Hydraulic fracturing generates large volumes of flowback and produced water, composed of complex mixtures of organic and inorganic constituents. The solids associated with these fluids are Fe-rich and can contain toxic organics, heavy metals and naturally occurring radioactive materials (NORMs). Despite this, only a few studies have analysed their composition and there is a lack of understanding about their interactions with microbial communities and their long-term fate in the environment. In this study, we analysed the solids associated with flowback water derived from a hydraulically fractured well in the Bowland Shale, UK. We also investigated the microbial reduction of these Fe(III)-rich materials under anaerobic conditions using anthraquinone-2.6-disulfonate (AQDS) as an electron shuttle and identified the resulting bioreduced mineral phases. XRD characterization indicated that the solids contained akaganeite (β-FeOOH, Cl) and Ba-bearing celestine (SrSO4). These Fe(III)-containing solids served as an electron acceptor for Shewanella frigidimarina and a flowback-derived Fe(III)-reducing enrichment culture. The bioreduced Fe(II)-bearing mineral phase was identified as ankerite [Ca(Fe,Mg,Mn)(CO3)2]; however, the presence of amorphous mineral phases is not ruled out. Microbial community composition was analysed using 16S rRNA gene sequencing. Amplicon sequence variants (ASVs) most closely related to Chromohalobacter, Caminicella and putative Fe(III)-reducing genera were dominant across treatments. Our findings highlight the potential of these Fe(III)-bearing sludges to be harnessed for the development of wastewater treatment strategies; for example, coupling the oxidation of toxic organics with Fe(III) reduction through either the introduction of microbial inocula or biostimulation of the native microbial communities. Furthermore, microbial processing can also be optimized to transform the Fe(III) sludges into denser materials, which are easier to handle and can immobilize toxic metals, thereby reducing the toxicity of this waste.

Following an outbreak of Salmonella Typhimurium in Wales in July 2021 associated with sheep meat and offal, further genetically related cases were detected across the UK. Cases were UK residents with laboratory-confirmed Salmonella Typhimurium in the same 5-single-nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) single-linkage cluster with specimen date between 01/08/2021–2031/12/2022. We described cases using routine (UK) and enhanced (Wales only) surveillance data. Exposures in cases in Wales were compared with non-Typhimurium Salmonella case–controls. Environmental Health Practitioners and the Food Standards Agency investigated supply chains of food premises reported by ≥2 cases. Animal, carcass, and environmental samples taken for diagnostic or monitoring purposes for gastrointestinal pathogens were included in microbiological investigations. We identified 142 cases: 75% in England, 23% in Wales and 3% in Scotland. Median age was 32 years, and 59% were male. Direct contact with sheep was associated with becoming a case (aOR: 14, 95%CI: 1.4–145) but reported by few (6/32 cases). No single food item, premises, or supplier linked all cases. Multi-agency collaboration enabled the identification of isolates in the same 5-SNP single-linkage cluster from a sheep carcass at an English abattoir and in ruminant, wildlife, poultry, and environmental samples, suggesting multiple vehicles and pathways of infection.

Despite its greatly weakened condition, could organised labour again be counter-hegemonic to and ultimately transformative of capitalism? Or is the current crisis, a crisis of collapse of manufacturing and wages and under-consumption due to the loss of redistributive power by key socio-political agents, possibly the final crisis of unionism, as argued by Wolfgang Streeck? Some on the political left, such as Streeck, argue that a new phase has been reached where redistributive and oppositional power of organised labour has been not just defeated but destroyed, with enormous consequences for the future of workers and capitalism itself. This article rejects such an overly pessimistic interpretation and asks what the possibility is of the labour movement’s again playing its historic role of transforming capitalism. It explores the potential role of organised labour in re-embedding the economy within democratic society, as Karl Polanyi argued, and building a socio-economic structure that is both stable and enhancing of social and environmental health. This problem is approached through a critique of the theories of Polanyi and Streeck and an examination of the unfortunate embrace of labourism and accommodation to neo-liberalism in the Australian labour movement.

