The potential withdrawal of the United States from European security commitments has raised questions about the future of nuclear deterrence on the continent. This article explores the feasibility of France assuming the role currently played by the United States in the ‘dual-key’ nuclear sharing arrangements with European NATO members. The analysis is divided into five main sections. The article begins by outlining the strategic context in which this analysis takes place, focusing on the potential withdrawal of the United States from European security commitments and the growing emphasis on the European Union’s strategic autonomy. Against this backdrop, the article first examines France’s technical capabilities to lead a dual-key system in Europe, addressing aspects such as the number of nuclear warheads, delivery vectors, and operational compatibility with European allies. Next, it analyses the political and doctrinal implications of a French-led dual-key system, identifying which aspects of French nuclear doctrine might require revision or could create friction. The article also explores potential forums for nuclear dialogue and coordination, as well as the challenges of harmonising France’s national doctrine with a hypothetical extended framework for dual-key countries. In the third section, the article evaluates the political and security utility of a French-based dual-key system. Finally, it assesses the strategic, operational, and doctrinal implications of shifting from a US nuclear provider to a French one, highlighting both potential benefits and challenges. The findings suggest that, while a French-led dual-key system is technically feasible, significant political obstacles must be overcome for successful implementation.

Historians of the Cold War and the nuclear age have largely overlooked the existence of tabletop role-playing games (TTRPGs), while films, comics, novels, and television programmes that tackled the challenging imaginary, yet all-too-possible, wastes of a post-nuclear landscape have been abundantly analysed. As cultural products and tools through which to imagine other worlds, TTRPGs offer powerful insights into how, where, and why certain groups thought about the spectre of the nuclear age and how they dealt with this threat by gaming within make-believe postapocalyptic worlds. This article draws together several threads in its analysis of the American-designed and -produced Twilight: 2000 TTRPG’s historical significance. Through analysing Twilight: 2000 as a case study of how a TTRPG functions as a specific nuclear-cultural object in its own right, the article also locates this game as a part of a wider-reaching dystopian fantasy rooted in the massive everyday reality of atomic annihilation. Likewise, the game, its mechanics, setting, and artwork are analysed here as part of a distinctive Cold War culture that permitted participants to derive pleasure and affirmation from fictional “adventures” in the postapocalyptic environment.

There is a rich history of using the arts in psychiatric care, e.g. in various forms of arts therapies. A more recent development is the collaboration of the arts in psychiatric research. The arts and psychiatric research have several fundamental differences which can lead to fruitful inspiration and innovative approaches in research. The benefits include a wider engagement of individuals and non-academic groups in research, creativity in designing research approaches, a reach to societal groups that academic research usually cannot access, and the provision of real life meaning to research evidence. Two examples of such collaborations illustrate the potentials.

Voters are increasingly turning away from governing parties in parliamentary elections, with junior parties in coalition governments often bearing the brunt of the electorate’s dissatisfaction. Can the design of legislative institutions help parties mitigate the electoral costs of governing? We suggest that in systems with strong legislative committees, junior coalition parties are better positioned to protect their party’s policy brand from being eroded, which in turn helps insulate them from the electoral costs of governing. Analyzing data on legislative committees and party-level electoral outcomes in 36 European and OECD countries from 1990 to 2019, we find that stronger parliamentary committee systems are associated with harsher electoral costs for the prime minister’s party but reduced electoral costs for junior coalition parties. Our findings suggest that the structure of legislative institutions in parliamentary systems can have significant electoral implications, including relatively positive outcomes for smaller governing parties.

This article analyses how forms of private cooperation between East and West were reshaped during the late Cold War and beyond. It does so by studying an elitist East–West club, called the International Vienna Council, which brings together leaders of multinational companies and leaders of the planned economy. While the permeability of the iron curtain has been well documented, little is known about the evolution of East–West circulation patterns during that time or the role played by economic elites. The International Vienna Council, initially a forum for ‘parallel diplomacy’, gradually became a platform for concrete business cooperation. The club’s activities continued after 1989, but it struggled with the transition from an East–West club to an interest group within the European Union. These dynamics shed light on the gradual autonomy of a private East–West cooperation group and its contribution to defining a pan-European economic space since the 1970s.

