Measurements of the ionisation state of the intergalactic medium (IGM) can probe the sources of the extragalactic ionising background. We provide new measurements of the ionising emissivity of galaxies using measurements of the ionising background and ionising photon mean free path from high-redshift quasar spectra at $2.5 \lt z \lt 6$. Unlike most prior works, we account for radiative-transfer effects and possible neutral islands from the tail of reionisation at $z \gt 5$. We combine our results with measurements of the UV luminosity function to constrain the average escaping ionising efficiency of galaxies, $\langle f_{\textrm{esc}} \xi_{\textrm{ion}}\rangle_{L_{\textrm{UV}}}$. Assuming galaxies with $M_{\textrm{UV}} \lt -11$ emit ionising photons, we find $\log (\langle f_{\textrm{esc}} \xi_{\textrm{ion}}\rangle_{L_{\textrm{UV}}}/{\textrm {erg}^{-1}Hz}) = 24.47_{-0.17}^{+0.09}$ and $24.75_{-0.28}^{+0.15}$ at $z=5$ and 6, and $1\sigma$ upper limits of $24.48$ and $24.31$ at $z = 2.5$ and 4, respectively. We also estimate the population-averaged $f_{\textrm{esc}}$ using measurements of intrinsic ionising efficiency from JWST. We find $\langle f_{\textrm{esc}} \rangle = 0.126_{-0.041}^{+0.034}$ and $0.224_{-0.108}^{+0.098}$ at $z=5$ and 6, and $1\sigma$ upper limits of $f_{\textrm{esc}}\lt 0.138$ and $0.096$ at $z=2.5$ and 4, respectively, for $M_{\textrm{UV}} \lt -11$. Our findings are consistent with prior measurements of $f_{\textrm{esc}} \lesssim 10\%$ at $z \leq 4$, but indicate a factor of several increase between $z = 4$ and 6. The steepness of this evolution is sensitive to the highly uncertain mean free path and ionising background intensity at $z\gt5$. Lastly, we find $1.10^{+0.21}_{-0.39}$ photons per H atom are emitted into the IGM between $z=6$ and $=5.3$. This is $\approx 4\times$ more than needed to complete the last 20% of reionisation absent recombinations, suggesting that reionisation’s end was likely absorption-dominated.

The Chinese Cultural Revolution reverberated the world over. As many scholars have shown, Maoism, an amorphous body of ideas originating from Chairman Mao Zedong, fed into different facets of the U.S. New Left, becoming one of the most powerful political forces in the 1960s. This article examines the fragmentation of U.S. Maoism in the 1970s to further illuminate the relationship between Mao’s China and its devout followers in the heartland of capitalism. As Sino-American “rapprochement” unfolded, U.S. Maoists travelled to China in droves to learn the essence of Mao’s revolution and replicate their own back home. They sought to build a united front party modeled after the Chinese Communist Party, while debating the “correct” line that their party should follow, an ideological altercation that fueled factional tension. Drawing on an array of U.S. and Chinese sources, this article argues that the quest for unity and struggle, the core tenet of Maoism, precipitated its downfall in the United States.

In recent years, Southern Thailand has witnessed an increase in surface planted with oil palm, driven primarily by smallholders who contribute over 90% of Thailand’s oil palm output. Despite their significant contribution, oil palm smallholders have consistently achieved lower yields compared to agro-industries, and limited research has been conducted to understand the limiting factors, such as management practices. Structured interviews were conducted to gather information about management practices and estimate the fresh fruit bunch yield in a network of 18 plantations in Krabi province, Thailand. A clustering approach, combining principal component analysis and hierarchical cluster analysis, was used to characterise the diversity of smallholder management practices. Four clusters of management practices were highlighted, characterised by varying intensities of fertiliser application (nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium), mechanical versus chemical weeding, and harvest intervals. Notably, the farmers in our study applied less fertiliser, on average, than the recommendations of Thai Good Agricultural Practices. A significant portion of plots in the area (12 out of 18 plots) achieved good yields compared to attainable yields. A clear relationship between management practices and yield could however not be established. The large diversity of oil palm smallholders’ management practices and their performances highlighted in this study need to be better taken into account and understood in order to improve sustainability and foster certification schemes such as Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO).

