The stars of the Milky Way carry the chemical history of our Galaxy in their atmospheres as they journey through its vast expanse. Like barcodes, we can extract the chemical fingerprints of stars from high-resolution spectroscopy. The fourth data release (DR4) of the Galactic Archaeology with HERMES (GALAH) Survey, based on a decade of observations, provides the chemical abundances of up to 32 elements for 917 588 stars that also have exquisite astrometric data from the Gaia satellite. For the first time, these elements include life-essential nitrogen to complement carbon, and oxygen as well as more measurements of rare-earth elements critical to modern-life electronics, offering unparalleled insights into the chemical composition of the Milky Way. For this release, we use neural networks to simultaneously fit stellar parameters and abundances across the whole wavelength range, leveraging synthetic grids computed with Spectroscopy Made Easy. These grids account for atomic line formation in non-local thermodynamic equilibrium for 14 elements. In a two-iteration process, we first fit stellar labels to all 1 085 520 spectra, then co-add repeated observations and refine these labels using astrometric data from Gaia and 2MASS photometry, improving the accuracy and precision of stellar parameters and abundances. Our validation thoroughly assesses the reliability of spectroscopic measurements and highlights key caveats. GALAH DR4 represents yet another milestone in Galactic archaeology, combining detailed chemical compositions from multiple nucleosynthetic channels with kinematic information and age estimates. The resulting dataset, covering nearly a million stars, opens new avenues for understanding not only the chemical and dynamical history of the Milky Way but also the broader questions of the origin of elements and the evolution of planets, stars, and galaxies.

Lactoferrin (LF), a sialylated iron-binding glycoprotein consisting of multiple sialic acid (Sia) residues attached to N-linked glycan chains, and studies have shown that both the iron and Sia are crucial for early neurodevelopment and cognition.(1) However, there is limited knowledge of the impacts of the iron saturation and sialylation in LF molecule on the early neurodevelopment and cognition. Objectives of the study were to explore the impacts and mechanisms of iron saturation and sialylation in LF molecule on early neurodevelopment and cognition. Maternal dietary intervention with native bovine LF (Native-LF), iron-free bovine LF (Apo-LF), or Sia-free bovine LF (Desia-LF) at a dose of 0.60 g/kg body weight per day was administered throughout the lactation period. Offspring pups were assessed for anxiety, learning, and memory through behavioral tests before being euthanized on postnatal day 63. Brain hippocampal tissue was then analyzed for polysialic acid (polySia), a marker of neurodevelopment and neuroplasticity.(1) The study protocol was approved by the Xiamen University Animal Ethics Committee (AE1640102). Our results showed that Apo-LF pups exhibited a 1.32-fold increase in total distance travelled in the arena compared to both Native-LF and Desia-LF groups, with the overall difference among the groups being statistically significant in the open field test (p = 0.008). Additionally, the frequency of central area entries in the Apo-LF group was 2.00-fold higher than in Desia-LF pups (p = 0.038) and 1.3-fold higher than in Native-LF pups, with a significant overall difference (p = 0.042). No significant differences in total distance travelled or central area entries were observed between Native-LF and Desia-LF groups (p > 0.05). These results suggest that Apo-LF pups demonstrated better anti-anxiety behaviors than both Native-LF and Desia-LF pups. In the Morris water maze test, Apo-LF pups spent significantly more time in the target quadrant compared to both Desia-LF (p = 0.019) and Native-LF pups (p = 0.0009), indicating enhanced short-term memory. Additionally, Apo-LF pups exhibited greater polySia-NCAM expression (1.2.95 ± 0.048) in the hippocampus, a marker associated with neuroplasticity and neurogenesis compared to both Native-LF and Desia-LF pups. We conclude that maternal supplementation with different types of lactoferrin during lactation supports improved learning and memory in offspring through distinct mechanisms, with sialylation playing a crucial role in neurocognitive development.

Feigenbaum universality is shown to occur in subcritical shear flows. Our testing ground is the counter-rotation regime of the Taylor–Couette flow, where numerical calculations are performed within a small periodic domain. The accurate computation of up to the seventh period-doubling bifurcation, assisted by a purposely defined Poincaré section, has enabled us to reproduce the two Feigenbaum universal constants with unprecedented accuracy in a fluid flow problem. We have further devised a method to predict the bifurcation diagram up to the accumulation point of the cascade based on the detailed inspection of just the first few period-doubling bifurcations. Remarkably, the method is applicable beyond the accumulation point, with predictions remaining valid, in a statistical sense, for the chaotic dynamics that follows.

