The theoretical stakes of the argument rest on a claim about twenty-first-century capitalism’s organizational form. Platforms, the authors argue, have become the dominant vehicle through which capital accumulates in the digital economy. Their power derives from monopolizing data, which they treat as a core factor of production on par with land, labor, and machinery in industrial capitalism. Every click, pause, replay, and scroll generates data that platforms mobilize to serve capital accumulation, refining recommendation algorithms and selling targeted attention to advertisers. In this arrangement, the platform owns the means of digital production while content creators and audiences supply the labor that makes the data valuable in the first place.

For mukbang streamers, the study argues, eating itself is transformed into digital labor. What Marx described as the most basic human activity — the consumption of food to sustain the body and express bodily needs — becomes a performance calibrated to algorithmic reward. Streamers must eat excessively to stand out in a saturated market, or fake eating entirely while concealing the deception, because the platform’s recommendation system rewards spectacle rather than nourishment. The streamer’s body becomes an instrument of production, and the natural instinct of hunger becomes a resource to be exploited or suppressed on camera.

This transformation produces what the authors call a dual estrangement for streamers. The first estrangement is from bodily instincts: the streamer must override satiety signals, eat past discomfort, or simulate the act of eating altogether, severing the natural connection between hunger, food, and health. The second estrangement is from creative autonomy. Although streaming appears to be self-directed work, the platform’s algorithms, monetization thresholds, and traffic distribution effectively dictate what content gets seen and rewarded. The streamer’s apparent freedom masks a dependence on platform infrastructure that shapes every creative decision, from portion sizes to presentation style.

Audiences, meanwhile, are not passive spectators in this arrangement but participants in what the study calls playbour — a fusion of play and labor. Viewing mukbang feels like leisure, yet every moment of watching generates data that platforms harvest and monetize. The audience’s attention becomes a productive force, and the pleasure of consumption becomes indistinguishable from unpaid work. The authors argue that this data-producing playbour constitutes a distinct form of alienation for viewers, who experience their own activity as something external to themselves, serving capital accumulation rather than their own fulfillment.

The Marxist framework underlying the analysis holds that labor dominated by capitalism is inevitably alienated labor. Marx identified four dimensions of alienation: estrangement from the product of one’s work, from the activity of work itself, from one’s species-being or human nature, and from other people. Tang and Yan apply this schema to the digital context, arguing that mukbang streamers are alienated from the products of their labor — the videos and data they generate — because platforms appropriate and monetize them. Streamers are alienated from the activity of eating, which becomes a means of production rather than an expression of life. They are alienated from their species-being, as bodily needs are distorted into spectacle. And they are alienated from audiences, whose relationship is mediated by platform metrics rather than genuine human connection.

The study’s most provocative claim concerns the scope of mukbang’s harms. The authors argue that the damage extends beyond the commonly cited problems of food waste and cybersecurity risks to human dignity itself. When eating — an activity essential to human survival and culture — is systematically distorted for profit, the distortion strikes at something fundamental to human life. Excessive eating on camera normalizes disordered relationships with food, while fake eating introduces deception into a genre built on apparent authenticity. Both practices, the authors contend, reflect the platform’s structural incentive to reward extremity and spectacle rather than health or honesty.

The analysis situates mukbang within a broader pattern of digital labor exploitation that scholars have documented across the platform economy. From gig workers navigating opaque algorithms to influencers performing intimacy for engagement metrics, the platform’s capacity to extract value from everyday activities has expanded the frontier of what can be commodified. Mukbang represents an extreme case because it commodifies not creative output or social connection but the biological act of eating itself. The genre’s popularity on short-video platforms, where attention spans are measured in seconds and competition for visibility is fierce, intensifies the pressure toward aberrant practices that can cut through the noise.

The authors’ argument carries implications for how mukbang’s problems might be addressed. If the aberrations are structural rather than individual, then solutions targeting streamer behavior alone — content warnings, eating-disorder resources, or platform guidelines against excessive eating — address symptoms rather than causes. The root of the problem, in the authors’ account, lies in platform capital’s profit-seeking logic and its monopolization of data. Meaningful reform would require rethinking the incentive structures that reward extremity, the data arrangements that extract value from viewers’ attention, and the traffic distribution systems that determine which content thrives.

The study contributes to a growing literature that applies classical critical theory to digital culture, testing whether nineteenth-century concepts can illuminate twenty-first-century phenomena. The authors suggest that Marx’s framework remains analytically powerful precisely because the underlying logic of capital accumulation persists across technological change, even as its organizational forms evolve from factory to platform. Mukbang, in this account, is not an isolated curiosity of internet culture but a vivid illustration of how digital capitalism penetrates the most intimate corners of human life, transforming eating, watching, and even hunger into sites of labor and extraction.

Subject of Research: Alienated labor in mukbang on short-video platforms: a Marxist perspective

Article Title: Alienated labor in mukbang on short-video platforms: a Marxist perspective

Article References: Tang, J., & Yan, S. (2026). Alienated labor in mukbang on short-video platforms: a Marxist perspective. Humanities and Social Sciences Communications. https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-026-09472-2

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1057/s41599-026-09472-2

Keywords: Alienated, labor, mukbang, short-video, platforms, Marxist, perspective, scientific research

Wetlands have always been integral to human civilization, from the fertile Mesopotamian marshes that earned the region its reputation as the cradle of civilization to the diminished remnants still worked by Marsh People today. Their value lies in a natural hydrology that periodically or seasonally floods, drawing nutrient-laden water from upstream sources into inundated zones where a complex interplay of hydrological, physical, chemical, and biological processes strips away excess nitrogen and phosphorus. Floodplains and coastal wetlands are particularly effective at this mitigation, retaining more than 10 kilograms of phosphorus per hectare per year in some cases, one to two orders of magnitude higher than in other wetland types such as minerotrophic peatlands. The pathways of water flow, whether surface runoff, groundwater, flooding, or tidal exchange, ultimately determine which nutrient cycling processes dominate and how much removal occurs.

Sedimentation is the first and most visible of these processes. When a stream overflows its banks, flow velocity decreases abruptly, allowing suspended material to deposit across the floodplain. Similarly, in coastal wetlands, suspended sediment settles when tidal cycles stagnate and flow velocities approach zero. The intensity and frequency of flooding shape the amount, type, and location of sediment in these areas, while water chemistry promotes flocculation, causing particles to aggregate and settle. Vegetation plays a critical role too, as wetland plants reduce water flow, promote particle deposition, and prevent resuspension and bank erosion, particularly when trees grow along stream channels. Coarse particles like sand settle quickly in low-flow areas, while finer clay, silt, and organic matter remain suspended longer. Microbes may even enhance sediment retention by binding particles, though bioturbation by worms and crustaceans can mix soil layers and reduce it.

Beneath the sediment surface, microbial transformations drive the most consequential nutrient removal. Denitrification, where nitrate is reduced to nitrogen gases and permanently removed from the aquatic system, is the key water purification process in wetlands, occurring mainly under anaerobic conditions in waterlogged soils. During flooding events, when nitrate-enriched water influxes into riparian zones, nitrogen removal efficiency can often exceed 90 percent. Yet the process is delicately balanced. At elevated nutrient loads, bacterial denitrification may be limited by carbon availability, which serves as the energy source and electron donor needed to reduce nitrate. Temperature matters as well, though significant nitrate removal can occur even below 5 degrees Celsius during winter. Effectiveness declines under fluctuating water tables, low pH, or high nitrate concentrations, leading to incomplete denitrification and the release of nitrous oxide, a potent greenhouse gas. Alongside microbial denitrification, an abiotic process involving nitrate reduction through pyrite oxidation has been observed in carbon-poor groundwater systems.

Phosphorus follows a different trajectory. Rather than being converted to a gas, it is retained through sorption to iron, aluminum, and calcium minerals, as well as by precipitation as insoluble compounds. In calcium-rich wetlands, phosphorus can precipitate with calcium to form calcium phosphate minerals under alkaline conditions. Phosphorus binding is favored at pH ranges of 4 to 6, thanks to the negative charge of phosphate species and the isoelectric point of metal oxides in the circum-neutral range. However, in coastal wetlands, high concentrations of sulfate can outcompete phosphorus for positively charged binding sites, and when sulfate is reduced to sulfide in anaerobic sediments, it promotes sulfate-mediated phosphorus mobilization or internal eutrophication, significantly altering the phosphorus cycle. Plant uptake provides yet another retention pathway, with mangroves and salt marshes particularly effective at assimilating nutrients into biomass.

The effectiveness of all these processes is now under threat from human activities and climate change. Hydrological connectivity is the key factor controlling the sink function of wetlands, facilitating nutrient exchange between aquatic and terrestrial environments. Fragmentation leads to smaller, isolated, and hydrologically disconnected wetlands, impairing this exchange and reducing nutrient removal efficiency. Excessive nutrient loading from agricultural runoff, wastewater discharge, and urban development leads to eutrophication, hypoxia, and harmful algal blooms, as frequently documented for the Baltic Sea over the last century. Climate change introduces further complexity, with rising temperatures, altered precipitation patterns, and more frequent droughts affecting soil chemistry and microbial processes like denitrification. Sea-level rise particularly threatens coastal wetlands by increasing erosion, altering salinity, and disrupting nutrient cycling, and even low levels of increased salinity can profoundly reshape microbial community composition and promote internal phosphorus mobilization in surface sediment.

