The study aimed to develop and validate a food literacy tool for Tanzanian adults. The Tanzanian nutrition, food and health promotion experts evaluated the initial twenty-three-question food literacy tool for its relevance to the context, where its content validity was determined. The construct validity involved the analysis of food literacy information collected in a cross-sectional study involving 709 adults (484 females and 225 males) sampled from rural and urban Tanzania. Exploratory factor analysis was conducted to explore the underlying factor structure and identify the number of latent constructs. A confirmatory factor analysis using structural equation modelling verified the measurement model and confirmed the theoretical model’s validity and reliability. The descriptive statistics summarised the essential characteristics of the study sample. The final tool remained with fourteen questions after removing questions with low factor loadings < 0·5 and higher uniqueness above 0·60. The model achieved construct validity through convergent and discriminant validity and construct reliability through the composite reliability exceeding 0·60 and a Cronbach’s α value of 0·83 and above. The fourteen-question food literacy tool has been reviewed and evaluated by experts in food, nutrition and public health; therefore, it is a valid measure of food literacy among adults in Tanzania. It is suitable for designing nutrition education programmes and ensures accurate and reliable measurements for effective interventions and policy actions.

Assessing glacier surface mass balance (SMB) is essential for evaluating glacier response to climate change. However, traditional in situ measurement methods are labour intensive and often lack the temporal and spatial resolutions required to fully constrain SMB models. Here, we explore the potential of the Global Navigation Satellite System Interferometric Reflectometry (GNSS-IR) technique which exploits reflected satellite signals to track surface height changes for continuous SMB estimation. Using data from 13 GNSS stations operating between 2019 and 2021 on Glacier d’Argentière (French Alps), we compare GNSS-IR-derived SMB with estimates from snow pits, wooden stakes, continuous ice-melt measurements using a SmartStake device, and a degree-day model. We demonstrate that the GNSS-IR technique can reliably estimate SMB values that closely match independent in situ measurements, while also offering the advantages of spatial integration and long-term time series that capture both snowfall events and snow/ice melt. We show that glacier surface roughness and antenna height, when the glacier is snow-free, strongly influence uncertainties, which can be reduced to as little as 2 cm d−1 using a smoothing filter. Finally, we demonstrate that the GNSS-IR technique can further constrain the degree-day factor, particularly its temporal evolution throughout the ablation season.

In a previous paper, the authors extended Mirzakhani’s (almost-everywhere defined) measurable conjugacy between the earthquake and horocycle flows to a measurable bijection. In this one, we analyze the continuity properties of this map and its inverse, proving that both are continuous at many points and in many directions. This lets us transfer measure convergence between the two systems, allowing us to pull back results from Teichmüller dynamics to deduce analogous statements for the earthquake flow.

Following the recent resurgence of capitalism as a key subject in historical analysis, historians have highlighted the globally interconnected making and remaking of capitalism. Commodity-centered histories in global history have shown how to write locally grounded histories of global capitalism, emphasizing the complex and contingent relationship between the local and the global. In these accounts, however, businesses and global firms rarely appear as the analytical centerpiece. We argue that the globally active firm provides an ideal prism for writing locally grounded histories of global capitalism. Furthermore, drawing on recent usages of assemblage theory in economic history, we propose viewing “the global firm” as a “capitalist assemblage” in order to capture the spatiotemporally contingent processes through which capitalism and distinct ways of organizing business, labor, and life under capitalism emerged and evolved at specific sites and times. This approach will contribute to global studies and address limitations in business history’s treatment of the global firm.

Smooth bromegrass (Bromus inermis Leyss.) is an introduced, perennial, cool-season invasive grass that has invaded native rangelands in the Great Plains. Defoliation at specific growth stages may reduce the abundance of B. inermis, but information is limited about when this should occur. Between 2018 and 2020 we assessed how defoliation at four different phenological stages influenced the amount of outgrowth on B. inermis tillers near Mandan, North Dakota, USA. In three replicated plots, we evaluated axillary buds, tillers, and rhizome outgrowth. Treatments consisted of defoliating B. inermus at a height of 5 cm at one of the following phenological stages: (1) once in the vegetative stage, (2) twice in the vegetative stage, (3) once in the elongation stage, (4) once in the reproductive stage, and an undefoliated control. Individual tillers were collected in the fall following defoliation and processed in the laboratory. Each year 10 tillers were defoliated at each phenological stage for a total of 50 tillers plot-1 year-1. The total number of crown positions was determined for each tiller and outgrowth (tillers and rhizomes), and the number of axillary buds was counted on each tiller. A double-staining technique was used to determine active, dead, and dormant axillary buds. Tillers defoliated twice in the vegetative stage had less outgrowth per tiller than tillers defoliated once in the reproductive stage or the undefoliated controls (new outgrowth of 1.2, 2.2, and 1.8 per tiller for twice vegetatively, reproductive, and control respectively). Results show that defoliating tillers in the elongation or reproductive stage resulted in nearly complete tiller mortality. Our data suggest managers who wish to reduce B. inermis abundance should focus on defoliating it twice in the vegetative stage and avoid defoliating B. inermis in the reproductive stage to limit outgrowth.

