Direct physical evidence for violent interpersonal conflict is seen only sporadically in the archaeological record for prehistoric Britain. Human remains from Charterhouse Warren, south-west England, therefore present a unique opportunity for the study of mass violence in the Early Bronze Age. At least 37 men, women and children were killed and butchered, their disarticulated remains thrown into a 15m-deep natural shaft in what is, most plausibly, interpreted as a single event. The authors examine the physical remains and debate the societal tensions that could motivate a level and scale of violence that is unprecedented in British prehistory.

With increased international concern over the pervasive plastic pollution problem, early negotiations to develop a legally binding instrument to end plastic pollution (“the Plastics Treaty”) were supported by 175 member countries toward a sustainable plastics future. Defining features of the plastics treaty by UNEP member countries began in Punta del Este, Uruguay in November 2022 during the first session of the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee (INC-1). However, INC-1 ended with many unanswered questions regarding the structure, scope, and targets of the treaty. Sixty-seven member countries, including members of the High Coalition Ambition, submitted their objectives, guiding principles, and expectations for the treaty before the INC-2 negotiations while also suggesting measures for its effective implementation. This paper compiles submissions of the 67 member countries and evidence-based policymaking approaches that have been described in peer-reviewed and gray literature following INC-1, but before the INC-2 negotiations in Paris, France in June 2023. Recommendations for developing an effective plastics treaty by most member countries include incorporating the complete life cycle of plastics, promotion of transparency in global trade through uniform labeling measures, capping virgin plastic production, incorporating extended producer responsibility to develop a circular economy, and addressing hazardous chemicals in plastics. Suggested implementation measures include building a multilateral fund, supporting smaller countries with technology transfer, improving local stakeholder engagement, developing subsidiary bodies, and regular national reporting. Encouragingly, many of these national plans were proposed in the Zero Draft document released in September 2023 before INC-3 in Nairobi, Kenya in November 2023 and further developed in the revised draft text which served as the provisional agenda at INC-4 in April 2024 in Ottawa, Canada.

Background: Adherence to healthy lifestyle behaviours or to prescribed medication requires perseverance with stamina, and this is captured by Grit, a non-cognitive trait defined as perseverance and passion for long-term goals. Despite predicting cognitive decline and physical, emotional, and social functioning, Grit remains poorly understood and its neural substrates are unknown in cognitive aging. Methods: Ninety-five cognitively unimpaired older adults with a family history of Alzheimer’s disease were recruited through the PREVENT-AD longitudinal cohort. Participants completed tests that assess grit and conscientiousness and underwent resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Multivariate pattern analyses (MVPA), a rigorous data-driven whole-brain approach, were used to examine if resting-state functional connectivity of connectome-wide voxels were associated with grit scores, controlling for age, sex, APOE ε4 carriership, mean displacement, and conscientiousness. Results: Our analyses identified two large (≥54 voxels) and statistically significant (p<0.01 corrected for family-wise error) clusters in the right ventrolateral prefrontal cortex and the left orbitofrontal cortex underlying grit. Conclusions: Being the first to identify functional neural correlates supporting grit in the aging population while accounting for the variance of conscientiousness, our study provides unique insights into the construct which has important applications in adherence to clinical and empirical neurological interventions as well as in successful aging.

National Action Plans (NAPs) are a possible implementation measure for the Global Plastics Treaty, through a NAP-based approach. Their effectiveness in other international agreements is contested, and their current format allows for weak, voluntary measures with limited accountability. By analysing stakeholder and country submissions to the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee (INC) secretariat ahead of INC-2 negotiations in Paris, June 2023, conducting a literature review, and interviewing key actors, this study aims to determine the support that governments and stakeholders have for a NAP-based approach in the Treaty, and identify the key enablers needed to ensure that NAP-based approaches, if adopted in the Treaty, are effective. Results indicate that by INC-2, more than 85% of countries supported a NAP-based approach, suggesting a high chance of this approach being selected as the means of implementation of the Treaty. However, interviewees and literature reviews indicate that NAPs in their current form are not likely to be effective at delivering ambitious Treaty targets. Six key enablers to improve the effectiveness of plastics NAPs are identified. These enablers should be integrated into any plastics NAPs both independently, and as potential requirements of the Treaty to ensure that NAP-based approaches are effective and have the impact intended.

This perspective explains why the lack of regulation around bioplastics remains a hurdle for the successful development and implementation of a legally binding agreement (the Global Plastics Treaty) by the United Nations Environment Assembly to curb plastic pollution by 2024. For example, bioplastics have been marketed to consumers as the panacea solution to our plastic waste crisis. Of the >400 million tonnes of plastics produced each year, <1% are bioplastics, but the market value of bioplastics is expected to grow. The rapid growth of the environmentally ‘sustainable’ plastic market has resulted in an overwhelming variety of products with different properties and labels, which has led to widespread public confusion, particularly about disposal guidelines. The umbrella term of ‘bioplastics’ describes plastics that can be fully or partially sourced from biological matter, unlike conventional petroleum-based plastics. Within this family of plastics, products can be ‘biodegradable’, ‘oxo-biodegradable’ and ‘compostable’ depending on their chemical composition and the external conditions required at disposal (end-of-life). However, cases of petroleum-based biodegradable plastics have been referred to as bioplastics, which is inaccurate. Overall, this lack of regulation remains a hurdle for the successful development and implementation of the Global Plastics Treaty.