The transition to chaos in the subcritical regime of counter-rotating Taylor–Couette flow is investigated using a minimal periodic domain capable of sustaining coherent structures. Following a Feigenbaum cascade, the dynamics is found to be remarkably well approximated by a simple discrete map that admits rigorous proof of its chaotic nature. The chaotic set that arises for the map features densely distributed periodic points that are in one-to-one correspondence with unstable periodic orbits (UPOs) of the Navier–Stokes system. This supports the increasingly accepted view that UPOs may serve as the backbone of turbulence and, indeed, we demonstrate that it is possible to reconstruct every statistical property of chaotic fluid flow from UPOs.

The ubiquity of social media platforms allows individuals to easily share and curate their personal lives with friends, family, and the world. The selective nature of sharing one’s personal life may reinforce the memories and details of the shared experiences while simultaneously inducing the forgetting of related, unshared memories/experiences. This is a well-established psychological phenomenon known as retrieval-induced forgetting (RIF, Anderson et al.). To examine this phenomenon in the context of social media, two experiments were conducted using an adapted version of the RIF paradigm in which participants either shared experimenter-contrived (Study 1) or personal photographs (Study 2) on social media platforms. Study 1 revealed that participants had more accurate recall of the details surrounding the shared photographs as well as enhanced recognition of the shared photographs. Study 2 revealed that participants had more consistent recall of event details captured in the shared photographs than details captured or uncaptured in the unshared photographs. These results suggest that selectively sharing photographs on social media may specifically enhance the recollection of event details associated with the shared photographs. The novel and ecologically embedded methods provide fodder for future research to better understand the important role of social media in shaping how individuals remember their personal experiences.

Ocean turbulence at meso- and submesocales affects the propagation of surface waves through refraction and scattering, inducing spatial modulations in significant wave height (SWH). We develop a theoretical framework that relates these modulations to the current that induces them. We exploit the asymptotic smallness of the ratio of typical current speed to wave group speed to derive a linear map – the U2H map – between surface current velocity and SWH anomaly. The U2H map is a convolution, non-local in space, expressible as a product in Fourier space by a factor independent of the magnitude of the wavenumber vector. Analytic expressions of the U2H map show how the SWH responds differently to the vortical and divergent parts of the current, and how the anisotropy of the wave spectrum is key to large current-induced SWH anomalies. We implement the U2H map numerically and test its predictions against WAVEWATCH III numerical simulations for both idealised and realistic current configurations.

The recent expansion of cross-cultural research in the social sciences has led to increased discourse on methodological issues involved when studying culturally diverse populations. However, discussions have largely overlooked the challenges of construct validity – ensuring instruments are measuring what they are intended to – in diverse cultural contexts, particularly in developmental research. We contend that cross-cultural developmental research poses distinct problems for ensuring high construct validity owing to the nuances of working with children, and that the standard approach of transporting protocols designed and validated in one population to another risks low construct validity. Drawing upon our own and others’ work, we highlight several challenges to construct validity in the field of cross-cultural developmental research, including (1) lack of cultural and contextual knowledge, (2) dissociating developmental and cultural theory and methods, (3) lack of causal frameworks, (4) superficial and short-term partnerships and collaborations, and (5) culturally inappropriate tools and tests. We provide guidelines for addressing these challenges, including (1) using ethnographic and observational approaches, (2) developing evidence-based causal frameworks, (3) conducting community-engaged and collaborative research, and (4) the application of culture-specific refinements and training. We discuss the need to balance methodological consistency with culture-specific refinements to improve construct validity in cross-cultural developmental research.

For almost eight decades, productivity in the United States agricultural sector has substantially increased, in large extent due to the adoption of technological innovations. Despite the increased utilization of technology, questions remain regarding which producers are more likely to adopt a greater number of technological innovations. This research seeks to understand how commodity diversification strategies, farm characteristics, producer perceptions of risk, conservation, information sources, climate adaptation, and producer demographic characteristics are associated with technology adoption among beef cattle producers in the Southeast United States. Utilizing data from an online survey and an Ordered Probit model, we show that beef cattle producers who also produce fruit have an increased probability of adopting a greater number of technologies. The opposite effect is found for other commodities such as vegetables, row crops, and other livestock. Policy recommendations are also discussed.

