, these mechanisms transitioned the Autistic community from a state of hermeneutical lacuna into a condition of hermeneutical domination. This theoretical model is subsequently applied to the contemporary United States federal health apparatus, documenting how 2025 and 2026 executive branch funding allocations, rhetorical strategies, and judicial rulings on compliance-oriented interventions function as convergent instruments of epistemic severance. Dismantling this living infrastructure ultimately requires accountable research governance that untethers federal grant eligibility from normative institutional affiliation and centers the intersectional knowledge produced by the Autistic community. Keywords: critical autism studies, epistemic injustice, hermeneutical domination, DisCrit, federal health policy, structural ableism, Double Empathy Problem, neurodiversity

Housing markets are complex adaptive systems in which heterogeneous, boundedly rational actors interact under institutional and spatial constraints, producing emergent dynamics—price cycles, segregation, and affordability pressures—that aggregate models struggle to capture. Agent-based models (ABMs) are increasingly used to study these systems and to test housing policy. This paper systematically reviews ABMs of housing markets. A search of the Web of Science Core Collection, screened against explicit eligibility criteria, yielded a corpus of 37 studies published between 2009 and 2024, which we synthesise thematically across model objectives, agent characteristics, market mechanisms, spatial representation, policy analysis, data and calibration, validation and robustness, computational complexity, and theoretical foundations. We find that households are the near-universal agent type while renters and other vulnerable groups remain underrepresented; that decentralised, bid–ask market structures predominate; and that the literature is concentrated in the Global North. Behavioural realism and empirical calibration have advanced, but systematic validation against observed data remains uncommon. ABMs have been used to evaluate a wide range of policy levers—macroprudential limits, zoning, taxation, transfers and short-term-rental regulation—often revealing non-linear and distributionally uneven effects. We map which modelling approaches are credible and reusable, and identify gaps to guide future housing policy modelling.

This article systematizes the theoretical foundations for designing an integral management model oriented toward consumer justice in Cuban state-owned gastronomy. A systematic scoping review of the literature was conducted using a critical-integrative approach across the Scopus, SciELO, and Web of Science databases, prioritizing publications from the last ten years (2015-2025) and foundational texts in the field. The review constructs a conceptual framework addressing: (1) the integral management model as an organizational system; (2) consumer protection as a challenge that transcends mere regulatory compliance; (3) consumer justice, understood through the lens of Organizational Justice Theory in its distributive, procedural, and interactive dimensions; and (4) the specificity of Cuban state-owned gastronomy as a context of application. The review suggests that implementing the proposed integral management model improves consumer perceptions of justice in each exchange relationship with the provider by articulating leadership, processes, organizational culture, and resources (material and non-material) around the principles of respect for consumer rights.

Depuis 2022, « polycrise » est devenu une catégorie d'analyse mondiale (BCE, FMI, ONU, COP, think tanks), mais ce succès institutionnel s'accompagne d'un effacement quasi total de sa source théorique. Cet article reconstitue cinquante ans de cette généalogie (1976-2026). Edgar Morin pose les fondements dès 1976 dans « Pour une crisologie » (retour au krisis, problématisation de la « crise de la crise »). Le terme et le concept apparaissent en 1993 dans Terre-Patrie, reformulés en 2011 et prolongés en 2014. Méthode. Trois corpus croisés : quatre textes moriniens fondateurs ; 257 textes académiques 1993-2024 codés sur 51 variables ; bibliométrie sur cinq aires civilisationnelles et 15 variantes linguistiques. Triangulation à trois sources de natures différentes exigée. Corpus codé déposé en supplément ouvert. Quatre résultats. (1) Citation explicite de Morin chute de 100 % en 1993-2006 à 6 % en 2022-2024 ; volume Google Scholar passe de moins de 100 à plus de 7 600 occurrences annuelles entre 2020-2025 ; part de l'anglais passe de 40 % à 83 %. (2) Trois antériorités multilingues: policrisis en espagnol à Buenos Aires dès 1993 (29 ans avant Davos-Tooze) ; deux calques chinois chez Ma Shengli en 1997 (16 ans avant le japonais) ; diffusion académique hispanophone continue depuis 1995. (3) Filiation Bakhtine-Morin philologiquement infirmée : 3 occurrences seulement sur 19 ouvrages cardinaux, toutes en contextes non-conceptuels ; lignée nommée par Morin lui-même (préface chinoise 1999) sans Bakhtine. (4) Trois glissements traductifs dans Homeland-Earth (Hampton Press 1999) contribuent à l'invisibilité du concept dans la réception anglophone pré-2022. Quatre contributions analytiques : crise de second ordre ; grille typologique R1-R4 ; substitution qualitative caractérisant la relocalisation paradigmatique post-2022 ; cartographie en six prismes contemporains de la polycrise. Trois niveaux de preuve hiérarchisés. Posture revendiquée comme idéal régulateur kantien. Quatre vérificationsphilologiques externes restent ouvertes sans affecter les résultats principaux. English summary. This article traces the 50-year genealogy of "polycrisis" (1976-2026). Based on three triangulated corpora across 15 languages, it documents the erosion of explicitMorin citation (100% to 6%), three multilingual antecedents (Spanish 1993, Chinese 1997, Japanese 2013), the philological infirmation of the supposed Bakhtin-Morin filiation, and three translational shifts in Homeland-Earth (1999). Four analytical tools are proposed.

This article examines how accelerating automation and the adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) in advanced economies reshape labor markets across the Global South through interconnected channels of production, migration, and remittances. Drawing on the theories and practices of economic geography, labor economics, and development studies, the analysis conceptualizes automation as a transnational shock that contracts demand for migrant labor while simultaneously amplifying employment precarity in labor-surplus economies. The article advances a geographically grounded framework linking technology adoption in core industries with labor displacement, youth unemployment, and urban labor saturation in South Asia and North Africa. It further highlights the macroeconomic vulnerabilities in developing countries arising from remittance dependence and the role of digital media in shaping youth mobilization and political unrest in their native countries. By integrating comparative regional field evidence with a technology–labor–space framework, the study contributes to economic geography by demonstrating how digital transformation reconfigures development patterns across regions and countries. The findings underscore the limits of technology-led growth strategies in labor-abundant contexts and call for employment-centered digital policies that are spatially differentiated and institutionally grounded. Keywords: automation, artificial intelligence, labor markets, remittances, youth unemployment, economic geography, Global South.

RESUMO Este artigo propõe o conceito de sujeito-fluxo como ferramenta analítica para compreender a experiência de presos cujas trajetórias carcerárias são estruturadas por transferências administrativas sucessivas entre unidades prisionais. Partindo de uma abordagem sociológica inspirada na filosofia de Deleuze e Guattari — especialmente nas noções de sociedade de controle, desterritorialização e reterritorialização — e ancorada na literatura sobre o sistema prisional paulista, o trabalho articula o conceito de Transitoriedade Institucional Permanente para descrever o regime em que deslocamentos, reclassificações e redistribuições populacionais tornam instável o vínculo entre o preso e a instituição. A análise dialoga com a sociologia da privação de Gresham Sykes (1958) para compreender como a ordem interna das celas é negociada, e com os estudos de Biondi, Dias, Feltran e Godoi sobre o PCC. Argumenta-se que esses circuitos institucionais de mobilidade produzem indivíduos que acumulam vínculos, informações e práticas organizacionais entre diferentes unidades, funcionando como vetores de difusão de redes. A pesquisa baseia-se em vinte anos de observação empírica como agente de segurança penitenciária. Palavras-chave: sujeito-fluxo. transitoriedade institucional permanente. sistema prisional paulista. PCC. transferências de presos. sociedade de controle.

The circular economy (CE) offers a practical alternative to the linear “take–make–dispose” model dominating Nepal’s agricultural system, which employs approximately 61% of the workforce and contributes around 22% of GDP. Despite its significance, open burning or unregulated disposal largely mismanages agricultural waste, including crop residues, livestock manure, and agro-chemical packaging. This conceptual review examines the applicability of CE principles to Nepal’s agricultural waste sector at national and sub-national policy levels. Drawing on the Ellen MacArthur Foundation framework and recent Nepal-specific studies, the paper identifies four key opportunities: crop residue valorization, livestock waste-to-biogas systems, agro-industrial circular clusters (CEICs), and enabling mechanisms such as digital residue aggregation platforms and extended producer responsibility. However, significant barriers persist, including fragmented landholdings, weak institutional coordination, high infrastructure costs, and limited farmer awareness. The paper argues that CE is not optional but essential for Nepal’s resource-constrained federal context. Three policy priorities emerge: developing a national CE roadmap for agricultural waste, strengthening biogas–biofertilizer value chains through market-based mechanisms, and piloting inter-municipal CEICs across agro-ecological zones. This review contributes to evidence-based policymaking for sustainable agricultural transformation in Nepal.

