Linking soil structure and microbial communities to predict CO2 emissions from drained arable peatlands

Understanding interactions between soil structure, microbial communities, and greenhouse gas dynamics is critical for predicting carbon losses from drained agricultural peatlands. This study tested the hypothesis that land use alters soil structure and microbial communities, thereby shaping CO 2 flux, using high-resolution XCT, microbial profiling, and gas and soil measurements across winter wheat, sugar beet, and bare soil treatments on a productive UK farm on peatland. Bare soil exhibited the highest pore connectivity and gas diffusivity (Dp/D 0 : 0.08-0.10 in dry conditions), declining to near-zero during wet periods in October. Fungal alpha-diversity (Shannon index: 2.8-3.2) was significantly higher in cropped soils compared to bare soil (2.0-2.5), with sugar beet supporting the most diverse fungal communities. Sordariomycetes dominated fungal assemblages (50-75 % relative abundance), while Actinobacteria and Vicinamibacteria consistently comprised 20-30 % of bacterial communities. Soil moisture strongly regulated diffusivity (R 2 = 0.93, p < 0.001), driving seasonal shifts in gas transport and microbial dynamics. Fungal communities showed stronger treatment differentiation (R 2 = 0.24-0.49) than bacterial communities, with distinct assemblages observed in sugar beet at 20 cm depth (R 2 = 0.489, p = 0.011). An XGBoost machine learning model explained 82 % of the variance in CO 2 concentrations, identifying key fungal (OTU_15_F, OTU_6_F) and bacterial (OTU_901, OTU_5115) taxa as top predictors. These results highlight that crop selection can alter microbial diversity by up to 60 % and drive tenfold changes in soil gas diffusivity, underscoring the importance of integrating soil structural and microbial metrics into greenhouse gas models. Such insights can guide sustainable peatland management strategies that balance productivity with carbon conservation

Bioleaching: from natural ores to urban mines for sustainability, circularity, and carbon neutrality

Securing critical raw materials for net-zero energy systems and green technologies, has become a global priority. This urgency is fuelled by increasing demand, dwindling natural reserves, and rising geopolitical instabilities. Urban waste streams, often rich in metal concentrations than natural ores, are emerging as viable alternative for metal recovery. Bioleaching, a natural process utilising microorganism to mobilise metals from solid mineral matrices, has become increasingly popular as a sustainable and economically attractive alternative to conventional mining of minerals, particularly for low-grade ores and waste-derived feedstocks. The attractiveness of bioleaching lies in low environmental impact and high efficiency, even at low metal concentrations. This review explores different metal-bearing secondary materials containing critical, precious, and rare earth elements (REEs) as potential feedstocks for bioleaching. It traces the evolution of bioleaching from natural ore processing to its growing utility in urban waste valorisation within a circular economy framework. It compares bioleaching process in natural ores versus urban waste, while showcasing recent advancements toward commercial implementation. The review also identifies existing challenges and proposes strategies for improvement. Finally, it articulates bioleaching's potential for integration into a circular economy model, emphasising its role in enabling sustainable metal recovery and achieving carbon neutrality goals

Investigating Death by PowerPoint: Do Medical School Lecturers Adhere to the Cognitive Theory of Multimedia Learning in Their Slide Design?

BackgroundLecturers in higher education commonly use slide software like Microsoft PowerPoint. Mayer's cognitive theory of multimedia learning (CTML) describes 15 principles for helping people learn better with words and images and is supported by a large number of empirical studies. Medical school curricula are intensive so teaching should be as effective as possible. Though there is existing research into lectures, this does not specifically determine whether CTML principles are being adopted. This study investigated to what extent lecturers incorporated the principles of CTML into lecture slide design at a single UK medical school.MethodsLectures were observed both live and recorded. Based on CTML principles, this included the time students were exposed to text-heavy (> 10 words) versus text-light (≤ 10 words) slides; whether images were used; the use of outlines, highlighting and pointing; extraneous images; and the labelling and timing of images. Word counts for slide sets were also recorded.ResultsStudents were exposed to text-heavy slides 84.4% of the time. Forty percent of lectures used outlines at the beginning. Slide sets contained a median of 1531 words and a mean of 38.3 words per slide.ConclusionSlide design appeared to consistently violate CTML principles; therefore, lecturers should receive training in adhering to these principles. Future research should examine what barriers exist to adopting CTML principles and how such training for teachers on these principles could be delivered