Alcohol misuse among women has risen compared to men. Women experience barriers to engaging in patient-centered comparative effectiveness research (CER) that, in turn, limits the evidence base for addressing alcohol misuse in this population. In this manuscript, we describe WomenWise, a community-partnered project and outline how we co-developed community focused CER training curriculum and collaboratively planned future partnered learning sessions (PLSs) with Community Advisory Board (CAB) feedback. Through this approach we aim to empower women to contribute to future patient-centered CER and enhance the stakeholder capacity for future patient-centered research.

Population is a key factor of national power. Declining fertility rates, especially in major economies, are reshaping global power dynamics by shrinking workforces amidst aging populations. In response, more nations are adopting techno-natalist policies, promoting reproductive technologies (“reprotech”) like IVF to increase birth rates. Advances in genetic embryo selection, gene editing, in vitro gametogenesis, and artificial wombs could further enhance these policies by improving birth rates, health, and human capital. This article examines current and emerging reprotechnologies, the policy landscape, socioeconomic and geopolitical implications, and future research directions. By shaping national and global gene pools, reprotech policies and practices offer a paradigmatic case of gene–culture coevolution. If these technologies prove safe and effective, nations that embrace them are likely to gain geopolitical and evolutionary advantages over those that do not.

Many people experiencing mental ill health are trapped in cycles of worsening social exclusion. Individual Placement and Support (IPS) is being implemented to support those with mental ill health into employment. However, this intervention does not address the many challenges faced by those who are more vulnerable and is less effective for those with more severe clinical presentations. Although National Health Service (NHS) guidance suggests broader support is needed, there is little clarity over what this should look like. We discuss one model, drawing on years of experience facilitating user-led services at Lambeth Vocational Services, implementing a genuinely person-centred, trust-based approach to facilitate social inclusion.

Social scientists are paying attention to the role that knowledge plays in economic phenomena. This focus on knowledge has led to exploring two challenges: first, its governance to reap positive externalities and solve social dilemmas, and second, how we can craft institutions to match the intangible nature of ideas with adequate property rules. This article contributes by elaborating on the different knowledge property regimes and the elements contributing to their classification. This paper first taxonomises knowledge governance regimes based on Ostrom’s work on institutional analysis. Second, it examines why governance structures for managing knowledge production vary across industries, according to (1) the characteristics of knowledge, (2) the attributes of the organisations, and (3) the different rules-in-use to enforce property rights. This is the first study at the intersection of institutional analysis and political economy that highlights the knowledge features, incentive structures, and mechanisms undergirding knowledge governance in different property regimes.

Culture is increasingly articulated by financial actors and financial firms as a solution to the dislocations of contemporary capitalism. It therefore matters, not just how actors behave, but how they articulate culture and what importance they accord it. Drawing on pragmatist sociology, the present paper takes this injunction seriously and reports the findings of a field study involving 29 interviews with senior members of financial firms whose understanding of culture and its importance were interrogated directly. The discourse concerning purposeful culture articulated in these interviews simultaneously recognises current arrangements between finance and society as fractured while positing organisational culture initiatives as the most realistic means of repairing said fracture. The paper draws on these findings to argue that, despite masquerading as a call for change, purposeful culture discourse has the effect of protecting against calls to rethink or radically transform the roles and effects of finance in society. The paper thus contributes to sociological perspectives on finance by illustrating how existing cultural discourse in financial markets serves as a kind of conservative critique where shortcomings are conceded in a way which insulates finance from wider structural change.

