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Climate and water-table levels regulate peat accumulation rates across Europe
No full textBackground: Peatlands are globally-important carbon sinks at risk of degradation from climate change and direct human impacts, including drainage and burning. Peat accumulates when there is a positive mass balance between plant productivity inputs and litter/peat decomposition losses. However, the factors influencing the rate of peat accumulation over time are still poorly understood.Methodology/Principle Findings: We examine apparent peat accumulation rates (aPAR) during the last two millennia from 28 well-dated, intact European peatlands and find a range of between 0.005 and 0.448 cm yr-1 (mean = 0.118 cm yr-1). Our work provides important context for the commonplace assertion that European peatlands accumulate at ~0.1 cm per year. The highest aPAR values are found in the Scandinavian and Baltic regions, in contrast to Britain, Ireland, and Continental Europe. We find that summer temperature is a significant climatic control on aPAR across our European sites. Furthermore, a significant relationship is observed between aPAR and water-table depth (reconstructed from testate-amoeba subfossils), suggesting that higher aPAR levels are often associated with wetter conditions. We also note that the highest values of aPAR are found when the water table is within 5–10 cm of the peatland surface. aPAR is generally low when water table depths are 25 cm, which may relate to a decrease in plant productivity and increased decomposition losses, respectively. Model fitting indicates that the optimal water table depth (WTD) for maximum aPAR is ~10 cm.Conclusions/Significance: Our study suggests that, in some European peatlands, higher summer temperatures may enhance growth rates, but only if a sufficiently high water table is maintained. In addition, our findings corroborate contemporary observational and experimental studies that have suggested an average water-table depth of ~10 cm is optimal to enable rapid peat growth and therefore carbon sequestration in the long term. This has important implications for peatland restoration and rewetting strategies, in global efforts to mitigate climate change.</p
Dental Shame: A Call for Understanding and Addressing the Role of Shame in Oral Health
No full textThis commentary highlights dental shame as a pervasive but underexplored phenomenon with significant implications for oral health and systemic inequities. It proposes dental shame as a critical lens for understanding and addressing the complex interplay between personal, social, economic, cultural and systemic factors contributing to oral health challenges. Drawing on interdisciplinary expertise, the authors collectively propose that dental shame is both a consequence and determinant of oral health issues, leading to a self‐reinforcing dynamic of avoidance, withdrawal and exacerbated inequities. They identify five key aspects of oral health where dental shame warrants deeper investigation: clinical encounters, care and social services, daily oral health behaviours, systemic inequities and psychological trauma. On this basis, the authors call for more research on dental shame and advocate for shame‐sensitive practices in dentistry and other health care and social settings. This approach includes fostering shame competence in practitioners, addressing systemic barriers and designing empathetic, inclusive care environments. Ultimately, the authors state that understanding and addressing dental shame can transform oral health promotion, reduce inequities and improve overall health outcomes.</p
The impact of different haze types on the atmospheres and observations of hot Jupiters: 3D simulations of HD 189733b, HD 209458b, and WASP-39b
No full textWe present the results from the simulations of the atmospheres of hot-Jupiters HD 189733b, HD 209458b, and WASP-39b, assuming the presence of three different types of haze. Using a 3D general circulation model, the Unified Model, we capture the advection, settling, and radiative impact of Titan-, water-world-, and soot-like haze, with a particle radius of 1.5 nm. We show that the radiative impact of haze leads to drastic changes in the thermal structure and circulation in the atmosphere. We then show that in all our simulations, (1) the super-rotating jet largely determines the day-to-night haze distribution, (2) eddies drive the latitudinal haze distribution, and (3) the divergent and eddy component of the wind control the finer structure of the haze distribution. We further show that the stronger the absorption strength of the haze, the stronger the super-rotating jet, lesser the difference of the day-to-night haze distribution, and larger the transit depth in the synthetic transmission spectrum. We also demonstrate that the presence of such small hazes could result in a stronger haze opacity over the morning terminator in all three planets. This could lead to an observable terminator asymmetry in WASP-39b, with the morning terminator presenting a larger transit depth than the evening terminator. This work suggests that, although it might not be a typical detection feature for hot Jupiters, an observed increase in transit depth over the morning terminator across the ultraviolet and optical wavelength regime could serve as a strong indicator of the presence of haze.</p
When does the opposition unite? An examination of Lebanon's 2022 parliamentary election
No full textWhile the literature on competitive authoritarian regimes stresses the importance of opposition unity, few study how the opposition comes together. With a clientelistic cartel party system, the Lebanese opposition approaches elections as if the country is a competitive authoritarian regime, driving efforts to build a broad opposition coalition. Lebanon’s 2022 parliamentary election is a fruitful case for exploring coalition formation as separate negotiations occurred in each electoral district. While groups differed on issues and candidates, the core opposition cleavage was over the meaning of “the opposition” and who counted as “the opposition”, which has relevance for other cases. The dynamics of contention in each district reflected the opportunity structure. Building on in-depth interviews, we argue the effective number of opposition parties in each district is determined by the strength of different opposition factions, district magnitude, and the number of opposition voters. Opposition splits were most likely when either 1) there were strong divides between the “traditional” and “anti-establishment” opposition and the opposition expected to win multiple seats or 2) when there were too few opposition voters to expect winning a seat. If groups believed they needed to unify to win any seats, they were more likely to manage their differences.</p
