Heath forests, or known locally as kerangas, in Indonesia and Malaysia form a distinct and understudied ecoregion. We document the distribution and ecological significance of the largest extent of kerangas in Kalimantan, Indonesian Borneo. We mapped 16,586 km2 of kerangas to the nearest one square kilometre across Kalimantan, showing a significant reduction from previous estimates. About 19% of this area exists as a poorly documented mosaic landscape in Central Kalimantan’s Rungan-Kahayan region. Here, peat-based forests transition to heath and dipterocarp forests, making it difficult to reliably classify these forests for conservation planning. Using remote sensing and tree plot data, we identified three forest types—kerangas, low pole, and mixed swamp. Vegetation structure is influenced by soil, topography, and hydrology, while peat depth and elevation affect species diversity. Our findings indicate that these forests are dynamic ecosystems with diverse vegetation communities adapted to peat as well as sandy soils. Lowland heath forests in Rungan-Kahayan exhibits higher tree densities compared to other Bornean heath forests, reflecting unique ecological adaptations to challenging environments. Despite covering just 3% of Kalimantan’s forest area, these ecosystems remain largely unprotected, facing threats from land conversion and fire. Our study highlights the ecological complexity of kerangas and underscores the urgent need for targeted conservation and further research on these forests.

Recent changes to US research funding are having far-reaching consequences that imperil the integrity of science and the provision of care to vulnerable populations. Resisting these changes, the BJPsych Portfolio reaffirms its commitment to publishing mental science and advancing psychiatric knowledge that improves the mental health of one and all.

In the standard U.S. image, North Korea is a monolithic, Stalin-style dictatorship controlled by one man, Kim Jong Il. But the key reason for North Korean intransigence in the nuclear crisis with the United States is that Kim does not have unchallenged control over foreign and defense policy. The North Korean power structure is deeply divided between pragmatists who favor a nuclear deal with the United States and increasingly assertive hardliners who argue that a tough posture is needed to stop the Bush administration from pursuing “regime change” in Pyongyang.

During the next three months, North Korea will unload its nuclear reactor at Yongbyon, removing fuel rods that can be reprocessed into plutonium for more nuclear weapons. Once again, Pyongyang is offering to negotiate a freeze that would prevent further reprocessing, as it did in June, 1994, leading to the Agreed Framework, and as it has repeatedly offered to do in the six-party talks.

Selig Harrison originally visited North Korea in 1972, when he and Harrison Salisbury were the first independent or non-communist American journalists to visit since the Korean War. Mr. Harrison was also one of the first American experts to understand the strong grip of nationalism in North Korea, which he elucidated in his excellent 1978 book, The Widening Gulf: Asian Nationalism and American Policy. He now has more than 20 visits to Pyongyang under his belt, and his most recent book, Korean Endgame is a provocative call for American disengagement with Korea.

It also contains perhaps the best informed treatment that we have of the issues that have animated the confrontation between Washington and Pyongyang over the latter's nuclear program. With that stymied conflict now in its eighteenth year, it is no wonder that Mr. Harrison returned from his most recent visit with a suggestion that “benign neglect” of the nuclear issue might be the best among a narrowing list of American options.

The latest numbers out of Iraq are some 11,000 Americans wounded in action and some 1,500 dead. The most conservative estimate of noncombatant Iraqis killed is about 15,700. This is happening because the war was sold to the U.S. Congress on the basis of false and misleading intelligence. So it's important to keep these numbers in mind in coping with the barrage of intelligence leaks we are getting about North Korea, in particular about the suspected uranium enrichment program that we'll be focusing on today. The people who put out the intelligence on Iraq don't think of themselves as liars. They operate according to an ideological, black and white view of the world in which there are good guys and bad guys and with bad guys you have to assume the worst.

On October 4, 2002, the United States suddenly confronted North Korea with a damning accusation: that it was secretly developing a program to enrich uranium to weapons grade, in violation of the 1994 agreement that Pyongyang had signed with Washington to freeze its pursuit of nuclear weapons. Since North Korea had cheated, the Bush administration declared, the United States was no longer bound by its side of the deal. Accordingly, on November 14, 2002, the United States and its allies suspended the oil shipments they had been providing North Korea under the 1994 agreement.

