Summary The altarpiece executed for the Chigi Chapel in S. Maria del Popolo, Rome, between 1530 and 1547, by Sebastiano del Piombo, but completed by Francesco Salviati, features an unusual, and unprecedented, depiction of the Birth of the Virgin, rendered apart from the remainder of the Marian narrative. Created at a time when Rome was still reeling from the effects of the destructive Sack of 1527, it represents a uniquely Roman interpretation of the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception of Mary. Beginning with a description of the work, and arguments for the change of subject, the introduction is followed by an analysis of the contextual material that informs the subject type. The second part provides a modest history of the immaculacy doctrine and provides a few examples of images depicting the Virgin's birth. Finally, by associating the doctrine with the ritual celebration of the feast of the Virgin’s nativity, it becomes apparent that the female figure, personified as the Woman of Proverbs 8:1-4, and 8:22-31, was conflated with the non-sexual birth of the Goddess Venus Aphrodite to produce the final solution. The timeline of debate for the doctrine makes it clear that Sebastiano’s work was advanced to align with debates concerning the doctrine; and that still later, Salviati was most likely advised to arrange his work with the altarpiece subject to correspond with the doctrinal arguments in support of the immaculist position challenged at the Holy Ecumenical Council held in the German City of Trent in 1546.

The evolutionary transition from unicellular to multicellular organisms exhibited a sharp increase in metabolic rates, yet the physical conditions supporting this transition remain poorly understood. Here we propose that wide-spread hydrodynamic enhancement of nutrient delivery to the microorganisms in the Neoproterozoic Era constituted a necessary enabling condition for early multicellularity, complementing the effect of rising oxygen levels occurring at the same time. Along with conceptual arguments in support of this hypothesis, we define three testable hydrodynamic mechanisms (viscous-diffusive, viscous-convective, and inertial-convective) controlling nutrient uptake and largely applicable for both bed-attached and free-floating microorganisms. We also highlight a flow-bed interface in surface streams as potentially important hotbed for multicellularity breeding, complementing the mainstream perception on the defining role of early oceans. Overall, our results emphasize hydrodynamics as under-represented physical component in existing evolutionary frameworks and generate testable predictions linking organism size, flow conditions, and habitat type.

ABSTRACT This article examines how arguments supporting and opposing gender-fair language (GFL) have been framed and politicized within Brazil’s federal legislative arena between 2000 and 2024. Drawing on a corpus of 61 legislative proposals retrieved from the Chamber of Deputies’ online database, it offers a diachronic analysis of how GFL becomes an object of parliamentary dispute and regulation. Using qualitative close reading, systematic coding, and keyword annotation, it identifies five oppositional and three supportive argument types. The findings show that supportive arguments remain relatively few but conceptually stable over time, whereas opposition intensifies after 2020 and shifts toward more legalistic, pedagogical and technocratic forms of legitimation. Rather than introducing new argumentative logics, legislative initiatives recontextualize recurrent ideological repertoires, translating public debates about language into proposals for legal and administrative regulation. In this way, parliamentary arenas function as sites where conflicts over gender, expertise and social order acquire policy relevance. The article thus argues that language policy operates as a key domain of ideological governance, in which linguistic authority and institutional legitimacy are discursively negotiated.

Livestock systems represent a considerable environmental challenge. In response, various scientists, non-governmental organisations, and policy makers claim that Western populations in particular need to sharply reduce meat consumption. Given people's attachment to meat, many of these actors favour hard policy interventions based on a range of systemic financial and legal reforms that would go beyond mere nudging and the formulation of recommendations, including the top-down imposition of meat taxes and bans, as well as herd size reductions, which would lead to sharply higher prices. However, arguments in support of such policies tend to oversimplify the issue, ignoring regional variations, mitigation potential, and broader ecological and nutritional contexts. The focus of this article is on dietary greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions as a main target for environmental policymaking, with all livestock production in the West contributing 2.6% of total anthropogenic GHG emissions globally. From a consumption perspective, reductions in meat eating represent a saving of 1-6% on the total individual carbon (C) footprint of an average Westerner, depending on dietary restrictiveness. However, such estimates need to account for differences in nutritional value when comparing animal and plant-based foods, as well as to factor in co-product benefits, C sequestration in grazing systems, natural baselines in rewilding scenarios, constraints on afforestation, the potential risk of "carbon leakage", and distinct evaluation metrics for biogenic (enteric) methane versus fossil-fuel derived carbon dioxide. Carbon tunnel vision, hyperbolic narratives, and misguided policies risk compromising pathways to reasonable reform of existing meat industries, which are desirable and urgent.

