Recent research has demonstrated the importance of spatial diffusion and environmental heterogeneity in influencing the transmission dynamics of infectious diseases. At the same time, human mobility patterns have been shown to exhibit scale-free, nonlocal dynamics characterized by an anomalous Lévy process diffusion, which is mathematically represented by nonlocal equations involving fractional Laplacian operators. To investigate the effects of environmental heterogeneity and long-range geographical disease transmission, we propose a time-periodic susceptible-infectious-susceptible (SIS) epidemic model that incorporates anomalous diffusion and spatial heterogeneity. The key issues of this paper include the existence and stability of both disease-free and endemic periodic equilibria, as well as the impact of diffusion rates and fractional powers on the spatial distribution of these periodic states. Our analytical findings indicate that spatio-temporal heterogeneity promotes disease persistence and that the fractional power can modulate the transmission threshold.

In settings of deep poverty and inequality, implementing policies that balance urgent needs with long-term development is crucial. What strategies are used to build public support for long-term oriented policies? Evidence shows that both left- and right-wing governments have played a role in the expansion of social policy. This article explores the context and meanings that governments with different ideologies assign to distributive policies, focusing on how these policies are communicated. In particular, I argue that ideology significantly shapes the framing presidents use when discussing and announcing social policies. Left-leaning governments emphasize social inclusion while right-leaning governments stress the productivity-enhancing aspects of these policies. Using text analysis techniques, including à la carte embeddings (ALC) this study analyzes presidential communications from Argentina, Uruguay, and Chile. The findings show how ideology drives communication strategies, revealing that in more polarized societies, presidents distinguish themselves more consistently through how they construct and communicate these policies.

States are increasingly resorting to international cooperative agreements to deter migrants and refugees from irregularly arriving at their borders. Although scholars have shown how these cooperative deterrence policies are undermining important refugee and human rights protections, making migration journeys more dangerous, and securitizing and criminalizing people on the move, what has not been adequately examined is how these cooperative arrangements can bring about normative changes that produce indifference to the suffering of refugees and migrants. This article examines the psychosocial dynamics of cooperative deterrence policies to show how the social processes of authorization, routinization, evasion of responsibility, and dehumanization weaken moral restraints and opportunities for moral contemplation. Governments are using these social processes to implement, legitimize, and promote harmful policies; evade legal responsibility; and obscure the moral implications of their policies. This article sheds new light on the psychosocial effects of cooperative deterrence, the dark side of international cooperation, and the role that indifference plays in maintaining and legitimizing migration deterrence polices.

In the Critique of the Power of Judgement, Kant defines the relation of harmony between the faculties as constituted by the freedom of the imagination and the lawfulness of the understanding. The freedom of the imagination, however, has been broadly understood as directed towards the cognitive needs of the understanding. I propose a novel interpretation, based on Kant’s statements in the General Remark: freedom should be understood as signifying an activity emanating from imagination’s own spontaneity, directed towards the satisfaction of imagination’s own needs, and is revealed through a distinctive phenomenology in the apprehension of the beautiful forms of nature.

Long-lived trees support biodiversity at multiple scales, maintain ecosystem functionality, serve as natural archives, and hold cultural and aesthetic value. Despite their importance, the maximum longevity of many tree species remains poorly understood, limiting the design of effective conservation strategies. Challenges in obtaining reliable tree ages are commonly represented by natural wood decay, sampling obstacles, and indistinct or absent annual rings, which prevent or limit the application of tree-ring analyses (dendrochronology). Radiocarbon dating, increasingly accessible and applicable to all species, provides a flexible approach to study tree longevity and its ecological implications. For tropical trees, which mostly lack annual rings, radiocarbon dating is one of the few reliable methods to determine tree ages. Even in sections of the calibration curve characterized by oscillations and plateaus, statistical methods such as wiggle-matching or deposition models may be used to reduce the range of probable tree ages. In this paper, we illustrate a mismatch between tree-ring and radiocarbon-derived estimates of the longevity of angiosperm trees, with tree-ring maximum ages often half of those obtained through radiocarbon dating. We also present the most up-to-date estimates of maximum longevity for 42 arboreal angiosperm species worldwide, based on a literature review. Radiocarbon results indicate that ages of 400–500 years are a common feature of many broadleaved species, while exceptional old ages are restricted to a small minority of individual trees. Our results underscore the need for increased efforts to locate old and ancient trees, investigate their role in ecosystem ecology and ensure their protection.

