We investigate how the government, as a customer, affects a supplier’s environmental policies. We find that government contractors have significantly lower levels of toxic pollution. Exploring the mechanisms, we show that government contractors reduce pollution by strengthening internal environmental governance and increasing investments in pollution abatement. Further analysis rules out alternative explanations related to reduced economic activities and financial constraints. Overall, our results highlight the government’s important role in disciplining corporate environmental misbehavior.

Spacetime singularities are expected to disappear in quantum gravity. Singularity resolution prima facie supports the view that spacetime singularities are mathematical pathologies of general relativity. However, this conclusion might be premature. Spacetime singularities are more accurately understood as global properties of spacetime rather than things. Therefore, if spacetime emerges in quantum gravity—as it is often claimed—then so may its singular structure. Although this proposal is intriguing, the attempt to uphold that spacetime singularities may be emergent fails. I provide three arguments in support of this claim, drawing on different views of spacetime emergence.

Promoting sustainable agriculture in the semiarid, rainfed areas of central Spain requires understanding how weed populations respond to different cropping systems and evaluating the economic profitability of these systems. A 6-yr field experiment compared three systems: a no-till barley (Hordeum vulgare L.) monoculture with fertilizers and herbicides (NT); a 2-yr rotation of grain legume or false flax [Camelina sativa (L.) Crantz] followed by barley, with reduced tillage and agrochemicals (MW); and a 3-yr fallow–grain legume–barley rotation under organic practices (ORG). Results showed that NT consistently provided the most effective weed control, reducing total weed density by 79% to 84% compared with ORG over the last 3 yr of the study. MW also significantly reduced total weed density by 11% to 75% relative to ORG, although some species increased. ORG was the least effective system, with weed densities reaching 395 plants m−2 and the lowest control efficacy. Weed population dynamics varied by management. Rigid ryegrass (Lolium rigidum Gaudin) was effectively controlled in NT through a consistent annual herbicide program and in MW by combining periodic tillage with targeted herbicide applications; however, it was extremely difficult to manage in ORG. Corn poppy (Papaver rhoeas L.) increased over time in all systems, while other species showed no clear trends. Weed species diversity was lowest in NT, with mean species richness reduced by 34% to 39% compared with ORG and by 13% to 17% compared with MW. Economic analysis revealed the highest adjusted net returns in MW and the lowest in ORG, driven by differences in crop sequences, yields, and subsidies from the European Common Agricultural Policy. These findings offer valuable insights for optimizing weed management in rainfed cereal systems, highlighting the importance of integrated approaches that balance effective weed control, crop productivity, and economic viability.

Galaxy clusters are commonly used tracers of cosmology. Gravitational lensing analysis of the Bullet Cluster is claimed to evidentially support dark matter, an important component in the ${\rm{\Lambda }}$CDM cosmology. I argue that such ${\rm{\Lambda }}$CDM-based models of individual galaxy clusters should be explanatory to meet such claims, but hardly in an ontic sense, due to galaxy cluster anisotropies, empirically equivalent non-${\rm{\Lambda }}$CDM-based models, and currently unaccountable cases. I propose that adopting an alternative epistemic/representational conception of scientific explanation can maintain the explanatory nature of individual galaxy cluster models, cope with the three complications, and be potentially generalizable to other branches of astrophysics.

According to the Developmental Origins of Health and Disease (DOHaD) hypothesis, low-birthweight (LBW) infants are programmed to seek additional resources as compensation for early deprivation. However, no study has yet explored this in the context of delay discounting (DD), which refers to the tendency to prefer smaller, immediate rewards over larger, delayed ones. Both prenatal factors, such as LBW, and postnatal factors, including adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) and exposure to natural disasters, may influence DD. To investigate whether LBW children seek larger future rewards, we analyzed LBW’s effect on DD, accounting for ACEs and natural disaster exposure. This prospective cohort study involved 167 children from areas affected by the Great East Japan Earthquake (GEJE), with a mean age of 8.3 years at the time of the DD experiment. LBW was assessed in the 2012 baseline questionnaire using the Mother-Child Handbook, along with ACEs prior to the GEJE and traumatic earthquake experiences. In 2014, DD was assessed through a token-based experiment where children allocated tokens for either immediate rewards (one candy per token for “now”) or delayed rewards (two candies per token for “one month later”). Our results showed that children with LBW and three or more ACEs exhibited lower DD, while traumatic earthquake experiences were not associated with DD. These findings suggest that children with LBW and multiple ACEs may develop adaptive strategies to seek more resources, indicating a responsive reward system to childhood adversity, even after exposure to a severe natural disaster.