The new mineral boevskite Pb4(TeO3)2(SO4)(S2O3) was found at the Boevskoe W-Be deposit, Chelyabinsk Oblast, Southern Urals, Russia. It occurs as very rare euhedral grains up to 0.25 mm at the contact of galena and pyrite, as inclusions in galena up to 0.2 mm, and as thin veinlets up to 0.2 × 0.03 mm filling cracks in sphalerite. Other associated minerals include anglesite, cerussite, chalcopyrite, empressite, hessite, ingodite, joséite-B, matildite and pyrrhotite. Boevskite is colourless and transparent with an adamantine lustre. It is brittle, with uneven fracture. No cleavage or parting are observed. The Vickers’ micro-indentation hardness (VHN, 10 g load) is 110 kg/mm2, corresponding to a Mohs’ hardness of 2.5–3. Dcalc. = 6.599 g/cm3. Boevskite is optically biaxial, colourless and nonpleochroic. The mean refractive index calculated using the Gladstone–Dale equation is 2.08. The empirical formula calculated on the basis of 13 O apfu is Pb4.01Te4+2.03S6+1.97S2–0.98O13. Boevskite is orthorhombic, space group Pnma, with a = 9.7764(7), b = 13.3622(10), c = 10.7213(9) Å, V = 1400.57(19) Å3 and Z = 4. The strongest lines of the powder X-ray diffraction pattern [d, Å (I, %) (h k l)] are: 6.683 (65) (0 2 0), 3.355 (44) (1 0 3), 3.344 (52) (0 4 0), 3.289 (60) (2 3 0), 3.230 (100) (1 3 2), 3.144 (92) (2 3 1), 3.120 (51) (3 0 1), 2.787 (50) (0 3 3). The crystal structure of boevskite was refined from single-crystal X-ray diffraction data to R1 = 0.0491 for 1538 reflections with I > 2σ(I). Boevskite has a unique structure formed by Te–Pb–O layers coplanar to the ac plane with thiosulfate groups and SO4 tetrahedra located between them. This is the first mineral having both sulfate and thiosulfate groups as species-defining constituents. It is named after the type locality.

Drawing on examples and lessons learned from an array of the author’s collaborative exhibit projects, this essay offers a model for making exhibits that a novice can adopt and adapt in a variety of contexts.

The classification of acacias has gone through recent upheaval. The latest phylogenies indicate that Acacia sensu stricto is only relatively distantly related to the species with which it was once grouped. Its sister group is the monospecific Paraserianthes. This study concerns P. lophantha subsp. lophantha, a species from SW Western Australia that is widely invasive. Both genera have seeds with physical dormancy (PY) and a lens-type water gap. Seed structure, particularly that of the lens, was assessed in Paraserianthes and compared with Acacia. Seed batch viability was almost 100%, all seeds had PY and average seed mass was 73 mg. The seed coat and the embryo made almost equal contributions to seed mass, indicating a substantial seed coat. Average testa (410 µm) and palisade layer (163 µm) thicknesses were greater than in most investigated Acacia species. Unpopped lenses were small (0.11 mm2, about 0.15% of the seed surface area). With a 1 min boiling water treatment, the lens detached from the seeds. The palisade cells of the lens were about 100% larger in area after detaching, which indicates that they previously were under considerable tension. With other PY-breaking treatments, the lens formed a mound or a slight change in colour occurred. The seeds of Paraserianthes lophantha had the same basic construction as most Acacia seeds, although they were relatively large and heavy, the testa made up a large proportion of the seed and the palisade cells were long. Different lens morphologies, associated with different dormancy-breaking treatments, have rarely been described.

Garnet and biotite are common minerals in and adjacent to metamorphosed massive sulphide deposits, but their trace element compositions are rarely used to explore for such ores. Both minerals are present in hydrothermal alteration zones metamorphosed to the amphibolite facies spatially related to semi-conformable massive sulphide horizons in the Paleoproterozoic Stollberg Zn-Pb-Ag-(Cu-Au) plus magnetite ore field, Bergslagen district, Sweden. The major-trace element chemistry of garnet in metamorphosed altered rocks, mafic dykes and sulphide mineralisation shows that garnet in garnet-biotite alteration (and high-grade sulphides) is Fe-rich (almandine ratio > 0.5) whereas garnet in skarn and garnet-pyroxene alteration contains significantly higher amounts of Ca and Mn and elevated concentrations of Co, Cr, Ga, Ge, Sc, Ti, V, Y, Zn and the heavy rare earth elements (HREEs). Chondrite-normalized REE patterns of garnet in all rock types are depleted in light REEs and enriched in heavy REEs. Garnet in sulphide-bearing altered rocks, including garnet-biotite and garnet-pyroxene alteration, shows a strong positive Eu anomaly and the highest concentrations of Ga, Ge, Mn, Pb and Zn. Rocks more distal to sulphide mineralisation typically contain garnet that exhibits no or negative Eu anomalies and lower mean concentrations of these elements and higher concentrations of Ti. Biotite shows variable Fe/(Fe+Mg) ratios with most centred around 0.5 and enrichments in Ga, Mn, Sn, Pb and Zn in and adjacent to sulphides. This suggests that garnet and biotite can be used as a vectoring tool to ore in the Stollberg ore field and potentially for metamorphosed massive sulphides elsewhere.

