The growing popularity of home-sharing platforms such as Airbnb, partly fueled by hosts’ ability to evade local taxes and regulations, has been shown to elevate housing costs by reallocating long-term housing units to the short-term rental market. This study assesses whether enhanced tax enforcement can mitigate this trend. We analyze staggered tax collection agreements between Airbnb and Florida counties, wherein Airbnb collects taxes from the hosts directly. Using a difference-in-differences methodology, we find these agreements significantly slow the growth of housing costs, highlighting the importance of tax policy in addressing the sharing economy’s influence on housing affordability.

The rising incidence of neurodegenerative diseases in an ageing global population has shifted research focus towards modifiable risk factors, such as diet. Despite potential links between dietary patterns and brain health, inconsistencies in neuroimaging outcomes underscore a gap in understanding how diet impacts brain ageing. This study explores the relationship between three dietary patterns – Mediterranean, Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension (DASH) and Mediterranean-DASH Intervention for Neurodegenerative Delay – and cognitive outcomes as well as brain connectivity. The study aimed to assess the association of these diets with brain structure and cognitive function, involving a middle-aged healthy group and an older cohort with subjective cognitive decline. The study included cognitive assessments and diffusion-weighted MRI data to analyse white matter microstructural integrity. Participants comprised fifty-five older individuals with subjective cognitive decline (54·5 % female, mean age = 64) and fifty-two healthy middle-aged individuals (48·1 % female, mean age = 53). Age inversely correlated with certain cognitive functions and global brain metrics, across both cohorts. Adherence to the Mediterranean, DASH and Mediterranean-DASH Intervention for Neurodegenerative Delay diets showed no significant cognitive or global brain metric improvements after adjusting for covariates (age, education, BMI). Network-based statistics analysis revealed differences in brain subnetworks based on DASH diet adherence levels in the subjective cognitive decline cohort. In the healthy cohort, lower white matter connectivity was associated with reduced adherence to Mediterranean-DASH Intervention for Neurodegenerative Delay and DASH diets. Ultimately, the study found no strong evidence connecting dietary patterns to cognitive or brain connectivity outcomes. Future research should focus on longitudinal studies and refine dietary assessments.

Responding to increasing concerns regarding human-induced climate change and shared commitment as environmental educators to support climate action, we crafted this article as a composite piece — an emerging method of inquiry. We are eleven contributors: the Editorial Executive of the Australian Journal of Environmental Education and two colleagues who each respond to prompts concerning our experience of climate change and our practices of climate change education. The responses provide insights regarding how we strive to enact meaningful climate action, education, advocacy and agency. This article presents the reader with various ways environmental educators work through eco-anxiety and engage in active hope when supporting climate change education/agency/action. The following insights emerged, illustrating 1. the significance of embracing diverse perspectives and knowledge systems; 2. Emotions as catalysts for action and activism; 3. the value of fostering collaborative spaces/relationships/communities that empower people; 4. the importance of integrating ethical responses and critical climate literacy in climate change education/research; 5. learning from places and multi-species entanglements; 6. acknowledging tensions. We offer these six insights not as a solution but as a potentially generative heuristic for navigating the complexity and uncertainty of climate change education in contemporary times.

Hypertrophic ‘giant’ handaxes are a rare component of Acheulean assemblages, yet have been central to debates relating to the social, cognitive and cultural ‘meaning’ of these enigmatic tools. The authors examine giant handaxes from the perspective of the British record and suggest that they are chronologically patterned, with the great majority originating from contexts broadly associated with Marine Isotope Stage 9. Giant handaxes tend to have higher symmetry than non-giants, and extravagant forms, such as ficrons, are better represented; they may therefore be linked to incipient aesthetic sensibilities and, potentially, to changing cognition at the transition between the Lower and Middle Palaeolithic.

