We consider a critical bisexual branching process in a random environment generated by independent and identically distributed random variables. Assuming that the process starts with a large number of pairs N, we prove that its extinction time is of order $\ln^2 N$. Interestingly, this result is valid for a general class of mating functions. Among these are the functions describing the monogamous and polygamous behavior of couples, as well as the function reducing the bisexual branching process to the simple one.

Despite biomedical explanations for diseases being increasingly accepted in sub-Saharan Africa, traditional African explanatory models of illness remain widespread. This study sought to understand local explanatory models for illness and patient experiences with different traditional health practitioners (THPs) among a population of rural women in Limpopo, South Africa. This was a cross-sectional qualitative study in which eighty-two in-depth interviews were conducted, and the data were thematically analysed. Study findings indicate that 68% of participants believed illnesses can be caused by bewitchment, and these diseases were often considered too taboo to even be discussed. High percentages of participants also believe that THPs can cure illnesses that medical doctors cannot treat. Additionally, several illnesses were identified related to traditional practices and cultural beliefs, which can only be cured traditionally, via THPs. While the hospital/clinic is often first approached, its failure to resolve illness can often be seen as a sign of the spiritual origin of the ailment. This study is a pre-context for more research around biomedical/traditional medicine collaborations.

Gender inequality carries high social costs, and understanding its causes and consequences remains a pressing concern. Numerous policymakers and academics have taken on this challenge, including anthropological archaeologists. Because archaeologists create narratives about the past that can justify or question current and future actions, contemporary archaeological practice impacts everyone. This themed issue builds on recent documentations of disparities and calls to address them. To do so, contributors use a mix of quantitative and qualitative analyses, as well as novel theoretical perspectives, to understand why intersectional gender-based inequalities continue and to propose interventions to rectify them. We begin by considering the history of feminist equity critiques. We then argue that scholars should build on existing research by reconceptualizing not only difference but also exclusion. Policymakers, academics, and others must move beyond the problematic yet ubiquitous metaphor of a leaky pipeline and instead consider the active—though often unconscious and unintentional—ways individuals and institutions exclude, including through notions of fit, prestige, and the hysteresis of habitus, also known as the Don Quixote effect. The overarching goal of the themed issue, and this article, is to advocate for interventions in contemporary archaeological practice and beyond.

Acute insults ranging from blunt force trauma and thermal injury to pathogenic infection elicit systemic inflammatory cascades intended to limit further tissue damage. These responses are accompanied by metabolic disturbances that generate distinct biochemical signatures measurable through advanced analytical platforms, such as mass spectrometry and nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy (NMR). Although numerous studies have examined these metabolic alterations, findings remain fragmented across clinical and analytical disciplines, leaving it unclear whether the systemic metabolic response to acute insult is fundamentally conserved or insult-specific. In this comparative review, we consolidate evidence across diverse injury and infection contexts to identify shared metabolic patterns, context-dependent differences, and critical gaps in current understanding. Here, we focus on lipid and lipoprotein profiling of blood plasma and serum. We present exemplar case studies spanning traumatic brain injury, burn injury, and SARS-CoV-2 infection to illustrate how lipid and lipoprotein perturbations differ or converge across insult types. Notable observations include consistently elevated palmitic acid (16:0) and reduced phosphatidylcholine species across all three conditions, suggesting these features may represent cross-condition biomarkers and highlighting the value of comparative metabolic profiling. By integrating evidence across diverse contexts, we propose a framework describing the interplay between lipid metabolism, lipoprotein dynamics, and inflammatory activation. Finally, we discuss the translational potential of metabolic phenotyping in enhancing patient stratification, refining prognostic modelling, and improving patient outcomes.

This article presents a proposal for personalised learning itineraries in the field of Ancient History, designed specifically for neurodivergent university students, particularly those with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), or dyslexia. Drawing on the flipped classroom model, the approach shifts the centre of gravity of learning to the students, who are asked to engage with historical content through autonomous preparation, artificial intelligence (AI)-supported tasks, and collaborative in-class activities. Two differentiated learning paths are outlined: one structured and linear and one open and creative. Both incorporate digital tools, such as Google Forms and Canva, and regulation strategies to support executive functioning and autonomy. The article discusses the inclusive potential of this model and reflects on how the integration of AI reshapes historical learning and critical engagement.

In the 17th century, a letter from Fermat to Mersenne considered the problem of finding the Pythagorean triples in which the hypotenuse and the sum of the other two sides are squares. We call this question the Fermat–Mersenne problem. Number-theoretic solutions of the problem are known, but they are complicated. We solve the Fermat–Mersenne problem by using a geometric approach that provides new insight. The argument involves stereographically projecting points onto an elliptic curve and applying complex multiplication on that curve.

Étude n°1 is a solo for feedback and effects pedals by David Caulet. Originally designed to enrich the electric guitar’s timbre, effects pedals have been widely repurposed by experimental and improvising musicians. Although their use is now common, notation practices associated with these devices remain underdeveloped. This work explores the development of a graphic system dedicated to representing instrumental gestures and opens perspectives for a notation framework adapted to contemporary musical practices incorporating electronic technologies.