Hiding in the supply chain: Investigating supplier eco-innovations when buyer and supplier have common owners

Common owners along the supply chain (COSC) indicate shareholders who simultaneously hold the equity stakes of upstream suppliers and downstream buyers. Despite the burgeoning interest in COSC's influences on supply chain actors' practices, its impact on supplier eco-innovations remains unexplored. Drawing on resource dependence theory, this paper proposes a set of competing hypotheses to critically investigate the relationship between COSC and supplier eco-innovations and the moderating roles of suppliers' internal environmental awareness and external legitimate pressure. Analysing a unique dataset of 1,841 buyer-supplier pair-year observations of Chinese A-share listed firms between 2003 and 2021, we find that COSC functions as a new form of shadow governance within the supply chain to hamper supplier eco-innovations. However, such the negative effect can be converted into positive ones when suppliers obtain higher environmental awareness, encounter more stringent environmental regulations, and receive intensified media coverage. The results remain robust under various robustness checks, yielding important implications for managerial practice and policy development

Digital-twin-assisted multi-stage machining of thin-wall structures using interchangeable robotic and human-assisted automation

Interconnected intelligent systems in multi-stage smart machining environments are an advancing area of research, demonstrating many real-life opportunities that can benefit from the development and integration of cyber-physical systems into machining habitats, while different automation levels in industrial manufacturing sites call for flexibility of core strategies towards smart machining ecosystems. This article introduces a versatile and smart multi-stage machining environment for the controlled clamping and machining of low-rigidity structures in an interconnected cyber-physical factory. This is exemplified by a deformation-prone thin-wall workpiece, which undergoes controlled clamping, enabled by interchangeable robotic automation and automation via human-cyber-physical systems, as well as digital-twin-assisted corrective machining enabled by the swift estimation of workpiece deformations and multi-stage communication between machining habitats. The underlying digital twin presents a fast, lightweight simulation approach, based on a mass-spring-lattice model, allowing information flow from and to systems, which is utilized by the CNC machine as well as the interchangeable robot- and human-in-the-loop clamping enablers. By employing this controlled clamping approach workpiece deformations are aimed to be minimized. At the same time, a desired total clamping force is achieved in order to perform subsequent digital-twin-assisted machining corrections to reduce deformation-caused flatness errors. Ultimately, this article presents an intelligent multi-stage machining scenario where digital-twin enabled information moves along with thin-wall structures and branches out for knowledge-based control and corrections to robots, humans and CNC machines respectively, showcasing a real-life example for versatile, information-driven smart machining ecosystems

Ascorbic acid mediated hydrolysis of galactomannans

Ascorbic acid (AA) is an antioxidant widely used in the food industry to prevent colour fade and spoilage. This study assesses the effect of 0.02 wt% AA on the rheology of common food thickeners – galactomannans (GM). GMs immediately exhibit a significant reduction in solution viscosity upon AA addition: guar gum (−67 % ± 7 %), locust bean gum (−47 % ± 5 %), and cassia gum (−58 % ± 4 %). Other food acids at 0.02 wt% showed no decline in viscosity, nor did another reducing agent, potassium iodide. GMs were then mixed with xanthan gum (XG) ± low acyl gellan gum (LAG) and AA's impact was assessed using small amplitude oscillatory shear rheology. As the temperature decreased, the storage modulus decreased in the presence of AA compared to without. The molecular weight (MW) of the GMs ± AA, was assessed using size exclusion chromatography – multi angle light scattering. The reduction in MW, was between 6 and 8 times for each GM, and was supported with analytical ultracentrifugation. This established the hydrolytic decomposition of GMs by AA, leading to a decrease in function due to a reduction in MW. This hydrolytic effect was observed regardless of pH, showing that acid hydrolysis isn't the primary mechanism. This study shows, for the first time, that AA causes extensive degradation of galactomannans, affecting their viscoelastic characteristics. These findings could affect many products; informing decisions on their quality and shelf life, as well as their cost-effectiveness and environmental life cycle