This paper discusses the role of data within scientific reasoning and as evidence for theoretical claims, arguing for the idea that data can yield theoretically grounded models and be inferred, predicted, or explained from/by such models. Contrary to Bogen and Woodward’s rejection of data-to-theory and theory-to-data inferences/predictions, we draw upon artificial intelligence as applied to science literature to argue that (a) many models are routinely inferred and predicted from the data and routinely used to infer and predict data, and (b) such models can, at least in some contexts, play the role of theories.

This essay explores a key stage in the legal history of the concepts of consent and guilt in cases of rape, namely in twelfth-century canon law in the work of Gratian and the early canonists who commented on his Decretum. It substantially revises the account that currently exists in scholarship and explains that confusion between raptus and rape and a limited read of the Decretum have combined to provide a problematic picture in which, it has been claimed, neither Gratian nor broader medieval canon law took rape seriously as an offence. The essay focuses on the underexplored Causa 32 in the Decretum and discusses how Gratian very directly addressed forced coitus in that section of his text, both condemning it and exonerating women of all guilt who are forced to have sex without their consent. Gratian and the decretists ended up changing the discourse on rape, in part through their treatment of both Lucretia of Roman legend and an early Christian martyr, Lucia. Their considerations, which intersected with theology, resulted in a legal principle that a raped wife cannot be charged with adultery. Since their considerations could also be applied to any rape victim, their work is important for the development of rape law and legal notions of consent.

We show that banks use industry knowledge acquired through corporate lending in mortgage lending, a phenomenon we refer to as the “industry expertise channel.” Specifically, banks that specialize in particular industries expand their mortgage lending activity in regions where those industries are concentrated. The impact of industry expertise increases with information asymmetry and borrower risk. In addition, mortgages originated from this channel contain more soft information and perform better. The effect of the channel increases after unexpected industry distress and the 2008 financial crisis, suggesting that the effect is likely causal.

By the end of the fourteenth-century AD, Native peoples throughout the midwestern and southeastern regions of North America had withdrawn from major monumental and political centers established in prior centuries. In this article, I present the results of a community-level examination of settlement transformations on the Georgia Coast that I argue are the outcome of this large-scale movement of Mississippian peoples. Specifically, I examine the consequences of the depopulation of the Savannah River Valley, a case of a rapid, historically contingent Mississippian emigration beginning in the fourteenth century AD. My results establish how a large-scale immigration event affected community spatial and political organization and demonstrate that migrants and coastal locals engaged in the collective cultural construction of new identities and lifeways in response to the challenges of negotiating the use of common pool resources, such as fisheries and suitable farmland. Reconstructing the spatial organization of communities can help explain the demographic, economic, and political processes that undergird the cultural materialization of space. Although much remains to be learned about intra-settlement organization at post-Archaic, precolonial sites along the Georgia Coast, this investigation provides new information about the local, community-level spatial response to the fourteenth-century immigration event.

The stable property cluster view of natural kinds leaves the metaphysical structure of natural kinds open. The positive corollary of this feature is freedom from explaining the nature of problematic entities and that it affords natural kind status and flexibility. However, some worries are raised against this feature; the metaphysical structure of natural kinds is required for explaining their epistemic values such as inductive and explanatory power. Here I take the criticisms at face value and offer a possible metaphysical model of the SPC account that does not meddle with the merits but mitigates the worries.

The recent phenomenon of anthropomorphizing artificial intelligences (AIs) is uniquely provocative for philosophy of religion because of its tendency to place AIs in an analogous position to divinity vis-à-vis humans in spite of AIs being human artefacts. In the case of divinity, intelligent mental capacities are, and in the case of AIs are sometimes presented as inevitably becoming, not just equivalent but in fact superior to their realization in humans. Philosophers of religion would do well to learn from discussions of anthropomorphism in AI, in conversation with the historical debates over anthropomorphizing divinity, and to remember that evolved cognitive biases may lose their adaptive functions as the cultural context shifts, and even become maladaptive.