Urban forests provide numerous benefits to urban residents, including shade, dust control, noise mitigation, stormwater retention, ecological services, pedestrian comfort, aesthetic enhancement, and economic value, including food production. Nepali urban areas face a range of environmental and infrastructure-related challenges, such as air and noise pollution, frequent street flooding, and poorly maintained roads and sidewalks. In addition, many pedestrians in cities experience uncomfortable, unpleasant, unhygienic, and unsafe walking conditions. Urban forests can help alleviate many of these problems at relatively low cost by providing shade, absorbing dust and noise, and reducing surface water runoff. Urban trees also enhance urban aesthetics, increase property values, and provide psychological and therapeutic benefits to residents. Despite these benefits, urban forestry remains an underappreciated aspect of urban planning and development in Nepal. In recent years, some municipalities have begun to recognize the importance of urban forests and are exploring ways to improve urban greenery and tree cover. However, substantial work remains to develop effective urban forestry plans and implement them to address the challenges described above. In contrast, urban forestry practices in many US cities are relatively advanced. Most major US cities now maintain urban forestry master plans aimed at improving shade, aesthetics, biodiversity, and environmental performance. This paper summarizes the benefits of urban forests, reviews urban forestry practices in selected US cities, and examines the current state of urban forestry in Nepal, particularly in the Kathmandu and Pokhara Valleys; the metropolitan cities of Bharatpur, Birgunj, and Biratnagar; and the sub-metropolitan cities of Dharan, Hetauda, and Nepalgunj. The paper proposes policy recommendations and practical steps for developing urban forestry master plans for Nepali cities. It also reviews selected examples of urban forestry practices in both the United States and Nepal. Urban planners and policymakers may benefit from the recommendations and planning approaches outlined in this paper.

The United States dollar’s dominance as the global reserve currency, established under the 1944 Bretton Woods system, has persisted despite the 1971 decoupling of the dollar from gold. Its liquidity, stability, and backing by the U.S. government provide strong financial security and advantages, including widespread global acceptance and relatively low borrowing costs. For these reasons, the U.S. dollar has dominated global markets for the past eight decades. However, rapidly emerging geopolitical and economic power shifts are increasingly challenging the dominance of the U.S. dollar. In 2009, Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa formed BRICS as a platform for collaboration and investment cooperation. BRICS, which has since expanded to include ten countries, is exploring alternatives to the U.S. dollar for international trade. These alternatives include trade in local currencies and the use of Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs). Western sanctions on China, Russia, Iran, and other countries, as well as China’s ambitious Belt and Road Initiative, have further accelerated efforts to reduce dependence on the dollar-based system. These emerging trends have mixed implications for South Asia. India is actively promoting rupee-based trade to strengthen regional commerce using the Indian Rupee, and several South Asian countries aspire to pursue similar approaches. The limited convertibility of the currencies of BRICS member nations makes a complete replacement of the U.S. dollar in international trade difficult. Nepal, in particular, may face substantial challenges because its economy relies heavily on remittances and imports, both of which remain closely tied to the global dollar-based financial system.

This paper examines the economic rationale for creating new provinces in Pakistan through the framework of fiscal federalism. It argues that Pakistan’s existing provincial structure contributes to administrative centralization, public value destruction, regional inequality, uneven public service delivery, and weak fiscal accountability. Drawing upon concepts of decentralization, subsidiarity, and competitive federalism, the study contends that smaller and more localized provinces may improve governance responsiveness, strengthen political inclusion, create public value, and promote region-specific economic development. The paper analyzes how provincial reorganization could encourage policy innovation, balanced urbanization, and more effective allocation of public resources while also addressing concerns relating to administrative costs, elite capture, and constitutional complexity. It concludes that carefully designed decentralization may strengthen both economic governance and federal cohesion in Pakistan.

This policy paper examines the scale and nature of organized crime in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC), highlighting its uniquely violent character. We propose a novel metric—excess lethal violence—that underscores how the region stands out globally in terms of criminal violence. Organized crime in LAC significantly undermines growth, productivity, and social mobility, reinforcing poverty and inequality traps. We argue that while eradicating organized crime is unlikely—just as developed countries coexist with entrenched mafia structures—countries already dealing with entrenched organized crime, as well as those where criminal networks have yet to fully embed themselves, still have a window of opportunity to contain their most harmful effects. The paper outlines four critical policy priorities for the region: (a) prison reform to address their criminogenic nature; (b) improved training and coordination within and across police and law enforcement agencies; (c) reinforced judicial effectiveness, reducing impunity and defining strategic priorities; and (d) international coordination and collaboration. We emphasize the value of emerging research efforts that combine fine-grained data with deep contextual knowledge of LAC’s local dynamics to inform more effective and actionable policy solutions.

This project investigates the connection between policy repositioning (aka flip-flopping) at the candidate-level and perceived ideology. Using a randomized survey experiment with ten candidate profiles, I evaluated a hypothetical candidate who repositions on immigration policy. Unlike past research, my design uses a campaign control group for a liberal and conservative candidate, and in-office positioning as treatment comparison groups. Results show that respondents do update their views of the candidate on average. This also occurred among the strategically important group of moderates when candidate reverted to the status quo (middle) position. Results also support the main argument that matching on ideology matters. Co ideologues are especially punitive if a candidate repositions, potentially demonstrating sentiments of disloyalty. And out-ideological update their perceived ideology at a lesser rate, potentially demonstrating skepticism of the candidate’s new position. However, repositioning toward the poles did not change perceived ideology on average. When broken down by ideology, liberals were more likely to update their perceived ideology than conservatives. These results help explain why candidates might receive backlash among their own flock for trying to moderate on policy. They also suggest why polarized repositioning might not receive backlash – respondents had a hard time recognizing the ideological changes that come from repositioning to the ideological poles.

Dieses empirische Analysepapier liefert die fallstudienbasierte Validierung meines zuvor auf SSRN postulierten Konzepts der ‚biologischen Archive‘ (vgl. SSRN-ID: 6702558). Am konkreten Beispiel der Familie Matutino aus Iloilo (Panay, Philippinen) rekonstruiere ich die außergewöhnliche Kontinuität und Resilienz einer indigenen Visayan-Nobilität unter spanischer Kolonialherrschaft. Gestützt auf serielle Primärquellen – darunter Padron-Listen, das Steuerbefreiungsregister ‚Relación de Reservados‘ von 1853 sowie die von mir erwirkten, notariell beglaubigten Pedigree-Erklärungen von 2026 – seziere ich die generationenübergreifende Machtsubstanz der Linie. Ich demonstriere anhand von Mechanismen wie erblicher Amtsfolge (Cabeza de Barangay), strategischer Endogamie und der völkerrechtlichen Verankerung der Ley XVI von 1594, wie die Familie als lebendiges Archiv agierte. Das Ergebnis erzwingt eine grundlegende historische und soziologische Rekategorisierung der Familie als mediatisiertes indigenes Fürstengeschlecht und leistet damit einen entscheidenden Beitrag zur Dekolonisierung der philippinischen Historiografie.

The 2008 FBI removal of the cooling-off period from the serial homicide definition left a persistent analytical gap: existing geographic mobility typologies assign static labels to offenders with no capacity to capture longitudinal dynamics of criminal careers. Although the distinction between territorially anchored and expansive offenders has been widely theorised, it has rarely been operationalised as an incident-by-incident dynamic metric across a verified cross-national sample. This study proposes an exploratory spatial framework for examining stability and expansion patterns in serial homicide trajectories. A dataset of 40 verified series from 13 countries (1918–2010) was analysed using two longitudinal metrics calibrated incident by incident on first-contact coordinates: the Stability Index (I_s) and the accumulated dispersion ratio_{RetExp}. A candidate transition region was identified around ratio_{RetExp=1.1082}\ with consistent convergence across independent calibration samples (AUC\ =\ 0.556;\ \mathrm{\Delta AUC}\ =\ 0.000), arguing against a sample-specific artefact. Leave-one-out cross-validation (n = 35) yielded R_{LOO\ }^2=\ 0.432 (degradation = 14.8%), suggesting moderate structural consistency without severe overfitting. One influential case (Dahmer) was identified; its exclusion substantially improved model performance. Longitudinal examination of the East Area Rapist Sacramento series revealed significant reduction in inter-event intervals across spatial phases (n\ =\ 30;\ Wilcoxon\ W\ =\ 142,\ p\ =\ .015), consistent with optimal foraging predictions. Findings do not support strong individual-level prediction but suggest that criminal longevity may be partially associated with sustained spatial stability, offering a preliminary framework for integrating longitudinal mobility dynamics into geographic profiling research.

