This essay links Jeremy Bentham and Immanuel Kant more closely in their politics and political theory through a shared, substantially similar debt to Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations. In particular, I argue that on some key political questions that are foundational to liberalism, they draw strikingly akin lessons from Smith and build on his ideas in a similar direction. That is, even otherwise very different strands of early liberalism find agreement on a constellation of ideas about trade, federalism, and peace. I show that these are not just preoccupations of Kant’s potentially idiosyncratic Perpetual Peace, but help define the whole political tradition.

Life insurance companies, including those founded by African Americans, historically sought to invest their policyholders’ premiums in reliable securities, including mortgages. With fewer safe investment outlets after the Great Depression, government-backed mortgages resulting from New Deal housing market reforms attracted insurers seeking security, into the early 1950s. However, with the post-World War II economy on an upswing and growth-related inflation looking likely, the potential downsides of federally insured mortgages grew clearer. The Eisenhower administration (1953–1961) especially leaned on institutional investors to underwrite low-interest home loans backed by the Federal Housing Administration and Veterans Administration. However, Black-owned life insurance firms faced competitive disadvantages due to their small size, information asymmetries, and a postwar housing market characterized by pervasive racial discrimination, mounting civil rights gains notwithstanding. This situation put African American life insurers in a difficult position as they continued to function as a credit reserve for the Black middle class, while simultaneously trying to work with federal agencies and remain profitable despite their limited influence in the broader financial economy.

This article reframes late medieval and early modern merchant governance through the lens of distrust, conceived as a structured and productive force for sustaining order amid uncertainty. Drawing on insights from economic sociology and organizational studies, and grounded in archival documents from across Europe, it introduces the art of distrust as a framework for understanding how merchants navigated both foreseeable risks and deeper, more pervasive forms of the unknown. Distrust operated as a discipline embedded in recursive documentation, distributed surveillance, rhetorical restraint, and tactical conflict management. These practices were not merely technical responses to risk but part of a broader normative tradition honed over centuries of mercantile life and codified in manuals guiding merchants in observing others and managing their own conduct. The protocols of vigilance articulated in this literature treated opacity as a terrain to be strategically navigated in the name of the common good. Their echoes in courtly and political writings invite reflection on how mercantile practices of surveillance and self-discipline contributed to shaping impersonal rule as a defining logic of modern institutional life.

The crystal structures of two arylcyclohexylamine derivatives – methoxmetamine·HCl (2-(3-methoxyphenyl)-2-(methylamino)cyclohexan-1-one hydrochloride, MMXE·HCl) and methoxetamine·HCl (2-(ethylamino)-2-(3-methoxyphenyl)cyclohexan-1-one hydrochloride, MXE·HCl) – have been determined using laboratory X-ray powder diffraction data contained in the Powder Diffraction File™. MMXE·HCl and MXE·HCl exhibit anesthetic and sedative effects and have been illicitly used as recreational drugs due to their dissociative hallucinogenic and euphoriant effects. The structure determination of MMXE·HCl and MXE·HCl was carried out with DASH, and the Rietveld refinements were performed with TOPAS Academic in monoclinic unit cells. The parameters obtained for MMXE·HCl were a = 15.0429(5) Å, b = 14.0721(5) Å, c = 6.5716(2) Å, β = 90.9864(14)°, and V = 1,390.91(8) Å3, with Z = 4 and space group P21/n. The parameters obtained for MXE·HCl were a = 8.7772(5) Å, b = 9.9528(7) Å, c = 8.5841(6) Å, β = 100.276(3)°, and V = 737.86(8) Å3, with Z = 2 and space group P21. The structures were validated by dispersion-corrected DFT calculations. Hirshfeld surface analysis and fingerprint plots calculations are also reported.

Polychoric correlation is often an important building block in the analysis of rating data, particularly for structural equation models. However, the commonly employed maximum likelihood (ML) estimator is highly susceptible to misspecification of the polychoric correlation model, for instance, through violations of latent normality assumptions. We propose a novel estimator that is designed to be robust against partial misspecification of the polychoric model, that is, when the model is misspecified for an unknown fraction of observations, such as careless respondents. To this end, the estimator minimizes a robust loss function based on the divergence between observed frequencies and theoretical frequencies implied by the polychoric model. In contrast to existing literature, our estimator makes no assumption on the type or degree of model misspecification. It furthermore generalizes ML estimation, is consistent as well as asymptotically normally distributed, and comes at no additional computational cost. We demonstrate the robustness and practical usefulness of our estimator in simulation studies and an empirical application on a Big Five administration. In the latter, the polychoric correlation estimates of our estimator and ML differ substantially, which, after further inspection, is likely due to the presence of careless respondents that the estimator helps identify.

This paper examines how the design and realisation of a concert presentation entitled Drawing Sound in Space led to the concept of digital spatial notation. Seven Australian composers were commissioned to create digital scores for an electroacoustic chamber music ensemble, and scores were shared with the audience. The author argues that contemporary digital notation practices enhance live performances of new music by expanding concepts of the audiovisual to include alternative notational approaches engaging with space, creating a ‘spatial notation’. Further, Drawing Sound in Space aimed to transform musicianship and audience experience by offering a more immersive encounter with music notation as a multimodal, social practice where audience engagement and musical understanding are enhanced. A theoretical framework is provided to facilitate the analysis of each work, where semiotic expansion, temporal engagement, distributed agency and spatial reconfiguration are discussed. Through different approaches to presenting music notation in Drawing Sound in Space, the project sought to provide audiences with a novel concert experience whilst simultaneously challenging composers to design notation intended for audiences as well as performers.

