This work analyses the genetic potential of Stevia rebaudiana beyond its sweetening properties, aiming to reassess its conservation and utilization in breeding programmes. This focus is justified by the growing global demand for natural sweeteners and the challenges posed by extreme weather events and diseases affecting crop yield and quality. The relationship between the species’ genetic diversity and its response to biotic and abiotic stresses is explored, as well as the limitations of current conservation and breeding strategies. Findings reveal underutilized genetic resources, limited integration of genomic tools in breeding efforts and a lack of robust in situ conservation initiatives. Genotypic variability has been observed in response to diseases such as Septoria leaf spot, while abiotic factors, including salinity and drought, can significantly influence steviol glycoside content. It is concluded that an integrated approach, combining dynamic conservation, photoperiod‐informed breeding strategies, improvements in seed viability, omics‐based tools and coherent public policies, is essential to ensure crop resilience and genetic sovereignty, especially in regions of origin such as Paraguay. The sustainable use of Stevia’s genetic diversity could foster more sustainable, healthier and fairer production systems.

Using a behavioural intervention to target nutrition during pregnancy may be key in meeting recommendations for healthy eating. The aim was to assess the use of a short-term dietary intake measurement tool (3-day food intake record) to infer long-term habitual dietary intake during pregnancy (using a short-form FFQ). A convenience sample (n 90) between 12- and 18-weeks’ gestation was recruited from a larger randomised controlled trial for cross-sectional analysis. Participants completed a forty-four-item FFQ and 3-day food intake record. Using the participant food intake record, the investigator blindly completed a second frequency questionnaire. The frequency questionnaires were scored using dietary quality scores (DQS) and compared. Aggregate data were evaluated using a Wilcoxon signed rank test, and individual-level data were evaluated using a Bland–Altman plot. No significant difference was observed in the scores (Z = –1·88, P = 0·06), with small effect size (r= 0·19). The Bland–Altman plot showed that comparing the DQS derived from the two different dietary assessments underestimated scores by a mean difference of 0·4 points (95 % limits of agreement: −3·50 to 4·26). The data points were evenly spread suggesting no systematic variation for over- or underestimation of scores. Minimal difference was observed between the functionality of the two assessment instruments. However, the food intake record can be completed by pregnant individuals to estimate short-term nutrient intake and then scored by the investigator to estimate long-term dietary quality. Combining these two instruments may best capture the most accurate representation of dietary habits over time.

Disasters can have catastrophic effects on people’s physical, mental, and psychosocial status, as well as public health. Many people undoubtedly suffer from short- and long-term disabilities as a result of the disaster once the first shock wears off [1]. Two devastating earthquakes caused extensive damage in southern and central Türkiye and northern and western Syria in February 2023, resulting in thousands of deaths and injuries. It is estimated that approximately 15 million people were affected. Since there is a possibility that people affected by the earthquake will continue their lives with disabilities, it is important to make an early assessment and make preliminary preparations in this respect. With this preparation and rehabilitation carried out in the early period, it is aimed at helping individuals adapt more quickly to both personal and social life and to increase their independence in daily life.

We propose CTREND, a new trend factor for cryptocurrency returns, which aggregates price and volume information across different time horizons. Using data on more than 3,000 coins, we employ machine learning methods to exploit information from various technical indicators. The resulting signal reliably predicts cryptocurrency returns. The effect cannot be subsumed by known factors and remains robust across different subperiods, market states, and alternative research designs. Moreover, it survives the impact of transaction costs and persists in big and liquid coins. Finally, an asset pricing model that incorporates CTREND outperforms competing factor models, providing a superior explanation of cryptocurrency returns.

Historical censuses have often served as valuable sources for understanding the past. Yet, their use as sources about women’s work has been highly debated. This article engages with the continuing debate regarding the reliability and validity of censuses by exploring significant potentials and issues of censuses’ information about women’s work. While recognizing a critical perspective on censuses’ information about women’s work, this article identifies the need for more careful and contextualized readings of censuses. To this end, it presents five novel analytical approaches that aim to enhance readings and interpretations of censuses. The approaches reveal the purposes, focuses, self-reflections, ambiguities, and evolving categorizations of censuses, respectively. Through analysis of Swedish census materials from 1910 to 1940, this article moreover demonstrates that historical census personnel engaged with women’s work in sophisticated ways and that censuses’ representations were complex. The article argues against dismissing censuses outright as a fruitful source about women’s work. Instead, it recommends leveraging their inherent qualities in new and creative ways. Though non-neutral by incorporating and disseminating ideas about gender, censuses can serve as rich historical sources about women’s work and societal roles when approached contextually in various ways. The article advocates for contextualized and historicized approaches to using census data, moving beyond simplistic labels to explore the complexities of these important historical sources.