A growing literature documents racial hierarchy in international institutions. I test whether formally equal rules eliminate that hierarchy in practice. The Schengen visa regime offers a hard case because member states process applications under identical law. I show that ancestral distance, a measure of perceived racial difference, predicts visa refusals. Contemporary ancestral distance drives the result. A pre-1500 measure does not, consistent with the social construction of race. A consulate-level analysis isolates the discretionary channel. Busier consulates discriminate more against ancestrally distant applicants, even though a nationality's risk profile does not change with consular workload. Routine operational pressures activate the categorical shortcuts that institutional design was supposed to prevent. A further test shows the effect is stronger where national populations hold more restrictive racial attitudes, not where institutional capacity is weakest. Harmonized rules do not eliminate international institutional racism. They push it into discretionary gaps that formal law cannot close.

Why do some refugee "crises'' elicit generosity while others provoke restriction, particularly in the Global North? In 2015, European governments responded to Syrian arrivals with increasingly restrictive policies, yet the same states were welcoming toward Ukrainians in 2022. I develop a formal model in which governments weigh economic scarcity, the racialized identity of arrivals, and foreign-policy salience. The model predicts that scarcity amplifies restriction toward non-White groups but can weaken or even reverse restrictiveness toward White groups when crises are geopolitically salient. I test these propositions using a country-year panel of asylum-policy admission and entry rules across Global North states. The results show that scarcity heightens backlash against non-White arrivals but reduces restrictiveness toward White arrivals when foreign-policy considerations are salient. Together, the findings demonstrate how race, economic conditions, and foreign policy interact to structure the politics of protection in the Global North.

While brain rot has entered the popular lexicon as a marker of cultural-intellectual decline, this article theorizes it as a systemic condition of late-capitalist survival. Integrating world-systems analysis with the critique of the attention economy, I argue that cognition has emerged as the new frontier of intensive accumulation. As material expansion shifts toward cognitive extraction within the post-2008 conjuncture, platforms assetize attention to stabilize speculative valuation. This induces a biopolitical rewiring that functionally degrades the capacity for sustained thought. This systemic brain rot is analyzed through its class-stratified distribution and institutional collision within the university, where deep learning confronts the high-frequency logic of extraction. Ultimately, this mutagenic mode of accumulation consumes capitalism’s social and cognitive foundations, necessitating a shift from therapeutic self-management toward the political contestation of attentional regimes through structural alternatives like engagement metric caps and public digital infrastructures.

Standard Consumer Price Indices treat the household as a single economic agent, ignoring which member manages each expenditure category. This paper proposes and demonstrates a methodology for constructing a Household Provisioning Price Index for Women (W-CPI) that weights categories by management responsibility rather than physical consumption, and applies it to India’s newly released CPI 2024 series.

Despite the educational expansion, educational attainment still depends strongly on factors beyond individual’s control, such as social origin, gender, and migration background. Although these different social categories likely intersect to produce compounded forms of disadvantage, most existing research has studied these factors in isolation. This study describes trends in intersectional inequalities of educational opportunity by the combinations of social origin by combinations of social origin, gender, and migration background for the birth cohorts 1970-2008 in West Germany using data of the Socio-Economic Panel. We use two complementary quantitative approaches to evaluate intersectional inequalities: the “multilevel analysis of individual heterogeneity and discriminatory accuracy” approach and Conditional Inference Forests. The results show that intersectional inequalities remained remarkably stable across cohorts. Social origin is the dominant social category: no combination of gender and migration background compensates for disadvantaged parental education. Intersectional interaction effects account for only a limited share of between-stratum differences and are not stable across cohorts. The Conditional Inference Forests further show that detailed measures of social origin are more informative for describing inequalities in Gymnasium attendance than highly specific intersectional groupings.

To access public services, citizens often navigate complex administrative requirements. These demands are introduced to ensure program integrity and maintain public support for welfare policies, yet they may create barriers for those in need. While prior studies on policy feedback and administrative burden show that burdensome encounters can reduce trust among welfare recipients, less is known about how the general public reacts to compliance demands. Stringent requirements may signal that programs are protected against fraud, potentially increasing perceptions of fairness and trust among non-recipients. We further hypothesize that compliance demands have positive effects on these outcomes when: 1) individuals are non-recipients rather than recipients of welfare services, and 2) the welfare recipient is perceived as undeserving. To test these hypotheses, we conducted a pre-registered vignette survey experiment in Denmark with a sample of the general public (N = 1,624) and welfare recipients (N = 409). We find that stringent compliance demands increase perceptions of fairness but do not affect trust in government among the general public. We find no support for the moderation hypotheses. Our findings challenge prevailing understandings of administrative burden, showing that stricter requirements can enhance perceived fairness without undermining trust—regardless of welfare experience and deservingness perceptions.

We seek to understand the impact of the February 2022 invasion of Ukraine on political coverage and engagement with it. Accordingly, we introduce new annotated data with more than 2 million social media posts from prominent Russian-language print and online media outlets. After manually annotating 6,661 posts that appeared on V'Kontakte (VK) as well as additional posts on Facebook and Telegram—and supplementing human annotation with Large Language Models (LLMs)—we assess the validity and reliability of our measures before considering substantive questions. Varied analyses point to one conclusion: the ecosystem for political news durably changed with the invasion. Post-invasion, political posts spiked, and social media users became more likely to engage with political posts versus non-political posts. Moreover, analyses using embeddings illustrate that the similarity between independent and government-oriented media posts briefly grew after the invasion. By analyzing both outlets' coverage and engagement with it, this research indicates that autocrats' strategies for managing news coverage are not static. Instead, autocratic regimes may abandon de-politicization in favor of more invasive approaches when events drive heightened engagement with news. This research also provides methodological tools for future research. It evaluates the value and limitations of deploying LLMs to annotate and analyze text in Russian, and also of translating text from Russian to English before annotation or analysis. This research contributes to our understanding of the possibilities and limits of using LLMs to measure more abstract concepts, too.

Fairness in healthcare shift scheduling is crucial for well-being of workers but remains challenging to achieve due to numerous requirements. While electronic rostering (e-rostering) helps manage the complexity of shift scheduling, its impact on fairness remains unclear. First, we develop a stimulus- organism-response model guided by organizational justice theory to explain how contextual factors in healthcare shift scheduling (schedule predictability, scheduling control, and relationship with supervisors) shape workers’ scheduling fairness perceptions and, in turn, influence job satisfaction. Second, we examine how e-rostering, compared to human scheduling, alters the relationships in this model. Using data from 185 healthcare workers, our results show that contextual factors significantly impact fairness perceptions, and salience shifts from procedural to distributive fairness in determining job satisfaction under e-rostering. We contribute to future research by highlighting how technologies can reshape the relationship between fairness and work attitudes, and to practice by offering design guidance for fair e-rostering.

Westwood [2025], followed closely by Van der Stigchel et al. [2026] and Westwood and Frederick [2026], argues that “AI contamination” poses a “potential existential threat of large language models to online survey research.” Although AI (frequently LLMs) poses potential challenges for survey research, the articles overstate their case, conflating distinct risks and advancing claims of field-level vulnerability without (1) clear definitions, (2) appropriate benchmarks, or (3) reproducible demonstrations of real-world impact.

The emergence of The Enhanced Games (TEG) in 2023 has been interpreted in the sport governance literature primarily through the frameworks of doping ethics and sports law. This article adopts a different approach, analysing TEG as the first institutionalised sporting experiment of a coherent ideological programme whose roots lie in Silicon Valley tech-libertarianism, the transhumanist movement, and anglophone deregulatory politics. Drawing on the Californian Ideology framework (Barbrook & Cameron, 1996), on Jasanoff's (2004) concept of co-production and sociotechnical imaginaries, and on Foucault's (1978) analysis of biopolitics, the article traces how TEG simultaneously constructs a new normative architecture for athletic competition and displaces biopolitical authority from quasi-public international institutions to private corporate platforms. The normative debate is examined through Thomas H. Murray's practical humanist position and Laura László's virtue-ethical analysis, both of which are returned to the co-production framework to reveal what is structurally at stake. The article concludes that TEG is not merely a sporting event but an ideological experiment that transforms the body into a laboratory, competition into a data source, and the athlete into an object of capital investment, and that understanding it as such is a precondition for adequate normative and governance responses.