Weedy rice (Oryza sativa f. spontanea Roshev.), a widespread and troublesome weed in rice (Oryza sativa L.) fields, is typically controlled using imazamox in imidazolinone-tolerant rice fields. However, suspected resistance to imazamox has emerged in weedy rice populations in Jiangsu Province, China. This study aimed to evaluate the degree of resistance and investigate the resistance mechanisms. A whole-plant bioassay was performed on 35 weedy rice populations, demonstrating that 26 populations developed resistance to imazamox. The effective dose values causing 50% inhibition of growth reduction (GR50) in resistant (R) populations ranged from 129.2 to 280.2 g ai ha−1, exceeding the recommended application rate of imazamox (120 g ai ha−1) in imazamox-tolerant rice fields. R populations displayed cross-resistance to other acetolactate synthase (ALS)-inhibiting herbicides, except for certain sulfonylurea herbicides. Sequencing of the ALS gene identified a Ser-653-Asn substitution in resistant populations. A novel derived cleaved amplified polymorphic sequence (dCAPS) method was developed for the rapid and efficient detection of the Ser-653-Asn mutation in O. sativa f. spontanea. In vitro ALS activity assays revealed that the imazamox concentration required to inhibit 50% (IC50) of ALS activity was 80.0- to 88.3-fold higher in R populations compared with a susceptible (S) population. After imazamox treatment, the ALS expression levels in both the S and R populations of weedy rice increased. Resistance was not reversed by cytochrome P450 oxidase system (CYP450) or glutathione S-transferase (GST) inhibitors, suggesting that metabolic resistance mechanisms were not involved. In conclusion, weedy rice developed a different resistance level to imazamox, and the Ser-653-Asn mutation in the target ALS was the main reason. To the best of our knowledge, this study is the first to reveal the mechanism of resistance to imazamox in weedy rice in China.

This historical study examines the evolving landscape of gender equality within the Anglican Church in the Diocese of Central Tanganyika (DCT), with a focus on health-related developments in the post-colonial period. Tracing the trajectory from entrenched gender-based limitations to broader inclusivity, the article highlights how women, once marginalized in Church health initiatives, have gained visibility and agency, particularly since the 1980s. The period marks a turning point in which women began to access education, participate in leadership and contribute to health programmes that had long been male-dominated. Traditional gender roles have gradually shifted, reflecting a redefinition of responsibility within the Church and a growing embrace of shared leadership rooted in Christian values of love, cooperation and mutual respect. However, despite institutional advancements and theological support for equality, enduring gender disparities, especially in rural health services, continue to pose serious challenges. This study underscores the dual narrative of progress and persistent inequality, offering an important account of the Anglican Church’s ongoing journey towards holistic gender inclusion in health and ministry.

Using close to 800,000 transactions by 66,000 households in the United States and close to 2,000,000 transactions by 303,000 households in Finland, this paper shows that, on average, individual investors with longer holding periods choose to hold less liquid stocks in their portfolios. The relationship between holding periods and transaction costs is stronger among more financially sophisticated households. We confirm our findings by analyzing changes in investors’ holding periods around exogenous shocks to stock liquidity. Our findings challenge the notion that individual investors ignore non-salient costs when making investment decisions and suggest that they are cognizant of the cost of trading stocks.

This work presents a novel dynamic inflow modeling approach for single- and multirotor systems. The proposed model is derived from first principles using a parametrisation that guarantees accurate results at steady-state. In an effort to simplify and unite previous works in the field, it is shown how two important works from the dynamic inflow modeling literature can be recreated using the present framework. The utility of the model is further illustrated through analysis and comparisons to well-established theories and empirical results in both steady-state and dynamic scenarios. Overall, the aim is to simplify and unite dynamic inflow models.

Carbonatites are complex rocks yet globally significant hosts of critical mineral resources. Mitigating exploration risk demands robust understanding of their geodynamic setting, which hinges on constraining the timing, duration and nature of associated magmatic and fluid–rock processes. We present multi-method geochronology and isotope geochemistry for the recently discovered Luni and Crean mineralized (Nb, REE, P) carbonatites of the Aileron Province, central Australia. We integrate data from multiple mineral-isotope-pairs: U–Pb and Lu–Hf in zircon, Rb–Sr in biotite and Sr, Lu–Hf, Sm–Nd and (U–Th)/He in apatite. Combined petrological and isotopic evidence resolves distinct geological events over >500 Myr. Zircon U–Pb and biotite Rb–Sr dates range from 831 ± 3 Ma to 796 ± 9 Ma. The oldest dates from less altered minerals reflect primary crystallization, and younger dates relate to pervasive hydrothermal alteration. Radiogenic isotopes (Sr–Nd–Hf) imply a moderately depleted mantle source with negligible recycled sedimentary components in the primary carbonatite magma. Our findings correlate carbonatite magmatism in the Aileron Province at ∼830–820 Ma with the onset of Rodinia Supercontinent breakup, during widespread rift-related extension and mantle-derived magmatism across Australia. Post-emplacement, Lu–Hf apatite dates from 722 ± 17 Ma to 653 ± 22 Ma suggest protracted alteration, whereas apatite (U–Th)/He data indicate exhumation at ∼250 Ma. Carbonatite emplacement probably exploited pre-existing transcrustal corridors during Tonian extension. These zones of structural weakness likely facilitated ascent of volatile-rich, mantle-derived melts to mid–shallow crustal depths, highlighting how regional geodynamics govern the localization and preservation of mineralized carbonatites.