The co-occurrence of mental illness and substance use disorders (SUDs) presents a significant public health challenge with affected individuals facing compounded stigma that leads to poor health outcomes, social exclusion, and systemic neglect. Despite growing recognition of stigma as a social determinant of health in people with comorbid mental illness and SUDs, current responses remain largely confined to clinical and academic settings. This article argues that civil society, particularly groups led by individuals with lived experience, represents an underutilized yet powerful force in combating stigma. Drawing from historical movements such as HIV/AIDS activism and contemporary examples from peer-led movements, we highlight how civil society organizations (CSOs) have reshaped public discourse, influenced policy, and fostered inclusive research. We examine emerging efforts in low resource settings and explore the transformative potential of digital civil society spaces. We advocate for a shift in stigma reduction paradigms to those that center lived experience, supports cross-sectoral collaboration, and recognizes both physical and digital civil society as essential to inclusive and sustainable change. To addressing the complex and intersecting stigmas associated with comorbid mental illness and SUDs, we recommend investing in CSOs, especially those grounded in participatory, culturally relevant approaches, particularly in low- and middle-income settings.

Many countries have implemented a variety of pension reforms in response to the challenges posed by an aging population. These reforms typically involve a trade-off between ‘refinancing’ (i.e., increasing contributions) and ‘retrenchment’ (i.e., reducing benefits). The primary question addressed in this study is whether policymakers in the European Union (EU) possess the necessary capacity to sustain legislated pension reforms, particularly given the growing political influence of the elderly. To examine this issue, we develop a bargaining model designed to optimally allocate the economic burden of aging between successive cohorts of workers and retirees, incorporating retirement incentives. In a scenario where bargaining power remains constant, the optimal allocation rule dictates a fixed-contribution system, effectively shifting the full burden of aging onto the elderly. However, when bargaining power is allowed to fluctuate in response to changes in the relative size of the retiree population (i.e., the dependency rate), the optimal allocation rule involves a compromise between increasing contributions and reducing benefits. In the empirical analysis, we compare these theoretical optimal allocation rules with projections of pension benefit rates and dependency ratios from the 2021 Economic Policy Committee. By calculating the implicit bargaining power required to align projected pension benefits with the optimal sharing rule for each year, we demonstrate a growing divergence between projected pension benefits and the optimal levels in many EU countries, as demographic shifts progress. Furthermore, our findings indicate that for most countries, projected pension benefits are increasingly falling below optimal levels when bargaining power adjusts in accordance with population aging.

To anticipate relationships between future climate change and societal violence, we need theory to establish causal links and case studies to estimate interactions between driving forces. Here, we couple evolutionary ecology with a machine-learning statistical approach to investigate the long-term effects of climate change, population growth, and inequality on intergroup conflict among farmers in the North American Southwest. Through field investigations, we generate a new archaeological dataset of farming settlements in the Bears Ears National Monument spanning 1,300 years (0 to AD 1300) to evaluate the direct and interactive effects of precipitation, temperature, climate shocks, demography, and wealth inequality on habitation site defensibility—our proxy for intergroup conflict. We find that conflict peaked during dry, warm intervals when population density and inequality were highest. Results support our theoretical predictions and suggest cascading effects, whereby xeric conditions favored population aggregation into an increasingly small, heterogenous area, which increased resource stress and inequality and promoted intergroup conflict over limited productive patches. This dynamic likely initiated feedback loops, whereby conflict exacerbated shortfalls and fostered mistrust, which drove further aggregation and competition. Results reveal complex interactions among socioclimatological conditions, all of which may have contributed to regional depopulation during the thirteenth century AD.

This article argues that the Greek perception of doves underwent a significant evolution from Homeric times, when they were not yet considered sacred birds. The comparison of Homeric goddesses to doves does not necessarily imply that these birds held a sacred status. Only from the fifth century b.c.e. onwards do Greek authors explicitly associate doves with three deities: Aphrodite, Apollo and Zeus. The article offers a critical analysis and interpretation of the systematic frameworks addressed only briefly in previous scholarship and argues that there was a shift in perspective from Homeric times down to the Roman era.

