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Mobilising Care for Cultural Heritage in Russia’s War Against Ukraine.
No full textThis report provides an overview of key transnational networks, trends and challenges in the provision of care for cultural heritage in Ukraine between the 2022 Russian full-scale invasion and February 2025. Approaches to heritage protection in war have developed considerably over the last 20 years, as have the range of actors involved, extending beyond state administration and public bodies to diverse INGOs and NGOs. However, the complex networks and political economies involved in this crowded landscape are not well understood. It is increasingly recognised that cultural emergency responses intersect with humanitarian ones, but how this happens in practice is rarely explored. Without this understanding, calls for greater coordination and coherence, as well integration of heritage interventions with humanitarian ones, will be difficult to implement. Our research therefore aims to advance knowledge of how care for cultural heritage in war is mobilised through aid and capacity-building, alongside legal and regulatory frameworks, including civilian support and emergency responses. Based on extensive qualitative social research across Europe, the report identifies the actors, resources and reasoning involved, as well as the financial, political and practical contexts of their operation. We unpick the networks, supply chains and organisational alliances entailed, both inside Ukraine and among Ukraine’s allies, showing what actions are taken, by whom, and with what consequences. We also identify factors that facilitate or hinder how care is delivered in practice, particularly constraints that local professionals might face in their effort to shape the agenda of international support. Our results provide new knowledge about cooperation and collaboration in various phases of the war, and show how cultural heritage emergency response, humanitarian aid, and support for social cohesion and resilience, intersect in practice. Analysing care for cultural heritage in this broader, cross-cutting framework transforms understanding of both the social role of cultural heritage in wartime, and the true extent of the networks and resources involved. The Ukrainian example also powerfully illustrates the relevance of ongoing heritage and memory work in the pre-recovery phase with important wider implications for policy and practice. The overarching objective is to produce more effective and better coordinated support for projects and activities involved in caring for Ukraine’s heritage, and the professionals, activists and lay communities involved in them
Chemistry Education for Climate Empowerment and Action
No full textUrgent action is needed across the world to combat climate change and its impact on the social, economic, and environmental well-being of humans and the planet. This important topic is one that is a priority for integration into chemistry classrooms, laboratories, and outreach efforts. It connects strongly to foundational chemistry concepts and highlights the critical role chemistry will play in finding solutions to the many challenges faced in reducing greenhouse gases due to human activity. This Special Issue presents a broad collection of efforts by chemistry educators across the globe to create innovative ways to motivate and inspire students and preservice teachers with the relevant chemistry knowledge, climate literacy, and scientific responsibility needed for climate action. A range of interactive tools, active-learning methodologies, and interdisciplinary approaches provide a wealth of resources for a broad range of teaching environments and ideas for instructors seeking to incorporate climate education and instill advocacy into chemistry programs
Editorial: Food production potential in the changing ocean
Full text linkFirst paragraph: Ocean and coastal environments are, as with many other environments, vulnerable to climate change (IPCC, 2023). The oceans occupy 70% of the world´s surface, with a vast biomass production potential, but climate stressors affect ecosystem functioning and the health and growth of aquatic organisms. Understanding how climate change will affect marine food production, and possible adaptation strategies is therefore vital. Whereas fisheries yields are stable or declining, aquaculture is believed to play an increasingly more important role in food security, contributing to the supply of high-quality food to meet growing demands in local and regional communities as well as the global population (Aksnes et al., 2017; FAO, 2024). Hence, we must consider how the changing ocean environment supports sustainable food production
Editorial: Sports, economics, and natural experiments: advances and retrospection
