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A Better Cycle-Breaker for Direct Democracy?
Item type: Journal Article
Gersbach, Hans; Noguerales, Rodrigo Casado; Schenk, Samuel (2026)
When a counter-proposal is made to an initiative to change the Swiss constitution, the citizenry makes three binary majority choices: the initiative versus the status quo, the counter-proposal versus the status quo, and the initiative versus the counter-proposal as a tie-breaker. If the three majority choices form a cycle, the current rule selects the alternative that beats the status quo. This rule may lead to strategic voting. We suggest breaking cycles differently by choosing the middle alternative in case of a cycle, which will normally be the counter-proposal. More precisely, we study Condorcet-consistent pairwise majority voting procedures when preferences are single-peaked and their distribution is common knowledge. We then show that whenever a strong Nash equilibrium exists, its outcome is the same as under sincere voting, and we characterize the cycle-breaking defaults for which sincere voting is itself a strong Nash equilibrium. In particular, among procedures that use the same default for both possible cycles, the middle alternative is the unique common default.
Propose or Vote: A Canonical Democratic Procedure
Item type: Working Paper
Gersbach, Hans (2026)
How should collective decision-making with proposal-making and voting be organized in the absence of a centralized mechanism designer? We introduce Propose or Vote (PoV), a democratic procedure in which agents choose between exercising proposal power and retaining voting rights. Under one-dimensional single-peaked preferences, PoV implements the Condorcet winner in a single voting round. For an odd number of agents, the implementing equilibrium is globally unique: exactly the median agent chooses to propose. For an even number of agents, multiplicity may arise, but uniqueness can be restored through a simple tie-breaking device. The results show how efficient agenda formation can emerge from decentralized incentives without preference revelation or centralized enforcement. The framework extends naturally to candidate elections.
Resilience—A Concept Toward an Actionable Clinical Approach to Aging
Item type: Review Article
Vanessa Matos Gonçalves; Ekaterina Maevskaia; Moon‐Ju Kim; et al. (2026)
ABSTRACT
Aging research has increasingly recognized the need for accurate biomarkers of aging, with aging clocks emerging as a powerful tool to quantify the degree of age‐related biological change. However, broad clinical implementation and the establishment of wide use of these biomarkers of aging remain ongoing. Resilience reflects a dynamic property of physiological homeostasis and offers a complementary lens to functionally interpret aging. Resilience does not capture the ground state the biological system is in, but rather its ability to maintain or improve function when challenged by adversity. Advances in wearable sensing technologies now enable scalable, continuous, and laboratory‐independent assessment of physiological, biochemical, and environmental parameters, which potentially offer a first window into resilience. Clinically, resilience holds promise for person‐centered risk stratification and guiding interventions, particularly in multimorbid populations. As such, we propose two lines of clinical resilience: first, reflecting involvement in disease onset mechanisms, and a second representing the capability to withstand and recover from medical interventions such as surgery or systemic pharmacotherapy. Integrating resilience into clinical frameworks may support personalized, proactive, and preventive approaches to aging, ultimately leading to meaningful clinical outcomes.
A modular synthetic hydrogel with cell-scale micropores modulates osteocyte-like morphogenesis and osteogenic differentiation in vitro
Item type: Data Collection
Horrer, Marion (2026)
Do Plastic-free Alternatives Work in Practice? User Experience and Consumer Adaptation Under Mandatory Regulation
Item type: Journal Article
Tang H.S.; Ko J.; Lee H.F. (2026)
Mandatory plastic-reduction policies are central to reducing disposable waste, yet it remains unclear how consumers adapt when sustainable alternatives are imposed externally rather than voluntarily chosen. This study examines how users’ experiences with plastic-free disposable tableware are associated with adaptive attitudes under Phase I of Hong Kong’s Plastic-Free Regulation. Drawing on the Attitude–Behavior–Context framework, the analysis distinguishes between haptic experience and consumption experience to assess how tactile and functional evaluations relate to acceptance of mandated substitutes. The study employs a cross-sectional mixed-methods design based primarily on survey data from 1,458 respondents in Hong Kong, complemented by qualitative evidence for interpretation. The findings indicate that consumption experience is more consistently associated with adaptive attitudes than haptic experience, suggesting that functional performance matters more than initial sensory impressions in shaping acceptance. Attitudinal factors and social influences are also significantly associated with adaptation. The study contributes by showing that adaptation under mandatory sustainability regulation depends not only on environmental orientations but also on everyday product experience, identifying consumption experience as more salient than haptic experience and highlighting the importance of substitute quality and service environments in the practical success of plastic-free transitions.