Street harassment is a widespread urban experience—particularly but not exclusively for women—yet marked by isolation from bystanders and other victim-survivors. Given this isolated dimension, what might a collective response look like? This paper examines a successful case of feminist street art protest in Brussels: posters claiming “laisse les filles tranquilles,” a demand which was swiftly extended on behalf of other groups by similar posters, and copied, commented, and modified both approvingly and disapprovingly by graffiti. Developing a novel critical phenomenological approach based in Sartre’s concept of seriality, this paper argues that the posters’ ingenuity lies in appropriating the infrastructure where harassment occurs, thus exploiting the spatially and temporally dispersed character of these intrusions. This article proceeds in three parts. First, drawing on empirical research on street harassment, I contextualize feminist protest and individual coping strategies within the postcolonial metropole of Brussels. Secondly, I reconceptualize street harassment through Sartrean seriality, combined with phenomenological insights from Beauvoir and Fanon, to underscore the dynamic between material objects, object-like social routines, and anonymity. Thirdly, I show that posters and their responses enable the formation of social antagonism between strangers who are not in a direct, physical relation, thereby politicizing the broader Brussels public.

Increasing meritocracy has intensified negative perceptions of individuals in lower socioeconomic positions, especially welfare recipients, who are often viewed as incapable, lazy, or unmotivated. We conducted twenty-nine in-depth interviews with long-term social assistance recipients (SARs) in the Netherlands to explore their experiences with welfare stigmatisation. We used García-Lorenzo and colleagues’ (2022) typology to analyse SARs’ responses to stigmatisation. Surrounded by negative stereotypes, most participants internalised welfare stigma. Initially, many withdrew socially and engaged in harmful behaviours, but over time, their responses became less destructive. We identified four groups: individuals who are managing health, reorienting life, rebuilding life, or blaming the system. Overall, our findings suggest that social interventions should help SARs develop new, non-stigmatised identities to enhance their self-image and overall well-being. Given the widespread and negative consequences of welfare stigma, public, political, and media discourses should focus on addressing underlying societal issues rather than solely attributing problems to individuals.

HIV/AIDS posed a significant health threat in Denmark from the early 1980s until the end of the 1990s, claiming approximately 2,000 lives. Gay men, hemophiliacs, drug users, sex workers and migrants were overwhelmingly among the victims of the disease. They also constituted the groups most associated with it. This led to a raised level of public attention to these groups; a heightened visibility that ambiguously resulted both in improving the life conditions of some while also increasing the stigma of others. This article analyses the roles of different cross-sector actors in shaping the responses to HIV/AIDS in Denmark, with each group influencing and being influenced by the epidemic. Yet despite the clear connection between HIV/AIDS and the minoritized, often marginalized, groups, the article argues that the overarching and dominant response objective during the crisis in Denmark was to prevent a heterosexual epidemic. Throughout the crisis, other responses, aims and objectives concerning the groups most affected by HIV/AIDS could be, and did become, contingent with this dominant objective. The strengths and positions of those subresponses depended on, however, the perceptions of them as logical and tangible means to the primary end of preventing the heterosexual epidemic. Pulling together different and changing responses from different and changing actors serves to crystallize what objectives or logics are the mutual ones, and the significance of this analysis is that what appeared to be a very heterogeneous set of responses to the disease in Denmark, was in fact rooted in the same objective. Notably, the perceived pertinence of preventing the heterosexual epidemic was not rooted in actual rates of infection or spread of the disease.

Metabolic dysregulation increases the risk of cognitive and motor deficits, exacerbated by diets high in refined carbohydrates and fats. Polyphenol-rich berries, such as red raspberries (RRB; Rubus idaeus), may offer protective benefits. This randomised, single-blinded, controlled crossover study evaluated the acute metabolic and cognitive effects of RRB intake in older adults (55–70 years) with overweight/obesity. Thirty-six adults (61 (sd 5) years, BMI: 30·0 (sd 2·8) kg/m2; 19 females: 17 males) consumed a high-carbohydrate, moderate-fat meal (56 % carbohydrate, 33 % fat) containing 0 g (control) or 25 g of freeze-dried RRB powder. Plasma was collected at baseline and postprandially over 7·5 h to assess glucose, insulin, triacylglyceride (TAG) and IL-6. In vitro, fasting and postprandial serum samples were applied to lipopolysaccharide (LPS)-stimulated microglial cells to assess neuroinflammatory responses (nitric oxide (NO) production, inducible nitric oxide synthase (iNOS) and cyclo-oxygenase-2 (COX-2) expression). Cognitive and vascular function were assessed at baseline and postprandially. The RRB meal significantly reduced peak glucose (by 8 %), insulin concentrations at 0·5 h and overall insulin response compared with control (P < 0·05). Serum from RRB consumers attenuated LPS-induced NO, iNOS and COX-2 expression in microglial cells (P < 0·001). Cognitive performance improved following the RRB meal, with fewer attempts in the CANTAB (Cambridge Neuropsychological Test Automated Battery) Paired Associates Learning task (P < 0·05) and fewer errors with better strategy use in the Spatial Working Memory task (P < 0·05). No significant differences were observed in vascular function. These findings suggest that acute RRB supplementation attenuated postprandial metabolic stress, reduced markers of neuroinflammation and improved cognitive performance, supporting RRB’s potential role in a dietary strategy for ageing populations.

