The Care Act 2014 gave English local authorities a duty to ‘shape’ social care markets and encouraged them to work co-productively with stakeholders. Grid-group cultural theory is used here to explain how local authorities have undertaken market shaping, based on a four-part typology of rules and relationships. The four types are: procurement (strong rules, weak relationships); managed market (strong rules, strong relationships); open market (weak rules, weak relationships); and partnership (weak rules, strong relationships). Qualitative data from English local authorities show that they are using different types of market shaping in different parts of the care market (e.g. residential vs home care), and shifting types over time. Challenges to the sustainability of the care system (rising demand, funding cuts, workforce shortages) are pulling local authorities towards the two ‘strong rules’ approaches which run against the co-productive thrust of the Care Act. Some local authorities are experimenting with hybrids of the two ‘weak rules’ approaches but the rival cultural biases of different types mean that hybrid approaches risk antagonising providers and further unsettling an unstable market.

XtendFlex® technology from Bayer allows growers to apply glyphosate, glufosinate, and dicamba POST to cotton. Since the evolution and spread of glyphosate-resistant weed species, early POST applications with several modes of action have become common. However, crop injury potential from these applications warrants further examination. Field studies were conducted from 2015 to 2017 at two locations in Mississippi to evaluate XtendFlex® cotton injury from herbicide application. Herbicide applications were made to XtendFlex® cotton at the three- to six-leaf stage with herbicide combinations composed of two-, three-, and four-way combinations of glyphosate, glufosinate, S-metolachlor, and three formulations of dicamba. Data collection included visual estimations of injury, stand counts, cotton height, total mainstem nodes, and nodes above whiteflower at first bloom. Data collection at the end of the season included cotton height, total mainstem nodes, and nodes above cracked boll. Visual estimations of injury from herbicide applications were highest at 3 d following applications containing glufosinate + S-metolachlor (36% to 41% injury) and glufosinate + S-metolachlor in combination with dicamba + glyphosate (39% to 41% injury), regardless of the dicamba formulation. Crop injury decreased at each rating interval and dissipated by 28 d following applications (P = 0.3748). Height reductions were present at first bloom and at the end of the season (P < 0.0001), although cotton yield was unaffected (P = 0.2089), even when injury at 3 d after application was greater than 30%. Results indicate that growers may apply a variety of herbicide tank mixtures to XtendFlex® cotton and expect no yield penalty. Furthermore, if growers are concerned with cotton injury after herbicide applications, the use of glufosinate in combination with S-metolachlor should be approached with caution in XtendFlex® cotton.

Colleges and universities around the world engaged diverse strategies during the COVID-19 pandemic. Baylor University, a community of ˜22,700 individuals, was 1 of the institutions which resumed and sustained operations. The key strategy was establishment of multidisciplinary teams to develop mitigation strategies and priority areas for action. This population-based team approach along with implementation of a “Swiss Cheese” risk mitigation model allowed small clusters to be rapidly addressed through testing, surveillance, tracing, isolation, and quarantine. These efforts were supported by health protocols including face coverings, social distancing, and compliance monitoring. As a result, activities were sustained from August 1 to December 8, 2020. There were 62,970 COVID-19 tests conducted with 1435 people testing positive for a positivity rate of 2.28%. A total of 1670 COVID-19 cases were identified with 235 self-reports. The mean number of tests per week was 3500 with approximately 80 of these positive (11/d). More than 60 student tracers were trained with over 120 personnel available to contact trace, at a ratio of 1 per 400 university members. The successes and lessons learned provide a framework and pathway for similar institutions to mitigate the ongoing impacts of COVID-19 and sustain operations during a global pandemic.

Metaphors are inescapable in human discourse. Policy researchers have suggested that the use of particular metaphors by those implementing policy changes both influences perceptions of underlying reality and determines what solutions seem possible, and that exploring ‘practice languages’ is important in understanding how policy is enacted. This paper contributes to the literature exploring the generative nature of metaphors in policy implementation, demonstrating their role in not just describing the world, but also framing it, determining what is seen/unseen, and what solutions seem possible. The metaphor ‘care pathway’ is ubiquitous and institutionalised in healthcare. We build upon existing work critiquing its use in care delivery, and explore its use in health care commissioning, using evidence from the recent reorganisation of the English NHS. We show that the pathways metaphor is ubiquitous, but not necessarily straightforward. Conceptualising health care planning as ‘designing a pathway’ may make the task more difficult, suggesting a limited range of approaches and solutions. We offer an alternative metaphor: the service map. We discuss how approaches to care design might be altered by using this different metaphor, and explore what it might offer. We argue not for a barren language devoid of metaphors, but for their more conscious use.