We present the first results from a new backend on the Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder, the Commensal Realtime ASKAP Fast Transient COherent (CRACO) upgrade. CRACO records millisecond time resolution visibility data, and searches for dispersed fast transient signals including fast radio bursts (FRB), pulsars, and ultra-long period objects (ULPO). With the visibility data, CRACO can localise the transient events to arcsecond-level precision after the detection. Here, we describe the CRACO system and report the result from a sky survey carried out by CRACO at 110-ms resolution during its commissioning phase. During the survey, CRACO detected two FRBs (including one discovered solely with CRACO, FRB 20231027A), reported more precise localisations for four pulsars, discovered two new RRATs, and detected one known ULPO, GPM J1839 $-$10, through its sub-pulse structure. We present a sensitivity calibration of CRACO, finding that it achieves the expected sensitivity of 11.6 Jy ms to bursts of 110 ms duration or less. CRACO is currently running at a 13.8 ms time resolution and aims at a 1.7 ms time resolution before the end of 2024. The planned CRACO has an expected sensitivity of 1.5 Jy ms to bursts of 1.7 ms duration or less and can detect $10\times$ more FRBs than the current CRAFT incoherent sum system (i.e. 0.5 $-$2 localised FRBs per day), enabling us to better constrain the models for FRBs and use them as cosmological probes.

To investigate the flame acceleration to detonation in 2.0 and 0.5 mm planar glass combustion chambers, the experiments have been conducted utilising ethylene/oxygen mixtures at atmospheric pressure and temperature. The high-speed camera has been used to record the revolution of flame front and pressure inside the combustion chamber. Different equivalence ratios and ignition locations have been considered in the experiments. The results show that the detonation pressure in the 2 mm thick chamber is nearly three times of Chapman-Jouguet pressure, while detonation pressure in the 0.5 mm thick chamber is only 45.7% of the Chapman-Jouguet value at the stoichiometric mixture. This phenomenon is attributed to the larger pressure loss in the thinner chamber during the detonation propagation. As the value of equivalence ratio is 2.2, the detonation cannot be produced in the 2 mm thick chamber, while the detonation can be generated successfully in the 0.5 mm thick chamber. This phenomenon indicates that the deflagration is easily to be accelerated and transformed into the detonation, due to a larger wall friction and reflection. Besides, the micro-obstacle has been added into the combustor can shorten the detonation transition time and reduces the distance of the detonation transition.

Investigations are conducted on the effect of wall proximity on the flow around a cylinder under an axial magnetic field, using the electrical potential probe technology to measure the velocity of liquid metal flow. The study focused on the impact of the inlet velocity of the fluid, the magnetic field and wall proximity on the characteristics of velocity fields, particularly on the vortex-shedding mode. Based on different magnitudes of the magnetic field and the distance from the cylinder to the duct wall, three types of vortex-shedding modes are identified, (I) shear layer oscillation state, (II) quasi-two-dimensional vortex-shedding states and (III) transition of the magnetohydrodynamic to hydrodynamic Kármán street. The transitions between these modes are analysed in detail. The experimental results show that the weak wall-proximity effect leads to the formation of the Kármán vortex street, while a reverse Kármán vortex street and secondary vortices emerge under a strong wall-proximity effect. It is noticed that the Kelvin–Helmholtz instability drives vortex shedding under regime I, leading to an increase in the Strouhal number (St) with stronger magnetic fields. Additionally, under a strong axial magnetic field, the wall-proximity effect (‘Shercliff layer effect’) promotes the instability of shear layers on both sides of the cylinder. These unique coupling effects are validated by variations in modal coefficients and energy proportions under different vortex-shedding regimes using the proper orthogonal decomposition method.

New limit theory is provided for a wide class of sample variance and covariance functionals involving both nonstationary and stationary time series. Sample functionals of this type commonly appear in regression applications and the asymptotics are particularly relevant to estimation and inference in nonlinear nonstationary regressions that involve unit root, local unit root, or fractional processes. The limit theory is unusually general in that it covers both parametric and nonparametric regressions. Self-normalized versions of these statistics are considered that are useful in inference. Numerical evidence reveals interesting strong bimodality in the finite sample distributions of conventional self-normalized statistics similar to the bimodality that can arise in t-ratio statistics based on heavy tailed data. Bimodal behavior in these statistics is due to the presence of long memory innovations and is shown to persist for very large sample sizes even though the limit theory is Gaussian when the long memory innovations are stationary. Bimodality is shown to occur even in the limit theory when the long memory innovations are nonstationary. To address these complications, new self-normalized versions of the test statistics are introduced that deliver improved approximations that can be used for inference.