Restoration, the review emphasizes, does not necessarily lead to all-natural processes, even if natural conditions are created. The physical structure for a particular ecosystem and its biotic composition may self-assemble, but the re-establishment of the microbiome can take several years. Successful projects must restore hydrological connectivity, enhance sediment and nutrient dynamics, and re-establish critical ecosystem processes such as denitrification and phosphorus sorption. For floodplains, this typically involves filling ditches and drains, reconnecting groundwater flow to the riparian aquifer, re-meandering channels, removing or breaching embankments, and reinstating natural surface flow dynamics. In coastal wetlands, restoring tidal flows enhances water exchange with the adjacent marine environment, supporting nutrient cycling and improving the removal or storage of excess nitrogen and phosphorus.

The evidence from long-term case studies is compelling. In 2003, a 6.5-kilometer stretch of River Odense in southern Denmark was re-meandered, allowing natural inundation of the floodplain every winter. Over the following two decades, sedimentation rates varied considerably between years, from zero to 11 kilograms of dry weight per square meter annually, while tracer measurements using cesium-137 indicated a longer-term average of 6 kilograms per square meter per year. Flooding enhanced nitrate removal in groundwater by 20 to 42 kilograms of nitrogen per hectare per year, creating a stagnant zone beneath the floodplain that increased residence time and upward flow into the highly reactive organic-rich topsoil. Seed richness and diversity from winter-deposited sediment peaked at 16 meters from the river channel, coinciding with a confluence zone emerging within the floodplain. Yet incubation experiments revealed that between 11 and 25 percent of the phosphorus deposited on the floodplain could be released as dissolved inorganic phosphorus following deposition, a reminder that restoration gains are never entirely one-directional.

On Rügen Island in Germany, a coastal fen peatland known as Polder Drammendorf was rewetted during winter 2019 through dike removal and is now permanently flooded by Baltic Sea water. Analysis of elevation-dependent soil characteristics revealed significant spatial variability in soil organic matter content and ammonium release behavior. A strong negative correlation between soil organic matter and elevation indicated restricted organic matter mineralization in low-lying areas. Soils at low elevations released significantly higher ammonium concentrations during initial leaching, with peak levels exceeding typical Baltic Sea waters by approximately two orders of magnitude. These findings identify low-lying areas as critical nutrient hotspots during initial rewetting stages, potentially creating significant eutrophication pressure on connected marine ecosystems. Along the Austrian Danube, modeling of the Donau-Auen National Park showed that fully reconnecting seven side-channels would increase current nitrogen and phosphorus retention by 2 to 5 times, compensating for lower retention capacities in dry years, though reconnected side-channels account for a nutrient reduction of only about 0.1 percent of the annual load of the Austrian Danube.

The review concludes that floodplain and coastal wetlands are irreplaceable ecosystems whose restoration requires a multifaceted approach combining habitat conservation, pollution reduction, climate change adaptation, and active restoration efforts while addressing societal needs. The EU Restoration Law, aiming to restore 30 percent of all habitats listed in the FFH directive annex 1 by 2030, offers an important vehicle for planning and implementing large-scale wetland restoration, though conflicts of objectives, debates on financing, land availability, and ecological potential continue to slow progress. The authors propose five research avenues, including examining wetland resilience to environmental changes, developing cost-effective and scalable monitoring techniques combining field surveys, in-situ nutrient measurements, and remote sensing, creating simulation models to predict hydrological impacts, investigating microbial ecology and nutrient cycling through genomic and metagenomic analyses, and promoting cross-disciplinary collaboration across hydrology, ecology, and socio-economics. Recovery of nutrient retention processes, they find, can be either rapid or delayed, and nutrient legacies and soil degradation remain the fundamental constraints. Ultimately, the effectiveness of restoration depends on site-specific factors such as wetland degradation, size, hydrological connectivity, plant recovery, and ongoing global changes, underscoring the importance of considering both spatial and temporal dimensions in every custom-tailored restoration strategy.

Subject of Research: Floodplains and coastal wetlands as nutrient sinks: a restoration perspective

Article Title: Floodplains and coastal wetlands as nutrient sinks: a restoration perspective

Article References: Zak, D., Tschikof, M., Natho, S., Jes Petersen, R., Kronvang, B., Hoffmann, C. C., Liu, H., Wang, M., & Kaden, U. S. (2026). Floodplains and coastal wetlands as nutrient sinks: a restoration perspective. Nature Conservation, 62, 175-193. https://doi.org/10.3897/natureconservation.62.158302

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.3897/natureconservation.62.158302

Keywords: Floodplains, coastal, wetlands, nutrient, sinks, restoration, perspective, scientific research

The central claim of the Perspective is deceptively simple. None of the promising device applications of Fe-based SCO complexes can be truly realized until researchers obtain a solid understanding of what actually terminates their surfaces. As the authors put it, echoing a maxim of interface science, the interface is the device. Any serious attempt at commercializing molecular transistors based on Fe-based SCO systems therefore necessitates a prior understanding of their respective surfaces, because the atomic species lying at the surface strongly influence the surface magnetochemistry of the material.

Deciphering the surface termination of these complexes is far from trivial. These are molecular salts and coordination polymers containing Fe(II) or Fe(III) ions in octahedral ligand fields, and the existing literature shows that ascertaining which molecular moiety caps the crystal is a genuinely hard problem. In a recent pioneering study, Zaz and colleagues resorted to X-ray absorption spectroscopy (XAS) and laboratory-based X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) measurements to prove that the surface of the Fe(III) SCO salt [Fe(qsal)2][Ni(dmit)2], where qsal is N(8-quinolyl)salicylaldimine and dmit(2−) is 1,3-dithiol-2-thione-4,5-dithiolato, preferentially terminates in the Ni(dmit)2 moiety. Until that investigation was disseminated, the surface termination of this family of materials lacked full transparency, and the discovery is expected to have significant implications for the fabrication of nanodevices based on this material.

What makes these materials truly intriguing, however, is not just their room-temperature bistability but the physics of how charge moves through them. In SCO complexes containing Fe(II) ions, charge transport is understood to be dictated by polarons, quasiparticles formed when an electron couples to the lattice vibrations around it. Depending on the specific values of the on-site Hubbard interaction and the strength of the ligand-to-metal charge transfer, these materials are theorized to be capable of hosting both small polarons, in which the charge is localized on a single molecular unit, and large polarons, in which the charge drags a extended cloud of lattice distortion behind it.

The theoretical description of large polarons in these systems currently rests on an approximate three-term Fröhlich Hamiltonian, the standard framework dating back to Fröhlich’s 1954 treatment of electrons in lattice fields. In that picture, the momentum of an electron is described by a momentum operator, the momentum and dispersion of phonons are denoted by their respective operators and functions, and the strength of the electron-phonon interaction is given by a coupling term whose specific form is dictated by the system of interest. Creation and annihilation operators associated with a phonon of a given wave number complete the description. It is a rough Hamiltonian, the authors concede, but if the theoretical speculations surrounding the presence of polarons in these systems are experimentally validated, it would represent a significant breakthrough in molecular spintronics, positioning Fe-based SCO materials as promising candidates for room-temperature applications in quantum information science with enhanced functionalities.

The problem is that the surfaces of Fe-based SCO complexes containing Fe(II) and Fe(III) ions in octahedral ligand fields remain clearly understudied, and much more work is needed to unravel the surface termination of these easily switchable spin-state materials. To close that gap in a non-disruptive fashion, Martínez Serra and Dhingra suggest two possible routes. The first is angle-resolved X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy, or ARXPS, in which the photoemission take-off angle is changed to alter the sample probing depth. ARXPS can easily be performed using a standard X-ray Al Kα or Mg Kα anode in any laboratory, making it accessible to virtually any surface science group. The second is photon-energy dependent high-resolution X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy, or HRXPS, which necessitates the use of a synchrotron facility but offers finer control over the depth sensitivity of the measurement.

For detecting the polarons themselves, the authors recommend using synchrotron-based vacuum ultraviolet (VUV) radiation to investigate the highest occupied molecular orbital, also known as the valence band edge, of these materials. Photoemission spectroscopy has already been shown to be one of the reliable methods for the experimental observation of polarons in condensed matter, and the proposal is to hunt for polaronic signatures at the surfaces of the complexes. Any changes in the intensities of the HOMO band and in the work function of the system will manifest as variations in the photoelectron yield and in the position of the secondary electron cutoff on the kinetic energy scale, respectively. Changes to the observed photoemission spectra in the vicinity of the Fermi level would carry physical significance that the authors direct curious readers to explore in the prior literature, given the strict word limit for Perspective articles in the journal.

If spectroscopic signatures pertaining to the existence of polarons in these materials are observed, the authors propose that temperature-dependent electrical transport, optical spectroscopy, and Raman spectroscopy measurements could eventually be used to cross-validate the photoemission spectroscopy data. The standalone applications of polaronic transport are numerous, spanning conducting polymers, oxide interfaces, and electromechanically coupled materials, so if polaronic transport is confirmed in Fe-based SCO systems it could enhance the already well-established versatility of these materials and raise it to another level. Recent direct observations of Fröhlich polaron formation in other nanoscale systems suggest the experimental toolkit is maturing rapidly.

The Perspective, thus, acts as a catalyst intending to push the frontiers of research into the surfaces of this class of materials for applications in room-temperature molecular spintronics. The idea disseminated via the article stems from data collected at the MaxPEEM beamline at the MAX IV Laboratory, a Swedish national user facility supported by the Swedish Research Council, Vinnova, and Formas. The discussions contained in the article are expected to catalyze future investigations into the fabrication of room-temperature nanodevices that exploit polaronic transport in these complexes, turning a family of molecular materials once valued mainly for their switchable spins into potential workhorses of polaronic molecular electronics.

