This article critically assesses the popular nineteenth-century universal history textbook Elements of General History, Ancient and Modern, by Alexander Fraser Tytler. Educators on both sides of the Atlantic found the text to be a useful and authoritative source of universal history appropriate for secondary and tertiary students for decades, indicating a shared vision for human history centering Europe as the apotheosis of human civilization. Over time, publishers and educators creatively adapted the work by inserting new research, enhancing coverage of national history, and adding religious content. American educators retrofitted the work to provide an origin story for the United States in which America was the heir to European civilization. The sustained success of Tytler’s narrative in the United States demonstrates that Eurocentric world histories have been deeply entwined with American education since the emergence of history as a school subject, providing a civilizational framing that complemented the ideology of American exceptionalism.

One argument that all explanations are causal explanations is that no extant analysis of non-causal explanations can respect mandatory restrictions on explanation. After articulating two such restrictions, Asymmetry and Directionality, we consider how they work with respect to an explanation from network theory that applies to both social and brain networks. We argue that there are two viable ways to make sense of this explanation. One approach is broadly ontic, while another is pragmatic.

This study examines prosecutorial resistance to democratic backsliding in Poland (2016–23) using Šipulová’s three-dimensional analytical framework. Despite facing greater structural vulnerabilities than judges – hierarchical subordination, immediate retaliation risks and weaker formal protections – Polish prosecutors developed sophisticated resistance strategies combining on-bench actions (challenging illegitimate orders, refusing transfers) with off-bench mobilisation (professional associations, media engagement, coalition-building with judges and civil society). Based on interviews with eleven prosecutors, the research reveals a paradoxical effectiveness pattern: minimal immediate political impact coupled with significant long-term achievements. While unable to prevent institutional capture, prosecutors elevated their professional standing, fostered unprecedented interprofessional solidarity and raised societal awareness about prosecutorial independence. The study demonstrates that prosecutorial resistance functions as democratic preservation rather than immediate political opposition, maintaining institutional memory and professional standards crucial for future democratic reconstruction.

In this paper, I distinguish between three different roles that symmetries play in physics practice that are not always distinguished in the philosophical literature and which seem to clash with each other. I then propose that the best way to make sense of these roles requires introducing a distinction between two different kinds of symmetries. One kind concerns invertible transformations that map solutions to solutions. The other is associated with the fact that one can use the same equation to model a system in many different frames.

Small-quantity lipid-based nutrient supplements (SQ-LNS) have been shown to improve growth, development and survival among young children in low-resource settings. One hypothesised pathway is through improvements in intestinal health, including modulation of the gut microbiome and reductions in environmental enteric dysfunction (EED). This study examined the effects of SQ-LNS on the gut microbiome and markers of EED and systemic inflammation among young children in Lusaka, Zambia. We conducted intention-to-treat analyses of 302 children aged 27–35 months in a 2 × 2 cluster-randomised trial. Serum biomarkers of EED (soluble CD14, intestinal fatty acid-binding protein) and inflammation (α-1-acid glycoprotein and C-reactive protein) were assessed in 240 children via the Micronutrient and Environmental Enteric Dysfunction Assessment Tool. Differences by SQ-LNS assignment were assessed using unadjusted and adjusted ordinary least squares regression models. Rectal swab samples from 299 children underwent 16S rRNA gene sequencing. Taxonomic profiles were visualised using stacked bar plots, alpha diversity was quantified using Shannon diversity indices and beta diversity was assessed using non-metric multidimensional scaling based on Bray–Curtis dissimilarity matrices. We found that SQ-LNS had no significant effect on EED or inflammation biomarkers and was not associated with differences in gut microbiome α diversity, beta diversity or overall microbial community composition. In exploratory analyses, Enterococcus abundance was lower among children receiving SQ-LNS. Overall, 18 months of SQ-LNS supplementation was not associated with broad changes in intestinal health among young Lusakan children. These findings suggest that the benefits of SQ-LNS operate through pathways other than intestinal health, such as improved nutrient availability.

Through a qualitative analysis of case studies from Boston in the 1970s and 1980s, this article explores how police officers exploited sex workers in pursuit of department goals and personal desires, all while attracting opposition from sex workers and their allies, who likened cops to pimps. Examining police-sex worker interactions documented in the commercial press, alternative media, appellate court rulings, and police documents, this article incorporates the police-as-pimp metaphor to elucidate the nature of police discretion in the context of sex work. When dealing with sex workers, officers proved willing to choose lawlessness if it helped them accomplish other personal and professional goals. Yet this article goes beyond condemning individual police officers as pimp like. Rather, the metaphor applies to entire law enforcement institutions, whose structures and norms facilitated state exploitation of sex workers.