Political professionals and scholars maintain that raising money early in the election season is critical to a successful campaign, having downstream consequences on a candidate’s future fundraising potential, the stiffness of competition she will face, and her likelihood of electoral victory. In spite of early money’s perceived importance, there is no common operationalization for money as “early.” Moreover, existing measures often fail to reflect definitional aspects of early money. In this paper, we first lay out a theoretical framework regarding the utility of early campaign fundraising for candidates. We argue that early fundraising can be expressed as two conceptually distinct quantities of interest centered on either a candidate’s own fundraising performance (candidate-centered) or her fundraising performance relative to her electoral competitors (election-centered). We next lay out steps for operationalizing candidate- and election-centered measures of early fundraising. Lastly, we demonstrate that both our proposed measures for early campaign fundraising are predictive of a candidate’s future fundraising and electoral success. By putting forward a set of best practices for early money measurement and, additionally, producing off-the-shelf measures for early fundraising in U.S. House elections, we fill an important gap in scholarly research on the measurement of money in politics.

The offshoring-fuelled growth of the Central and Eastern European business services sector gave rise to shared service centres (SSCs) – quasi-autonomous entities providing routine-intensive tasks for the central organisation. The advent of technologies such as intelligent process automation, robotic process automation, and artificial intelligence jeopardises SSCs’ employment model, necessitating workers’ skills adaptation. The study challenges the deskilling hypothesis and reveals that automation in the Polish SSCs is conducive to upskilling and worker autonomy. Drawing on 31 in-depth interviews, we highlight the negotiated nature of automation processes shaped by interactions between headquarters, SSCs, and their workers. Workers actively participated in automation processes, eliminating the most mundane tasks. This resulted in upskilling, higher job satisfaction, and empowerment. Yet, this phenomenon heavily depends upon the fact that automation is triggered by labour shortages, which limit the expansion of SSCs. This situation encourages companies to leverage the specific expertise entrenched in their existing workforce. The study underscores the importance of fostering employee-driven automation and upskilling initiatives for overall job satisfaction and quality.

The impact of the self-sealing band on interior ballistics is investigated during the gun launching, and a high-precision interior ballistics coupling algorithm that takes leakage into account is proposed. This study focuses on a 65 mm short-barrel, equal-caliber balanced cannon, integrating Abaqus finite element software with an interior ballistics calculation programme. It uses a User-defined AMPlication Load (VUAMP) subroutine to achieve real-time coupling calculations of the chamber pressure and self-sealing band deformation, correcting variations in the chamber pressure. Experimental results show that the coupling algorithm offers the higher precision compared to traditional interior ballistics models and can effectively capture the impact of leakage on the interior ballistics performance. Further research reveals that changes in the charge amount and assembly gap significantly affect the sealing performance of the self-sealing band and the leakage of propellant gases, which in turn influence the chamber pressure and projectile velocity. The high-precision coupling algorithm proposed in this paper provides the effective theoretical support for the design of the self-sealing band and the analysis of cannon performance.

The Making Care Primary (MCP) model represents a sharp shift in Medicare’s approach to primary care, yet its current design risks duplicating failures from prior alternative payment models. Our editorial suggests refinements to address these gaps. To prevent early provider dropout from MCP’s rigid track-based system, we propose a sliding-scale infrastructure payment model that adjusts based on practice needs rather than abrupt phase-outs. Given MCP’s reliance on community-based organisations (CBOs) for social determinants of health interventions, we also advocate for direct, outcomes-based contracts between providers and CBOs, ensuring accountability for patient outcomes rather than passive referrals. We recommend that MCP enforce data-sharing mandates for commercial insurers and Medicaid agencies, drawing from Washington State’s successful Multi-Payer Collaborative, to avoid payer disengagement that plagued previous multi-payer models. To expand beyond conventional quality measures, we propose integrating patient-centred outcomes from the International Consortium for Health Outcomes Measurement, making sure MCP captures meaningful clinical impact. Finally, we propose programme adjustments frequently at two- to three-year intervals to refine risk adjustment methodologies. These approaches could enhance MCP’s sustainability, preventing the financial instability and misaligned incentives that undermined past value-based care initiatives.

