Search Results (231)

Adam Smith’s system of natural liberty aimed at the happiness and virtue of humankind. Yet the Scottish philosopher also recognised that the system’s internal dynamics could render it unsustainable unless the state intervened to preserve sociability and justice through the education of both the working and the middle and upper classes. This article argues that the educational programme envisaged in The Wealth of Nations entailed the triumph of a pure and rational religion, understood as the conviction that the Supreme Being valued and rewarded virtue alone, thereby reinforcing the sense of duty, together with an awareness of belonging to an impartially conceived, divinely ordered system, fostering humility. Full article

(1) The importance of social structure and dominance hierarchies in cooperative-breeding species is well-documented, yet the inclusion of these processes in conservation translocation planning remains limited. Here, we empirically measured the social networks of three populations of the endangered Floreana Mockingbird, then used model simulations of different translocation scenarios to test the effects of social disruption on the social networks. (2) We used social network analysis and Exponential Random Graph Models (ERGMs) to characterise dominance hierarchies, group structure, and the consequences of selectively removing individuals from family groups. (3) Dominance hierarchies were strongly transitive, with age emerging as the primary determinant of dominance relationships. Simulated removals demonstrated that the loss of individuals occupying different network positions produced variable levels of social disruption. (4) Although age is the principal driver of antagonistic interactions, network properties such as high betweenness centrality and the presence of a broker (individuals that occupy a strategic position) are also critical considerations for translocation design. Incorporating social network structure into management strategies can minimise group disruption and enhance the success of conservation translocations for endangered cooperative breeders. Full article

Complex global optimization problems are widely encountered in wireless sensor network deployment, engineering design, energy scheduling, structural optimization, and intelligent parameter optimization. Due to their gradient-free search mechanism, strong global exploration capability, simple implementation, and adaptability to nonlinear and multimodal optimization problems, swarm intelligence algorithms have become effective tools for solving complex optimization tasks. In this study, an enhanced Great Wall Construction Algorithm based on a Marginal Benefit Assessment mechanism, termed GWCA-MBA, is proposed for numerical optimization and engineering applications. The proposed method incorporates three cooperative enhancement strategies into the original GWCA framework, including a quasi-oppositional chaotic initialization strategy, a Marginal Benefit Assessment-based adaptive role scheduling mechanism, and an elite differential-Lévy refinement strategy. These mechanisms jointly improve population diversity, adaptive search capability, and local exploitation precision. To evaluate its effectiveness, GWCA-MBA is comprehensively tested on the CEC2017, CEC2020, and CEC2022 benchmark suites and compared with several representative metaheuristic algorithms. Experimental results demonstrate that GWCA-MBA achieves the best Friedman mean ranks of 2.70, 3.50, and 2.33 on the CEC2017, CEC2020, and CEC2022 benchmark suites, respectively, indicating superior overall optimization performance and robustness. In addition, the proposed algorithm exhibits highly stable convergence behavior with significantly lower standard deviation values than the compared algorithms on most benchmark functions. To further verify its engineering applicability, GWCA-MBA is applied to a three-dimensional wireless sensor network coverage optimization problem and two constrained engineering design problems. In the wireless sensor network deployment problem, GWCA-MBA achieves a coverage rate of 75.90%, outperforming the compared algorithms and demonstrating strong spatial optimization capability and practical applicability. Moreover, GWCA-MBA also achieves the first Friedman ranking in the engineering application experiments, further demonstrating its strong practical optimization capability and generalization performance in real-world optimization problems. Overall, GWCA-MBA effectively balances exploration and exploitation and provides a competitive optimization framework for complex numerical optimization and practical engineering applications. Full article

This article provides a critical evaluation of Giorgio Agamben’s argument that Adam Smith’s metaphor of the invisible hand is representative of economic theology and providential control. Although Agamben’s analysis does not explicate a nuanced view of the invisible hand, it does reveal the embedded economic theology in its misuse by neoliberal economists who characterise the invisible hand as a fundamental mechanism of market coordination consistent with a providential order. Conversely, this study argues that such perspectives fail to account for the intricacy and ambivalence inherent in Smith’s philosophy. Through textual analysis of the invisible hand in The Theory of Moral Sentiments, The Wealth of Nations, and The History of Astronomy, the manuscript highlights that Smith presents three distinct perspectives and that the theological interpretations do not adequately capture this divergence. Rather than endorsing a providential or theological framework, Smith’s use of the invisible hand is shown to be a conditional and intricate metaphor that serves as a critique, a form of social engagement, ethical commerce, and empirical analysis of irrational belief in markets that support the common good. Therefore, this interpretation transcends economic theology and reductive neoliberal economics, offering a more nuanced understanding with important implications for contemporary economics. Full article