Tribrachidium heraldicum is an Ediacaran body fossil characterized by triradial symmetry. Previous work has suggested that the anatomy of Tribrachidium was conducive to passive suspension feeding; however, these analyses used an inaccurate model and a relatively simple set of simulations. Using computational fluid dynamics, we explore the functional morphology of Tribrachidium in unprecedented detail by gauging how the presence or absence of distinctive anatomical features (e.g., apical pits and arms) affects flow patterns. Additionally, we map particle pathways, quantify deposition rates at proposed feeding sites, and assess gregarious feeding habits to more fully reconstruct the lifestyle of this enigmatic taxon. Our results provide strong support for interpreting Tribrachidium as a macroscopic suspension feeder, with the apical pits representing loci of particle collection (and possibly ingestion) and the triradial arms representing morphological adaptations for interrupting flow and inducing settling. More speculatively, we suggest that the radial grooves may represent ciliated pathways through which food particles accumulating in the wake of the organism were transported toward the apical pits. Finally, our results allow us to generate new functional hypotheses for other Ediacaran taxa with a triradial body plan. This work refines our understanding of the appearance of suspension feeding in shallow-water paleoenvironments, with implications for the radiation of Metazoa across the Ediacaran/Cambrian boundary.

The present work focuses on a specific bouncing behaviour as a spherical particle settles through a density interface in the absence of a neutral buoyant position. This behaviour was initially discovered by Abaid et al. (Phys. Fluids, vol. 16, issue 5, 2004, pp. 1567–1580) in salinity-induced stratification. Both experimental and numerical investigations are conducted to understand this phenomenon. In our experiments, we employ particle image velocimetry (PIV) to measure the velocity distribution around the particle and to capture the transient wake structure. Our findings reveal that the bouncing process begins after the wake detaches from the particle. The PIV results indicate that an upward jet forms at the central axis behind the particle following wake detachment. By performing a force decomposition procedure, we quantify the contributions from the buoyancy of the wake ($F_{sb}$) and the flow structure ($F_{sj}$) to the enhanced drag. It is observed that $F_{sb}$ contributes primarily to the enhanced drag at the early stage, whereas $F_{sj}$ plays a critical role in reversing the particle's motion. Furthermore, our results indicate that the jet is a necessary condition for the occurrence of the bouncing motion. We also explore the minimum velocities (where negative values denote the occurrence of bouncing) of the particle, while varying the lower Reynolds number $Re_l$, the Froude number $Fr$, and the upper Reynolds number $Re_u$, within the ranges $1 \leqslant Re_l\leqslant 125$, $115 \leqslant Re_u\leqslant 356$ and $2 \leqslant Fr\leqslant 7$. Our findings suggest that the bouncing behaviour is influenced primarily by $Re_l$. Specifically, we observe that the bouncing motion occurs below a critical lower Reynolds number $Re^\ast _{l}=30$ in our experiments. In the numerical simulations, the highest value for this critical number is $Re^\ast _{l}=46.2$, which is limited to the parametric ranges studied in this work.

A set of 68 simple sequence repeat (SSR) markers were selected from existing databases (including Medicago, soybean, cowpea and peanut) for the purpose of exploiting the transferability of SSRs across species and/or genera within the legume family. Primers were tested for cross-species and cross-genus fragment amplification with an array of 24 different legume accessions. Nearly one-third (30.78%) of the SSR primers screened generated reproducible and cross-genus amplicons. One hundred and seventeen cross-species polymorphic amplicons were identified and could be used as DNA markers. These polymorphic markers are now being used for characterization and evaluation of our collected and donated legume germ- plasm. The transferability of SSRs, mis-/multiple-primings, homologous/heterologous amplifications, single/multiple-amplicons and application of these amplicons as DNA markers are discussed. The transfer of SSR markers across species or across genera can be a very efficient approach for DNA marker development, especially for minor crops.

To enhance the impact resistance capacity and ensure the floatability of aircraft after ditching, the slamming response of three types of aircraft sub-floor structures are investigated including the flat, cylindrical and ellipsoidal under floor. A coupled Finite Element-Smooth Particle Hydrodynamic (FE-SPH) method is employed with focus on non-linear structural collapse in fluid-structure interaction. The material is defined by bilinear elastic plastic law, and the strain rate effect is taken into account. Further, comparison and analyses are performed in terms of acceleration, local pressure and strains at different speeds. Results show that conventional flat sub floor structures perform poorly during ditching due to excessive peak acceleration and pressure. By contrast, the peak acceleration of ellipsoidal under floor is lower at all measured speeds and the pressure on the sides is reduced. Moreover, the ellipsoidal sub-floor with bi-directional curvature generates smaller plastic strain and deflection of skin, demonstrating better mechanical properties in water impact scenarios.