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The transformation of major river basins represents one of the most prominent markers of the Anthropocene. This article provides a global historical analysis of anthropogenic river engineering projects across Eurasia and North America from the late eighteenth century through the mid-twentieth century. Drawing on archival records, cartographic evidence, and paleo-environmental proxy data, the study explores how centralized state authorities systematically reshaped fluvial hydrology to facilitate modern state consolidation, agricultural expansion, and industrialization. We trace the shift from localized, adaptive water management systems to mega-hydraulic engineering projects characterized by extensive damming, channelization, and wetland reclamation. The environmental consequences—including altered sedimentation dynamics and loss of aquatic biodiversity—demonstrate a recurring historical pattern where immediate economic objectives compromised ecological stability. Keywords: Environmental History, Hydrology, Anthropocene, State Power, River Engineering, Ecological Transformation

Addressing educational disparities across nations requires rigorous comparative analysis of institutional design and fiscal allocation models. Utilizing international large-scale assessment data from PISA and TIMSS alongside OECD institutional policy indicators across 28 member states, this paper investigates the structural factors underlying cross-national achievement differences in secondary education. Hierarchical Linear Modeling (HLM) reveals that absolute national expenditure per student is a non- linear predictor of performance; beyond a baseline expenditure threshold, equity-directed resource distribution exerts a significantly stronger influence on socio-economic achievement gaps than total national funding. Nations featuring comprehensive early childhood education and delayed institutional tracking consistently demonstrated lower variance in student performance alongside higher overall mean achievement scores.

Standard economic models frequently operate under the assumption of unbounded cognitive capacity, failing to account for systemic decision biases in complex institutional environments. This paper examines how cognitive constraints—specifically bounded rationality—interact with formal regulatory architecture to influence market participant compliance and economic efficiency. Utilizing a multi-stage laboratory economic experiment involving 320 participants, we simulated institutional compliance scenarios under varying degrees of choice complexity and structural information nudges. Our findings demonstrate that as institutional rules increase in cognitive complexity, participant error rates rise exponentially, leading to suboptimal resource allocation. However, when choice architectures were restructured to align with cognitive heuristics, compliance rates increased by 38% without increasing legal enforcement expenditures.

Grounding its framework in Self-Determination Theory (SDT), this empirical study evaluates the structural relationships between perceived organizational support, basic psychological need satisfaction (autonomy, competence, and relatedness), and long-term psychological wellbeing among remote and hybrid workers (N = 1,280). Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) was conducted on longitudinal survey data collected across three distinct time points over eighteen months. Results indicate that perceived organizational support significantly predicts sustained psychological wellbeing (beta = .42, p < .001). Crucially, autonomy satisfaction emerged as the primary mediating variable, accounting for 64% of the indirect effect on emotional exhaustion reduction and positive vitality enhancement. The study provides robust empirical evidence that organizational policies prioritizing employee autonomy foster long-term psychological resilience.

As political discourse has migrated onto commercial social media platforms, private companies have assumed an increasingly consequential role in regulating political speech—deciding what stays online, what is removed, and what is demoted or labeled. This review synthesizes recent scholarship on platform content moderation as a form of political governance, examining three interrelated dimensions: the legal and institutional status of platforms as "new governors" of speech; the comparative politics of state efforts to regulate platform moderation; and the uneven, often Western-centric application of moderation systems across national and linguistic contexts. Drawing on legal scholarship, comparative political science, and empirical platform studies, the review finds that content moderation increasingly functions as a hybrid public-private governance regime, shaped simultaneously by platform policy, national regulation, and transnational pressure, with outcomes that vary substantially by country, platform, and political system. The review highlights a persistent asymmetry: moderation systems designed primarily around U.S. legal norms and English-language content are applied, often poorly, to political speech in linguistically and politically diverse contexts, particularly across the Global South. The review concludes by outlining implications for platform accountability, comparative regulatory design, and future research on moderation equity.

Political polarization in democratic societies has intensified over the past two decades, coinciding with the rise of social media as a dominant channel for political information and expression. This narrative review synthesizes evidence from systematic reviews, meta-analyses, and empirical studies published between 2010 and 2025 to evaluate the role of social media in shaping political polarization. Drawing on prior systematic work, the review addresses four themes: selective exposure and media effects, the contested empirical status of echo chambers and filter bubbles, the role of algorithmic curation and recommender systems, and the distinction between affective and issue-based polarization. The synthesis indicates that while pro-attitudinal media use is consistently associated with heightened polarization, direct causal evidence that social media use produces echo chambers is weaker and more contested than popular discourse suggests. Existing research is disproportionately concentrated on Twitter/X and United States samples, constraining generalizability. The review concludes by identifying priority areas for future research, including cross-platform and cross-national designs, longitudinal causal identification strategies, and interventions capable of reducing affective polarization without suppressing legitimate political expression.

In the 21st century, the proximal examination of fish behavior—the analysis of immediate genetic, physiological, neurobiological, and environmental mechanisms triggering behavior—has shifted from basic observation to a high-tech, predictive science. Driven by rapid technological innovation and global environmental pressures, modern researchers use fish behavior as a neural proxy to reveal complex internal states, breaking old assumptions that fish operate on simple, rigid reflexes.

This is a Journal of Behavoural Ecology in West Africa.