Vaccines have revolutionised the field of medicine, eradicating and controlling many diseases. Recent pandemic vaccine successes have highlighted the accelerated pace of vaccine development and deployment. Leveraging this momentum, attention has shifted to cancer vaccines and personalised cancer vaccines, aimed at targeting individual tumour-specific abnormalities. The UK, now regarded for its vaccine capabilities, is an ideal nation for pioneering cancer vaccine trials. This article convened experts to share insights and approaches to navigate the challenges of cancer vaccine development with personalised or precision cancer vaccines, as well as fixed vaccines. Emphasising partnership and proactive strategies, this article outlines the ambition to harness national and local system capabilities in the UK; to work in collaboration with potential pharmaceutic partners; and to seize the opportunity to deliver the pace for rapid advances in cancer vaccine technology.

Fifty-three tests designed to measure aspects of creative thinking were administered to 410 air cadets and student officers. The scores were intercorrelated and 16 factors were extracted. Orthogonal rotations resulted in 14 identifiable factors, a doublet, and a residual. Nine previously identified factors were: verbal comprehension, numerical facility, perceptual speed, visualization, general reasoning, word fluency, associational fluency, ideational fluency, and a factor combining Thurstone's closure I and II. Five new factors were identified as originality, redefinition, adaptive flexibility, spontaneous flexibility, and sensitivity to problems.

The Durness Group of NW Scotland records deposition on the Laurentian margin from the basal Miaolingian (Cambrian, 509 Ma) to the Dapingian–Darriwilian boundary interval (Middle Ordovician, 470.3–468.9 Ma). The 930 m thick succession of peritidal and subtidal carbonates was deposited on the Scottish promontory, a nearly 120° deflection in the Palaeozoic continental margin between the Appalachian and Greenland sectors. These sediments were deposited as part of the Great American Carbonate Bank, a non-uniformitarian, continent-scale carbonate platform developed on the peneplaned craton. Measurement and description of a bed-by-bed composite section through the Durness Group provide a high-resolution reference framework that integrates conodont biostratigraphy, chemostratigraphy and sequence stratigraphy, including correlation with the Sauk megasequence and its subdivisions. The Sauk II–Sauk III sequence boundary marks the base of the group. The top of the group is faulted against rocks of the Moine thrust zone, generated by the Scandian orogeny, but sedimentation was probably terminated by the earlier Grampian arc–continent collision at 470–469 Ma. The highly mature quartz arenites of the underlying Ardvreck Group (Cambrian Series 2) indicate that there was no source-to-sink depositional continuity from the Hebridean foreland to the Dalradian Supergroup, which has coeval clastic sedimentary rocks of contrasting composition.

Advances in artificial intelligence (AI) have great potential to help address societal challenges that are both collective in nature and present at national or transnational scale. Pressing challenges in healthcare, finance, infrastructure and sustainability, for instance, might all be productively addressed by leveraging and amplifying AI for national-scale collective intelligence. The development and deployment of this kind of AI faces distinctive challenges, both technical and socio-technical. Here, a research strategy for mobilising inter-disciplinary research to address these challenges is detailed and some of the key issues that must be faced are outlined.

Successful employment outcomes are often beyond the reach of people with disabilities, but relatively little is known about the factors that best enable the achievement of this goal. Using survey data from 803 people with and without disabilities, we examine the association of eight factors with successful employment outcomes. Using regression tree analysis, five factors emerged as statistically significant predictors of successful employment outcomes for people with disabilities: corporate culture and climate, job characteristics, government support, employer attitudes, and societal attitudes. Key interrelationships between factors include: (1) government support linking with corporate culture and climate; and (2) job characteristics linking with corporate culture and climate. Findings are relevant to organisations and governments to inform policy and practice to improve employment outcomes for people with disabilities.

Traditional approaches for evaluating the impact of scientific research – mainly scholarship (i.e., publications, presentations) and grant funding – fail to capture the full extent of contributions that come from larger scientific initiatives. The Translational Science Benefits Model (TSBM) was developed to support more comprehensive evaluations of scientific endeavors, especially research designed to translate scientific discoveries into innovations in clinical or public health practice and policy-level changes. Here, we present the domains of the TSBM, including how it was expanded by researchers within the Implementation Science Centers in Cancer Control (ISC3) program supported by the National Cancer Institute. Next, we describe five studies supported by the Penn ISC3, each focused on testing implementation strategies informed by behavioral economics to reduce key practice gaps in the context of cancer care and identify how each study yields broader impacts consistent with TSBM domains. These indicators include Capacity Building, Methods Development (within the Implementation Field) and Rapid Cycle Approaches, implementing Software Technologies, and improving Health Care Delivery and Health Care Accessibility. The examples highlighted here can help guide other similar scientific initiatives to conceive and measure broader scientific impact to fully articulate the translation and effects of their work at the population level.

Accurately quantifying all the components of the surface energy balance (SEB) is a prerequisite for the reliable estimation of surface melt and the surface mass balance over ice and snow. This study quantifies the SEB closure by comparing the energy available for surface melt, determined from continuous measurements of radiative fluxes and turbulent heat fluxes, to the surface ablation measured on the Greenland ice sheet between 2003 and 2023. We find that the measured daily energy available for surface melt exceeds the observed surface melt by on average 18 ± 30 W m−2 for snow and 12 ± 54 W m−2 for ice conditions (mean ± SD), which corresponds to 46 and 10% of the average energy available for surface melt, respectively. When the surface is not melting, the daily SEB is on average closed within 5 W m−2. Based on the inter-comparison of different ablation sensors and radiometers installed on different stations, and on the evaluation of modelled turbulent heat fluxes, we conclude that measurement uncertainties prevent a better daily to sub-daily SEB closure. These results highlight the need and challenges in obtaining accurate long-term in situ SEB observations for the proper evaluation of climate models and for the validation of remote sensing products.

