Recent developments in widefield radio telescopes have enabled searches of a new region of parameter space in the time domain: timescales of seconds to minutes, that have been overlooked in traditional surveys. These searches have revealed a new population of sources: long period transients, which typically show periodic behaviour of minutes to hours. In addition they have detected phenomena ranging from extreme scintillation to stellar radio bursts. However, almost all searches to date have involved archival data that has been processed in offline, batch mode. In this context, we present VASTER, the first short-timescale imaging and transient detection pipeline running in real time on a widefield radio telescope. VASTER has been running on the Australian SKA Pathfinder (ASKAP) since July 2025, and images most of the ASKAP survey project data on timescales of 15 min. In this paper we describe the VASTER system, and present the results from the first two weeks of operation, including the discovery of two long period transients: ASKAP J165130.3$-$450520 with a period of 6.48 h and ASKAP J170036.6$-$445758 with a period of 4.69 h. The detection of these two sources adds to the small, but growing, population of long period transients, as well as demonstrating the potential of VASTER to explore this region of transient parameter space.

Greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions significantly affect the environment, public health, and socioeconomic systems. Many countries and organizations have launched sustainable strategies to ease damaging consequences caused by the global climate change. Food services contribute greatly to greenhouse gas emissions. Service factors involved are food waste, the type of food service provided, and the use of single-use plastic products. For example, a single-use plastic food container related greenhouse gas emissions ranges from 0.16 to 0.48 kg CO2e. We have encouraged staffs to use reusable food containers since July 2024, and we shared the related information with all of staffs via emails and official website. This study aimed to evaluate the impact of sustainability initiatives—particularly the promotion of reusable food containers and a variable price buffet system. In our staff restaurant, 3 types of food services were in place: (i) variable price buffet service, (ii) fixed price canteen service, and (iii) fixed price box lunch. Data were first collected from July 2023 to December 2024, and then analysed according to the following 4 aspects: (i) the average number of lunches consumed each day, (ii) the amount of reusable food containers used, (iii) the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions, and (iv) an observation of food waste in food services. Statistical analysis was carried out using the SPSS software, version 22. We found that in 2024, the restaurant provided 1,200 to 1,800 meals/day during lunch time. Within these meals, 37.1% were from variable price buffets, 18.8% were from fixed price canteen, and 44.1% were from fixed price box lunches. First, in 2024, the use of reusable food containers in the variable price buffet averaged at 50% (47.9% to 56.3% on a monthly basis). In comparison to the period July to December 2023, our results show a significant increase in use of reusable food containers from July to December in 2024 (p < 0.05). Second, from July to December 2024, an estimated GHG emission reduction of 15,387–46,163 kg CO2e. Finally, based on the observation of food waste in different types of food services, there was almost no food waste in variable-price buffet service. In the literature, Matzembacher et al. have reported that the variable-price buffet service generates 116% less avoidable food wastes when compared with the fixed price canteen service(1). With the increasing public awareness of sustainable practices aimed at environmental protection, the adoption of reusable food containers and a variable-price buffet model effectively reduced plastic waste and GHG emissions. These initiatives included the implementation of a variable price buffet service to reduce food wastes and minimizing single-use plastic items and carbon footprints.