Subject of Research: Surface polarons in Fe-based spin-crossover complexes – a perspective

Article Title: Surface polarons in Fe-based spin-crossover complexes – a perspective

Article References: Serra, A. M., & Dhingra, A. (2026). Surface polarons in Fe-based spin-crossover complexes – a perspective. Frontiers in Nanotechnology, 8, Article 1901345. https://doi.org/10.3389/fnano.2026.1901345

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.3389/fnano.2026.1901345

Keywords: polaronic transport, polarons, spin crossover complexes, surface termination, synchrotron science, vacuum ultraviolet (VUV) radiation, Surface, Fe-based, spin-crossover, complexes, perspective, scientific research

The research team, based at the Institute of Educational Sciences in Bucharest and working within the Horizon Europe REVERS-ED project, exploited a resource few countries can offer at this scale: the Romanian Integrated Information System of Education, known as SIIIR, which assigns each student a unique identifier and links school enrollment records with national examination results. Using extracts provided by the Romanian Ministry of Education in November 2024, the researchers compared three birth cohorts—1999, 2004, and 2009—across six transition-specific analyses organized into two overlapping historical windows. The lower-secondary and Grade 9 transitions were compared between the 2004 and 2009 cohorts, while upper-secondary completion, Baccalaureate entry, and Baccalaureate success were compared between the 1999 and 2004 cohorts. Inequality was examined descriptively along four administrative indicators: recorded sex, the Roma administrative marker derived from the nationality field, first language, and the location of the school attended at each transition origin.

The headline cohort gains were substantial. The probability of promoted Grade 8 completion by the expected endpoint rose from 88.87 percent in the 2004 cohort to 92.98 percent in the 2009 cohort, a gain of 4.11 percentage points. Promoted Grade 12 completion within day-school high school increased by 7.16 percentage points between the 1999 and 2004 cohorts, from 86.05 to 93.21 percent. Baccalaureate entry in the examination year of documented high-school completion rose by 2.33 percentage points, and cumulative Baccalaureate success within the first two examination opportunities climbed by 7.60 percentage points, from 74.54 to 82.14 percent. Administrative observability of a subsequent Grade 9 state among promoted Grade 8 completers was nearly universal in both cohorts, at roughly 98 percent, but the distribution across the four parallel Grade 9 pathways—theoretical high school, technological high school, vocational and aptitude-based high school, and the three-year professional vocational route—shifted between cohorts, with professional VET declining by 4.46 percentage points in the later cohort.

Between-cohort changes in inequality were strikingly uneven across indicators and transitions. Female–male differences were smaller in the later cohort at all four favorable milestone endpoints, with reductions ranging from 0.90 percentage points for Grade 12 completion to 3.11 points for Baccalaureate success. The non-Roma–Roma difference narrowed markedly at Grade 8 and Grade 12 completion, by 12.18 and 11.27 percentage points respectively, although sizeable Roma-related gaps remained within the later cohorts. The urban–rural contrast followed a more stage-specific pattern: it changed little for Grade 8 completion, narrowed by 5.53 points for Grade 12 completion and 6.36 points for Baccalaureate success, but widened by 3.36 points at Baccalaureate entry. First-language contrasts were comparatively small and directionally heterogeneous, even reversing sign at some transitions.

The second analytical perspective followed a single linked population of 122,344 students from the 2004 cohort, each with a documented Grade 5 origin and no administrative special-education marker at that baseline, through a progressive stage-based multi-state framework. Rather than multiplying conditional transition probabilities from separate populations, the researchers propagated fitted probabilities through the modeled Grade 9 pathway branches and subsequent transitions, then averaged over the empirical joint distribution of the four Grade 5 baseline indicators using marginal standardization. Uncertainty was estimated by direct person-level nonparametric bootstrap, refitting the complete six-model transition system in each of 2,000 successful replications. The standardized results were sobering: from the common Grade 5 origin, 90.54 percent of students reached promoted Grade 8 completion, 64.59 percent reached documented high-school completion, 60.21 percent entered the Baccalaureate examination sequence, and only 50.72 percent achieved Baccalaureate success across the first four examination opportunities.

Within this linked trajectory, every signed group difference was larger at Baccalaureate success than at Grade 8 completion, although not all gaps evolved monotonically. The female–male difference grew from a negligible 0.67 percentage points at Grade 8 completion to 15.08 points by the fourth examination opportunity. The non-Roma–Roma difference, already a formidable 30.75 points at Grade 8 completion, surged to 50.60 points at documented high-school completion, receded to 48.20 points at Baccalaureate entry and 39.31 points at the first success opportunity, then climbed again to 43.15 points through four opportunities. By that final horizon, the standardized probability of Baccalaureate success was 51.90 percent for students without the Roma marker and just 8.75 percent for those with it. The Romanian–different-first-language contrast widened from 0.79 to roughly 6.2 points across the Baccalaureate horizons, and the urban–rural Grade 5-origin difference ballooned from 2.32 points at Grade 8 completion to 30.39 points at Baccalaureate success, where the corresponding standardized probabilities were 65.90 percent for urban-origin students and 35.51 percent for rural-origin students.

Grade 9 emerged as the system’s great branching point, where quantitative access and qualitative differentiation visibly diverged. Theoretical high school showed particularly large differences by the Roma marker and Grade 5 school setting, at 26.98 and 24.06 percentage points respectively, alongside an 11.78-point female advantage. Professional VET displayed the opposite direction for these contrasts: it was 11.76 points more probable among males, 7.51 points more probable among students with the Roma marker, and 17.38 points more probable among students with a rural Grade 5 origin. The researchers interpret this pattern through the lens of Lucas’s theory of effectively maintained inequality, which holds that when quantitative access to an educational level becomes widespread, advantage may shift toward qualitative distinctions within that level, such as tracks and destinations. They caution, however, that the study does not measure socioeconomic origin and therefore does not constitute a direct test of the theory.

The spatial dimension of the Grade 9 transition proved especially pronounced. Among students whose Grade 8 school was rural and whose subsequent Grade 9 setting was known, roughly 85 percent in both cohorts were observed in an urban Grade 9 school, with urban destinations predominating across all four pathways. For these students, entry into upper-secondary education was frequently a geographical as well as an educational transition. This finding resonates with prior GIS-based research showing that 84.1 percent of Romanian public high schools are located in urban areas although approximately half of the high-school-aged population lives rurally, leaving many rural communities with substantially lower accessibility and fewer high-school options. The authors stress that school setting in their data refers to the location of the recorded school rather than students’ residence, and that the observational design cannot disentangle distance, transportation, school availability, family resources, prior achievement, or residential mobility as mechanisms.

The cohorts also encountered different institutional arrangements that situate the contrasts without explaining them. Upper-secondary admission rules changed across the periods studied, with the weighting of National Evaluation results shifting from 75 percent for the 1999 cohort to 80 percent for the 2004 cohort and to the National Evaluation alone for the 2009 cohort. The three-year state professional VET route was introduced from Grade 9 in the 2014–2015 school year, and the cohorts intersected the COVID-19 pandemic at different educational stages. The authors are explicit that these historical differences cannot be treated as discrete exposures and that the observed between-cohort differences cannot be attributed to particular reforms, admission rules, or pandemic disruption. The administrative records themselves impose further limits: they do not provide complete annual grade-by-grade histories, absence of a later record cannot be interpreted as dropout, the Roma indicator is an administrative classification whose misclassification could not be validated, and the first-language variable is a broad administrative indicator rather than a measure of any specific ethnolinguistic group.

The study’s central contribution is conceptual as much as empirical. Aggregate progression, between-cohort change in inequality, and the development of inequality across stages within a cohort are related but distinct processes, and a single endpoint can obscure convergence at some transitions alongside larger or reconfigured inequalities elsewhere in the trajectory. Among 161 longitudinal studies of K–12 educational inequality in a recent European scoping review, only one used a Romanian sample, making this analysis a rare population-level account from an underrepresented national context. By locating the transitions and pathway junctures at which inequalities change in magnitude or form, the researchers provide a map for subsequent work on the mechanisms that generate these differences and on whether particular interventions can alter educational progression or pathway distributions, for whom, and under what implementation conditions.

Subject of Research: Education

Article Title: A longitudinal perspective on educational inequalities in Romania: between-cohort comparisons and within-cohort progression across stages and pathways

Article References: Simionescu, D. P., Dalu, A.-M., Goia, D., Iftode, O., Noveanu, G. N., & Plăeșu, A. (2026). A longitudinal perspective on educational inequalities in Romania: between-cohort comparisons and within-cohort progression across stages and pathways. Frontiers in Education, 11, Article 1924720. https://doi.org/10.3389/feduc.2026.1924720

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.3389/feduc.2026.1924720

Keywords: educational inequality, Romania, longitudinal study, educational transitions, multi-state analysis, Roma students, rural education, Baccalaureate, educational pathways, cohort comparison, longitudinal, perspective

The biogenesis of extracellular vesicles is central to understanding why different vesicle populations behave so differently. Exosomes arise through the endosomal pathway: early endosomes mature into late endosomes, and inward budding of the limiting membrane generates intraluminal vesicles within multivesicular bodies. When these bodies fuse with the plasma membrane, their intraluminal vesicles are released as exosomes, typically in the small vesicle range below 200 nanometers. Ectosomes, by contrast, form by direct outward budding and shedding of the plasma membrane, a process that tends to produce larger vesicles. Migrasomes, a more recently described subtype, form on retraction fibers left behind by migrating cells, while apoptotic bodies are released as cells undergo programmed death and fragment. The authors note that the latest MISEV guidelines discourage overreliance on biogenesis-based nomenclature, since the origin of a given vesicle preparation is often uncertain, and instead recommend operational classifications based on physical characteristics such as size and density, on biochemical composition, or on the cell type and conditions from which the vesicles were obtained. This pragmatic approach matters for reproducibility, because studies that simply report isolating exosomes may actually be working with heterogeneous mixtures of vesicle subtypes.

