Although forests play a vital role in US climate strategies, US forest area is expected to decline in the coming decades. Policymakers can help arrest or reverse that decline by strengthening incentives for forest carbon sequestration. Increased funding for afforestation, restoration, and bioenergy and wood products market development will likely benefit the forest sector unevenly across geographic, commercial, and demographic dimensions. This review explores the effects of policies – particularly incentives for afforestation and reforestation, carbon credit market participation, and wood products utilization – on US forest communities. We describe this policy landscape and use various data to investigate effects on diverse stakeholders, with special emphasis on the implications for disadvantaged and forest-dependent communities.

Afforestation policies in the South-Central region could significantly enhance carbon dioxide removal while reshaping rural dynamics. Forest carbon credit markets, though crucial for climate goals, may disadvantage small forest owners and communities, instead favoring large corporate entities. Policies promoting wood products in the South-Central region could benefit forest-dependent, high-poverty communities. We also note how policy implementation might ensure an equitable distribution of climate-related benefits among stakeholders in the forest sector.

Multicenter clinical trials are essential for evaluating interventions but often face significant challenges in study design, site coordination, participant recruitment, and regulatory compliance. To address these issues, the National Institutes of Health’s National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences established the Trial Innovation Network (TIN). The TIN offers a scientific consultation process, providing access to clinical trial and disease experts who provide input and recommendations throughout the trial’s duration, at no cost to investigators. This approach aims to improve trial design, accelerate implementation, foster interdisciplinary teamwork, and spur innovations that enhance multicenter trial quality and efficiency. The TIN leverages resources of the Clinical and Translational Science Awards (CTSA) program, complementing local capabilities at the investigator’s institution. The Initial Consultation process focuses on the study’s scientific premise, design, site development, recruitment and retention strategies, funding feasibility, and other support areas. As of 6/1/2024, the TIN has provided 431 Initial Consultations to increase efficiency and accelerate trial implementation by delivering customized support and tailored recommendations. Across a range of clinical trials, the TIN has developed standardized, streamlined, and adaptable processes. We describe these processes, provide operational metrics, and include a set of lessons learned for consideration by other trial support and innovation networks.

Variation between general practices in the rate of consultations for musculoskeletal pain conditions may signal important differences in access to primary care, perceived usefulness, or available alternative sources of care; however, it might also just reflect differences in underlying ‘need’ between practices’ registered populations. In a study of 30 general practices in Staffordshire, we calculated the proportion of adults consulting for a musculoskeletal pain condition, then examined this in relation to selected practice and population characteristics, including the estimated prevalence of self-reported musculoskeletal problems and chronic pain in each practices’ registered population. Between September 2021 and July 2022, 18,388 adults were consulted for a musculoskeletal pain condition. After controlling for length of recruitment, time of year, and age-sex structure, the proportion consulting varied up to two-fold between practices but was not strongly associated with the prevalence of self-reported long-term musculoskeletal problems, chronic pain, and high-impact chronic pain.

The Students Participating as Ambassadors for Research in Kentucky (SPARK) program provides novel health equity research training and targeted mentorship for undergraduates, particularly those from groups underrepresented in the biomedical and behavioral research and workforce. SPARK aims to address inadequate diversity in the medical and scientific research fields by providing comprehensive research mentorship and skill-building. Unlike most existing research training programs that are brief, focus on laboratory research, or are limited to graduate students and junior faculty, SPARK delivers a 16-month intensive behavioral and population health science training, equipping students with needed tools to conceptualize, plan, execute, and analyze their own health equity research study. Trainees complete didactic coursework on health equity, study design and proposal development, data analysis, and ethics. Students receive a stipend and research expenses, and multiple mentors guide them in creating original research projects for which they serve as Principal Investigator. Students disseminate their findings annually at an academic research conference as a capstone. Evaluation data from the first three cohorts suggest SPARK has been pivotal in preparing students for graduate studies and research careers in health equity and behavioral and population health sciences, providing strong support for further investments in similar undergraduate research training models.

This article presents a framework of ethical analysis for anticipatory evaluation of advanced biopreservation technologies and employs the framework illustratively in three domains. The framework features four clusters of general ethical considerations: (1) Producing Benefits, Minimizing Harms, Balancing Benefits, Risk, and Costs; (2) Justice, Fairness, Equity; (3) Respect for Autonomy; and (4) Transparency, Trustworthiness, and Public Trust.

Advanced biopreservation technologies using subzero approaches such as supercooling, partial freezing, and vitrification with reanimating techniques including nanoparticle infusion and laser rewarming are rapidly emerging as technologies with potential to radically disrupt biomedicine, research, aquaculture, and conservation. These technologies could pause biological time and facilitate large-scale banking of biomedical products including organs, tissues, and cell therapies.

