Political work requires alliance building, but antagonism and divisions dominate legislatures and society in many democracies. How do legislators handle being pulled in both directions simultaneously? We use the anthropological method of ethnography and the political science method of network analysis and show how their combination enhances understanding of cross-party cooperation among Representatives even when such work is not depicted in the media and may clash with expectations of constituents. This interdisciplinary project utilizes a case study of the Texas House of Representatives, which provides a tough case for cooperation given the intense polarization of the state’s politics. Through observational and interview research methods of anthropology, we discovered how and why Representatives work across party lines. We then used network analysis to assess what traits of Representatives are associated with bill coauthoring and joint authoring to systematically measure cooperation. More senior Representatives, Hispanic, African American, and Asian Representatives but not women, and Representatives who join a bipartisan caucus most often build networks across party lines.

A metamaterial absorber is proposed that features multiple absorption peaks ranging from 2 to 20 GHz, tailored for multiband radar applications. It employs low-cost FR4 dielectric as the substrate material and has a compact footprint of 0.0068$\lambda _o^2$. The multiband absorption properties of this absorber are crucial at microwave frequencies for radar applications, particularly for reducing radar cross-section and providing electromagnetic interference shielding. The miniaturized version of this absorber acting as a biosensor at THz range features multiple absorption bands, surpassing the count of comparable biosensors. This enhancement increases the sensing resolution and provides greater resistance to false peak shifts. The proposed biosensor exhibits a remarkable sensitivity of 4.64 THz/RIU, enabling the detection of even slight variations in refractive index, thereby enhancing cancer detection compared to recent studies. The analysis indicates that it achieves an impressive absorption rate of over 90% across all operating frequencies, with a peak Q-factor of 90.71, enhancing the interaction between THz waves and biomolecules, thereby ensuring precise detection. This absorber shows a stable response across various polarization angles and reaches optimal absorption for incident angles from 0° to 60° for both transverse electric and transverse magnetic waves. This works facilitates the detection of cancer among humans at the earlier stage with a portable and cost-effective sensing device.

Our politics are increasingly polarised. Polarisation takes many forms. One is increasing clustering, whereby people hold down-the-line liberal or conservative views on a wide range of orthogonal issues. Some philosophers think that such clustering is indicative of irrationality, and so finding yourself in one of several clusters gives you evidence that not all your political beliefs are true. I argue that the reverse is true, presenting a simple model of belief-formation in which finding yourself in one of several clusters of opinion on orthogonal issues should increase, rather than decrease, your confidence that all your beliefs are true.

What role does racial/ethnic diversity in the American states play in racialized partisan and partisan-ideological sorting? We expand the commonly employed empirical frame of Whites’ partisan and partisan-ideological reactions to minority groups at the national level by leveraging the variation in racial/ethnic populations in the American states and accounting for both out-group and in-group size across White, Black, Latino, and Asian respondents. Using the pooled 2012–22 Congressional Election Study, the results demonstrate that Whites tend toward Republican orientations in states with larger Black and Foreign-Born populations and display stronger partisan-ideological sorting in more diverse states with large Black, Latino, or Asian populations. The analyses also reveal that partisan-ideological sorting is asymmetrical along both racial and partisan identities. White partisan-ideological sorting across state racial/ethnic contexts is driven by both Republican and Democratic identifiers, while Black, Latino, and Asian respondents show few signs of elasticity to state context in partisan identity or partisan-ideological sorting. The asymmetries in both PID and partisan-ideological alignment lead to larger racial/ethnic gaps in attachment and alignment in more diverse state contexts. These are well-understood conditions for greater partisan and factional conflict and polarized party and electoral politics.

Partisanship and feelings about racial groups are increasingly linked among whites in the United States. Does this pattern extend to other Americans? To answer this question, we begin by examining trends in what has been termed “affective differentiation”—a measure of racial affect that is, in our case, the difference in ratings between one’s own group and white Americans—and partisanship to demonstrate first that affective differentiation has increased. Further, this measure of racial affect has a growing relationship with partisanship among Black and Latine Americans such that Democratic identification is associated with higher levels of affective differentiation. Next, using panel data from the two most recent presidential elections we find that the direction of influence flows from partisanship to affective differentiation. Higher levels of attachment to the Democratic Party are associated with greater affective differentiation in which respondents rate their own group more favorably than whites. In recent elections, there has been a stark polarization among political parties regarding the utilization of explicit racial rhetoric. Members of the electorate have taken notice, leading partisans to update their racial attitudes.