Full text linkSports provide a unique field laboratory for advancing behavioral microeconomics, offering precise and objective measurements of behavior due to standardized rules, clear observability, and highly motivated expert participants. Extensive data on sports are readily available, continuously refined and expanded, and cover the same or similar contestants over long periods. Additionally, sports offer numerous natural experiments where exogenous factors plausibly divide individuals, teams, or organizations into treatment and control groups, allowing for causal analysis. Despite these advantages, economic studies using sports often face challenges regarding external validity. Such studies can appear niche and may be difficult to understand for those unfamiliar with sports, potentially limiting the broader applicability of their findings and hindering the full use of sports as a platform for testing economic theories. The aim of this Research Topic was to showcase examples of research that harness sports as a field laboratory, leverage natural experiments, and replicate or validate existing findings. This collection features two studies exploiting natural experiments, three capitalizing on the advantages of sports data for measuring productivity, and one replication study. Below is a brief overview of these studies
Fostering Health Behaviour Change in Overweight Male Football Fans Through the European Fans in Training (EuroFIT) Program: A Self-Determination Theory Perspective
Full text linkThe European Fans in Training (EuroFIT) program integrated need-supportive motivational strategies from Self-Determination Theory (SDT) in the design of a healthy lifestyle program delivered to overweight or obese male football fans (n = 1113; mean age of 45.9 [SD = 9.0] years old and BMI of 33.2 kg/m2 [SD = 4.6]) in professional football club settings in the UK, Portugal, Norway and the Netherlands. With a critical realist approach, we developed a structured thematic framework analysis based on Self-Determination Theory (SDT) to investigate the process of change in men who participated in the EuroFIT randomized controlled trial (RCT). We examined whether men’s experiences of the social context of EuroFIT, and whether their engagement with the program’s motivational strategies supported or frustrated their basic psychological needs while attempting to change their lifestyle behaviours. We found that men in all countries perceived the social contexts of the EuroFIT program as mostly needs-supportive, and that they found engagement with most of the program components helpful in supporting their psychological needs when initiating health behaviour changes. However, some of the program elements in the EuroFIT program were perceived as needs-frustrating by some participants and need-supportive by others. Implications for the use of need-supportive motivational strategies in designing future lifestyle interventions in sport settings to promote health behaviour change among male football fans are discussed
Interactions between nutritional programming, genotype, and gut microbiota in Atlantic salmon: Long-term effects on gut microbiota, fish growth and feed efficiency
Full text linkNutritional programming (NP) is a tool for developing adaptive changes that can be expressed in adulthood by exposing individuals to a stimulus early in life. This study investigated the interactions between nutritional programming (NP), genotype and gut microbiota in Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar) across the life cycle, to potentially improve feed efficiency and fish health. Approximately 5100 eggs from six families characterised by high (HP) or low pigment retention (LP) were incubated and divided into four groups (HPM, HPV, LPM, LPV) that received a stimulus diet based on marine (M) (61 % fishmeal and 8 % fish oil) or vegetable (V) (5 % fishmeal, plant proteins and rapeseed oil) ingredients. This stimulus phase lasted three weeks, followed by a 49-week freshwater intermediate phase with fish fed a commercial feed subsequent to seawater transfer. In seawater, the fish were initially fed a commercial feed for 13 weeks and then switched to a plant-based “challenge” diet with approximately 3 % EPA + DHA until the end of the experiment, at 101 weeks, at which point fish were 4 kg. During the study, survival rates, SGR, and FCR were monitored. Samples for microbiota analysis were collected at T0 (after the stimulus), T1 (before the challenge), T2 (challenge, after the feed change), and T3 (end of the feeding trial). Gut and feed microbiota were analysed by bacterial DNA extraction, Illumina NGS library preparation and raw sequencing data analysis using QIIME 2 and PICRUSt software. Gut microbiota composition changed with fish age, independent of NP and pigmentation genotype, emphasising the importance of developmental stage. Early diet influenced beta diversity and increased the number of specific bacteria, but these changes decreased with time. NP influenced the gut microbiota during the stimulus phase but not during the challenge phase, showing that the current diet has a greater influence than the earlier diet. Some microbial genera were associated with different genotypes and diets, suggesting interactions between genotype and stimulus diet. Differences in the metabolic potential of the gut microbiota due to the stimulus diet were observed but were not associated with differences in growth and feed utilisation. The study concludes that early nutritional programming with a plant-based diet has a transient effect on growth and gut microbiota, with long-term growth performance being more strongly influenced by pigmentation genotype. Further studies on the interactions between genotype, diet and microbiota are required