develop [11] ? Can harm to a social robot be meaningfully compared to harm inflicted on a person [26]? Many of these questions ultimately converge on a broader philosophical issue: the moral status of emerging AI technologies. The central concern is whether LLMs and social robots can plausibly be regarded as objects of moral consideration, that is, as entities that can legitimately fall within the scope of moral concern. Recent academic debate has framed this issue primarily as a confrontation between property-based and relational approaches to moral status [65] . Property-based views ground moral status in the possession of intrinsic properties such as consciousness or the capacity to suffer, whereas relational approaches emphasize the role of social practices, relationships, and institutional mediation. The aim of this article is to advance a novel argument in support of the relational approach by situating it within a broader account of moral progress.

Public acceptance of nature conservation instruments is critical for their effective and fair implementation. Understanding conservation governance as a rational activity aligns with the view that citizens base their judgments of conservation instruments on a critical evaluation of the anticipated ecological, economic, and social impacts. However, although citizens generally consider various conservation instruments acceptable, their awareness and knowledge about the instruments are often limited, suggesting that the judgments may also be influenced by factors other than knowledge. We explored acceptability of voluntary biodiversity offsetting in Finland that was written into law in 2023. We hypothesized that public acceptability of the instrument hinges partially on the level of concern for biodiversity loss and of hopefulness that biodiversity loss can be halted and that level of acceptability is justified through rational arguments regarding the instrument's impacts. We tested our hypotheses empirically with an online survey of a representative sample of Finnish citizens (n=1993). Biodiversity offsetting was largely unknown to the public; yet, it was generally judged to be highly acceptable. The supportive argument was that biodiversity offsetting promotes resolution of conservation conflicts, and the opposing arguments were that it restricts land use and leads to degradation of nature values. Hopefulness amplified the positive effect of concern for biodiversity on acceptability of offsetting (β=0.072). Acceptability was positively related to the argument that biodiversity offsetting results in resolution of conservation conflicts (β=0.424) and negatively related to the claims that it results in restriction of land use (β=-0.213) and destruction of nature values (β=-0.195). Our results broaden theoretical understanding of the public acceptance of conservation policies.

Analogue experiments have been promoted as means of potentially confirming theoretical predictions about systems that are inaccessible under the relevant conditions. A focus has been on the example of potential confirmation of Hawking radiation in black holes via analogue ‘dumb hole’ experiments in fluids. Dardashti (The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, 68:55–89, 2017; Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part B: Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics, 67:1–11, 2019) present arguments in support of this possibility, while Crowther (Synthese (Suppl 16):1–26, 2019) is critical that these arguments suffice. The latter analysis utilises the characterisation of analogue experiments given by the former two papers, upon which analogue experiments are supposed to differ from both conventional experiments as well as analogies. The defining feature was taken, by Crowther (Synthese (Suppl 16):1–26, 2019), to be the inaccessibility of the target system. This, however, not only rules out the possibility of such experiments being confirmatory, but also conflicts with the common belief that conventional scientific experiments can aim to provide knowledge about inaccessible target systems. So, if not inaccessibility of their target systems, what defines an analogue experiment? Here, I argue that there is nothing special about analogue experiments: Either, they are conventional experiments, or they are material analogies. Nevertheless, there remain particular challenges for the case of confirming Hawking radiation via dumb hole experiments, owing to inaccessibility issues.