Sexual minorities, including those identifying as lesbian, gay, bisexual or queer (LGBQ) are at heightened risk of experiencing mental health problems. Nationally, treatment outcomes within England’s Improving Access to Psychological Therapies (IAPT) services are worse for sexual minority patients than for heterosexuals. An IAPT service in London developed a cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) group specifically for sexual minority patients to provide a safe, affirmative intervention to learn skills for overcoming depression, anxiety and stress. A qualitative online survey was emailed to all 59 service users who had completed the eight-session intervention, to explore their experiences inductively. Survey data were analysed using qualitative content analysis. Themes were identified in participants’ responses in order to establish which aspects of the group intervention were deemed to be helpful and unhelpful, and to explore suggestions for group improvement. Eighteen people completed the survey (response rate 30.5%). Respondents reported that they found the CBT frame of the group useful, with the LGBQ focus experienced as particularly beneficial, often enhancing engagement with CBT concepts and tools. In addition to generic elements of group therapy that some found difficult, others reported that intragroup diversity, such as generational differences, could lead to a reduced sense of connection. Several suggestions for group improvement were made, including incorporating more diverse perspectives and examples in session content and focusing more on issues relating to intersectionality. These results provide preliminary evidence that a culturally adapted CBT group intervention developed specifically for sexual minorities is acceptable and perceived as offering something unique and helpful.

In 1975, the New Topographics: Photographs of a Man-Altered Landscape exhibition, organized by William Jenkins, at George Eastman House, changed the scope and aesthetics of American landscape photography. Ostensibly pared-back and banal, these black-and-white images formally presented the United States as a series of streets, suburban new builds, industrial sites and warehouses. None bigger than eleven inches by four or thirteen by thirteen, the photographs were also small and unassuming, refusing the grandness and potential sublimity of previous evocations of the US landscape. Rather than present the United States as a series of locations marked by regional and economic differences, photographers such as Robert Adams, Frank Gohlke, Lewis Baltz and Bernd and Hilla Becher now focussed on an increasing homogeneity across terrains, terrains often indeterminable in terms of actual locations, and, more often than not, eerily devoid of human presence. In Neil Campbell's words, the images were “unemotional, flat and appeared everyday, aspiring to ‘neutrality’ with a ‘disembodied eye.’” The New Topographics – according to such readings – differed from earlier depictions of the United States, moving away from the documentary focus on agrarian poverty and urban slums as seen during the Depression, as well as the humanist vision of postwar photographers such as Robert Frank. As William Jenkins put it in the original introduction to the exhibition, New Topographics was a study more “anthropological than critical,” one that would recentre everyday lived experience – not as a collection of individualized narratives, but as a cultural landscape marked by commercial interests above all.

This article explores Sally Mann's memoir Hold Still (2015) as a complex photo-text that excavates, mediates and shapes memories, both of her family and of the US South more broadly. Theorizing photo-text topographics, the article argues that various landscapes (regional, memorative, aesthetic) are mediated by the interrelation between word and image. Mann's depictions of her children, southern location, and – most explicitly – black–white relations in the United States will be shown to reveal how the past can never be “held still.”

