Low socioeconomic status (SES) is linked to pubertal development, mental health issues, and academic performance. However, the role of early pubertal development in the link between low SES and mental health and academic outcomes is unclear. Using longitudinal data from the ABCD Study (9–10 years at baseline, N = 9,848, 52.2% males) across four time points, we examined associations between household and neighborhood disadvantage, pubertal development, and mental health and academic achievement. Greater household and neighborhood disadvantage were associated with more advanced pubertal status at baseline in both males and females. Among females, higher pubertal status at baseline mediated the association between lower household income and neighborhood disadvantage with greater mental health problems and poorer school performance. Additionally, slower pubertal tempo attenuated the relationship between neighborhood disadvantage and these outcomes in females. These findings underscore the importance of considering both household and neighborhood contexts in shaping adolescent development and highlight pubertal development as a potential pathway underlying socioeconomic disparities in mental health and academic achievement.

This essay shows how the United States racialized refugees through photography. American policy makers and news media have deployed photography as a definitive tool in characterizing Haitian “economic migrants” as “bad” refugees in opposition to “good” or “model” refugees from Vietnam. A cluster of black bodies on an unseaworthy boat came to represent an economic and hygienic threat, unlike the Vietnamese who are political victims of an oppressive communist regime. To critique our optical framework regulated by the Cold War racial politics, this essay historicizes how refugees were produced by American warfare and militarism. In the United States, war making, race making, and refugee making are mutually constitutive.

Thanks to the rich findings of Swiss archaeological practice, Tacitus’ narrative for the violent encounter between the Vitellian army and the Helvetians in 69 c.e. (Hist. 1.67–9) can fruitfully be embedded in different material contexts from the late first century b.c.e. and the early first century c.e. (funerary practice, numismatic finds, military architecture, consumption, social relations). The resulting picture is that of the Helvetian civitas as a political community endowed with autonomy and state-like capacities within the Roman empire: militaria are the index of local militarism rather than auxiliary service. This model might be applied more widely within the western provinces and the Roman empire in general.

Second language (L2) pronunciation research has measured speech comprehensibility by asking listeners to assess L2 learners’ speaking performance with rating scales. While some studies have provided validity evidence for these rating scales, few studies have examined the extent to which those scales effectively distinguish among L2 speakers. To fill this gap, the present study examines the 9-point scale used in Saito et al. (2020: Annual Review of Applied Linguistics, 40, 9–25.) and the 100-point scale in Huensch and Nagle (2023: Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 45(2), 571–585.) from a Rasch measurement perspective and showcases post hoc score category collapsing as a potential countermeasure against suboptimal rating scale functioning. Findings suggested that different score categories represented the same ability level and were therefore interchangeable. Collapsing these score categories yielded shorter but more functional scales without compromising the psychometric qualities of the original scales. These findings suggest that researchers need to empirically refine their scale lengths rather than uncritically following their conventional measurement practices.

We live in turbulent times. Humanity has become a geological force altering planetary conditions whilst notions of a universal abstract human have been challenged by the geohistorical formation of ecologies of power, capital and nature. Climate change, along with conceptualisations of education rooted in industrial framings of the world centring on human progress, testifies to multiple crises. This contribution attends to the connectedness of multiple crises and the complexity needed to address them by probing their marks, what is introduced as the etchings of metacrisis. In so doing, climate change and education are brought together to problematise the mindset of modernity and Enlightenment and the transhistorical continuity of -isms violences (capitalism, colonialism, imperialism, industrialism). Transoceanic thinking and Édouard Glissant’s notion of whirling encounters are mobilised along an affective approach to archives re-imagining environmental education. Such an approach prompts imaginaries of eco-relationality traversing the local and the global, the past and the present and re-vivifying the relationality of peoples and Land without downplaying violences of the -isms.

Lepidopteran stemborers are among the most destructive pests of maize, sorghum, and sugarcane in Africa. Yet, data on their species composition and host range in Rwanda remain limited. This study provides the first comprehensive assessment of stemborer diversity, seasonal dynamics, and altitudinal distribution across eastern (low altitude), central (mid-altitude), and northern (high altitude) Rwanda. Surveys were conducted during both the rainy (maize growing) and dry seasons of 2023–2024, targeting infested maize fields and surrounding wild vegetation. A total of 2691 stemborer individuals were recovered from nine host plants, with 1474 (54.8%) from wild and fodder vegetation and 1217 (45.2%) from maize plantations. Species richness was highest in the mid-altitude zone, while overall abundance peaked at low altitudes. Busseola fusca was the most abundant in the high-altitude zone, Chilo partellus in the low altitude, and Sesamia spp. was concentrated in the mid-altitude. Seasonal variation significantly influenced population dynamic, with the highest abundance (1251; 46.4%) recorded during the dry season. Notably, Pennisetum purpureum (Napier grass) hosted 1156 (42.9%) of all specimens, highlighting its role as a key refugium during maize off-seasons. These findings underscore the ecological importance of wild vegetation in sustaining stemborer populations and suggest that wild vegetation, altitudinal, and seasonal factors must be considered in designing integrated lepidopteran stemborer pest management strategies.

Harnessing the economic and social value of health data in the EU – The European Health Data Space Regulation (the Regulation) as a cornerstone of data-driven healthcare and research – Balancing innovation with fundamental rights and European constitutional values – The Regulation within the broader process of European integration in public health – Contribution of the Regulation to the Digital Single Market and the European Health Union – Limits of member state action in a Union based on the rule of law – Constitutional tensions between strategic policy ambitions and existing EU competences – Critical assessment of the Regulation’s compatibility with the EU constitutional framework – Pathways to address identified shortcomings through constitutional and institutional reforms.

In a series of detective novels published between 1957 and 1969 Chester Himes portrayed diverse individuals struggling for survival, wealth, and status in a fictionalized postwar Harlem, combining what Richard Wright called a “bio-social” perspective with an antiracist aesthetics that falsified simplistic racial categories. In this essay, I trace Himes’s renderings of bodily difference and transformation, highlighting features neglected by contemporaries such as Ellison and Baldwin as well as more recent critics and readers who frame Himes’s writings as protests against anti-Black violence. I conclude that Himes’s Harlem novels did not simply reflect violent realities of African American lives but instead exhibited unresolved conflicts between antiracist imperatives, namely a recognition of individual complexities on the one hand, and organized struggle against racially discriminatory institutions and practices on the other.