Among the immune cell sources discussed, macrophages receive particularly detailed attention, reflecting their dual role in gastrointestinal inflammation. Classically activated M1 macrophages can drive tissue damage, and the review describes vesicles from these cells that promote colitis progression by activating the TLR4 signaling pathway in recipient cells. Other macrophage-derived vesicles carry microRNA-223, which suppresses the expression of TMIGD1, a protein involved in maintaining intestinal barrier integrity, thereby contributing to barrier dysfunction. A further example involves tumor necrosis factor carried on vesicles, which engages the TNFR2 receptor and the NF-κB pathway in recipient cells; the review describes this axis both as a mechanism that protects CD4-positive T cells from activation-induced cell death and as a trigger for glycolytic reprogramming and inflammatory activation in macrophages themselves. These findings illustrate a recurring theme: the same vesicle-associated signal can have context-dependent effects, protecting some cells while activating pro-inflammatory programs in others, depending on the recipient cell type and the state of the local microenvironment.

Vesicles from other immune populations add further layers to this regulatory network. The review describes vesicles carrying microRNA-21a-5p, which reduces E-cadherin expression and thereby activates group 2 innate lymphoid cells through the KLRG1/GATA-3 axis, linking epithelial adhesion molecule shedding to innate lymphoid cell activity. Vesicle proteins from M1 macrophages are also reported to influence T lymphocyte viability and proliferation. Although the excerpted evidence focuses on inflammatory bowel disease, the authors extend their discussion to inflammatory conditions in other segments of the digestive tract, emphasizing that immune cell-derived vesicles can act on epithelial cells directly as well as on other immune cells, creating feedback loops that can either amplify or resolve inflammation depending on the cargo involved.

The therapeutic implications of this work rest on two complementary strategies. The first is to use immune cell-derived vesicles as drug carriers. Because vesicles are naturally occurring nanoscale structures, they can cross biological barriers, protect their payload from degradation, and deliver cargo to cells with which their surface molecules have affinity. The authors highlight advances in biological nanotechnology that make it feasible to isolate, characterize, and modify vesicles for therapeutic purposes. The second strategy is to modify vesicles themselves to enhance their efficacy, and the review offers a classification of modification approaches based on fundamental principles, which the authors present as an intuitive framework for readers. Such modifications can, in principle, alter vesicle tropism, change cargo loading, or adjust surface signaling molecules to bias recipient cell responses toward resolution of inflammation rather than its perpetuation.

Several practical considerations temper the enthusiasm surrounding these approaches. Isolation and purification of vesicles from cell culture supernatants or body fluids remains technically challenging, and contamination with protein aggregates or lipoproteins can confound functional studies. Standardization of vesicle characterization, in line with the MISEV framework the authors cite, will be essential for comparing results across laboratories. Dosing presents another challenge, since vesicle preparations are heterogeneous and potency may vary with the state of the parent cells at the time of collection. The source of vesicles for clinical use also matters; vesicles derived from allogeneic immune cells may carry donor-specific molecules, while vesicles engineered from cell lines may not fully recapitulate the behavior of primary cell-derived vesicles. The review acknowledges that the mechanisms of vesicle formation are not yet fully understood, which limits the precision with which vesicle production can be controlled.

The rising incidence and prevalence of gastrointestinal inflammation noted by the authors underscores the clinical urgency of this research. Chronic inflammatory conditions of the digestive tract impose substantial burdens on patients and healthcare systems, and existing treatments, while helpful for many, do not achieve durable remission in all patients and can carry significant side effects. Immune cell-derived vesicles offer a potential avenue for more targeted intervention, one that works with, rather than against, endogenous signaling pathways. The functional network the authors map, connecting various immune cell types and their vesicle-mediated crosstalk with epithelial and other cells, provides a framework for identifying which vesicle populations might be most amenable to therapeutic manipulation.

Looking forward, the review points toward several research directions. Better characterization of vesicle cargo under different inflammatory conditions could yield biomarkers for disease activity or treatment response. Deeper understanding of how vesicles navigate the gastrointestinal environment, including the mucus layer, the epithelial barrier, and the microbiota, will be needed before vesicle-based therapies can be reliably delivered to target sites. And continued refinement of modification strategies, guided by the classification the authors propose, may eventually allow researchers to design vesicles with defined cargo and tropism, transforming a naturally occurring communication system into a controllable therapeutic platform for inflammatory diseases of the digestive tract.

Subject of Research: Novel perspective on immune cell regulation in gastrointestinal inflammation: the role of extracellular vesicles and therapeutic prospects

Article Title: Novel perspective on immune cell regulation in gastrointestinal inflammation: the role of extracellular vesicles and therapeutic prospects

Article References: Wang, J., Xu, J., Cui, Z., & Wu, J. (2026). Novel perspective on immune cell regulation in gastrointestinal inflammation: the role of extracellular vesicles and therapeutic prospects. Experimental Biology and Medicine, 251, Article 11114. https://doi.org/10.3389/ebm.2026.11114

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.3389/ebm.2026.11114

Keywords: Novel, perspective, immune, cell, regulation, gastrointestinal, inflammation, role, extracellular, vesicles, therapeutic, prospects

The distinction between the two regimes is central to the proposal. Endemic persistence describes viral systems that remain regionally established over long temporal scales, coexisting with local crops, weeds, and vector populations under relatively stable ecological interactions. Such systems are characterized by ecological continuity, recurrent mixed infections, local recombination, and long-term circulation within regional host–vector networks. Invasive emergence, by contrast, involves the biological introduction and rapid spatial expansion of viral lineages into novel agroecological contexts, frequently associated with shifts in vector populations, crop intensification, trade-mediated dispersal, and ecological disturbance, followed by strong anthropogenic selection and post-introduction adaptation. Importantly, the authors stress that these regimes are not mutually exclusive categories; rather, they coexist and interact within shared agricultural landscapes, creating opportunities for mixed infections, recombination, host shifts, and the generation of novel epidemiological trajectories.

To make the framework empirically useful, the researchers operationalize the endemic–invasive continuum along four measurable axes: temporal persistence, measured as years of documented regional circulation; geographic range breadth, measured as the number of distinct production regions with confirmed detection; mixed-infection frequency, measured as the proportion of field-collected samples co-infected by two or more begomovirus species; and recombination incidence, estimated from the frequency of recombination events detected per genomic dataset in published surveys. Under this scheme, the pepper huasteco yellow vein virus (PHYVV, Begomovirus capsicumhuastecoense) and pepper golden mosaic virus (PepGMV, B. capsicummusivi) rank high on the first three axes, consistent with long-term endemic persistence, whereas tomato yellow leaf curl virus (TYLCV, B. coheni) ranks high on geographic breadth, reflecting its rapid expansion, but lower on temporal persistence and mixed-infection frequency within Mexican systems, consistent with its recent introduction. The authors note that position along these axes is dynamic and may shift as ecological and epidemiological conditions change, reinforcing the continuum rather than categorical nature of the regimes. A formally weighted composite index is beyond the scope of the current perspective, but future work could normalize each axis to a 0–1 scale and combine them into a quantitative continuum-position score for tracking directional shifts over time.

Mexico provides an especially relevant empirical arena for the framework because its pepper- and tomato-associated agroecosystems contain both regionally persistent begomoviruses and recently introduced invasive lineages, all within highly connected production systems dominated by whitefly-mediated transmission. The authors use the PHYVV/PepGMV and TYLCV pathosystems as contrasting models of the two regimes. They also introduce the concept of surveillance-relevant contact zones: agroecological areas where endemic and invasive begomovirus regimes spatially or temporally co-occur within shared host and vector networks, thereby elevating the probability of mixed infection, genomic exchange, and the emergence of novel viral variants. Such zones may function as evolutionary interfaces that facilitate the appearance of variants with altered host range, transmission efficiency, or pathogenicity, making them priority locations for genomic monitoring.

The biological attributes of begomoviruses underpin the entire framework. These compact single-stranded DNA viruses mainly infect dicotyledonous plants and display either monopartite or bipartite genome organization, encoding functions required for replication, movement, encapsidation, and vector-mediated transmission while enabling rapid diversification through mutation, recombination, and genomic component exchange. Recombination is a major evolutionary process shaping begomovirus diversification: comparative analyses of DNA-A and DNA-A-like components have identified recombination hot- and cold-spots, suggesting that genomic exchange is constrained by functional and structural organization rather than occurring randomly. Phylogeographic analyses of coat protein and replication-associated protein sequences further reveal strong geographic structure among begomovirus populations, indicating that regional ecological conditions and dispersal histories contribute to diversification patterns. The whitefly vector itself is now recognized as a complex of cryptic lineages differing in geographic distribution, host range, transmission efficiency, and invasion potential, and through its vector activity it interconnects cultivated crops, weeds, ruderal vegetation, and alternative hosts within broader epidemiological networks.

Mixed infection adds another critical layer. Experimental studies have demonstrated synergistic interactions between PHYVV and PepGMV in pepper (Capsicum annuum) plants, resulting in increased symptom severity and viral DNA accumulation. Superinfection by PHYVV can additionally modify recovery responses in PepGMV-infected plants through changes in viral DNA accumulation, DNA methylation, and viral chromatin state. More recent studies indicate that coinfection and recombination may generate recombinant variants with altered competitive capacity and epidemiological behavior, reinforcing the importance of ecological contact zones where endemic and invasive viral lineages overlap. In Mexican pepper agroecosystems, field surveys in the state of Sinaloa revealed high prevalence of both endemic viruses in symptomatic chili pepper plants, with PHYVV detected in 74.4 percent and PepGMV in 53.7 percent of analyzed samples, including frequent PHYVV/PepGMV mixed infections. Experimental transmission assays have further shown that the whitefly can efficiently acquire and transmit both viruses individually or simultaneously to chili pepper plants, creating ecological conditions that facilitate coinfection and increase opportunities for viral interaction within shared hosts.

