For more than two decades, maternal health policy in sub-Saharan Africa has been guided by a powerful and intuitive idea: if women can physically reach a health facility, maternal deaths will fall. This logic has driven billions of dollars in investment toward building clinics, training health workers, subsidising care, and expanding coverage. On paper, the strategy has worked. Skilled birth attendance in sub-Saharan Africa rose from just 38% in 2000 to approximately 74% by 2023.1 Facility density has increased; user fees have been reduced or abolished in many countries; and maternal health has remained central to global development agendas. Yet maternal mortality remains catastrophically high. Sub-Saharan Africa still accounts for nearly 70% of all maternal deaths globally, with an estimated 182,000 maternal deaths recorded in 2023 alone.2 The region's maternal mortality ratio, 454 deaths per 100,000 live births, is more than 150 times higher than that of high-income countries.

From the late 1930s to today, the technological lure of hydroponics has inspired many geopolitical imaginations of planetary transformation. Hydroponics, or soilless farming, refers to a bundle of technologies to raise crops outside of arable land, using nutrient solutions in water, sand or gravel media. Envisioned as a technology with the potential to overcome food scarcity, soil exhaustion and climate limitations, hydroponics featured in many 20th-century geopolitical imaginations, often as a tool unlocking greater state power over formerly inhospitable regions and reducing territorial competition. In this article, we investigate three such geopolitical imaginations, as articulated by a raft of agronomists within the US Army, the Zionist movement, and the British Commonwealth. Engaging with these agronomists as international thinkers, we reveal how they fabricated geopolitical visions of hydroponics as part of new infrastructures of American transoceanic airpower, Israeli desert reclamation and postcolonial community development in South Asia and Africa. Through these three cases, we argue that geopolitical imaginations of hydroponics traded in distinctive geographical imaginations, epistemic politics and ideas of state power, placing emphasis on transforming frontiers, controlling plant productivity and enabling the contrasting politics of military hegemony, territorial occupation or postcolonial democracy alike. To conclude, we reflect on how hydroponics remains entangled with geopolitical speculation today, amid concerns with global climate change and agrarian shocks. Casting present-day anxieties through past futurisms, we suggest future avenues for the study of hydroponic imaginations within historical International Relations.

In Nexus: A brief history of information networks from the Stone Age to AI, Yuval Noah Harari argues that artificial intelligence (AI) could profoundly transform our world. Unlike earlier technologies, AI not only analyzes data but also reshapes it and produces narratives that influence how we think, challenging ideas of knowledge, power, and social organization. Psychoanalyst Violaine Fua Púppulo suggests that AI may constitute a “fourth narcissistic wound” by questioning whether creativity, decision-making, and knowledge production are uniquely human. While these issues seem contemporary, technology has always shaped how humanity defines itself. From basic tools to neural networks, each innovation blurs the boundary between human and non-human. AI is distinctive because it expands human capacities while forcing a reconsideration of autonomy and subjectivity. Philip K. Dick's Do androids dream of electric sheep? dramatizes this tension by asking whether androids can desire, suffer, or create meaning like humans. As AI increasingly enters areas grounded in human interaction, such as therapy, this paper critically examines its therapeutic use from a psychoanalytic perspective that highlights human vulnerability and the essential role of relationships.

The traditional healing practices of the Sukuma people in Tanzania are truly fascinating. Their healing practices were studied during the period when the British were in charge, from approximately the 1920s to 1961. This paper looked at what people said in interviews in Misungwi District, Mwanza, and at old records from the colonial time. This helped the author see how traditional healers of the Sukuma people of Tanzania figure out what is wrong with people in a way that makes sense and works. The British doctors back then did not pay much attention to the traditional healers of the Sukuma people of Tanzania and their ways of doing things. They did not think the traditional healing practices of the Sukuma people of Tanzania were as good as their medical practices. The Western medical system is really popular. The Sukuma healers think their way of diagnosing people is just as good. They can figure out what is wrong with someone even if someone cannot see it. The Sukuma healers are similar to doctors who use special tools to find tiny germs that make people sick. This paper looks at why the Western medical system and the traditional healing methods of the Sukuma people do not match. It shows how the people in charge of the medical system tried to make the traditional healing methods seem weak, but the Sukuma people kept using them anyway because they worked well for their community. The Sukuma healers and the Western medical system have different ideas about how to make people healthy, and this paper tries to understand these differences. The Sukuma healers and their traditional healing methods are still important today. The paper also helps tothink about how countries were run with kinds of medicine. It shows that the ways of thinking and knowing that people had before the colonizers came can still be strong when there are other powerful medical ideas around. The paper is really about administration and medical pluralism and how indigenous epistemologies can withstand dominant medical paradigms.

