Microplastics are ubiquitous in our environment but their presence in air is less well understood. Homes are likely a key source of airborne microplastics and microfibres to the environment owing to the frequent use and storage of plastics and textiles within them. Studying their presence, concentration and distribution in these environments is difficult without the participation of citizens due to accessibility challenges. Few studies have examined the intricacies of the prevalence of indoor microplastics and microfibres or the link between indoor exposure and behavioural and regulatory approaches that could reduce their concentrations. The application of a quintuple innovation helix framework, within which a co-creative citizen science research methodology is applied, provides an opportunity for citizens to shape the scientific method, ensuring that methods are accessible and appropriate for widespread use and designed by the citizen, for the citizen. Exploring behaviours and motivations in plastic and textile use by citizens with industry may reduce the generation of these particles. Future studies should consider the importance of citizen inclusion when designing research strategies for measuring and reducing microplastic concentrations in homes, enabling a nuanced understanding of their generation and distribution and facilitating the development of appropriate behavioural, industrial and regulatory messaging and mitigative measures.

The current study aims to make welfare-based recommendations for gun/cartridge combinations and shooting positions that will ensure death of the sheep (horned, unhorned, rams and ewes), without the need for either sticking or pithing. The study examined the pathophysiology of captive-bolt gun (CBG) injuries that result in incomplete concussion leading to death. Behavioural, brainstem and cranial/spinal responses were examined along with gross pathology in 489 animals (116 polled ewes, 134 horned ewes, 117 polled rams and 122 horned rams) following a variety of CBG-cartridge combinations. Shooting horned rams was more challenging than unhorned sheep, partly because minor movements of the head at the time of shooting can result in deflection of the gun by the horns. Marksmanship was the definitive factor: 100% of animals that showed signs of incomplete concussion were found to have been shot incorrectly. The findings will have application when it is necessary to kill sheep on farms for disease control or euthanasia purposes.

‘Discourses of climate delay’ pervade current debates on climate action. These discourses accept the existence of climate change, but justify inaction or inadequate efforts. In contemporary discussions on what actions should be taken, by whom and how fast, proponents of climate delay would argue for minimal action or action taken by others. They focus attention on the negative social effects of climate policies and raise doubt that mitigation is possible. Here, we outline the common features of climate delay discourses and provide a guide to identifying them.

The climate crisis requires nations to achieve human well-being with low national levels of carbon emissions. Countries vary from one another dramatically in how effectively they convert resources into well-being, and some nations with low levels of emissions have relatively high objective and subjective well-being. We identify urgent research and policy agendas for four groups of countries with either low or high emissions and well-being indicators. Least studied are those with low well-being and high emissions. Understanding social and political barriers to switching from high-carbon to lower-carbon modes of production and consumption, and ways to overcome them, will be fundamental.

Manhattan, Berlin and New Delhi all need to take action to adapt to climate change and to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. While case studies on these cities provide valuable insights, comparability and scalability remain sidelined. It is therefore timely to review the state-of-the-art in data infrastructures, including earth observations, social media data, and how they could be better integrated to advance climate change science in cities and urban areas. We present three routes for expanding knowledge on global urban areas: mainstreaming data collections, amplifying the use of big data and taking further advantage of computational methods to analyse qualitative data to gain new insights. These data-based approaches have the potential to upscale urban climate solutions and effect change at the global scale.

As produced, raw carbon nanotubes are not soluble in many solvents necessary for printing applications. Standard methods for circumventing this problem involve sidewall functionalization and surfactants. Sidewall functionalization invariably destroys the π-network that gives carbon nanotubes their useful electronic properties, while surfactants deposit an insulating layer onto the carbon nanotube surface that must be washed off to regain the desired properties. Non-covalent functionalization offers the possibility to achieve solubility without destroying the π-network, but published methods have resulted in relatively low concentrations or substandard electronic performance. We have developed a scalable method to non-covalently functionalize long (> 3 μm) carbon nanotubes with simple pyrene derivatives. This method produces highly dispersed solutions with concentrations as high as 2.5 g/l that can be used to produce conductive coatings with sheet resistance as low as 350 Ω/sq with 85% transmittance at 550 nm without post-deposition washing or doping treatments. The functionalized carbon nanotubes can be formulated into solutions that can be printed by ink-jet deposition, Aerosol-Jet® deposition, screen printing, and spray coating for printed electronics fabrication, and the solutions are stable for months without signs of bundling.

The Strange Situation procedure was developed by Ainsworth two decades agoas a means of assessing the security of infant-parent attachment. Users of the procedureclaim that it provides a way of determining whether the infant has developed species-appropriate adaptive behavior as a result of rearing in an evolutionary appropriate context, characterized by a sensitively responsive parent. Only when the parent behaves in the sensitive, species-appropriate fashion is the baby said to behave in the adaptive or secure fashion. Furthermore, when infants are observed repeatedly in the Strange Situation,the pattern of behavior is said to be highly similar, and this pattern is said to predict the infants' future behavior in a diverse array of contexts. After an exhaustive review of the literature, it is shown that these popular claims are empirically unsupported in their strong form, and that the interpretations in terms of biological adaptationare misguided. There is little reliable evidence about the specific dimensions of parental behavior that affect Strange Situation behavior, although there does appear to be some relationship between these constructs. Temporal stability in security of attachment ishigh only when there is stability in family and caretaking circumstances. Likewise, patterns of Strange Situation behavior only have substantial predictive validity in similarly stable families. Implications for future research and theorizing — particularly as they relate to the use of evolutionary biology in psychological theory — are discussed.

Fifty per cent. of the soils studied came from the United States and represent samples from sites in which engineering difficulties were encountered; therefore, it is significant that the clay in 50% of all soils examined was an illite-smectite type, while illite-chlorite comprised 15% of the total. For illite-smectite clays, quantitative estimation of the illite and smectite percentages is obtained from the total potash and glycol retention data. The agreement between measured and calculated cation exchange capacities is taken as supporting evidence of the reliability of the methods used. The chlorite component in the illite-chlorite clays was a high-iron chlorite. Regular and random stratification of illite and chlorite components was observed. The most important influence of composition on behaviour is the very high water sensitivity of the expansive minerals. Most of the soils studied which had caused stability or volume change problems in the field contained expansive minerals. For soils with fines of a single mineral species or a simple mixture of minerals, predictions of behaviour can be made with fair accuracy from a knowledge of soil composition. Where the soil fines are interstratified minerals or cemented crystals, predictions can seldom be made with accuracy. Interstratification or cementation usually inhibits the water sensitivity of normally expansive minerals. This fact seriously limits the value of soil compositional data to the engineer.