Perspectives on Tobacco Product Waste: A Survey of Framework Convention Alliance Members' Knowledge, Attitudes, and Beliefs.

Cigarette butts (tobacco product waste (TPW)) are the single most collected item in environmental trash cleanups worldwide. This brief descriptive study used an online survey tool (Survey Monkey) to assess knowledge, attitudes, and beliefs among individuals representing the Framework Convention Alliance (FCA) about this issue. The FCA has about 350 members, including mainly non-governmental tobacco control advocacy groups that support implementation of the World Health Organization's (WHO) Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC). Although the response rate (28%) was low, respondents represented countries from all six WHO regions. The majority (62%) have heard the term TPW, and nearly all (99%) considered TPW as an environmental harm. Most (77%) indicated that the tobacco industry should be responsible for TPW mitigation, and 72% felt that smokers should also be held responsible. This baseline information may inform future international discussions by the FCTC Conference of the Parties (COP) regarding environmental policies that may be addressed within FCTC obligations. Additional research is planned regarding the entire lifecycle of tobacco's impact on the environment

Tobacco industry:a barrier to social justice

Social justice recognises the need for the ‘the distribution of wealth, opportunities, and privileges within a society’. According to the United Nations, social justice is an underlying principle for peaceful and prosperous coexistence within and among nations. Social justice can also refer to the balance between individuals and society; if we assume that governments play a major role in society, then their obligation to protect individuals from third parties4 (eg, the tobacco industry) becomes one of their key responsibilities in maintaining social justice. Furthermore, the actions of the government in one country can negatively impact social justice in another

Asteroseismology of luminous red giants with Kepler - II.: Dependence of mass-loss on pulsations and radiation

Mass loss by red giants is an important process to understand the final stages of stellar evolution and the chemical enrichment of the interstellar medium. Mass-loss rates are thought to be controlled by pulsation-enhanced dust-driven outflows. Here we investigate the relationships between mass loss, pulsations, and radiation, using 3213 luminous Kepler red giants and 135000 ASAS-SN semiregulars and Miras. Mass-loss rates are traced by infrared colours using 2MASS and WISE and by observed-to-model WISE fluxes, and are also estimated using dust mass-loss rates from literature assuming a typical gas-to-dust mass ratio of 400. To specify the pulsations, we extract the period and height of the highest peak in the power spectrum of oscillation. Absolute magnitudes are obtained from the 2MASS Ks band and the Gaia DR2 parallaxes. Our results follow. (i) Substantial mass loss sets in at pulsation periods above ~60 and ~100 days, corresponding to Asymptotic-Giant-Branch stars at the base of the period-luminosity sequences C' and C. (ii) The mass-loss rate starts to rapidly increase in semiregulars for which the luminosity is just above the Red-Giant-Branch tip and gradually plateaus to a level similar to that of Miras. (iii) The mass-loss rates in Miras do not depend on luminosity, consistent with pulsation-enhanced dust-driven winds. (iv) The accumulated mass loss on the Red Giant Branch consistent with asteroseismic predictions reduces the masses of red-clump stars by 6.3%, less than the typical uncertainty on their asteroseismic masses. Thus mass loss is currently not a limitation of stellar age estimates for galactic archaeology studies.Comment: 14 pages, 12 figures, accepted for publication in MNRA

Tidal Dissipation in the Early Eocene and Implications for Ocean Mixing

The tidally driven vertical diffusivity in the abyssal ocean during the early Eocene (55 Ma) is investigated using an established tidal model. A weak tide is predicted in the Eocene ocean, except in the Pacific. Consequently, the integrated global tidal dissipation rate is a mere 1.44TW, of which 40% dissipate in the Pacific. However, due to a stronger abyssal vertical stratification the predicted Eocene vertical diffusivities are consistently larger than at present. The results support the hypothesis that altered tidal dissipation may play a role in explaining the maintenance of past climate regimes, especially the anomalously warm temperatures in the southwest Pacific in the Eocene, and the low dissipation rates may be important for lunar evolution history

Bioconductor: open software development for computational biology and bioinformatics.

The Bioconductor project is an initiative for the collaborative creation of extensible software for computational biology and bioinformatics. The goals of the project include: fostering collaborative development and widespread use of innovative software, reducing barriers to entry into interdisciplinary scientific research, and promoting the achievement of remote reproducibility of research results. We describe details of our aims and methods, identify current challenges, compare Bioconductor to other open bioinformatics projects, and provide working examples

Human rights and the WHO FCTC conference of the parties

‘In the absence of the COVID-19 pandemic, many people in tobacco control worldwide would have been at the Hague, Netherlands, from 9–14 November for the 9th Conference of the Parties (COP9) of the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC), advocating for even stronger policies against the tobacco epidemic. The COP has been postponed to 2021, but the pandemic did not stop the global civil society from ‘virtually’ gathering to talk about the FCTC, where it is and where it is going.’http://www.tobaccoinduceddiseases.orgam2021School of Health Systems and Public Health (SHSPH

Les pratiques récentes de mixité entre art actuel et art ancien : le contemporain dans les musées

Pendant longtemps, les musées ont séparé l’art du passé et l’art du présent, celui-ci étant exposé seulement dans des musées dont le nom même – musée d’art moderne ou d’art contemporain – signalait cette séparation. Depuis quelque temps pourtant, singulièrement en France mais pas uniquement, de nombreux musées se sont mis à montrer au sein de leurs collections permanentes des œuvres d’art créées très récemment voire réalisées spécialement pour l’occasion. Trois conservateurs et un artiste, qu..

Discovery of the Isotopes with 11 <= Z <= 19

A total of 194 isotopes with 11 $\le$ Z $\le$ 19 have been identified to date. The discovery of these isotopes which includes the observation of unbound nuclei, is discussed. For each isotope a brief summary of the first refereed publication, including the production and identification method, is presented.Comment: to be pubslihed in At. Data Nucl. Data Table

Socially-mediated arousal and contagion within domestic chick broods

Emotional contagion – an underpinning valenced feature of empathy – is made up of simpler, potentially dissociable social processes which can include socially-mediated arousal and behavioural/physiological contagion. Previous studies of emotional contagion have often conflated these processes rather than examining their independent contribution to empathic response. We measured socially-mediated arousal and contagion in 9-week old domestic chicks (n = 19 broods), who were unrelated but raised together from hatching. Pairs of observer chicks were exposed to two conditions in a counterbalanced order: air puff to conspecifics (AP) (during which an air puff was applied to three conspecifics at 30 s intervals) and control with noise of air puff (C) (during which the air puff was directed away from the apparatus at 30 s intervals). Behaviour and surface eye temperature of subjects and observers were measured throughout a 10-min pre-treatment and 10-min treatment period. Subjects and observers responded to AP with increased freezing, and reduced preening and ground pecking. Subjects and observers also showed reduced surface eye temperature - indicative of stress-induced hyperthermia. Subject-Observer behaviour was highly correlated within broods during both C and AP conditions, but with higher overall synchrony during AP. We demonstrate the co-occurrence of socially-mediated behavioural and physiological arousal and contagion; component features of emotional contagion