Corporations play a foundational role in the global economy, yet persistent gaps remain between corporate governance ideals, legal frameworks and organizational practice. The rapid integration of artificial intelligence (AI), particularly generative AI and large language models, intensifies these challenges by reshaping corporate decision-making, compliance and accountability. This paper examines how AI both promises to alleviate long-standing governance problems, such as information asymmetries and managerial opportunism, and generates new risks arising from opacity, automation bias and diminished human oversight. It analyzes five interrelated areas of tension: the emerging AI governance gap, models of AI integration within corporate structures, the adaptation of directors’ duties to algorithmic decision-making, the transparency paradox created by AI-mediated disclosure and the problem of anthropomorphism, whereby attributing agency to AI risks obscuring human responsibility. Rather than offering definitive solutions, the paper identifies critical questions that corporate law must confront as automated and semi-automated corporations become an established reality. It argues that sustaining legitimacy in the AI era requires renewed emphasis on human judgment, board-level oversight and adaptive governance frameworks capable of reconciling technological power with legal accountability and societal expectations.

The global health landscape has entered a period of profound change. Official development assistance for health has sharply declined, while new U.S. policies threaten long-standing public health norms and undermine evidence-based guidance. Vaccine hesitancy, political interference in medical recommendations, and climate policy reversals illustrate a troubling erosion of scientific authority. These developments coincide with growing polarization, revealing that ‘following the science’ is neither straightforward nor free from uncertainty. The COVID-19 pandemic exposed how public health decisions were often made under evolving evidence, with limited transparency about risks, trade-offs, and unintended consequences. Subsequent international initiatives, such as the WHO’s global agenda on Public Health and Social Measures, now seek to build a more balanced evidence base. Rebuilding public trust demands openness about uncertainty, acknowledgement of past missteps, and transparent communication of policy rationales. Structured after-action reviews and community engagement are essential to demonstrate accountability and learning. Ultimately, restoring confidence in science and public health will require humility, consistency, and cross-partisan collaboration to show that science is adaptive, responsive, and committed to improvement.

While studies based on the civic voluntarism model generally suggest that stronger party identification increases electoral participation, other studies report mixed findings on the relationship between partisan strength and voter turnout. This study argues that the participatory effect of party identification depends on whether voters’ partisan identity is consistent with the party affiliation of their preferred candidate. Drawing on conflicted voter theory, we argue that when voters identify with one party but prefer a candidate nominated by another party, the psychological costs generated by betrayal aversion reduce their likelihood of voting. Using pooled survey data from the Taiwan Election and Democratization Study (TEDS) for Taiwan’s presidential elections from 2008 to 2024, our binary logistic regression results support this argument. This study contributes to the literature by showing that conflicted voter status should be incorporated into future studies of voter turnout. It also suggests that political parties should pay closer attention to conflicted voters in closely contested elections, because turnout differences within a small segment of the electorate can have notable political consequences.

Food insecurity (FI), defined as unreliable access to sufficient, safe, and nutritious food, affects nearly 10 million people in the UK. However, official statistics often exclude individuals relying on informal or non-referral-based food support, rendering their experiences largely invisible. This study explores how users and volunteers experience and interpret FI in charity-run, community-based food aid settings across England, an area under-represented in UK studies which are dominated by formal, referral-based food bank models. This qualitative study employed a hermeneutic phenomenological approach to understand the lived experiences of FI. Nineteen semi-structured interviews were conducted with a purposive sample of food bank users (n = 10) and volunteers (n = 9). Interviews were transcribed verbatim and analysed using reflexive thematic analysis (TA). The socio-ecological model (SEM) was used to structure analysis across five levels: individual, interpersonal, institutional, community, and policy levels. Five interconnected themes emerged across the socio-ecological model: (1) Individual: Mental Health, Stigma and Shame; (2) Interpersonal: Caregiving Responsibilities and Sacrifice; (3) Institutional: Chronic Food Aid Reliance and Nutritional Constraints; (4) Community: Informal Networks and Support; and (5) Public Policy: Welfare Inadequacy and Political Neglect. Volunteers also played a mediating role between systems and individuals, navigating logistical burdens and emotional labour. The findings highlight the multidimensional and structured nature of FI in the UK and offer new insights into how dignity, autonomy, and nutritional adequacy are negotiated within informal food support systems. The study calls for more sustainable, community-responsive food aid models and structural policy reforms addressing poverty, inequality, and the legal right to food.