The Coding as Another Language (CAL) curriculum offers a means for young children to develop digital coding skills, which is a form of literacy development. The work presented in this paper extends this idea to the domain of physical computing, positing that it leverage the same powerful ideas of computational thinking. Furthermore, this hands-on, often screen-free domain provides an additional venue that invites young children to develop operational, cultural, and critical literacies in developmentally appropriate ways. To illustrate these ideas, this paper describes three prototypes of early childhood physical computing technologies and relevant curricular activities based on CAL. These cases highlight young children’s growing technological fluency as they transferred and deepened their new knowledge through engagement with various physical materials. The materials used to craft tangible artifacts serve as a medium for developing technical skills, expressing ideas, fostering shared values, and questioning established processes. To this end, authors noted how the CAL curriculum can place physical computing in conversation with other technical, experiential, and deeply humanistic pursuits.

The work further develops the results of studies [1]–[5] based on a systematic analysis using an interpretative-formal approach in a new scientific and technical direction – the technological interpretation of provisions of vector and tensor analysis that are similar in meaning. This allows expanding the formal field of representation of technological processes within the concept of their “technological meaning” and increasing the formal capacity of TP description. The results of research are revealed in the practical and production aspects related to TP, providing for the application of vector and tensor analysis in the coordinate approach, technological space, scalar product, matrix tensor, as well as examples of tensor and vector analysis in composite AKZ technology. It is determined that vectors (tensors) can be specified in different ways, depending on the technological context (polymer composite materials technology – PCM), and the set of components is only its representation in a certain (in terms of detail) basis. A coordinate approach is used, as well as the possibility of other methods of specifying and working with vectors (tensors) using the example of ordinary vectors and simple second-rank tensors, characterized by the powerful idea of orthogonality. Since the second vector and tensor represent real technological objects, including: autonomous dynamic systems (ADS), structural and technological solutions (STS), technological processes (TP), in the form of contravariant and covariant vectors, etc.The interpretative correspondence of the technological interpretation of contravariant and covariant coordinates of a vector is shown, and the nature of the relationships between technological contravariant and technological covariant coordinates is established.The example demonstrates the invariance of the enlarged stages of a complex technological process in different coordinate systems, which confirms the invariance of the technological vector under the condition of transformation of its coordinates.

This paper explores how mass polarization, social discrimination, and structural injustice emerge in the digital realm, a domain that challenges traditional legal and ethical frameworks. As digitalization shapes society, ethical and community perspectives enter debates with normative claims often hard to justify transparently. To address this, the paper engages with Rainer Forst’s philosophy and critical theory. It argues that risks of domination online cannot be addressed by technical transparency alone. Instead, they require a commitment to justification as a normative practice. Applying Forst’s idea of justificatory power, the study shows how digital technologies reinforce dominant orders. Algorithms and data infrastructures both reflect and perpetuate structural inequalities. Accountability, therefore, must be reframed beyond compliance or procedural openness. It should demand justifications that withstand reasonable scrutiny and affirm equal standing. This approach supports resisting structural injustice and advancing democratic values. Keywords: Justification. Digital Ethics. Normative orders. Structural Injustice. Critical Theory.

