Explaining altruistic behavior may require expanding the bargaining framework. In particular, accommodating altruism may require greater emphasis on bargaining under normative rather than actual conditions. Fleshing out the account of resource-rational bargaining under normative conditions raises important questions for future research.

By targeting treatment according to molecular biomarkers, precision medicine promises a revolution in health care. We examine this promise by distinguishing three precision medicine strategies: biomarker-stratified high-risk-targeting, biomarker-based individual targeting, and biomarker-based disease targeting. Each strategy seeks to boost one of the determinants of the population impact of a medical intervention. We conclude that these strategies give a molecular coating to decades-old tactics. There is no compelling reason to believe that precision medicine strategies are uniquely effective for sick individuals or sick populations.

Resource-rational contractualism claims that moral flexibility leads to mutually beneficial agreements through renegotiation when new situations arise. We challenge this view using COVID-19 evidence, where moral change leads to persistent disagreement rather than consensus. We demonstrate that three psychological factors – social identity, confirmation bias, and emotional responses – systematically prevent convergence, revealing limitations in the resource-rational contractualism model.

The sensory horizons hypothesis as an explanation of consciousness depends on visual experience directly affecting neural activity underlying conscious model-based planning. Given that there is no known mechanism for subjective experience to generate action potentials, the sensory horizons hypothesis lacks explanatory insight into the function of consciousness. We contend that a better strategy is to investigate non-causal functions of consciousness.

A strict lower limit of 400 ms is suggested for the formation of conscious vision. This processing delay could result from the need to create a unified percept over visual features processed with different time constants, and even longer intentional visual processes. Given the flexibility of these processing times, we question the need for a strict lower limit for conscious vision.

Action may indeed rely on unconscious sensory processing, but that may not be true of perceptual recognition in aquatic species, which in mammals relies on brain circuits that are paradigmatically associated with conscious processing. Perhaps limited sensory horizons even make model-based conscious processing especially important for finding prey and mates, avoiding predators, and navigating underwater environments.

In consciousness science, theoretical predictions are often untestable, such as claims about phenomenal consciousness in other beings. This evidential underdetermination, in combination with the perceived moral significance of consciousness, puts consciousness science at risk of becoming a marketplace of rationalizations: a field that produces theories that reaffirm social practices and conventions.

Fleming and Michel suggest that conscious vision reflects a reality monitoring (RM) mechanism that evolved to separate planning from perception. Here, I critically examine the RM decision policy implied by the authors – a slow, winner-take-all strategy tagging only one first-order representation as “real.” Specifically, I explore how expectations about environmental or reality-tagging stability may mask alternative RM decision policies, with important implications for learning and the evolutionary emergence and function of consciousness.

This study reconstructs Late Holocene vegetation and Indian summer monsoon (ISM) variability over the past ∼2700 years from the Bandhavgarh Tiger Reserve, located in central India’s Core Monsoon Zone (CMZ). High-resolution pollen data reveal five distinct vegetational phases, with the period between ∼2700 and 2300 cal yr BP characterized by a dense moist deciduous forest dominated by Shorea robusta, indicating strong monsoonal activity. The interval between ∼2300 and 1600 cal yr BP shows four distinct sub-phases: a warm and humid episode (∼2300–2200 cal yr BP), a pronounced dry spell (∼2200–2030 cal yr BP), an ameliorating phase (∼2030–1680 cal yr BP), and renewed monsoon intensification (∼1680–1600 cal yr BP). A moderately strong and stable ISM persisted until ∼820 cal yr BP, followed by a dry, open vegetation regime (∼820–400 cal yr BP) coinciding with increased anthropogenic indicators. Since ∼400 cal yr BP, the resurgence of moist deciduous taxa reflects climatic recovery and forest regeneration. Pollen-based climate reconstructions provide valuable insights into long-term monsoon–vegetation interactions in tropical India.

The authors make common assumptions that I reject: that consciousness has functions distinct from those of the brain processes on which it depends, that there is a moment at which consciousness happens, and that consciousness itself can be measured. This leads to Cartesian materialism and asking such unanswerable questions as when and why consciousness evolved. An alternative view is proposed.