Codebooks—documents that operationalize concepts and outline annotation procedures—are used almost universally by social scientists when coding political texts. To code these texts automatically, researchers are increasingly turning to generative large language models (LLMs). However, there is limited empirical evidence on whether “off-the-shelf” LLMs faithfully follow real-world codebook operationalizations and measure complex political constructs with sufficient accuracy. To address this, we gather and curate three real-world political science codebooks—covering protest events, political violence, and manifestos—along with their unstructured texts and human-coded labels. We also propose a five-stage framework for codebook-LLM measurement: Preparing a codebook for both humans and LLMs, testing LLMs’ basic capabilities on a codebook, evaluating zero-shot measurement accuracy (i.e., off-the-shelf performance), analyzing errors, and further (parameter-efficient) supervised training of LLMs. We provide an empirical demonstration of this framework using our three codebook datasets and several pre-trained 7–12 billion open-weight LLMs. We find current open-weight LLMs have limitations in following codebooks zero-shot, but that supervised instruction-tuning can substantially improve performance. Rather than suggesting the “best” LLM, our contribution lies in our codebook datasets, evaluation framework, and guidance for applied researchers who wish to implement their own codebook-LLM measurement projects.

This study explores the complexities of land formalization and the ongoing struggles for land justice among the Îgembe of the Kenyan Central Highlands. It begins by reviewing the prevailing argument that the formalization of land rights contributes to socio-economic growth and tenure security in the Global South. The study highlights the relational nature of rights in different contexts in African countries and discusses both the evidence and the scepticism surrounding land formalization. While the aim was to restore land rights to local people from colonial powers, the introduction of land registration in Kenya allowed political elites to appropriate land. The Îgembe people, having experienced land injustice in their local socio-historical context, have navigated the complexities of land disputes using indigenous institutions alongside state legal processes. I argue that success in land disputes often comes from a combination of personal courage and the use of both indigenous and formal legal frameworks.

Cover crops and soil-residual herbicides are considered essential tools within integrated weed management practices. However, interception of soil-applied herbicides by cover crop residue can reduce weed control and crop yield. Field trials were conducted in 2022 and 2023 in Indiana to investigate the effect of cereal rye (Secale cereale L.) termination strategies on the concentration of sulfentrazone, S-metolachlor, and cloransulam-methyl in soil, weed control, and soybean [Glycine max (L.) Merr.] yield. Soybeans were planted at cereal rye anthesis. Termination strategies included roller-crimped cereal rye, standing cereal rye, and a fallow control. The average cereal rye biomass in 2022 and 2023 was 4.06 and 14.2 Mg ha−1, respectively. Soybean stands were unaffected in 2022 but were reduced by 24% and 69% in the presence of roller-crimped and standing cereal rye, respectively, in 2023. On average, 75% and 84% of the soil-residual herbicides applied were intercepted by the roller-crimped cereal rye residue in 2022 and 2023, respectively. The use of cereal rye did not improve overall weed control relative to fallow at 18 after soybean planting in 2022 and 2023. In 2022, roller-crimped cereal rye reduced soybean yields by up to 13% in comparison with the fallow. In 2023, regardless of management strategy, the use of cereal rye as a cover crop reduced soybean yields by an average 44% in comparison to the fallow. Results from this research suggest that the adoption of the planting green system can significantly reduce soybean yield primarily due to stand losses if proper planting equipment is not used. Furthermore, the high levels of cereal rye biomass achieved in both years of the study did not provide additional season-long weed suppression relative to the non-cover crop control.

Given a topologically transitive system on the unit interval, one can investigate the cover time, that is, the time for an orbit to reach a certain level of resolution in the repeller. We introduce a new notion of dimension, namely the stretched Minkowski dimension, and show that under mixing conditions, the asymptotics of typical cover times are determined by Minkowski dimensions when they are finite, or by stretched Minkowski dimensions otherwise. For application, we show that for countably full-branched affine maps, results using the usual Minkowski dimensions fail to give a finite limit of cover times, whilst the stretched version gives a finite limit. In addition, cover times for irrational rotations are calculated as counterexamples due to the absence of mixing.