One powerful idea of the Ancién Régime suggested that meritorious judges could prevent judicial abuse, while innate deficiencies linked to low social origins or questionable occupations caused corruption. This concept of merit included schooling and compliance with royal law, but this was only one fledgling aspect among others. Merit also strongly referred to the noble and pure Christian lineage of judges and their forebears, who had served community, king, or the faith in honorable occupations and deserved rewards. Merit in this sense provided judges with the proper character to act virtuously in the magistracies. The idea also derided as corruptible people of mixed ethnic origins, questionable social descent, and those who garnered money in humble occupations. For this reason, many theologians or jurists underlined the dangers of selling office appointments to unmerited candidates. The “judicial pluralism” provided the rules for the innate corruption and explains to an extent the divergence between royal law and the judicial practices. However, in the late seventeenth century, the discourse on innate corruption began to decline, as the Crown increasingly promoted trained and obedient ministers of proven experience rather than those of high birth. The present article focuses on this period until the reign of Carlos III (1759-1788) that saw the rise of performative corruption.

In this work, we propose a simple analytical/semi-analytical approach to solve various φ,ψ-fractional partial differential equations (φ,ψ-FPDEs) using initial and boundary conditions (ICs, BCs) depending on the φ,ψ-Double Elzaki transform (φ,ψ-DET) method. The suggested approach takes advantage of a DPET modification that works well with φ,ψ-fractional operators. The proposed method not only solves the φ,ψ-FPDEs but also reduces them to a more straightforward algebraic recurrence issue. This simple yet powerful idea can be used to solve φ,ψ-FPDEs in science and engineering. We contrast the outcomes of the stated computational examples with exact solutions in order to verify the exactness and efficacy of this methodology.

ABSTRACT The aim of this study was to investigate psychometric related issues of the TechCheck-K instrument for assessing the computational thinking skills of Turkish kindergarteners as well as explore whether age in month and gender made a significant difference in their general and domain-specific computational thinking skills. For this purpose, data were collected from 352 kindergarten-aged children attending public kindergartens in Türkiye. Item response and comparative analysis were used to analyse collected data. Item response results indicated that the TechCheck-K instrument had good psychometric properties, was suitable for use with Turkish kindergarten children and was more powerful in discriminating kindergarten children with moderate and low ability levels. It was also shown in the results that there was a significant difference between three age groups in months regarding participants’ general computational thinking skills. Significant differences in the general computational thinking skills were also observed within boys and girls according to their age in month. Specifically, boys and girls in the older month groups had statistically significantly higher mean scores. There was a significant difference in the domain-specific powerful ideas of computational thinking skills with respect to age in month. Finally, implications and directions for future research were discussed.

ABSTRACT This article gives account of an inaugural lecture and the conclusions drawn from the argument that formed the basis of the lecture. The focus of the lecture was on the concept of perception and the idea of power as per media institutions. The author divided the paper into three separate yet related sections: 1) his background and his introduction to the field of media practice and media research, 2) the focus of his research and how it speaks to the questions of perception, media and power and lastly, 3) the author draws some conclusions on the way forward about the area of under discussion. The central theory of the paper is that media institutions is that at best, media platforms can be said to encompass or exhibit “social power”. Thus, having an ability to play individuals, social relations between groups or institutions. Key words: media, perception, power, culture and radio

This article explores the potential of liberation medicine through an ethnographic account of a primary healthcare van operating in Cañada Real, an informal settlement on the margins of Madrid. Drawing from 10 years of clinical experience and anthropological inquiry, the article offers a situated analysis of "context-based medicine"; a mode of practice grounded in relationality, trust, and responsiveness to structural violence. Engaging with María Lugones' concept of pilgrimages and Hannah Arendt's idea of power with, the paper examines how this interstitial program disrupts dominant rationales within the healthcare system (gatekeeping, managerialism, and evidence-based medicine) by fostering collective, care-based alternatives. Through fieldwork and reflective practice, the author argues that the van's displacement (which is physical, institutional, and professional) creates a liminal space where emancipatory practices can emerge. While not a utopian model, the van provides a lens to imagine how clinical work might transgress spatial and institutional boundaries to align more closely with the political and ethical stakes of care.