Plastic chemicals are numerous and ubiquitous in modern life and pose significant risks to human health. Observational epidemiological studies have been instrumental in identifying consistent and statistically significant associations between exposure to certain chemicals and adverse health outcomes. However, these studies often fail to establish causality due to the complexity of real-world chemical mixtures, confounding factors, reverse causation, and study designs that lack measures reflecting underlying genetic and cellular mechanisms indicating causal pathways to harm. Addressing these limitations requires moving beyond traditional ‘black-box’ epidemiology, which mainly focuses on the strength of associations. We propose adopting hybrid epidemiological methodologies that incorporate genetic susceptibility and molecular mechanisms to uncover biological pathways, combined with machine learning and statistical analysis of chemical mixtures, to strengthen the causal evidence linking exposure to harm. By integrating observational multi-omics data with experimental and mechanistic models, hybrid epidemiology offers a transformative path to improve causal evidence and public health interventions. In addition, machine learning and statistical methods provide a more nuanced understanding of the health effects of exposures to plastic chemical mixtures, facilitating the identification of interactions within chemical mixtures and the influence of biological pathways. This paradigm shift is critical addressing the complex challenges of plastic exposure and protecting human health.

Iron oxide-apatite (IOA) deposits and the related iron oxide-copper-gold (IOCG) deposits, are major repositories of base metals (Fe, Cu). However, the genesis of IOA deposits remains a topic of debate, with both magmatic and hydrothermal models. Close parallels exist between IOA deposits and some skarns, which exhibit sodic alteration in silicic host rocks, but are unequivocally metasomatic in origin. In this study we compared the trace element composition of magnetite from IOA deposits in the Kiruna District, Sweden, with magnetite skarns from the Turgai district, Kazakhstan. Comparison with published discrimination diagrams for deposit types shows poor correspondence with defined fields. The two districts correspond closely in terms of Sn and Ga contents, with close correspondence to previous analyses of porphyry and skarn deposits. When estimates of temperature (T) from Mg in magnetite are considered Sn and Ga show little correlation with T, whereas Ni increases and Mn decreases with decreasing T. Rare earth element distribution patterns correspond to local igneous rocks, albeit at lower absolute concentration. Tin and Ga, as high valence ions in tetrahedral sites in magnetite are potentially more resistant to re-equilibration and preserve a high temperature magmatic-hydrothermal signature comparable to Fe skarns and the early magmatic stages of some IOA deposits in the Kiruna district. Overall, these data are consistent with an early high-temperature mineralisation stage, potentially resulting from hypersaline brines or salt melts interacting with volcanic rocks (Kiruna district) or limestone and volcanic rocks (Turgai district), followed by subsequent hydrothermal magnetite mineralisation to relative low T. The high-temperature stage is better represented in the Turgai skarns compared to the Kiruna district IOA deposits. Overprint of sulfide mineralisation on magnetite results in an increase in Ni content which may be an effective tracer for IOCG mineralisation related to IOA deposits, or sulfide mineralisation in skarns, whilst metamorphism may homogenise and reduce trace element concentrations.