The Pósa–Seymour conjecture determines the minimum degree threshold for forcing the $k$th power of a Hamilton cycle in a graph. After numerous partial results, Komlós, Sárközy, and Szemerédi proved the conjecture for sufficiently large graphs. In this paper, we focus on the analogous problem for digraphs and for oriented graphs. We asymptotically determine the minimum total degree threshold for forcing the square of a Hamilton cycle in a digraph. We also give a conjecture on the corresponding threshold for $k$th powers of a Hamilton cycle more generally. For oriented graphs, we provide a minimum semi-degree condition that forces the $k$th power of a Hamilton cycle; although this minimum semi-degree condition is not tight, it does provide the correct order of magnitude of the threshold. Turán-type problems for oriented graphs are also discussed.

By investigating 321 smuggling vessels that travelled between the Faroe Isles and the British Isles between 1775 and 1785, this article explores the regionality and seasonality of illegal trade in the north Atlantic. The article centres on a neglected oceanic region, thereby inverting historical geographies, shifting the focus from port centres like London and Copenhagen to the Scottish Northern and Western Isles, as well as the Faroe Islands. Epitomizing the ‘dichotomy of insularity’, in the eighteenth century these areas were located along maritime highways of global trade, and illegal trade flourished there, despite their challenging location. The article demonstrates that this illegal trade had different seasonal cycles from those of legal trade. While legal trade halted in the winter season, illegal trade continued throughout. Linking illegal maritime activities to more lawful ones, like fishing, the article suggests that the recurring nature of the contraband trade ought to be understood in relation to the broader coastal culture, in which maritime knowledge was circulated and the local relationship to the sea defined. The study suggests that illegal trade should be viewed not merely as an extension of globalization but as a rooted phenomenon, which developed in unison with the local environment.

The recent advancements in digital technologies have made remote work a core aspect of modern organizations, bringing opportunities and challenges for employee well-being. Drawing on the Job Demands-Resources model, the study investigates key stressors undermining employees’ well-being within digitalized settings. Fuzzy total interpretive structural modeling (F-TISM) and MICMAC analysis are employed to understand the hierarchical interrelationship and classify the stressors according to their driving and dependence power. The findings reveal low supervisor support, unrealistic supervisor expectations, digital overload, digital fatigue, and constant connectivity as critical drivers undermining remote workers’ well-being in these work practices. The proposed health impairment process of the JD-R model provides theoretical insights into how high job demands in digitalized settings undermine the well-being of remote workers, amid the growing emphasis on digital transition and flexible work models. The developed decision model provides actionable insights for practitioners and policymakers.

AMSTAR-2 (A Measurement Tool to Assess Systematic Reviews, version 2) and ROBIS are tools used to assess the methodological quality and the risk of bias in a systematic review (SR). We applied AMSTAR-2 and ROBIS to a sample of 200 published SRs. We investigated the overlap in their methodological constructs, responses by item, and overall, percentage agreement, direction of effect, and timing of assessments. AMSTAR-2 contains 16 items and ROBIS 24 items. Three items in AMSTAR-2 and nine in ROBIS did not overlap in construct. Of the 200 SRs, 73% were low or critically low quality using AMSTAR-2, and 81% had a high risk of bias using ROBIS. The median time to complete AMSTAR-2 and ROBIS was 51 and 64 minutes, respectively. When assessment times were calibrated to the number of items in each tool, each item took an average of 3.2 minutes per item for AMSTAR-2 compared to 2.7 minutes for ROBIS. Nine percent of SRs had opposing ratings (i.e., AMSTAR-2 was high quality while ROBIS was high risk). In both tools, three-quarters of items showed more than 70% agreement between raters after extensive training and piloting. AMSTAR-2 and ROBIS provide complementary rather than interchangeable assessments of systematic reviews. AMSTAR-2 may be preferable when efficiency is prioritized and methodological rigour is the focus, whereas ROBIS offers a deeper examination of potential biases and external validity. Given the widespread reliance on systematic reviews for policy and practice, selecting the appropriate appraisal tool remains crucial. Future research should explore strategies to integrate the strengths of both instruments while minimizing the burden on assessors.

With the increasing number and diversity of reptile species kept in zoological facilities and households, their welfare in captivity warrants structured and consistent evaluation. However, focused research on reptile welfare remains limited within the broader field of animal welfare science. Recognising such a gap, this study adopts an evidence-informed approach to review existing literature and proposes two conceptual welfare assessment frameworks — one for zoo settings and another for private keeping. We first identify the intended audiences for each framework and discuss common challenges reptile caretakers may face when conducting welfare assessments in different contexts. The frameworks are grounded in established principles from the Five Domains model and the European Welfare Quality® protocol, incorporating both resource- and animal-based indicators under the domains of Environment, Nutrition, Physical Health, and Behaviour. The design rationale is also explained to support future refinement. Finally, these conceptual frameworks are intended as a foundation for the development and validation of adaptable tools, capable of guiding improved husbandry practices and resource allocation for better welfare outcomes across a broad range of reptile taxa.