The Middle Dnieper region, situated within a transitional glacial–periglacial zone, preserves complex loess–palaeosol archives. This study reconstructs the environmental evolution of the Velyka Andrusivka sequence using a multiproxy approach integrating sedimentological, geochemical, mineralogical, magnetic, and palynological data supported by luminescence dating. The succession rests on Dnieper glacial till and comprises loess units from the last and penultimate glacial cycles, palaeosols, and an upper chernozem formed after loess deposition had ceased. Optically stimulated luminescence ages range from ∼22 to 187 ka, revealing hiatuses and diachronous boundaries relative to Marine Isotope Stage divisions. The older loess is more heterogeneous and enriched in Zr-Hf-REE with mixed provenance, whereas the younger loess is more homogeneous and dominated by distal dust. These contrasts demonstrate how local sediment recycling and regional dust supply jointly shaped the environmental signal. Palaeosols record phases of weathering, while the upper chernozem largely retains the parent-loess texture within a sequence overprinted by postdepositional alterations in colour, geochemistry, and magnetic properties. Comparison along the 50°N transect shows that robust interpretation of the sequence requires integration with neighbouring loess–palaeosol records, as only multi-site correlation captures shared stratigraphic patterns and site-specific deviations, enabling reconstruction of environmental processes across multiple spatial scales.

This article explores the strategic (mis)use of historical memory by populist political actors, focusing on George Simion, leader of the Romanian radical-right party Alliance for the Unity of Romanians. Through a detailed case study of the Valea Uzului Cemetery controversy, the research examines how populist movements construct and disseminate exclusionary historical narratives to mobilize affective publics, reinforce nationalistic ideologies, and generate political support. Drawing on qualitative analysis of Facebook comments and posts, the study investigates how memory is weaponized to polarize public opinion and elevate a simplified, antagonistic vision of history. The Valea Uzului case exemplifies how war cemeteries and commemorative practices can be transformed into symbolic battlegrounds for political gain. The digital environment serves as a key vector for radicalization, emotional amplification, and narrative reinforcement. Ultimately, this research highlights the critical role of memory in populist politics and the power of social media in shaping historical perception. It calls for further comparative investigation into how such mnemonic strategies impact democratic processes, interethnic relations, and the broader politics of remembrance in contemporary Europe.

The Pinel Sanatorium, the brainchild of Doctor Antonio Carlos Pacheco e Silva, a leading figure in Brazilian psychiatry, was inaugurated in 1929 in São Paulo as a private institution. It operated until 1944, during which time it recorded approximately 4,500 hospitalisations. In 30 psychiatric records, in addition to the usual clinical records, such as the Psychiatric Examination – in which the doctor records the elements he deems essential for identifying the mental illness from different sources of information, such as those provided by family members – attachments were found containing letters and short texts written by the inpatients. Addressed to different people, these letters, which were retained and evaluated by the doctors, played a central role in assessing the psychiatric conditions of the inmates. However, by being considered historical sources that reveal the ‘point of view’ of the mad, these documents are fundamental to the development of innovative approaches in the field of the history of madness and psychiatry. Based on the articulation between the context in which these records were produced, the social markers of difference that constitute the subjects, as well as the emotions expressed by the people who wrote them, the article sets out to answer two questions: (1) How the emotions expressed – both by the inmates and by their loved ones – were interpreted by psychiatrists and used to formulate diagnoses, and to define treatments and prognoses; (2) What meanings these emotions took on for the inmates themselves, in other words, how they put their experiences and subjectivities on display.

We prove new results about comparing the efficiency of general state space Markov chain Monte Carlo algorithms that randomly select a possibly different reversible method at each step (previously known only for finite state spaces). We also provide new, simpler, more accessible proofs of key results, and analyse numerous examples. We provide a full proof of the formula for the asymptotic variance for real-valued functionals on $\varphi$-irreducible reversible Markov chains, first introduced by Kipnis and Varadhan (1986, Commun. Math. Phys. 104, 1–19). Given two Markov kernels P and Q with stationary measure $\pi$, we say that the Markov kernel P efficiency-dominates the Markov kernel Q if the asymptotic variance with respect to P is at most the asymptotic variance with respect to Q for every real-valued functional $f\in L^2(\pi)$. Assuming only a basic background in functional analysis, we prove that for two reversible Markov kernels P and Q, P efficiency-dominates Q if and only if the operator $\mathcal{Q}-\mathcal{P}$, where $\mathcal{P}$ is the operator on $L^2(\pi)$ that maps $f\mapsto\int f(y)P(\cdot,\mathrm{d}y)$ and similarly for $\mathcal{Q}$, is positive on $L^2(\pi)$, i.e. $\langle f,\left(\mathcal{Q}-\mathcal{P}\right)f\rangle\geq0$ for every $f\in L^2(\pi)$ (previous proofs for general state spaces use technical results from monotone operator function theory). We use this result to show that under mild conditions, sandwich variants of data augmentation algorithms efficiency-dominate the original algorithm. We also provide other easy-to-check sufficient conditions for efficiency dominance, some of which are generalized from the finite state space case. We also provide a proof based on that of Tierney (1998, Ann. Appl. Prob. 8, 1–9) that Peskun dominance is a sufficient condition for efficiency dominance for reversible kernels. Using these results, we show that Markov kernels formed by random selection of other ‘component’ Markov kernels will always efficiency-dominate another Markov kernel formed in this way, as long as the component kernels of the former efficiency-dominate those of the latter. These results on the efficiency dominance of combining component kernels generalizes the results on the efficiency dominance of combined chains introduced by Neal and Rosenthal (2024, J. Appl. Prob. 62, 188–208) from finite state spaces to general state spaces.