A recurring challenge in science and engineering is the model-reality gap, where trusted legacy simulators lose fidelity due to unresolved physics or structural incompleteness. This challenge has motivated remedies ranging from imperfect mechanistic models to fully data-driven surrogates. Here, we address this gap with Alternating Neural Integrators (ANI), a non-intrusive reuse-and-correct framework for upgrading executable legacy simulators without requiring access to or modification of their internal implementation. Guided by operator-splitting principles, ANI alternates the evolution of a fixed prior simulator with a learned neural correction that targets structured discrepancy between the prior and the supervisory data. We show that ANI can recover missing coupling in chaotic systems and act as an effective subgrid correction in turbulence, improving dynamical fidelity where prior models drift. In selected mechanistically structured settings, post hoc symbolic distillation yields compact hypotheses and, in controlled benchmarks, supports closed-loop refinement of the prior. By combining data-driven flexibility with reusable scientific simulators in a theoretically grounded framework, this work provides a practical gray-box route for systematically upgrading existing computational infrastructure when a callable prior and supervisory data are available.

Chronic depression associated with early trauma remains one of the most treatment-resistant conditions in mental healthcare. Clinical and empirical findings have increasingly suggested that patients with histories of early trauma may benefit differentially from intensive psychoanalytic treatments compared to symptom-focused or short-term psychotherapies. Our conceptual article aims to elucidate the mechanisms underlying sustained therapeutic change in psychoanalysis with chronically depressed, early traumatized patients by integrating clinical psychoanalytic theory, contemporary dream research, and interdisciplinary models of memory reconsolidation. Taking a longitudinal case from the LAC Depression Study as an illustration, this study examines a patient who underwent high-frequency psychoanalysis and demonstrated enduring structural change, which remained accessible for more than a decade after treatment termination. Clinical material from the original analysis and from a later crisis intervention illustrates how embodied memories of early traumatic experiences can be discovered and understood within the transference relationship and gradually transformed through repeated analytic working-through. Particular emphasis is placed on changes in dream processes as indicators of deep psychic reorganization. Using psychoanalytically informed dream research, including the Zurich Dream Process Coding System (ZDPCS), the analysis demonstrates a shift from early trauma-dominated nightmares characterized by helplessness and an absence of a helping object to a later dream reflecting increased affect regulation, symbolic capacity, involvement, and self-agency. These transformations are conceptualized as markers of structural change rather than mere symptom reduction. This article further argues that psychoanalytic processes resonate with contemporary neurobiological models of memory reconsolidation. When embodied memories of trauma are revived within a safe and emotionally attuned analytic relationship, they may enter a labile state that allows for enduring modification and reintegration. From this interdisciplinary perspective, psychoanalysis is uniquely positioned to foster sustained change in patients with chronic depression and early trauma by enabling the re-transcription and reconsolidation of traumatic embodied memories within the analytic relationship. This conceptual integration contributes to a more profound understanding of why psychoanalysis can produce lasting therapeutic effects in a patient population traditionally considered difficult to treat.

Humans conceptualize time in terms of space, allowing flexible time construals from various perspectives. We can travel internally through a timeline to remember the past and imagine the future (i.e., mental time travel) or watch from an external standpoint to have a panoramic view of history (i.e., mental time watching). However, the neural mechanisms that support these flexible temporal construals remain unclear. To investigate this, we asked participants to learn a fictional religious ritual of 15 events. During fMRI scanning, they were guided to consider the event series from either an internal or external perspective in different tasks. Behavioral results confirmed the success of our manipulation, showing the expected symbolic distance effect in the internal-perspective task and the reverse effect in the external-perspective task. We found that the activation level in the posterior parietal cortex correlated positively with sequential distance in the external-perspective task but negatively in the internal-perspective task. In contrast, the activation level in the anterior hippocampus positively correlated with sequential distance regardless of the observer's perspectives. These results suggest that the hippocampus stores the memory of the event sequences allocentrically in a perspective-agnostic manner. Conversely, the posterior parietal cortex retrieves event sequences egocentrically from the optimal perspective for the current task context. Such complementary allocentric and egocentric representations support both the stability of memory storage and the flexibility of time construals.

This study examines vaccine hesitancy in wartime Ukraine, where institutional mistrust, displacement, and emotional trauma reshape parental decision-making. Drawing on in-depth interviews with mothers and pediatric professionals, we explore how caregivers navigate immunization choices amid disrupted health systems, contested information environments, and weakened trust in state and international actors. We frame hesitancy not as a static or irrational stance but as a dynamic process shaped by context, history, and emotion. Findings reveal that hesitancy stems from intersecting structural and interpersonal factors, including the erosion of institutional credibility, fear-based digital content, and generational memories of coercive medicine. Mothers often rely on social networks and peer narratives to fill gaps left by healthcare services, while providers struggle to communicate effectively under wartime pressures. Vaccine decision-making in this context is deeply relational, moral, and affective, extending beyond biomedical considerations. Addressing hesitancy in conflict-affected settings requires public health strategies that move beyond access and education, prioritizing empathetic communication, rebuilding trust, and acknowledging the emotional and symbolic dimensions of vaccination during crisis.