Evidence from Mexican chiltepin pepper-associated systems extends these findings to the eco-evolutionary scale. Rodelo-Urrego and colleagues showed that ecosystem biodiversity modulates PHYVV and PepGMV genetic diversity in a virus-specific manner while also detecting recombinant and reassortant viral variants. From this perspective, the authors cautiously interpret the PHYVV/PepGMV pathosystem as an endemic recombination arena in which long-term ecological coexistence, bipartite genome organization, mixed infections, and persistent vector circulation collectively create conditions favorable for diversification and evolutionary experimentation. Critically, they emphasize that this endemic regime does not represent stasis: the recurrent generation of recombinant and reassortant variants means that endemic systems are evolutionarily active arenas, not inert reservoirs. The distinction between ecological stability and evolutionary stasis is central to understanding why endemic begomoviruses may, under altered ecological conditions, shift position along the continuum toward emergence. The authors also outline why PHYVV and PepGMV have not transitioned to an invasive regime elsewhere: both display strong geographic structuring consistent with regional adaptation, are primarily associated with pepper cultivation systems that lack the international trade-mediated dissemination routes that benefit TYLCV, and their bipartite genome organization imposes a co-dispersal requirement for both DNA-A and DNA-B components, potentially constraining long-distance spread relative to monopartite viruses.

TYLCV exemplifies the opposite evolutionary trajectory. One of the most globally disseminated begomoviruses, it is associated with tomato yellow leaf curl disease, a viral disease complex with major impacts on tomato (Solanum lycopersicum) production worldwide. Phylogeographic analyses suggest a probable Middle Eastern origin followed by extensive global dissemination driven by agricultural trade, vector expansion, and intensive crop production systems. In Mexico, TYLCV was initially detected in symptomatic tomato plants from the Yucatán Peninsula and subsequently reported in Sinaloa during the 2005–2006 tomato-growing seasons; viral sequences from these outbreaks displayed high nucleotide identity with TYLCV isolates previously described from the Caribbean region and Florida, supporting recent introduction events linked to transregional viral movement. Successful establishment was likely favored by intensive tomato production, continuous availability of susceptible hosts, and efficient vector-mediated transmission by the Bemisia tabaci cryptic species complex. Following introduction, TYLCV populations may undergo additional adaptive processes associated with host resistance and management-driven selection: in Mediterranean systems, deployment of resistant tomato cultivars has been associated with shifts in begomovirus population structure and viral composition, and recent analyses of the tomato ty-5 resistance network suggest that host resistance mechanisms can shape TYLCV–host interactions at both molecular and epidemiological levels. In the Mexican context, García-Estrada and colleagues identified intensive insecticide use targeting the whitefly, continuous cropping schedules, and the incremental adoption of Ty-gene-carrying tomato hybrids as key drivers shaping viral epidemiology in Sinaloa and Sonora. Although studies directly quantifying TYLCV population shifts in response to resistant cultivar deployment in Mexico remain limited compared to the Mediterranean literature, the growing adoption of Ty-1, Ty-3, and ty-5 resistance genes in commercial hybrids across northern Mexican production regions constitutes a parallel selection context that warrants targeted molecular surveillance.

The connections between the endemic and invasive pathosystems are where the framework becomes most consequential. In northern Mexico, TYLCV has been identified in double and triple infections involving PHYVV and/or PepGMV within pepper-associated disease complexes, demonstrating that resident and introduced begomoviruses can occupy overlapping ecological and epidemiological niches. Such coexistence exposes viruses with contrasting evolutionary histories to the same host species, vector populations, surrounding vegetation, and agricultural practices, creating evolutionary interfaces that connect the endemic and invasive ends of the continuum. Mixed infections may modify transmission dynamics through interactions within shared hosts and vectors, while coinfection creates the potential for genomic exchange through recombination, one of the principal drivers of begomovirus diversification. The importance of these ecological interfaces is supported by high-throughput sequencing studies documenting the co-circulation of multiple begomovirus species and related genomic sequences in non-cultivated plants from northern-Pacific Mexico, where begomovirus-associated DNA signatures were found in more than 60 percent of sampled plants across multiple regions. Additional evidence from Colima identified a novel recombinant begomovirus, sida chlorotic leaf virus (SiChLV, B. sidaflavusfolii), in weeds belonging to the genera Sida and Malvastrum, while also detecting crop-associated begomoviruses infecting non-cultivated plants, supporting the interpretation that weeds may function simultaneously as reservoirs, incubators of viral diversity, and environments favoring recombination events capable of generating new viral variants. Comparative evidence from Côte d’Ivoire, where a nationwide survey of cassava agroecosystems identified 65 plant species functioning as alternative hosts for cassava mosaic begomoviruses, and from Saudi Arabia, where high-throughput sequencing revealed the co-circulation of TYLCV, watermelon chlorotic stunt virus, and tomato leaf curl Palampur virus within cucurbit production systems alongside the emergence of a novel TYLCV lineage, illustrates the broader global applicability of the contact-zone concept.

Current begomovirus surveillance strategies remain largely focused on symptomatic crop outbreaks and single-pathogen diagnostics, despite increasing evidence that begomovirus emergence is driven by broader ecological and evolutionary interactions involving vectors, weeds, intercrops, alternative hosts, agricultural intensification, and viral coexistence. The authors propose that surveillance must evolve from a reactive framework toward an eco-evolutionary approach integrating genomic, ecological, and landscape-level information capable of identifying the interfaces where endemic and invasive viral systems converge and diversify. Specific operational recommendations include sentinel plot sampling in pepper–tomato interface regions to monitor ecological overlap and early mixed-infection events; systematic collection of weeds and ruderal vegetation along agroecosystem edges, particularly in contact-zone areas; regular monitoring of whitefly populations with cryptic species identification using molecular markers such as mtCOI typing; whole-genome sequencing of samples from mixed infections to detect recombination events and characterize novel viral variants; temporal sampling across consecutive crop cycles to capture seasonal dynamics and multi-season evolutionary trends; application of recombination screening pipelines such as RDP5 and SimPlot as standard components of begomovirus genomic surveillance; and integration of crop calendars, host plant distribution maps, and vector abundance data into spatially explicit epidemiological risk models. Emerging sequencing technologies, including Oxford Nanopore approaches, may further strengthen surveillance capacity by enabling real-time characterization of mixed infections, recombinant variants, and invasive begomovirus population dynamics. The authors caution that the suggested sampling efforts and thresholds are illustrative operational starting points intended to guide implementation and prioritization, not validated universal thresholds, and should be calibrated to local epidemiological context. Taken together, the findings support interpreting begomovirus emergence as an eco-evolutionary continuum rather than a collection of isolated epidemiological categories. In regions such as Mexico, West Africa, and the Middle East, where crop diversity, whitefly pressure, weed reservoirs, and intensive agriculture converge, surveillance frameworks integrating evolutionary biology, genomics, and agroecosystem ecology may help identify where viral persistence is likely to occur, where invasive lineages may become established, and where recombination-associated risks should be prioritized. Such an approach may ultimately shift begomovirus management from reactive outbreak response toward more anticipatory and risk-informed disease surveillance strategies, anticipating the ecological conditions that favor viral emergence, diversification, and long-term persistence before outbreaks occur.

Subject of Research: An eco-evolutionary perspective on endemic persistence and invasive emergence of begomoviruses in Mexico

Article Title: An eco-evolutionary perspective on endemic persistence and invasive emergence of begomoviruses in Mexico

Article References: Aviña-Padilla, K., Alcántar-Aguirre, F. C., Zamora-Macorra, E. J., Vasquez-Gutierrez, U., Carrillo-Tripp, J., & Diaz-Lara, A. (2026). An eco-evolutionary perspective on endemic persistence and invasive emergence of begomoviruses in Mexico. Frontiers in Virology, 6, Article 1897263. https://doi.org/10.3389/fviro.2026.1897263

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.3389/fviro.2026.1897263

Keywords: eco-evolutionary, perspective, endemic, persistence, invasive, emergence, begomoviruses, Mexico, scientific research

The research team applied SolBeePop, a trait-based population model for solitary bees, to field study data collected with Osmia bicornis, the red mason bee, a polylectic spring-active species native to Europe and an important crop pollinator. Rather than treating the landscape as a static backdrop, the investigators built scenarios of floral resource availability at three levels of detail, from a simplified world containing only a single flowering oilseed rape field to a rich representation that incorporated satellite-derived land-cover maps, flowering phenology of trees and meadows, and even the actual pollen compositions found in bee brood provisions. The model outputs were then compared directly to untreated control data from six published field studies conducted across Germany and France, allowing the researchers to assess whether increasingly detailed landscape information improved the model’s ability to reproduce what real bees actually did.

At the heart of the approach lies a crucial insight about how solitary bees experience their environment. Unlike honey bees, which communicate about resource locations and forage in large numbers, a solitary bee conducts a limited number of foraging flights each day and seeks out attractive patches on an individual basis. The SolBeePop model reflects this by using an aggregated landscape representation rather than a fully spatially explicit one. Daily input time series capture weather-dependent foraging opportunities, resource quality from the focal crop, resource quality from non-crop flowering plants, and the proportion of foraging directed at the crop. In combination, these time series determine how much resource a female bee can collect on any given day and, in turn, how efficiently she can provision brood cells. This design makes the model especially useful when detailed data on resource distribution and spatial behaviour are lacking, which is the case for most solitary bee species of interest.