This article proposes a reframing of the ethics of human intelligence collection (HUMINT). Intelligence officers (IOs) engaged in HUMINT routinely transgress ordinary ethical norms: to serve their nation-state, they lie, manipulate, deceive, and instrumentalize others not only in professional settings (“doing HUMINT”) but also in private life (“living HUMINT”). The currently dominant framework for HUMINT ethics, derived from the just war tradition, does not adequately address key challenges—particularly at the individual level. I therefore argue for a reframing grounded in the lived experience of HUMINT, aimed at real dilemmas faced by conscientious IOs. The proposal has two components: first, expanding the space for individual moral responsibility across all levels of intelligence decision-making; and second, emphasizing peace as a minimal common telos to guide ethical deliberation by both IOs and their agencies. The reframing, I conclude, can enhance the efficiency and accountability of intelligence agencies while providing IOs with a more robust framework to guide their actions.

Consider a random walk in a time-inhomogeneous random environment. When the environment is stationary and ergodic, we identify a quenched harmonic function for almost every realization of the environment. This function allows us to define a random walk in a random environment conditioned to stay positive, using Doob’s h-transform.

Existing research on descriptive representation maintains that political candidates often receive more political support from in-group voters than their out-group competitors. Scholars claim this is due in large part to the assumption that descriptive candidates have a greater inclination to act in ways that benefit their shared identity group. This paper explores the other side of these heightened expectations and asks—How do voters evaluate a descriptive representative whose actions are perceived as being at odds with group expectations? Moreover, how do those evaluations compare to out-group candidates who behave in similarly? Using an experimental test, we examine the costs leveraged against political candidates who meet voters’ expectations and those who do not, and seeing whether the shared identity conditions voters’ evaluations. In doing so, we provide a more holistic view of the ways in which descriptive representation matters to voters.

The consensus on the need to regulate artificial intelligence is clear, but the how remains elusive. Private regulation, as proposed by the tech industry itself, and state regulation, as embodied in the recent EU Artificial Intelligence Act, are two common forms of governance. We advance a third option that has received very little attention to date: professional regulation. Professional regulation is modeled after hybrid public-private regulatory structures found in medicine, such as those put forth by the American Medical Association. Such governance schemes develop both technical and ethical standards, shaping professional training, continuing knowledge, and conduct. We contend that it is the most practical means of ensuring the development of human-centered AI in an era of rapid technological change and intensely opposing views of what regulation ought to do. This article places the responsibility of acting ethically on the group that knows the technology best and can anticipate its effects: AI developers. But unlike other voluntary standards, professional regulation articulates and enforces standards to certify individuals. Professional licensing is an alternative that provides public protections based on privately developed standards that ensure the safety of AI prior to their release.

A high serum total cholesterol (TC) concentration is a major risk factor for CVD, and lifestyle modifications including a healthy diet are among the first-line strategies for lowering cholesterol concentration and reducing CVD risk. Several studies in rodents have demonstrated a lower circulating TC concentration after intake of cetoleic acid (CA, C22:1n-11). The primary aim was to investigate the effect of consuming herring oil (HERO) containing CA or a CA concentrate (CECO) on the circulating TC concentration in obese hypercholesterolaemic rats. Secondary aims included investigating effects of CA on a selection of hepatic enzymes and receptors involved in cholesterol metabolism, lipogenesis and VLDL assembly. Thirty male obese Zucker fa/fa rats were fed a diet containing either HERO or CECO, containing 0·70 or 1·40 wt% CA, respectively, or a Control diet with soyabean oil for 5 weeks. Data were analysed using one-way ANOVA. The serum TC concentration was lower in the HERO and CECO groups compared with the Control group (17 and 20 percent, respectively). Both the HERO and the CECO diets down-regulated de novo lipogenesis, cholesterol esterification and lipidation of VLDL in the liver compared with the Control diet, but did not affect the hepatic cholesterol synthesis, the LDL receptor or the faecal excretion of cholesterol and bile acids. To conclude, rats fed the HERO or CECO diets had a lower serum concentration of TC, probably as a result of down-regulated VLDL secretion in response to lower lipogenesis. This may have relevance for lowering TC in hypercholesterolaemic humans.

Jacques Maritain draws from the wisdom of Thomas Aquinas in order to distinguish between art and prudence and to argue for the indirect influence of morality on art. He extends Thomas’s notion of knowledge by connaturality or affective knowledge, as it is sometimes called, to the domain of art and poetry. Maritain’s move here is certainly innovative, for in Thomas this sort of knowledge is principally applied to the realm of morality whereby the cultivation of virtue leads a person to spontaneously know how to act, creating, as it were, a second nature in the person. For Maritain knowledge by connaturality has fallen into oblivion and needs to be restored; he explains creative intuition as a form of connatural knowledge that regards not only the knowledge of things to be expressed in the artist’s work but also the subjectivity of the artist in whom things are grasped through affective resonance. It seems that for Maritain creative intuition is conditioned by the degree to which the artist takes a disinterested stance with respect to his own ego; if he does not, then the work of art is in jeopardy as is also the beauty to which art tends.