World order projects frequently exhibit a structural contradiction of projecting inevitable success, yet simultaneously warn of existential fragility. While traditional theories of hegemonic order transition often dismiss such contradictions as incoherence, they fail to explain how great powers sustain mutually exclusive temporalities. This article advances the concept of ‘superposed present futures’ to theorize how great powers govern the radical uncertainty of international politics by maintaining conflicting temporalities simultaneously. Adopting a discursive superposition heuristic, we argue that the resilience of a world order project depends on managing an intra-actor paradox, as the project is discursively constructed as both historically inevitable and imminently threatened. The framework is operationalized through a qualitative analysis of China’s ‘Global Community of Shared Future’ (GCSF) discourse from 2013 to 2025 as a case study. By bridging quantum social theory with historiographical typologies of future generation, it is demonstrated how Beijing stabilizes the GCSF by superposing a future of inevitability to enhance international coordination, alongside a future of fragility to enforce political discipline in the face of complacency. The article contributes to the temporal turn in International Relations (IR) by reframing world order projects from linear projections to complex temporal regimes of expectation management that sustain power through productive tension.

The proliferating Sino-US peer competition is increasingly impacting Latin American states and triggering uncertainty. As China’s expanding influence in the region challenges longstanding US supremacy in the western hemisphere and reshapes the strategic calculus for regional states, hedging behaviour becomes increasingly opportune. This most notably includes Brazil, the largest state in Latin America both politically and economically, whose hedging behaviour oscillated between governments, a characteristic normally associated with states facing higher systemic pressures. As such, how does the Sino-US peer competition impact Brazil’s hedging strategy? And why do coping behaviours differ on various indices between different administrations, from Lula to Bolsonaro? Findings suggest that depending on whether the incumbent government was left- or right-wing, Brazil’s hedge was recalibrated as either pro- or anti-US regional supremacy.

We took a multilevel developmental contextual approach and characterized trajectories of alcohol misuse from adolescence through early midlife, examined genetic and environmental contributions to individual differences in those trajectories, and identified adolescent and young adult factors associated with change in alcohol misuse. Data were from two longitudinal population-based studies. FinnTwin16 is a study of Finnish twins assessed at 16, 17, 18, 25, and 35 years (N = 5659; 52% female; 32% monozygotic). The National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (Add Health) is a study of adolescents from the United States, who were assessed at five time points from 1994 to 2018 (N = 18026; 50% female; 64% White, 21% Black, 4% Native American, 7% Asian, 9% Other race/ethnicity). Alcohol misuse was measured as frequency of intoxication in FinnTwin16 and frequency of binge drinking in Add Health. In both samples, trajectories of alcohol misuse were best described by a quadratic growth curve: Alcohol misuse increased across adolescence, peaked in young adulthood, and declined into early midlife. Individual differences in these trajectories were primarily explained by environmental factors. Several adolescent and young adult correlates were related to the course of alcohol misuse, including other substance use, physical and mental health, and parenthood.

We assessed patterns of enteric infections caused by 14 pathogens, in a longitudinal cohort study of sequelae in British Columbia (BC) Canada, 2005–2014. Our population cohort of 5.8 million individuals was followed for an average of 7.5 years/person; during this time, 40 523 individuals experienced 42 308 incident laboratory-confirmed, provincially reported enteric infections (96.4 incident infections per 100 000 person-years). Most individuals (38 882/40 523; 96%) had only one, but 4% had multiple concurrent infections or more than one infection across the study. Among individuals with more than one infection, the pathogens and combinations occurring most frequently per individual matched the pathogens occurring most frequently in the BC population. An additional 298 557 new fee-for-service physician visits and hospitalisations for enteric infections, that did not coincide with a reported enteric infection, also occurred, and some may be potentially unreported enteric infections. Our findings demonstrate that sequelae risk analyses should explore the possible impacts of multiple infections, and that estimating risk for individuals who may have had a potentially unreported enteric infection is warranted.

