Between 2021 and 2023, the Center for Applied Isotope Studies (CAIS) tested over 500 samples for biobased carbon content under the United States Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Biopreferred Program using the American Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM) biobased testing standard D6866. We describe some of the novel approaches we used to prepare a diverse array of biobased products and summarize those radiocarbon test results and success rates in meeting the USDA Minimum Biobased Content (MBC).

Suzume no tojimari (2022) depicts the coming-of-age road trip of a teenage girl through abandoned places, in order to save Japan from giant earthquake worms, and to confront her own past of 3/11. With hyperrealistic visuals and references to Shinto mythology and folklore traditions, the movie constructs a correlation between human misbehavior and natural disasters. This narrative indicates the restoration of a mythological unity of Japanese land, people, and culture to prevent earthquakes, and to overcome personal and social issues, echoing Japanese national conservative discourse. By doing so, the movie puts moral responsibility to the individual to cope with disasters and decline.

Technological similarity enables wine operators to share best practices, benchmark against industry standards, and identify new areas of innovation. Despite this, measuring similarity is notoriously challenging. In this paper, I use sentence embeddings on wine patent data to show how similarity compares across different models. I validate the results both internally and externally, showing large discrepancies in annual trends. The results underscore the importance of selecting suitable models for market assessment, providing a valuable primer for both wine operators and technologists.

This paper explores the complex dynamics between religion-based solidarity initiatives (RSIs) and local governments, focusing on government funding. RSIs, driven by religious values, support vulnerable groups but often face tension with secular, bureaucratic expectations. Using an institutional logics framework, the study identifies sources of tension and examines how RSIs in Antwerp and Louvain, Belgium, navigate these challenges. Our findings show that by mobilizing faith capital, RSIs strengthen community trust and resilience, enabling strategies such as segmentation or strategic non-engagement to counter government pressures while safeguarding their religious mission. However, state pressures can risk turning RSIs into “blocked organizations”, forcing them to abandon their religious mission. This research sheds light on how RSIs balance accountability to religious communities and government actors, offering insights into their strategies to preserve autonomy.

On June 19, 2024, the Anti-Money Laundering Regulation (“AMLR”), the Regulation establishing the Anti-Money Laundering Authority (“AMLAR”), and the Sixth Anti-Money Laundering Directive (“AMLD6”) were published in the Official Journal of the EU, signaling a significant shift in the institutional and substantive architecture of anti-money laundering (“AML”) frameworks within the Union. More than simply enhancing existing rules, the new regime introduces innovative solutions to address persistent deficiencies in previous AML/CFT frameworks, particularly the fragmentation across Member States. A notable innovation is the extension of the AML regulatory framework to the professional football sector, which has become increasingly vulnerable to illicit financial activity due to its complex organisation, large financial flows and opaque ownership structures. As a result, professional football clubs and football agents are now subject to AML requirements, including customer due diligence, transaction monitoring and reporting suspicious transactions. This article examines the recently introduced AML obligations for the football sector, navigating the complex regulatory framework and mapping out the underlying requirements. The aim is to increase awareness and understanding of these obligations, thereby aiding football clubs and agents in complying with them and ensuring the integrity of the European football industry.

Hydrogenation of CO2 into high-value carbon-containing compounds can effectively reduce greenhouse gas emissions. These plasma-catalysed systems offer convenient reactions under mild conditions, and, combined with their widely distributed, low-cost clay minerals, they can effectively reduce reaction costs and promote their further industrial application. However, research on their synergistic applications remains limited at present. In this work, we propose a model for synergistic catalytic CO2 conversion by coupling clay minerals and dielectric barrier discharge (DBD) plasma. The synergistic effects of eight typical clay minerals on CO2 conversion and CO selectivity catalysed by DBD and their influencing factors were explored through a combination of performance tests and characterization using X-ray diffraction, scanning electron microscopy and Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy. Based on the performance and characterization results, minerals exhibiting a two-dimensional tubular structure, increased surface hydroxyl groups, appropriate transition metal active components and low water contents demonstrate greater CO2 conversion rates and CO selectivity. This work demonstrates that clay minerals can be used as effective DBD catalysts and represent low-cost green catalysts for the DBD catalytic system. This is of great significance for the rapid screening of clay minerals that are favourable for CO2 catalytic reactions and their further modification and application.

This article examines attitudes to the law in Menander. It argues that the law is given a specifically Athenian context and that it can give us an insight into the concerns and values of the playwright and his society. By analysing the ways in which characters perceive issues of legality, the article stresses the importance of humanity and personal character in the plays’ dramatization of the interface between private lives and public institutions in early Hellenistic Athens. The article highlights how the ambivalence and the multivocality which are inherent in Menander’s dramatic technique allow for varying responses and for the presentation of radical views.