Human interactions in the online world comprise a combination of positive and negative exchanges. These diverse interactions can be captured using signed network representations, where edges take positive or negative weights to indicate the sentiment of the interaction between individuals. Signed networks offer valuable insights into online political polarization by capturing antagonistic interactions and ideological divides on social media platforms. This study analyzes polarization on Menéame, a Spanish social media platform that facilitates engagement with news stories through comments and voting. Using a dual-method approach—Signed Hamiltonian Eigenvector Embedding for Proximity for signed networks and Correspondence Analysis for unsigned networks—we investigate how including negative ties enhances the understanding of structural polarization levels across different conversation topics on the platform. While the unsigned Menéame network effectively delineates ideological communities, only by incorporating negative ties can we identify ideologically extreme users who engage in antagonistic behaviors: without them, the most extreme users remain indistinguishable from their less confrontational ideological peers.

Can observing opposing partisans engage in dialogue depolarize Americans at scale? Partisan animosity poses a challenge to democracy in the United States. Direct intergroup contact interventions have shown promise in reducing partisan polarization, but are costly, time-consuming, and sensitive to subtle changes in implementation. Vicarious intergroup contact—observing co-partisans engage with outparty members—offers a possible solution to the drawbacks of direct contact, and could potentially depolarize Americans quickly and at scale. We test this proposition using a pre-registered, placebo-controlled trial with a nationally representative sample of Americans. Using both attitudinal and behavioral measures, we find that a 50-minute documentary showing an intergroup contact workshop reduces polarization and increases interest but not investment in depolarization activities. While we find no evidence that the film mitigates anti-democratic attitudes, it does increase optimism about the survival of democratic institutions. Our findings suggest that vicarious intergroup contact delivered via mass media can be an effective, inexpensive, and scalable way to promote depolarization among Americans.

The digitalization of the mining industry requires wireless connectivity for real-time status indications, remote-controlled mining operations, and autonomous driving vehicles in tunnels. This paper presents a wideband radio propagation measurement system and provides radio channel measurement results for data at 5G frequency range 1 and frequency range 2 bands recorded in Sandvik’s test mine in Tampere, Finland. The measured signal attenuation due to the blocking of the tunnel by a scoop and a large loader vehicle is found to be in the range of 10 dB at 3.5 GHz. The radio signal level attenuates significantly when the other end of the link moves into a side tunnel from the main tunnel. The measured signal attenuation rates in tunnel crossroads at 3.5 GHz were 10 and 15 dB/m. The root mean square delay spreads in the two crossroads were 3–10 ns, corresponding to coherence bandwidths of 300 and 100 MHz, respectively. The signal reflections from the tunnel walls were studied at a 26.5 GHz frequency by steering the transmission antenna azimuthally. The FR2 measurement results at 6 m inside the side tunnel indicate strong reflections from the side walls, evident from the path length amplitude results.

Argumentation is often conceived as a rational response to disagreement, even when it does not resolve differences of opinion. Arguing in the face of disagreement has, however, distinctive epistemic effects. Sometimes argumentation achieves convergence of opinion or at least the mutual recognition that a more thorough inquiry is required. But facing disagreement, participants of argumentative exchanges quite often remain steadfast in their initial views or even radicalize them. Can we make sense of these latter situations? To account for their occurrence, it is common to point out that people’s ability to argue is flawed, that an “argumentative culture” is lacking, and that emotional and other non-rational factors often interfere in confrontative situations. But these suggestions do not amount to a thorough satisfactory explanation. In this paper, I provide the outline of a purely epistemic account of these peculiar effects of argumentation in the face of disagreement. I argue that probabilistic models of degrees of confidence (or “credences”) can shed light on the conditions that give rise to several of these effects. This could provide some guidance on how to avoid them.