The contribution to sea level to 2200 from the grounded, mainland Antarctic Peninsula ice sheet (APIS) was calculated using an ice-sheet model initialized with a new technique computing ice fluxes based on observed surface velocities, altimetry and surface mass balance, and computing volume response using a linearized method. Volume change estimates of the APIS resulting from surface mass-balance anomalies calculated by the regional model RACMO2, forced by A1B and E1 scenarios of the global models ECHAM5 and HadCM3, predicted net negative sea-level contributions between −0.5 and −12 mm sea-level equivalent (SLE) by 2200. Increased glacier flow due to ice thickening returned ∼15% of the increased accumulation to the sea by 2100 and ∼30% by 2200. The likely change in volume of the APIS by 2200 in response to imposed 10 and 20 km retreats of the grounding line at individual large outlet glaciers in Palmer Land, southern Antarctic Peninsula, ranged between 0.5 and 3.5 mm SLE per drainage basin. Ensemble calculations of APIS volume change resulting from imposed grounding-line retreat due to ice-shelf break-up scenarios applied to all 20 of the largest drainage basins in Palmer Land (covering ∼40% of the total area of APIS) resulted in net sea-level contributions of 7–16 mm SLE by 2100, and 10–25 mm SLE by 2200. Inclusion of basins in the northern peninsula and realistic simulation of grounding-line movement for AP outlet glaciers will improve future projections.

A detailed understanding of long-term climatic and environmental change in southwestern China is hampered by a lack of long-term regional palaeorecords. Organic analysis (%TOC, %TN, C/N ratios and δ13C values) of a sediment sequence from Lake Shudu, Yunnan Province (ca. 22.6–10.5 cal ka BP) indicates generally low aquatic palaeoproductivity rates over millennial timescales in response to cold, dry climatic conditions. However, the record is punctuated by two marked phases of increased aquatic productivity from ca. 17.7 to 17.1 cal ka BP and from ca. 11.9 to 10.5 cal ka BP. We hypothesise that these shifts reflect a marked, stepwise lacustrine response to Asian summer monsoon strengthening during the last deglaciation.

The purpose of this study was to address two methodological issues that have called into question whether previously reported gene–environment interaction (GxE) effects for adolescent alcohol use are ‘real’. These issues are (1) the potential correlation between the environmental moderator and the outcome across twins and (2) non-linear transformations of the behavioral outcome. Three environments that have been previously studied (peer deviance, parental knowledge, and potentially stressful life events) were examined here. For each moderator (peer deviance, parental knowledge, and potentially stressful life events), a series of models was fit to both a raw and transformed measure of monthly adolescent alcohol use in a sample that included 825 dizygotic (DZ) and 803 monozygotic (MZ) twin pairs. The results showed that the moderating effect of peer deviance was robust to transformation, and that although the significance of moderating effects of parental knowledge and potentially stressful life events were dependent on the scale of the adolescent alcohol use outcome, the overall results were consistent across transformation. In addition, the findings did not vary across statistical models. The consistency of the peer deviance results and the shift of the parental knowledge and potentially stressful life events results between trending and significant, shed some light on why previous findings for certain moderators have been inconsistent and emphasize the importance of considering both methodological issues and previous findings when conducting and interpreting GxE analyses.

Language facilitates communication and efficient encoding of thought and experience. Because of its essential role in early childhood development, in educational achievement and in subsequent life adaptation, language was included as one of the subdomains in the NIH Toolbox for the Assessment of Neurological and Behavioral Function Cognition Battery (NIHTB-CB). There are many different components of language functioning, including syntactic processing (i.e., morphology and grammar) and lexical semantics. For purposes of the NIHTB-CB, two tests of language—a picture vocabulary test and a reading recognition test—were selected by consensus based on literature reviews, iterative expert input, and a desire to assess in English and Spanish. NIHTB-CB’s picture vocabulary and reading recognition tests are administered using computer adaptive testing and scored using item response theory. Data are presented from the validation of the English versions in a sample of adults ages 20–85 years (Spanish results will be presented in a future publication). Both tests demonstrated high test–retest reliability and good construct validity compared to corresponding gold-standard measures. Scores on the NIH Toolbox measures were consistent with age-related expectations, namely, growth in language during early development, with relative stabilization into late adulthood. (JINS, 2014, 20, 1–10)