Human milk oligosaccharides (HMOs) are the third most abundant carbohydrates in human milk after lactose and lipids(1). While HMOs are known for various health benefits, their effects on cognitive function and brain development remain debated. This study investigates whether individual or combined supplementation of HMOs improves cognitive behaviours and stress responses in piglets, an ideal animal model for human infants. Sixty-four domestic male piglets, 3 days old, were randomly assigned to 1 of 4 groups and received pig milk replacer supplemented with different HMOs from postnatal day (PND) 3 to 38. Treatment groups included: Group 1: 2′-Fucosyllactose (2′-FL, 1.8 g/L; n = 14); Group 2: 3′/6′-Sialyllactose (3′/6′-SL in a 1:2.5 ratio, 1.8 g/L, n = 16); Group 3: combined HMOs (cHMOs, 70% 2′-FL and 30% 3’/6’-SL in a 1:2.5 ratio, at 1.8 g/L, n = 16), and Control (methyl cellulose, 1.8 g/L; n = 14). Cognitive performances were assessed using our published 8-arm radial maze(2), incorporating easy task (PND 23–27) and difficult task (PND 29–33) visual cues. Stress responses were assessed by measuring serum cortisol concentrations via ELISA. All data were analysed using SPSS (SPSS Inc., Chicago, IL) with significance set at *p < 0.05. The research protocol was approved by the ACECs of Charles Sturt University (A23566). Results showed that on the third day of behaviour testing, piglets in the cHMO group made significantly fewer total mistakes than the controls in the easy task (p < 0.05), whereas the 2′-FL group exhibited significantly fewer total mistakes in the difficult task (p < 0.05). Serum cortisol levels were not significantly different between the groups (p > 0.05). The findings suggest that HMOs supplementation may enhance cognitive function under both challenging and non-challenging conditions without affecting physiological stress markers, highlighting their potential role in supporting brain development during early life.

We report the discovery of a new long-period radio transient, ASKAP J142431.2–612611, with a 36 min period, identified in the Australian SKA Pathfinder Evolutionary Map of the Universe survey. We detected pulsed emission from ASKAP J142431.2–612611 over a period of eight days during follow-up observations with the Australia Telescope Compact Array, after which the source appears to have switched off. No optical or near-infrared counterpart is detected in archival surveys or in targeted Gemini South FLAMINGOS-2 observations. During its active state, the source exhibits a stable pulse profile with fractional polarisation consistent with 100%, evolving from elliptically to linearly polarised and tracing a well-defined great-circle trajectory on the Poincaré sphere. We show that this behaviour is consistent with fully linearly polarised intrinsic emission modified by propagation through a linearly polarised birefringent medium. This discovery expands the known population of long-period transients and highlights the intermittent nature of their activity. We discuss the implications for proposed models of long-period transients and outline future observations needed to constrain the origin of their intermittency and polarisation properties.

Drylands cover 41% of Earth’s land surface, support 36% of the global population and contribute 60% of global food production. Despite these ecosystems’ importance and high vulnerability to droughts and heatwaves, drylands remain some of the most understudied systems on Earth. Monitoring drylands is challenging due to their complex ecosystem structure of visible soil mixed with diverse plant species that respond rapidly to weather and climate. In 2023 and 2024, a NASA scoping study was conducted for a proposed dryland terrestrial ecology field campaign called Adaptation and Response in Drylands (ARID). Thereafter, the NASA ARID scoping team submitted their campaign proposal to NASA Headquarters, providing a study design for how field, aircraft and satellite measurements, as well as modeling, could address the most critical fundamental and applied science questions in drylands. The extensive strategic vision was created by and for the drylands research community, including remote sensors, modelers, experimentalists and ecologists from across the world, and the overall approach can be further utilized and altered for different uses and data information needs. Here, we summarize the final ARID research agenda, including its main objectives, field campaign strategy, data end-user support strategy, and U.S. and global community engagement.

Eco-anxiety is an emerging mental health concern among adolescents, particularly in regions affected by climate-related disasters. Following the 2023 wildfires in Canada’s Northwest Territories (NWT), this study examined associations between wildfire exposure severity, socio-ecological factors, and eco-anxiety among adolescents in the NWT. We conducted a cross-sectional survey with 290 adolescents aged 13–18 years across NWT secondary schools during the 2023–2024 school year. Structural equation modelling examined pathways linking social factors (gender, sexual orientation, Indigenous identity), living conditions (rural residence, caregiver status), structural conditions (food insecurity, wildfire exposure severity) and eco-anxiety. Self-esteem was examined as a moderator. Participants had a mean age of 13.7 years; most identifyied as Indigenous and lived in rural communities. Greater wildfire exposure severity and food insecurity were associated with higher eco-anxiety. Girls, LGBQ+ youth and rural youth reported higher eco-anxiety. Indigenous identity was indirectly associated with eco-anxiety through food insecurity and wildfire exposure severity. Higher self-esteem was associated with lower eco-anxiety and buffered the relationship between wildfire exposure and eco-anxiety. Findings suggest that eco-anxiety among NWT adolescents is shaped by climate-related disruption and social conditions. Interventions can address psychosocial resources and material conditions to support NWT youth mental health following climate-related disasters such as wildfires.