This study explores the heterogeneous and asymmetric macro-financial effects of weather-related shocks in Central, Eastern and Southeastern European countries, depending on the level of underlying macro-financial vulnerabilities. Focusing solely on acute physical risks – those arising from extreme weather events – it employs panel quantile regression analysis to examine data from 2000Q1–2022Q4 for 17 countries in the region. Notably, we find that weather shocks – particularly droughts, floods, heatwaves and wildfires – exacerbate macroeconomic and financial imbalances, increasing the susceptibility of already vulnerable economies to additional risks. Specifically, countries with higher economic imbalances suffer more severe output disruptions and heightened inflationary pressures following a weather shock. While the immediate impact of climate shocks on external imbalances is limited, countries with existing vulnerabilities may still encounter longer-term pressures on trade and investment patterns. Additionally, extreme weather events can intensify financial vulnerabilities for countries that are already grappling with lower levels of financial resilience.

Despite the absence in the Aristotelian corpus of an established technical vocabulary as part of an explicit doctrine of cases, the use there of πτῶσις suggests that Aristotle was aware of the declension of nouns. This much is suggested by his discussion of the distinction between names (ὀνόματα) and cases of names (πτώσεις ὀνομάτων) at On Interpretation 16a32–b1, where the nominative is not a case but a name from which cases (that is, the ‘oblique’ cases) fall. However, at Prior Analytics 48b35–49a5, Aristotle lists the nominative form of a noun as an example of a word taken according to its case. This inconsistency raises a question about whether Aristotle has an internally consistent view of names and the nominative across the corpus. In particular, it is unclear whether the nominative form of a noun ultimately counts as a case for Aristotle. This article examines occurrences of πτῶσις in other Aristotelian texts, such as the Poetics, the Categories and the Topics, to argue that Aristotle uses this term in both a broad and a narrow sense. In its broad sense, any morphological change of any word, including a noun in the nominative, counts as a πτῶσις. In its narrow sense, only the oblique cases count as πτώσεις and not the nominative. The distinction comes down to a difference in the sphere of explanation. This reading renders Aristotle’s view of grammatical case consistent and makes sense of the claims about cases attributed to him by the later ancient commentators.

Datasets from around the world suggest that people completed early monumental construction projects without long-term structures of hierarchy or authority. In the Maya area, some of the first monuments produced by semisedentary societies, such as those at Yaxuna and Ceibal, were built in the absence of substantial social inequality. The focus of these monuments was a relatively inclusive plaza. This article presents evidence of an eighth-century BC monumental construction at Ucí, another site that was probably not fully sedentary. At Ucí, however, the first large architecture is not inclusive. Structure 14sub5 lacks a front stairway, separating people in the plaza from those who could ascend the building from the back. The difference between the inclusivity at Ceibal and Yaxuna and exclusivity at Ucí suggests variation in degrees of inequality. Different societies experimented creatively with social and political organization. This aligns with the inherent complexity of egalitarian societies as well as the possibility that not all complex societies began as egalitarian. Consonant with the idea that people had power to act otherwise, early exclusivity at Ucí developed into inclusive forms of governance in the Late Preclassic.

Michael Blake, Yuna Blajer de la Garza, and Alex Zakaras offer insightful critiques of several arguments central to my book Beyond the Law’s Reach? In the process, they raise large questions in political philosophy more generally, especially as it pertains to global affairs. Blake is skeptical about the distinction, driving much of the book, between consolidated liberal democracies and jurisdictions where the “shadow of violence” prevails. Blajer de la Garza worries that the international reparative duties that the book highlights may linger indefinitely, and, consequently, be exploited by cynical political actors. Finally, whereas Beyond the Law’s Reach? argues that liberal democracies’ collective integrity is affected by their entanglement in violence and corruption abroad, Zakaras doubts whether this collective moral problem carries over into the individual level, given individual citizens’ reasonable ignorance of policy details. I offer responses to each of these critiques in turn. I conclude by highlighting the picture of democratic civic responsibility that emerges from these responses.