Samples of cuttings from the Borchard A-2 well, Imperial Valley, California, were collected over a measured borehole temperature interval 135° to 275°C. The <0.5-µm (e.s.d.) fraction was separated using high-gradient magnetic separation (HGMS) to create a nonmagnetic fraction rich in illite and a magnetic fraction rich in chlorite. Chlorite was less easily separated from illite in lower temperature samples (<200°C), presumably due to the presence of polymineralic grains of chlorite and illite. Grains in higher temperature samples were more nearly monomineralic and more easily separated.

The chlorite is the IIb polytype. The thickness of coherent scattering domains of chlorite increased until 220°C and then remained constant. The amount of 7-Å interstratified material increased downhole until 195°C and then decreased. Over the same temperature interval, the illite polytypes varied systematically from 1Md (135° to 175°C) to 1M + 2M1 (230° to 275°C) and coherent scattering domains in the mineral became thicker to about 200°C and then remained constant in thickness. The percentage of illite in mixed-layer illite/smectite (I/S) increased from 40% at 135°C to 100% at temperature >205°C; ordering in the I/S changes from R0 to R1 between 135° and 155°C, and from R1 to R ≥ 3 at temperatures >155°C.

The concurrent structural changes in chlorite and illite indicate a general improvement in the overall structural order of the clay minerals with increasing temperature. Differences between chlorite and illite suggest that the minerals may have reacted differently to changing conditions or that they may have formed by different mechanisms. The exclusive occurrence of IIb chlorite at temperatures as low as 135°C extends the limit of IIb chlorite stability to temperatures lower than previous estimates.

The oxidation of As(III) to As(V) by K-birnessite was examined at different temperatures, pHs, and birnessite/As(III) ratios. Experiments ranged in duration from 5 to 64 hr, and solution and solid products were determined at several intervals. All experiments showed that the reaction produced large amounts of K+ to solution and very little Mn2+. As(V) was released to solution and incorporated into the K-birnessite. The oxidation was initially rapid and then slowed. The oxidation of As(III) was probably facilitated initially by autocatalytic Mn-As(V) reactions occurring mostly in the interlayer, in which large amounts of As(V) and K+ could be easily released to solution. The reaction also slowed when interlayer Mn was exhausted by forming Mn-As(V) complexes. Mn(IV) could only be acquired from the octahedral sheets of the birnessite. The two-stage reaction process proposed here depended on the layered structure of birnessite, the specific surface, and presence of exchangeable cations in K-birnessite.

Traditionally genetics is said to be the science of heredity. At least this was how William Bateson defined it in 1906. Today this is no longer the case. Since about ten years ago. when biologists learned to extract genes from cells, to transfer them from cell to cell, to dissect them, to analyze them biochemically, in short to manipulate them, the term genetics has tended rather to designate the science of the action of genes in cells. (This is what was formerly called physiological genetics). In any case this is the form of genetics which today is in the forefront of biological research. (This is also called molecular genetics). This kind of genetics is also in the forefront in the media, because of its present or potential applications, in the realms of biotechnology, genetic therapy and so on.

The heavy atom content and distribution in chlorite were estimated using the relative intensities of basal X-ray powder diffraction (XRD) peaks. For these peaks to be meaningful, however, corrections had to be made for the effects of sample thickness, sample length, and preferred orientation of the mineral grains, all of which are 2θ dependent. The effects of sample thickness were corrected for by a simple formula. The effects of sample length were accounted for by using rectangular samples and by ensuring that the sample intersected the X-ray beam through the range of diffraction angles of interest. Preferred orientation of mineral grains were either measured directly or estimated. Estimated values were quicker and easier to obtain and were within 5% of measured values. A comparison of the compositional parameters of chlorite estimated before correcting for these sample effects with those estimated after the corrections had been applied indicate that the uncorrected values differed from the corrected values by as much as 55% of the latter values. Mounts of a single sample prepared by different filter-membrane peel and porous-plate techniques yielded widely different compositions until the measurements were corrected for sample effects. Analyses in triplicate indicated that the XRD intensity ratio 003/001 is preferred for calculating heavy atom distributions and abundances in chlorite because of the relative strength of the 001 peak.