Open-text questions in quantitative surveys can yield rich information from large samples, but analysing and coding these data using qualitative text analysis is resource-intensive. Large Language Models (LLMs) are a promising tool for scaling up such analyses, reducing time and financial costs. In this paper, we compare the coding accuracy of LLMs with that of student assistants, defining accuracy as agreement with a researcher-coded benchmark dataset. We assess performance on a semi-complex coding task: coding approximately 1,400 open-ended text responses from young US Americans about dating across party-political lines. A researcher-designed coding scheme, developed through thematic qualitative text analysis of the open-text responses, was applied by LLMs and student assistants. We evaluate models from OpenAI, Anthropic, and Mistral, with and without access to training data. The most advanced models outperform student assistants, and performance further increases with training data, highlighting LLMs’ capability to code open-text responses. Whereas previous research has mainly focused on social media texts, comparatively simple and surface-level coding tasks, and a technically oriented audience, we contribute to the literature by studying a particularly promising use case of open-ended survey responses and by providing practical recommendations to applied social scientists.

Reviews the debate over whether global tax multilateralism and international tax co-operation has survived current global trade upheavals, including whether such multilateralism is compatible with uneven application, and whether the design of international tax policy makes it resistant to breakdown.

In the UK, the transport sector is a major contributor to air pollution, and associated pollution remains one of the most serious environmental risks to public health. As cities transition to more sustainable transport systems, gaining public support for measures that restrict car use and encourage modal shift to alternative modes remains a key challenge. Understanding public attitudes is crucial for creating policies that are not only effective but also socially acceptable. This study examines how air quality perceptions and environmental attitudes shape support for clean air and sustainable transport interventions in Birmingham, UK. A mixed methods approach was employed, combining an assessment of local air quality trends with a survey of 176 residents to capture their attitudinal, behavioural and contextual factors at play. The findings show high levels of concern about local air quality and support for enabling investments in public transport and active travel infrastructure. However, persistent motonormative attitudes and polarisation around restrictive policies such as congestion charges and traffic filtering schemes reveal potential social and political challenges of reducing car dependency. These patterns highlight the importance of equitable policy design, clearer public communication, and long term efforts to shift mobility norms. Overall, the findings indicate that reducing traffic-related emissions in Birmingham will require an effective coordinated strategy integrating infrastructure investment, affordability improvements, enhanced safety, and cultural change to support sustainable travel behaviours.

This article examines how the afterlives of state socialism are made legible in contexts where the everyday past is only partially documented, materially fragmented, or absent from visual archives. Focusing on childhood memories of communist Romania in the 1980s and their remediation in post-socialist museum spaces in Prague, Budapest, and Warsaw, it argues that the legibility of this past does not depend primarily on the recovery of missing images or the reconstruction of singular historical events, but on the curatorial reactivation of rhythms of everyday life.

The timing of parental investment in youth sports development is under-theorized in the human capital literature. This paper applies Cunha and Heckman’s (2007) skill formation framework to a simulation of competitive youth tennis in order to investigate optimal investment timing. A longitudinal simulation was developed for 10,000 virtual players tracked across three developmental stages: Foundation (ages 8 to 10), Development (ages 11 to 14), and Elite (ages 15 to 18). The model incorporates parameters for self-productivity, dynamic complementarity, and sensitive periods drawn from existing sports science and economic research. Computational models of this kind are best understood as hypothesis-generating frameworks rather than empirical tests, a constraint that is treated explicitly throughout the paper. Natural ability emerges as the dominant predictor of final skill (β = 0.458, p < 0.001), explaining approximately 46% of outcome variance. Investment timing produces modest but differentiated effects. Stage 1 investment has a near-zero coefficient, while Stages 2 and 3 show small but statistically significant positive effects, consistent with the simulation’s built-in assumptions. Among resource-constrained families, late-weighted investment strategies yield slightly higher mean final outcomes (mean = 18.48) than early-weighted strategies (mean = 18.39), with balanced strategies intermediate (mean = 18.42). These patterns identify directions for empirical research on youth sports development. The inherent circularity of simulation-based inference requires caution in generalising beyond the modelled framework.

This pre-registered meta-analysis examines the discriminant validity of Disintegration (D), the trait-like conceptualization of psychotic-like experiences and behaviors (PLEBs), in relation to the HEXACO personality traits. The main finding is that D shows small to moderate intercorrelations (i.e., range = |.01| - |.31|) ranging within the HEXACO intercorrelations. The main implication is that D as a most recent operationalization of PLEBs is not covered by existing taxonomies, but rather suggests its addition, which may allow for improved predictions of personality outcomes by covering previously neglected variance, or by capturing new phenomena. Limitations of the primary studies aggregated and the extended HEXACO plus D model are discussed.

Why do some urban neighborhoods walk while others drive, even when their physical environments appear similar? This study demonstrates that travel mode choice is fundamentally a coordination problem rather than an infrastructure capacity problem. Using a game-theoretic framework calibrated directly from observed commute behavior across all 33,054 census blocks in Chicago, we show that neighbors’ walking behavior exerts a dominant influence on individual mode choice—outweighing the combined effects of density, safety, land use, and accessibility. We estimate utility functions via maximum likelihood logistic regression on American Community Survey data and solve for Nash equilibria at the block level. Results reveal that 93.5% of blocks are in transitional (off-equilibrium) states: approximately 31% exhibit walk-favored structural conditions but remain suppressed by coordination failures, representing high-leverage intervention targets, while 63% are transitioning toward automobile lock-in. Spatial analysis exposes stark environmental injustice—walkable hotspots cluster in the wealthy North Side and downtown, while car-dependent coldspots dominate the South and West sides. These findings establish that walking spreads as a social contagion through strategic complementarities, and that concentrated interventions achieving critical mass generate substantially higher returns than dispersed investments. The study provides a validated, spatially explicit framework for identifying tipping points and targeting active transport policies to maximize modal shift and advance environmental equity.

New developments in artificial intelligence (AI) technology poses both novel opportunities and threats to education in general. Given their importance in students’ flourishing, moral and character education could not be exceptions. In the current special section, AI and Moral Education, six individual articles contributed by authors from various fields, including but not limited to, moral philosophy, psychology, and pedagogy, critically examined AI’s potential benefits and threats in moral education.

Public support is crucial for the success of policy interventions that aim to change behaviour. While communicating evidence of policy effectiveness can increase support, it remains unclear which type of evidence is most effective. Statistical evidence is often seen as objective and persuasive, yet personal anecdotes can strongly influence beliefs. We examined how statistical and anecdotal evidence affect policy perceptions. In three online experiments with representative UK samples (N = 901), we showed participants different types of evidence (statistical, anecdotal, or both) that argued for or against six policies, such as meat taxes (climate change), banning e-cigarettes (public health), and 20 mph speed limits (community safety). We measured policy support and perceived effectiveness before and after exposure and explored participants’ reasoning through open-text responses. Results showed that positive statistical and anecdotal evidence did not significantly increase perceived policy effectiveness or support, even when combined. However, negative anecdotes significantly reduced both, though this effect was sometimes mitigated when paired with statistical evidence. Qualitative results found that participants have broader concerns beyond policy effectiveness, such as fairness. Our findings suggest that communicating evidence on policy effectiveness alone may not increase support, as it does not address broader public concerns.

We profile the genetically informed part of the INVEST research flagship’s full population register (e17), a Finnish linked data infrastructure that combines rich administrative social and health registers with polygenic scores (PGSs) derived from population health surveys conducted by the Finnish Institute for Health and Welfare (THL). The working paper has three aims. First, it describes the scope and content of the data linkage, including its register modules, the genotyped sample, and sibling-based analytic extensions. Second, it documents the construction of the available PGSs in a format aligned with the Polygenic Risk Score Reporting Statement (Wand et al., 2021, Nature, 591, 211–219). Third, it reviews the data opportunities and limitations and offers guidance for the responsible use of genetically informed designs in health and social research. The INVEST project exploits longitudinal health data, including diagnoses based on the ICD-10 classification recorded in public specialized health care, together with administrative records on social, demographic and economic characteristics of the individuals. With particular attention to dyadic and intergenerational research designs, we highlight the mental health information available across Finnish registers. The genetic component is based on THL’s health surveys, including FINRISK 1992-2012, Health 2000/2011, and FinHealth 2017, and currently includes 39,570 individuals. The paper also outlines weighting strategies developed to partially correct for volunteer bias in the genotyped subsample and describes how partially genotyped sibling designs can be utilized for within-family analyses. In sum, the combined genetically informed register data provide a valuable cohort for sociogenomic research in Finland while also illustrating why careful interpretation and transparent reporting are essential whenever PGSs are used.

