This essay takes as its starting point the experience of designing and teaching the extension course “Regenerative Ecologies: Imagining Sustainable Futures through Science Fiction,” offered at the Federal University of Pelotas in late 2024 as part of Brazil’s triadic model of teaching, research, and extension in higher education. Bringing together participants from the humanities, natural sciences, health sciences, and environmental studies, the course created a space where speculative narratives could be read alongside diverse forms of expertise and lived experience, fostering ecological awareness, critical engagement with science and technology, and the exercise of accountability and collective responsibility. From this context, I explore the role of science fiction as a critical and imaginative tool for public engagement with science and draw upon philosophy of science to argue that science fiction supports ethical reflection, strengthens scientific communication, and cultivates the “moral imagination” essential to responsible science, enabling readers to anticipate the social and environmental consequences of scientific and technological advancements. Through this case study, I highlight how speculative narratives can bridge the gap between scientific practice and public participation in the co-creation of sustainable futures, while also showcasing the affordances of public higher education outreach initiatives in Brazil.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the degree index and the clustering index in dense random graphs. The degree index in our setup is a certain measure of degree irregularity whose basic properties are well studied in the literature, and the corresponding theoretical analysis in a random graph setup turns out to be tractable. On the other hand, the clustering index, based on a similar reasoning, is first introduced in this paper. Computing exact expressions for the expected clustering index turns out to be more challenging even in the case of Erdős–Rényi graphs, and our results are on obtaining relevant upper bounds. These are also complemented with observations based on Monte Carlo simulations. In addition to the Erdős–Rényi case, we also present a simulation-based analysis for random regular graphs, the Barabási–Albert model, and the Watts–Strogatz model.

In this note, we investigate iterations of consistency, local and uniform reflection over Heyting arithmetic. For consistency and local reflection, we recover the same results known to hold for Peano arithmetic. In the case of uniform reflection, we present a new, self-contained proof of Dragalin’s extension of Feferman’s completeness theorem, drawing on ideas from Rathjen’s novel proof of Feferman’s classical result (cf. [12]).

Richard Powers’ latest novel, Playground (2024), foregrounds two realms of scientific issues in the public sphere—the oceans and AI. In that sense, it looks in large part like a follow-up to two of his previous works: The Overstory (2018), an analogous treatment of the environment as represented by forests, and Galatea 2.2 (1995), which describes the creation of a very early version of an AI. Here, the focus appears to be an elaborate scheme to fill the South Pacific with floating cities, to allow wealthy people to escape the tribulations of the real world, with the development of a Facebook-like app as a secondary theme. The exposition proceeds via three narrative streams: the stories of a software engineer, a pioneering deep ocean explorer, and a tiny Polynesian island designated as the home base for the floating cities project. As the plotlines evolve, the reader is led to anticipate how the pieces will connect up—until a totally unexpected plot reversal near the end forces a drastic reappraisal of what the book is primarily about, suggesting that despite the elaborate portrayal of risks to the oceans, AI may, in fact, well prove to be the greater threat.

Six weeks after the United States entered World War II, Baseball Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis wrote to President Franklin D. Roosevelt asking if he thought Organized Baseball should continue during the war. FDR responded the next day with his famous Green Light Letter, basically saying yes. Although this simple decision has been amply covered by scholars, its complex consequences have not. During the course of the war, more than a dozen executive agencies were called on to deal with practical aspects of the Green Light letter decision including the Selective Service; the Office of Defense Transportation; the War Mobilization Commission; the Office of War Mobilization; and the departments of war, treasury, and agriculture.

This paper examines the underrepresentation of underwater cultural heritage (UCH) within the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) 1972 World Heritage Convention. Although the 2001 Convention on the Protection of the Underwater Cultural Heritage provides a dedicated framework, submerged heritage remains inconsistently recognized in World Heritage processes. The paper traces the historical development of UCH recognition, outlines challenges in classification and protection, and considers the potential of sites to be evaluated as possessing Outstanding Universal Value (OUV). It highlights the cultural–natural interconnections of UCH, the risks posed by climate change and human activities, and the need to consider sites in international waters. The authors argue for clearer criteria, interdisciplinary collaboration, and the systematic integration of UCH into nomination dossiers and management plans. This work seeks to inspire stakeholders to prioritize UCH within heritage management systems, ensuring its preservation for future generations and thereby ensuring a balanced representation of human history in the World Heritage List.

Inertial Alfvén waves are thought to accelerate electrons to auroral energies via their parallel electric field in the Earth’s magnetosphere. During active geomagnetic times, it is estimated that a significant percentage of electron precipitation energy into the Earth’s ionosphere can be attributed to these waves. However, self-consistent wave/particle interactions of inertial Alfvén waves with the accelerated electron population are not well understood. We show that recent self-consistent models have a strong nonlinearity in them. A reduced set of equations which describe this nonlinear steepening is derived and shown to agree with drift-kinetic simulations and other published studies. From this reduced set of equations, many properties of the nonlinearity are derived and shown to agree with simulations. This includes the time and length scales and connecting the speed of the wave to the perturbation maximum value.

