Communication at the science-policy interface can be bewildering not only for early-career researchers, but also for many within the research community. In the context of Antarctica and the Southern Ocean, decision-makers operating within the Antarctic Treaty System (ATS) aspire to use the best available science as a basis for their decision-making. Therefore, to maximize the impact of Antarctic Treaty Parties' substantial investment in southern polar research, researchers wishing to contribute to policy and management must understand 1) how their work relates to and can potentially inform Antarctic and/or global policy and 2) the available mechanisms by which their research can be communicated to decision-makers. Recognizing these needs, we describe the main legal instruments relevant to Antarctic governance (primarily the ATS) and the associated meetings and stakeholders that contribute to policy development for the region. We highlight effective mechanisms by which Antarctic researchers may communicate their science into the policy realm, including through National Delegations or the Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research (SCAR), and we detail the key contemporary topics of interest to decision-makers, including those issues where further research is needed. Finally, we describe challenges at the Antarctic science-policy interface that may potentially slow or halt policy development.

Protection of Antarctica's biodiversity and ecosystem values is enshrined in the Protocol on Environmental Protection to the Antarctic Treaty, which provides for the designation of Antarctic Specially Protected Areas (ASPAs) to areas with outstanding values. Concern has been raised that existing ASPAs fail to prioritize areas to maximize the likelihood of ensuring the long-term conservation of Antarctic ecosystems and biodiversity. The absence of systematic and representative protection is particularly acute for inland aquatic ecosystems, which support a disproportionate amount of inland biodiversity. This paper promotes the case for overt inclusion of inland waters as a critical component of a representative protected area framework for Antarctica, thereby addressing their current underrepresentation. We set out a structured approach to enable the selection of representative freshwater systems for inclusion in the ASPA framework that, with modification, could also be applied across other Antarctic habitats. We acknowledge an overall lack of information on the biogeography of inland aquatic diversity and recommend increased use of remote data collection along with classification tools to mitigate this, as well as the need for the consideration of catchment-scale processes. Changes that accompany contemporary and anticipated climate change make the need for the conservation of representative biodiversity increasingly urgent.

Antarctic and Southern Ocean environments are facing increasing pressure from multiple threats. The Antarctic Treaty System regularly looks to the Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research (SCAR) for the provision of independent and objective advice based on the best available science to support decision-making, policy development and effective environmental management. The recently approved SCAR Scientific Research Programme Ant-ICON - ‘Integrated Science to Inform Antarctic and Southern Ocean Conservation‘ - facilitates and coordinates high-quality transdisciplinary research to inform the conservation and management of Antarctica, the Southern Ocean and the sub-Antarctic in the context of current and future impacts. The work of Ant-ICON focuses on three research themes examining 1) the current state and future projections of Antarctic systems, species and functions, 2) human impacts and sustainability and 3) socio-ecological approaches to Antarctic and Southern Ocean conservation, and one synthesis theme that seeks to facilitate the provision of timely scientific advice to support effective Antarctic conservation. Research outputs will address the most pressing environmental challenges facing Antarctica and offer high-quality science to policy and advisory bodies including the Antarctic Treaty Consultative Meeting, the Committee for Environmental Protection and the Scientific Committee of the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources.

This paper reviews recent demographic and familial changes in the Middle East and North African countries (MENA), which parallel the developments associated with the second demographic transition that has transformed population profiles and family life in the more developed OECD countries. The emerging needs for family-oriented policies are analysed in relation to these changes. And the current levels of social protection in the MENA region are assessed along with the recent measures initiated in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The paper offers evidence of the demographic transition underway in the region, as many countries are experiencing declining fertility rates combined with an increase in life expectancy, which creates a rising old age dependency ratio. This in turn adds an additional burden of elderly dependents on the working age population and on the state’s capacity to care for elderly dependents, which generates an increasing need to expand social protection in the MENA region.

Based on data from the International Social Survey Program (ISSP), this study examines the extent to which cognitive dissonance regarding egalitarian attitudes toward the gender division of labour are associated with fertility rates in sixteen societies, representing Anglo American, Northern European, Western European and East Asian regimes. The findings show that although levels of support for gender equality in the realms of the family and the market are positively associated with fertility rates, an even stronger relationship to fertility emerges when weighing the differences between the levels of support for gender equality in each realm. The findings lend some corroboration to McDonald’s hypothesis, which suggests that declining fertility rates are influenced by contradictory expectations between gender equality for women in the home and market.

The future is uncertain for Antarctica, with many possibilities – some more plausible, others more preferable. Indeed, the region and its governance regime may be reaching (or may have reached) a crossroads moment as a result of a series of challenges, including the changing Antarctic climate and environment, increasing human activity, shifting values among Antarctic states and a low-cost, somewhat benign governance regime (the Antarctic Treaty System). Within this context there are a number of interdependent drivers that are likely to influence Antarctica's future over, say, 25 years: global environmental and socio-economic developments; Antarctic governance; Antarctic research, including national Antarctic programme operations; and Antarctic tourism. The research presented here involved a thorough examination of Antarctic literature on current Antarctic developments and challenges, and an assessment of global trends. Scenarios were developed through a facilitated workshop process. From these, four future scenarios were developed based on interactions between these drivers. The resulting scenarios provide a dynamic, evolving possibility space to be explored as a means of understanding where Antarctic issues might evolve, depending on the growth or diminishing importance of drivers. In turn these suggest that more structured polar futures are needed based on formal quantitative and qualitative data.