At first glance, the formulation of the principle of inertia—not. yet complete with Galileo, more precise with Gassendi, finally systematic with Newton—seems to constitute but one of the aspects of a process of deep transformations at the end of which traditional cosmology was replaced by various world systems. These transformations—or, to use a more classic term, this “ scientific revolution” —have been the object of numerous works, a list, of which would alone fill the pages of a thick volume. But the principle of inertia itself, a principle about which can be said without exaggeration that it expressed the essence of this revolution at the same time as it stimulated it, has perhaps not received all the attention it deserves. And especially the impact of this principle on Western culture has not been fully measured. True, Alexandre Koyré has always insisted on the fact that, by reducing movement to a state like that of the state of rest, the principle of inertia expressed a new vision of the world more than a scientific result. But his admirable analyses deal more with the slow advent of the priciple of inertia among the natural philosophers who preceded, accompanied and then followed Galileo than with the theological, philosophical and literary impact of this principle. Moreover, by examining this impact, we discover that it is necessary to make a distinction between Euclidian space and absolute space, a distinction which is frequently implicit with certain scientific historians, but, and this must be emphasized, is more often ignored.

Since the initial studies of chlorite polytypes, it has been suggested that the stability of the various polytypes may be a function of the temperature at which the mineral formed; however, few studies have been performed in which polytypes of chlorite in a specific suite of samples have been determined and correlated with temperature. A review of the reported occurrences of type I chlorite indicates that other factors, including grain size of the host rock, may be at least as important as temperature in controlling the stability of these polytypes. Results of systematic studies in areas of diagenesis and very low-grade metamorphism suggest that type-II chlorite is stable at temperatures well below 200°C and that it can form as the initial chlorite phase without passing through any intermediate polytypic stages. The conditions under which type-I polytypes occur are somewhat restricted, and cognizance of those restrictions will help to direct future studies of chlorite polytype transformations. These studies should focus on the structural details of polytype transformations; on the relationship of polytype stability to pressure, composition and kinetics; and on experimental calibration of the transformations.

The structure of a highly disordered synthetic birnessite was studied by comparing powder X-ray diffraction (XRD) data with calculated patterns generated by BIRNDIF and WILDFIRE© in an attempt to describe the nature of disorder and to estimate the size of the coherent diffracting domains. The material has a turbostratic stacking sequence and coherent diffracting domains that are 25 to 30 Å on a side in the ab plane (N1 = 5 unit cells, N2 = 10 unit cells) and which average 2.5 unit cells thick parallel to c. Turbostratic stacking probably results because there are few constraints on the relationship between adjacent layers.

The structure of a disordered IIb Mg-chamosite was studied using Rietveld refinement techniques and powder X-ray diffraction (CuKα, 18–120° 2θ in 0.02° 2θ increments). The refinement in space group CĪ yielded high precision lattice parameters (a = 5.36982(5)Å, b = 9.3031(9)Å, c = 14.2610(6)Å, α = 90.315(5)°, β = 97.234(7)°, γ = 90.022(9)°) and atomic coordinates very similar to previous studies. However, the presence of semi-random stacking in this specimen created a situation in which not all atoms could be precisely located: the positions of the octahedral cations and anions which repeat at intervals of ±b/3 could be uniquely determined in three dimensions whereas only the z parameter of the other atoms could be refined. The reasonable appearance of the final model, despite the fact that many of the atom positions could be located in only one dimension, may have resulted because all of the atoms in this structure except O(5) repeat at intervals which are very nearly ±b/3.

Waste generation and subsequent plastic pollution pose a major threat to both human and environmental health. Furthering our understanding of waste at individual levels can inform future waste reduction strategies, education and policies. This study explores the components and perceptions among individuals using survey data combined with a mini-review. An online Qualtrics survey was distributed pre-COVID-19 following a global social media challenge, Futuristic February, which directed participants to collect their nonperishable waste during February 2020. Participants were asked about their waste generation, perceptions toward waste and plastic pollution issues, and environmental worldview using the New Ecological Paradigm (NEP) scale (n = 50). We also conducted a mini-review of eight waste and plastic pollution statements from our survey in both popular media and scientific journal articles. Survey results indicated participants had an overall pro-ecological worldview (M = 4.32, SD = 0.88) and reported cardboard and paper (66%) as the most commonly occurring nonperishable waste category. Across categories, food packaging was the most common waste type. Participants were most uncertain about statements focusing on bioplastic or biodegradable plastic, respectively (44% and 30%), while the statement on microplastic toxicity obtained 100% mild or strong agreement among participants. Uncertainty for reviewed statements varied depending on the topic and group. Popular media and scholarly articles did not always agree, possibly due to differences in communication of uncertainty or terminology definitions. These results can inform future policy and educational campaigns around topics of misinformation.

Scholars, policymakers, and citizens alike remain invested in the impact of infectious diseases worldwide. Studies have found that emerging diseases and disease outbreaks burden global economies and public health goals. This article explores the potential link between measles outbreaks and various forms of civil unrest, such as demonstrations, riots, strikes, and other anti-government violence, in four central African countries from 1996 to 2005. Using a difference-in-differences model, we examine whether disease outbreaks have a discernible impact on the prevalence of civil unrest. While our findings indicate that the relationship between disease and civil unrest is not as strong as previously suggested, we identify a notable trend that warrants further investigation. These results have significant implications for health and policy officials in understanding the complex interplay between state fragility, civil unrest, and the spread of disease.