Globally, glaciers are changing in response to climate warming, with those that terminate in water often undergoing the most rapid change. In Alaska and northwest Canada, proglacial lakes have grown in number and size but their influence on glacier mass loss is unclear. We characterized the rates of retreat and mass loss through frontal ablation of 55 lake-terminating glaciers (>14 000 km2) in the region using annual Landsat imagery from 1984 to 2021. We find a median retreat rate of 60 m a−1 (interquartile range = 35–89 m a−1) over 1984–2018 and a median loss of 0.04 Gt a−1 (0.01–0.15 Gt a−1) mass through frontal ablation over 2009–18. Summed over 2009–18, our study glaciers lost 6.1 Gt a−1 to frontal ablation. Analysis of bed profiles suggest that glaciers terminating in larger lakes and deeper water lose more mass to frontal ablation, and that the glaciers will remain lake-terminating for an average of 74 years (38–177 a). This work suggests that as more proglacial lakes form and as lakes become larger, enhanced frontal ablation could cause higher mass losses, which should be considered when projecting the future of lake-terminating glaciers.

Among the multitude of enemies facing the newly born English republic, the Presbyterians of Ulster posed a threat at once ideological and military. Such supporters of the new regime as John Milton derided the “blockish presbyters” of a “remote” province and denounced them as Scottish intruders upon English soil. But the threat they posed lay not only in their capacity to mobilize an armed population but to do so around religious and political positions drawn from a common stock of ideas present across the three kingdoms. The twin dangers could be made to serve polemical purposes within domestic English debate as the Commonwealth sought to counter the religious ambitions and constitutional challenges of those they branded as “Scottified” Presbyterians. In Ulster, the short-lived Presbyterian “revolt” proved a remarkable though fleeting success. Its proponents cultivated these transplanted ideas into fertile if fragile growth in the form of armed organization and communal mobilization. This episode attests to the importance of localizing ideology in precise contexts, and to the fact that print was only one vector, if a vital one, for its transmission.

Understanding differences in social-emotional behavior can help identify atypical development. This study examined the differences in social-emotional development in children at increased risk of an autism spectrum disorder (ASD) diagnosis (infant siblings of children diagnosed with the disorder). Parents completed the Brief Infant-Toddler Social-Emotional Assessment (BITSEA) to determine its ability to flag children with later-diagnosed ASD in a high-risk (HR) sibling population. Parents of HR (n = 311) and low-risk (LR; no family history of ASD; n = 127) children completed the BITSEA when their children were 18 months old and all children underwent a diagnostic assessment for ASD at age 3 years. All six subscales of the BITSEA (Problems, Competence, ASD Problems, ASD Competence, Total ASD Score, and Red Flags) distinguished between those in the HR group who were diagnosed with ASD (n = 84) compared to non-ASD-diagnosed children (both HR-N and LR). One subscale (BITSEA Competence) differentiated between the HR children not diagnosed with ASD and the LR group. The results suggest that tracking early social-emotional development may have implications for all HR children, as they are at increased risk of ASD but also other developmental or mental health conditions.

Glacier basal motion is responsible for the majority of ice flux on fast-flowing glaciers, enables rapid changes in glacier motion and provides the means by which glaciers shape alpine landscapes. In an effort to enhance our understanding of basal motion, we investigate the evolution of glacier velocity and ice-marginal lake stage on Kennicott Glacier, Alaska, during the spring–summer transition, a time when subglacial drainage is undergoing rapid change. A complicated record of > 50 m fill-and-drain sequences on a hydraulically-connected ice-marginal lake likely reflects the punctuated establishment of efficient subglacial drainage as the melt season begins. The rate of change of lake stage generally correlates with diurnal velocity maxima, both in timing and magnitude. At the seasonal scale, the up-glacier progression of enhanced summer basal motion promotes uniformity of daily glacier velocity fluctuations throughout the 10 km study reach, and results in diurnal velocity patterns suggesting increasingly efficient meltwater delivery to and drainage from the subglacial channel system. Our findings suggest the potential of using an ice-marginal lake as a proxy for subglacial water pressure, and show how widespread basal motion affects bulk glacier behavior.

Rapid, non-destructive methods for measuring seed germination and vigour are valuable. Standard germination and seed vigour were determined using 81 soybean seed lots. From these data, seed lots were separated into high and low germinating seed lots as well as high, medium and low vigour seed lots. Near-infrared spectra (950–1650 nm) were collected for training and validation samples for each seed category and used to create partial least squares (PLS) prediction models. For both germination and vigour, qualitative models provided better discrimination of high and low performing seed lots compared with quantitative models. The qualitative germination prediction models correctly identified low and high germination seed lots with an accuracy between 85.7 and 89.7%. For seed vigour, qualitative predictions for the 3-category (low, medium and high vigour) models could not adequately separate high and medium vigour seeds. However, the 2-category (low, medium plus high vigour) prediction models could correctly identify low vigour seed lots between 80 and 100% and the medium plus high vigour seed lots between 96.3 and 96.6%. To our knowledge, the current study is the first to provide near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS)-based predictive models using agronomically meaningful cut-offs for standard germination and vigour on a commercial scale using over 80 seed lots.

Tungsten is one the most important material for both plasma facing and structural applications in current designs for advanced divertors. Recent work has shown that composites can be manufactured from nanostructured tungsten foils which show significantly higher toughness than monolithic tungsten, but there is no data on the radiation resistance of such materials. In this study W-5 wt% Re foil in both an as rolled and annealed condition was implanted with 2MeV W+ ions to two damage levels, 0.07 and 0.4 dpa. The change in hardness was measured using nanoindentation. An increase in hardness was seen in both materials at both damage levels, with more hardening seen for the 0.4 dpa implanted samples. However the increase in hardness due to ion implantation was 2.6 times higher in the annealed material as compared to the as rolled material. This is due to the smaller grain size and higher dislocation density providing more sinks for the irradiation produced defects in the as rolled material as compared to the annealed material. Thus showing that unannealed tungsten foils are superior for use in applications in which they will see significant levels of radiation damage.

The fracture behaviour of individual grain boundaries has been studied in order to understand the mechanisms controlling stress corrosion cracking in nuclear reactors. In particular, the role of oxidation in facilitating crack initiation and propagation has been reviewed. Nickel alloys from pressurized water reactors (PWRs) have been tested in simulated primary water conditions to induce grain boundary oxidation. Microcantilevers containing an oxidized grain boundary plane have been prepared and tested for fracture. The brittle nature of the oxide was demonstrated and the required stress to fracture measured.

Model alloys have been made of pure W and 1% & 5% W-Ta and W-Re. Indentation hardness and modulus data were obtained by nanoindentation to assess the effect of composition on mechanical properties. Results showed that both the Ta and Re compositions hardened with increasing alloy content, greater in the W-5%Ta composition which showed an increase of 1.03GPa (17%), compared to a 0.43GPa (7%) increase in W-5%Re. The samples also showed very small increases in modulus of ∼ 25GPa (6%) in both W-5%Re and W-5%Ta. The samples were implanted with 3000appm concentration of helium. All samples show a substantial increase in hardness of up to 107% in the case of pure W. An appreciable difference in modulus is also seen in all samples. Initial TEM work has shown no visible He bubbles, suggesting that the mechanical properties changes are due to He-vacancy cluster formation below the resolvable limit.