In a vision-first story, conscious vision evolved before other kinds of conscious experience. This can be contrasted with an olfaction-first story, in which conscious vision co-opted integrative mechanisms that first evolved for modeling the causes of olfactory stimuli. An olfaction-first story makes good sense of the connection between consciousness and holistic integration across temporal windows in the ∼400ms range.

Contractualism is valuable, but morality is not a means to agreements for mutual benefit. Beyond what we expect others to agree to, morality is – by almost any definition – about what we think others ought to agree to. Children, youth, and adults form judgments about social inequalities based on reasoning about rights and justice, whether they expect agreement or not.

Levine et al. argue that morality solves the problem of finding mutual benefit in interdependent choice. We explore how legal and institutional design can reduce cognitive burdens and support agreement-finding—explicit, implicit, and simulated. From contract law to government and organizational policy, we highlight how aligning systems with resource-rational contractualist principles can support individuals in finding mutual benefit.

We challenge Fleming and Michel’s claim that conscious vision is too slow for real-time action. Correlative and functional evidence suggest that conscious perception can emerge around 200 ms post-stimulus and guide behavior. Due to their reliance on rare postdiction effects and assumptions about unconscious vision, they underestimate the speed of conscious vision and overestimate the functional relevance of unconscious vision.

We investigate how Mandarin-speaking children categorize novel intransitive verbs as unergative and unaccusative using distributional information in language input. Using a Word2vec model, we examined whether distributional cues in sentences influence the categorization of novel verbs. Our results indicated that the distributional representations of novel verbs in some sentence types exhibited closer similarities to real unergatives, and the others closer to real unaccusatives, showing a distinct effect of distributional cues on verb categorization. Subsequently, we examined children’s sensitivity to the distributional information in a few sentence types. The results demonstrated that distributional cues in these sentence types were useful for children to categorize novel verbs, since the categorization linked to verb meanings was reinforced by sentence types in which novel verbs occur. These findings may explain atypical behaviours of some Mandarin formal and double-syllable verbs that previous theoretical frameworks have found challenging to explain.

We study the semi-infinite Neumann problem, which models the variation law of a cline in a semi-infinite habitat. Using the bifurcation analysis method, we find that there is a unique solution curve emanating from $(\arctan \alpha ,0)$ with $\alpha> 0$, which is strictly increasing and approaches $1$ in $C[0,+\infty )$. Furthermore, we show that any cline (bifurcation solution) is stable, thereby providing a confirmed answer to a conjecture. Moreover, we also establish the stability of the trivial solution. Our conclusions are consistent with the related numerical results and biological reality.

The Fontan circulation is defined by unique physiological constraints that limit preload, elevate systemic venous pressure, and reduce the capacity to compensate for stress or injury. Traditional paradigms for managing biventricular heart failure are often misaligned with the pathophysiology of this preload-limited, non-pulsatile system. In this editorial, we propose a conceptual reframing of medical therapy in the Fontan circulation, centred on preserving physiological reserve and long-term durability rather than reversing established failure. We introduce a serial constraints model that emphasises the interconnected roles of the pulmonary vascular bed, ventricular filling, systemic output, venous and lymphatic function, and end-organ tolerance. As limitations shift over time, therapeutic focus must also evolve from pulmonary vasodilation in early stages to addressing ventricular dysfunction, venous congestion, and fibrosis later in the trajectory. We review emerging applications of phosphodiesterase type 5 inhibitors, sodium-glucose cotransporter-2 inhibitors, nonsteroidal mineralocorticoid receptor antagonists and exercise within this framework, while cautioning against routine use of conventional renin-angiotensin-aldosterone system inhibition or beta-blockers in the absence of clear comorbid indications. Antithrombotic strategies remain important due to a persistent thrombo-inflammatory milieu. We advocate for a shift from reactive to trajectory-preserving therapy, targeting flow under stress, organ protection, and reserve conservation. This physiology-aligned, evidence-informed approach provides a rationale for earlier intervention and testable hypotheses for future Fontan-specific trials.

We compute a Hirzebruch-Riemann-Roch type formula for the invariant Riemann-Roch number of a quantizable Hamiltonian $S^1$-manifold $(M,\omega ,{ \mathcal J})$, allowing $0$ to be a singular value of the moment map ${ \mathcal J}:M\to {\mathbb R}$. Our formula represents an instance of the Guillemin-Sternberg principle, which states that quantization should commute with reduction. The conceptual novelty of our result is that the involved reduced system only depends on the symplectic data of M. To establish this, we derive a complete singular stationary phase expansion of the Witten integral without appealing to any kind of desingularization. As a consequence, our formula expresses the invariant Riemann-Roch number purely in terms of symplectic invariants of the singular symplectic quotient. In particular, it involves a new explicit symplectic invariant of the singularities.

