Transitional justice has become the legal and moral grammar for articulating victims’ demands for justice in conflict-affected societies. Yet it is a grammar that deftly places the responsibility for addressing impoverished victims’ main concerns, namely economic and social rights (ESR), in other fields. This is largely possible thanks to the ‘separability thesis’, according to which ESR and reparations are conceptually distinct, and therefore the guarantee of ESR cannot be considered a means of reparation. This thesis, now widely accepted by scholars, UN special procedures, and the Inter-American Human Rights System, places victims in a situation where they can be repaired while remaining poor. This article critically examines the development of this thesis during the encounter with transitional justice in Colombia and clarifies the important role it has played in the remaking of the field and its application in conflict-affected societies. Drawing on the lessons of this conceptual history, the article argues for the development of a framework that articulates victims’ everyday ESR claims in terms of reparation, and explores human rights bodies, traditionally neglected in the transitional justice literature, that are well suited for this purpose. Reconsidering the separability thesis requires rethinking the state–individual relationship, understanding state power not only as a source of mistrust and a target of stigmatization, but also as an active agent in addressing socioeconomic wrongs. With this shift, the article anchors the literature on transformative reparations within the normative framework of the ICESCR, while acknowledging the realpolitik constraints that affect the guarantee of ESR.

Empathy is essential for designers to obtain a deep understanding of user experiences. It encompasses emotional and cognitive dimensions, combining the ability to resonate with others’ feelings emotionally, and to intellectually grasp their perspective, known respectively as affective and cognitive empathy. While empathy has been recognized as vital in a human-centered design process, empathic interactions with users depend on designers’ innate empathic tendencies, referred to as dispositional empathy, making the interactions prone to bias. This nuanced distinction between designers’ dispositional empathy and the resulting automatic responses to a context-specific user circumstance, known as situational empathy, remains underexplored. This research aims to establish the influence of designers’ dispositional empathy on the resulting situated outcome, thereby determining how empathy is triggered. Through an empirical evaluation using immersive virtual reality (VR) technology, participants embody the perspective of a user with vision impairment. This research reveals a statistically significant relationship between dispositional empathic concern and situational affective responses, and between situational cognitive and situational affective empathy. The findings highlight situational affective empathy as inherently linked to humans’ empathic tendencies, underscoring the significance of contextual elements to elicit cognitive empathy, and the potential for emotional responses to drive further cognitive thinking. Through a deepened understanding of empathy’s nuanced nature, the outcomes establish methods and tools for eliciting and measuring situational cognitive and affective empathy when experienced from a first-person perspective in VR. This research contributes to a broader understanding of the practical implications of constructing and experiencing VR experiences for enhanced designer empathy, facilitating future design innovation through digital contexts.

This study employed Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR)-based metabolomics to investigate the impact of probiotic supplementation on the metabolite profile in broiler chickens. Broilers were fed a diet supplemented with a Bacillus blend (F1) containing three strains (BPR-11, BPR-16 and BPR-17). NMR-based metabolomic analysis revealed significant increases in metabolites associated with energy production, including short chain fatty acids (SCFAs), glucose, choline and other trimethylammonium compounds, taurine, and alanine. Elevated SCFAs indicated enhanced breakdown of indigestible fibers, providing additional energy resources. Increased levels of glucose, choline, taurine, and alanine pointed to activation of gluconeogenesis and lipid metabolism pathways. These findings provided new insights into the biochemical effects of Bacillus supplementation in broiler chickens and may inform the development of more effective Bacillus-based formulations and feeding strategies in poultry production.

The notion of constitutional identity rests on a seemingly inevitable tension: it is seen both as a source of inclusive social cohesion and as a potentially exclusionary concept invoked to justify populist claims and divergent interpretations of the rule of law and human rights. This has led legal scholars to redirect the understanding of constitutional identity towards an exclusively legal and functional definition in line with the formulation of Article 4 (2) TEU, which protects the ‘national identities’ of the European Member States: identity is assured so far as it is inherent to the ‘fundamental structures, political and constitutional’ of the Member States. This contribution criticises this approach, because it ignores the dynamic nature of a community and its attachment to its ethnocultural affinities, possibly undermining the viability of an inclusive polity. This is a concern, especially for multinational communities like the European Union. It then proposes an alternative conception of constitutional identity as narrative identity, in which preconstitutional identity emerges as the ghost in the shell of constitutional identity. A narrative conception of constitutional identity bridges the civic/ethnic divide by giving ethnocultural elements a place through narrative integration of preconstitutional identities but avoids an illiberal logic by putting them forward according to a retrospective logic as projections rather than as a robust core. Starting from that narrative conception, the relationship between preconstitutional and constitutional identity is further clarified by investigating their interplay across six binaries that often recur in the debate: continuity/change, sameness/difference, unity/plurality, sameness/difference, fact/fiction, affect/ratio.

