With the increasing application of artificial intelligence and autonomy in cyberspace, there is little doubt that “autonomous cyber capabilities” (ACC) – software agents that are programmed to carry out specific tasks through cyberspace without real-time human control or oversight – will be deployed in future armed conflicts. Yet, ACC’s lack of real-time human control and the risk of unpredictable, unreliable and unexplainable behaviour raise important concerns as to their use in compliance with international humanitarian law (IHL). This article explores whether due diligence may be a valuable framework to mitigate the risks associated with ACC and avoid unintended violations of IHL. Notably, it contends that due diligence is a chapeau obligation for several IHL norms that require States to undertake all appropriate measures to ensure the development and use of ACC in compliance with IHL, and it provides examples of diligent measures that States shall adopt.

The 2025 HTAi Global Policy Forum (GPF) report offers a timely and thoughtful synthesis of the opportunities and challenges associated with the use of artificial intelligence (AI), and particularly generative AI (GenAI), in Health Technology Assessment (HTA) (1). Its emphasis on trust, human agency, and risk-based approaches reflects both the maturity of the discussion within the HTA community and a shared recognition that technical capability alone is insufficient for responsible adoption. The report succeeds in articulating a common set of principles and a broadly aligned vision across HTA bodies, life sciences, and other interest holders.

Meta-analysis synthesizes evidence from multiple randomized clinical trials and informs evidence-based practices across various medical domains. Recently, causally interpretable meta-analysis has been proposed and applied to treatment evaluations for target populations, requiring individual participant data (IPD). Standard meta-analysis assumes transportability or exchangeability of a (conditional) relative effect (such as relative risk or odds ratio), which may be violated when the relative effects are correlated with the baseline risks across clinical trials. In addition, the weighted average of some study-specific effect measures such as the (log) odds ratios or the (log) hazard ratios is non-collapsible and does not correspond to any target population. Furthermore, when the randomization ratios between treated versus untreated arms vary across trials, confounding bias may occur. To address these challenges, we propose a causal meta-analysis (CMA) framework using only aggregated data, enabling causally interpretable and accurate estimation for different target populations. The CMA adjusts its weights for treatment effect across various target populations, including the average treatment effect (ATE), the ATE on the treated (ATT) population, the ATE on the control (ATC) population, and the ATE in the overlap (ATO) population. Mathematically, we discover the connection between traditional meta-analysis estimators and CMAs. For example, the Mantel–Haenszel weighted meta-analysis is equivalent to the CMA with ATO.

Jack Kemp’s ascent from cast-off professional football player to conservative national figure requires understanding how the phases of his athletic career, which he filtered through his on-field experiences, shaped his unorthodox hybridity. He was in many ways a standard small-government conservative advocating the tenets of the technocratic Sunbelt New Right, but one who took surprisingly progressive stands on issues of labor and race very much at odds with developing Republican orthodoxy.

This essay takes as its starting point the experience of designing and teaching the extension course “Regenerative Ecologies: Imagining Sustainable Futures through Science Fiction,” offered at the Federal University of Pelotas in late 2024 as part of Brazil’s triadic model of teaching, research, and extension in higher education. Bringing together participants from the humanities, natural sciences, health sciences, and environmental studies, the course created a space where speculative narratives could be read alongside diverse forms of expertise and lived experience, fostering ecological awareness, critical engagement with science and technology, and the exercise of accountability and collective responsibility. From this context, I explore the role of science fiction as a critical and imaginative tool for public engagement with science and draw upon philosophy of science to argue that science fiction supports ethical reflection, strengthens scientific communication, and cultivates the “moral imagination” essential to responsible science, enabling readers to anticipate the social and environmental consequences of scientific and technological advancements. Through this case study, I highlight how speculative narratives can bridge the gap between scientific practice and public participation in the co-creation of sustainable futures, while also showcasing the affordances of public higher education outreach initiatives in Brazil.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the degree index and the clustering index in dense random graphs. The degree index in our setup is a certain measure of degree irregularity whose basic properties are well studied in the literature, and the corresponding theoretical analysis in a random graph setup turns out to be tractable. On the other hand, the clustering index, based on a similar reasoning, is first introduced in this paper. Computing exact expressions for the expected clustering index turns out to be more challenging even in the case of Erdős–Rényi graphs, and our results are on obtaining relevant upper bounds. These are also complemented with observations based on Monte Carlo simulations. In addition to the Erdős–Rényi case, we also present a simulation-based analysis for random regular graphs, the Barabási–Albert model, and the Watts–Strogatz model.

Richard Powers’ latest novel, Playground (2024), foregrounds two realms of scientific issues in the public sphere—the oceans and AI. In that sense, it looks in large part like a follow-up to two of his previous works: The Overstory (2018), an analogous treatment of the environment as represented by forests, and Galatea 2.2 (1995), which describes the creation of a very early version of an AI. Here, the focus appears to be an elaborate scheme to fill the South Pacific with floating cities, to allow wealthy people to escape the tribulations of the real world, with the development of a Facebook-like app as a secondary theme. The exposition proceeds via three narrative streams: the stories of a software engineer, a pioneering deep ocean explorer, and a tiny Polynesian island designated as the home base for the floating cities project. As the plotlines evolve, the reader is led to anticipate how the pieces will connect up—until a totally unexpected plot reversal near the end forces a drastic reappraisal of what the book is primarily about, suggesting that despite the elaborate portrayal of risks to the oceans, AI may, in fact, well prove to be the greater threat.

This paper examines the underrepresentation of underwater cultural heritage (UCH) within the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) 1972 World Heritage Convention. Although the 2001 Convention on the Protection of the Underwater Cultural Heritage provides a dedicated framework, submerged heritage remains inconsistently recognized in World Heritage processes. The paper traces the historical development of UCH recognition, outlines challenges in classification and protection, and considers the potential of sites to be evaluated as possessing Outstanding Universal Value (OUV). It highlights the cultural–natural interconnections of UCH, the risks posed by climate change and human activities, and the need to consider sites in international waters. The authors argue for clearer criteria, interdisciplinary collaboration, and the systematic integration of UCH into nomination dossiers and management plans. This work seeks to inspire stakeholders to prioritize UCH within heritage management systems, ensuring its preservation for future generations and thereby ensuring a balanced representation of human history in the World Heritage List.