SPECIAL REPORT: Watchdogs under pressure: Pacific Islands journalists’ demographic profiles and professional views

While global scholarship on journalists’ professional views has expanded tremendously over recent decades, the Pacific Islands remains somewhat of a blind spot, with only sporadic research. To address this gap in our knowledge, this study reports the results of a comprehensive survey of 206 Pacific Islands journalists in nine countries, providing a much-needed update of journalists’ demographic profiles, role conceptions, ethical views and perceived influences. Our analysis finds that while journalists are now older, more experienced and better educated than 30 years ago, they are still younger and less well-educated than their counterparts in many other parts of the globe. In the digital age, some old challenges persist in relation to their roles: While journalists are committed to holding power to account and aiding in the development of their countries, they continue to face political and economic challenges that make their tasks difficult and sometimes even perilous.This study was funded by The University of the South Pacific, the United States Embassy in Fiji and the Pacific Media Centre, formerly based at the Auckland University of Technology

Deep eutectic solvents as sustainable solvents for industrial separation problems: A recent update

Deep eutectic solvents (DESs) are ionic liquid analogues that consist of Lewis or Brønsted acids and bases. These systems are characterized by a substantial decrease in melting points as compared to those of the neat constituents. Activity coefficients at infinite dilution of organic solutes is used as a screening tool for extracting solvents, an approach that is useful for identifying acceptable precursors and assessing separation performance in practical applications. This review assesses the effectiveness of DESs as solvents for chemical separations wherein the data is presented for the activity coefficients at infinite dilution for 33 solutes in different DESs at various temperatures. Additionally, the selectivities and capacities for various solute extraction problems are also appraised from the activity coefficients at infinite dilution at T = 323.15 K; capacity represents the solvent's ability to extract the component