Quantum field theory predicts a nonlinear response of the vacuum to strong electromagnetic fields of macroscopic extent. This fundamental tenet has remained experimentally challenging and is yet to be tested in the laboratory. A particularly distinct signature of the resulting optical activity of the quantum vacuum is vacuum birefringence. This offers an excellent opportunity for a precision test of nonlinear quantum electrodynamics in an uncharted parameter regime. Recently, the operation of the high-intensity Relativistic Laser at the X-ray Free Electron Laser provided by the Helmholtz International Beamline for Extreme Fields has been inaugurated at the High Energy Density scientific instrument of the European X-ray Free Electron Laser. We make the case that this worldwide unique combination of an X-ray free-electron laser and an ultra-intense near-infrared laser together with recent advances in high-precision X-ray polarimetry, refinements of prospective discovery scenarios and progress in their accurate theoretical modelling have set the stage for performing an actual discovery experiment of quantum vacuum nonlinearity.

Ambient air pollution remains a global challenge, with adverse impacts on health and the environment. Addressing air pollution requires reliable data on pollutant concentrations, which form the foundation for interventions aimed at improving air quality. However, in many regions, including the United Kingdom, air pollution monitoring networks are characterized by spatial sparsity, heterogeneous placement, and frequent temporal data gaps, often due to issues such as power outages. We introduce a scalable data-driven supervised machine learning model framework designed to address temporal and spatial data gaps by filling missing measurements within the United Kingdom. The machine learning framework used is LightGBM, a gradient boosting algorithm based on decision trees, for efficient and scalable modeling. This approach provides a comprehensive dataset for England throughout 2018 at a 1 km2 hourly resolution. Leveraging machine learning techniques and real-world data from the sparsely distributed monitoring stations, we generate 355,827 synthetic monitoring stations across the study area. Validation was conducted to assess the model’s performance in forecasting, estimating missing locations, and capturing peak concentrations. The resulting dataset is of particular interest to a diverse range of stakeholders engaged in downstream assessments supported by outdoor air pollution concentration data for nitrogen dioxide (NO2), Ozone (O3), particulate matter with a diameter of 10 μm or less (PM10), particulate matter with a diameter of 2.5 μm or less PM2.5, and sulphur dioxide (SO2), at a higher resolution than was previously possible.

Psychopathology assessed across the lifespan often can be summarized with a few broad dimensions: internalizing, externalizing, and psychosis/thought disorder. Extensive overlap between internalizing and externalizing symptoms has garnered interest in bifactor models comprised of a general co-occurring factor and specific internalizing and externalizing factors. We focus on internalizing and externalizing symptoms and compare a bifactor model to a correlated two-factor model of psychopathology at three timepoints in a large adolescent community sample (N = 387; 55 % female; 83% Caucasian; M age = 12.1 at wave 1) using self- and parent-reports. Each model was tested within each time-point with 25–28 validators. The bifactor models demonstrated better fit to the data. Child report had stronger invariance across time. Parent report had stronger reliability over time. Cross-informant correlations between the factors at each wave indicated that the bifactor model had slightly poorer convergent validity but stronger discriminant validity than the two-factor model. With notable exceptions, this pattern of results replicated across informants and waves. The overlap between internalizing and externalizing pathology is systematically and, sometimes, non-linearly related to risk factors and maladaptive outcomes. Strengths and weaknesses to modeling psychopathology as two or three factors and clinical and developmental design implications are discussed.