Awards are widely used as incentives. This paper situates awards in the broader incentives landscape and shows how the motivational value of awards can be understood through a framework that considers three sources of value: the tangible component of an award, the social signals it emits, and its self-signaling function. We identify and discuss several major characteristics of awards through the lenses of these three dimensions: the audience, scarcity, the giver’s status, and the selection process. Based on our framework, we integrate the awards literature published across economics, psychology, management, and sociology journals to elucidate what has been learned and offer a roadmap for future experimental research on awards and incentives.

Dietary patterns are prerequisites for health and integral components of ecological systems. For over a century researchers have been building a body of evidence of associations between dietary patterns and health and sustainability outcomes while policymakers have been synthesising and translating this evidence into policies to promote public health. During this period, food systems have dramatically changed and driven the emergence of food supplies and dietary behaviours with no ecological or evolutionary precedent. Now, the relevance of conventional nutrition research and policymaking approaches for understanding food system transitions and protecting against unhealthy and unsustainable diets is being questioned. This review aims to examine how the ecological nutrition paradigm might guide a transformed approach to nutrition research and policymaking to promote healthy and sustainable diets. It shows the ecological nutrition paradigm is transdisciplinary integrating biological, social and environmental dimensions into nutrition research and policymaking. The paradigm operates to a ‘fit-for-purpose’ policymaking orientation. It draws on ecological and evolutionary theories to provide insights to conceptualise the causes of, and solutions to, nutrition problems and help design relevant decision-making processes. These research and policymaking features contrast with the ‘one-size-fits-all’ policymaking orientation and prescriptive decision-making processes of the conventional medical nutrition paradigm. Their attention to a relevance criterion engenders confidence in the likely effectiveness, and ability to avoid unintended consequences, of policies informed within an ecological nutrition paradigm. The review proposes a shift to the ecological nutrition paradigm to transform nutrition research and policymaking for promoting healthy and sustainable diets is overdue.

The European Union (EU) is currently overhauling its pharmaceutical regulations, seeking to mature a single market for medicines as part of a ‘European Health Union’. We reflect on the interactions between regulations and markets in these reforms and investigate what this single market for medicines may mean in practice. We note how the proposed reforms aim to ensure equitable access to innovative treatments, yet at the same time, tie this access directly to regulatory exclusivities, limiting price competition. The reforms also do not seek full pricing transparency: prices will remain largely opaque and be set at the national levels rather than created through market exchange and open competition at the EU level. The envisioned single market for medicines thus remains a market that operates without direct reference to price − a situation not addressed head-on by the proposed reforms.

Existing research documents a log-linear relationship between income and subjective well-being, known as the income–well-being gradient. Using data from millions of Americans, mainly from the Gallup Daily Poll, we find significant racial differences in this gradient. Whites exhibit a steeper income–well-being gradient than Blacks, Hispanics, and Asians. These gradient differences remain after accounting for demographic, socioeconomic, neighborhood, and relative income factors. Additional analyses reveal similar racial heterogeneity in (i) other well-being measures, (ii) expected future well-being, and (iii) the age–well-being relationship. These findings underscore the important role of race in the well-being relationships and the need to better understand the dimensions of heterogeneity in the income–well-being gradient.

Our ability to accurately quantify the total ice volume in glaciers and the loss of glacier volume, discharge and freshwater in response to climate change is limited by a paucity of ice thickness and bed topography observations. Consequently, glacial ice thickness is often inferred indirectly from more easily obtained surface measurements. Here, we present a simple inversion building on the assumption of perfect plasticity. In the traditional perfect-plastic approximation, the ice thickness (or bed) can be inferred from the surface elevation and yield strength. Here, we extend this to demonstrate that, provided glaciers are changing, we can simultaneously determine the yield strength and bed topography from observations of surface elevation alone. We demonstrate that the ice thicknesses and bed topographies we infer perform comparably to other inversions documented in the Ice Thickness Models Intercomparison eXperiment. Unlike other inversions, we do not require surface mass balance or glacier velocities, which can be inaccurate and difficult to obtain. Given the increasing availability of high-resolution surface elevation data, it may be possible to apply this method to glaciers worldwide to better constrain the ice thickness, bed topography and volume of glaciers globally.