The Generation End Game (GEG) policy in Malaysia aims to establish a smoke-free generation and has prompted substantial media attention. This qualitative cross-sectional study employed a netnographic approach to analyse Malaysian online news articles published between January 2022 and January 2024 in response to the policy. Data from news portals were collected via NCapture and analysed in NVivo using thematic content analysis. A total of 441 news articles were analysed and categorised into three timeframes: the initial announcement, the official announcement and the removal of the GEG provision from the bill. A positive slant prevailed across all timeframes with 52.2%, 42.1% and 37.8%, respectively, while negative slants were observed with 32.6%, 30.3% and 21.6%, respectively. Supportive arguments emphasised anticipated public health benefits, whereas opposition centred on concerns of the enforcement challenges. Most online news articles reported the GEG policy positively, suggesting that online media predominantly played a role in garnering support for the policy.

This study examines Law No. 6284 following Türkiye's withdrawal from the Istanbul Convention. It aims to contribute to advocacy efforts by formulating arguments in support of Law based on a feminist-informed explanatory sequential mixed-methods analysis of 106 individual application cases (112 decisions, 149 examined allegations) of the Turkish Constitutional Court. Drawing on four core arguments derived from analysis, the findings show that inadequate protection against male violence in Türkiye stems not from the law itself but from its negligent implementation. While Law No. 6284 must remain in force, its effectiveness depends on diligent enforcement that recognizes structural gender inequality.

Several countries have revised their policies to make vaccine refusal more difficult. The role of the public in this process has seldom been examined. We analysed the public consultation process for the Australian government's 2016 'No Jab No Pay' mandatory childhood vaccination policy to better understand who participated, their arguments, and how their contributions were incorporated into the legislative process. Publicly available submissions and hearing transcripts were categorised by submitter type, stance on the legislation, and writing style. We undertook a qualitative reflexive thematic analysis of the submissions' structure and content and compared our findings with the Inquiry Report. Most public submissions (95 %) opposed the legislation. Vaccine-rejecting submitters focused on safety arguments to argue the legislation was unjustified, unethical or ineffective. Vaccine-supportive submitters focused on the importance of vaccination but supported or opposed the legislation based on positions that weighed collective goods against individual rights. The findings of this analysis differed somewhat from the Inquiry Report that analysed the same evidence. The Report identified similar key legislation-specific concerns, but the committee's explicit position on the importance of vaccines meant that vaccination concerns were not considered relevant. The Report drew heavily on supportive arguments from academics, medical organisations, and government, while minimising critical arguments. Our findings suggest a process that epistemically privileged expert opinion in favour of mandates and discounted testimony driven by experiences, emotion, and beliefs of opponents. Future consultations on vaccination policy might consider approaches which are designed to connect high quality evidence with the plural values of citizens.

In this review article we discuss the main arguments in support of the hypothesis that in Contemporary Catalan and Italian nominal ne is neither a prepositional clitic, nor a partitive clitic nor a quantitative clitic. While the item from which Romance ne originates (Latin inde) pronominalized PPs with locative meanings, similarly to what happens with de, following a grammaticalization cline, ne comes to pronominalize different layers of nominal structure, and in contemporary Romance also expresses non-specific indefiniteness. We maintain that, syntactically, whereas partitivity is characterized as being a birelational category that necessarily connects a subset to a maximal superset, the indefinite use of ne is not birelational in the same sense. We support the hypothesis that nominal ne is a property-type anaphora that resumes a non-specific weak indefinite nominal expression. We review a number of syntactic and semantic arguments in support of the non-partitivity of nominal ne in Catalan and Italian, from which we conclude that it is a pro-NP, unmarked for gender and number, whose antecedent cannot have a unique or maximal reference.

ABSTRACT While the world is beginning to recognize that rigid monolingual education formats (e.g. English medium instruction) limit student engagement, it is becoming increasingly clear that the development of flexible bi/multilingual practices is crucial for optimal science education. A fundamental goal of bilingual science education is to promote bilingual scientific literacy (BSL). Although bilingual scientific argumentation (BSA) is an essential aspect of BSL, there is little published evidence on how to support BSA. This intervention study aimed to provide empirical evidence for the theoretical claim that recorded oral feedback (ROF) can be used as a type of formative assessment to support BSA. Using a quasi-experimental single-case research design, we analyzed the BSA produced by thirty-seven undergraduates (13 females and 24 males, 16–27 years old) during a bilingual science course taught within a ROF-based formative assessment environment. The findings indicate that ROF helped the participants’ creation of arguments, anticipation of counterarguments, and construction of rebuttals in Spanish, in English and in a hybrid fashion (Spanish-English code-switching). The results provide valuable evidence for bilingual science educators to consider the use of ROF as a genuine formative assessment practice to support BSA. Implications related to supporting students’ development of BSA skills are discussed.