Street harassment is a widespread urban experience—particularly but not exclusively for women—yet marked by isolation from bystanders and other victim-survivors. Given this isolated dimension, what might a collective response look like? This paper examines a successful case of feminist street art protest in Brussels: posters claiming “laisse les filles tranquilles,” a demand which was swiftly extended on behalf of other groups by similar posters, and copied, commented, and modified both approvingly and disapprovingly by graffiti. Developing a novel critical phenomenological approach based in Sartre’s concept of seriality, this paper argues that the posters’ ingenuity lies in appropriating the infrastructure where harassment occurs, thus exploiting the spatially and temporally dispersed character of these intrusions. This article proceeds in three parts. First, drawing on empirical research on street harassment, I contextualize feminist protest and individual coping strategies within the postcolonial metropole of Brussels. Secondly, I reconceptualize street harassment through Sartrean seriality, combined with phenomenological insights from Beauvoir and Fanon, to underscore the dynamic between material objects, object-like social routines, and anonymity. Thirdly, I show that posters and their responses enable the formation of social antagonism between strangers who are not in a direct, physical relation, thereby politicizing the broader Brussels public.

We show that for any set $A\subset {\mathbb N}$ with positive upper density and any $\ell ,m \in {\mathbb N}$, there exist an infinite set $B\subset {\mathbb N}$ and some $t\in {\mathbb N}$ so that $\{mb_1 + \ell b_2 \colon b_1,b_2\in B\ \text {and}\ b_1<b_2 \}+t \subset A,$ verifying a conjecture of Kra, Moreira, Richter and Robertson. We also consider the patterns $\{mb_1 + \ell b_2 \colon b_1,b_2\in B\ \text {and}\ b_1 \leq b_2 \}$, for infinite $B\subset {\mathbb N}$ and prove that any set $A\subset {\mathbb N}$ with lower density $\underline {\!\mathrm {d}}(A)>1/2$ contains such configurations up to a shift. We show that the value $1/2$ is optimal and obtain analogous results for values of upper density and when no shift is allowed.

Increasing meritocracy has intensified negative perceptions of individuals in lower socioeconomic positions, especially welfare recipients, who are often viewed as incapable, lazy, or unmotivated. We conducted twenty-nine in-depth interviews with long-term social assistance recipients (SARs) in the Netherlands to explore their experiences with welfare stigmatisation. We used García-Lorenzo and colleagues’ (2022) typology to analyse SARs’ responses to stigmatisation. Surrounded by negative stereotypes, most participants internalised welfare stigma. Initially, many withdrew socially and engaged in harmful behaviours, but over time, their responses became less destructive. We identified four groups: individuals who are managing health, reorienting life, rebuilding life, or blaming the system. Overall, our findings suggest that social interventions should help SARs develop new, non-stigmatised identities to enhance their self-image and overall well-being. Given the widespread and negative consequences of welfare stigma, public, political, and media discourses should focus on addressing underlying societal issues rather than solely attributing problems to individuals.

Toxoplasma gondii (T. gondii), a zoonotic parasite, can cause severe disease in warm-blooded animals. Pathological changes in murine tissues infected with different T. gondii isolates were studied to establish factors influencing lesion severity and parasite burden. In Study A, mice were orally inoculated with genotype #3, #6 or #8 oocysts. In Study B, mice were inoculated intraperitoneally with genotype #1, #3, #6, #13, #141 or #265 tachyzoites. Mice were euthanised serially and tissues processed for histopathology. In Study A, genotype #6 caused pathology in the liver, brain, lung, intestine and kidney, predominantly associated with tachyzoites, while #8 caused mainly moderate pathology in the brain, lung and liver, usually associated with tissue pseudocysts/cysts. Genotype #3 occasionally caused mild pathology, but the parasite was not visible in examined tissues. In Study B, genotypes #13 and #6 caused systemic infections associated with tachyzoites. Genotypes #3, #141 and #265 caused moderate pathology associated with pseudocysts/cysts in the brain and tachyzoites in peripheral organs. Genotype #1 caused mild pathology associated with pseudocysts/cysts in organs assessed. Comparison of genotype #6 between studies showed parasite stage and inoculation method did not affect the severity of pathology, but for #3, pathology was more severe when mice were inoculated intraperitoneally with tachyzoites compared to those inoculated orally with oocysts. This study confirmed route of infection, T. gondii strain, life stage and dose influence infection outcome and ultimately contributes to the refinement of T. gondii pathogenesis knowledge, which is fundamental for toxoplasmosis management and treatment.

