From past, persisting, and consolidating ecologies of segregation to ecologies of repair.

September 22, 2026| Source: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America

Across the United States and Europe, urban and periurban spaces have historically been shaped by land dispossession and enclosure that systematically exclude marginalized, non-White communities from the benefits of society, including access to nature. These dynamics, which have played out and perdured over centuries as part of historic land dispossession and recent green racial capitalism, form the bedrock of contemporary urban segregation and socioecological inequalities. As a result, we see that minoritized and low-wealth groups continue to be deprived of ecological resources and suffer perturbations and loss in urban ecosystem functions and balances. This piece examines the complex relationship between segregation and urban ecologies, drawing on examples from the United States and Europe. We identify five concurrent pathways through which exclusionary land use results in unequal urban ecologies that undermine both social well-being and ecological health. In doing so, we explore how legacies of racial capitalism, colonialism, and segregation create ecologically unbalanced urban landscapes and ecosystems and entangle periurban and rural areas in unequal urbanization. We conclude by advocating for emancipatory and reparative planning practices that confront unequal ecologies and green racial capitalism. These integrate reparations, community-led solutions, equitable green infrastructure, and a radical rethinking of exclusionary socioecological systems.

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Ancient DNA challenges to admixture narratives: Insights from Notre-Dame Cemetery (1683-1796) in Colonial Montreal, Canada.

Historical narratives of early colonization in Quebec frequently portray French-Indigenous relations as cooperative and characterized by admixture; which are often mobilized in modern debates on false-indigeneity. These narratives have been studied through genealogical, genetic, and bioarchaeological analyses, yet individuals of African descent remain mostly absent from them, while Indigenous peoples are framed largely in relation to colonists. Notre-Dame Cemetery (1683-1796) in Tiohtià:ke-

Society & CultureOctober 20, 2026

Understanding consciousness (biological and artificial) as a society of self-schemas.

This article argues that human cognition is more than the performance of functions such as memory, decision-making, and attention. The brain also builds schematic models of those cognitive functions and uses those models to monitor, predict, and partially control them. When you introspect, your understanding of who you are and what is happening inside of you is derived from those schematic, sometimes inaccurate, but generally useful models, rather than from the actual cognitive functions that ar

Society & CultureOctober 13, 2026

Hyperfunction of PSD-95 leads to hyperexcitability and cognitive abnormalities in MEF2C haploinsufficiency.

Myocyte enhancer factor 2C (MEF2C) is a transcription factor critical for brain circuit development and cognitive behavior. The loss of one copy of MEF2C leads to MEF2C haploinsufficiency syndrome (MCHS), a neurodevelopmental disorder characterized by intellectual disability, epilepsy, and behavioral phenotypes associated with autism spectrum disorders. Given that numerous genes are regulated by MEF2C, the neuronal and behavioral deficits in MCHS are complex, and there is currently no effective

Society & CultureOctober 13, 2026

Interventions to mitigate post-infection morbidity: Management insights from simple models.

A variety of pathogens that cause acute disease can also affect their host long after recovery. These post-infection effects lead to elevated costs for individuals and societies, which can be mitigated by large-scale interventions. Here, we examine the management of post-infection morbidity with mathematical models. First, we show that long-term usage of nonpharmaceutical interventions can reduce post-acute burden. Second, to investigate how post-infection effects affect optimal vaccination cove

Society & CultureOctober 13, 2026

Reproducibility of social science research using aggregate statistics with noise infused for differential privacy.

Privacy-preserving analytics such as differential privacy are designed to allow the analysis of sensitive datasets while protecting individuals' privacy. Their deployment, however, has been controversial. Critics maintain that statistical noise injected to preserve privacy can degrade the quality and feasibility of social science research. We select a benchmark of empirical findings from 93 published social science studies involving regression analyses over aggregate statistics. We evaluate whet