To build the landscape scenarios, the team first compiled a comprehensive review of published pollen analyses from O. bicornis brood provisions across Europe, drawing on studies conducted in Poland, Czechia, Germany, Sweden, Switzerland and Great Britain. The review revealed that pollen from oak trees, Brassicaceae plants including oilseed rape, and buttercups were consistently present in provision samples, while Rosaceae pollen from orchard trees and berries appeared across most studies as well. In studies that sampled provisions at multiple time points, the pollen compositions shifted during the season, reflecting the flowering phenology of the plants. Oilseed rape pollen ranged from zero to 73 percent across studies, and in four studies where flowering oilseed rape fields were explicitly part of the design, the average and maximum proportions of Brassicaceae pollen were higher than in studies without that focus. This generalised picture of floral preferences, independent of any single location, provided the foundation for translating land-cover types into model inputs.

For the medium detail scenario, the researchers used land-cover data from the European Union’s Copernicus Land Monitoring Service, specifically the Corine Land Cover + Backbone dataset with a 10-metre resolution, to characterise the landscapes surrounding each of the six field study sites. Each land-cover class was assigned to plant taxa known to be collected by red mason bees, with woody broadleaved deciduous trees corresponding to oak, maple, walnut, horse chestnut, willow and orchard species, and permanent herbaceous areas corresponding to buttercups and other non-crop herbaceous plants. Flowering times were categorised into date ranges with associated resource availability factors, so that trees provided high resources from late April to mid-May while herbaceous plants peaked from late May to mid-June. The land-cover composition was analysed within three presumed foraging radii of 400, 800 and 1200 metres around each nest location, reflecting the considerable variation in reported foraging distances for the species.

Two alternative approaches were tested for translating land-cover into resource availability. The first, called dist, calculated the shortest distance from the nest to the nearest resource-providing patch and converted it to a quality value based on the assumed foraging radius. The second, called prop, calculated the proportion of the total area within the foraging radius that was covered by resource-providing land covers. The results were striking: using the proportional area approach resulted in much lower assumed resource availability and correspondingly lower simulated brood production, producing outputs more comparable to the simplified low detail scenario. In contrast, the distance-based approach yielded higher resource availability and higher brood production rates. The researchers argue that the distance approach is more plausible from the bee’s perspective, since solitary bees are likely to seek out few attractive resources on a daily basis rather than distributing their foraging effort across the entire landscape in proportion to patch size.

When comparing model outputs to the field study data using normalised root mean square errors, the best relative match was obtained with the high detail scenario using the distance approach and a 1200-metre foraging radius. This scenario incorporated study-specific pollen composition data, with the percentage of Brassica pollen in provisions directly reflecting the proportion of foraging on crop, interpolated linearly between sampling dates. The simulated cumulative brood cell production increased across scenarios, from low to medium to high detail, demonstrating that consideration of multiple floral resources across the landscape and study period improved model performance. Oilseed rape peak flowering was limited to about a week, indicating that resources from the focal field were not optimal throughout the study phases and that floral resources beyond the field were important drivers of brood production. Notably, the bees appeared to seek out oak pollen specifically, even when nest boxes were placed adjacent to flowering oilseed rape fields.

Weather emerged as another critical factor in the simulations. The model assumes that the life span of bees is independent of weather, meaning that time lost to inclement conditions cannot be compensated for by individual bees. Default assumptions were that days with maximum temperatures below 10 degrees Celsius or precipitation of 25.4 millimetres or more did not allow foraging. When the researchers tested an alternative set of thresholds requiring warmer and drier conditions, based on assumptions used in a previous analysis of the species, the number of days available for foraging dropped considerably and simulated brood production fell accordingly. The authors note that published data on weather-dependent foraging in O. bicornis are limited and that more detailed information on thresholds or correlations between foraging activity and temperature, humidity, precipitation, wind speed and solar irradiation could substantially improve the realism of future simulations.

The study also revealed considerable variability in the field data that the model could not explain. Brood cell numbers in one trial, Tübingen 2014, were particularly low, resulting in a stark overestimation by the model even under the scenario that performed best across trials. The researchers suggest that multiple factors could contribute to such variability, including the condition of released cocoons, dispersal behaviour of emerged bees, fine-scale resource availability and unknown environmental influences. This unexplained variability makes it difficult to identify a single best-fitting scenario and highlights the inherent challenges of validating population models against field observations. Nevertheless, the model successfully captured the general pattern of increased brood production when non-crop resources were included, and the authors emphasise that even simplified scenarios provide useful conservative estimates when detailed information is lacking.

The implications extend well beyond the red mason bee. For ecological risk assessment of pesticides, understanding how solitary bees use dynamic agricultural landscapes is essential for estimating potential exposures, since landscape composition alone may not predict exposure well without accounting for food availability, nesting sites and weather. The SolBeePop framework allows researchers to generate scenarios at whatever level of detail the available data support, from conservative assumptions that bees forage only on a treated crop while it is in flower to realistic representations incorporating multiple resources across the season. For polylectic species that use multiple floral sources in parallel, treated and untreated resources should both be considered to estimate realistic exposures. For oligolectic species specialised on one or few plant taxa, a simple landscape representation is likely sufficient because the relevant resources occur in a single land-cover type. The authors conclude that the model represents an important tool for identifying data gaps and research needs, as well as for supporting risk assessments of solitary bee species in complex landscapes, even when knowledge of their floral preferences and spatial behaviour remains incomplete.

Subject of Research: Landscapes from the bee perspective: an application of SolBeePop to field study data

Article Title: Landscapes from the bee perspective: an application of SolBeePop to field study data

Article References: Schmolke, A., Galic, N., & Hinarejos, S. (2025). Landscapes from the bee perspective: an application of SolBeePop to field study data. Food and Ecological Systems Modelling Journal, 6, Article e149273. https://doi.org/10.3897/fmj.6.149273

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.3897/fmj.6.149273

Keywords: Landscapes, perspective, application, SolBeePop, field, data, scientific research

The research, led by Xianyou Pan of Shanghai University of Electric Power together with colleagues from Basin Electric Power Cooperative and State Grid Zhoushan Electric Power Supply Company, tackles one of the most consequential puzzles in corporate climate finance. According to the 28th Conference of the Parties, global climate finance flows currently amount to only one-third of what is required to meet temperature control goals, creating what economists call a funding bottleneck. Annual investments of 2.4 trillion dollars are expected to be needed by 2030. Yet corporate willingness and efficiency in green investment remain generally low, because such projects often generate limited short-term economic returns and carry considerable uncertainty. Under resource constraints, rational entrepreneurs who favor certain returns are reluctant to proactively allocate funds to green projects, and each enterprise adopts a wait-and-see approach out of concern that it will bear the costs of the green transformation alone.

Pan and colleagues argue that this dilemma cannot be understood by treating each company as an isolated decision-maker. Corporate green investment, they contend, is embedded within a network of group decision-making comprising enterprises in the same industry, region, or supply chain. Their theoretical framework draws on collective intelligence theory—which holds that when most individuals within a group engage in coordinated action, they can generate substantial collective benefits—and organizational information processing theory, which examines how firms selectively interpret and respond to external signals. The key insight is that the investment behavior of peer enterprises constitutes an external information pool, and whether, how, and to what extent an enterprise utilizes this pool depends on its internal group decision-making mechanisms, including the board’s network for information acquisition, the information-processing structure of senior management, and the transparency of information disclosure.

To test these ideas empirically, the team assembled an unbalanced panel of 821 Chinese listed enterprises from 2010 to 2020, comprising 4,065 observations. Green investment data were manually collected from the annual reports of listed enterprises, screening expenditures directly related to environmental protection in the notes to construction in progress—projects for wastewater treatment, exhaust gas control, dust removal, energy conservation, desulfurization, and denitrification. Green investment efficiency was measured using the Richardson model, a capital allocation framework in which the absolute value of the regression residual captures the gap between actual investment and the economically optimal level conditional on enterprise fundamentals. The primary explanatory variable, Deviation, measures the absolute difference between a company’s green investment and the average green investment of its peer group, defined by industry classification according to the China Securities Regulatory Commission’s standards. The analysis employed fixed-effects models with individual and year fixed effects, alongside system GMM estimators to address dynamic endogeneity.

The benchmark results reveal a striking asymmetry. The coefficient on peer green investment deviation is significantly positive at the 1 percent level (0.0033), supporting the hypothesis that peer effects enhance corporate green investment efficiency. In economic terms, a one-standard-deviation increase in deviation leads to approximately a 0.0039 change in the green investment inefficiency index, corresponding to roughly 26 percent of the mean inefficiency during the sample period—indicating that peer convergence behavior can alleviate about one-quarter of the efficiency deviation. When the team decomposed the effect, they found that negative peer deviation is significantly positive (0.0034, p < 0.01), whereas positive peer deviation is statistically insignificant. In other words, efficiency losses occur only when peer enterprises’ green investment falls below that of the focal enterprise, suggesting the peer effect operates through a directional information-learning mechanism rather than simple overinvestment.

The most provocative finding concerns whom companies choose to imitate. The team classified enterprises into leaders (the top third) and followers (the bottom two-thirds) along two dimensions: the scale of green investment and corporate social responsibility scores. When followers simply replicated the visible green-investment scale of leaders, the coefficient was insignificant, suggesting that such simple replication does not improve efficiency. By contrast, when followers learned from CSR-oriented leaders, the effect was significantly positive (0.5660, p < 0.01), and this promoting effect even exceeded the peer effect within the CSR leader group itself (0.4520, p < 0.01). The interaction term test further indicated that the follower group exhibits significantly higher sensitivity to peer deviation than the leader group. The explanation, the authors argue, is that green-investment-scale leaders may be motivated by non-economic considerations such as policy compliance and image-building; followers who copy the visible scale without discerning the underlying rationale are prone to blind imitation, triggering a bandwagon phenomenon that crowds out genuinely efficient green investments. CSR leaders, however, reflect more robust long-term strategies and stakeholder relationships, and learning from them constitutes rational information learning through which followers can effectively optimize investment allocation.