Affective polarization is often blamed on the rise of partisan news. However, self-reported measures of news consumption suffer serious flaws. We often have limited ability to characterize partisan media audiences outside of the United States. I use a behavioural data set of 728 respondents whose online behaviour was tracked over four weeks during the 2019 Canadian federal election. These data were paired to a survey for a subset of respondents. I find that audiences for partisan media are small, and web traffic is driven by an even smaller share of the population. There are few major partisan differences in news media use, and partisan news exposure is higher among highly attentive, sophisticated news consumers, rather than those with strong political commitments.

The Australian SKA Pathfinder (ASKAP) offers powerful new capabilities for studying the polarised and magnetised Universe at radio wavelengths. In this paper, we introduce the Polarisation Sky Survey of the Universe’s Magnetism (POSSUM), a groundbreaking survey with three primary objectives: (1) to create a comprehensive Faraday rotation measure (RM) grid of up to one million compact extragalactic sources across the southern $\sim50$% of the sky (20,630 deg$^2$); (2) to map the intrinsic polarisation and RM properties of a wide range of discrete extragalactic and Galactic objects over the same area; and (3) to contribute interferometric data with excellent surface brightness sensitivity, which can be combined with single-dish data to study the diffuse Galactic interstellar medium. Observations for the full POSSUM survey commenced in May 2023 and are expected to conclude by mid-2028. POSSUM will achieve an RM grid density of around 30–50 RMs per square degree with a median measurement uncertainty of $\sim$1 rad m$^{-2}$. The survey operates primarily over a frequency range of 800–1088 MHz, with an angular resolution of 20” and a typical RMS sensitivity in Stokes Q or U of 18 $\mu$Jy beam$^{-1}$. Additionally, the survey will be supplemented by similar observations covering 1296–1440 MHz over 38% of the sky. POSSUM will enable the discovery and detailed investigation of magnetised phenomena in a wide range of cosmic environments, including the intergalactic medium and cosmic web, galaxy clusters and groups, active galactic nuclei and radio galaxies, the Magellanic System and other nearby galaxies, galaxy halos and the circumgalactic medium, and the magnetic structure of the Milky Way across a very wide range of scales, as well as the interplay between these components. This paper reviews the current science case developed by the POSSUM Collaboration and provides an overview of POSSUM’s observations, data processing, outputs, and its complementarity with other radio and multi-wavelength surveys, including future work with the SKA.

Despite nearly two centuries of actively stylizing itself as above the partisan fray of banal politics, the US Supreme Court faces increasing scrutiny over its ideological nature, ethical lapses, and perceived disconnection from democratic accountability. This article explores potential reforms including ethics guidelines, public affairs offices, and term limits to enhance the Court’s legitimacy. It also examines trends in judicial decision making, the Court’s relationship with public opinion, and the influence of identity politics on judicial perceptions through an examination of the scholarship on the Court. The article concludes by emphasizing the need for ongoing research and methodological innovation to address these challenges and ensure the Court’s role in American democracy.

As corporations increasingly embrace ethical commitments and prioritize corporate social responsibility (CSR), commentators have begun to speak of a shift toward “moral capitalism.” This shift has revived debates about the compatibility of CSR with economic efficiency and the role of markets in promoting social change. We find the economic concern misplaced: moral capitalism efficiently responds to a growing demand for CSR from all stakeholders, including shareholders. Yet the same market mechanisms that make modern CSR profitable raise political objections worth considering. Major shareholders can now leverage their disproportionate economic power to use corporations as vehicles for forcing unilateral resolutions of societal issues, bypassing and undermining formal democratic processes. Beyond this, there is a broader risk to social cohesion: when markets become arenas for adjudicating rather than sidestepping moral and political disagreements, they reinforce exchanges among “friends” (those with shared preferences) while deepening divisions with “foes.” This may import polarization into market life, with spillover effects on society at large. Taken together, these concerns raise the question of whether moral capitalism may threaten the very democratic moral sensibility it claims to uphold.