As the strategic debate around corporate purpose intensifies, organizations face a persistent paradox: how to sustain purpose-driven commitments under the continuous pressure of exchange-system efficiency and competing institutional logics. This paper introduces affective infrastructure: the interdependent organizational systems through which firms cultivate and reproduce the emotional and evaluative dimensions of institutional identity. Building on a synthesis of Adam Smith’s moral philosophy and Kenneth Boulding’s integrative systems theory, the paper argues that corporations operate simultaneously as exchange systems and integrative systems and that institutional character emerges from the organizational systems that sustain integrative commitments alongside exchange efficiency. Four infrastructure components are identified (identity alignment systems, integrative human-resource architecture, stakeholder communion practices, and institutional memory mechanisms), and design principles, assessment methods, and organizational illustrations are developed for each. The paper situates the construct within seven adjacent literatures, develops a configurational diagnostic framework comprising six organizational types, and concludes with a structured empirical research agenda that includes proxies for each component. The governing proposition unifying these contributions is this: affective infrastructure explains how organizations sustain integrative capacity under exchange-system pressure as a system—not as a culture to be cultivated, not as a commitment level to be measured, not as a stakeholder orientation to be managed, but as the interdependent organizational architecture through which identity alignment, integrative membership, stakeholder communion, and institutional memory become simultaneously operative and mutually reinforcing. This is what the adjacent constructs, taken individually, cannot explain: no single tradition specifies the generative system through which all four domains become durable together. Full article

Computer vision–based weed detection plays a critical role in agricultural robotics, enabling accurate, selective weeding. These systems operate on resource-constrained embedded platforms, which introduces a significant trade-off between accuracy and efficiency. This study presents a comparative evaluation of six detection models (YOLOv11n, YOLOv11s, SSD-Lite, NanoDet, Faster R-CNN, RT-DETR) for agro-robotic applications, measuring precision, recall, mAP@0.5, and runtime on low-power hard-ware. NanoDet achieved the highest detection accuracy (precision 98.6%, recall 94.2%, mAP@0.5 97.7%). YOLOv11s demonstrated similar performance (mAP@0.5: 96.1%) but required more computation. YOLOv11n provides the most favourable balance between accuracy and throughput (mAP@0.5: 94.6%, 207 FPS on a workstation). On Raspberry Pi 5, light models achieved 3–5 FPS. RT-DETR and Faster R-CNN exhibited high latency (3112–6500 ms/frame), which prevents real-time operation. NanoDet excelled in detection, while YOLOv11n provides the best balance between accuracy and efficiency for limited devices. Full article

Background/Objectives: Longer lifetime exposure to endogenous estradiol (L_EE2) has been associated with lower risk of age-related cognitive decline and dementia. Complementary to cognitive decline, behavioral and functional decline are also predictive of dementia risk; however, the association between L_EE2 and these domains is underexplored. We investigated whether L_EE2 is correlated with later-life changes in behavior and function. Methods: Baseline data from 1156 females enrolled in the CAN-PROTECT study were analyzed. L_EE2 was estimated based on the length of the reproductive period (menopause age–menarche age) plus years pregnant and scaled in 5-year increments. Objective cognition was measured using the CAN-PROTECT neuropsychological battery, while subjective cognition, behavior, and function were measured using the Revised Everyday Cognition (ECog-II) scale, Mild Behavioral Impairment Checklist (MBI-C), and Standard Assessment of Global Everyday Activities (SAGEA) scale, respectively. Linear regressions modeled the association between L_EE2 and neuropsychological performance. Three separate negative binomial regression models examined the association between L_EE2 and ECog-II, MBI-C, and SAGEA total scores. All models adjusted for menopause hormone therapy, menopause type, age at first childbirth, body mass index, age, education, and ethnocultural background. Results: Each five-year increase in L_EE2 was associated with a lower MBI-C score (count ratio [CR] = 0.89, 95% CI [0.82, 0.97]) and lower SAGEA score (CR = 0.91, 95% CI [0.84, 0.98]). L_EE2 was not significantly associated with any objective or subjective cognitive measures. Conclusions: Longer L_EE2 may associate with lower severity of later-life behavioral and functional symptoms in older women. Full article

This study integrates recent literature with qualitative data from sexual-health outreach workers in the Greater Toronto Area to examine how outreach is delivered to gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (GBTQ+) men who have sex with men (MSM) in virtual social settings, including social networking applications. Using a symbolic-interactionist framework and reflexive thematic analysis, the study identifies persistent challenges that shape GBTQ+ and MSM users’ engagement with sexual-health services, such as stigma, privacy concerns, and platform-level constraints. Findings highlight mismatches between current outreach practices and community needs in app-based environments and point to opportunities to strengthen the relevance, accessibility, and trustworthiness of digital sexual-health initiatives. The analysis offers practical recommendations for improving service design and delivery in online queer spaces and outlines priorities for future research focused on outreach effectiveness, equity, and user safety. Full article

