There have been a number of calls for neuroscience to embrace a wider range of model systems. Authors of these opinion pieces have emphasized the inherent value of explicitly evolutionary and comparative work in neuroscience and the value of diversity in applied and biomedical research. However, few of these papers address the role of undergraduate neuroscience education in preparing students to pursue, much less value, evolutionary and comparative neuroscience. Here, we argue that the field of neuroscience would benefit from the explicit inclusion of evolutionary and comparative neuroscience in introductory courses. We first review the state of introductory neuroscience curricula and available teaching materials, before discussing the importance of an early introduction to evolutionary and comparative ideas, challenges to incorporating these ideas into introductory courses, and finally offer a number of strategies to increase student awareness of the diversity of systems available for neuroscience research. We speculate that introducing students to evolutionary and comparative neuroscience early in their education may increase retention of students with an evolutionary or comparative bent, which may increase the number of researchers interested in pursuing these questions in their careers, while also making students bound for health, biomedical research, or engineering professions more aware of the value of evolutionary and comparative approaches.
We argue that adjoint QCD in 3+1 dimensions, with any SU(N) gauge group and two Weyl fermion flavors (i.e. one adjoint Dirac fermion), confines and spontaneously breaks its chiral symmetries via the condensation of a fermion bilinear. We flow to this theory from pure N=2 SUSY Yang–Mills theory with the same gauge group, by giving a SUSY-breaking mass M to the scalars in the N=2 vector multiplet. This flow can be analyzed rigorously at small M, where it leads to a deconfined vacuum at the origin of the N=2 Coulomb branch. The analysis can be extended to all M using an Abelian dual description that arises from the N multi-monopole points of the N=2 theory. At each such point, there are N−1 hypermultiplet Higgs fields hmi=1,2, which are SU(2)R doublets. We provide a detailed study of the phase diagram as a function of M, by analyzing the semi-classical phases of the dual using a combination of analytic and numerical techniques. The result is a cascade of first-order phase transitions, along which the Higgs fields hmi successively turn on, and which interpolates between the Coulomb branch at small M, where all hmi=0, and a maximal Higgs branch, where all hmi≠0, at sufficiently large M. We show that this maximal Higgs branch precisely matches the confining and chiral symmetry breaking phase of two-flavor adjoint QCD, including its broken and unbroken symmetries, its massless spectrum, and the expected large-N scaling of various observables. The spontaneous breaking pattern SU(2)R→U(1)R, consistent with the Vafa–Witten theorem, is ensured by an intricate alignment mechanism for the hmi in the dual, and leads to a ℂP1 sigma model of increasing radius along the cascade.
The evolution of planet-forming regions in protoplanetary disks is of fundamental importance to understanding planet formation. Disks with a central deficit in dust emission, a “cavity,” have long attracted interest as potential evidence for advanced disk clearing by protoplanets and/or winds. Before JWST, infrared spectra showed that these disks typically lack the strong molecular emission observed in full disks. In this work, we combine a sample of 12 disks with millimeter cavities of a range of sizes (∼2–70 au) and different levels of millimeter and infrared continuum deficits. We analyze their molecular spectra as observed with MIRI on JWST, homogeneously reduced with the new JDISCS pipeline. This analysis demonstrates a stark dichotomy in molecular emission where “molecule-rich” (MR) cavities follow global trends between water, CO, and OH luminosity and accretion luminosity as in full disks, while “molecule-poor” (MP) cavities are significantly subluminous in all molecules except sometimes OH. Disk cavities generally show subluminous organic emission, higher OH/H _2 O ratios, and suggest a lower water column density. The subthermal excitation of CO and water vibrational lines suggests a decreased gas density in the emitting layer in all cavities, supporting model expectations for C _2 H _2 photodissociation. We discover a bifurcation in the infrared index (lower in MR cavities) suggesting that the molecular dichotomy is linked to residual μ m-size dust within millimeter disk cavities. Put together, these results suggest a feedback process between dust depletion, gas density decrease, and molecule dissociation. Disk cavities may have a common evolutionary sequence where MR switch into MP over time.
As conversational AI systems become a larger part of the media landscape, they raise questions about whose interests they serve and the risks they may pose to users. These systems do more than provide information: they increasingly offer advice and companionship through interfaces that can appear supportive and socially responsive. A pressing concern is that users may form social or interpersonal relationships with these systems and place relational trust in them, even when the interests shaping interactions do not fully align with their own. The Fake Friend Dilemma (FFD) describes the problem that follows: the same relational trust that makes conversational AI useful can also leave users open to manipulation and exploitation when institutional interests conflict with their own. Drawing on work on trust, AI alignment, dark patterns, and surveillance capitalism, the paper considers how the FFD can manifest through product sales, propaganda and biased information, behavioral nudging, and surveillance. It also considers possible structural and technical mitigation strategies. The FFD is not simply about AI misleading users. The problem it surfaces is that the trust people place in these systems can itself become a resource for institutional actors seeking to influence behavior or extract information. The FFD is therefore as much a problem of media governance and political economy as it is a technological one.