This study examines gender relations and co-authorship networks in board game design from 1975 to 2025, based on an aggregated BGG dataset (132,062 games; 59,389 designers). Since around 2020, the proportion of female designers has stabilized at 9–10%. Women collaborate significantly more frequently with other women and, on average, work in smaller teams, indicating different network patterns. Bipartite network analyses and linear regression models reveal that higher betweenness centrality, larger teams (with diminishing marginal returns), and greater complexity are associated with higher BGG ratings. In contrast, newcomer teams tend to receive lower ratings. A higher proportion of women in a team is correlated with lower ratings; this relationship has intensified over time and persists even when controlling for complexity. Cohort analyses of the overall network point to a shift in central actors over the decades. Overall, the study underscores the importance of networks in board game authorship and highlights persistent structural inequalities.

The interplay between science and politics is increasingly complex and contentious, especially in times of crises and polarized public debates. Although calls to "follow the science" are often invoked in political discourse, science’s role in politics is rarely straightforward, and it is frequently used strategically beyond its informational function. This study examines how science-related political communication influences perceived message credibility and communicator trustworthiness, integrating insights from science communication and political communication research. We empirically test hypotheses across three conceptual dimensions. First, we evaluate the effects of source credibility by comparing communicators (scientists vs. politicians) and their respective uses of evidence. Second, we analyze the impact of different rhetorical strategies employed to communicate the political decision-making process, like highlighting evidence-determined justifications, reasoned processes, or populist appeals. Third, we investigate how science-populist attitudes and pre-existing issue-attitudes moderate these effects. Results of a pre-registered factorial survey experiment (N = 552) show that source credibility and the choice of evidence are primary drivers of perceived credibility and trustworthiness. In contrast, rhetorical strategies related to decision-making processes have no significant effect. Notably, science-populist attitudes strongly influence which epistemic authorities respondents consider legitimate bases for political decisions. These findings reveal tensions at the science-politics nexus between the strategic effectiveness of constructing epistemic authority and the normative democratic demand for political accountability. The study contributes novel empirical insights into how communicative strategies shape trust in science-related political communication, offering implications for safeguarding trust in science and improving the credibility and trustworthiness of political communication in polarized environments.

Time is a foundational yet underspecified concept in criminological theory and research. While developmental and life course criminology is explicitly concerned with temporal processes, including the onset, duration, and desistance of criminal behaviour, the precise specification of time in theory and empirical research remains largely implicit. This paper critically examines how time is conceptualized and modelled in criminology, with particular attention to the gap between the temporal assumptions embedded in theory and the designs and methods used to test them. We argue that this underspecification has important consequences for both scientific understanding and practical application, including the design and evaluation of interventions where questions of dosage, timing, and the duration of effects are central. We demonstrate that theoretical and empirical decisions about temporal processes are often driven by convenience or convention rather than explicit reasoning, and that commonly held assumptions about the stability of key constructs over time rest on an insufficient empirical foundation. To address these limitations, we make a case for more formally specifying causal temporal assumptions, integrating measures across micro- and macro-time scales, and adopting research designs, such as ambulatory assessment, experience sampling, and burst designs, capable of capturing how short-term experiences translate into longer-term behavioural change. Greater transparency about temporal assumptions and their empirical basis will strengthen causal inference and improve the design and evaluation of criminological interventions.

While anticorruption appeals are commonly employed by politicians to win votes, the effectiveness of such appeals varies considerably. When do voters reward politicians for anticorruption action? Drawing on two original survey experiments in Colombia and Mexico, this study finds evidence of voters relying on contextual features to evaluate politicians proposing anticorruption policies. The findings underscore how, while voters always value anticorruption action compared to inaction, evaluations are higher in the absence of a recent corruption scandal and when proposed by an opposition politician. While respondents generally prefer punitive policies, the effect was only significant in Colombia. Remarkably, the preference for punitive policies is shown to be conditional on incumbency for both countries---incumbent party politicians benefit from punitive proposals, while opposition politicians do not. These findings offer new insights into how voters evaluate anticorruption appeals, showing how appeals can boost electoral outcomes, regardless of whether politicians intend to follow through.

Digital trace mobility data are now widely used to infer infectious contacts and parameterize transmission dynamics within epidemiological simulations. However, mobility is not a single observable quantity and may be operationalized in mathematically distinct ways that exhibit different patterns of socioeconomic stratification. Using a metapopulation model applied to COVID-19 in Brazil, we examine how alternative operationalizations of mobility magnitude and network structure affect inferred epidemic mortality inequality dynamics. Specifically, we compare mobility measures based on the number of spatial units visited versus the probability of remaining within a spatial unit, as well as static versus dynamic mobility network formulations derived from multiple data sources, while holding remaining model inputs constant. Across model specifications, socioeconomic inequalities in mortality ultimately emerge, but their apparent timing differs systematically depending on how mobility is represented within the model. Simulations parameterized using mobility measures based on the number of spatial units visited and static mobility networks produced earlier emergence of mortality inequalities than simulations parameterized using stay-put probability measures and dynamic mobility networks. These differences arise because alternative mobility measures capture distinct socially stratified dimensions of mobility and dynamic mobility networks contracted and became more localized and assortative during the early pandemic period. These findings demonstrate that mobility operationalization constitutes a substantively consequential modeling choice capable of altering inferred epidemic inequality trajectories even under otherwise equivalent epidemiological conditions. More broadly, these results demonstrate that representational assumptions embedded within epidemiological models can shape inferred epidemic inequalities, bearing consequences for equity in infectious disease research and response.

Este sexto informe de la serie C22-CEP sobre las elecciones presidenciales 2025 analiza las visualizaciones y emociones de seis candidatos de cara a las elecciones del 16 de noviembre de 2025: Jeannette Jara, Franco Parisi, Harold Mayne-Nicholls, Evelyn Matthei, José Antonio Kast y Johannes Kaiser. El análisis se basa en un corpus de 901.112 palabras (distribuidas entre 15.160 publicaciones) obtenidas de Facebook e Instagram entre el 1 de agosto y el 30 de septiembre de 2025 y procesadas mediante técnicas de minería de texto y análisis de frecuencias léxicas. Nuestro argumento en este informe es que el tema de seguridad ha agotado su novedad. Este agotamiento de la seguridad como tema de campaña no implica que ya no sea relevante, sino que no produce nueva información para los públicos. Los resultados muestran que el agotamiento de la seguridad tiene varios efectos: 1) un surgimiento disperso de otras propuestas temáticas en algunos casos asociadas a los programas; 2) un aumento de polémicas entre candidatos; 3) un descenso de la primacía que Kast tenía en la derecha hace algunos meses; y 4) la predominancia del enojo como emoción central en los candidatos. La comunicación política transitó desde una configuración centrada exclusivamente en confrontaciones entre candidatos hacia una que incorpora propuestas programáticas. Los debates presidenciales y la publicación de programas electorales en septiembre forzaron este desplazamiento temático, especialmente visible en Matthei, Kaiser y Jara. El artículo concluye que la extensión del período de campaña dificulta cualquier capacidad de generar información innovadora de manera constante. De ahí el agotamiento de la seguridad como tema, así como el incremento de polémicas irrelevantes y la dispersión temática en la comunicación política en torno a los candidatos.