Although numerous, small, manganese oxide deposits associated with dolomite in the Eastern Transvaal escarpment, Republic of South Africa, have been known for many years, their mineralogical make-up is somewhat controversial. Chemical, mineralogical, and morphological properties of the weathering products of dolomite and the coexisting manganese oxide material in the Graskop area were therefore determined. Mn and Fe occur only in minor accessory minerals in the original rock; however, in the weathering residue, these elements are concentrated and occur as separate mineral phases, chiefly birnessite, nsutite, and goethite. Thin veins of pure muscovite and quartz traverse the residua. Rare, pure calcite and maghemite nodules were noted throughout the residual manganese material. The properties of this weathering sequence suggest that the manganese wad deposits were formed in situ as a result of the congruent dissolution of dolomite, leaving a porous, sponge-like structure, highly enriched in Mn and Fe oxides.

In the United Kingdom, people living with dementia admitted to National Health Service (NHS) psychiatric/mental health inpatient dementia assessment wards (dementia assessment wards) are nearly always compulsorily detained under a section of the Mental Health Act 1983 owing to the risk and complexity of the presenting condition. As such, dementia assessment wards admit some of the most vulnerable patients in society, yet these environments of care are under-researched and under-reported in the literature. Using care aesthetics as an overarching explanatory lens, this article focuses on the care of one patient (Charlotte – not her real name) resident on a dementia assessment ward and uses a range of qualitative methods to illuminate that experience, including ethnographic observations and a care record review. To further develop the reach of the case study, interviews were also conducted with Charlotte's husband as her main family carer and key ward staff involved in Charlotte's care. Data were analysed using a sensory and narrative-based method to provide a sequential, embodied, individually positioned and storied account of Charlotte's care and interpreted experience on the ward. The analysis revealed that Charlotte's presentation of dementia was complex insofar as she resisted any attempt by the ward staff to offer her food or drink or to help with washing and dressing. Charlotte also swore frequently and loudly and spent time actively ‘watching’ and ‘looking’ at people and the environment in which she was now living. The findings contribute to the fields of critical dementia studies, dementia education, health-care practice and policy making, and may be used to highlight the value of sensory and embodied approaches to capturing a caring dynamic.

Among vertebrates, allomothering (non-maternal care) is classified as cooperative breeding (help from sexually mature non-breeders, usually close relatives) or communal breeding (shared care between multiple breeders who are not necessarily related). Humans have been described with both labels, most frequently as cooperative breeders. However, few studies have quantified the relative contributions of allomothers according to whether they are (a) sexually mature and reproductively active and (b) related or unrelated. We constructed close-proximity networks of Agta and BaYaka hunter–gatherers. We used portable remote-sensing devices to quantify the proportion of time children under the age of 4 spent in close proximity to different categories of potential allomother. Both related and unrelated, and reproductively active and inactive, campmates had substantial involvement in children's close-proximity networks. Unrelated campmates, siblings and subadults were the most involved in both populations, whereas the involvement of fathers and grandmothers was the most variable between the two populations. Finally, the involvement of sexually mature, reproductively inactive adults was low. Where possible, we compared our findings with studies of other hunter–gatherer societies, and observed numerous consistent trends. Based on our results we discuss why hunter–gatherer allomothering cannot be fully characterised as cooperative or communal breeding.

To assess how the presence of surfactant in lung airways alters the flow of mucus that leads to plug formation and airway closure, we investigate the effect of insoluble surfactant on the instability of a viscoplastic liquid coating the interior of a cylindrical tube. Evolution equations for the layer thickness using thin-film and long-wave approximations are derived that incorporate yield-stress effects and capillary and Marangoni forces. Using numerical simulations and asymptotic analysis of the thin-film system, we quantify how the presence of surfactant slows growth of the Rayleigh–Plateau instability, increases the size of initial perturbation required to trigger instability and decreases the final peak height of the layer. When the surfactant strength is large, the thin-film dynamics coincide with the dynamics of a surfactant-free layer but with time slowed by a factor of four and the capillary Bingham number, a parameter proportional to the yield stress, exactly doubled. By solving the long-wave equations numerically, we quantify how increasing surfactant strength can increase the critical layer thickness for plug formation to occur and delay plugging. The previously established effect of the yield stress in suppressing plug formation (Shemilt et al., J. Fluid Mech., vol. 944, 2022, A22) is shown to be amplified by introducing surfactant. We discuss the implications of these results for understanding the impact of surfactant deficiency and increased mucus yield stress in obstructive lung diseases.

Healthcare innovations often represent important improvements in population welfare, but at what cost, and to whom? Health technology assessment (HTA) is a multidisciplinary process to inform resource allocation. HTA is conventionally anchored on health maximization as the only relevant output of health services. If we accept the proposition that health technologies can generate value outside the healthcare system, resource allocation decisions could be suboptimal from a societal perspective. Incorporating “broader value” in HTA as derived from social values and patient experience could provide a richer evaluative space for informing resource allocation decisions. This article considers how HTA is practiced and what its current context implies for adopting “broader value” to evaluating health technologies. Methodological challenges are highlighted, as is a future research agenda. Ireland serves as an example of a healthcare system that both has an explicit role for HTA and is evolving under a current program of reform to offer universal, single-tier access to public services. There are various ways in which HTA processes could move beyond health, including considering the processes of care delivery and/or expanding the evaluative space to some broader concept of well-being. Methods to facilitate the latter exist, but their adaptation to HTA is still emerging. We recommend a multi-stakeholder working group to develop and advance an international agenda for HTA that captures welfare/benefit beyond health.