Political philosophy is often said to stand at an uneasy distance from everyday politics. On one side lie the often-abstract normative arguments of philosophers; on the other, the messy, power-saturated realities of political life; and in between, what seems to be a sizable gulf in aims, topics, and practices that limits their mutual relevance. Taking that gap as both a diagnosis and a provocation, this issue draws together a diverse group of political philosophers to explore why it persists, why it matters, and how it might be reduced. This introduction sets the stage for that discussion in three ways. First, it advances a principled argument for the inescapability of public political philosophising. Beyond familiar pragmatic pressures to demonstrate relevance or impact, it argues that political philosophy is intrinsically bound to public life, and that both philosophers and public actors have good principled reasons to engage with one another. Second, it offers a conceptual map of the contributions organised around three themes: the varied ways political philosophers have engaged with the public, the growing integration of public voices and empirical methods into philosophical reasoning, and the experimental and innovative practices through which public political philosophy is reshaping the boundaries of the discipline itself. Third, it reflects on our own experience guest editing the collection, highlighting how the somewhat serendipitous discovery of a hugely varied and inventive field of contemporary public political philosophising—far exceeding anything we had anticipated—pushed us to rethink some of our own assumptions and preconceptions.

A setup based on magnetic levitation technologies was created to demonstrate credible solutions in the area of cryogenic fuel target (CFT) noncontact transport and their repeatable injection. A necessary element is a levitating CFT carrier made from Type-II, high-temperature superconductors (HTSCs). This paper discusses four principal categories: (1) a tandem HTSC–carrier configuration; (2) a linear permanent magnet guideway to maintain a friction-free acceleration of the HTSC–carrier; (3) a spring mechanism for driving the HTSC–carrier; (4) an optical tracking system to control the HTSC–carrier and injected targets motion. In demo experiments (T = 80 K), a magnetic track oriented S-N-S (size 360 mm × 24 mm × 5 mm) had a large cross-sectional gradient ΔВ = 0.33 T at the edges of the track forming the so-called ‘magnetic wall’ to provide a lateral stability of the HTSC–carrier trajectory. Acceleration and braking of the HTSC–carrier containing two surrogate targets was recorded, followed by targets injection with a rate of 10–25 Hz.

Party-based authoritarian regimes have often demonstrated remarkable resilience throughout wars, revolutions, and state-building processes. Yet how they consolidate authority in newly emerging socioeconomic fields that arise from the (partial) liberalization of socioeconomic policies remains insufficiently explored. This study examines the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) penetration into new socioeconomic organizations in the non-public sector, showing how it balances political control with socioeconomic vitality. We identify three strategies—coercion, indoctrination, and incentivization—framed within a process-oriented, three-step model that highlights ongoing CCP-organization dynamics rather than one-sided penetration. Drawing on resource dependence and organizational field theories, we explain both the Party’s strategic choices and organizational responses. This process has generated institutional isomorphism in the non-public sector, where party-building is increasingly viewed as a means of securing legitimacy and enhancing performance. Our analysis contributes not only to understanding CCP adaptability but also to broader debates on how authoritarian ruling parties consolidate authority in emerging fields.

Since its establishment in 2005, the HTAi Patient and Citizen Involvement in HTA Interest Group (PCIG) has worked to strengthen health technology assessment (HTA) by systematically incorporating patient and citizen perspectives. Over two decades, PCIG has advanced this goal through multistakeholder projects and collaborations that have produced practical tools, guidance, and methods to support patient involvement in HTA worldwide. Through global knowledge exchange, PCIG has fostered shared learning and capacity building for inclusive, participatory HTA. Its work continues to drive a shift in the mindset of the HTA community – from passive consultation to active partnership with patients and citizens – and encourages investment in robust research to understand patient perspectives. As health systems increasingly aim to reflect lived experiences and community values to improve the implementation and impact of services, PCIG’s journey offers a compelling example of the long-term value of collective action, sustained engagement, and meaningful involvement in HTA.

This article presents Bath as an urban crucible for global visitors, ideas and cultural brokers like Edmund Rack, a Quaker and former shopkeeper (1735/36–87). Rack seized opportunities to use his social networks to forge a scientific community in Bath. A study of members of Rack’s Bath Philosophical Society shows science was a pathway to social mobility for dissenters, physicians and men of marginal backgrounds. Scientific knowledge became the property of non-elites, whose interests over-rode socio-economic differences. The impact of knowledge brokers and Bath on eighteenth-century social and urban history is, thus, seen anew in its local, national and global contexts.

In 1977, British Labour Prime Minister James Callaghan joined Commonwealth leaders by committing to the Gleneagles Agreement and thereby pledged to “combat the evil of apartheid” by “taking every practical step” to prevent sporting contacts between Britain and South Africa. Within two years of the agreement being struck, the Tories came to power under the leadership of Margaret Thatcher. Until the end of Thatcher’s time in office (1990), Britain’s application of the agreement became more controversial and divisive than it ever had during Callaghan’s administration, as critics zeroed in on the new Prime Minister’s interpretation of what “every practical step” represented or required. Although there are several studies that explore how and why Thatcher’s government chose to apply Gleneagles, none consider how the agreement was interpreted, debated, and contested from multiple perspectives. In this article, we examine what motivated such different reactions to Gleneagles in Britain and the Commonwealth and why ultimately Thatcher could not seem to please anyone.