This article tries to explain the flourishing of geopolitical alternatives to the nation-state form and foreign policies organized around giant militarized power blocs during the two decades after World War II. The first section presents these new approaches to organizing the world. The first set of alternatives consisted of ideas and practices of the federation and the amalgamation of states into larger political units. These included Senghor’s vision of a postcolonial federation in which France and its former colonies would be equals; Nkrumah’s vision of a United States of Africa; and various short-lived amalgamations of states, including the Mali Federation and the United Arab Republic. These new geopolitical alternatives also included nonalignment, which originated with Jawaharlal Nehru of India and culminated with Josip Broz Tito of Yugoslavia but also encompassed Ireland between 1957 and 1961 and France in the early Fifth Republic. One of the distinctive features of this conjuncture is that these experiments were not limited to the global peripheries, colonies, and recently decolonized states, but also characterized certain nonhegemonic European core countries. The second section examines a set of four factors in this period that created an opportunity structure or space of possibilities for geopolitical experimentation: (1) late colonialism; (2) the Cold War; (3) the character of decolonization; and (4) the United Nations. The coexistence of these factors opened spaces of maneuver and autonomy for a flourishing of geopolitical imaginaries. The final section discusses possible reasons for the end of this period of experimentation.

The global food system puts enormous pressure on the environment. Managing these pressures requires understanding not only where they occur (i.e., where food is produced), but also who drives them (i.e., where food is consumed). However, the size and complexity of global supply chains make it difficult to trace food production to consumption. Here, we provide the most comprehensive dataset of bilateral trade flows of environmental pressures stemming from food production from producing to consuming nations. The dataset provides environmental pressures for greenhouse gas emissions, water use, nitrogen and phosphorus pollution, and the area of land/water occupancy of food production for crops and animals from land, freshwater, and ocean systems. To produce these data, we improved upon reported food trade and production data to identify producing and consuming nations for each food item, allowing us to match food flows with appropriate environmental pressure data. These data provide a resource for research on sustainable global food consumption and the drivers of environmental impact.

Historians of colonial and postcolonial attempts to deal with undernutrition in Africa have generally argued that, after the Second World War, scientists and doctors “medicalized” hunger by emphasizing specific deficiencies that could be medically “cured” or alleviated through dietary supplements, thereby covering up the economic, social, and political causes of (post)colonial hunger. This article argues that this explanation obscures the persistence of a more holistic approach immediately after the Second World War, which rejected this narrow vision of hunger and, on the contrary, framed it as a very broad problem requiring interdisciplinary research and ambitious economic and social solutions. It focuses in particular on the work of British nutrition specialist B. S. Platt and his “experiment” in The Gambia that was meant to devise a replicable recipe to cure colonial malnutrition through mechanization and agricultural development. Like many other such colonial projects, the project ended in dismal failure, but it illustrates how malnutrition was understood at the end of the war as a broad economic and social problem. It also shows how this more holistic approach was tightly associated with the postwar project of colonial “development” and was predicated on an ambition to thoroughly re-engineer colonial landscapes and subjects.

The U.S. Supreme Court is often regarded as an impartial arbiter of justice, yet various prejudices may influence its decisions. This article examines Supreme Court justices’ biases, focusing on how they invoke racialized stereotypes of criminality. We argue that justices are more likely to vote in favor of white, nonviolent litigants, reinforcing stereotypes that depict nonwhite defendants as inherently more criminal and violent. Drawing on the U.S. Supreme Court Database’s criminal procedure cases from 2005–2017, combined with an original dataset of litigants’ racial identities, we estimate a series of multilevel logistic regressions. Our findings show that litigant race, crime type, and justice ideology jointly shape judicial votes. We further investigate how bias appears in justices’ written opinions, revealing language that perpetuates racialized conceptions of criminality. Overall, our results underscore the Court’s role in constructing what it means to be both “criminal” and “nonwhite,” suggesting that the Court is not a neutral interpreter of law, but an institution shaped by broader social and political biases.

While gender-based violence (GBV) is increasingly recognised as a significant social and political issue, its impact on women educators remains underexamined. In the context of growing concerns about violence against educators and the prevalence of GBV in educational institutions, this study investigates gendered patterns of violence against school leaders in Australian schools. Drawing on 18,172 observations from reports by principals and deputy principals, this analysis explores incidents of bullying, threats of violence, and physical violence to identify disparities in the experiences of men and women school leaders. The analysis determined that women school leaders were more likely to experience threats of violence and bullying at work than their male counterparts. Logistic regression analyses revealed that gender, school sector, and role significantly influence the likelihood of experiencing various forms of workplace violence, with women in secondary schools and those in government or Catholic sectors being particularly vulnerable.