Women's mental health is profoundly shaped by structural violence through housing, which impacts their experience of home and sense of belonging. This Perspective advances an integrative sociological framework across a continuum from the most concrete manifestation of shelter (housing) through symbolic representations of home, to the psychological experience of belonging to a place. We synthesize evidence for relationships between unstable, unsafe housing, abusive homes, social dislocation, and mental ill-health. Drawing on interdisciplinary scholarship, we specify how housing insecurity erodes community, relationships, and safety, generating ontological insecurity that amplifies vulnerability to interpersonal violence. We show that these dynamics are bidirectional: mental health conditions can impede access to resources and secure housing, reinforcing insecurity, while housing adversity is associated with worsened mental health. An intersectional lens reveals that minoritised women experience compounded harm through migration status, precarity, and policy regimes that limit protection and support. Our framework connects macro-level structures (national and international policy), meso-level institutions (welfare, health, and housing services), and micro-level lived experience, demonstrating how structural conditions become embodied as mental health symptoms. This Perspective situates ontological (in)security as central to the relationships between shelter, place, and women's mental health, identifying actionable leverage points for change. We argue for gender-sensitive, integrated interventions that expand access to safe, stable housing, co-locate mental healthcare with rights-based and anti-discrimination services, and address feedback loops between shelter, place, and mental health. By foregrounding housing as a key conduit of structural violence, this Perspective advances sociological understanding of how belonging and mental health are co-constituted and offers directions for research and policy to improve women's health and flourishing.

Social prescribing has gained attention internationally as a health-promoting way to address patients' nonmedical needs, yet research in the Nordic healthcare context remains limited. This theory-informed process evaluation set out to unpack the early implementation of a social prescribing model in Swedish primary care, developed to reduce loneliness and promote health among older adults. Guided by Normalization Process Theory (NPT) and the Consolidated Framework for Implementation Research (CFIR), this study assessed how and under what conditions the model was implemented across 10 primary care centres between May 2023 and December 2024. Data were triangulated from interviews with prescribers and patients, alongside prescribing and follow-up materials. Thematic analysis indicated that while the approach was perceived as relevant and timely, implementation was hindered by a selective use of the routine screening question and lack of person-centredness in the prescribing process, reflecting poor fidelity to core principles. Leadership engagement and managerial support that appeared symbolic rather than active further constrained implementation by limiting integration into organizational workflows, rendering the approach peripheral or optional to other clinical and statutory tasks. The model's operationalization also lacked alignment with community resources and bridging structures, limiting implementation by failing to meet patients' needs and expectations. While the Swedish social prescribing approach aligns with national policy discourse and prescribers' values, its scale-up will require clearer guidance on components needing high-fidelity delivery, necessary organizational structures, accessible local resources, and mechanisms linking primary care with the wider community. These findings contribute to the international evidence base on social prescribing and inform refinements of the Swedish model.

The adoption of the World Health Organization Pandemic Agreement in May 2025 marked a political commitment to stronger global pandemic preparedness. Its credibility, however, depends on the successful negotiation and implementation of the Pathogen Access and Benefit Sharing annex under Article 12, to be finalized by April 2026. The COVID 19 pandemic exposed the failures of voluntary global health mechanisms, as African countries rapidly shared pathogen samples and sequence data yet faced severe delays in access to vaccines, diagnostics, and therapeutics. The PABS annex therefore represents the core test of whether the Agreement can move beyond symbolic equity toward enforceable obligations. This commentary argues that African countries enter the PABS negotiations with an unusual convergence of leverage: early scientific contributions, expanding regulatory and manufacturing capacity, and coordinated diplomacy through the African Union and Africa CDC. In a fragmented multilateral environment dominated by high income state interests, the central challenge is not recognition but conversion of capacity into binding rules. African negotiators have responded by pushing for standardized contracts, traceability of pathogen materials and sequence information, and compliance mechanisms that condition access on enforceable benefit sharing. Drawing on Africa’s institutional readiness, the paper contends that the continent is positioned not merely to influence the PABS annex, but to co-design its operational architecture. Whether this potential is realized will determine if the Pandemic Agreement corrects past inequities or reproduces them under a new legal form.

