Nearly all contemporary countries were colonized at some point in their history by a foreign power, but do citizens resent their former metropoles for past colonial abuses? We exploit survey questions in which respondents were asked for their opinion of a named foreign country. Our analyses of responses from over ninety countries yield the surprising finding that today's citizens are more favourable toward their country's former colonizer – by 40 per cent of a standard deviation – than they are toward other countries. Contemporary monadic traits that make former metropoles liked around the world – especially their tendency to be democracies – as well as their relatively high volumes of trade with former colonies explain their popularity among citizens of their former colonies. We also illustrate and describe these patterns in two least-likely cases, Mexico and Zimbabwe. Our findings have important implications for understanding international soft power, an asset about which today's states care deeply.

Do Latin American citizens admire the United States for its material wealth and the opportunities this creates for them, or do they revile the United States because of the military and economic threat it has historically posed? Both narratives have a strong presence in Latin American societies, and much scholarship on mass anti-Americanism in the region portrays the dominant narrative as one of the United States as threat. In this article, we consult surveys from contemporary Latin America and find that various forms of ongoing economic exchange with the United States—trade, aid, migration, and remittances—are the primary influence on mass perception of the northern hegemon and actually promote goodwill, rather than bitterness, toward the United States. Moreover, we demonstrate that the most powerful channel through which economic exchange does so is consumption: inflows of US imports boost pro-American sentiment more than do other forms of exchange. In contrast, the legacy of US imperialism has little resonance in mass beliefs about the colossus of the north.

A multiproxy oxygen and carbon isotope (δ13C and δ18O), growth rate, and trace element stalagmite paleoenvironmental record is presented for the Early Holocene from Ethiopia. The annually laminated stalagmite grew from 10.6 to 10.4 ka and from 9.7 to 9.0 ka with a short hiatus at ~9.25 ka. Statistically significant and coherent spectral frequencies in δ13C and δ18O are observed at 15–25 and 19–23 years, respectively. The observed ~1‰ amplitude variability in stalagmite δ18O is likely forced by nonequilibrium deposition, due to kinetic effects during the progressive degassing of CO2 from the water film during stalagmite formation. These frequencies are similar to the periodicity reported for other Holocene stalagmite records from Ethiopia, suggesting that multidecadal variability in stalagmite δ18O is typical. Several processes can lead to this multidecadal variability and operate in different directions. A hydroclimate forcing is likely the primary control on the extent of the partial evaporation of soil and shallow epikarst water and associated isotopic fractionation. The resulting oxygen isotope composition of percolation water is subsequently modulated by karst hydrology. Further isotopic fractionation is possible in-cave during nonequilibrium stalagmite deposition. Combined with possible recharge biases in drip-water δ18O, these processes can generate multidecadal δ18O variability.

Conventional wisdom among scholars of Latin American politics holds that informal workers are less participatory and less left-leaning than formal workers. Relevant empirical findings, however, are mixed and in need of synthesis. This article provides that synthesis by conducting meta-analyses on the universe of previous quantitative studies of informality and the vote. It finds that informal workers are indeed less likely to vote than formal workers, but the effect of informality is small—just four to seven percentage points. It further finds that informal workers are more likely to vote for the left, not the right, but here the effect size is even smaller. Meta-regression analyses reveal that in countries where organized professional activity among informal workers is high, gaps in turnout between the two sectors are minimal. The article concludes that the conventional wisdom over-states the individual-level political consequences of labor informality in Latin America.

The Chronos 14Carbon-Cycle Facility is a new radiocarbon laboratory at the University of New South Wales, Australia. Built around an Ionplus 200 kV MIni-CArbon DAting System (MICADAS) Accelerator Mass Spectrometer (AMS) installed in October 2019, the facility was established to address major challenges in the Earth, Environmental and Archaeological sciences. Here we report an overview of the Chronos facility, the pretreatment methods currently employed (bones, carbonates, peat, pollen, charcoal, and wood) and results of radiocarbon and stable isotope measurements undertaken on a wide range of sample types. Measurements on international standards, known-age and blank samples demonstrate the facility is capable of measuring 14C samples from the Anthropocene back to nearly 50,000 years ago. Future work will focus on improving our understanding of the Earth system and managing resources in a future warmer world.

