Although there has been considerable scholarly discussion of the relationships between the infrastructure and social and economic conditions of settlements and their estimated populations, there has been virtually no investigation of the extent to which it is possible to detect similar relationships within settlements, aside from some very preliminary work on Pompeii. The aim of this article is therefore to build on earlier work and investigate whether this is indeed the case by focusing on three other sites: Delos, Herculaneum, and Ostia. The results show that there are almost identical relationships between the numbers of rooms and the total ground floor footprints of the residential units within these settlements, despite their different social and economic contexts. This demonstrates, for the first time, that these effects are not just confined to one site and that we may be dealing with a relatively widespread phenomenon.

Psychiatric disorders are complex conditions involving multifactorial, nonlinear causal dynamics, which make effective treatment challenging. To address this complexity, a framework is proposed that distinguishes between types of causality: permissive causality, which pertains to factors affecting the likelihood of an outcome occurring, and instructive causality, which refers to factors shaping the specific features of the outcome. In this framework, when considering an individual as a complex adaptive system, causal processes within the individual are permissive, whereas causal processes outside the individual can be either permissive or instructive in relation to the individual’s global emergent outcomes. Accordingly, when dealing with mental states or complex behaviors, biological substrates – from genes to brain areas – operate through permissive causality, shaping a space of possibilities rather than instructing a specific outcome. By contrast, contextual factors – such as life challenges or subjective appraisal – can also operate through instructive causality, steering behavior and mental states toward specific trajectories. Therapeutic strategies should harness the synergistic interplay between these types of causality, targeting biological substrates to enable transitions in mental states, and leveraging contextual factors to steer these transitions toward mental well-being. Recognizing such interplay holds promise for developing innovative and effective approaches in precision psychiatry, especially for treatments enhancing plasticity – which itself operates through permissive causality – including antidepressants and psychedelics.

This research addresses the perceptual conflict wherein consumers place greater trust in independent repair providers than in brand-led initiatives. Positioned within design for sustainability discourse, this paper, firstly examines repair service providers’ perspectives, revealing their challenges & systemic complexities. Secondly it presents their role in shaping the industry through skill transfer, community building etc. Lastly, design interventions are analyzed using systemic leverage points framework to expose varying depths of repair services to bring systemic change of fashion sector.

This study investigates the challenges of dynamic value integration in complex innovation projects. Difficulties stem not from a lack of willingness, but from a persistent lack of re-openability in design governance systems. This study identifies a triple closure mechanism that filters out evolving stakeholder values. The paper reframes value integration from a technical problem to a political-institutional process, arguing for an Adaptive Governance Infrastructure designed to manage the necessary tension between static and re-opening.

This paper provides a structured overview of methods for assessing assembly complexity in manufacturing. A systematic literature review classifies approaches as product-, information-, or system-centered, each reflecting distinct sources of complexity and application contexts. A four-dimensional scheme enables consistent comparison. The results highlight methodological gaps and support future development of scalable, integrable models for planning and decision-making in high-variety production environments.

Critical infrastructures are complex, interdependent systems on which our societies are reliant. A better understanding of these interdependencies is vital to improving their functioning and resilience. While various studies and surveys have been conducted, we aim to cast a new perspective by focusing on what Rinaldi et al. introduced in 2001, as “logical interdependencies” and their modeling and simulation considering the human factor, and by adopting a cross-area approach to guide future works through the identification of research directions and common design challenges, good practices.

The paper presents a simulation framework for evaluating fast charging and battery swapping strategies in battery-electric construction machinery. Developed using discrete-event and agent-based modeling, the framework supports scenario analysis in mining and road construction contexts. Case studies demonstrate how charging strategies impact productivity, energy costs, and battery degradation. Results highlight trade-offs between operational efficiency and long-term sustainability, offering a decision-support tool for electromobility transition in construction machinery.

The implementation of services into complex systems is not well understood in design. We explore this issue by interviewing 24 design professionals with experience in implementing digital services in healthcare. We asked when they consider such services as implemented, and how they view the relation between design and implementation. Results reveal diverse perspectives on both topics. Given the wide dispersion in views, we propose two categories to describe implementation goals (impact on, and integration with systems), and to view design as a contributor to the implementation phase.

Despite the growing application of behavioural science in public policy, progress in many countries has been slow. This study explores the challenges in applying behavioural insights (BI) to policymaking and identifies potential solutions. We conducted semi-structured interviews with 12 behavioural science experts who have worked with national governments or international bodies across 39 countries. Using inductive content analysis, we discovered three main challenges perceived by the experts: limited knowledge and misunderstandings of BI among stakeholders, constraints within the public policy environment, and resource limitations in both BI units and public administrations. The experts also highlighted strategies to build capacity within the public sector, including creating peer networks, partnering with external experts, organising targeted training programmes, and providing supportive tools and resources. We interpret these findings through the lens of navigating complex adaptive systems, distinguishing between ordered problems – amenable to transferable solutions – and genuinely complex problems requiring participatory approaches and contextual adaptation. Advancing contextual understanding of behavioural science in policy may require distinguishing challenges that permit efficient solutions from those demanding slower, relationship-based sense-making.

The text explores ‘Black Box Music,’ an artistic research experiment investigating human–technology relations in musical improvisation. The authors describe performances in which each musician plays an unfamiliar, complex, custom-built instrument designed by another team member. These ‘black box’ devices – ranging from AI-based systems to assemblages of analogue devices – cannot be fully understood or controlled, thus foregrounding questions of agency, sense-making, and aesthetic experience. Drawing on Actor-Network Theory, phenomenology, and philosophies of technology, the authors show how performers, instruments, and audience form a dynamic network of actants whose roles and intentions remain ambiguous. Players initially struggle to ‘read’ the instruments’ behaviour, shifting from reactive analysis toward proactive improvisation. This process blurs embodiment and alterity: the instruments alternately function as transparent extensions of the body and as quasi-autonomous others. Such ambiguity invites anthropomorphisation and even ritualised interaction, echoing historical entanglements of music, magic, and spirituality. Audience members, too, encounter indeterminate agency and must negotiate aesthetic meaning without clear attribution of sound to human or machine. The project demonstrates how complexity and unpredictability destabilise traditional notions of control, revealing improvisation as collective, participatory sense-making and highlighting the emergent, co-creative agency of both humans and technological instruments.

Mimesis is a foundational concept that has influenced aesthetics and arts scholarship for centuries. Originating with Plato, in whose work it primarily described artistic referentiality, the term was later popularized in acousmatic music during the 1990s as a framework for many composers. This article highlights an alternative interpretation emerging in performative studies: mimesis as an assimilation of incidents. Through this reinterpretation, I underscore the properties of evolution, adaptation, multiplicity, self-determination, and emergence as key characteristics of performative mimesis. The article concludes by suggesting potential similarities with the concept of complex systems – an emerging theory in the natural sciences – which may prove useful for future research.

Despite contemporary relevance in understanding how cities historically overcame demographic, social and economic constraints imposed by the lack of clean, fresh water, the value of estimating aqueduct delivery rates and their potential relationship with population size in the Roman Empire remains uncertain. Here, the authors use settlement scaling theory to examine recent statistics for city size and aqueduct capacity, revealing a systematic but sublinear relationship between these variables, whereby water supply increased at a slower rate than population size. Far from merely ostentatious displays of power, aqueducts were carefully planned to ensure an adequate supply of clean and fresh water.