Clusterin is a chaperon protein that is involved in many physiological processes, including binding to beta-amyloid (Aβ). Recently, we showed that in Alzheimer’s disease (AD) model mice and human postmortem brains, there are elevated levels of methionine-oxidized clusterin in the disease state versus controls. These observations prompted us to investigate the possibility that elevated methionine-oxidized levels of clusterin in human blood plasma correlate with clinical diagnosis of both mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and AD stages. To achieve this goal, we have used a combination of Elisa kits for determining the total level of clusterin and methionine-oxidized clusterin in human blood plasma, enabling the quantification of a methionine-oxidized clusterin to total clusterin ratio. This ratio was correlated with the diagnostics of three groups of patients (normal controls (NL), MCI, and AD; with n = 44 per group). Accordingly, it was determined that there was a significant increase in the relative methionine-oxidized clusterin level in the MCI and AD groups compared to the controls. In conclusion, it is suggested that increased levels of methionine-oxidized clusterin in human blood plasma may serve as a potential marker for MCI and AD diagnosis. Full article

Metaheuristic optimization algorithms are widely employed to address complex nonlinear and multimodal optimization problems due to their flexibility and strong global search capability. However, the original Connected Banking System Optimizer (CBSO) still exhibits several inherent limitations when handling high-dimensional and highly complex search spaces, including excessive dependence on single global-best guidance, rapid loss of population diversity, weak exploitation ability in later iterations, and inefficient boundary handling. These deficiencies often lead to premature convergence and unstable optimization performance. To overcome these drawbacks, this paper proposes a Multi-Strategy Enhanced Connected Banking System Optimizer (MSECBSO) by systematically enhancing the CBSO framework through multiple complementary mechanisms. First, a multi-elite cooperative guidance strategy is introduced to aggregate information from several high-quality individuals, thereby mitigating search-direction bias and improving population diversity. Second, an embedded differential evolution search strategy is incorporated to strengthen local exploitation accuracy and enhance the ability to escape from local optima. Third, a soft boundary rebound mechanism is designed to replace rigid boundary truncation, improving search stability and preventing boundary aggregation. The proposed MSECBSO is extensively evaluated on the CEC2017 and CEC2022 benchmark suites under different dimensional settings and is statistically compared with nine state-of-the-art metaheuristic algorithms. Experimental results demonstrate that MSECBSO achieves superior convergence accuracy, robustness, and stability across unimodal, multimodal, hybrid, and composition functions. In terms of computational complexity, MSECBSO retains the same order of time complexity as the original CBSO, namely O(N×D×T), while introducing only a marginal increase in constant computational overhead. The space complexity remains O(N×D), indicating good scalability for high-dimensional optimization problems. Furthermore, MSECBSO is applied to corporate bankruptcy forecasting by optimizing the hyperparameters of a K-nearest neighbors (KNN) classifier. The resulting MSECBSO-KNN model achieves higher prediction accuracy and stronger stability than competing optimization-based KNN models, confirming the effectiveness and practical applicability of the proposed algorithm in real-world classification tasks. Full article

If modern readers sometimes find Adam Smith’s laissez-faire market vision in Wealth of Nations difficult to reconcile with his emphasis on sympathy in The Theory of Moral Sentiments, which Smith published in 1759 while serving as Chair of Moral Philosophy at the University of Glasgow, the fault may be ours. For many of Smith’s eighteenth-century contemporaries, the connections between the two books would have been obvious: they were distinct but converging aspects of an Enlightenment project to lay the ethical foundations of an urban middle-class discourse of polite sociability that reflected Britain’s status as a modern transactional society. This focus on the moral dimensions of eighteenth-century Britain’s experience of commercial modernity becomes especially clear when we read Smith in the philosophical context out of which his ideas emerged, including writers such as Joseph Addison, Francis Hutcheson, and David Hume. Closer attention to these earlier writers, especially Steele and Addison’s Spectator, offers a powerful reminder of the philosophical complexity of this project and a timely rejoinder to current efforts to sever economic policies from ethical imperatives in the name of an often brutal protectionism today. Full article