There are numerous challenges pertaining to epilepsy care across Ontario, including Epilepsy Monitoring Unit (EMU) bed pressures, surgical access and community supports. We sampled the current clinical, community and operational state of Ontario epilepsy centres and community epilepsy agencies post COVID-19 pandemic. A 44-item survey was distributed to all 11 district and regional adult and paediatric Ontario epilepsy centres. Qualitative responses were collected from community epilepsy agencies. Results revealed ongoing gaps in epilepsy care across Ontario, with EMU bed pressures and labour shortages being limiting factors. A clinical network advising the Ontario Ministry of Health will improve access to epilepsy care.

Healthy dietary patterns such as the Mediterranean diet (MeDi), Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension (DASH) and the Mediterranean-DASH Intervention for Neurodegenerative Delay (MIND) have been evaluated for their potential association with health outcomes. However, the lack of standardisation in scoring methodologies can hinder reproducibility and meaningful cross-study comparisons. Here we provide a reproducible workflow for generating the MeDi, DASH and MIND dietary pattern scores from frequently used dietary assessment tools including the 24-h recall tool and two variations of FFQ. Subjective aspects of the scoring process are highlighted and have led to a recommended reporting checklist. This checklist enables standardised reporting with sufficient detail to enhance the reproducibility and comparability of their outcomes. In addition to these aims, valuable insights in the strengths and limitations of each assessment tool for scoring the MeDi, DASH and MIND diet can be utilised by researchers and clinicians to determine which dietary assessment tool best meets their needs.

The Australian SKA Pathfinder (ASKAP) has surveyed the sky at multiple frequencies as part of the Rapid ASKAP Continuum Survey (RACS). The first two RACS observing epochs, at 887.5 (RACS-low) and 1 367.5 (RACS-mid) MHz, have been released (McConnell, et al. 2020, PASA, 37, e048; Duchesne, et al. 2023, PASA, 40, e034). A catalogue of radio sources from RACS-low has also been released, covering the sky south of declination $+30^{\circ}$ (Hale, et al., 2021, PASA, 38, e058). With this paper, we describe and release the first set of catalogues from RACS-mid, covering the sky below declination $+49^{\circ}$. The catalogues are created in a similar manner to the RACS-low catalogue, and we discuss this process and highlight additional changes. The general purpose primary catalogue covering 36 200 deg$^2$ features a variable angular resolution to maximise sensitivity and sky coverage across the catalogued area, with a median angular resolution of $11.2^{\prime\prime} \times 9.3^{\prime\prime}$. The primary catalogue comprises 3 105 668 radio sources, including those in the Galactic Plane (2 861 923 excluding Galactic latitudes of $|b|<5^{\circ}$), and we estimate the catalogue to be 95% complete for sources above 2 mJy. With the primary catalogue, we also provide two auxiliary catalogues. The first is a fixed-resolution, 25-arcsec catalogue approximately matching the sky coverage of the RACS-low catalogue. This 25-arcsec catalogue is constructed identically to the primary catalogue, except images are convolved to a less-sensitive 25-arcsec angular resolution. The second auxiliary catalogue is designed for time-domain science and is the concatenation of source lists from the original RACS-mid images with no additional convolution, mosaicking, or de-duplication of source entries to avoid losing time-variable signals. All three RACS-mid catalogues, and all RACS data products, are available through the CSIRO ASKAP Science Data Archive (https://research.csiro.au/casda/).