At least three meanings of the word reduction have been theorized by philosophers: epistemic, ontological, and methodological reductions. In this article, I suggest a fourth meaning to complement the literature: the axiological meaning. Theorizing reduction as an epistemic value refers to the normative pull that reduction sometimes has on scientific reasoning. The example of genetic reductionism in evolutionary biology shows that in cases of underdetermination of theory by evidence, reduction can influence theory acceptance just like other values do. I suggest that reduction, in this context, is involved in a value trade-off that also features parsimony and explanatory power.

The green bug aphid, Schizaphis graminum, is one of the most serious pests of wheat which cause considerable yield loss in wheat fields. At present, beneficial microorganisms such as plant growth-promoting rhizobacteria (PGPR) need to be incorporated into wheat production to diminish the high risk of heavily insecticide application for environment and health hazards. This study aimed to assess the influence of several PGPR strains, Pseudomonas geniculata, Azospirillum oryzae, Pseudomonas brassicacearum, and Azotobacter chroococcum, applied as seed treatments of wheat, on the life table parameters and foraging behaviour of the green aphid, S. graminum. We investigated the physiological and biochemical responses of wheat plants under aphid stress to elucidate the induced resistance conferred by PGPRs. Preference tests revealed that plants treated with A. chroococcum were the least favoured by aphids at 24 h post-infestation. Furthermore, biological parameters of the aphids exhibited significant variation across treatments, with the highest values recorded in the control group and the lowest in plants treated with A. chroococcum. The intrinsic rate of increase (rm) of the aphids was diminished following the application of PGPR, with the lowest rm observed in the A. chroococcum treatment. The highest concentrations of proteins, carbohydrates, total phenols, and antioxidant enzymes were detected in infested plants treated with A. chroococcum 72 h post-infestation. According to our results, A. chroococcum emerged as the most effective treatment for enhancing both antixenosis and antibiosis resistance in wheat against S. graminum, suggesting its significant potential for integration into pest management strategies in wheat cultivation.

Public schools in Dearborn, Michigan, experienced increased enrollment of students of Arab descent during the 1980s and 1990s. While social, political, and personal contestation accompanied this demographic shift, the experiences of Arab American students in Dearborn revealed a spectrum of acceptance and rejection of American values among communities of Arab descent. As the presence of Arab-descendant youth increased, public schools shifted from emphasizing assimilation to becoming more accepting of cultural pluralism. This shift developed through a reciprocal process in which Arab-descendant students and their adult allies demanded respect for their multifaceted linguistic, religious, and ethnic identities even as they refashioned conceptions of who they were through acculturation. By illuminating Arab and Muslim students’ school experiences amid heightened geopolitical tensions, this article complicates prevailing narratives about Arab American identity formation. Additionally, its examination of youth identity formation in relation to geopolitics, religion, nationality, race, and gender broadens understandings of schooling and identity formation within the United States.

The public release of OpenAI’s generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) chatbot ChatGPT in November 2022 was, in the jargon of political science, a “critical juncture” in which AI’s potential was made manifest to ordinary people. Following the initial enthusiasm, however, came a strong undercurrent of skepticism about the human costs of AI advances. In 1958, Hannah Arendt presciently observed:

Following pressure from investors, Congress passed the 1976 Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act (FSIA) to facilitate lawsuits by nonstate commercial actors against sovereign states in US courts. This legislation redefined sovereign debt as a commercial activity, seemingly favoring creditors. Yet case outcomes proved variable. While the FSIA established clear procedural guidelines, judicial discretion remained, raising questions about what factors influence outcomes. How deep is the effect of judges’ partisan leanings? To what extent does a left–right divide exist in this issue area? Although sovereign debt of other countries rarely sparks US political debate, I argue that partisan influence persists in these cases, particularly when defendants are democracies. Republican-nominated judges consistently apply the FSIA’s pro-creditor framework regardless of defendant characteristics, reflecting their party’s historical support for transnational commercial actors and contract enforcement. Democratic-nominated judges, however, exhibit conditional deference: when democracies demonstrate fiscal restraint before defaulting—signaling genuine economic distress—Democratic-nominated judges more readily defer to the sovereign defendant within the FSIA’s constraints. When democracies maintain high government consumption while defaulting, suggesting strategic choice rather than necessity, Democratic-nominated judges enforce more strictly. By contrast, both Democratic- and Republican-nominated judges converge on pro-creditor positions when adjudicating autocratic defaults because the absence of credible fiscal signals eliminates conditions for conditional deference. I test this argument with an original data set of sovereign debt litigation cases brought to the United States from 1977 to 2022.