Freshwater lakes play a critical role in the global carbon cycle by storing and transforming organic matter (OM) from both terrestrial and aquatic sources. Small lakes in northern temperate regions, despite their limited surface area, disproportionately influence regional carbon budgets. Buried sediments integrate OM inputs over time and archive ecosystem responses to natural and anthropogenic disturbances. However, the direction and magnitude of recent environmental changes on sediment carbon (C) dynamics remain poorly understood. 

A 23-cm core was collected from a small temperate lake in northeastern USA to evaluate sediment OM content and composition over timescales relevant to historical land-use change, damming, and recovery from acid deposition. Patterns in OM burial and source contributions were revealed via elemental and isotopic analyses of bulk OM and ultraviolet-visible spectrophotometry of water-extractable organic matter (WEOM). The optical metrics expanded observations of likely OM sources beyond the information gained from bulk carbon metrics (total carbon, δ13C). The aromaticity of WEOM increased downcore, which is consistent with a shift from increased terrestrial inputs during early logging and damming activity (pre ∼1920) to more microbial-derived OM in recent surficial sediments. 

Future applications of WEOM optical properties as complements to traditional geochemical metrics can enhance interpretations of lake ecosystem responses recorded in lake sediments to environmental perturbations in temperate lakes.

Scientization tends to be understood as a process whereby a form of knowledge is rendered scientifically legitimate. In this way, scientists work with other experts and lay theories to move claims into the realm of fact, where they are stabilized and expanded through scientific practice. Paradoxical scientization describes a process in which efforts to render cultural values scientifically legitimate depend on and reproduce claims to cultural specificity. 

The recent scientization of sisu – a historically mutable Finnish concept and cultural value that is typically translated as grit or resilience while cast as ‘impossible to translate’ – has occurred in three steps: the datafying of affect, the creation of a measurement scale, and the scale's extension through machine-learning methods. Through this process, what was previously seen as a mutable cultural value has been transformed into a measurable affective capacity.

Paradoxical scientization relies on sisu being both cultivatable and universal to all humans, yet unique to the Finnish culture, language, and people. It also lays the ground for sisu’s commercialization as a neoliberal self-help product. Scientization does not occur in isolation, but must be analyzed in context. In the case of sisu, scientization is taking place alongside neoliberal restructuring and ethnonationalist mobilization – contexts in which appeals to sisu are made to advance ideological agendas. By leaving unresolved the paradox at its heart, the scientization of a cultural value can reinforce racialised, ableist and classist exclusions.

Pandemic-scale disruptions can trigger disaster-related buying behaviors (DRBBs) that amplify shortages and strain supply chains, making it essential to understand how households adjust essential-goods inventories during crises. 

Using COVID-19 as an empirical case, this study offers the first multi-country Latin American comparison of DRBBs, measured as revealed changes in household inventory-days, and integrates Prospect Theory and Liquidity Constraints Theory to explain how perceived losses and risk interact with financial capacity. Survey data collected April–June 2020 across seven Latin American countries (N = 1,821) are analyzed using a Poisson rate model with an offset for baseline inventory-days. 

Results indicate that households with children and those facing greater pandemic severity tend to maintain higher inventory levels of basic supplies, while the effects of income and experienced shortages vary across countries, with reduced purchasing power and constrained access often associated with lower inventory levels. These findings guide targeted interventions to reduce DRBB externalities and protect equitable access to essentials in future crises.

Background/Aims

Deployment of non-physician healthcare professionals, such as advanced practice providers (APPs) in the US, could offer a partial solution to the physician shortages faced by healthcare systems worldwide. This study examined how the combined effects of APPs and primary care physicians are related to health outcomes in the state of North Carolina, US. In particular, the authors considered whether the role of APPs as either complements or substitutes for physicians was more likely to be related to overall health.

Methods

A cross-sectional design was used, performing linear regression with county-level data of measures related to APPs, primary care physicians and health outcomes across 97 counties in North Carolina.

Results

A higher deployment of APPs was found to be beneficial for health outcomes, but only when there was also a large number of primary care physicians in relation to the population of a county.

Conclusions

The results of this study suggest that the positive effect of a higher deployment of APPs on health outcomes is dependent on the number of primary care physicians, which supports the idea of APPs as complements to, rather than substitutes for, physicians.

Implications for practice

Increased deployment of non-physician healthcare professionals has been viewed as a possible approach to mitigating staff shortages in the UK as well as the US. However, simply substituting an APP for a physician may not yield the best health outcomes. Managers should consider the working relationship between physicians and APPs, and how they allocate healthcare tasks.

While various carbon materials have been reported to make composite lithium metal anodes (LMAs) for liquid-electrolyte batteries, transferring the success to solid-state batteries has proven challenging. 

Here, we investigate the Li cycling performance of composite LMAs with four representative carbon materials, including carbon black, carbon nanotubes, ordered mesoporous carbon, and graphite. While most carbon materials can demonstrate comparable or better performance than planar Li foil, graphite exhibits the best electrochemical performance in terms of Li cycling. An almost 2-fold increase in the critical current density can be achieved at room temperature after the incorporation of graphite in Li metals due to improvement in the interfacial contact between the anode and the solid electrolyte during Li stripping. 

The results suggest the effective role of graphite over other types of carbon materials in improving the transport of Li atoms in composite Li anodes for solid-state battery applications.