This article studies uniform inference on a function $g(\cdot )$ and its functionals in a nonparametric panel data model with fixed effects. The nonparametric panel model relaxes restrictions on time-series behavior by allowing for arbitrary types of stationary or nonstationary dependence (e.g., stationary mixingale, mildly stationary, or local-to-unity process). After removing the fixed effects via transformations, a sieve estimator is proposed, accompanied by Yurinskii’s coupling principle of Gaussian processes and uniform confidence bands (UCBs) that rely on the sieve score bootstrap method to test for linear functionals of $g(\cdot )$. Under the asymptotic framework of an increasing cross-sectional dimension and either a fixed or diverging time dimension, we prove that the bootstrapping Kolmogorov–Smirnov (sup-type) test has asymptotic uniform size controls. This article shows that our uniform inference procedure can be extended to the two-way fixed-effects nonparametric panel model with stationary mixingale regressors. Extensive simulations confirm that our sieve estimators and their UCBs work well in finite samples. The present article further applies the above methods to empirical settings and finds some interesting results in nonlinear patterns of consumption concerning income shocks and asset holdings.

This essay takes up the question of how literature can help us adapt to a world in which climate change is an ongoing reality. Climate literature offers a promising realm in which scholars are reckoning with the central humanistic problem of how we make sense of a world undergoing the chaos of climate change. This essay explores the climate literature anthology Tales of Two Planets for how its stories and essays model a practice of narrative agency—the ability to consciously identify, dispense with, and create the tales we tell ourselves about climate change. The narrative agency that climate literature like Tales of Two Planets promotes has the potential to widen its readers’ locus of control in environments where there is very little to begin with.

Here we develop the concept of metacrisology – a way of thinking shaped by crisis that examines the nature of crisis itself – by engaging with philosophers in the context of climate change, technological acceleration and symbolic misery. Beginning with a traumatic childhood experience of cosmic finitude, we reconceive crisis not merely as a path toward inevitable disaster but, in Kostas Axelos’s Heraclitean sense, as an improbable imperative that challenges passive acceptance. Drawing on Bernard Stiegler’s interpretation of krisis as a decisive moment, we argue that the metacrisis is fundamentally a crisis of time deprived of care. Yet against survivalist resignation, we advocate a pedagogy of the unexpected (anelpiston) that cultivates openness to the unprecedented as such. For this we search for a new experimental language to explain the situation. Byung-chul Han’s critique of Heidegger and his revival of the sublime also informs our discussion of beauty as a temporal suspension that resists the rush of technical time. We critique the fetishisation of wounds, whether symbolic or ecological, that forecloses futures and instead argue for a destructive aesthetics that can generate the untimely catastrophe from which, in Deleuze’s sense, a people-to-come might emerge.

Environmental education is never neutral; through what is emphasised or ignored, education shapes how learners understand their relationships with the more-than-human world. This editorial introduces the Special Issue Beyond the Metacrisis: Educating for the Future World to Come, situating environmental education within a planetary metacrisis produced by intersecting ecological, social, economic and epistemic failures. Drawing on critiques of colonial modernity, neoliberal growth imperatives and Enlightenment dualisms that separate culture from nature, the authors argue that the metacrisis is an educational paradox: education systems reproduce normative conditions—like resource extractivism, alienation and technocratic optimism—that threaten collective futures. The metacrisis is conceptualised as an entanglement of multiple polycrises, including climate disruption, biodiversity collapse, international and local violences, toxic pollution, social inequity and public anxiety, whose planetary scale distinguishes the present moment from historic civilisational crises. This editorial synthesises contributions challenging assumptions of progress, neutrality and individualism. Collectively, the Special Issue papers engage with the problematic of modernity, neoliberalism and the marketisation of everything, the alienation embedded in the Enlightenment. Each essay has an introductory synopsis, categorised as an activation about neoliberalism, a response to collapse, and a reworking of the modern alienation between culture and nature. Instead of alienation, the papers foreground Indigenous, place-based, relational and post-growth approaches to environmental education, offering alternative pedagogies, curricula and institutional imaginaries grounded in care, reciprocity and ecological limits. Together, they position environmental education as a site for ethical re-worlding, supporting cultural regeneration, social justice and renewed human–Earth relationships.

Subsidiarity, a principle of justice rooted in law and political philosophy, remains largely overlooked in contemporary debates in international law. Its central idea is that decisions should be made as close as possible to those affected, with higher authorities intervening only when necessary.1 This approach balances local agency with supportive solidarity, promoting cooperation that is both participatory and responsive.2

Health care providers (HCPs) with histories of adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) are at increased risk for burnout, which can threaten healthcare quality. This study examines the relation between ACEs and burnout among HCPs in primary care clinics at a safety-net hospital and whether this association is buffered by resilience. Sixty-seven HCPs (68.7% women; 44.8% White; Mage = 36.7 years, SDage = 9.8) recruited from a large, public U.S. healthcare system participated in an anonymous study assessing their ACE history, resilience, and burnout symptoms. ACE scores were positively correlated with burnout, r =.25, p =.048. A moderation analysis revealed main effects of ACEs, B = .17, SE = .07, p = .013, and resilience, B = −.34, SE = .08, p = .000, on HCP burnout, when controlling for years in healthcare. ACEs and resilience interacted to predict burnout, n = 55, B = −.11, SE=.05, p = .029. A positive relation was found between ACEs and burnout for HCPs who reported low, t = 3.21, p = .002, and average, t = 2.57, p = .013, resilience levels. Resilience appears to mitigate, or even prevent, burnout among HCPs, although it may be most helpful for those with ACE histories. Healthcare systems can build a more resilient workforce by offering routine, system-wide exposure to trauma-informed professional development or self-care opportunities to their HCPs.