Functional logic languages are a high-level approach to programming by combining the most important declarative features. They abstract from small-step operational details so that programmers can concentrate on the logical aspects of an application. This is supported by appropriate evaluation strategies. Demand-driven evaluation from functional programming is amalgamated with non-determinism from logic programming so that solutions or values are computed whenever they exist. This frees the programmer from considering the influence of an operational strategy on the success of a computation, but it is a challenge to the language implementer. A non-deterministic demand-driven strategy might duplicate unevaluated choices of an expression, which could duplicate the computational effort. In recent implementations, this problem has been tackled by adding a kind of memoization of non-deterministic choices to the expression under evaluation. Since this has been implemented in imperative target languages, it was unclear whether this could also be supported in a functional programming environment like Haskell. This paper presents a solution to this challenge by transforming functional logic programs into a monadic representation. Although this transformation is not new, we present an implementation of the monadic interface which supports memoization in non-deterministic branches. Additionally, we include more advanced features of functional logic languages, namely functional patterns and encapsulated search, in our approach. By optimizing our implementation for purely functional computations with both a static and dynamic approach, we are able to achieve a promising performance that outperforms current compilers for Curry.

Macroeconomic models often have multiple equilibria. Nonetheless, a popular view on inflation targeting posits that this policy helps to coordinate agents’ expectations and actions. This paper provides a rationalization for this notion. I consider an infinitely repeated game, built on the Barro-Gordon model, in which the central bank incurs a fixed penalty whenever the actual inflation rate differs from the announced target and study how changes in the penalty impact its equilibria. I conclude that, in consonance with the aforementioned view, an inflation-targeting policy lessens the problem of equilibrium multiplicity. However, by itself, it is unlikely to achieve uniqueness.

This article argues that concepts of time are central to how armed forces imagine and pursue victory, functioning as both an ordering principle and an instrumental resource. Here, the article advances the concept of a ‘martial theory of mind’ to explain how armed forces seek to instrumentally manipulate the ordering properties of time to produce spatial and technological advantages, rooted in socio-technical imaginaries of both their own and their adversaries’ behaviour. However, technological change has frequently altered the relationship between time and space in warfare, necessitating constant alteration to prevailing military doctrines as armies update their ‘martial theory of mind’. The article then applies this theoretical lens to analyse the potential collapse of contemporary doctrines of manoeuvre warfare, highlighting how technological diffusion has undermined the relationship between time and space in the martial theory of mind underpinning their operation. It concludes by articulating a series of potential avenues by which Western armies might seek to address this growing imbalance.

This study investigated the effects of essential oils (EOs) from rosemary (Rosmarinus officinalis L.) and Shirazi thyme (Zataria multiflora Boiss.) on the early growth and physiological characteristics of three weed species: redroot pigweed (Amaranthus retroflexus L.), common lambsquarters (Chenopodium album L.), and Canada thistle [Cirsium arvense (L.) Scop.] conducted at Razi University. the experiment utilized a factorial design with varying concentrations of EOs in laboratory (0.5, 1, 2, 5, 10, and 20 µl ml−1) and greenhouse (5, 10, and 20 µl ml−1) settings. Control treatments included distilled water, distilled water + Tween 20 (1%), and trifluralin and glyphosate. Gas chromatography–mass spectrometry analysis revealed 15 major compounds in rosemary (Rosmarinus officinalis L.) EO and 23 in Shirazi thyme EO. A significant inhibition of plumule and radicle lengths was reported across all species. In greenhouse trials, Shirazi thyme EO at 10 and 20 µl ml−1 reduced stem length by up to 75.2% and 74.5% in A. retroflexus, surpassing reductions caused by rosemary EO (57.2% at 20 µl ml−1) and glyphosate (65.2%). Root length reductions were most pronounced with Shirazi thyme EO, reaching up to 83.9% inhibition in A. retroflexus at 10 µl ml−1, exceeding effects of rosemary EO and glyphosate. Shirazi thyme EO causing up to 54.4% reduction in stem dry weight of C. arvense and 82.7% reduction in root dry weight of A. retroflexus. Leaf greenness, photosynthetic efficiency, and maximum quantum yield of photosystem II also decreased markedly with increasing EO concentrations, particularly under Shirazi thyme EO, which in some cases completely abolished photosynthetic efficiency, outperforming glyphosate.

Arthropods, such as jumping spiders, depend on vision over a distance when hunting. Their tactics suggest planning. Experimental evidence indicates that they use representations acquired from one location when acting in another. These tiny creatures should, therefore, depend upon reality-monitoring and be conscious. Is this necessarily the case? Could we know what sort of consciousness they might possess?

What exactly is a contract? In this commentary, we discuss the need for a formal theory of how contracts are represented in the mind. Drawing inspiration from the representation of real-world contracts, we suggest that probabilistic programs are an appealing candidate representation.