In April 2022, the US Food and Drug Administration announced a proposed ban on menthol cigarettes, a historic policy to improve public health. This study aimed to identify arguments used to position the ban in relevant news sources to determine how messages were framed and inform future educational and policy efforts. Online news databases were searched for articles about the ban published between April 2022 and April 2024 in the top 25 circulating newspapers in the US, one online-only news source (CNN), three national news wires (AP, Reuters, UPI), and one press-release wire. Unique articles (n=122) were coded for pro- and anti-ban arguments and their sources. Supporting arguments referred to public health benefits (75% of all articles), health equity issues (66%), and targeted marketing of tobacco products in Black communities (61%). Most articles also noted youth prevalence (65%) and that menthol qualities facilitate use (57%). Fewer articles (34%) mentioned that ban enforcement would not be against individuals. Anti-ban arguments related to concerns about increased criminalization in Black communities (54%), and 20% referred to the ban as discriminatory. Arguments on both sides were attributed to Black organizations, leaders, and advocates (pro-48%; anti-26%). This study identified gaps in news coverage related to the ban's rationale, enforcement plans, and industry-funding of anti-ban advocacy efforts, finding that coverage often framed the ban as a debated issue, particularly with implications for Black individuals and communities. Messaging on these topics may build public and political support for menthol cigarette policies.

Motility endows microorganisms with the ability to swim to nutrient-rich environments, but many species are sessile. Existing hydrodynamic arguments in support of either strategy, to swim or to attach and generate feeding currents, are often built on a limited set of experimental or modeling assumptions. Here, to assess the hydrodynamics of these 'swim' or 'stay' strategies, we propose a comprehensive methodology that combines mechanistic modeling with a survey of published shape and flow data in ciliates. Model predictions and empirical observations show small variations in feeding rates in favor of either motile or sessile cells. Case-specific variations notwithstanding, our overarching analysis shows that flow physics imposes no constraint on the feeding rates that are achievable by the swimming versus sessile strategies - they can both be equally competitive in transporting nutrients and wastes to and from the cell surface within flow regimes typically experienced by ciliates. Our findings help resolve a long-standing dilemma of which strategy is hydrodynamically optimal and explain patterns occurring in natural communities that alternate between free swimming and temporary attachments. Importantly, our findings indicate that the evolutionary pressures that shaped these strategies acted in concert with, not against, flow physics.

Motility endows microorganisms with the ability to swim to nutrient-rich environments, but many species are sessile. Existing hydrodynamic arguments in support of either strategy, to swim or to attach and generate feeding currents, are often built on a limited set of experimental or modeling assumptions. Here, to assess the hydrodynamics of these ‘swim’ or ‘stay’ strategies, we propose a comprehensive methodology that combines mechanistic modeling with a survey of published shape and flow data in ciliates. Model predictions and empirical observations show small variations in feeding rates in favor of either motile or sessile cells. Case-specific variations notwithstanding, our overarching analysis shows that flow physics imposes no constraint on the feeding rates that are achievable by the swimming versus sessile strategies – they can both be equally competitive in transporting nutrients and wastes to and from the cell surface within flow regimes typically experienced by ciliates. Our findings help resolve a long-standing dilemma of which strategy is hydrodynamically optimal and explain patterns occurring in natural communities that alternate between free swimming and temporary attachments. Importantly, our findings indicate that the evolutionary pressures that shaped these strategies acted in concert with, not against, flow physics.

