The unchecked rise in global plastic production has resulted in widespread pollution and exposure to hazardous chemicals. Over 16,000 chemicals are used across the plastics life cycle, with thousands meeting criteria for persistence, bioaccumulation, mobility and toxicity. Many remain unregulated under existing multilateral environmental agreements. In response, the United Nations Environment Assembly has mandated the development of an international, legally binding instrument to end plastic pollution. Current treaty negotiations have begun addressing a short list of chemicals, yet significant gaps remain. These include insufficient regulatory mechanisms, lack of chemical transparency and reliance on ineffective recycling strategies that reintroduce toxic substances into consumer products. The presence of harmful chemicals in plastics contributes to major public health burdens and is an environmental threat, with high annual costs that reduce the potential for economic development through safer recycling. Vulnerable populations, including children, reproductive-aged individuals, and frontline communities, face heightened risks. To address this, we recommend the following three critical actions for the treaty: (1) globally regulating chemicals of concern based on hazard; (2) mandating transparency of plastic chemical composition and (3) designing plastics using safe-by-design principles and essential-use criteria. Group-based regulation, which would consider categories of related chemicals, should replace individual chemical approaches to prevent regrettable substitutions. Binding, global obligations, rather than fragmented or voluntary measures, are vital for sustainability, chemical safety, circularity and accountability across the plastics life cycle. A strong treaty is a critical opportunity to achieve a safer, more sustainable future for human and environmental health.

Distinguishing early domesticates from their wild progenitors presents a significant obstacle for understanding human-mediated effects in the past. The origin of dogs is particularly controversial because potential early dog remains often lack corroborating evidence that can provide secure links between proposed dog remains and human activity. The Tumat Puppies, two permafrost-preserved Late Pleistocene canids, have been hypothesized to have been littermates and early domesticates due to a physical association with putatively butchered mammoth bones. Through a combination of osteometry, stable isotope analysis, plant macrofossil analysis, and genomic and metagenomic analyses, this study exploits the unique properties of the naturally mummified Tumat Puppies to examine their familial relationship and to determine whether dietary information links them to human activities. The multifaceted analysis reveals that the 14,965–14,046 cal yr BP Tumat Puppies were littermates who inhabited a dry and relatively mild environment with heterogeneous vegetation and consumed a diverse diet, including woolly rhinoceros in their final days. However, because there is no evidence of mammoth consumption, these data do not establish a link between the canids and ancient humans.

In recent years, the importance of the gut microbiota in human health has been revealed and many publications have highlighted its role as a key component of human physiology. Owing to the use of modern sequencing approaches, the characterisation of the microbiome in healthy individuals and in disease has demonstrated a disturbance of the microbiota, or dysbiosis, associated with pathological conditions. The microbiota establishes a symbiotic crosstalk with their host: commensal microbes benefit from the nutrient-rich environment provided by the gut and the microbiota produces hundreds of proteins and metabolites that modulate key functions of the host, including nutrient processing, maintenance of energy homoeostasis and immune system development. Many bacteria-derived metabolites originate from dietary sources. Among them, an important role has been attributed to the metabolites derived from the bacterial fermentation of dietary fibres, namely SCFA linking host nutrition to intestinal homoeostasis maintenance. SCFA are important fuels for intestinal epithelial cells (IEC) and regulate IEC functions through different mechanisms to modulate their proliferation, differentiation as well as functions of subpopulations such as enteroendocrine cells, to impact gut motility and to strengthen the gut barrier functions as well as host metabolism. Recent findings show that SCFA, and in particular butyrate, also have important intestinal and immuno-modulatory functions. In this review, we discuss the mechanisms and the impact of SCFA on gut functions and host immunity and consequently on human health.

Crocus, a one-dimensional model of snow-cover stratigraphy and evolution,was developed by the Cenire d’Etudes de la Neige (CEN, Météo-France) andextensively validated in temperate Alpine conditions. We present here astudy of Crocus’s ability to reproduce the characteristics of polar snow atthe surface of ice sheets. Crocus simulates the evolution of the thermal andstructural features of snow cover as a function of meteorological parametersat the snow-atmosphere interface. Only models can provide the necessarymeteorologic at information with full ice-sheet spatial coverage, and withthe temporal resolution needed by Crocus. Meteorological data have beenextracted from the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts(ECMWF) archives (analyses and short-term predictions), over the entiresurface of Antarctica with a spatial resolution of 1.5°. Here, the ECMWFdata from the South Pole are first compared with observations to check theirquality. Then, 20 year simulations of snow covet are computed to test thesensitivity of Crocus to inaccuracies in the meteorological input. Thesimulated snow characteristics exhibit a strong sensitivity to airtemperature, accumulation rate and the initial density of depositing snow.However, even with no major model adaptation to polar conditions, Crocusdoes reproduce a number of thermal and structural features of polarsnow.

Our position in the Milky Way (MW) is both a blessing and a curse. We are nearby to many star clusters, but the dust that is a product of their very existence obscures them. Also, many massive young clusters are expected to be located near, or across the Galactic Center, where the dust extinction is extreme (AV > 15 mag) and can be better penetrated by infrared photons. This paper reviews the discoveries and the study of new MW massive stars and massive clusters made possible by near infrared observations that are part of the VISTA Variables in the Vía Láctea (VVV) survey. It discusses what the studies of their fundamental parameters have taught us.