This article examines how donor requirements affect Civil Society Organisations’ execution of foreign aid initiatives, comparing core and project funding mechanisms in development cooperation. Through a structured, focused comparison of two Latin American CSOs receiving funding from the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (SIDA), the research reveals that core funding, contrary to prevailing theories, has a more detrimental impact than project funding due to the nature, timing, and cost of its associated requirements. The analysis identifies variations in stakeholder impact across the aid chain, with intermediary organisations playing significant roles. The findings challenge assumptions about core funding's empowering effects, highlighting how multiple layers of requirements can impede operational effectiveness. The study contributes to scholarly understanding of donor-recipient dynamics while offering practical insights for improving aid delivery mechanisms. It suggests that enhancing aid effectiveness requires not merely simplified requirements, but a fundamental reconsideration of how donors structure their relationships with implementing CSOs.

This research paper addresses the hypothesis that the in vivo criterion of bovine somatic cell count (SCC) < 200,000 cells/ml milk as a diagnostic marker for healthy mammary tissue is not suitable to be adopted to milk samples taken post slaughter. To study immune mechanisms associated with intramammary infections, we developed a mammary explant model. As SCC is routinely applied to differentiate between healthy and inflamed mammary tissue, donor cows were selected based on their milk SCC obtained in vivo. Furthermore, milk cell differentiation for early mastitis detection via flow cytometry allows identification of leucocyte subpopulations and complements SCC. To replace in vivo examination and allow for post mortem selection of donor cows, this explorative study aimed to investigate how slaughter influences the reliability of SCC and differential milk cell count (DMCC) and to assess their validity as diagnostic markers for udder health in bovine milk samples obtained post slaughter. Therefore, quarter milk samples from cows were obtained in vivo and post mortem and analysed to determine SCC and DMCC and identify major mastitis pathogens. The logarithmized numbers of SCC, non-viable cells, viable cells, lymphoid cells, polymorphonuclear (PMN) and large cells per ml milk were compared using linear mixed-effects models in milk samples obtained from cows in vivo and post mortem. The number of lymphoid cells, PMN and large cells was significantly higher in milk samples obtained post mortem than in vivo, with PMN being the most prominent cell population. Higher milk SCC values measured post mortem might be explained by migration of leucocytes into the periphery during slaughter. This should be considered when modelling intramammary infection in vitro using udder tissue. Reflecting these findings, it is not feasible to endorse SCC as a reliable marker for post mortem selection of donor cows with healthy mammary tissue for in vitro models.

This paper examines replication research in pragmatics. The paper has three goals: to understand how replication has been used in pragmatics, to explore how replication research can enrich research in pragmatics and language learning, and to offer some suggestions for replication projects in L2 pragmatics. The paper examines sets of original and replicated studies in both L1 and L2 pragmatics to understand the range of research that has been conducted. It then considers the status of item replications (repeated scenarios) that characterize L2 pragmatics research. And it concludes by considering specific issues in L2 pragmatics research that can be insightfully investigated via replication.

Practice research networks (PRNs) have been proposed as a mechanism to support continuous service evaluation and improvement in the field of psychological therapies. In theory, PRNs could help to generate high quality practice-based evidence that has potential to inform and improve clinical care. However, in practice, many obstacles pose challenges to the sustainability and impact of such networks. The UK Northern Talking Therapies PRN is an exemplar that has generated over 20 scientific publications over a decade of successful clinical-academic collaborations. This article distils key lessons learned over that time, to guide and promote the wider adoption of PRNs in psychological services.

The democratic character of Norwegian voluntary organizations is facing tension from rising social inequality and increased demands for specialized expertise. This article explores this tension by examining how social class and individual resources influence board volunteering. We argue that an occupation-based class analysis better captures socioeconomic differences in board volunteering than a resource-theory model by considering both the volume and composition of resources. Using a survey from Norway, we use occupational data to operationalize a scheme that allows us to distinguish class positions according to employment relations and skill requirements. We also control for economic, social, and cultural resources. We find that those in higher-level class positions linked to managerial and socio-cultural occupations, but not technical occupations, are more likely to volunteer on boards. Furthermore, class differences are only partly explained by individual resources, demonstrating that class analysis can complement existing approaches in volunteer research.

Deception Island is an active, caldera-forming volcano whose surveillance is critically constrained by its extreme Antarctic isolation, scarce resources and limited seasonal human access. This study addresses these challenges by presenting an innovative Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) geodetic surveillance framework specifically adapted for such a remote environment. Our approach establishes a key operational distinction between non-real-time monitoring and near-real-time surveillance via a semi-continuous wireless network. We effectively resolve the inherent trade-off between promptness and precision by applying signal enhancement methods (e.g. Kalman filtering) to maintain millimetric accuracy in deformation detection, even when utilizing the high sampling rates (1 Hz) essential for rapid assessment. The resulting model allows for the rigorous isolation of the local volcanic signal from the complex regional tectonic kinematics. Crucially, data analysis reveals recurrent 3 year cycles of inflation and deflation in the magmatic system, strongly correlated with seismicity, which validates ground deformation as a reliable volcanic precursor. The primary practical advance is the validation of a dual-term hazard forecasting system: 1) mid-term (months) forecasts based on long-term time-series analysis to facilitate safe inter-campaign operations and 2) short-term (days) forecasting during periods of unrest using ground displacement acceleration, complemented by a magma injection model to predict the spatial location of potential vent openings. This validated and technologically adjusted framework provides an optimized and transferable template for continuous geodetic surveillance in other isolated, active polar volcanoes.