Several Elaeagnus species (autumn olive [E. umbellata (Thunb.)], Russian olive [E. angustifolia (L.)], and thorny olive [E. pungens (Thunb.)]) are invasive in North America. Elaeagnus pungens is prevalent throughout much of the southeastern United States, commonly overtaking wooded and natural areas, bottomlands, and roadsides. While many management methods including several herbicide treatments have been evaluated, efficacy of these methods can vary based on the size and density of the target plants. Further, personal communication with land managers revealed a lack of information that incorporated application effort, duration and associated cost into treatment efficacy and usefulness. We evaluated three herbicide application methods using the free acid formulation of triclopyr in an E. pungens infested forest in South Carolina, United States to determine the effectiveness of each application method. We estimated pre-treatment E. pungens biomass and destructively harvested all live material post treatment to obtain actual biomass values. Foliar herbicide application was ineffective, but both cut stump and basal bark application nearly eliminated E. pungens in the treatment plots. The basal bark application took slightly more time to complete than cut stump treatments but was described as less physically demanding by applicators. Based on treatment efficacy and time required, the basal bark application method seems most prudent for controlling E. pungens in these areas. These results will help land managers more effectively use their resources for invasive woody plant control.

Young stellar objects (YSOs) are protostars that exhibit bipolar outflows fed by accretion disks. Theories of the transition between disk and outflow often involve a complex magnetic field structure thought to be created by the disk coiling field lines at the jet base; however, due to limited resolution, these theories cannot be confirmed with observation and thus may benefit from laboratory astrophysics studies. We create a dynamically similar laboratory system by driving a $\sim$1 MA current pulse with a 200 ns rise through a $\approx$2 mm-tall Al cylindrical wire array mounted to a three-dimensional (3-D)-printed, stainless steel scaffolding. This system creates a plasma that converges on the centre axis and ejects cm-scale bipolar outflows. Depending on the chosen 3-D-printed load path, the system may be designed to push the ablated plasma flow radially inwards or off-axis to make rotation. In this paper, we present results from the simplest iteration of the load which generates radially converging streams that launch non-rotating jets. The temperature, velocity and density of the radial inflows and axial outflows are characterized using interferometry, gated optical and ultraviolet imaging, and Thomson scattering diagnostics. We show that experimental measurements of the Reynolds number and sonic Mach number in three different stages of the experiment scale favourably to the observed properties of YSO jets with $Re\sim 10^5\unicode{x2013}10^9$ and $M\sim 1\unicode{x2013}10$, while our magnetic Reynolds number of $Re_M\sim 1\unicode{x2013}15$ indicates that the magnetic field diffuses out of our plasma over multiple hydrodynamical time scales. We compare our results with 3-D numerical simulations in the PERSEUS extended magnetohydrodynamics code.

Hypertension and depression are increasingly common noncommunicable diseases in Ghana and worldwide, yet both are poorly controlled. We sought to understand how healthcare workers in rural Ghana conceptualize the interaction between hypertension and depression, and how care for these two conditions might best be integrated. We conducted a qualitative descriptive study involving in-depth interviews with 34 healthcare workers in the Kassena-Nankana districts of the Upper East Region of Ghana. We used conventional content analysis to systematically review interview transcripts, code the data content and analyze codes for salient themes. Respondents detailed three discrete conceptual models. Most emphasized depression as causing hypertension: through both emotional distress and unhealthy behavior. Others posited a bidirectional relationship, where cardiovascular morbidity worsened mood, or described a single set of underlying causes for both conditions. Nearly all proposed health interventions targeted their favored root cause of these disorders. In this representative rural Ghanaian community, healthcare workers widely agreed that cardiovascular disease and mental illness are physiologically linked and warrant an integrated care response, but held diverse views regarding precisely how and why. There was widespread support for a single primary care intervention to treat both conditions through counseling and medication.

The trend of global cooling across the Cenozoic transformed the North American landscape from closed forest to more open grasslands, resulting in dietary adaptations in herbivores in response to shifting resources. In contrast, the material properties of the predator food source (muscle, skin, and bone) have remained constant over this transition, suggesting a corresponding lack of change in predator dietary adaptations. We investigated the North American mammalian predator fossil record using a tooth-shape metric and body mass, predicting that the former would exhibit stability. Instead, we found that mean molar morphology became more blade-like, with our tooth-shape metric sharply increasing in the late Eocene and remaining high from the Oligocene onward. Subsequent tests in extant carnivorans reveal taxa with more bladelike teeth are prevalent in more open environments. Our results reveal an unexpected functional shift among North American predators in response to large-scale environmental changes across the Cenozoic.