Using calibrated radiocarbon dates, this study investigates climate signals recorded in fluvial sedimentary archives from southern Poland, eastern Netherlands, and eastern Germany. Summed probability density functions (PDFs) were constructed and analyzed in the context of INTIMATE stratigraphy. The results indicate that fluvial sedimentation and erosion processes were closely linked to climate fluctuations, particularly during GS/GI and GI/GS transitions. The analyses indicate multi-scale relationships between regional geomorphological processes and global climate trends during the period from 50 to 15 cal kBP. This study provides a reconstruction of Late Pleistocene fluvial activity and highlights the need for more precise radiocarbon dates to refine correlations between regional and global climate events.

We prove a common refinement of theorems of Bergfalk and of Casarosa and Lambie-Hanson, showing that under certain hypotheses, the higher derived limits of a certain inverse system of abelian groups $\mathbf {A}$ do not vanish. The refined theorem has a number of interesting corollaries, including the nonvanishing of the second derived limit of $\mathbf {A}$ in many of the common models of set theory of the reals and in the Mitchell model. In particular, we disprove a conjecture of Bergfalk, Hrušák, and Lambie-Hanson that higher derived limits of $\mathbf {A}$ vanish in the Miller model.

Capitalism is in trouble, or so we have been told. I argue that Adam Smith has a lot to teach us about the future of capitalism. I first examine recent discussions about the current challenges and criticisms against capitalism such as the productivity slowdown, waning competition, the role of globalization, rising inequality, and climate change. I emphasize that there are some global trends, but there are also important national and regional differences reflecting differences in institutions and policy. Not only natural-scientific technology, but also social-scientific technology—that is, governance, policy, and institutions—matter. Then, I explain what Smith can teach us. First, Adam Smith conceives a truly inclusive capitalism: he takes income distribution into account when he argues for the desirability of economic development. Second, inclusive capitalism requires broad formation and sharing of knowledge among people. Third, the expansion of exchange and trade has beneficial effects, but we should be aware of its distributional consequences. Fourth, institutions matter. Fifth, proper law and institutions—the “system of natural liberty”—are essential to a well-functioning market economy. However, the “system of natural liberty” is not automatically achieved. Policy and institutions are history-dependent; therefore, history matters.

The discovery of Middle Bronze Age field systems at Fengate, to the east of Peterborough, Cambridgeshire (Pryor 1980), in the 1970s, was hugely significant for Bronze Age studies in eastern England. Since then, gravel quarry excavations along the western edge of the East Anglian Fens – several of which have become vast, long-running landscape projects – have shaped our understanding of the region’s prehistory. This paper will examine new evidence from the (comparatively) ‘upland’ region of East Anglia, to the south and east of the Fens – primarily through two case study landscapes: South Cambridgeshire (along the Cam Valley) and East Norfolk (the Bure and Yare/Wensum Valleys). Both areas have seen extensive archaeological investigation over the past 15 years and offer new perspectives on the region’s Bronze Age, where land division and settlement context appear different to that of the Fenland and where burial rites display a diversity that has until recently been largely unrecognised. Recent and upcoming publication of these landscapes highlights the need for up-to-date synthesis and review of the region’s Middle Bronze Age evidence, and accordingly, the wider East Anglian context is also briefly considered here, in the hope of providing stimulus for further research and analysis.

On 25 April 2024, Portugal celebrated the 50th anniversary of the Portuguese Revolution of Carnations, which led to the establishment of democracy in the country. Commemorations took place throughout the year. Moreover, it was a super year of legislative elections and subnational elections in the Azores and Madeira. On top of the national- and subnational levels of electioneering, there were also European Parliament elections. A new minority government came into office under Prime Minister Luis Montenegro.

After Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the United States Supreme Court decision that overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022, OB/GYN residents’ access to abortion training, which is required in all accredited programs, has come under pressure. To receive the foundational training doctors in the field need, many residents in ban states travel to out-of-state programs where abortion is legal. But demand is high, travel for multiple weeks is expensive, and the capacity to train at host sites is limited.

Training by travel could have ripple effects for the quality of patient care. As the number of OB/GYNs continues to decrease, newly-trained providers will have different, and arguably diminished, skills in delivering not just elective but also medically necessary abortion care. And as exceptions for life and health become how legal, procedural terminations take place in one-third of the United States, there is no guarantee that the doctors in those states will feel comfortable providing that care.

This article explores the residency training provided today, providers’ and institutions’ navigation of abortion bans, and what changes in residency programs might mean for patient care in the coming years. Part I surveys the landscape of abortion law after Dobbs; even the strictest bans contemplate instances when abortion is medically required and legally permitted. Part II summarizes the pre- and post-Dobbs expectations for abortion training for OB/GYN residents, describing how graduate medical education has changed for residents in ban states. Part III assesses shorter and longer-term effects of a system that relies on travel and simulation (the use of models) or is out of compliance with national accreditation standards. Part IV concludes with potential paths forward that depend on state and national organizations supporting and funding the networks of health care professionals that facilitate training across the country.