We examine how the social condition of work influences design cognition. By applying cognitive load theory, we explore that individual work fosters internal self-regulation and user-centered pragmatism, whereas group work creates the collaborative substitution paradox, in which digital resources supplant interaction, thus encouraging external regulation and experiential narratives. The findings suggest that social conditions act as a moderator of cognitive load, indicating that individual work is beneficial for deep learning, while structured group work help mitigate substitution effects.

This paper presents the Designable Inclusive Design Methodology, a modular framework that was tested across two consecutive semesters in a company-sponsored design studio within academic settings. The toolkit provides practical and repeatable methods that embed inclusion throughout the design process. Developed through research through design, it offers a fast and flexible alternative to large-scale curriculum reform. Initial findings indicate that the use of the methodology enhances student confidence, fosters deeper reflection, and promotes inclusive thinking in everyday studio work.

Iptriazopyrid is a novel 4-hydroxyphenylpyruvate dioxygenase inhibitor that, upon registration for rice production, will be the first azole carboxamide herbicide labeled in the United States. Because herbicides are commonly mixed to broaden the weed control spectrum and efficacy, herbicide interactions with iptriazopyrid must be evaluated. Field experiments were conducted near Colt, AR, in 2024 and 2025 to evaluate interactions between iptriazopyrid and either synthetic auxins or residual herbicides labeled for rice. The experiments were designed as a two-factor randomized complete block design, with the presence of iptriazopyrid at 50 g ai ha-1 as factor one and the presence of labeled synthetic auxins or residual herbicides as the second factor. Applications targeted 3- to 4-leaf barnyardgrass, and Colby’s method was utilized to determine herbicide interactions. 2,4-D was the only herbicide found to be antagonistic to iptriazopyrid throughout the experiments. Applied alone, iptriazopyrid provided 75%, 83%, and 79% barnyardgrass control at 1, 2, and 4 WAT, respectively, compared to 12%, 18%, and 8% control when mixed with 2,4-D. The iptriazopyrid plus triclopyr combination was antagonistic for barnyardgrass control at 1 and 2 weeks after treatment (WAT), with 61% and 73% control, respectively; however, the relationship was no longer significant at 4 WAT. Barnyardgrass density supported an antagonistic interaction between 2,4-D and iptriazopyrid, as combinations of the two led to higher densities than iptriazopyrid applied alone. No labeled residual herbicide antagonized iptriazopyrid for barnyardgrass control; nor did barnyardgrass densities differ from iptriazopyrid applied alone. Overall, these findings show that iptriazopyrid offers reasonable flexibility when mixed with some, but not all, synthetic auxins labeled for rice, and that there is no reduction in barnyardgrass efficacy when mixed with residual herbicides.

An old improvisational semiotic practice is gesturing by hand. Hand gestures have often been regarded as spontaneous embodiments of psychic processes, and also as a primal and universal mode of human expression. The view not only characterizes some psychological and lay theories, but also schools of modern art, most explicitly Abstract Expressionism. This article is a study of hand gestures by an art historian discussing two Abstract Expressionist painters. It shows how an ideology of gestures and brushstrokes as spontaneous emotion-driven expressions is articulated by the expert’s hand gestures, but also shown to be a calculated effect of the images, a figuration. Following the analysis of the videotaped episode, the construal of gesture as primal and emotional is shown to match conservative ideologies seeking to suppress the alleged wildness of gesture. A review of the art-historian’s own improvisational, kinesthesia-driven gesture practices concludes the article.

This article is a study of people with dwarfism employed as court dwarfs during the reigns of Henri IV, Louis XIII and Louis XIV of France. Through an analysis of the varying positions held by people with dwarfism at court and the roles they performed there, it challenges existing historiographies that emphasise the wonder their physical difference elicited and their function as the monarch’s alter ego to explain their presence at court. Instead of focusing on symbolic meanings attached to dwarfism, this study centres on the activities and experiences of people with dwarfism. This approach reveals that the invisibility of people with dwarfism in the archive is partly due to their reticence to be identified with the office of court dwarf. Indeed, they struggled to power the institutional development of the office because it was a constant reminder of their marginal status at court. The office’s eventual disappearance under Louis XIV thus reveals how marginalisation combined with processes of institutionalisation to destabilise the lives and careers of people with dwarfism at court. The article’s analysis rests on a granular approach to primary sources, re-emphasising the value of archival research for the study of marginalised groups, even when surviving material is relatively lacking.