Malaria remains one of the critical public health threats, particularly in endemic sub-Saharan countries like Malawi. Although malaria prevalence has declined over the years, the disease continues to pose a notable public health burden, contributing to high levels of morbidity and mortality. This study mapped malaria risk in Nsanje District, southern Malawi. Environmental variables (temperature, rainfall, elevation, slope, and proximity to rivers) were used to model malaria hazard, while socio-economic factors (proximity to health facilities and roads, and population density) defined vulnerability. Land use and land cover derived from Sentinel-2 using the random trees classifier in ArcGIS Pro were used to delineate elements at risk. The analytical hierarchy process and weighted overlay analysis were applied to generate hazard, vulnerability, and risk maps. Additionally, sensitivity analysis was conducted to determine the most influential factors. Results show that temperature and rainfall contributed more within the model to malaria hazard, with 20.4% and 35.1% of the area classified as high- and very high-hazard zones, respectively. Vulnerability was mainly affected by proximity to health facilities and population density, while 43.1% of the district was categorized as high risk and 40.5% as moderate risk. Overall, malaria hazard contributed most to the total risk, followed by vulnerability. The findings of this study are essential for understanding the complex dynamics of malaria transmission, which are influenced by a combination of environmental, climatic, and socio-economic factors. The study recommends enhancing healthcare accessibility and developing early warning systems, including malaria risk maps, to support targeted prevention and control efforts. Future studies should integrate long-term climate projections and real-time, high-frequency environmental and epidemiological data to enhance malaria risk modelling.

Why do states under-expend? Conventional explanations point to institutional failures. By contrast, drawing on the case of cesses in Indian tax history and practice, I take underspending not only as symptomatic of flaws in state administration, but also as constitutive of state forms. In this specific case, I argue that the underspending of earmarked funds, and their consequent pooling and remobilisation, produce a bifurcated state through its revenue arrangements. This argument is of substantive value, but it is also in the service of a broader conceptual move: reinterpreting something that might conventionally be understood as a marker of state failure or dysfunction, as in fact constitutive of the state. Finally, the argument also has a methodological dimension. In order to execute this redescription, I draw on a mix of archival material and analysis of case law. This extends an insight from tax law scholarship on the importance of a multi-disciplinary methodological apparatus to bring tax and constitutional scholarship together.

This study explores the reception and adaptation of Roman and Roman-inspired materials in South Asia and Southeast Asia during the early historic period. Drawing on a database of over 300 objects, it compares materials such as glass vessels, beads, engraved gems, and coin adaptations. While South Asia shows greater diversity and quantity of Roman imports, Southeast Asia demonstrates selective appropriation and creative transformation, often filtered through South Asia, particularly peninsular India. Southeast Asia favoured high-quality imports and innovative hybrid adaptations blending Mediterranean and Indic elements. In contrast, South Asian adaptations tended either to evoke Roman originals more closely using easily accessible raw materials such as in the case of terracotta bullae, or, when made from more valuable raw materials, often to diverge more substantially from the Roman prototypes. This pattern is further complicated by the emergence of Sri Lanka as a key crossroads in Indian Ocean networks after the fourth century ce. The study highlights regional differences in integrating Roman materials, revealing unique cultural priorities and engagement with global trade networks.

Nutrition has long been investigated with respect to its influence on human health. With the availability of various omics data, such as metagenomics and metabolomics, novel insights have been obtained into the influence of nutrition, particularly concerning the gut microbiome. The gut microbiome plays an important role in the breakdown of food-derived compounds and in producing essential bioactive metabolites required for human health. However, this wealth of information made the interactions between nutrition and human health increasingly intricate, and unravelling these links is complex. This review covers the concepts of genome-scale metabolic modelling as a tool to understand the links between nutrition, the gut microbiome and human metabolism and its applications. Genome-scale metabolic modelling treats metabolism as a mathematical problem which was used to develop models of human metabolism that incorporate physiology and organ-specific metabolism, known as whole-body metabolic models (WBMs). WBMs can incorporate physiological data, such as sex, weight and body fat percentage, as well as nutrition in the form of its metabolite constituents. Finally, the gut microbiome can also be incorporated through a mathematical representation of the species present, based on stool metagenomics. WBMs have already been applied to understand gut microbiome–host co-metabolism in various non-communicable diseases. However, challenges remain, as metabolites measured in food items in public databases typically cover only common metabolites, and engagement with end-users such as nutritionists and policymakers is limited. Nevertheless, WBMs represent a promising step towards digital metabolic twins and thus personalised nutrition and medicine.