We evaluated whether the volume of alcohol-based handrub used by healthcare workers affects the residual bacterial concentration on their hands according to hand size. Bacterial reduction was significantly lower for large hands compared with small hands, which suggests a need for customizing the volume of alcohol-based handrub for hand hygiene.

Infect. Control Hosp. Epidemiol. 2016;37(2):219–221

This paper presents the results of two sentence production studies addressing the role of language exposure, prior linguistic modelling and discourse-pragmatic appropriateness on the phenomenon of cross-linguistic influence (CLI) in bilingual 5-year-olds. We investigated whether French–English bilingual children would be as likely as monolingual children to use a left-dislocation structure in the description of a target scene. We also examined whether input quantity played a role in the degree of accessibility of these syntactic constructions across languages. While the results indicate a significant effect of elicitation condition only in French, the relative amount of language exposure in each language predicted the likelihood of producing a left-dislocation in both French and English. These findings make a new contribution to the role of language exposure as a predictor of CLI. The data also support the recent proposal that CLI arises out of processing mechanisms.

JANNUS (Joint Accelerators for Nanosciences and Nuclear Simulation), the unique triple beam facility in Europe, offers the possibility to produce three ion beams simultaneously for nuclear recoil damage and implantation of a large array of ions for well-controlled modeling-oriented experiments. The first triple beam irradiation was performed in March 2010. Along with irradiation developments, continuous efforts have been made to implement ex situ and in situ characterization tools. In this study, we set out the present status of the JANNUS facility of the Saclay site. We focus on the instrumentation used for conducting multi-ion beam irradiations and implantations as well as for characterizing bombarded samples. On-line control of irradiation parameters, in situ modification monitoring using Raman spectroscopy or ion beam induced luminescence, and ex situ characterization by ion beam surface analysis [Rutherford backscattering spectrometry (RBS), nuclear reaction analysis (NRA), and elastic recoil detection analysis (ERDA)] of implanted samples are detailed. Some examples of single, dual, and triple beam irradiation configurations are presented. Access to the facility is provided by the French network EMIR for national and international users (http://emir.in2p3.fr/).

In order to confirm the results of previous experiments concerning the chemical behaviour of organic molecules in the space environment, organic molecules (amino acids and a dipeptide) in pure form and embedded in meteorite powder were exposed in the AMINO experiment in the EXPOSE-R facility onboard the International Space Station. After exposure to space conditions for 24 months (2843 h of irradiation), the samples were returned to the Earth and analysed in the laboratory for reactions caused by solar ultraviolet (UV) and other electromagnetic radiation. Laboratory UV exposure was carried out in parallel in the Cologne DLR Center (Deutsches Zentrum für Luft und Raumfahrt). The molecules were extracted from the sample holder and then (1) derivatized by silylation and analysed by gas chromatography coupled to a mass spectrometer (GC–MS) in order to quantify the rate of degradation of the compounds and (2) analysed by high-resolution mass spectrometry (HRMS) in order to understand the chemical reactions that occurred. The GC–MS results confirm that resistance to irradiation is a function of the chemical nature of the exposed molecules and of the wavelengths of the UV light. They also confirm the protective effect of a coating of meteorite powder. The most altered compounds were the dipeptides and aspartic acid while the most robust were compounds with a hydrocarbon chain. The MS analyses document the products of reactions, such as decarboxylation and decarbonylation of aspartic acid, taking place after UV exposure. Given the universality of chemistry in space, our results have a broader implication for the fate of organic molecules that seeded the planets as soon as they became habitable as well as for the effects of UV radiation on exposed molecules at the surface of Mars, for example.

We present preliminary results of the determination of fundamental parameters of single O-type stars in the MiMeS survey. We present the sample and we focus on surface CNO abundances, showing how they change as stars evolve off the zero-age main sequence.

Food insecurity is affecting an increasing number of urban poor in the developing world. Yet seasonal characteristics of food intakes have rarely been studied in West African cities. The objective of the present study was to assess the seasonality of the dietary dimension of household food security in Ouagadougou (Burkina Faso). In 2007, two sets of data were collected during the lean and post-harvest seasons, respectively, on a representative sample of 1056 households. At each season, two non-consecutive 24 h recalls were performed at the household level. Food prices were also recorded. Household food security was assessed by the household's mean adequacy ratio (MAR) for energy and eleven micronutrients. Changes in the MAR according to the season were analysed by mixed multivariate linear regression. Results showed that intakes of energy and of ten micronutrients were significantly lower during the lean season than during the post-harvest season, leading to a lower MAR in the lean season (49·61 v. 53·57, P < 0·0001). This was related to less frequent consumption and consumption of smaller amounts of vegetables and of foods prepared at home. Food security relied heavily on food expenses (P < 0·0001) and on the price of meat/fish (P = 0·026). Households with economically dependent adults (P = 0·021) and larger households (P < 0·0001) were the most vulnerable, whereas education (P = 0·030), social network (P = 0·054) and urban origin other than Ouagadougou (P = 0·040) played a positive role in food security. To achieve food security in Ouagadougou, access to micronutrient-dense foods needs to be ensured in all seasons.