The public plays a central role in producing and sustaining abortion stigma by shaping dominant narratives, reinforcing moral norms, and passing judgment on individuals associated with abortion. These collective attitudes are expressed through social exclusion and symbolic condemnation - practices that shape both personal experiences and structural access to care. This mixed-methods systematic review updates the state of research by synthesising recent evidence from high-income countries (HICs), with particular focus on how the public enact and experience abortion stigma. We conducted a mixed-methods systematic review of peer-reviewed quantitative and qualitative studies published since 2015, following international standards for systematic reviews. Due to heterogeneity in measurement, quantitative and qualitative data were narratively synthesised. Methodological quality was assessed using standardised appraisal tools for both quantitative and qualitative research. Nineteen studies were included (12 qualitative, 7 quantitative). Quantitative findings reveal that abortion stigma in HICs persists at moderate levels and is associated with religiosity, political conservatism, lower income, and male gender. Qualitative studies demonstrate how stigma is enacted, perceived, and anticipated across diverse social settings, highlighting prevailing stereotypes and uncovering experiences of verbal harassment and social exclusion. Abortion stigma remains deeply embedded within the public. By updating and expanding on the previous work, this review underscores the need for targeted, group-specific stigma reduction strategies and more robust instruments for capturing stigma.

In the early 1960s, global actors and international organizations embraced desalination as a promising development tool and a fresh expression of technology's power to control nature. Amid postwar reconstruction, decolonization, and Cold War tensions, desalination symbolized progress and promised equitable, universally accessible fresh water. Yet, despite its compelling appeal, desalination was prohibitively expensive compared to existing sources of water, with numerous technical and economic uncertainties remaining unresolved. By looking at the cases of Tunisia and Chile, this article explores the techno-political mismatch between utopian visions of desalination solving water scarcity across any geography and the political, financial, and environmental realities of implementation. As a form of hope and aspiration, desalination demonstrates how high-modernist ideals materialized unevenly, shaped by diverse and contested global contexts. By tracing this transnational pursuit, the article foregrounds a significant yet relatively unknown global history of technological optimism and shows how universalist visions ran up against local geographies and postcolonial development agendas.

In Papua New Guinea (PNG), like other countries, health service access, engagement and the provision of primary health and public health infectious disease care changed dramatically during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. To understand this disruption a photovoice study was conducted with community members (n = 12), clients of health services (n = 10) and healthcare workers (n = 5) and in six provinces in PNG during the third and largest wave of COVID-19 in country. The key findings from this study highlight how COVID-19 fear, and absence and avoidance of health facilities during COVID-19 directly influenced how healthcare was accessed and provided during COVID-19 in PNG. Spatiality, specifically the distance to service, to each other, and to treatment and care were directly influenced by health facility changes, service provision reconfigurations, and fear of COVID-19. This fear and these changes were presented through stark, but symbolic, images of health facilities empty and devoid of clients and healthcare workers. People struggled to get to health facilities due to a lack of transport, and when they could entry was restricted by locked gates and doors, and movement across health facility spaces was controlled by security. This article follows the varying, but mostly similar, experience of healthcare works and clients with respect to health setting spatiality and its important influence in providing or accessing care during COVID-19 - providing important lessons for the management of health facilities for future health emergencies and pandemics.

Background: Opioid use disorder (OUD) and associated overdose deaths have reached epidemic proportions worldwide over the past two decades, with death rates for men consistently reported at twice the rate for women. We have recently reported sex-specific differences in electrocortical activity in persons with OUD in a visual object recognition task. The mesolimbic dopamine (DA) system is implicated in OUD but also plays a critical role in some disorders of visual attention and a modulatory role in the processing of visual stimuli in the blue cone pathway of the retina. We hypothesized that electrocortical responses to color stimuli would be affected differentially in men and women with OUD. Methods: Using a controlled, cross-sectional, age-matched (18-56 years) design, we evaluated color processing in male and female subjects recruited from a community-based, high-intensity residential substance abuse and detoxification treatment program. We evaluated electroencephalogram (EEG) event-related potentials (ERPs) and reaction time (RT), in male and female participants with OUD (n = 38) vs. sex- and age-matched non-OUD control participants (n = 37) in a simple color recognition Go/No-Go task, as well as perceptual and behavioral responses in physiological and neuropsychological tests. Results: N200, P300, and late potential (LP) Relevant stimulus-induced ERPs were evoked by the task and were well-differentiated from Irrelevant distractor stimuli. P300 amplitudes were significantly greater and N200 and LP latencies were significantly shorter in male vs. female non-OUD controls in this task. There were significant sex differences in N200, P300, and LP amplitudes and latencies between male vs. female non-OUD subjects and OUD differences with blue color as the Relevant stimulus. In the Binocular Rivalry Test, there were shorter dwell times for perceiving a blue stimulus in male OUD subjects and there were significant sex and OUD differences in neuropsychological tests including Finger Tapping, Trails A/B, and Symbol Digit Modalities Test. Conclusions: These findings suggest that there are significant sex-related physiological, perceptual, and cognitive differences in color processing that may result from deficits in DA production in the retina that mirror deficits in mesolimbic DA transmission correlating with OUD, suggesting that blue color processing has the potential to be an effective biomarker for brain DA and for diagnosis and monitoring of treatment efficacy in substance use disorders.