This commentary enriches Singh’s subjective selection framework by focusing on the nature of goals. It considers their origins (biology, ecology, culture) and varying salience, allowing the model to account for both highly instrumental actions and seemingly goal-demoted behaviors like ritual, thus broadening its applicability.

Let G be a connected Lie group and $\mathrm {Sub}_G$ be the space of closed subgroups of G equipped with the Chabauty topology. In this article, we investigate the existence of invariant random subgroups of G supported on various orbits of the conjugation action of G on $\mathrm {Sub}_G$.

Wlezien offers a compelling framework of policy “inputs” and “outputs” to better understand policy responsiveness. Building on this framework, I argue that inequality in policy influence is central to understanding policy responsiveness and must be treated as a first-order concern: disparities in political power complicate both sides of the “inputs” and “outputs” equation. Disadvantaged groups face barriers in signaling preferences and shaping policy agendas, while policymakers respond unequally across groups. These inequalities challenge how we measure responsiveness and question whether aggregate measures capture democratic quality when preferences are polarized along entrenched social cleavages. Institutional reforms designed to improve representation – from public comment periods to the Voting Rights Act – may serve their stated goals while simultaneously producing unintended consequences for equitable responsiveness. I contend that scholars must ask not just whether policy responds to public opinion, but whose opinion it follows. Responsiveness may be necessary but insufficient for democratic legitimacy if one does not reckon with unequal political power.

While rates of youth homelessness appear to be increasing across different countries, young people experiencing homelessness face particularly critical situations, with a notably high prevalence of mental health problems and extended histories of stressful life events. This article analyzes the life trajectories and current health and needs of 392 individuals experiencing homelessness (207 men and 185 women) in the city of Madrid (Spain). People who had first experienced homelessness during their youth (under the age of 30) were, on average, younger but had experienced longer and more frequent episodes of homelessness. They had also been exposed to multiple stressful life events early in life and had a higher prevalence of victimization and criminal justice involvement throughout their lives. Likewise, youth-onset homelessness was associated with lower use of healthcare services, increased rates of mental health diagnoses and suicide attempts, and more symptoms of anxiety, depression, and substance dependence. The ongoing adversity experienced by individuals who experienced youth-onset homelessness suggests that social support systems may be failing to address the needs of vulnerable families and children. These deficiencies may contribute to the intergenerational transmission of poverty and disadvantage, and lead to situations of greater hardship for people experiencing youth-onset homelessness.

In “On Policy Responsiveness,” Wlezien provides a realist account of policy responsiveness. While recognizing it as a democratic good, he identifies the many obstacles that must be overcome and conditions that must be met to achieve it. Wlezien suggests that “it may be surprising that we observe any representation at all,” considering the many conditions that must be met to achieve it. This raises an important and challenging question, which we expand upon here: what is an appropriate level of responsiveness to expect from democratic systems and what level of observed policy congruence might we deem surprising and/or sufficient? The question of an appropriate counterfactual, apart from being crucial to guide research and hypothesis testing, also creates this fruitful opportunity for collaboration and discussion between a normative political theorist (Scudder) and an empirical political scientist (Grillos). Here, we identify two sources of counterfactual thinking, one normative and one empirical, to provide a benchmark against which we can judge observed levels of policy responsiveness.

Quantitative studies of policy responsiveness are liable to overstate the fairness and quality of democratic governance, because they neglect to account for forms of capture and distortion by powerful groups that are more difficult to operationalize and measure. The field essay by Christopher Wlezien that surveys these studies is comprehensive and generally fair, but it nevertheless shares the blind spots of that literature as a whole, and therefore dismisses realist skepticism (such as that of Achen and Bartels) too quickly. By properly situating this literature within broader discussions of democratic values and political equality, this response aims to recenter the big picture – and highlight what may be concealed when we give too much weight to policy responsiveness.

This paper investigates the feasibility of using mycelium colonization to upcycle household waste, specifically cat litter and spent coffee grounds, into large-scale screening elements through 3D printing and toolpath-informed design. The study introduces a composite that repurposes cat litter, a household waste that is typically sent directly to landfill, as a substrate for fungal growth within additively manufactured forms. By eliminating casting molds and employing continuous fractal toolpaths, the fabrication approach reduces secondary material waste while enabling space-filling, intricate geometries with parametrically controlled spacing that supports mycelium growth. This process extends existing biofabrication precedents through increasing geometric complexity. The research develops a repeatable workflow integrating material circularity, mycelium colonization, 3D printing, and computational fractal design to support scalable biofabrication. Prototypes were produced and evaluated at three incremental scales: 9 cm, 15.24 cm, and 22.86 cm. This work contributes to the biodesign community by demonstrating a resource-efficient method for transforming cat litter into biodegradable screening panels within a circular material system.