Spectral-line results from a new cryogenic phased array feed (cryoPAF) on the Murriyang telescope at Parkes are presented. This array offers a significant improvement in field of view, aperture efficiency, bandwidth, chromaticity, and survey speed compared with conventional horn-fed receivers. We demonstrate this with measurements of sky calibrators and observations of 21-cm neutral hydrogen (HI) in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) and the nearby galaxy NGC 6744. Within 0.3 deg of the optical axis, the ratio of system temperature to dish aperture efficiency ($T_\mathrm{sys}/\eta_{d}$) is 25 K, and the ratio with beam efficiency ($T_\mathrm{sys}/\eta_\mathrm{mb}$) is 21 K (at 1.4 GHz). For the previously measured $T_\mathrm{sys} = 17$ K, respective efficiency values $\eta_{d} \approx 0.7$ and $\eta_\mathrm{mb} \approx 0.8$ are derived. Our HI observational results are in good agreement with previous results, although detailed comparison with multibeam observations of the LMC suggests that the earlier observations may have missed an extended component of low-column-density gas ($\sim$$8\times 10^{18}$ cm$^{-2}$). We use the cryoPAF zoom-band and wideband data to make a preliminary investigation of whether the large number of simultaneous beams (72) permits the use of novel data reduction methods to reduce the effects of foreground/background continuum contamination and radio-frequency interference (RFI). We also investigate if these methods can better protect against signal loss for the detection of faint, extended cosmological signals such as HI intensity maps. Using robust higher-order singular value decomposition (SVD) techniques, we find encouraging results for the detection of both compact and extended sources, including challenging conditions with high RFI occupancy and significant sky continuum structure. Examples are shown that demonstrate that 3D SVD techniques offer a significant improvement in noise reduction and signal capture compared with more traditional layered 2D techniques.

The ‘stepping-stone’ model has been used to study genetic similarity of peoples as a function of the geographical distances separating them. A gene is represented by one of several alleles, much as a meaning is represented by one of many words. Based on this parallel, the stepping-stone model is here applied to a body of linguistic data from a chain of Micronesian islands. The logarithm of the lexical similarity, when plotted against geographical distance, shows a pronounced upper concavity not found in the genetic investigations. This deviation from linearity is largely caused by non-homogeneity of replacement rates in the words studied. Another contributing factor is that the effect of distance on lexical similarity is much greater for the eastern islands in the group.

Rates of replacement in space, computed here, show a significant positive correlation with those in time, computed for a related language or for different groups of languages.*

The Variables and Slow Transients (VAST) Survey on the Australian SKA Pathfinder (ASKAP) is designed to systematically explore the dynamic radio sky, detecting sources that vary on timescales from minutes to several years. In this paper, we present Data Release 1 of the VAST Extragalactic Survey, which targets slowly evolving synchrotron transients in the southern sky. The observations were carried out between June 2023 and May 2025, comprising 2 945 images of 276 fields spanning $\sim 12\,300\ \mathrm{deg}^2$, observed at 888 MHz with a typical rms sensitivity of 0.24 mJy $\mathrm{beam}^{-1}$ and 12–20 arcsec resolution. Each field was revisited approximately every two months, yielding 10 or 11 observations per field. The VAST pipeline extracts the light curves for all the observed sources, and additional filters are implemented to improve the reliability of the resulting light curve database. The light curve database contains 0.5 million sources and 6.4 million individual measurements, publicly available through the CSIRO data access portal. An untargeted variability search yields 117 astrophysical variables, including 27 pulsars, 40 radio stars (10 newly detected at radio wavelengths), 44 active galactic nuclei, two optically identified supernovae, one supernova candidate, one brown dwarf, and two sources without multi-wavelength counterparts that are yet to be identified. This data release provides the first large-scale, high-cadence, uniform view of long-term radio variability in the extragalactic sky and lays the groundwork for future population studies of radio transients with ASKAP.

