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.

Healthcare personnel who deal with COVID-19 experience stigma. There is a lack of national-level representative qualitative data to study COVID-19-related stigma among healthcare workers in India. The present study explores factors associated with stigma and manifestations experienced by Indian healthcare workers involved in COVID-19 management. We conducted in-depth interviews across 10 centres in India, which were analysed using NVivo software version 12. Thematic and sentiment analysis was performed to gain deep insights into the complex phenomenon by categorising the qualitative data into meaningful and related categories. Healthcare workers (HCW) usually addressed the stigma they encountered when doing their COVID duties under the superordinate theme of stigma. Among them, 77.42% said they had been stigmatised in some way. Analyses revealed seven interrelated themes surrounding stigma among healthcare workers. It can be seen that the majority of the stigma and coping sentiments fall into the mixed category, followed by the negative sentiment category. This study contributes to our understanding of stigma and discrimination in low- and middle-income settings. Our data show that the emergence of fear of the virus has quickly turned into a stigma against healthcare workers.

New specimens of Cyclocystoides scammaphoris Smith and Paul, 1982, are here reported from the Upper Ordovician Platteville Formation of northern Illinois, Plattin and Decorah groups of east-central Missouri, and Lebanon Limestone of central Tennessee. These fossils reveal skeletal details that provide insight into the anatomy of cyclocystoids. Of particular significance is a network of channels that likely originate near the center of the central disk and extend along the oral side of the radial plates, bifurcating distally two or three times before entering the radial facets on the proximal surface of each marginal ossicle. From here, the network enters a series of facet canals that extend upward through each marginal ossicle, exiting in a linear row of pores. The canals are very similar in size and distribution to the nerve canals in living echinoderms. The axes of the canals, which number up to 500 in some specimens, and those of the radial ducts project proximally away from the oral surface at an elevation angle of about 25°, apparently forming a network that could have converged within the upper part of the body cavity. This origin and function are made clear by the connection between the channel on each radial plate and the radial facet canal pores within each marginal ossicle.

Intense debate surrounds the effects of trade on voting, yet less attention has been paid to how fluctuations in the real exchange rate may influence elections. A moderately overvalued currency enhances consumers’ purchasing power, yet extreme overvaluation threatens exports and economic growth. We therefore expect exchange rates to have a conditional effect on elections: when a currency is undervalued, voters will punish incumbents for further depreciations; yet when it is highly overvalued, they may reward incumbents for depreciation. We empirically explore our argument in three steps. First, we examine up to 412 elections in up to 59 democratic countries and show that voters generally punish depreciation in the real exchange rate when the currency is undervalued. We also find that at extremely high levels of currency overvaluation, voters sometimes reward incumbents for depreciation. A currency peg, especially in the eurozone, appears to insulate incumbents from these effects. In a second step, we explore the microfoundations of the election results through survey experiments in three advanced industrialized and two emerging market nations with different monetary and exchange rate policies and institutions. Respondents in countries with undervalued to mildly overvalued currencies disapprove of currency depreciations, whereas those facing a very highly overvalued currency favor depreciation. Third, we examine the mechanism of political competition in exchange rate policymaking and demonstrate that sustained undervaluation is rare in countries with strong political competition. Democratic governments have electoral incentives to avoid using undervalued currencies as a means of shielding workers from import competition.

This study assessed the incidence rate of all-cause pneumonia (ACP) and invasive pneumococcal disease (IPD) and associated medical costs among individuals aged ≥16 in the German InGef database from 2016 to 2019. Incidence rate was expressed as the number of episodes per 100 000 person-years (PY). Healthcare resource utilisation was investigated by age group and by risk group (healthy, at-risk, high-risk). Direct medical costs per ACP/IPD episode were estimated as the total costs of all inpatient and outpatient visits. The overall incidence rate of ACP was 1345 (95% CI 1339–1352) and 8.25 (95% CI 7.76–8.77) per 100 000 PY for IPD. For both ACP and IPD, incidence rates increased with age and were higher in the high-risk and at-risk groups, in comparison to the healthy group. ACP inpatient admission rate increased with age but remained steady across age-groups for IPD. The mean direct medical costs per episode were €8075 (95% CI 7121–9028) for IPD and €1454 (95% CI 1426–1482) for ACP. The aggregate direct medical costs for IPD and ACP episodes were estimated to be €8.5 million and €248.9 million respectively. The clinical and economic burden of IPD and ACP among German adults is substantial regardless of age.