Multi-model resilience framework to assess functional recovery for power systems to typhoon winds

Typhoons have a significant impact on power systems' functions. To quantitatively assess the functional state of power systems and improve post-typhoon recovery efficiency, this paper proposes a multi-model resilience assessment framework. A physical typhoon model was constructed based on the structure and characteristic parameters of typhoons. Operation of power infrastructures was evaluated using fragility curves. A network function model was built based on undirected weighted graphs and adjacency matrices. Then, system function metrics were established to achieve a functional time-varying analysis, and resilience metrics were proposed by integrating resilience characteristics with the power system network. An economic loss model was developed based on both economic requirements and regional power outages. This enabled a dual quantitative assessment of system resilience and regional economic losses. Subsequently, a functional recovery path optimization method was built to find the most efficient repair sequence. By assessing the resilience of a typical power network test system, the optimal recovery path was identified, and the resilience metrics and total economic loss were determined. Simulations of multiple recovery scenarios and typhoon scenarios showed similarities in the recovery characteristics of power systems, thereby demonstrating the effectiveness of the optimal recovery path and the applicability of the proposed framework

Gendering the safety net: Social protection policy and the limits to Decent Work in Cambodia's garment sector

The adoption of the Social Protection Floors Recommendation (SPFR) by the International Labour Conference in 2012 is widely recognised as an "historic" (Deacon 2013) and "radical" (Cichon 2013) reorientation of social protection, promising a new "universal and comprehensive" approach. Despite the SPFR's bold ambitions, however, the implementation of social protection floors at global-and national-level has proven uneven. In practice, the social protection floors initiative has generally been "subordinate" (Seekings 2019) to the Decent Work agenda. Particularly in many lower-income settings in the global South, for instance, vertical expansion of benefits to waged workers through social insurance has taken precedence over the SPFR's more radical promise to horizontally expand the frontiers of social assistance. In Cambodia, for example, entrenched norms of fiscal and social conservativism have focused policy attention on expanding benefits provided to the 700,000 workers in the country's largest formal industry-the garment sector-rather than expanding the scope of social protection to include the yet more numerous informal or agricultural sector workforce. In this paper, we examine the consequences of this lopsided social protection strategy for its apparent beneficiaries: women working within the garment industry. We argue that the focus on extending support for formal workers, at the exclusion of informal workers is, in fact, detrimental to both groups. To illustrate these arguments, we draw on original data from the GCRF-funded ReFashion project, a longitudinal study tracing the impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic on a cohort of 200 garment workers in Cambodia over 24 months. We use this rich and grounded data to develop an emic perspective on social protection programming that shows how, in the absence of a robust social protection floor, gendered norms in Cambodia compel women to fill the gaps in social protection programming by the state. Women workers in the garment sector effectively fund a social safety net for family members through remittance transfers. However, garment sector salaries alone are insufficient for this task, leading to a "debtfare" (Soederberg 2014) model, in which workers finance these costs through increasing resort to personal debt. The result is a crisis of over-indebtedness among workers in the garment industry that undermines the achievement of Decent Work in the sector. We suggest that Covid-19 offers a moment for reflection, like that which followed the Global Financial Crisis of 2008 and inspired the SPRF itself, to learn from the vulnerabilities exposed by the pandemic and recentre a radical vision of social protection that delivers for all

Uncertainty Words and Corporate Information Environment

This paper investigates the impact of the uncertainty tone in a firm's annual report on stock price informativeness. We show that firms with a higher proportion of uncertainty words in 10-Ks have lower stock idiosyncratic risk. Our results suggest that the uncertainty tone of a firm's financial disclosures results in information uncertainty that deteriorates its stock price informativeness. While the tone dispersion amplifies the relation between uncertainty tone and firm-specific risk, the use of causation and discrepancy words attenuates this effect. Furthermore, external oversight mechanisms including analysts following, institutional holdings, audit quality and more frequent access to 10-Ks undermine the impact of uncertainty tone. Our findings highlight the influence that managers can exert on corporate transparency with the use of linguistic tone in financial reports