Clinical and translational investigators increasingly rely on complex institutional and national data resources, yet barriers related to data discovery, governance, and access pathways remain common. To address fragmentation in data access, we piloted a Data Navigation Program within the Clinical and Translational Science Institute (CTSI) that established a trained Data Navigator as a centralized first point of contact for investigator data inquiries who provided individualized consultations, facilitated connections to data domain experts and honest broker services, and increased awareness of institutional data assets and regulatory requirements. To better characterize investigator needs, a CTSI-wide survey assessing data sources, governance, and training priorities was conducted in collaboration with the Clinical Translational Data Science (CTDS) Workgroup. Results demonstrated strong demand for structured guidance in data discovery and governance navigation. These findings informed refinement of the program, including development of the Research Data Source Match, a self-service decision-support tool implemented in REDCap that generates customized data access roadmaps based on investigator characteristics and data needs. During the pilot year, the Data Navigator conducted consultations addressing electronic health record (EHR), PCORnet resources, and government datasets. Integrating personalized navigation with scalable self-service tools may reduce barriers and support responsible data use in translational research.

This article addresses a central challenge in political science: how to choose between competing conceptions and structures of concepts. Existing approaches to concept validity offer useful criteria—such as resonance, consistency, differentiation, causal utility, and operationalization—but tend to omit criteria for evaluating the normative considerations that often underpin conceptual choices. As a result, conceptualization may face a fundamental indeterminacy when multiple conceptions appear equally well grounded. To address this lacuna, I introduce a “concern” criterion, which evaluates concepts according to the extent to which they capture what is most worrisome in the political world. Building on the semantic–pragmatic approach to conceptualization, I argue that normative considerations can be disciplined, rather than avoided. The argument is illustrated through the case of political polarization, where a shift from issue-based to affect-based conceptions reflects changing concerns about political division. I also examine the implications of the concern criterion for structuring multidimensional concepts and address objections concerning objectivity, stability, and legitimacy. A concern criterion, although not sufficient on its own, provides a valuable complement to existing criteria and helps ground conceptual choices in a normatively informed yet methodologically disciplined manner.

Evidence-based nutrition guidance for female athletes remains limited relative to that available for males; in part, this has contributed to widespread reliance on social media for dietary information. Whilst social media can enhance health communication, it also facilitates the rapid dissemination of unverified, commercially driven nutrition claims. This narrative review critically synthesises the current scientific literature underpinning four prevalent claims targeting nutrition close to exercise for active females; (1) fasted training is harmful for all females, (2) menstrual cycle-related hormonal fluctuations require sex-specific hydration strategies, (3) carbohydrate differences by sex and menstrual cycle phase and (4) precise protein timing is essential for optimal adaptation in females. Despite social media and ‘influencer’ claims of no evidence in humans for many of the claims, there is some, albeit limited, evidence. This review evaluates the available research and the evidence supporting these claims to provide practical advice for active females. Collectively, this review demonstrates that many widely circulated nutrition claims directed at active females lack robust scientific support. The findings emphasise the importance of individual context, including training load, energy availability, environmental conditions and total dietary intake, over rigid, sex-specific nutrition rules. Improved translation of female-specific sports nutrition research into accurate, accessible public messaging is urgently needed to counter persistent misinformation in digital media.

This paper examines virtual reality gaming as a form of embodied interaction at the intersection of digital mediation, improvisation, and agency. In VR environments, players act through avatars, and their actions are shaped in real time by shifting relations among embodiment, disembodiment, subjectivity, and intersubjectivity. The analysis brings together Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari’s concept of the Body without Organs, Charles Goodwin and Marjorie Harness Goodwin’s work on cooperation and multimodal interaction, and Alessandro Duranti’s account of improvisation. Focusing on Population: One and Richie’s Plank Experience, I argue that improvisation emerges through the unstable relation between the biophysical body and the digital body. Glitches, misalignments, and other breakdowns create moments in which participants must adjust ongoing action spontaneously, thereby destabilizing established physical and linguistic categories. These moments reveal a continuing process of deterritorialization and reterritorialization through which bodies, joint action, and agency are continuously reconfigured.

This special issue pursues a social semiotic study of improvisation. The approach considers the phenomenon both as a constitutive dimension of action and as a socially recognizable achievement. Contributions share a common focus on interaction, which is analyzed across multiple modalities including virtual reality, heavy machinery, paint and canvas, rock, theater, war, and the ethical relation between self and other.

This study examines how love is metaphorically represented by non‑native English speakers, focusing on German learners of English as a second language. Drawing on interviews conducted in 2024, the research investigates the metaphorical linguistic features and conceptualizations used by 96 bachelor’s degree students when expressing love in English. Participants were asked to describe situations in which they would express love and to provide examples of how they would formulate such expressions. As the interviews took place in English used as a lingua franca, the dataset reflects communicative practices characteristic of ELF interactions, including creative or non‑standard metaphor use. Conceptual Metaphor Theory (CMT) serves as the analytical framework for identifying and interpreting the metaphorical patterns in the data. By relying on naturally occurring language rather than introspective intuition, the study addresses critiques of CMT, including its dependence on researcher interpretation and limited empirical grounding. The findings show how socio‑cultural background, L1 conceptual structures and L2 proficiency shape metaphorical expressions of love, contributing to a deeper understanding of emotional metaphor use in second language contexts.