Research that assesses individual judges’ ability to shape decisions typically focuses on courts that publish separate votes and opinions. Yet, many courts issue per curiam judgments that do not permit public dissent. To overcome this limitation, we use a convolutional neural network (CNN) to model the variation in judges’ expressed preferences from language in aggregated judgments. Specifically, we construct a CNN to analyze the written judgments of judge-rapporteurs and opinions of advocates-general from the Court of Justice of the European Union. Along a pro-/anti-EU dimension, we estimate how judgments differ within (1) each case relative to the advocate-general’s opinion, and (2) each judge-rapporteur, which captures how judges alter their writing across cases. Our results provide novel empirical support for theoretical models of European judicial decision-making: more pro-EU opinions driven by the Court, not the advocate-general or the judge-rapporteur, are associated with larger chambers and stronger external signals of compliance.

Neonates are highly susceptible to infection, a major cause of neonatal death, given their immature immune system. Comprehensive studies examining multiple immune-response-related proteins in relation to neonatal infection are scarce. We conducted a nested case-control study within the Shenzhen Baoan Birth and Twin (SZBBTwin) cohort, measuring 92 immune-response-related proteins in cord plasma of 149 twins (including 34 discordant twin pairs) with proximity extension assay. All twins were followed for clinical diagnoses of infection from birth until 27 days of age. Wilcoxon rank-sum test was used to determine differentially abundant proteins (DAPs) between infected and noninfected neonates, the predictive performance of which was evaluated by receiver operating characteristic curves, and their functions and pathways were annotated through enrichment analysis. Logistic regression was used to assess the associations between levels of proteins and risk of neonatal infection. Finally, five DAPs (ITGA11, FCRL6, DDX58, SH2D1A, and EDAR) were identified for neonatal infection, and the area under the curve of the five DAPs achieved 0.835 for infection prediction. Enrichment analysis indicated that five DAPs were mainly involved in immune function and cell binding, and they were mainly enriched in the nuclear factor kappa-B pathway. A higher level of ITGA11 was associated with an increased risk of neonatal infection in all twins (OR 3.00; 95% CI [1.33, 6.78]) and discordant twin pairs (OR 5.50; 95% CI [1.20, 25.23]). In conclusion, multiple immune-response-related proteins in cord plasma, particularly ITGA11, are associated with the risk of neonatal infection in twins.

Extending Singh’s theory of cultural “super-attractors,” this commentary examines the Intensive Care Unit as a living model of the cultural manifold. In this high-acuity clinical environment, patients, families, and clinicians unconsciously reconstruct cultural super-attractors through ritual, cooperation, and shared humanitarian goals. Integrating psychiatric consultation reveals how these attractors transform unconscious adaptation into structured healing and recovery.

Breast cancer represents one of the main causes of mortality among women, and the consumption of bioactive compounds seems to contribute to improving the prognosis of the disease. However, the relationship between polyphenol intake and breast cancer has not yet been fully elucidated. The objective of this study was to investigate the association between polyphenol intake and breast cancer mortality, survival, and recurrence. This is an observational study with a prospective sample of 95 women, followed up for an average of 11.5 years. Intake of polyphenols was assessed using a Food Frequency Questionnaire (FFQ) and estimated using the Phenol-Explorer® database. Cox proportional hazard models were used to investigate the associations. Survival curves were calculated using Kaplan-Meier analysis. An inverse association was found between the intake of total polyphenols, phenolic acids, and lignans, and the risk of breast cancer-specific mortality (HR= 0.20, 95% CI [0.05-0.80]; HR= 0.09, 95% CI [0.01-0.50]; HR= 0.15, 95% CI [0.04-0.63], respectively). Phenolic acids also showed an inverse association with breast cancer recurrence (HR= 0.35, 95% CI [0.13-0.98]) and all-cause mortality (HR= 0.23, 95% CI [0.07 - 0.77]). Coffee was the major contributor to total polyphenol, phenolic acid, and lignan intake. Total polyphenol intake was associated with longer survival when breast cancer mortality was considered (p=0.048). In conclusion, higher intake of polyphenols was associated with lower breast cancer-specific mortality. In addition, phenolic acids were associated with lower all-cause mortality and breast cancer recurrence. Further studies are needed to confirm these associations.

This paper develops an interdisciplinary perspective, which combines ideas from anthropology, sociolinguistics and interface design, on how AI chatbots project recognizable social identities. Specifically, it brings together Silvio’s notion of animation, the social practices through which “humanness” is projected onto nonhuman entities, and Blommaert’s notion of enoughness, the idea that the authenticity of linguistic performances is a matter not of the accuracy of a performance but of how audiences collectively evaluate it as socially recognizable. The analysis draws on a corpus of metapragmatic artifacts posted on social media sites related to ChatGPT’s advanced voice mode and Sesame.ai’s hyper-realistic voice interface. Analysis of these artifacts reveals how designers, users and AI systems co-produce boundaries of authenticity through the deployment and uptake of linguistic and discursive features such as accent and stance. In doing so, they continually recalibrate what counts as culturally competent performances, shaping emergent norms of identity and sociality around AI. The paper highlights how humanness and culturality are distributed across technical systems, corporate discourse, and human interlocutors, with important implications for understanding how generative AI reproduces cultural stereotypes by drawing on the linguistic labor of users.