Autistic children and young people (CYP) experience mental health difficulties but face many barriers to accessing and benefiting from mental health care. There is a need to explore strategies in mental health care for autistic CYP to guide clinical practice and future research and support their mental health needs. Our aim was to identify strategies used to improve mental health care for autistic CYP and examine evidence on their acceptability, feasibility, and effectiveness. A systematic review and meta-analysis were carried out. All study designs reporting acceptability/feasibility outcomes and empirical quantitative studies reporting effectiveness outcomes for strategies tested within mental health care were eligible. We conducted a narrative synthesis and separate meta-analyses by informant (self, parent, and clinician). Fifty-seven papers were included, with most investigating cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT)-based interventions for anxiety and several exploring service-level strategies, such as autism screening tools, clinician training, and adaptations regarding organization of services. Most papers described caregiver involvement in therapy and reported adaptations to communication and intervention content; a few reported environmental adjustments. In the meta-analyses, parent- and clinician-reported outcomes, but not self-reported outcomes, showed with moderate certainty that CBT for anxiety was an effective treatment compared to any comparison condition in reducing anxiety symptoms in autistic individuals. The certainty of evidence for effectiveness, synthesized narratively, ranged from low to moderate. Evidence for feasibility and acceptability tended to be positive. Many identified strategies are simple, reasonable adjustments that can be implemented in services to enhance mental health care for autistic individuals. Notable research gaps persist, however.

We present source detection and catalogue construction pipelines to build the first catalogue of radio galaxies from the 270 $\rm deg^2$ pilot survey of the Evolutionary Map of the Universe (EMU-PS) conducted with the Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder (ASKAP) telescope. The detection pipeline uses Gal-DINO computer vision networks (Gupta et al. 2024, PASA, 41, e001) to predict the categories of radio morphology and bounding boxes for radio sources, as well as their potential infrared host positions. The Gal-DINO network is trained and evaluated on approximately 5 000 visually inspected radio galaxies and their infrared hosts, encompassing both compact and extended radio morphologies. We find that the Intersection over Union (IoU) for the predicted and ground-truth bounding boxes is larger than 0.5 for 99% of the radio sources, and 98% of predicted host positions are within $3^{\prime \prime}$ of the ground-truth infrared host in the evaluation set. The catalogue construction pipeline uses the predictions of the trained network on the radio and infrared image cutouts based on the catalogue of radio components identified using the Selavy source finder algorithm. Confidence scores of the predictions are then used to prioritise Selavy components with higher scores and incorporate them first into the catalogue. This results in identifications for a total of 211 625 radio sources, with 201 211 classified as compact and unresolved. The remaining 10 414 are categorised as extended radio morphologies, including 582 FR-I, 5 602 FR-II, 1 494 FR-x (uncertain whether FR-I or FR-II), 2 375 R (single-peak resolved) radio galaxies, and 361 with peculiar and other rare morphologies. Each source in the catalogue includes a confidence score. We cross-match the radio sources in the catalogue with the infrared and optical catalogues, finding infrared cross-matches for 73% and photometric redshifts for 36% of the radio galaxies. The EMU-PS catalogue and the detection pipelines presented here will be used towards constructing catalogues for the main EMU survey covering the full southern sky.

Clinical outcomes of repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) for treatment of treatment-resistant depression (TRD) vary widely and there is no mood rating scale that is standard for assessing rTMS outcome. It remains unclear whether TMS is as efficacious in older adults with late-life depression (LLD) compared to younger adults with major depressive disorder (MDD). This study examined the effect of age on outcomes of rTMS treatment of adults with TRD. Self-report and observer mood ratings were measured weekly in 687 subjects ages 16–100 years undergoing rTMS treatment using the Inventory of Depressive Symptomatology 30-item Self-Report (IDS-SR), Patient Health Questionnaire 9-item (PHQ), Profile of Mood States 30-item, and Hamilton Depression Rating Scale 17-item (HDRS). All rating scales detected significant improvement with treatment; response and remission rates varied by scale but not by age (response/remission ≥ 60: 38%–57%/25%–33%; <60: 32%–49%/18%–25%). Proportional hazards models showed early improvement predicted later improvement across ages, though early improvements in PHQ and HDRS were more predictive of remission in those < 60 years (relative to those ≥ 60) and greater baseline IDS burden was more predictive of non-remission in those ≥ 60 years (relative to those < 60). These results indicate there is no significant effect of age on treatment outcomes in rTMS for TRD, though rating instruments may differ in assessment of symptom burden between younger and older adults during treatment.