Bio-Futures for Transplanetary Habitats (BFfTH) is a Special Interest Group within the Hub for Biotechnology in the Built Environment that aims to explore and enable interdisciplinary research on transplanetary habitats and habitats within extreme environments through an emphasis on the biosocial and biotechnological relations. BFfTH organized the online and onsite networking symposium BFfTH to examine how emerging biotechnologies, living materials, and more-than-human life can be implemented in habitat design and mission planning. The two-day symposium aimed to serve as a catalyst in establishing an international network and to support the development of novel methodologies to move beyond discipline-specific approaches. The symposium consisted of five sessions, including Mycelium for Mars and Novel Biotechnologies for Space Habitats. This opinion paper presents key outcomes and trends from these sessions, a moderated panel, and informal discussions. The identified research trends explored the use of biotechnology and biodesign to enhance safety, sustainability, habitability, reliability, crew efficiency, productivity, and comfort in extreme environments on Earth and off-world. Beyond design and engineering, the symposium also examined sociotechnical imaginaries, focusing on desired experiences and characteristics of life and technology in transplanetary futures. Some of the specific topics included innovative material-driven processes for transplanetary habitat design, socio-political and ethical implications, and technology transfer for sustainable living on Earth. The outcomes emphasize the necessity for advancing biosocial and biotechnological research from an interdisciplinary perspective in order to ethically and meaningfully enable transplanetary futures. Such a focus not only addresses future off-world challenges but also contributes to immediate ecological and architectural innovations, promoting a symbiotic relationship between space exploration and sustainability on Earth.

Clay samples from shales and bentonites in the Mancos Shale (Cretaceous) and its stratigraphic equivalents in the southern Rocky Mountain and Colorado Plateau have been analyzed by X-ray powder diffraction methods. The major clay in the shales is mixed layered illite/smectite, with 20–60% illite layers. The regional distribution of ordered vs. random interstratification in the illite/smectite is consistent with the concept of burial metamorphism in which smectite interlayers are converted to illite, resulting finally in ordered interstratification. The interstratification data correlate with other geologic information, including rank of coal and Laramide tectonic activity. In addition, contact metamorphism of the shale by Tertiary igneous intrusions produced a similar clay suite. Chemical variation within these shales (particularly the presence or absence of carbonate) affected the clay conversion reactions in the interbedded bentonites and the shale itself during the early stages of transformation. In extreme cases, shales and bentonites from a single outcrop may contain clays that range from pure smectite (calcareous shales) to ordered illite/smectite containing ⩾50% illite layers (noncalcareous shales). The use of mixed-layered illite/smectite compositions to infer thermal regimes, therefore, may be misleading unless allowance is made for local chemical controls.

Changing practice patterns caused by the pandemic have created an urgent need for guidance in prescribing stimulants using telepsychiatry for attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). A notable spike in the prescribing of stimulants accompanied the suspension of the Ryan Haight Act, allowing the prescribing of stimulants without a face-to-face meeting. Competing forces both for and against prescribing ADHD stimulants by telepsychiatry have emerged, requiring guidelines to balance these factors. On the one hand, factors weighing in favor of increasing the availability of treatment for ADHD via telepsychiatry include enhanced access to care, reduction in the large number of untreated cases, and prevention of the known adverse outcomes of untreated ADHD. On the other hand, factors in favor of limiting telepsychiatry for ADHD include mitigating the possibility of exploiting telepsychiatry for profit or for misuse, abuse, and diversion of stimulants. This Expert Consensus Group has developed numerous specific guidelines and advocates for some flexibility in allowing telepsychiatry evaluations and treatment without an in-person evaluation to continue. These guidelines also recognize the need to give greater scrutiny to certain subpopulations, such as young adults without a prior diagnosis or treatment of ADHD who request immediate-release stimulants, which should increase the suspicion of possible medication diversion, misuse, or abuse. In such cases, nonstimulants, controlled-release stimulants, or psychosocial interventions should be prioritized. We encourage the use of outside informants to support the history, the use of rating scales, and having access to a hybrid model of both in-person and remote treatment.

Childhood obesity represents a significant global health concern and identifying its risk factors is crucial for developing intervention programs. Many “omics” factors associated with the risk of developing obesity have been identified, including genomic, microbiomic, and epigenomic factors. Here, using a sample of 48 infants, we investigated how the methylation profiles in cord blood and placenta at birth were associated with weight outcomes (specifically, conditional weight gain, body mass index, and weight-for-length ratio) at age six months. We characterized genome-wide DNA methylation profiles using the Illumina Infinium MethylationEpic chip, and incorporated information on child and maternal health, and various environmental factors into the analysis. We used regression analysis to identify genes with methylation profiles most predictive of infant weight outcomes, finding a total of 23 relevant genes in cord blood and 10 in placenta. Notably, in cord blood, the methylation profiles of three genes (PLIN4, UBE2F, and PPP1R16B) were associated with all three weight outcomes, which are also associated with weight outcomes in an independent cohort suggesting a strong relationship with weight trajectories in the first six months after birth. Additionally, we developed a Methylation Risk Score (MRS) that could be used to identify children most at risk for developing childhood obesity. While many of the genes identified by our analysis have been associated with weight-related traits (e.g., glucose metabolism, BMI, or hip-to-waist ratio) in previous genome-wide association and variant studies, our analysis implicated several others, whose involvement in the obesity phenotype should be evaluated in future functional investigations.