Este quinto informe de la serie C22-CEP sobre las elecciones presidenciales 2025 analiza los programas de siete candidatos de cara a las elecciones del 16 de noviembre de 2025: Eduardo Artés, Jeannette Jara, Harold Mayne-Nicholls, Franco Parisi, Evelyn Matthei, José Antonio Kast y Johannes Kaiser. El análisis se basa en un corpus de 221.582 palabras procesadas mediante técnicas de minería de texto, análisis de frecuencias léxicas, modelamiento de tópicos y técnicas de reducción dimensional. El estudio busca identificar las estructuras léxico-semánticas subyacentes, convergencias y divergencias programáticas, así como las orientaciones doctrinarias que caracterizan las propuestas. El hallazgo principal revela que el contenido programático de los candidatos muestra una estructura predominantemente gerencial-compromisoria, es decir, orientada por medidas técnicas para establecer compromisos institucionales sectoriales. Esta convergencia hacia un vocabulario técnico-administrativo se observa especialmente en Jara, Mayne-Nicholls y Matthei, mientras que Kast oscila entre el lenguaje gerencial y propuestas de mayor profundidad estructural. Por su parte, Artés, Parisi y Kaiser presentan vocabularios libertarios con énfasis en reformas estructurales de largo plazo. El análisis de similitud y componentes principales revela una paradoja significativa en la configuración del sistema político chileno. Los candidatos de izquierda (Artés y Jara) presentan la menor convergencia léxica en el corpus, inferior incluso a sus similitudes con candidatos de derecha. En contraste, el bloque de derecha muestra alta cohesión discursiva, con Matthei y Kast compartiendo un 59% de similitud en sus vocabularios. El análisis de ideal points sugiere un desplazamiento del centro de atracción político hacia la centroderecha, espacio donde convergen Matthei, Kast y, más alejado, Mayne-Nicholls por su proyecto de restauración del consenso de la transición democrática, mientras Jara ocupa una posición aislada en el cuadrante progresista-técnico. Este grupo configura lo que denominamos un centro excéntrico o multipolar, flanqueado por las posiciones extremas de Artés y Kaiser, quienes, además, ocupan la mayor distancia léxica en el sistema. El artículo concluye que los patrones identificados revelan que el sistema político chileno actual se estructura menos en torno a un eje ideológico lineal izquierda-derecha y más como un espacio donde la radicalidad discursiva se opone a un centro excéntrico dominado por el lenguaje gerencial-compromisorio.

El 10 de abril de 2025, dos jóvenes de 12 y 18 años fallecieron en las inmediaciones del Estadio Monumental durante una 'avalancha' organizada y convocada previamente en redes sociales para ingresar al partido contra el equipo brasileño de Fortaleza. La intervención policial habría provocado que las víctimas quedaran atrapadas bajo una reja en uno de los accesos del estadio. A través del análisis de 5.585 publicaciones de redes sociales (Facebook e Instagram) procesadas con métodos computacionales (redes, comunidades discursivas, modelamiento de tópicos), examinamos cómo este evento reconfiguró el discurso público y las respuestas gubernamentales sobre la seguridad en estadios y sus inmediaciones. Argumentamos que el acontecimiento constituye el inicio de un nuevo ciclo de crisis-reforma-fracaso que conceptualizamos como gestión simbólica de crisis, esto es, una reacción comunicativa inicial seguida de anuncios de reforma y una progresiva dilución operativa que no alcanza a intervenir en el mecanismo de producción de la violencia en los estadios. Este es un doble movimiento circular en el que en una dirección fluye la disposición de las barras bravas al enfrentamiento físico y uso de la violencia para distintas finalidades, y en el otro fluye la disposición de agentes deportivos e institucionales al financiamiento y la provisión de espacios de menor control para que estos grupos operen. Los principales resultados muestran la presencia de seis comunidades discursivas diferenciadas que compiten por la hegemonía narrativa del evento. El análisis revela un patrón de disrupción-normalización, caracterizado por un peak inicial del discurso sobre el incidente que se atenúa en diez días, seguido de una rápida recuperación e incluso fortalecimiento de las narrativas histórico-institucionales que funcionan como formas de absorción del evento crítico. A esto lo denominamos desplazamiento discursivo: el concepto de 'barras bravas' queda sistemáticamente ausente del discurso público postragedia. Esta omisión permite proteger la continuidad del mecanismo que conduce al evento crítico y ocultar las relaciones que lo producen. El artículo concluye que la gestión simbólica de crisis opera como tecnología de normalización que sostiene la reproducción de las condiciones estructurales de violencia, convirtiendo cada evento crítico en una oportunidad perdida para la intervención de política pública.

El 29 de junio se realizaron las primarias presidenciales de la izquierda. Jeannette Jara fue elegida la candidata presidencial de los sectores de izquierda. En la derecha se mantienen los tres candidatos conocidos (Kaiser, Kast, Matthei) e ingresa ahora Franco Parisi del PDG. Otros candidatos aún consiguen firmas o no han sido ratificados por Servel. En ese marco se ha dado inicio a la fase que culminará en la primera vuelta presidencial del 16 de noviembre. Por medio de técnicas digitales y estadísticas, en este Cuarto Informe C22-CEP sobre las elecciones 2025 observamos a los candidatos mencionados en sus redes sociales (Instagram y Facebook) para analizar sus visualizaciones, las emociones que generan y los temas que abordan. Nuestro argumento es que, en julio, aún sin claridad de los programas presidenciales, se incrementa la autorreferencia política producto de la necesidad de diferenciación de la derecha, la organización del comando de Jara y el posicionamiento de Franco Parisi. Este incremento de la autorreferencia política conduce a una comunicación clausurada frente a los públicos de la política, que pone énfasis en la confrontación y desplaza las propuestas programáticas en las que se da respuesta a preocupaciones generales y particulares de la ciudadanía. Los resultados indican que la emoción de enojo concentra temáticamente la autorreferencia política y desplaza propuestas programáticas dirigidas a los públicos de la política. Esta concentración autorreferencial de la comunicación política se expresa en: a) una dinámica comunicacional de etiquetamiento ideológico; b) dependencia de la comunicación de métricas y rankings aportados por encuestas; y c) una posposición o renuncia a propuestas programáticas que abran la comunicación a la ciudadanía. El artículo concluye que una comunicación política instalada en la modalidad de negación del adversario conduce a una polarización centrífuga de las posiciones. Esto puede cambiar con la presentación de programas políticos sustantivos, pero la próxima incorporación de nuevos candidatos seguramente reactivará la dinámica de polarización centrífuga de la campaña presidencial en términos de identidad, redundancia y carácter inercial de la comunicación política.

El 29 de junio se realizaron las primarias presidenciales de la izquierda. Jeannette Jara obtuvo 60,2%, Carolina Tohá 28,1%, Gonzalo Winter 9,0% y Jaime Mulet 2,7%. Con ello, Jeannette Jara es la representante de la izquierda para las elecciones presidenciales del 16 de noviembre de 2025. Por medio de técnicas digitales y estadísticas, en este Tercer Informe C22-CEP sobre las elecciones 2025 observamos los resultados de estas elecciones primarias y sus efectos para el escenario político general. Analizamos también el comportamiento de la comunicación en redes sociales (Instagram y Facebook) en torno a los siete principales candidatos presidenciales durante el mes de junio 2025. Ellos son Johannes Kaiser, José Antonio Kast, Evelyn Matthei, Gonzalo Winter, Jeannette Jara, Carolina Tohá y Jaime Mulet. Exploramos sus visualizaciones y la comunicación de sentimientos y emociones en torno a ellos. Los resultados generales indican que, en primarias, la izquierda redujo su capacidad de movilización entre 2021 y 2025. Lo mismo acontece con el Frente Amplio, el que baja de 1 millón de votos en las primarias de 2021 (Gabriel Boric) a 124 mil en 2025 (Gonzalo Winter). Jeannette Jara, con 826 mil votos, obtuvo un mejor rendimiento electoral en comunas de la zona poniente de Santiago con mayores niveles de pobreza, lo que muestra un voto asociado a componentes socioeconómicos para esta candidata. Esto no se reproduce a nivel nacional excluyendo la RM. En sentimientos y emociones, Jara logró un rendimiento mejor que el de Tohá, su rango de diferenciación es menor y los sentimientos positivos, así como la emoción de alegría, son los más altos entre todos los candidatos. Esto evidencia una fortaleza de la candidata: su cercanía y capacidad de conexión emocional con los públicos; en redes, su trasfondo político comunista es su desventaja. El Informe concluye que el triunfo de Jeannette Jara en las primarias de izquierda debe ser observado con cautela. La cantidad de votantes que convocó la izquierda es menor que la que movilizó en las primarias de 2021. Si esto se compara con la convocatoria de la Nueva Mayoría en 2013, el descenso en el rendimiento de la izquierda en elecciones primarias es más agudo. El triunfo de Jara no se explica tanto por un alto rendimiento del comunismo, sino por la debilidad de la socialdemocracia representada por Tohá.