Paleohydrological changes during the late Holocene are inferred from humification, testate amoebae, and pollen evidence from three blanket peat profiles in northwest Scotland. Replicate peat humification records from the Traligill basin share the same patterns of change for a 600-yr period of overlap between 1800 and 2400 cal yr B.P. The shared patterns, inferred from samples with a resolution of 5–13 yr, represent basinwide hydrological changes. In a nearby, but hydrologically separate, area with caves beneath peat, the luminescence emission wavelength measured in two speleothem samples correlated with the humification record in the overlying peat. This correlation implies that speleothem luminescence emission wavelength depends primarily on decay rates in the soils from which drip waters are derived, as long as there is no major change in soil or vegetation. The peat and speleothem records from the cave site further correlate with the peat records from the Traligill basin. Taken together, the records thus represent a regional climatic signal. Peaks in surface wetness replicated in two or more records occur at ca. 2300, 2090, 2030, 1820, 1600, and 1440 cal yr B.P. Further peaks occur at 800, 570, and 115 cal yr B.P. in the humification and stalagmite records that extend to the present day. Correlative changes have been observed, not only in other peat records from Scotland but also in ice accumulation at GISP2. These further correlations imply that precipitation regimes in Scotland and Greenland were in phase during the late Holocene.

A verified instrumental calibration of annually resolved δ18O for a stalagmite from Gümüşhane in northeast Turkey is presented and cross-validated using a ‘leave-one-out’ technique. The amount of late autumn to winter precipitation is negatively correlated with stalagmite δ18O between AD 1938 and 2004. The observed relationship is extrapolated back to ~ AD 1500 leading to the first long winter precipitation reconstruction for this region. Modern day October to January precipitation is linked to pressure fields in Western Russia. Anomalously lower reconstructed rainfall is recorded in AD 1540–1560 at which time higher pressure over the Caspian Sea region is inferred.

Lipid extracts from a 61.7-cm-long subtropical stalagmite in southern China, spanning the period of ca. 10,000–21,000 yr ago as constrained by U–Th dating, were analyzed using gas chromatography–mass spectrometry. The higher plants and microorganisms in the overlying soils contribute a proportion of n-alkanes identified in the stalagmite. The occurrence of LMW (lower molecular weight) n-alkanols and n-alkan-2-ones in the stalagmite was mainly related to the soil microorganisms. We suggest that HMW (higher molecular weight) n-alkanols and n-alkan-2-ones identified in the stalagmite originate from soil organics and reflect input from contemporary vegetation. Shifts in the ratio of LMW to HMW n-alkanols or n-alkan-2-ones indicative of the variation of soil ecosystems (e.g., microbial degradation of organic matter and/or the relative abundance of soil microorganisms to higher plants) are comparable with the subtropical alkenone-SST (sea surface temperature) record of the same period. The similar trends seen in the δ13C data and the lipid parameters in this stalagmite imply that the overlying soil ecosystem response to climate might be responsible for the variation of δ13C values.

A hundred-year stalagmite lipid biomarker record from Mechara, southeastern Ethiopia, is presented. The record has been recovered at a 10-yr temporal resolution, marking the first time this has been achieved in stalagmite biomarker work and providing the first opportunity to investigate the relationship between stalagmite lipid records and hydrological transport lags, a vital issue in interpreting palaeoenvironmental signals. Preserved plant-derived n-alkanes and n-alkanols show clear changes in composition over time, relating to known land-use changes in the area, particularly the expansion of agriculture in the early twentieth century. The level of environmental detail provided by this technique, combined with the long-term chronological framework offered by stalagmites, holds significant promise for the investigation of early human environments and their associated climatic and anthropogenic controls.

Since its inception in 2010, the Network for Public Health Law (Network) has aligned with federal, state, tribal, and local public health practitioners to assess how law can promote and protect the public’s health. In 2013, Network authors illustrated major trends in public health laws and policies emanating from an internal assessment of thousands of requests for technical assistance nationally. More recently, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) has invited the Network and other partners to consider new ideas and strategies toward building a “culture of health.” Per Figure 1, RWJF’s conception of a culture of health emphasizes key action areas essential to the promotion of health across all sectors and diverse populations.

Virtually all previous studies of domestic economic redistribution find white Americans to be less enthusiastic about welfare for black recipients than for white recipients. When it comes to foreign aid and international redistribution across racial lines, I argue that prejudice manifests not in an uncharitable, resentful way but in a paternalistic way because intergroup contact is minimal and because of how the media portray black foreigners. Using two survey experiments, I show that white Americans are more favorable toward aid when cued to think of foreign poor of African descent than when cued to think of those of East European descent. This relationship is due not to the greater perceived need of black foreigners but to an underlying racial paternalism that sees them as lacking in human agency. The findings confirm accusations of aid skeptics and hold implications for understanding the roots of paternalistic practices in the foreign aid regime.