Two barrel cylinders bearing a royal inscription belonging to King Nebuchadnezzar II (604-562 BC) were found by chance on the surface of Tell Al-Uhaimir, which includes the remains of the ziggurat of the ancient city of Kish. Both cylinders bear the same text, which relates to the restoration work of the ziggurat é.u6.nir.ki.tuš.maḫ, whose name means “House, temple-tower, exalted abode” and is dedicated to the god Zababa and the goddess Ishtar. This is the first foundation text documenting the construction works of King Nebuchadnezzar II to restore the ziggurat of the god Zababa in Kish.

Sri Lanka is immersed in the ideology of Buddhist primacy: “the island belongs to its Sinhala Buddhists, and Buddhism should dominate the state.” Why does this ideology attract? The standard answer is that it justifies the power of the Sinhala Buddhist ethnic group. This article offers a different take through two contestations of modernity. It draws from Sabhyatva Rajya Kara or Towards a Civilisation-State by the Sinhala public intellectual Gunadasa Amarasekara, and the work of post-secular thinkers such as Jurgen Habermas, Charles Taylor, and Nicholas Wolterstorff, and argues that, along with power, Buddhist primacy attracts because it offers an invitation to join a dignifying, heroic narrative, and a vision of “fullness.” That is, there is more to Buddhist primacy than power. This points to the need for a richer human anthropology, and a fuller account of religion, in studies of religion and constitutions.

Nisbett and Wilson’s (1977) classic study in social cognition, the so-called ‘stocking case’, is a long-lasting authority that has often been interpreted as providing empirical support for the claim that introspection regarding mental processes such as the decision-making process is untrustworthy. In this article, I argue that such interpretations fail to identify the appropriate targets of introspection or appropriate object of criticism, thus leading to the emergence of several sceptical views. I show that researchers erroneously view the psychological causes of mental processes, rather than the processes themselves, as the targets of introspection and erroneously equate introspection about the decision-making process with mechanisms such as reasoning and retrospection. Therefore, sceptical views concerning the trustworthiness of introspection about the decision-making process ultimately commit two fallacies pertaining to – what I call – equivocal targets and equivocal mechanisms.

Classic Maya burials are complex archaeological contexts, shaped by distinctive depositional and postdepositional activities. To address this complexity, mortuary archaeologists have increasingly adopted theoretical and methodological frameworks from archaeothanatology. This article applies an archaeothanatological approach to the analysis of 35 burials from Group IV, a nonroyal elite residential compound at the Classic Maya site of Palenque, Mexico. The study reveals a complex funerary sequence that includes predepositional body preparation, primary and secondary depositions, and postdepositional modifications, reflecting long-lasting relationships between the living and the dead. The results provide evidence for differential treatments. Protracted rituals were conducted around elaborate burials, although they rarely included secondary skeletal manipulation. Conversely, simpler stone graves underwent reopening and secondary manipulation, and a few individuals were buried directly into the soil. Despite their differences, these activities were materializations of beliefs, which underscored the centrality of ritual interaction with the dead in Classic Maya mortuary traditions. These patterns mirror broader ritual traditions at Palenque that involved the prolonged usage of ritual spaces and burials, as well as concerns about corpses’ decay.

Informative path planning (IPP) is one of key applications for unmanned aerial vehicles. It can be applied to terrain monitoring problems, which are to find the static targets from bird’s eye view. In this research, the proposed algorithm generates the cost-benefit spanning tree (CBST) to boost the IPP performance. The CBST is able to generate different tree structures based on different parameters. The proofs show that the theoretical guarantees depend on the tree structures (e.g., minimal spanning tree and shortest path tree). The simulations and experiments demonstrate that the proposed method outperforms the benchmark approaches.