We show that there exist constants $\delta _1,\delta _2\gt 0$ such that if $G$ is an $(n,d,\lambda )$-graph with $\lambda /d\le \delta _1$, then $G$ contains an induced cycle of length at least $\delta _2n/d$. We further demonstrate that, up to a constant factor, this is best possible. Utilising our techniques, we derive that the number of non-isomorphic induced subgraphs of such $G$ is at least exponential in $n\log d/d$, and further demonstrate that this is tight up to a constant factor in the exponent.

In the realm of global governance, the unique status and authority of expertise have traditionally been associated with its claims to rely on science and its often-associated qualities of ‘neutrality’, ‘impartiality’, and ‘objectivity’. Policymakers and technocratic experts have widely resorted to these attributes to render their knowledge credible and authoritative. While such claims to scientificity remain significant, we contend that contemporary global governance increasingly relies on alternative practices to confer knowledge its expert status. Global sites of governance are nowadays engaging in a broader set of practices of knowledge production and packaging, which include participatory experiments, aesthetic performances, calls to the imagination, and repertoires of benevolence. Such practices of knowledge pluralization have largely been seen as positive and unproblematic moves. Without contesting the need to pluralize expertise, we argue that such practices are not inherently democratizing, but part of an evolving technocratic repertoire of governing. Our introduction is structured around four sections: 1) a justification for the issue and contribution to the literature on expertise in International Relations; 2) the conditions of possibility or ‘context’ of the pluralization of expertise; 3) a discussion of novel practices of knowledge authorization and of their politics; and 4) an outline of our main contributions.

Historically the United States uses both bilateral aid and influence over multilateral development finance to further its geopolitical objectives. Past studies explain the choice between these two instruments based on either a divided government effect or whether the recipient government is a traditional US ally (the dirty work hypothesis). We advance a theory explaining the bilateral/multilateral choice in terms of the confluence of these factors and test its predictions using United Nations Security Council voting, US bilateral aid flows, and World Bank lending. Results confirm theoretical expectations: higher bilateral aid goes to allies who support the United States in the Security Council but only when the US government is not divided and higher World Bank lending goes to non-allies who support the United States in the Security Council but only when the US government is divided. This detailed understanding of the link between domestic politics and governance in international organizations has important implications as the international order moves beyond a US-dominated system.

Palmer amaranth (Amaranthus palmeri S. Watson) is a highly competitive and drought-tolerant weed that poses significant challenges to U.S. agriculture due to its adaptability, prolific seed production, and herbicide resistance. Understanding how water stress at specific growth stages affects its development and seed production is critical for optimizing management strategies, particularly in water-limited environments. This study evaluated the effects of growth stage–specific water stress on growth and fecundity of A. palmeri under controlled greenhouse conditions. Four irrigation levels (100%, 80%, 60%, and 40% field capacity [FC]) were applied during vegetative and reproductive stages. Increasing water stress significantly reduced plant height, stem diameter, and biomass, with reductions of 17% to 35% under severe stress (40% FC). Total biomass declined by approximately 17% under severe water limitation. Root biomass at 60% FC decreased by 13% to 14% relative to 100% FC, whereas root length density increased by 11% to 16%, indicating adaptive root elongation under severe water deficit conditions. Despite reductions in vegetative growth, A. palmeri maintained high reproductive capacity. Seed production at 100% FC was 48% to 72% higher than at 80% FC and more than 2- to 3-fold greater than at 60% FC. Furthermore, plants subjected to reproductive-stage stress produced approximately 29% more seeds than those stressed during the vegetative stage, highlighting strong stage-dependent reproductive plasticity. Seed germination was highest at 100% FC but declined by approximately 55% at 60% FC. In contrast, germination at 80% FC remained within 10% of optimal levels and was comparable under 40% FC, suggesting a nonlinear response and potential maternal effects enhancing seed resilience under stress. The study revealed the importance of early-season weed control to exploit periods of vulnerability and limit seedbank replenishment. Overall, this study provides valuable insights for integrating weed management strategies in dryland cropping systems, where water scarcity and herbicide resistance present ongoing challenges.