This article examines how digital infrastructure has become a new space of power within the global economy. Using a political economy approach inspired by Susan Strange’s idea of structural power, it explains that digitalisation often repeats the old pattern of inequality between developed and developing countries. The study combines qualitative analysis of international policy documents with quantitative evidence on global investment and technology flows. It looks at major digital programmes such as China’s Digital Silk Road, the European Union’s Global Gateway, and the G‑7 Partnership for Global Infrastructure and Investment, and compares them with similar regional projects led by emerging economies. Case studies from Kenya, Indonesia, Brazil, and Nigeria show that while digital networks bring innovation and faster growth, they can also deepen economic and regulatory dependence on foreign actors. This study finds that the core problem is not access to technology, but the concentration of power over data, capital, and technical standards. The paper argues that countries in the Global South can only convert connectivity into real development if they strengthen regional cooperation, insist on transparent contractual terms, and invest in domestic research capacity and skilled labour. These measures would allow technology to serve sovereignty instead of reinforcing dependence so that countries in the Global South can use technology to strengthen their sovereignty and achieve genuine development.

Abstract This essay investigates the narration of the late medieval empire in chronicles from areas south of the Alps. The performativity, narration and self-representation of the individuals heading governmental and administrative political institutions such as the Empire and their officials played a key role, making deliberate use of discourses, symbols and communicative processes. The study is also accompanied by an examination of the reception, perception and narration of political power by individual authors and in different local contexts. The analysis aims to understand both the image of power transmitted to contemporaries, and the actors and mechanisms that underpinned its manifestation, as well as the individuals in whom decision-making power resided and the cultures and values from which an idea of power developed and found meaning within a political regime. The survey deals specifically with the reception of the imperial ideal in the chronicles of Matteo Villani and Donato di Neri and in the „Liber de coronatione Caroli IV“. Specifically, it focuses on the claims and actions of government in areas south of the Alps, demonstrating the persisting vitality of the fourteenth-century Empire in the territories of Reichsitalien.

ABSTRACT In this work, we introduce a new image encryption method designed to overcome key weaknesses found in many existing techniques—like low randomness, poor sensitivity to key changes, and vulnerability to statistical attacks. Our algorithm combines two powerful ideas: first, we use orthogonal Latin square transversals to shuffle pixels in a way that avoids repetition and boosts spatial unpredictability, and second, we apply a chaos‐based diffusion process using the Lorenz chaotic system to change pixel values, which makes the encryption highly sensitive to initial conditions and resistant to intrusion attempts. The two primary steps of the encryption process are pixel permutation using organized shuffling and diffusion using chaotic sequences produced by the Lorenz chaotic system. Standard grayscale images (256 × 256) were used to evaluate the method. Results of keyspace analysis, histogram analysis, correlation analysis, information entropy analysis, NPCR and UACI analysis, and key sensitivity analysis indicate strong and robust security of the algorithm against various kinds of attacks. It only took 0.1689 s to encrypt each image, demonstrating the method's efficiency and security. Our algorithm offers a dependable solution for safe image encryption since it is complicated, resilient, and resistant to statistical and differential assaults when compared with other methods.

ABSTRACT Persistent under-recruitment and poor retention threaten the sustainability of England’s education system, with shortages acute among early career teachers. Using Michel Foucault’s ideas of power, discipline, and governmentality, this paper argues that these issues stem not only from workload or pay but from systemic disempowerment. Successive reforms have enabled the Department for Education to centralise control over curriculum, pedagogy, and teacher education, embedding surveillance, accountability, and performativity that constrain autonomy. Teachers are cast as implementers of state-mandated practices—such as systematic synthetic phonics—validated through prescribed “evidence-based” methods. This disciplinary regime produces self-regulating, compliant teachers, eroding agency, identity, morale, and long-term commitment. From a Foucauldian view, such disempowerment is structural to neoliberal governmentality, where marketised systems operate through data and compliance. England’s experience reflects global trends, as organisations like the OECD promote policy convergence and performative accountability that reshape teaching worldwide into regulated, data-driven labour. Addressing England’s teacher crisis requires more than financial incentives: it demands restoring trust, autonomy, and intellectual freedom, reimagining teachers as critical professionals. Universities offering initial and continuing teacher education can lead this re-empowerment through reflective practice, research engagement, and democratic involvement in policymaking.