The study also identifies the conditions under which peer effects translate into efficiency gains, examining three sequential stages of information learning. Information transparency was proxied by the KV index, a market-based measure of corporate disclosure quality in which a smaller value indicates more comprehensive disclosure. Information acquisition capability was measured by the betweenness centrality of independent directors within the director network, capturing the structural-hole positions through which directors access heterogeneous information. Information analysis capability was proxied by the number of executives with environmental backgrounds, identified by resume keywords such as ecology, low carbon, sustainability, energy conservation, and clean energy. All three interaction terms were significant in the expected direction: higher transparency, stronger acquisition capability, and greater analytical capability each amplified the positive impact of peer effects on green investment efficiency. Notably, the main effect of information analysis capability was positive and significant, while transparency and acquisition capability exerted only indirect influence—consistent with the theoretical expectation that environmentally versed executives can directly optimize green investment decisions while also strengthening the interpretation of peer signals.

The team conducted extensive robustness checks to distinguish the information-learning mechanism from regulatory imitation. The interaction term between industry deviation and the intensity of environmental regulation was significantly positive (4.739, p < 0.01), and remained so when regulation was lagged by one period (2.989, p < 0.01), ruling out reverse causality. The authors reason that if the peer effect were solely attributable to passive imitation by enterprises seeking to comply with regulatory requirements, environmental regulation should not reinforce the efficiency-enhancing effect of the peer effect. Cross-validation using a VRS-DEA output-oriented model that incorporates both environmental and economic performance dimensions confirmed the benchmark findings (0.0161, p < 0.05), although a pure green DEA model relying solely on a single environmental output dimension failed to achieve statistical significance, suggesting that a single environmental indicator is insufficient to capture the economic-environmental trade-offs inherent in green investment efficiency. After controlling for geographical-level peer effects, the industry deviation coefficient remained significant while the geographical coefficient did not, indicating that technological trajectories and institutional pressures among enterprises in the same industry are the dominant channels through which peer effects operate.

The findings carry pointed implications for both policymakers and corporate managers. From the government perspective, the authors recommend leveraging the guiding role of leading enterprises by establishing model and pilot enterprises to stimulate other companies in the same industry to actively participate in green investment, while strengthening oversight mechanisms involving the government and the public to prevent the compliant bandwagon phenomenon. From the corporate governance perspective, enterprises should enhance their information coordination capabilities through disclosure, acquisition, and analysis, fostering rational information learning behaviors and preventing blind following of trends. The authors also acknowledge limitations: the Deviation variable cannot fully distinguish whether convergence stems from active information learning or passive institutional imitation, the reflection problem and common-shock problem inherent in peer-effect research are difficult to fully resolve with existing methods, and peer relationships defined by industry classification fail to capture supply chain linkages and interlocking director networks. Future research leveraging exogenous policy shocks, such as environmental regulations or green finance pilot programs rolled out in batches, would help disentangle these mechanisms.

As climate finance flows remain far short of what is needed, the study offers a sobering message: the aggregate quality of green capital allocation may depend less on how much companies invest and more on how they learn from one another. In a group decision-making environment with excessive information noise, managers can easily form a false consensus and trigger the bandwagon phenomenon, leading to resource misallocation and overcapacity. But when enterprises possess the internal information-processing capabilities to observe, acquire, and analyze peer signals rationally, the collective intelligence of the market can compensate for the shortcomings of policy pressures and incentives, amplifying investment variability and steering green capital toward genuinely efficient uses. The difference, it turns out, is not imitation itself but the sophistication of the learner.

Subject of Research: Enhancement mechanism of corporate green investment efficiency from the perspective of group decision making

Article Title: Enhancement mechanism of corporate green investment efficiency from the perspective of group decision making

Article References: Pan, X., Wu, X., Ma, J., Lu, H., & Liu, B. (2026). Enhancement mechanism of corporate green investment efficiency from the perspective of group decision making. Frontiers in Environmental Economics, 5, Article 1876957. https://doi.org/10.3389/frevc.2026.1876957

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.3389/frevc.2026.1876957

Keywords: Enhancement, mechanism, corporate, green, investment, efficiency, perspective, group, decision, making, scientific research

The study, led by Ibrahim Sallieu Jalloh of the China University of Geosciences in Wuhan together with Shixiang Li, Guangjin Zhang, H. M. Wasif Rasheed, and Rashid Khurshid, is the first of its kind in Sierra Leone’s civil service. The researchers combined Social Exchange Theory, which holds that workplace relationships operate on reciprocity, with Social Information Processing theory, which explains how employees interpret managerial practices as social cues. According to the exchange logic, when an organization gives employees genuine influence over their daily tasks, scheduling, and work environment, employees perceive this as benevolence and respect. They respond in kind, first with emotional trust in their leaders and organization, then with energetic investment in their work, and finally with discretionary behaviors that benefit the whole agency. The information processing logic adds that participation and authentic leadership function as signals that employees decode to decide what kind of attitude and behavior is appropriate in their workplace.

Methodologically, the research used a quantitative cross-sectional design. Data were collected from eight key public sector departments in Sierra Leone using a structured 62-item questionnaire distributed through a drop-off-and-pick-up procedure over one month. Of 538 questionnaires handed out, 470 were returned, and after screening, 431 were deemed usable. The sample was predominantly male at 82.8 percent and young, with 66.1 percent aged between 18 and 30. More than 85 percent held a Bachelor’s or Master’s degree. Notably, while 60.6 percent had served their organization for 5 to 10 years, 60.8 percent had worked under their current supervisor for 3 years or less. The researchers argue this tenure gap is theoretically critical: employees are anchored in the organization but their relational contract with a specific leader is still new, which makes the building of trust and the role of authentic leadership especially significant in these fresh dyads.

The analytical engine of the study was Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling, or PLS-SEM, run in SmartPLS 4. This variance-based technique is suited to complex conceptual models with many latent constructs, sequential multi-path mediation, and moderation, without imposing strict parametric assumptions. The researchers first validated the measurement model, confirming internal consistency with Cronbach’s alpha values ranging from 0.807 to 0.952, convergent validity with average variance extracted above the 0.50 threshold for every construct, and discriminant validity using both the Fornell-Larcker criterion and the more sensitive heterotrait-monotrait ratio, where all HTMT values fell below 0.90. Five items with weak loadings were dropped, leaving 57 indicators. Common method bias was addressed procedurally through anonymity and statistically through full collinearity tests and Harman’s single-factor check, which found the first factor explained only 34.2 percent of variance, well below the 50 percent cutoff.

The structural results read like a relay race. Participation in decision-making showed a very strong association with affective trust, with a path coefficient of 0.764. Affective trust then associated positively with work engagement at 0.573 and with affective commitment at 0.428. Work engagement associated with organizational citizenship behavior at 0.617, while affective commitment showed a complementary but weaker association at 0.200. Finally, citizenship behavior associated with employee performance at 0.633. The model explained 58.3 percent of the variance in affective trust, 52.9 percent in work engagement, 58.0 percent in affective commitment, 59.3 percent in citizenship behavior, and 40.1 percent in employee performance. Cross-validated redundancy was high for trust and engagement and modest for performance, which the authors attribute to unobserved institutional constraints that also shape in-role performance in public bureaucracies.

The sequential mediation tests are where the study delivers its most viral finding. The indirect pathway running from participation through trust, then engagement, then citizenship behavior, and finally to performance was significant with an estimated effect of 0.171. The parallel pathway through commitment was also significant but smaller at 0.041. When the researchers tested the direct path from participation to performance, it was non-significant, while the total indirect effect equaled the total effect, establishing full mediation. In plain terms, participation does not improve performance by itself. It works only when it first builds emotional trust, which then converts into engagement or commitment, which then expresses itself as voluntary extra-role behavior. The authors argue this unpacks the black box between managerial practice and performance outcome that has produced inconsistent findings across decades of participation research.

Authentic leadership, measured with the 16-item Authentic Leadership Questionnaire covering self-awareness, relational transparency, balanced processing, and internalized moral perspective, emerged as a critical boundary condition. The interaction between authentic leadership and affective trust was significant for both work engagement and affective commitment. Simple slope analyses showed that at high levels of authentic leadership, one standard deviation above the mean, the trust-to-engagement association strengthened from 0.452 to 0.694, and the trust-to-commitment association strengthened from 0.317 to 0.539. The researchers interpret this through Social Information Processing theory: authenticity is a salient social cue that shapes how employees interpret and express trust. When leaders are perceived as genuine, the conversion of trust into energetic involvement and emotional attachment is amplified. Interestingly, authentic leadership also showed direct associations with both attitudes, suggesting that even apart from trust, the mere presence of a genuine leader fosters engagement and attachment.

Why does this matter beyond Sierra Leone? The authors argue that in hierarchical, resource-constrained West African bureaucracies, participation is not just a human resource technique but a major organizational transformation. Employees accustomed to centralized power and high power distance may decode participative cues as more meaningful signals than employees in Western organizations where participation is routine. Affective trust also carries a built-in element of risk tolerance. In bureaucracies, speaking out or volunteering extra effort can carry professional risks including reprimand or exclusion. Trust acts as a psychological buffer that changes the employee’s risk calculus, allowing risk-averse civil servants to engage in the discretionary, innovative behavior that improves public service provision without fear of bureaucratic punishment. Given that formal material incentives are often restricted in the public sector, relational exchange becomes the primary currency of motivation.

The study’s practical implications are direct. Public sector organizations may consider strengthening participative mechanisms such as employee consultation, feedback, and involvement in relevant work-related decisions where institutional conditions permit. Leadership development emphasizing transparency, ethical conduct, openness, and consistency may amplify the conversion of trust into engagement and commitment. Initiatives supporting engagement, recognition, professional development, and constructive citizenship behaviors may form part of broader employee-management strategies. The findings suggest an integrated approach combining participation, authentic leadership, employee engagement, and supportive work conditions, adapted to organizational resources and structures.