Vastly increased transnational business activity in recent decades has been accompanied by controversy over how to cope with its social and environmental impacts. The most prominent policy response thus far consists of international guidelines. We investigate to what extent and why citizens in a high-income country are willing to restrain companies to improve environmental and social conditions in other countries. Exploiting a real-world referendum in Switzerland, we use choice and vignette experiments with a representative sample of voters (N = 3,010) to study public demand for such regulation. Our results show that citizens prefer strict and unilateral rules (with a substantial variation of preferences by general social and environmental concern) while correctly assessing their consequences. Moreover, exposure to international norms increases demand for regulation. These findings highlight that democratic accountability can be a mechanism that motivates states to contribute to collective goods even if not in their economic interest and that awareness of relevant international norms among citizens can enhance this mechanism.

This article offers a new conceptualisation of the meaning of norms in world politics. It starts from the observation that existing norm scholarship in International Relations has underestimated the role of ambiguity in the constitution of norm meaning. To address this shortcoming, we advance a conceptualisation that sees norm polysemy – the empirically observable plurality of norm meanings-in-use – as resulting from the enactment of inherently ambiguous norms in different contexts. By foregrounding norm ambiguity, this view offers a radically non-essentialist understanding of norm meaning, one that eschews any attempt to salvage final or ‘true’ meanings behind the polysemy of norms. Using empirical illustrations from different fields of contemporary global governance, we identify four mechanisms through which actors practically cope with the multiplicity of norm meanings that arises from norm ambiguity (deliberation, adjudication, uni- or multilateral fixation attempts, and ad hoc enactment) and outline their varying effects on the legitimacy and effectiveness of global governance. Based on this discussion, the article points to the normative implications of a radically non-essentialist conception of norms and suggests harnessing the positive potential of norm ambiguity as an ethically desirable condition that promotes human diversity and the plurality of global life.

In a ruling on 25 July 2018, the Court of Justice of the European Union concluded that organisms obtained by means of techniques/methods of mutagenesis constitute GMOs in the sense of Directive 2001/18, and that organisms obtained by means of techniques/methods of directed mutagenesis are not excluded from the scope of the Directive. Following the ruling, there has been much debate about the possible wider implications of the ruling. In October 2019, the Council of the European Union requested the European Commission to submit, in light of the CJEU ruling, a study regarding the status of novel genomic techniques under Union Law. For the purpose of the study, the Commission initiated stakeholder consultations early in 2020. Those consultations focused on the technical status of novel genomic techniques.

This article aims to contribute to the discussion on the legal status of organisms developed through novel genomic techniques, by offering some historical background to the negotiations on the European Union (EU) GMO Directives as well as a technical context to some of the terms in the Directive, and by analysing the ruling. The article advances that (i) the conclusion that organisms obtained by means of techniques/methods of mutagenesis constitute GMOs under the Directive means that the resulting organisms must comply with the GMO definition, ie the genetic material of the resulting organisms has been altered in a way that does not occur naturally by mating and/or natural recombination; (ii) the conclusion that organisms obtained by means of techniques/methods of directed mutagenesis were not intended to be excluded from the scope of the Directive is not inconsistent with the negotiation history of the Directive; (iii) whether an organism falls under the description of “obtained by means of techniques/methods of directed mutagenesis” depends on whether the genetic material of the resulting organisms has been altered in a way that does not occur naturally by mating and/or natural recombination. Finally, the article offers an analysis of the EU GMO definition, concluding that for an organism to be a GMO in the sense of the Directive, the technique used, as well as the genetic alterations of the resulting organism, must be considered.

We implemented universal severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) testing of patients undergoing surgical procedures as a means to conserve personal protective equipment (PPE). The rate of asymptomatic coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) was <0.5%, which suggests that early local public health interventions were successful. Although our protocol was resource intensive, it prevented exposures to healthcare team members.