Medically important ixodid ticks often carry multiple pathogens, with individual ticks frequently coinfected and capable of transmitting multiple infections to hosts, including humans. Acquisition of multiple zoonotic pathogens by immature blacklegged ticks (Ixodes scapularis) is facilitated when they feed on small mammals, which are the most competent reservoir hosts for Anaplasma phagocytophilum (which causes anaplasmosis in humans), Babesia microti (babesiosis) and Borrelia burgdorferi (Lyme disease). Here, we used data from a large-scale, long-term experiment to ask whether patterns of single and multiple infections in questing nymphal I. scapularis ticks from residential neighbourhoods differed from those predicted by independent assortment of pathogens, and whether patterns of coinfection were affected by residential application of commercial acaricidal products. Quantitative polymerase chain reaction was used for pathogen detection in multiplex reactions. In control neighbourhoods and those treated with a fungus-based biopesticide deployed against host-seeking ticks (Met52), ticks having only single infections of either B. microti or B. burgdorferi were significantly less common than expected, whereas coinfections with these 2 pathogens were significantly more common. However, use of tick control system bait boxes, which kill ticks attempting to feed on small mammals, eliminated the bias towards coinfection. Although aimed at reducing the abundance of host-seeking ticks, control methods directed at ticks attached to small mammals may influence human exposure to coinfected ticks and the probability of exposure to multiple tick-borne infections.

Studies suggest that bilingualism may be associated with better cognition, but the role of active bilingualism, the daily use of two languages, on cognitive trajectories remains unclear. One hypothesis is that frequent language switching may protect cognitive trajectories against effects of brain atrophy. Here, we examined interaction effects between language and brain variables on cognition among Hispanic participants at baseline (N = 153) and longitudinally (N = 84). Linguistic measures included self-reported active Spanish–English bilingualism or Spanish monolingualism. Brain measures included, at baseline, regions of gray matter (GM) thickness strongly correlated with cross-sectional episodic memory and executive function and longitudinally, tissue atrophy rates correlated with episodic memory and executive function change. Active Spanish–English bilinguals showed reduced association strength between cognition and gray matter thickness cross-sectionally, β=0.303, p < .01 but not longitudinally, β=0.024, p = 0.105. Thus, active bilingualism may support episodic memory and executive function despite GM atrophy cross-sectionally, but not longitudinally.

This retrospective cohort study examined prosocial skills development in child welfare-involved children, how intimate partner violence (IPV) exposure explained heterogeneity in children’s trajectories of prosocial skill development, and the degree to which protective factors across children’s ecologies promoted prosocial skill development. Data were from 1,678 children from the National Survey of Child and Adolescent Well-being I, collected between 1999 and 2007. Cohort-sequential growth mixture models were estimated to identify patterns of prosocial skill development between the ages of 3 to 10 years. Four diverse pathways were identified, including two groups that started high (high subtle-decreasing; high decreasing-to-increasing) and two groups that started low (low stable; low increasing-to-decreasing). Children with prior history of child welfare involvement, preschool-age IPV exposure, school-age IPV exposure, or family income below the federal poverty level had higher odds of being in the high decreasing-to-increasing group compared with the high subtle-decreasing group. Children with a mother with greater than high school education or higher maternal responsiveness had higher odds of being in the low increasing-to-decreasing group compared with the low stable group. The importance of maternal responsiveness in fostering prosocial skill development underlines the need for further assessment and intervention. Recommendations for clinical assessment and parenting programs are provided.