We show that for a minimal system $(X,T)$, the set of saturated points along cubes with respect to its maximal $\infty $-step pro-nilfactor $X_\infty $ has a full measure. As an application, it is shown that if a minimal system $(X,T)$ has no non-trivial $(k+1)$-tuples with arbitrarily long finite IP-independence sets, then it has only at most k ergodic measures and is an almost $k'$ to one extension of $X_\infty $ for some $k'\leqslant k$. In particular, for $k=1$, we prove that $(X,T)$ is uniquely ergodic (even regular with respect to $X_\infty $), which answers a conjecture stated by Dong et al [Infinite-step nilsystems, independence and complexity. Ergod. Th. & Dynam. Sys. 33(1) (2013), 118–143].

Political parties play important roles in contemporary and historical contexts. With the digital turn in the humanities, historians and, increasingly, political scientists are turning to party archives for doing comparative analysis. Party archives provide unique insights on the role of party structures, actors, motivations, and discourses in real time. Yet despite their institutional and scholarly importance, comparative analysis is difficult given the heterogeneous landscape of party archives. This article aims to facilitate comparative analysis. We show that the establishment of different types of party archives follows distinct motivations before we link common obstacles (location, content, searchability, and usage) arising in comparative archival work to them. These obstacles’ severity is often connected to the type of archive, where personal and scholarly archives mark the extremes. The findings can help scholars gain deeper, broader, and, above all, comparable insights about political parties.

In this paper, I explore the poetic virtue of filmmaking. In the first part, I look at the virtue of art more generally, drawing on Catholic philosopher Jacques Maritain’s Aquinas-inspired conception of poetic virtue. In the rest of the paper, I then map Maritain’s poetic virtue onto the artform of the moving image, its processes of production and reception. Here, I show how poetic intuition is conceived by filmmakers such as David Lynch and translated into the realities of filmmaking in the Sci-Fi mystery thriller, The Silent Messenger, in which I was involved in as producer and performer. Enlisting the help of film philosopher Alain Badiou and film phenomenologist Vivian Sobchack, I claim that for the poetic virtue of film to come into full presence, both filmmaker and viewer need to take responsibility for their moral capacity for gaze. It is only when the viewer loses themselves (their self) in the shared sight of the filmmaker, and the artist respects the audience’s own intellectual creativity, that film can teach us that seeing is always a relational enterprise, one that brings our human relationships – in all its tragedy and beauty – into shared vision.

Social scientists routinely characterize religious influence in electoral politics as conservative and left-wing parties as fundamentally secular. Against these claims, I argue that the relationship between religion and electoral politics is shaped by the redistributive beliefs and preferences of religious leaders, who can become valuable allies of left-wing parties. I evaluate this argument in Brazil following the appointment of Pope John Paul II, leveraging as-if random variation in municipalities’ exposure to progressive Catholic bishops. I show that bishops who actively supported state-led redistribution were essential to the electoral success of the left-wing Workers’ Party (Partido dos Trabalhadores [PT]). Voters in municipalities with longer exposure to these bishops supported the PT at higher rates. The findings highlight the under-examined role of religious leaders in shaping the electoral influence of religion and provide evidence that these leaders can, in fact, be key for the development of left-wing parties, especially in the developing world.

Evolutionary game-theoretic (EGT) models of morality face powerful under-addressed objections. Critics claim the simulations fail to specify their explanandum, muddying their explanatory value. Additionally, morality is suggested to be not computationally representable, jeopardising the method’s general applicability. This paper explicates and addresses the objections. I argue at least one concrete explication of morality, emotionism coupled with functionally understood emotions, can be a plausible subject of EGT explanations. I demonstrate how fixing this explanandum assuages the methodological objections and provide a computational model as proof of concept. If successful, the contribution placates serious long-standing criticisms of evolutionary game theory as a meta-ethical tool.

Housing and human capital represent two major forms of household wealth. This article investigates the potential for housing speculation to crowd out household investment in children’s education, an endeavor that only pays off in the long run. To address endogeneity concerns, we exploit the unintended spillover effect of staggered house purchase restrictions (HPR) in China. Using a difference-in-differences approach, we find that HPR reduce educational investment of households in nearby unregulated cities. We also provide evidence consistent with a housing speculation channel. These findings shed new light on the socioeconomic consequences of housing market booms.

We consider a DA-type surgery of the famous Lorenz attractor in dimension 4. This kind of surgery was first used by Smale [Differentiable dynamical systems. Bull. Amer. Math. Soc. (N.S.) 73(6) (1967), 747–817] and Mañé [Contributions to the stability conjecture. Topology 17(4) (1978), 383–396] to give important examples in the study of partially hyperbolic systems. Our construction gives the first example of a singular chain recurrence class which is Lyapunov stable, away from homoclinic tangencies, and exhibits robustly heterodimensional cycles. Moreover, the chain recurrence class has the following interesting property: there exists robustly a two-dimensional sectionally expanding subbundle (containing the flow direction) of the tangent bundle such that it is properly included in a subbundle of the finest dominated splitting for the tangent flow.

Leaf litter in headwater streams serves as an important energy source for the aquatic food web. However, the timing, magnitude, and source dynamics of leaf litter inputs into tropical montane streams have received less attention. Here we present an 8-year study of leaf litter inputs from two tropical montane first-order headwater streams in the Luquillo Experimental Forest, Puerto Rico that include a prolonged drought period and major hurricanes. Leaf litter was collected across different landscape sources such as canopy and riparian inputs, and litter transported from upstream. The different sources of leaf litter were compared to environmental variables (precipitation, wind, solar radiation, and temperature) to identify potential drivers of inputs to streams and exports. Leaf litter from upstream was the greatest contributor (50–95%) and can vary with storms and droughts. Transitions between dry and wet periods led to pulses of leaf litter in both streams. Increasing precipitation, solar radiation, and wind led to increased leaf litter inputs but varied across sources. The variable responses across sources to climatic events suggest that the timing and magnitude of litter inputs to headwater streams may be specific by source. Moreover, the results underscore the value in considering the forest cover of the watershed landscape in its entirety when quantifying organic matter inputs as they depend on upstream conditions that go beyond the immediate reach-adjacent riparian zone.

We examine whether free-speech protections influence corporate environmental performance. Using the staggered enactment of U.S. anti-SLAPP statutes in a stacked difference-in-differences design from 1990 to 2019, we find that these laws significantly reduce firms’ toxic emissions without curbing economic activity. Anti-SLAPP enactments also promote environmental investment through green innovation, abatement spending, and waste reduction management, and strengthen governance via improved sustainability oversight, ESG-linked executive pay, employee training, and supply chain management. The effects are stronger when stakeholder monitoring is stronger and when managerial incentives embed sustainability goals. Overall, free-speech protections generate powerful environmental benefits.