What is called “International Relations theory” today is not a science of the international but a provincial theology of Europe, secularized and universalized as global knowledge. Realism, Liberalism, and Constructivism—these are not mere analytical tools, but conceptual residues of a specific historical experience: that of Latin Christendom grappling with its own theological crisis. When these theories are uncritically applied to non-Western contexts, they illuminate some dynamics but systematically misdescribe others, leaving residual variance unexplained. India–Japan relations, we show, are not an anomaly to these theories but a mirror reflecting their epistemic limitations. We do not abandon their insights but relocate them, showing that under specified scope conditions—early institutionalization, normatively costly cooperation, and trust-persistence—they fall short. We argue that the problem lies not with the world but with the conceptual apparatus we use to describe it. Civilizations are not variations on a universal template—they are distinct ways of being in the world. India and Japan engage each other not through abstract ideas of power or liberal values, but through shared memories, affective trust, and experiential continuity. We propose, therefore, not a new theory, but a shift: from theorizing the world as Europe once experienced it, to letting civilizations describe themselves. Only then does IR become global.

ABSTRACT The field of peace studies is necessarily concerned with issues of equity, justice, and inclusion. Notions of violence that define the field and a normative commitment to positive, sustainable peace mean that peace scholars often engage with ideas of identity and power. Thus, it is important to understand how the field is creating norms and expectations around the concept of positionality. Positionality refers to elements of identity or background which may influence the way scholars engage with the research process. A positionality statement is an increasingly common device used in academic writing which states these factors explicitly for the purpose of communicating transparently with the writer’s audience. This article examines the use of positionality statements in five leading peace studies journals and finds that while positionality statements remain rare in the field, their use is rapidly increasing, with significant diversity in how and where they are used, and by whom.

The article examines the legal foundations of the state life of the Ukrainian Cossack state in the second half of the XVII-XVIII centuries through the prism of the «Treaty on the Constitutional Rights and Freedoms of the Zaporozhian Army». The content of the Ukrainian-Muscovite articles is analyzed as an example of early modern constitutionalism in Eastern Europe. The political and legal significance of these documents for the formation of the idea of limited power, representative government and social protection is revealed. The efforts of the Cossack elite to preserve autonomous rights are highlighted. It is proved that Cossack law is a unique form of constitutional tradition in the history of Ukrainian state formation.To analyze the content and meaning of the «Treaty on the Constitutional Rights and Freedoms of the Zaporozhian Army» as the fundamental constitutional principles of the Ukrainian Cossack state; to determine their influence on the formation of the political and legal system and mechanisms of state administration.The methodological basis of the scientific article: the historical-legal method for the reconstruction of the legal bases and traditions of the Cossack statehood; a systemic-structural approach to identify the institutional elements of the state system established in Cossack law; source method for analysis of normative acts.The concept of the «Treaty on the Constitutional Rights and Freedoms of the Zaporozhian Army» not only reflected customary law, but also acquired a normative design that corresponded to the principles of constitutionalism in early modern Europe.It is shown that despite the formal dependence on the Moscow protectorate, the Ukrainian Cossack elite defended autonomous «rights and freedoms» as the political and legal foundation of their statehood.The Document formed a unique model of state and legal thinking, which combined democratic principles, military organization and customary law. The study allows us to assert that the Cossack state of the second half of the XVII-XVIII centuries had developed features of early modern constitutionalism. Legal codification of «freedoms» was not only a means of preserving identity, but also a political mechanism for resisting external pressure by the Moscow state.

ABSTRACT This article explores how Türkiye and Iran – despite their contrasting political systems (secular vs. theocracy) – instrumentalize religion to sustain and expand authoritarian control both domestically and transnationally. Türkiye has increasingly embedded Sunni Islamic values into state institutions, particularly via the Diyanet, reshaping governance with a religious veneer. Iran, conversely, places Shia Islam at the core of its political structure, with clerics wielding direct power. While their historical and ideological roots differ, both regimes now converge in their strategic use of religion: to legitimize rule, suppress dissent, and advance social conservatism. Moreover, they project influence beyond borders through religiously affiliated proxies. Drawing on Constructivism, the performative turn, authoritarian theory, and Foucault’s idea of disciplinary power, this study introduces “religious statecraft” as a new analytical framework. It conceptualizes how religion operates not only as a tool of domestic governance but also as a spectacle of power as well as a vehicle of regional influence through normative and institutional diffusion.