People with polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) have higher weight gain and psychological distress compared to those without PCOS(1). While COVID-19 restrictions led to population level adverse changes in lifestyle, weight gain and psychological distress(2), their impact on people with PCOS is unclear. The aim of this study was to investigate the impact the 2020 COVID-19 restrictions had on weight, physical activity, diet and psychological distress for Australians with PCOS. Australian reproductive-aged women participated in an online survey with assessment of weight, physical activity, diet and psychological distress. Multivariable logistic and linear regression were used to examine associations between PCOS and residential location with health outcomes. On adjusted analysis, those with PCOS gained more weight (2.9%; 95% CI; 0.027–3.020; p = 0.046), were less likely to meet physical activity recommendations (OR 0.50; 95% CI; 0.32–0.79; p = 0.003) and had higher sugar-sweetened beverage intake (OR 1.74; 95% CI 1.10–2.75; p = 0.019) but no differences in psychological distress compared to women without PCOS. People with PCOS were more adversely affected by COVID-19 restrictions, which may worsen their clinical features and disease burden. Additional health care support may be necessary to assist people with PCOS to meet dietary and physical activity recommendations.

Cosmological simulations fail to reproduce realistic galaxy populations without energy injection from active galactic nuclei (AGN) into the interstellar medium (ISM) and circumgalactic medium (CGM); a process called ‘AGN feedback’. Consequently, observational work searches for evidence that luminous AGN impact their host galaxies. Here, we review some of this work. Multi-phase AGN outflows are common, some with potential for significant impact. Additionally, multiple feedback channels can be observed simultaneously; e.g., radio jets from ‘radio quiet’ quasars can inject turbulence on ISM scales, and displace CGM-scale molecular gas. However, caution must be taken comparing outflows to simulations (e.g., kinetic coupling efficiencies) to infer feedback potential, due to a lack of comparable predictions. Furthermore, some work claims limited evidence for feedback because AGN live in gas-rich, star-forming galaxies. However, simulations do not predict instantaneous, global impact on molecular gas or star formation. The impact is expected to be cumulative, over multiple episodes.

Accelerated glacier melt and the loss of perennial snowfields have been associated with increased warming in polar regions, at rates up to four times faster than the rest of the world, thereby reinforcing the critical need for improved models (and predictions) of glacier melt. An essential requirement for such models is an improved understanding of the sensible heat fluxes over glaciers. Since their complexity makes them difficult to model, and direct measurements of sensible turbulent heat fluxes over real glaciers are both rare and impractical, the present work involves simultaneous hot-wire anemometry and cold-wire thermometry measurements of two components of velocity and temperature above a melting glacier model in a series of wind-tunnel experiments. Both single- and multi-variable statistics were used to compare the turbulent velocity field measured over melting ice with that of a similar flow in the absence of ice. The results demonstrate that the ice's presence reduces the magnitude of the Reynolds stresses and vertical velocity variance, but also increases the streamwise velocity variance. The transient evolution of temperature statistics throughout the melt process was also investigated and found to be similar when suitably non-dimensionalized. The velocity and temperature fields were furthermore evaluated at an equivalent non-dimensional time during the melt process, in which statistics of the temperature field, and joint statistics of the vertical velocity and temperature, were studied. The present work lays the foundation for future laboratory-scale replications of the flow above melting glaciers, and provides additional insight into turbulent heat transfer over melting ice.

Community-Research Advisory Councils (C-RAC) provide a unique mechanism for building sustainable community-academic partnership, fostering bidirectional understanding of complex research issues, disseminating timely research findings, and thereby improving public trust in science. Created in 2009, the Johns Hopkins C-RAC has a mission to achieve diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) of stakeholders across the entire research continuum. It has nurtured over a decade of partnership among community and academic stakeholders toward addressing health disparity, health equity, structural racism, and discrimination. Evidence of successful strategies to ensure DEI in partnership and lessons learned are illustrated in this special communication.

With high-sensitivity kiloparsec-scale radio polarimetry, we can examine the jet-medium interactions and get a better understanding of the blazar divide in radio-loud (RL) AGN. We are analyzing the radio polarimetric observations with the EVLA and GMRT of 24 quasars and BL Lacs belonging to the Palomar-Green (PG) sample. The RL quasars show extensive polarisation structures in their cores, jets, lobes, and hotspots, whereas preliminary results suggest that BL Lacs exhibit polarisation primarily in their cores and inner jet regions. These findings imply that both intrinsic (central engine-related) and extrinsic (environment-related) variables are important in the formation of the blazar subclasses. The Fanaroff-Riley (FR) dichotomy can also be studied assuming RL unification and looking through the lens of blazars. Due to the radio-unbiased nature of the optically/UV-selected PG sample, we find a large fraction of the PG quasars are restarted, distorted (S- or X-shaped), or have a hybrid FR morphology.