The authors are careful about limits. The cross-sectional design cannot establish causal ordering, and employees who perceive themselves as high performers may subsequently report greater trust and engagement. Self-reported measures leave room for halo effects and social desirability, and the strong association between work engagement and citizenship behavior indicates conceptual and perceptual proximity that should be acknowledged. Convenience sampling limits external validity, and the gender imbalance reflects context-specific constraints in digital access and survey participation. Future research should employ longitudinal or cross-lagged panel designs, multi-source data including supervisor ratings and peer assessments, and objective performance measures such as civil service ratings or citizen satisfaction surveys. Testing the model across private enterprises and varied cultural settings would confirm whether the sequential social exchange process is universal. Still, for the first time, the invisible machinery connecting a manager’s invitation to participate and a civil servant’s measurable output has been mapped end to end, and trust sits at the center of it all.

Subject of Research: A social exchange perspective on employee performance in Sierra Leone’s public sector: the roles of authentic leadership, participative decision-making, and trust

Article Title: A social exchange perspective on employee performance in Sierra Leone’s public sector: the roles of authentic leadership, participative decision-making, and trust

Article References: Jalloh, I. S., Li, S., Zhang, G., Rasheed, H. M. W., & Khurshid, R. (2026). A social exchange perspective on employee performance in Sierra Leone’s public sector: the roles of authentic leadership, participative decision-making, and trust. Frontiers in Psychology, 17, Article 1885753. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2026.1885753

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2026.1885753

Keywords: social, exchange, perspective, employee, performance, Sierra, Leone, public, sector, roles, authentic, leadership

The analysis focused on the official macro-level agendas of the two titles, which were founded in 1985 and 1991 respectively and have since designated more than 300 cities in over 100 countries. The European Capital of Culture operates with a legal mandate as an official European Union action, managed by the European Commission, while the Ibero-American Capital of Cultures is owned by the Union of Ibero-American Capital Cities, a non-governmental organisation uniting 29 capital and major cities across Latin America, Spain, and Portugal. Both titles mention sustainability or sustainable development in their agendas, but previous research had never examined how exactly they understand sustainability or its connection to culture. Pekkarinen set out to fill that gap by analysing the official documents that guide candidate cities and title holders, including the 2014 European Parliament and Council Decision establishing the ECoC action for 2020 to 2033, the European Commission’s guide for bidding cities, and the minutes of the UCCI’s Cultural Committee meetings from 2017 to 2019.

The methodological approach combined frame analysis, originally developed by sociologist Erving Goffman and later adapted for policy research, with an ecosystemic perspective that views cultural activity as embedded in overlapping, interconnected, and interdependent dimensions rather than hierarchical levels. Frame analysis examines how actors make sense of situations, which aspects they select, name, and categorise as relevant, and how they combine elements into coherent stories about problems and solutions. Pekkarinen applied this lens to identify how the two titles construct meaning around the culture-sustainability relationship, paying attention to the various interconnections and interdependences enabling or hindering sustainability transformations within and across the micro, meso, and macro levels of the cultural ecosystem and between that ecosystem and other areas of society and nature.

Crucially, the study enriched this ecosystemic analysis with the concept of buen vivir, or good living, which draws on the lifestyles and philosophies of Latin American Indigenous peoples, particularly the Ecuadorian Kichwa concept of sumak kawsay and the Aymara concept of suma qamaña. Buen vivir emerged as a critical response to development ideology and gained political ground when Ecuador and Bolivia included it in their constitutions in 2008 and 2009 respectively. The concept is not a single coherent philosophy but a contested field of thought with three main streams: an indigenist and pachamamist line, a socialist line, and an ecologist and post-developmentalist line. What unites them is a way of life based on harmony with oneself, society, and nature, alongside principles of biocentrism and plurality and a critical stance towards development ideology. Pekkarinen used buen vivir as a non-Western lens to challenge the dominant frameworks through which international cultural policy typically approaches sustainability.

The findings reveal stark differences between the two titles. The European Capital of Culture understands sustainability primarily in the sense of lasting legacy, categorising desired impacts into cultural, economic, and social dimensions while almost completely ignoring environmental considerations. The word environment appears only once in the ECoC Decision, as an example of a sector with which title cities could develop links. The ECoC frames culture as a driver of local and regional development, presenting the title as an opportunity for cities to create sustainable solutions to their cultural, social, and economic problems through careful planning, cross-sector cooperation, and citizen participation. Its stories warn that poor preparation, weak governance, or insufficient commitment may hinder the realisation of lasting impacts, but environmental issues are never raised as problems or solutions. The guiding frame, Pekkarinen concludes, is culture-led urban development, within which culture is harnessed for the creation of a long-lasting cultural, economic, and social legacy.

The Ibero-American Capital of Cultures takes a different approach, aligning its sustainability aims explicitly with the United Nations 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and Agenda 21. The IACoC documents state that culture is a dimension of sustainable development and, due to its transformative nature, indispensable for the success of the 2030 Agenda. The proposed selection criteria require each title city to commit to implementing the Sustainable Development Goals at the local level and to include an environmental sustainability perspective in its cultural activities and administration. The UCCI’s 2018 General Assembly minutes even note that the union’s cultural work is based on values of peace, diversity, solidarity, and shared care for people and the planet. Unlike the ECoC, the IACoC documents consider interconnections with the natural environment, mentioning the development of cultural policies in harmony with the environment. The IACoC also takes a more outward-looking stance, critiquing the insufficient recognition of culture in international sustainable development policies and proposing the title as a vehicle for establishing culture as the fourth pillar of sustainable development through international advocacy.

However, the critical analysis through a buen vivir lens found limited transformative sustainability potential in both titles’ current approaches. The ECoC documents show no signs of adopting an active role in sustainability policies or discussions, reinforcing the separation between culture and nature and prioritising human and economic development aims over the natural world. The IACoC’s idea of cultural policies based on plurality, inclusivity, and harmony with nature represents a refreshing viewpoint that could begin to challenge Western and anthropocentric notions, but even these promising stances fail to provide transformative viewpoints because they align with dominant development ideals instead of questioning them. From a buen vivir perspective, both titles’ ecosystemic thinking is limited: their celebration of diversity and agency lacks recognition of alternative worldviews and sustainability conceptions, and they only consider human interconnections, treating the more-than-human world as external to the cultural ecosystem rather than as part of it.

The study argues that more transformative sustainability approaches would require a conscious reframing of the titles’ macro-level sustainability approaches, which would mean questioning hegemonic sustainable development discourses and opening up to alternative conceptions, particularly ecosystemic and biocentric ones. In practical terms, the official criteria could require applicant cities to emphasise respect for planetary boundaries, foster harmonious coexistence in the more-than-human world, or make ecological priorities the central focus. The macro level could even encourage experiments on implementing the rights of nature in local contexts or constructing local culture-led utopias in which dominant worldviews are allowed to be challenged. Importantly, Pekkarinen stresses that the macro level should not dictate the process or end results; CoC projects should be developed locally with a bottom-up approach but based on a set of shared principles that integrate alternative concepts and viewpoints into the titles’ agendas and strategies.

The arts themselves hold untapped potential in this reframing. As essentially cultural and artistic programmes, the two titles currently miss the opportunity to emphasise the transformative potential of the arts in sustainability ambitions and ecological reconstruction. Drawing on Timothy Morton’s notion of hyperobjects, massive issues such as the climate crisis or biodiversity loss that are difficult to grasp, Pekkarinen suggests that CoCs could promote artistic thinking, methods, and viewpoints as possibilities to go beyond ordinary ways of thinking and seeing towards awareness and responsibility. The study also calls for a more critical approach to culture itself, acknowledging that cultures can prevent sustainable change. The wider notion of culture, encompassing lifestyles, value systems, worldviews, and the human-nature relationship, should be recognised as part of the CoC agenda alongside the traditionally understood domain of cultural policy.

The timing of this call is significant. The current period of the ECoC action will come to an end in 2033, and the UN Sustainable Development Agenda concludes in 2030 without having achieved the 17 Sustainable Development Goals. Whether the ECoC and IACoC choose to take a more proactive and critical approach or continue to align with dominant development goals remains to be seen. Future research, Pekkarinen notes, should explore how the official criteria are interpreted, adapted, or perhaps challenged in CoC cities and among local culture sector actors and citizens. The two cities holding the ECoC title in 2026, Trenčín in Slovakia with its emphasis on ecological sustainability and environmental protection, and Oulu in Finland with its theme of Cultural Climate Change, would provide interesting cases for such investigation. Less information is available about local IACoC projects, but studying how the macro-level emphases on sustainable development have actualised at the city level since 2017 would be insightful. Research on the sustainability approaches of other Capital of Culture titles would also help understand what kinds of framings of culture and sustainability emerge from different contexts around the world.

Subject of Research: Culture and sustainability in international Capital of Culture programmes’ macro-level agendas: an ecosystemic and buen vivir perspective

Article Title: Culture and sustainability in international Capital of Culture programmes’ macro-level agendas: an ecosystemic and buen vivir perspective

Article References: Pekkarinen, J. (2026). Culture and sustainability in international Capital of Culture programmes’ macro-level agendas: an ecosystemic and buen vivir perspective. European Journal of Cultural Management and Policy, 16, Article 16453. https://doi.org/10.3389/ejcmp.2026.16453

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.3389/ejcmp.2026.16453

Keywords: Culture, sustainability, international, Capital, programmes, macro-level, agendas, ecosystemic, buen, vivir, perspective, scientific research