The optimal balance between central governmental authority and the degree of autonomy of local public bodies is an enduring issue in public policy. The UK National Health Service is no exception, with NHS history, in part at least, a history of repeated cycles of centralisation and decentralisation of decision-making power. Most recently, a significant reorganisation of the NHS in 2012–13 was built around the creation of new and supposedly more autonomous commissioning organisations (Clinical Commissioning Groups – CCGs). Using Bossert's (1998) concept of ‘decision space’, we explored the experiences of local commissioners as they took on their new responsibilities. We interviewed commissioning staff from all of the CCGs in two regional health care ‘economies’, exploring their perceptions of autonomy and their experiences over time. We found significant early enthusiasm for, and perceptions of, increased autonomy tempered in the vertical dimension by increasingly onerous and prescriptive monitoring regimes, and in the horizontal dimension by the proliferation of overlapping networks, inter-organisational groups and relationships. We propose that, whatever the balance between central and local control that is adopted, complex public services require some sort of meso-level oversight from organisations able to ‘hold the ring’ between competing interests and to take a regional view of the needs of the local health system. This suggests that local organisational autonomy in such services will always be constrained.

Some of the most interesting and enigmatic cnidarians are classified within the hydrozoan subclass Trachylina. Despite being relatively depauperate in species richness, the clade contains four taxa typically accorded ordinal status: Actinulida, Limnomedusae, Narcomedusae and Trachymedusae. We bring molecular data (mitochondrial 16S and nuclear small and large subunit ribosomal genes) to bear on the question of phylogenetic relationships within Trachylina. Surprisingly, we find that a diminutive polyp form, Microhydrula limopsicola (classified within Limnomedusae) is actually a previously unknown life stage of a species of Stauromedusae. Our data confirm that the interstitial form Halammohydra sp. (Actinulida) is derived from holopelagic direct developing ancestors, likely within the trachymedusan family Rhopalonematidae. Trachymedusae is shown to be diphyletic, suggesting that the polyp stage has been lost independently at least two times within trachyline evolution. Narcomedusae is supported as a monophyletic group likely also arising from trachymedusan ancestors. Finally, some data, albeit limited, suggest that some trachyline species names refer to cryptic species that have yet to be sorted taxonomically.

Results from a large-scale, capture—recapture study of humpback whales Megaptera novaeangliae in the North Atlantic show that migration timing is influenced by feeding ground origin. No significant differences were observed in the number of individuals from any feeding area that were re-sighted in the common breeding area in the West Indies. However, there was a relationship between the proportion (logit transformed) of West Indies sightings and longitude (r2=0.97, F1,3=98.27, P=0.0022) suggesting that individuals feeding farther to the east are less likely to winter in the West Indies. A relationship was also detected between sighting date in the West Indies and feeding area. Mean sighting dates in the West Indies for individuals identified in the Gulf of Maine and eastern Canada were significantly earlier than those for animals identified in Greenland, Iceland and Norway (9.97 days, t179=3.53, P=0.00054). There was also evidence for sexual segregation in migration; males were seen earlier on the breeding ground than were females (6.63 days, t105=1.98, P=0.050). This pattern was consistently observed for animals from all feeding areas; a combined model showed a significant effect for both sex (F1=5.942, P=0.017) and feeding area (F3=4.756, P=0.0038). The temporal difference in occupancy of the West Indies between individuals from different feeding areas, coupled with sexual differences in migratory patterns, presents the possibility that there are reduced mating opportunities between individuals from different high latitude areas.

In situ transmission electron microscopy (150 kV) has been employed to study the evolution of dislocation microstructures during relatively rapid thermal cycling of a 200 nm Al thin film on Si substrate. After a few thermal cycles between 150 and 500°C, nearly stable Al columnar grain structure is established with average grain less than a μm. On rapid cooling (3–30+ °C/s) from 500°C, dislocations first appear at a nominal temperature of 360–380°C, quickly multiplying and forming planar glide plane arrays on further cooling. From a large number of such experiments we have attempted to deduce the dislocation evolution during thermal cycling in these polycrystalline Al films and to account qualitatively for the results on a simple dislocation model.