Background: Since October 2020, the Infection Prevention Resource and Assessment Team (IPRAT) has provided infection prevention guidance and support to congregate-care settings throughout Michigan. Specifically, outreach to skilled nursing facilities (SNFs) in response to reported positive COVID-19 resident and staff cases. Case rates provide limited data and do not factor in additional variables, such as staffing shortages, geographical location, or access to supplies, which can increase the vulnerability of staff and residents to outbreaks. To facilitate equitable outreach, a risk assessment was developed using variables related to infection prevention and poor COVID-19 outcomes utilizing local, state, and federal data reporting websites. Methods: A retrospective data review of IPRAT’s electronic data repository was performed, and 2 distinct periods were identified between November 6, 2020, and December 5, 2022. Outreach method 1 involved only using case counts from November 6, 2020, to September 24, 2021. Outreach method 2 (new risk-assessment–based outreach) involved additional data points from April 12, 2021, to December 5, 2022. Data included 17 self-reported items from the NHSN, 3 characteristics regarding facilities’ COVID-19 units, and 7 community-level variables derived from county vaccine rates, social vulnerability index (SVI), and COVID-19 community transmission level. The scoring of each data point ranged from 0–10, and outreach was prioritized to facilities with the highest overall scores. Successful referrals (resulting in a site visit) were compared to the SVI and healthcare emergency regional maps to determine whether the new outreach method reached more facilities in vulnerable communities. Results: Of 358 outreach attempts, IPRAT had a higher success rate with method 2 (6.9%) compared to method 1 (5.3%) and improved outreach in rural Michigan regions 7 and 8 (15% vs 3%). Site visits in counties with a high SVI rating with method 2 were 14.5% versus 10.6% using method 1. COVID-19 prevention referral success rates were higher (4.4% vs 3.1%) using method 2. Conclusions: The risk-assessment–based outreach method showed improvement in overall referral success rates among facilities in rural and higher-SVI counties. These communities tend to experience higher health disparities and poorer health outcomes. Incorporating the more nuanced data variables correlated with at-risk congregate-care settings receiving timelier outreach. The limitations of the study include sample size, period of data collected (2 years), and the complexity of objectively measuring equity.

Disclosures: None

The Australian SKA Pathfinder (ASKAP) radio telescope has carried out a survey of the entire Southern Sky at 887.5 MHz. The wide area, high angular resolution, and broad bandwidth provided by the low-band Rapid ASKAP Continuum Survey (RACS-low) allow the production of a next-generation rotation measure (RM) grid across the entire Southern Sky. Here we introduce this project as Spectral and Polarisation in Cutouts of Extragalactic sources from RACS (SPICE-RACS). In our first data release, we image 30 RACS-low fields in Stokes I, Q, U at 25$^{\prime\prime}$ angular resolution, across 744–1032 MHz with 1 MHz spectral resolution. Using a bespoke, highly parallelised, software pipeline we are able to rapidly process wide-area spectro-polarimetric ASKAP observations. Notably, we use ‘postage stamp’ cutouts to assess the polarisation properties of 105912 radio components detected in total intensity. We find that our Stokes Q and U images have an rms noise of $\sim$80 $\unicode{x03BC}$Jy PSF$^{-1}$, and our correction for instrumental polarisation leakage allows us to characterise components with $\gtrsim$1% polarisation fraction over most of the field of view. We produce a broadband polarised radio component catalogue that contains 5818 RM measurements over an area of $\sim$1300 deg$^{2}$ with an average error in RM of $1.6^{+1.1}_{-1.0}$ rad m$^{-2}$, and an average linear polarisation fraction $3.4^{+3.0}_{-1.6}$ %. We determine this subset of components using the conditions that the polarised signal-to-noise ratio is $>$8, the polarisation fraction is above our estimated polarised leakage, and the Stokes I spectrum has a reliable model. Our catalogue provides an areal density of $4\pm2$ RMs deg$^{-2}$; an increase of $\sim$4 times over the previous state-of-the-art (Taylor, Stil, Sunstrum 2009, ApJ, 702, 1230). Meaning that, having used just 3% of the RACS-low sky area, we have produced the 3rd largest RM catalogue to date. This catalogue has broad applications for studying astrophysical magnetic fields; notably revealing remarkable structure in the Galactic RM sky. We will explore this Galactic structure in a follow-up paper. We will also apply the techniques described here to produce an all-Southern-sky RM catalogue from RACS observations. Finally, we make our catalogue, spectra, images, and processing pipeline publicly available.