Characterizing the structure and composition of clay minerals on the surface of Mars is important for reconstructing past aqueous processes and environments. Data from the CheMin X-ray diffraction (XRD) instrument on the Mars Science Laboratory Curiosity rover demonstrate a ubiquitous presence of collapsed smectite (basal spacing of 10 Å) in ~3.6-billion-year-old lacustrine mudstone in Gale crater, except for expanded smectite (basal spacing of 13.5 Å) at the base of the stratigraphic section in a location called Yellowknife Bay. Hypotheses to explain expanded smectite include partial chloritization by Mg(OH)2 or solvation-shell H2O molecules associated with interlayer Mg2+. The objective of this work is to test these hypotheses by measuring partially chloritized and Mg-saturated smectite using laboratory instruments that are analogous to those on Mars rovers and orbiters. This work presents Mars-analog XRD, evolved gas analysis (EGA), and visible/shortwave-infrared (VSWIR) data from three smectite standards that were Mg-saturated and partially and fully chloritized with Mg(OH)2. Laboratory data are compared with XRD and EGA data collected from Yellowknife Bay by the Curiosity rover to examine whether the expanded smectite can be explained by partial chloritization and what this implies about the diagenetic history of Gale crater. Spectral signatures of partial chloritization by hydroxy-Mg are investigated that may allow the identification of partially chloritized smectite in Martian VSWIR reflectance spectra collected from orbit or in situ by the SuperCam instrument suite on the Mars 2020 Perseverance rover. Laboratory XRD and EGA data of partially chloritized saponite are consistent with data collected from Curiosity. The presence of partially chloritized (with Mg(OH)2) saponite in Gale crater suggests brief interactions between diagenetic alkaline Mg2+-bearing fluids and some of the mudstone exposed at Yellowknife Bay, but not in other parts of the stratigraphic section. The location of Yellowknife Bay at the base of the stratigraphic section may explain the presence of alkaline Mg2+-bearing fluids here but not in other areas of Gale crater investigated by Curiosity. Early diagenetic fluids may have had a sufficiently long residence time in a closed system to equilibrate with basaltic minerals, creating an elevated pH, whereas diagenetic environments higher in the section may have been in an open system, therefore preventing fluid pH from becoming alkaline.

With China’s economy transitioning into a post-industrial phase focused on knowledge and technology, there has been a notable shift in the patterns of Chinese Outward foreign direct investment (OFDI). This change has led to the emergence of new research perspectives, underscoring the importance of organizing them systematically. To address this, our research presents a thorough analysis of eighty-eight publications examining Chinese OFDI in natural resource-rich (NRR) and technology-intensive (TI) locations across various global regions and countries. Based on the geographical scope and comprehensive coverage of studies published between 1998 and 2023, we summarize the major themes, theories, and methodologies used in this research area. Identifying three elements related to Chinese investment (antecedents and motives, operational strategies, and investment outcomes), we develop a matrix based on the discussion of Chinese firms’ investment behavior in the foreign environment in which they operate. We describe the theoretical distinctions between investments in NRR global regions, such as Africa and Central Asia, and TI regions, such as Europe and North America, with regard to technology acquisition, creation, co-creation, and transfer. We identify several research sub-themes (e.g., control and learning mechanisms, technology transfer, intellectual property, etc.) that remain under-investigated and suggest future research opportunities.

Over the twentieth century, the Vienna Philharmonic—Austria’s flagship musical institution—became a leading player in global musical life through intercontinental touring, the distribution of recordings, and the establishment of “Austrianness” as a global brand. By framing the mobility of musicians as “world practices,” this article investigates the driving forces behind an Austrian ensemble going global. It understands the Philharmonic’s relation to the music world as an entangled history of globalizing tour destinations, cultural diplomacy, non-European audiences, the agents and interests in the music market, and musical branding. The attitudes that become visible in relation to the musicians’ global mobility and their reluctance to admit non-European players bear witness to the disruptive dimensions of world practices. In conclusion, this article proposes the Philharmonic’s entanglements with Europe, the Americas, East Asia, and the Middle East as an entry point for writing a global history of twentieth-century Austrian culture.

How did the COVID-19 outbreak affect citizens’ democratic preferences? Were the changes persistent or temporary? We track a representative sample of Spanish citizens before, during, and after the pandemic, with eight survey waves from January 2020 to January 2024. We compare democratic attitudes before and after the pandemic with individual fixed effects models. We identify a sharp increase in preferences for technical rather than ideological policy-making at the very onset of the pandemic, as well as significant changes in voters’ preferences for competent rather than honest politicians. These changes are sudden and persistent over 4 years. Using a set of repeated survey experiments, we also document a widespread willingness to sacrifice rights and freedoms to deal with the pandemic as compared to other global threats, such as international terrorism and climate change. But this effect quickly faded over time. Overall, we identify significant changes in democratic attitudes during the pandemic and a durable shift in technocratic preferences that outlived the pandemic, setting the conditions for the long-term legacies of COVID-19 on democracy.