This roundtable discussion convenes contributors to this special issue for reflections on the diversity of their research questions, approaches, and findings, as well as avenues for further inquiry. The discussion touches on several shared concerns, including the role of lexicalization in improvised forms becoming intelligible, enregistered, and reusable; how improvisational action might implicate action below the threshold of awareness; and more generally the relation between sign-processes and embodied action. In doing so, this roundtable discussion considers the importance of social semiotic analysis for understanding improvisation.

China’s persistently low fertility is associated with fertility inequality, reflected in a U-shaped relationship between household human capital and fertility. We develop an overlapping-generations model showing that this pattern depends on the substitutability of educational inputs. When educational inputs are complementary, fertility is U-shaped in household human capital, with middle-human-capital households having the fewest children; when inputs are substitutable, the relationship is inverted U-shaped. Using China Family Panel Studies data, we find a robust U-shaped relationship between household human capital and fertility, significant complementarity among educational time, monetary investment, and household human capital in children’s human-capital formation, and similar patterns across eastern, central, and western China. Complementarity requires households to increase time and monetary inputs jointly, intensifying the quantity–quality trade-off, particularly for middle-human-capital households. Policies that enhance substitutability among educational inputs may therefore mitigate fertility inequality and raise aggregate fertility.

Food habits vary across ethnic groups and geographical regions. However, validated dietary assessment tools accounting for such diversity remain limited. A semi-quantitative food frequency questionnaire (FFQ) was developed and validated to assess the habitual food intake of adolescents and adults across Malaysia. The 147-item FFQ was constructed using commonly consumed foods from five main ethnicities (Malay, Chinese, Indian, and Sabah and Sarawak indigenous groups) identified from national surveys. A cross-sectional validation study was conducted among purposively sampled healthy individuals aged 10–59 years from 16 administrative regions. Trained community nutritionists administered the FFQ to assess monthly intake, alongside a three-day dietary record and recall (3DRR) covering two weekdays and one weekend. Spearman’s correlation, Bland–Altman plots, and quartile cross-classification evaluated the agreement between the FFQ and 3DRR for energy, macronutrients, and selected micronutrients (Vitamin C, thiamine, calcium, and iron). Respondents (n = 361; 50.3% adults, 49.7% adolescents) were 50.4% female and represented five main ethnicities (range: 15.8–25.2%), with 60.4% from Peninsular Malaysia. Energy intake estimated by the FFQ (median: 2285 kcal) was significantly higher than by the 3DRR (median: 1785 kcal; Wilcoxon p < 0.001). Spearman’s correlation coefficients observed for energy (crude r = 0.31), and selected nutrients (energy-adjusted r range: 0.19–0.38), along with <10% of extreme quartile misclassification indicated acceptable ranking ability and agreement for most nutrients. Bland–Altman plots indicated no proportional bias for energy and macronutrients. In conclusion, the FFQ is a valid tool for assessing dietary intake within the multi-ethnic Malaysian population nationwide.

This article examines how artificial intelligence (AI) became framed as a critical node of U.S.–China strategic competition between 2015 and 2023, arguing that “hybrid epistemic experts” – figures who straddle technical expertise, corporate leadership and policy influence – played a decisive role in shaping elite understanding of AI. Through a critical review of policy documents, news media, public statements and institutional developments, this article examines how the “U.S.–China AI Race” narrative did not emerge along the usual pathways of state-driven, top-down bureaucratic processes or traditional lobbying but was actively constructed and amplified by figures like former Google executive Eric Schmidt. Schmidt’s role as a hybrid actor allowed him to translate AI from a narrow technological domain into an existential competition requiring massive policy investment. This overarching capability was driven by AI’s speculative, technically complex and general-purpose nature, which has concentrated knowledge production in private hands, enabling hybrid actors to achieve disproportionate influence over AI policy discourse. This phenomenon raises concerns about democratic governance, the collapse of independent expertise and the self-reinforcing dynamics between private power and public policymaking in emerging technologies.

Lawrence Goodwyn’s Democratic Promise: The Populist Moment in America (1976), a pathbreaking book on the history of Populism and agrarianism, turns fifty in 2026. In this retrospective roundtable, a distinguished panel of historians of Populism discusses the book and its legacy, as well as its author and the relevant historiographical debates. Democratic Promise, which focused largely (although not exclusively) on Texas, was one of several works that pushed back against earlier analyses of the Populists, such as the largely negative portrayal in Richard Hofstadter’s The Age of Reform (1955). Goodwyn, who taught for more than three decades at Duke University, controversially introduced the idea of a “shadow movement” that effectively derailed the promise of Populism. Nevertheless, Goodwyn’s book was tremendously influential, and it still demands the attention of historians of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era.