The role and function of images in everyday teaching activity have been highlighted by many researchers, given the contribution which these images make to the process of acquiring and retaining knowledge. This study examines the views of secondary-school teachers on the use of transformative images when teaching lessons. The findings show that teachers use transformative images when teaching since they are aiming at the various benefits provided by these images. However, they have colleagues who do not share this view, whilst providing arguments in support of their opinion.<p> </p><p><strong> Article visualizations:</strong></p><p><img src="/-counters-/soc/0040/a.php" alt="Hit counter" /></p>

his study examines, on one hand, the evidence advanced by those who accuse Ibn Mālik of fabricating grammatical citations (shawāhid), and, on the other, the evidence and rejoinders offered by those who hold him innocent of such fabrication. The researcher adopts an inductive method by tracing the arguments of both the affirmers and the deniers, analyzing them, and then evaluating them in an effort to reach a preponderant judgment on the question. The findings indicate the strength and cogency of the two principal proofs: solitary transmission (tafarrud) and omission of attribution (ighfāl al-nisba), as well as the inability of the deniers to overturn them. They also highlight the plausibility of several corroborating indicia that tip the balance in favor of the charge, namely stylistic uniformity (tasāwuq), the verses’ self-contained meanings, the banality and thinness of many meanings, recurrent syntactic molds and stale diction, the prominence of religious themes, and the tendency of most shawāhid to cluster around narrow, specific themes and purposes. In contrast, other proposed indicia prove weak or untenable, such as the prevalence of post-classical coinages (muwallad), the paucity of certain features known in authentic classical poetry, the scarcity of rare vocabulary (gharīb), the claim that features co-occur which ordinarily do so only by contrivance, and mere lexical repetition. The study also identifies clear methodological shortcomings in some proponents’ handling of the evidence that depart from sound scholarly practice, particularly the categorical tone used in issuing probabilistic judgments and certain conclusions, especially on the statistical side. This, in turn, strengthened the skeptics’ position in questioning the reliability of those results. Conversely, emotion and a lack of objectivity colored parts of the skeptics’ case. The desire to exonerate Ibn Mālik from fabrication often governed their replies, leading them to reject wholesale the probative force of the evidence and indicia, despite the cogency of some of it

This paper examines Kant?s pre-critical argument from possibility, developed in The Only Possible Argument in Support of a Demonstration of the Existence of God (1763). In this work, Kant attempts to establish the existence of a necessary being on the basis of the very concept of internal possibility-conceivability without contradiction. The argument is based on a distinction between the formal element of possibility, grounded in the principle of non-contradiction, and the material element, which requires actual existence as a condition for anything to be thinkable. Without this material element, Kant argues, all possibility would be abolished. Since contingent beings cannot provide such a foundation, he concludes that a necessary being must exist as the ground of all internal possibility. The paper offers a systematic reconstruction of the argument and reassesses its philosophical significance. It argues that Kant?s early account of the relation between possibility and existence anticipates key problems that reappear-transformed-in his critical philosophy. In this way, the argument from possibility merits renewed attention, not merely as a historical curiosity, but as a significant step in the broader trajectory of Kant?s metaphysical development.

Abstract. In the last few decades, the effort that has been devoted to the mechanistic, quantitative description of soil processes has been justified on the grounds that theories and models help us understand how soils function, and also predict how, e.g., they are likely to adjust in the future to environmental change. The argument, familiar to physicists, that theories uniquely determine what should be measured, has rarely if ever been invoked in the soil science literature. On the contrary, to enable the classification and mapping of soils, enormous amounts of “theory-free” data have been and continue to be amassed by soil scientists. In this general context, the key objective of the present Forum article is to argue that the accumulation of more “theory-free” data, in particular to allow the application of artificial intelligence methods, does not make practical sense at this stage, and that the development of improved theories of soil processes is crucial to provide guidance about the type of measurements that should be collected. Hopefully, this Forum article will stimulate a debate on this issue, and will lead to a much-needed intensification of theoretical research and modelling in soil science.

This study discusses the position that the domestic law takes before the EU institutions and EU Courts, in particular when the domestic law constitutes the reference system needed for the evaluation of the selective character of a fiscal State aid measure. The methodology comprises, on one side, the study of the general elements related to the status of domestic law before EU institutions (first part), and, on the other side, the examination of recent case-law related to the “reference framework” in the context of State aid law (second part). The results of the study envisage the identification of two hypotheses relating to the position of the domestic law before EU institutions and EU courts. Without taking any firm position, the concluding part discusses possible arguments in support of the two hypotheses.