HIV/AIDS posed a significant health threat in Denmark from the early 1980s until the end of the 1990s, claiming approximately 2,000 lives. Gay men, hemophiliacs, drug users, sex workers and migrants were overwhelmingly among the victims of the disease. They also constituted the groups most associated with it. This led to a raised level of public attention to these groups; a heightened visibility that ambiguously resulted both in improving the life conditions of some while also increasing the stigma of others. This article analyses the roles of different cross-sector actors in shaping the responses to HIV/AIDS in Denmark, with each group influencing and being influenced by the epidemic. Yet despite the clear connection between HIV/AIDS and the minoritized, often marginalized, groups, the article argues that the overarching and dominant response objective during the crisis in Denmark was to prevent a heterosexual epidemic. Throughout the crisis, other responses, aims and objectives concerning the groups most affected by HIV/AIDS could be, and did become, contingent with this dominant objective. The strengths and positions of those subresponses depended on, however, the perceptions of them as logical and tangible means to the primary end of preventing the heterosexual epidemic. Pulling together different and changing responses from different and changing actors serves to crystallize what objectives or logics are the mutual ones, and the significance of this analysis is that what appeared to be a very heterogeneous set of responses to the disease in Denmark, was in fact rooted in the same objective. Notably, the perceived pertinence of preventing the heterosexual epidemic was not rooted in actual rates of infection or spread of the disease.

Recent scholarship on the post-Habsburg world has highlighted the often ambiguous transitions between nineteenth-century empires and the Central European nation-states of the interwar period such as Czechoslovakia, Poland, Romania, Hungary, and Yugoslavia. In this vein, the article reconsiders how imperial legacies continued to inform the political cultures, administrative practices, and center-periphery relations, in one such contested periphery: Subcarpathian Ruthenia, the easternmost province of interwar Czechoslovakia. By examining Czechoslovak practices and policies toward the region, it interrogates whether Prague’s governance assumed a colonial character, as contemporary observers and strands of recent historiography have contended. Such accusations struck at the heart of Czechoslovakia’s interwar standing as Central Europe’s exemplary democracy. Rather than accepting or dismissing these charges at face value, the article advances an alternative interpretation by conceptualizing Czechoslovak state-building in Subcarpathian Ruthenia as “external democracy promotion”—a concept drawn from contemporary political science. This more differentiated assessment of the achievements and limitations of democratic governance in a nascent state’s periphery, as well as of the declared intentions and concrete practices of the historical actors, permits a more productive dialogue between past and present. It navigates beyond the pitfalls of presentism, but remains critically engaged with enduring questions of power, legitimacy, and democratic praxis regarding interwar Central Europe.

During the perinatal period, women in low- and middle-income countries experience high rates of common mental disorders (CMDs). We aimed to estimate CMD prevalence at 6 and 12 months postpartum in Rahim Yar Khan (RYK), Pakistan, and identify factors associated with postpartum mental health. We conducted secondary analysis of a longitudinal birth cohort study, which was nested within the control arm of a community-based, cluster-randomized trial that enrolled pregnant women in their third trimester (n = 2,122). Mental health was assessed using the Self-Reporting Questionnaire. Factors associated with postpartum mental health were explored using mixed-effects linear regression, and associations between preconception, antenatal and postpartum CMDs were assessed using robust Poisson regression. The prevalence of CMDs was 16% and 17% at 6 and 12 months postpartum, respectively. Women who reported that their husbands were unhappy had poorer postpartum mental health, whereas high social support was associated with improved postpartum mental health. History of antenatal CMDs was associated with increased risk of CMDs at 6 and 12 months postpartum (adjusted risk ratio = 2.60 and 1.90, 95% confidence interval: 1.69–4.01 and 1.40–2.58, respectively). Mothers with identified risk factors may benefit from targeted mental health support during the perinatal period.

Within anthropology, the use of three-dimensional (3D) imaging has become increasingly common and widespread, since it broadens the available avenues for addressing a wide range of key anthropological issues. The ease with which 3D models can be generated and shared has a major impact on research, cultural heritage, education, science communication, and public engagement, as well as contributing to the preservation of the physical specimens and archiving collections in widely accessible databases. Current scanning protocols have the ability to create the required research-quality 3D models; however, they tend to be time- and labor-intensive and not practical when working with large collections. Here we describe a streamlined Batch Artifact Scanning Protocol (BASP) to rapidly create 3D models using a medical computed tomography (CT) scanner. While this method can be used on a variety of material types, we have, for specificity, applied our protocol to a large collection of experimentally broken ungulate limb bones. By employing the BASP, we were able to efficiently create 3D models of 2,474 bone fragments at a rate of less than four minutes per specimen.