This article explores digital colonialism in Africa, focusing on how Big Tech and local intermediaries perpetuate data exploitation, infrastructure dependency and algorithmic bias. Applying a Third World Approaches to International Law (TWAIL) lens, it draws parallels between historical colonialism and the modern digital economy, highlighting persistent power imbalances in data control and tech sovereignty. Multinational firms from the Global North extract and monetise African data with little benefit to local communities, reinforcing dependency. Local actors (governments, tech elites and influencers) often enable this through policy gaps and cultural alignment with Western platforms. The article examines the impact on data sovereignty, human rights and economic autonomy, including risks of surveillance and silencing local voices. It calls for policy reforms, investment in African tech ecosystems, digital literacy and robust regional regulation. Ultimately, it advocates for digital justice and self-governance to reclaim Africa’s digital future.

The second Trump administration has disrupted global climate politics, turning the United States away from the clean energy and environmental policies of the Biden administration. Consequently, analytical attention is turning, inside and outside of the United States, to a family of concepts referred to as “Climate Realism” (CR), which favors long-run investments in technology and adaptation over near-term climate mitigation efforts. We critically engage with CR and argue that political science identifies four key features of climate politics that shed light on CR’s strengths and weaknesses, and which will persist even in the second Trump era. Despite CR’s flaws, we contend that its emergence in reaction to the second Trump administration highlights some important dimensions of climate politics that deserve greater attention going forward. We highlight three topics for research: the political and practical strategies of the anti-green coalition; the heterogeneity in viable national economic strategies; and the implications for IR of a turn away from meaningful climate mitigation in powerful nations.

This article provides a capabilities analysis of the financial behaviour of United Kingdom-based Zimbabwean senders of international remittances to Zimbabwe. It elaborates an expanded analytical framework of financial capability to investigate the effects of remitting on the financial capabilities of the senders of remittances. The data presented draw on the findings of a survey (n = 347) and semi-structured interviews (n = 23) conducted with Zimbabweans in the United Kingdom. The data reveal adverse effects of remitting on the respondents’ personal financial practices in respect of budgeting, saving and preparing for their retirement. It also shows the limits of FinTech services in transferring remittances and provides insights into how personal finance and -related capabilities constitute a social remittance. Overall, discourses on migration and development need to incorporate an expanded financial capabilities perspective to understand better how remittance fields are structured and to contribute to public policy reforms aiming to enhance the efficacy of remittances.

Medical device innovation is key to advancing healthcare and fostering economic development. As the global medical technology market expands, the capacity of regions and countries to attract and support innovation has become increasingly significant. This article examines the growing perception that China is becoming a more attractive environment for medical device development than Europe, focusing on key regulatory differences that may influence this shift. It compares the hierarchical structure of legislation, regulatory oversight bodies, and classification procedures, particularly for emerging technologies like artificial intelligence (AI). For instance, while Europe’s decentralised system of notified bodies offers developers flexibility, China’s centralised regulatory agencies and more adaptable classification system – alongside the absence of stringent AI-specific regulations like the EU’s AI Act – may present a different set of trade-offs and facilitate faster market entry for innovative technologies. Despite these differences, the paper argues that regulation alone does not fully explain China’s rising attractiveness. Other contributing factors, such as its vast market size, significant government support, and broader R&D policies, must also be considered. The analysis concludes that while regulatory structures are influential, they represent just one component of a multifaceted ecosystem that shapes the global geography of medical device innovation.

Sacrificing own resources to punish norm violators is often regarded an altruistic act, promoting cooperation and fairness within social groups. However, recent studies highlight difficulties in interpreting third-party punishment as a prosocial and cooperative signal. Moving beyond abstract, decontextualized settings typically employed in economic game paradigms, we aimed to better understand the appraisal of observed punishment and punishers in real-world situations. To this end, we created and validated 24 written vignettes of everyday-life scenarios depicting interactions between a perpetrator, a victim, and a punisher. Across two preregistered experiments, we systematically manipulated key aspects of third-party punishment: transgression type and punishment type (property-oriented, corporal, or psychological; Experiment 1; N = 48) and punishment severity (weak or strong; Experiment 2; N = 50). Participants rated punishment adequacy and the punisher’s warmth, competence, and suitability as an interaction partner, whether as a friend or team leader. Results indicated preferences for psychological punishments, punishments that aligned with transgression type, and less severe punishments. Our findings support the notion that punishment is an ambiguous issue and reveal important contextual factors that contribute to its evaluation as a useful social strategy.

This scoping review provides an overview of the impact of fruit and vegetable (FAV) consumption on cognitive function in adolescents and young adults between January 2014 and February 2024. A comprehensive search across six databases, CINAHL, PubMed-MEDLINE, ProQuest, Web of Science, Scopus, and Embase, identified 5,181 articles, of which six met the inclusion criteria after deduplication and screening. This scoping review focused on individuals aged 11–35 years in schools, colleges, universities, and communities. Following a descriptive and narrative synthesis of the data, tables and figures were used to present the findings. Across the six included studies, most consistently demonstrated a positive association between higher fruit and vegetable (FAV) intake and improved cognitive performance among adolescents and young adults. This association was evident in both cross-sectional and longitudinal studies, with stronger effects observed for whole fruits and vegetables high in fibre and polyphenols. Cognitive domains positively impacted included psychomotor speed, memory, attention, and mood. However, findings varied by type of food and cognitive domain; while whole FAVs were generally beneficial, results for fruit juice were mixed—some studies showed acute benefits. Differences in study designs, dietary assessment tools, and cognitive measures contributed to variability. Despite these inconsistencies, the overall trend supports a beneficial role of FAV consumption in promoting cognitive health during adolescence and early adulthood. This review demonstrates that increased fruit and vegetable consumption is consistently linked to improved cognitive function in adolescents and young adults. However, further research is needed to establish its long-term effects on cognitive ageing and disease prevention

This brief note corrects an aspect of our 2024 paper looking at the evidence for the route of the Dorchester aqueduct in which we attributed a previously hypothesised route for the aqueduct to Christopher Sparey-Green.

This article explores the variation surrounding the semi-modals be going to and gonna. While gonna is frequently mentioned alongside be going to, it remains under-described in traditional grammars and academic literature. However, recent studies within Construction Grammar suggest that gonna may represent an independent construction, prompting a reconsideration of other variants within the be going to / gonna paradigm such as gon and imma, which appear to derive directly from gonna and no longer from be going to. In light of recent work, what have traditionally been regarded as mere ‘phonetic realizations’ or ‘orthographic variants’ may in fact play a more significant role in the formation and definition of constructions, raising questions about the structure of constructional networks. This article analyzes the immediate syntactic environment of the variants to account for both the variation of forms and the status of such forms. The study is conducted using two corpora that are particularly prone to showing linguistic innovations and language change: a spontaneous spoken corpus and a web corpus. Findings indicate that shorter variants often involve elision of be and that gonna is more grammaticalized than going to, based on the types of verbs they precede.