Zoledronic-acid plus neoadjuvant therapy is associated with provoking outcomes in Her2-positive breast cancer
Full text linkFirst paragraph: Dear Editor, We recently came across Mei Liu et al meta-analysis, a comprehensive study published in 2023, and wish to discuss a few aspects
Making and Unmaking the Cold War in Museums
Full text linkTo introduce “Cold War Museology” and a volume of new essays in this chapter, we develop what we propose to be core themes of the subject. Our aim is to establish the Cold War as a key topic in museum studies, both in its own right, but also in terms of how it speaks to more general themes of contemporary museology. In doing so, we seek to learn from Cold War critical heritage research, bringing some of its analytical rigour to bear on museum work. Focusing primarily on curatorial practices and display analysis, we highlight three key themes for further discussion: the way in which objects reflect broader networks; the relationship between spaces, places and things (and specifically the ways in which objects create meanings when they are removed from their original locations); and the values that attach to collections. We also highlight absences in our discussions, including the question of how to address the global nature of the Cold War in the context of debates about decolonising collections as well as questions of gender and race when they appear to be absent from collections relating to the Cold War. This volume calls for a museology that reflects the ways in which the Cold War was both made and unmade, the spaces and places where this happens and what this means for museum collections, interpretation and engagement
"Addressing the Non-Communicable Diseases (NCDs) burden and protecting the young through comprehensive Alcohol Policies: Lessons from recent studies in Africa".
No full textThe age-standardized alcohol-attributable burden of disease and injury is highest in the WHO African Region, at 70.6 deaths and 3 044 DALYs per 100 000 people, placing an enormous strain on already challenged health systems. Drinkers in Africa consume 21% more alcohol per day than the global average. Small disposable plastic sachets- pouches which contain single use quantities of alcohol which often contain 40% spirits- have led to significant abuse amongst the most vulnerable and poorest communities in Malawi and Uganda. Concerns about harmful consumption and the public health and societal impact led to national bans on sachets of alcohol in Malawi (2016) and Uganda (2019), but those may not have had the impact anticipated. We will conduct interviews with key policy stakeholders and with district and local stakeholders in enforcement and trade in Malawi and Uganda to understand the adoption and formulation of the bans, what mechanisms for implementation were proposed and put in place, how the bans were enforced in practice, and any unintended consequences that have resulted. We will conduct focus group discussions with community members, health staff from local health centres and with traditional/ church leaders and school headteachers to explore the perceived impact of the ban and any unintended consequences from a local community perspective. Our multidisciplinary international team will conduct a robust analysis based the Health Policy Analysis framework to highlight contextual factors important for the transferability of findings to other Sub-Saharan countries in order to inform alcohol policy development and implementation across the region. We will publish results in peer reviewed journals and share them at stakeholder events in each country to discuss how the results may be used to further regulation of the supply of alcohol and reduction of related harms. Our researchers in LMICs will benefit from a strong capacity-building and research skills programme
The many faces of Wilton Park
Full text linkThis chapter explores the idea for and role of Wilton Park in the fabric of British foreign policy from its origins in the context of British post-war planning to the present day. It traces Wilton Park’s story from its early days as a prisoner of war (PoW) camp to an institution for the democratisation of post-National Socialist Germany to a networking and conference site for Western countries during the Cold War, and from there to an international policy forum part funded by the British government as an executive agency of the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO). In so doing, this chapter focuses on the ways in which Wilton Park managed to adapt to a changing domestic and international environment by redefining its purpose, while retaining some of the original ideas and methods that drove its foundation
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