This paper is concerned with a duality between $r$-regular permutations and $r$-cycle permutations, and a monotone property due to Bóna-McLennan-White on the probability $p_r(n)$ for a random permutation of $\{1,2,\ldots, n\}$ to have an $r$th root, where $r$ is a prime. For $r=2$, the duality relates permutations with odd cycles to permutations with even cycles. For the general case where $r\geq 2$, we define an $r$-enriched permutation as a permutation with $r$-singular cycles coloured by one of the colours $1, 2, \ldots, r-1 $. In this setup, we discover a bijection between $r$-regular permutations and enriched $r$-cycle permutations, which in turn yields a stronger version of an inequality of Bóna-McLennan-White. This leads to a fully combinatorial understanding of the monotone property, thereby answering their question. When $r$ is a prime power $q^l$, we further show that $p_r(n)$ is monotone. In the case that $n+1 \not\equiv 0 \pmod q$, the equality $p_r(n)=p_r(n+1)$ has been established by Chernoff.

Trichostrongylus spp. are globally distributed gastrointestinal nematodes that affect ruminants and humans, posing significant veterinary and public health challenges. Despite their zoonotic potential, the temporal dynamics of Trichostrongylus infection remain poorly understood globally. This study aimed to estimate long-term trends in Trichostrongylus prevalence in humans, ovines, and bovines using time series modelling. A systematic review identified 240 eligible studies with annual prevalence data across 60 countries. Following Kalman smoothing, annual prevalence time series were constructed for each host species covering 1947–2024 for humans, 1966–2024 for ovines, and 1962–2024 for bovines. ARIMA models were fitted separately: ARIMA(0,1,1) for humans, ARIMA(3,0,0) for ovines, and ARIMA(0,1,1) for bovines. Model selection was based on Stationary R2, RMSE, MAPE, and the Ljung-Box Q test for residual independence. Forecast 95% confidence intervals were reported to convey uncertainty in the projected trends. All three models demonstrated good in-sample fit and adequate residual diagnostics. Infection rates in humans and bovines are projected to decline, from 4.64% to 3.73% in humans and from 20.11% to 11.76% in bovines by 2034. In contrast, the ovine model forecasts an increase in infection rates, from 6.50% to 15.56%. This increase in ovines may reflect greater pasture exposure and environmental persistence of infective larvae, while improvements in hygiene and livestock management likely contribute to the declining trends observed in humans and bovines. The rising infection rate in ovines, coupled with sustained zoonotic risk, underscores the need for integrated One Health surveillance and control efforts.

We present the discovery of PSR J1728$-$4608, a new redback spider pulsar identified in images from the Australian SKA Pathfinder telescope. PSR J1728$-$4608 is a millisecond pulsar with a spin period of 2.86 ms, in a 5.05 h orbit with a companion star. The pulsar exhibits a radio spectrum of the form $S_{\nu} \propto \nu^\alpha$, with a measured spectral index of $\alpha = -1.8(3)$. It is eclipsed for 42% of its orbit at 888 MHz, and multi-frequency image–domain observations show that the egress duration scales with frequency as a power law with index $n = -1.74$, where longer duration eclipses are seen at lower frequencies. An optical counterpart is detected in archival Gaia data within $0.5''$ of the radio position. It has a mean G-band magnitude of 18.8 mag, and its light curve displays characteristics consistent with a combination of ellipsoidal modulation and irradiation effects. We also report the nearest Fermi $\gamma$-ray source, located 2′ away from our source, as a possible association. A radio timing study constrains the intrinsic and orbital properties of the system, revealing orbital period variations that we attribute to changes in the gravitational quadrupole moment of the companion star. At the eclipse boundary, we measure a maximum dispersion measure excess of $2.0 \pm 1.2 \ \mathrm{pc\ cm^{-3}}$, corresponding to an electron column density of $5.9 \pm 3.6 \times10^{18} \ \mathrm{cm^{-2}}$. Modelling of the eclipse mechanism suggests that synchrotron absorption is the dominant cause of the eclipses observed at radio wavelengths. The discovery and characterisation of systems like PSR J1728$-$4608 provide valuable insights into pulsar recycling, binary evolution, the nature of companion-driven eclipses, and the interplay between compact objects and their plasma environments.