This paper analyses recent developments in US welfare policy and their implications for future reforms. The analysis begins by examining how the enactment of the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) programme in 1996 changed the essential character of public assistance and the major social forces that accounted for this fundamental shift in US welfare policy. It then shows how the most recent welfare reforms under the Deficit Reduction Act of 2005 broadened and intensified the TANF requirements, leaving four avenues along which issues of conditionality and entitlement are likely to be played out in future welfare reforms. Finally, the discussion highlights how a new social contract is being forged through progressive and conservative proposals, which shift the focus of public assistance from the right to financial support to the right to work and earn a living wage.

All 153 crosses between 18 tomato varieties were grown in F1, F2, F3 and F4. The F2, F3 and F4 were derived by selfing one plant of the previous generation. The F2 plant chosen to give the F3 was selected (1 in 20) for early yield; and the F3 plant chosen to give the F4 was similarly selected. Flowering date was an unsatisfactory character. In crosses segregating for the Mendelian gene ‘uniform’, a significant excess of heterozygotes was selected. The parents transmitted variability of yield (as well as average yield) to their offspring. The division of yield into its components fruit number and fruit size is useful because (1) much of the heterosis in yield can be viewed as a combination effect between these components, (2) the components responded differently to selection, (3) different components showed phenotypic dominance in different directions. The average yield and fruit number responded as expected to selection; fruit size did not. The F1 generation means for all three characters exceeded the parental means; but the crosses were grouped more compactly about their generation mean than were the parents, so that heterosis rarely occurred in crosses involving the best parents. The yields of each cross were analysed into parental main effects (general combining abilities) and interactions (specific combining abilities). No useful prediction of interactions could be made in any generation, either from the same generation in different years or from different generations in the same year. The main effects (general c.a.) were analysed into a part due to regression on parental yield, and a deviation from that regression. No useful prediction of the deviations from parental regression could be made in generations which had responded to selection. The actual advance under selection of different crosses, although not uniform, was unpredictable. During advance under selection, the parental means gave predictions of the (relative) performance of each generation's crosses which were as good as predictions based on the previous generation. This may, of course, be connected with the fact that the parents were inbred and that the amount of heterozygosity decreases in each successive generation. These results indicate, therefore, that in an inbreeding species propagated by seed, the early hybrid generations tell us nothing more than do the parental yields about the relative performance of the inbred lines that can be selected from those hybrids. (This generalization from Lycopersicon esculentum to inbreeders as a whole may, of course, be false.) The relative performance of F1 hybrids, on the other hand, is better predicted from other F1 crosses involving the parents concerned than from the yields of those parents. There was phenotypic dominance of high yield, large fruit number and low fruit weight. The extent of this dominance was not enough to invalidate the analysis by general combining abilities; and since it varied from year to year and from generation to generation, the emphasis that should be given to the top-parent (in contrast to the bottom-parent) in predicting the yields of crosses after selection, is as yet unpredictable.

The usual conventions are relaxed to permit the introduction of a curved genetic model that shows some attractive features. Linear polygene analysis is examined in the light of this more flexible model. It is shown that great care is necessary in the choice of scale, since variances are more sensitive than means to small deviations from additivity. Inclusion of the F3 is necessary for successful prediction by extrapolation. The genetical validity of any type of polygene analysis is discussed. The new model is quite promising for the analysis of means; but I think that the (more ambitious) analysis of variances is likely to remain intractable, for both genetical and statistical reasons.

A modest theory of polygene selection is presented. Recently published data show that the curved model of gene action (presented in a previous paper) is insufficiently general. The curved model does, however, show that the scaling tests (used in the additive type of polygene analysis) do not guarantee additivity; they guarantee a state of indeterminacy, in which additivity is one of a range of reasonable possibilities. These different possibilities give entirely different predictions of selective advance. The failure (in practice) of polygene analysis does not reduce the value of polygene concepts.

An additive-multiplicative model is found to describe diallel cross data rather well. Estimates of the model's parameters are highly correlated from generation to generation.

The UK has a considerable stockpile of separated plutonium; a legacy of over 50 years of civilian nuclear programmes. This material has been considered both as an asset for future energy generation and a liability due to the proliferation threat. A proportion of the PuO2 stocks may be consumed by nuclear fission, in mixed oxide (MOx) or inert matrix (IMF) fuels but a quantity of waste PuO2 will remain which is unsuitable for fuel manufacture and will require immobilisation. A research program is currently underway to investigate the potential of various single phase ceramic formulations for the immobilisation of this waste PuO2 fraction. In this work a number of synthetic mineral systems have been considered including titanate, zirconate, phosphate and silicate based matrices. Although a wealth of information on plutonium disposition in some of the systems exists in the literature, the data is not always directly comparable which hinders comparison between different ceramic hosts. The crux of this research has been to compile a database of information on the proposed hosts to allow impartial comparison of the relative merits and shortcomings in each system.

Tailored ceramics are promising potential hosts for the immobilization of actinides [1]. In this study the potential of a range of different ceramic systems were investigated for the incorporation of waste plutonium, using Ce as a Pu surrogate. Durable actinide containing minerals exist in nature and provided excellent target phases for the titanate, zirconate, silicate and phosphate based formulations examined here [2]. The Ce single phase solid solution limits for each system were established and the processing parameters required to produce high quality ceramic specimens were optimised. Importantly, this was achieved within the constraints of a generic processing route suitable for fabrication of Pu bearing samples.