Este artículo analiza los nueve discursos inaugurales (‘discursos de balcón’) pronunciados por los presidentes de Chile desde 1990 hasta la actualidad cuando se asoman al balcón de La Moneda por primera vez. Mediante técnicas de análisis computacional de texto, el estudio examina las direcciones semánticas e ideológicas de los discursos.   Sobre esta base, argumentamos que los ‘discursos de balcón’ ilustran el tránsito desde una comprensión pura de la democracia liberal como oposición al autoritarismo dictatorial en 1990 a un orden posdemocrático que apela a recursos políticos y motivacionales de tipo autoritario e identitario para construir legitimación política y formar programas de acción.   Los resultados muestran una transición desde un discurso simbólico centrado en la reconciliación, como el de Aylwin en 1990, hacia marcos crecientemente programáticos orientados a la seguridad pública (Piñera II y especialmente Kast). Los encuadres semánticos evolucionan del trauma dictatorial (Aylwin) a la seguridad como macrocategoría (Kast).   El índice RILE (Right-Left Index) híbrido posiciona a los gobiernos de manera consistente con la clasificación experta: Boric y Bachelet II en el extremo izquierdo, la Concertación histórica en el centro, y Kast en el extremo derecho. Un análisis semántico complementario muestra que palabras como seguridad, libertad y democracia adquieren significados ideológicamente opuestos según el enunciante. Sin embargo, también muestra un hallazgo sustantivo: la disputa política contemporánea no opera por diferenciación léxica, sino por resignificación: las mismas palabras nombran proyectos opuestos (e.g., justicia, seguridad, democracia, entre otros): Boric y Kast, los presidentes ideológicamente más distantes, comparten el mayor vocabulario del corpus.   Por último, el discurso se ha desplazado de ser un acto simbólico puro hacia el anuncio programático. Aylwin (1990) pronuncia un discurso enteramente abstracto, mientras Bachelet II (2014) invierte esa proporción con vocabulario concreto referido a programas e instituciones. Los discursos recientes combinan ambos registros, pero el ritual republicano ya no es solo ritual —una evolución que se aprecia en sus distintos momentos en el análisis de entidades discursivas.   El artículo concluye que los discursos reflejan la búsqueda de la semántica democrática por responder a la fragmentación identitaria, al debilitamiento de los mecanismos clásicos de integración política y a la presión por restablecer el orden público.   Publicado originalmente como Punto de Referencia del Centro de Estudios Públicos (CEP), grupo C22.

Las elecciones presidenciales y parlamentarias de noviembre y diciembre 2025 constituyen el inicio de un nuevo ciclo político. No se trata solo del triunfo claro de Kast en segunda vuelta, sino del espectro amplio de opciones que se abrieron en la primera vuelta presidencial especialmente en la derecha, con Kast, Matthei, Kaiser, y con Parisi en un eje político que no responde a las distinciones clásicas de la política chilena. Por medio del análisis de datos electorales, este séptimo y último informe del proceso electoral chileno de 2025 busca extraer las principales implicancias de tal proceso para el ciclo político que se inaugura. Una de esas implicancias se relaciona con los votos nulos y blancos, además de la población que regularmente no vota, y que alcanza al 15%. Esta población es la fuente del elector indiferente, cuya oscilación política ha caracterizado el reciente ciclo político desde el estallido social en adelante. El no cumplimiento de las tareas del gobierno de emergencia de Kast puede conducir a este elector a abandonar tempranamente el apoyo al gobierno. Asimismo, la contundencia del triunfo de Kast produce altas expectativas cuya administración debe ser distribuida entre los miembros de una coalición de gobierno para obtener un mayor respaldo técnico y político en la consecución de las tareas respectivas. Por otro lado, es preciso tener en consideración la alta votación de Parisi en el norte de Chile y en la zona centro-sur. Ella refleja un nuevo actor social (la clase media emergente) que dista mucho del ideal de universalidad de la clase media tradicional. Por otro lado, los patrones territoriales y socioeconómicos de votación de Kast muestran que la acción del gobierno debiera avanzar paralelamente en sus tres tareas centrales: control de la delincuencia y el crimen organizado, control de la inmigración y la reactivación económica. De otro modo, la crítica en una zona escalará a una crítica generalizada al gobierno y a la pérdida de su apoyo electoral, a pesar de la situación favorable del Partido Republicano en el Congreso y de las transferencias que obtuvo en segunda vuelta de los votantes de Parisi, Matthei y Kaiser. El artículo concluye que las elecciones presidenciales 2025 muestran una votación abundante para el gobierno electo, sin embargo, la base de desafección política es amplia, lo que representa un desafío al ciclo político próximo.

How does a classical vocal scene hold itself together? Performers are bound to one another two ways at once, by a visible web of who performs with whom and by a partly hidden lineage of where they trained. These two infrastructures of the same field are rarely measured together, so we do not yet know how they relate. We align both on a single corpus to ask whether collaboration and pedigree are coupled, and where they fail to align. Using KoVox, a relational corpus of a decade of Korean classical vocal recitals assembled from the national performing-arts registry, we extract academic pedigree from nearly all performer profiles via a benchmark-validated language-model pipeline, encode it at four institutional resolutions, and align it with the program-item co-performance network. The scene exhibits a bilateral architecture. Removing a small cadre of pianist-accompanists collapses the collaboration network's connected core, while singers almost never meet on stage without one of them. Performers who trained at the same individual conservatory are roughly 2.67 times more likely to share a stage than chance predicts, an effect concentrated at the institution rather than country or region and robust across four nulls of increasing strictness. The joint pattern is a descriptive account of how a recital-centric classical vocal scene holds itself together, through fine-grained institutional co-affiliation stitched by structurally critical broker accompanists. Findings are scope-conditioned on the Seoul-centric mainstream recital subset that KoVox documents.

Public relations scholarship has produced substantial work on corporate social responsibility (CSR) and corporate social advocacy (CSA), yet whether the two constructs remain conceptually distinct or are converging remains unresolved. In this study, we provide the first large-scale computational comparison of CSR and CSA across 4128 full-text articles published between 2004 and 2024 in six major public relations journals, using structural topic modeling and word embedding. Our analyses show that CSA is semantically distinguished from CSR by its closer alignment with political terms, but is not simply reducible to political CSR. Linguistically, CSR and CSA have converged since 2020, yet they draw on largely distinct bodies of literature, with little citation overlap, suggesting the convergence is more terminological than conceptual. Topic affinity analysis further reveals that CSR and CSA exhibit different forms of “habitual mind”: CSR scholarship has developed broadly dispersed topical attachments across the field, whereas CSA scholarship clusters around a narrower set of recurring partners. To support transparency and future inquiry, we open-source PR-Embed, an interactive platform for exploring the full topic and semantic space of the corpus. We argue that maintaining definitional clarity is essential to preserve each concept’s theoretical and practical value as their boundaries continue to converge.

The growth of new digital technology, in particular new forms of communication and artificial intelligence, has raised questions about technology's role in society. Critics argue that it has increased hate speech, polarized the electorate, reduced deliberation, and coarsened the discourse. Others have emphasized the democratizing potential of tools facilitating collective action and enabling broader exchange of ideas. To better understand citizens' general orientation towards technology, we develop a new anti-technology scale and test it on two diverse samples of Americans. Our scale measures three distinct areas of anti-technology attitudes: 1) attitudes towards social media, 2) attitudes towards artificial intelligence, and 3) concerns about modernity. We show that these areas form a general latent anti-technology orientation. We then show that this general anti-tech orientation predicts attitudes towards technology policies and support for contentious actions against tech companies. Finally, we use a pairwise comparison experiment to understand which pro- and anti-AI arguments are most persuasive.

Rising housing costs have renewed calls for social housing across Europe. Why have social democratic parties that once championed social housing stopped building, even when in power? Using a regression discontinuity design and four decades of data on local elections and housing permits, we show that Social Democratic control increased social housing construction in the 1980s. This effect weakened through the 1990s and has since disappeared. Ideological shifts, fiscal constraints, and declining legislative influence cannot explain this pattern. Instead, we argue that compositional changes among social housing residents weakened the coalition that once sustained public housing, reducing left-wing parties' electoral incentives to provide it. Registry and election data show that social housing residents, compared to left-wing electorates, have become more socio-economically marginalized. This depressed Social Democratic support in high-social-housing precincts and eliminated electoral rewards for construction. Our findings show how beneficiary composition can erode the political foundations of welfare provision.

Public backlash against scientists, encompassing attacks, harassment, intimidation, hate, and threats from members of the public, has become a recurring feature of scientific work in the Netherlands and beyond. Despite growing attention and importance, the evidence base is scattered, terminology is used inconsistently, and responses are fragmented across institutions and countries. This report synthesizes the international academic literature in the form of a narrative review. It maps the conceptual vocabulary and summarizes empirical evidence on the prevalence of backlash (30–45% of academics; 50–80% of media-exposed scientists), its forms, drivers, gendered and racialized patterns, psychological and behavioral consequences, and individual and institutional responses, including a comparison with journalism and parliamentary politics. It reviews countermeasures in the Netherlands and internationally. Finally, it discusses limitations of the current support landscape, identifies lessons from adjacent professions, and proposes approaches for future research. A comprehensive appendix lists current initiatives and resources available to scientists, communicators, and institutions.