Adam Smith’s The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759) and The Wealth of Nations (1776) offer a distinctive perspective on moral development that avoids succumbing to the limitations of capitalism and utilitarianism by supporting both moral agency and the importance of enabling structures and systems in commerce. Corruption of moral sentiments cannot be averted by enforcing only mechanical structures and systems of compliance with governance rules, regulations, and disciplinary processes to control employees. Compliance then follows a means-to-an-end logic for maximising profit, which becomes a barrier for autonomous moral development or is even incapable of moral decision-making, as suggested by Hannah Arendt. Smith’s originality lies in grounding this analysis with an affirmative view of human nature and liberty, which enables him to move beyond purely legalistic or moralistic approaches to understand and counter moral failure. Smith offers a distinctive perspective on moral development in commerce, integrating human cognition, moral philosophy, and enabling structural and systemic design that avoids the displacement of responsibility noted by Albert Bandura. For Smith, the corruption of moral sentiments is distorted by the natural need for praise from others at all costs, as opposed to praiseworthy conduct. His remedy is a two-fold process of moral education in which the impartial spectator extends the natural desire for praise to prioritise honour and integrity in behaviour that is praiseworthy. However, moral education also requires a structural social space that is not prescriptive or legalistic to enhance the freedom to develop morally by exercising the choice to strive towards ethical behaviour. In this manner, self-interest enables moral development through natural means that prioritise honourable conduct and perpetuates sympathetic sentiment in which the well-being of others is considered. Full article

ADP-ribosylation factor (Arf) proteins are small GTPases that regulate intracellular membrane trafficking and actin remodeling through tightly controlled cycles of GTP binding and hydrolysis. Arf1, a central coordinator of Golgi and endosomal transport, and Arf6, which regulates plasma membranes and endosomal dynamics, have both been implicated in late stages of the HIV-1 life cycle. However, the mechanisms by which these GTPases support viral assembly and release remain incompletely defined. Here, we provide direct evidence that both Arf1 and Arf6 are required for efficient trafficking of the HIV-1 Gag polyprotein, assembly, and virion production. Perturbation of Arf1 function using either GTP-locked (Q71L) or GDP-locked (T31N) mutants significantly reduced virus release, impaired Gag association with membrane compartments, and prevented its accumulation at the plasma membrane. Manipulation of Arf1 cycling through the GTPase-activating protein AGAP1 further demonstrated that dynamic transitions between GTP- and GDP-bound states are essential for productive Gag trafficking. Similarly, expression of a constitutively active Arf6 mutant (Q67L) misrouted Gag to intracellular membranes and markedly suppressed virion release. Importantly, disruption of Arf1 or Arf6 activity did not affect the expression, surface levels, or intracellular distribution of the host restriction factor BST-2. Together, these findings identify Arf1- and Arf6-mediated trafficking pathways as critical host determinants of HIV-1 assembly and release and establish that their functions operate independently of BST-2 antagonism. Full article

This essay argues that Jeremy Bentham’s experience of the 1780 Gordon Riots and 1787 sojourn to White Russia inspired his conception of several projects for managing unruly populations. Bentham’s devotion to speculative enterprise informs his Defence of Usury, which vindicates schemers and dreamers from the criticism of Adam Smith, whose Wealth of Nations caricatured projectors as “riotous” con-artists who threatened domestic peace. Bentham’s Defence, I show, resuscitated early modern debates over the efficacy of free-lance enterprise to authorize his own efforts to improve society. A projector and theorist of projection, Bentham reveals how residents of the late eighteenth century described riot so that they could suppress it. Full article

Microbial communities play a crucial role in coastal ecosystem function, yet their seasonal and spatial dynamics in response to environmental change remain underexplored in tropical and subtropical regions. This yearlong study investigated microbial composition in water, sinking particles, and sediments along an inshore–offshore gradient influenced by the Caloosahatchee River Estuary in southwest Florida. The region has been altered by rapid coastal development and was struck by Hurricane Ian in September 2022. Environmental parameters exhibited significant spatiotemporal variation, shaping microbial beta diversity in all habitats. Sediment communities showed the greatest hurricane-induced disruption but returned to pre-disturbance conditions within six months. Dominant microbial classes included Alphaproteobacteria, Bacteroidia, and Gammaproteobacteria. Biogeochemical cycling taxa displayed strong habitat specificity, such as Desulfobulbia which dominated sinking particles, Desulfobacteria which was abundant in sediments, and Nitrosomonadaceae and Nitrosopumilaceae which were key nitrifiers in water and sediments, respectively. Particle–sediment taxonomic overlap suggests resuspension processes. Several inshore microbial indicators were consistently present across microbial habitats, especially at estuarine sites, suggesting the estuary as a microbial diversity reservoir for the coastal zone. These results highlight the value of long-term microbial monitoring to understand ecosystem change and resilience in dynamic coastal environments. Full article