It is UK Government policy to dispose of higher activity radioactive waste through geological disposal into an engineered deep underground geological disposal facility (GDF; DECC, 2014). Those wastes include low-level (LLW) and intermediate-level (ILW) radioactive wastes that are very heterogeneous, containing a range of inorganic and organic materials, the latter including cellulosic items. After closure of the GDF, eventual resaturation with groundwater is expected, resulting in the development of a hyperalkaline environment due to the proposed use of a cementitious backfill. Under these high-pH conditions, cellulose is unstable and will be degraded chemically, forming a range of water-soluble, low molecular weight compounds, of which the most abundant is isosaccharinic acid (ISA). As ISA is known to form stable soluble complexes with a range of radionuclides, thereby increasing the chance of radionuclide transport, the impact of microbial metabolism on this organic substrate was investigated to help determine the role of microorganisms in moderating the transport of radionuclides from a cementitious GDF. Anaerobic biodegradation of ISA has been studied recently in high-pH cementitious ILW systems, but less work has been done under anaerobic conditions at circumneutral conditions, more representative of the geosphere surrounding a GDF. Here we report the fate of ISA in circumneutral microcosms poised under aerobic and anaerobic conditions; the latter with nitrate, Fe(III) or sulfate added as electron acceptors. Data are presented confirming the metabolism of ISA under these conditions, including the direct oxidation of ISA under aerobic and nitrate-reducing conditions and the fermentation of ISA to acetate, propionate and butyrate prior to utilization of these acids during Fe(III) and sulfate reduction. The microbial communities associated with these processes were characterized using 16S rRNA gene pyrosequencing. Methane production was also quantified in these experiments, and the added electron acceptors were shown to play a significant role in minimizing methanogenesis from ISA and its breakdown products.

Neptunium-237 will be present in radioactive wastes over extended time periods due to its long half-life (2.13 × 106 years). Understanding its behaviour under conditions relevant to radioactive waste disposal is therefore of particular importance. Here, microcosm experiments were established using sediments from a legacy lime workings with high-pH conditions as an analogue of cementitious intermediate-level radioactive waste disposal. To probe the influence of Fe biogeochemistry on Np(V) in these systems, additional Fe(III) (as ferrihydrite) was added to select experiments. Biogeochemical changes were tracked in experiments with low levels of Np(V) (20 Bq ml–1; 3.3 μM), whilst parallel higher concentration systems (2.5 KBq ml–1; 414 μM) allowed X-ray absorption spectroscopy. As expected, microbial reduction processes developed in microbially-active systems with an initial pH of 10; however, during microbial incubations the pH dropped from 10 to ∼7, reflecting the high levels of microbial metabolism occurring in these systems. In microbially-active systems without added Fe(III), 90% sorption of Np(V) occurred within one hour with essentially complete removal by one day. In the ferrihydrite-amended systems, complete sorption of Np(V) to ferrihydrite occurred within one hour. For higher-activity sediments, X-ray absorption spectroscopy (XAS) at end points where Fe(II) ingrowth was observed confirmed that complete reductive precipitation of Np(V) to Np(IV) had occurred under similar conditions to low-level Np experiments. Finally, pre-reduced, Fe(III)-reducing sediments, with and without added Fe(III) and held at pH 10, were spiked with Np(V). These alkaline pre-reduced sediments showed significant removal of Np to sediments, and XAS confirmed partial reduction to Np(IV) with the no Fe system, and essentially complete reduction to Np(IV) in the Fe(III)-enriched systems. This suggested an indirect, Fe(II)-mediated pathway for Np(V) reduction under alkaline conditions. Microbial analyses using 16S rRNA gene pyrosequencing suggested a role for alkali-tolerant, Gram-positive Firmicutes in coupled Fe(III) reduction and Np immobilization in these experiments.

Horehound seed from Wyperfeld (Wyp90 and Wyp93) had optimum germination (98%) at constant 25 C and alternating 30/15 C at 0 MPa, while seed from Swift's Creek (SC93) had optimum germination at constant 25 to 27 C (84%) or alternating 25/15 C (95%). The Generalized Additive Models showed the effects of the three covariates (temperature, temperature difference and water potential) followed a smooth and regular pattern. Germination of SC93, Wyp90 and Wyp93 seed increased (P < 0.001) by 9.1, 6.1, and 11.6% for each degree increase in temperature difference but decreased (P < 0.001) with decreases in water potential by a factor of 4.1, 4.8, and 7.1 respectively, and ceased at −1.5 MPa. At constant temperatures the odds of germination were 27, 19, and 18% smaller for water potentials of 0, −0.25 and −0.5 MPa than when alternating temperatures varied by 15 C.