Smart city assessment is often shaped by fragmented rankings, heterogeneous indicator systems, and limited attention to how cities improve over time. This paper examines how international smart city standards and maturity models can be brought together to support a more coherent assessment approach for smart, sustainable, and resilient urban development. Drawing on a qualitative, narrative review methodology, the study analyses smart city evaluation frameworks, the ISO 371xx standards, and the logic of maturity-based assessment. The analysis shows that ISO standards offer a shared language for comparability, transparency, interoperability, and evidence-based governance. Standards such as ISO 37120, ISO 37122, and ISO 37123 define common indicators for sustainability, smartness, and resilience. Maturity models add a complementary perspective by helping cities assess capabilities, structure their development over time, and embed continuous improvement. The paper argues that a standards-based maturity approach can help municipalities move beyond static benchmarking and towards more systematic, accountable, and adaptive smart city transformation. These are promising directions, but the harder work - testing this approach with actual municipalities, in messy governance realities - remains ahead.

Party identification is widely recognised as a pillar of democratic stability and a driver of political participation rooted in family socialisation. Although parental separation has become increasingly common across Europe, little is known about its implications for political socialisation. This study examines how parental separation during childhood (ages 0-15) affects the probability of identifying with any political party across the developmental trajectory of young adulthood (ages 18-25) by estimating logistic mixed-effects growth models on longitudinal mother-child dyadic data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (years 2001-2024; N = 2,770). Growing up with a partisan mother emerges as the strongest predictor of party identification, while maternal education exerts an independent effect and parental separation shows a modest negative association. Effects are largely confined to initial levels at age 18, pointing to early and persistent stratification. Going beyond average effects, results indicate that separation weakens mother-child transmission, particularly following early-childhood separation, while having little impact among offspring of apartisan mothers. Additional analyses suggest that weakened transmission cannot be explained by father absence alone but may reflect complex post-separation family dynamics.

Recently, calls for interdisciplinary science advice have intensified, yet many approaches to knowledge integration overlook the epistemic politics that shape whose knowledge counts, when, and on what terms. This paper reconceptualises integrated science advice as a situated epistemic practice, drawing on feminist and STS scholarship on situated knowledges, epistemic justice, and boundary work. We examine how advisory practices reproduce and, at times, reconfigure epistemic hierarchies.. Empirically, we analyse a multi-session, scenario-based pandemic exercise conducted in the Netherlands in 2025, in which biomedical, social, behavioural, and humanities scholars collaboratively produced advice for a fictional virus outbreak. Through participant observation across three phases of an evolving crisis, we trace how different forms of knowledge are enabled or constrained. Our analysis shows that the integration of knowledges is temporally ordered. Shifts in knowledge integration underscore that epistemic hierarchies are not static but are continuously enacted through temporal, affective, and institutional arrangements. By foregrounding temporality and situatedness, this paper contributes to debates on situated epistemologies and epistemic justice by showing how advisory infrastructures can organise the co-presence of diverse standpoints. We argue that achieving more just forms of knowledge integration requires reconfiguring the temporal and institutional conditions under which different knowledges can become ‘actionable’.

Online videos are central to social platforms and contemporary media consumption. Yet social science lacks scalable methods to analyze large numbers of videos without prior knowledge of their content, limiting our ability to study platform usage patterns. To address this gap, we present a novel computational method: MAVIC, a Multimodal, content-Agnostic and scalable Video protocol for Interpretable feature Compositions. MAVIC positions any video along 271 human-interpretable visual, audio, and linguistic features and clusters them bottom-up by their feature profiles. Unlike transfer learning or multimodal large language model approaches that rely on opaque embeddings, MAVIC produces traceable, and auditable representations, enabling quantification of similarity between videos and distinction along explicit dimensions of content rather than metadata. We demonstrate MAVIC on 20,180 videos randomly selected from watch histories donated by an approximated representative sample of 1,009 Danish YouTube users. The protocol identifies 52 feature-composition clusters that partially overlap with YouTube genres. When linked with viewer demographics and ideologies, these clusters reveal systematic differences in appeal across population groups. MAVIC thus provides a tool to monitor video platforms and to clarify which kinds of content resonate with which audiences.

In this chapter -- forthcoming in the edited volume, "Federalism in a Divided America" -- we first trace the development of public lands agencies and policies over time, ending with a review of the Trump administration’s current efforts to dismantle them. Second, we draw on various survey data to describe contemporary public opinion towards public lands and their management in the U.S. Our analyses reveal how resentful rural Americans are among the sharpest critics of the public lands management status quo. Thus, we propose a theoretical framework for explaining why rural resentment underpins opposition to public lands management in the third section of this chapter. Our framework stresses the importance of procedural grievances linked to the development of public land agencies and policies. To conclude, we offer a series of recommendations for improving the governance of our federal public lands by re-centering “place” in policy development and administration.

There is something quietly devastating about the way Nigeria is losing its architectural heritage. It does not happen all at once, through a single dramatic act of destruction, though that happens too. It happens gradually, through the accumulation of small decisions that each seem reasonable at the time: a crumbling wall patched with Portland cement, a rotting timber lintel replaced with a concrete beam, a lime-plastered facade painted over with synthetic emulsion. Each intervention is made in good faith, often by people who simply do not know any better. Together they constitute the systematic destruction of building fabric that took centuries to create and cannot be remade once it is gone. This article examines the current state of architectural preservation in Nigeria, with particular attention to the role that indigenous and locally sourced materials must play in any serious conservation effort. It draws on the scholarship of Dmochowski, Moughtin, Elleh, Prussin and others who have documented Nigeria’s traditional building traditions, and on the technical conservation literature of Ashurst and Ashurst, Holmes and Wingate, and the ICOMOS charters, to argue that the most technically correct approach to preserving Nigeria’s earthen, lime-based and timber heritage is the one that returns, as far as possible, to the materials from which that heritage was originally made. The article also argues that this approach cannot be implemented without a fundamental change in how building technology education in Nigeria addresses the knowledge and skills of conservation, which at present it barely addresses at all.

This study explores the persistence of colonial mindsets in post-independent India and examines how colonial legacies continue to influence language preference, cultural identity, social behaviour, and perceptions of modernity in contemporary society. Although India achieved political independence in 1947, colonial influence remains embedded within educational systems, language hierarchies, institutional structures, and everyday social practices. The research particularly focuses on the dominance of English language, preference for Western cultural norms, and the reproduction of colonial values through social interaction and cultural perception. The study adopts a mixed-method research design, combining quantitative and qualitative approaches. Primary data were collected from 80 respondents aged between 18–45 years through a structured interview schedule consisting of close-ended and open-ended questions. Purposive and convenience sampling techniques were used to select respondents from different educational and social backgrounds. Quantitative data were analyzed through frequency and percentage distribution, while qualitative responses were interpreted thematically. The findings reveal that English continues to function as a symbol of intelligence, professionalism, status, and social mobility. Respondents also associated Western lifestyle and culture with modernity and social acceptance. At the same time, many participants demonstrated hybrid cultural identities by balancing traditional values with global influences such as Western and Korean Gen-Z culture. The study further indicates that colonial values are often internalized unconsciously and reproduced through education, media, and social behaviour. The research is theoretically informed by Pierre Bourdieu’s concept of cultural capital, Antonio Gramsci’s theory of cultural hegemony, and Homi K. Bhabha’s concept of hybridity. Overall, the study concludes that although India is politically independent, colonial influence continues to shape social consciousness and identity in subtle but significant ways.

El Informe Nacional 2026 sobre Consumo de Noticias y Evaluación del Periodismo en Chile —liderado por la Escuela de Periodismo de la Pontificia Universidad Católica de Valparaíso, en colaboración con Feedback— constituye la tercera entrega de una serie anual orientada a monitorear cómo las audiencias chilenas se relacionan con las noticias, los medios de comunicación y el periodismo. Luego de las mediciones realizadas en años anteriores (Mellado & Cruz, 2024; 2025), esta nueva edición permite observar con mayor claridad qué tendencias se mantienen, cuáles se intensifican y qué nuevas dimensiones comienzan a adquirir relevancia dentro del ecosistema informativo nacional. El estudio se desarrolla en base a una encuesta aplicada a 9,797 personas mayores de 18 años, provenientes de todas las regiones del país, agrupadas en cuatro macrozonas: Norte, Centro, Sur y Región Metropolitana. El levantamiento de los datos fue realizado por Feedback entre el 5 de marzo y el 24 de abril de 2026, mediante una estrategia online.