How loneliness relates to health, wellbeing, quality of life, and healthcare resource utilisation and costs across multiple age groups in the UK
No full textIncreasing evidence of its detrimental impact has brought loneliness to the forefront of public health in recent years. Loneliness has been recognised as a cross-cutting theme for Healthy Ageing by the World Health Organisation and there is increasing need to better understand its wide-ranging health, wellbeing, and economic impacts across the wider population. This study utilises data from wave 13(2021–2023) of the Understanding Society UK Household Longitudinal Study to evaluate health and economic outcomes associated to loneliness (UCLA 3-item scale). Outcomes include the General Health Questionnaire, Short Form Health Survey, Short Warwick-Edinburgh Mental Well-being Scale, and costed GP, outpatient, and inpatient visits. Generalised Linear Modelling is applied to adjust for demographic characteristics, and subgroup analysis is conducted to consider costs in different age groups. Complete data provided observations for 23,071 respondents. Average marginal effects found loneliness is associated to higher mental distress, lower positive mental wellbeing, poorer physical and mental functioning, and higher healthcare service use. Overall, there is approximately a £900 cost difference in healthcare use between lonely and non-lonely respondents. Cost difference increases with age, and for more severe loneliness forms a U-shape with the greatest costs in younger and older adults. Additionally, difference in mean is only statistically significant across all models for 16- to 24-year-olds, suggesting importance in targeting young adult healthcare resource use. This is the first study to consider age-based analysis of health-related costs of loneliness in the UK. It also adds to the literature by considering validated wellbeing and health-related outcomes in a large UK based population. Findings motivate tackling young adult loneliness to support their health, wellbeing, quality of life, and potential overuse of healthcare services. This study also supports the pressing need for greater economic evaluation of loneliness and loneliness interventions.</p
BayesKD: Bayesian Knowledge Distillation for Compact LLMs in Constrained Fine-tuning Scenarios
No full textLarge language models (LLMs) have revolutionized various domains with their remarkable capabilities, but their massive parameter sizes pose significant challenges for fine-tuning and inference, especially in resource-constrained environments. Conventional compression methods often result in substantial performance degradation within LLMs and struggle to restore model quality during fine-tuning. To address this challenge, we present Bayesian Knowledge Distillation (BayesKD), a novel distillation framework meticulously designed for compact LLMs in resource-constrained fine-tuning scenarios. Departing from conventional LLM distillation methods that introduce time-consuming paradigms and fail to generalize in compressed LLM fine-tuning scenarios, our BayesKD develops the Logits Dual-Scaling, Knowledge Alignment Module, and Bayesian Distillation Optimization. In particular, our Logits Dual-Scaling strategy adaptively aligns the strength of the teacher’s knowledge transfer, while the Knowledge Alignment Module bridges the gap between the teacher and student models by projecting their knowledge representations into a shared interval. Additionally, we employ Logits-Aware Bayesian Optimization to swiftly identify optimal settings based on these strategies, thereby enhancing model performance. Extensive experiments across diverse tasks demonstrate that BayesKD consistently outperforms baseline methods on various state-of-the-art LLMs, including LLaMA, Qwen2, Bloom, and Vicuna. Notably, our BayesKD achieves average accuracy gains of 2.99% and 4.05% over standard KD for the 8B parameter LLaMA and Qwen2 model. Codes are available in the supplementary materials.</p
Foreign Policy and Domestic Opposition Spaces under Authoritarianism: Moroccan Political Reconfigurations in Response to Israel’s Wars on Gaza
No full textAbstract
Moments of heightened violence and war in Palestine have often elicited extraordinary regime and opposition reactions in Arab states, including large-scale popular protests that are otherwise rare in such authoritarian contexts. This article examines how foreign policy influences domestic political opposition under authoritarianism. We approach this relationship combining classical insights from foreign policy analysis (FPA) with our own theorization of opposition as a tri-dimensional political space – as the dynamic product of intersecting institutional, practical and discursive spaces. Empirically, we capture such complexity through an exploratory, in-depth case study focusing on Morocco and, specifically, on the expressions and reconfigurations of its opposition movements in response to Israel’s wars on Gaza (2008–2009 and 2023–2025). Drawing on interviews conducted between 2007 and 2024 as well as official statements and press releases, these two episodes shed light on the consequences of both time-bound foreign policy shocks and more gradual, structural foreign policy transformations.</p
Climatic and Edaphic Drivers of Soil Organic Carbon and Pyrogenic Carbon Stocks Across Elevation and Disturbance Gradients in Colombian Andean Forests
No full textUnderstanding the drivers of soil organic carbon (SOC) and soil pyrogenic carbon (PyC) variation and their role in natural and managed ecosystems is increasingly important. However, PyC stocks in tropical Andean soils remain understudied. Here, we examined how edaphic and environmental factors affect PyC across elevation and disturbance gradients in 36 plots spanning natural forests and agrosilvopastoral systems in the Colombian Andes. Across the 0–100 cm soil profile, the mean SOC stock in the study region was 433.10 Mg C ha−1 (range: 67.97–1462 Mg C ha−1), while the mean PyC stock was 34.13 Mg C ha−1 (range: 2.29–305.70 Mg C ha−1), accounting for approximately ~8% of the total SOC. This PyC stock is approximately nine times greater than the Amazon-wide average. PyC (%) did not vary significantly with disturbance gradients or soil depths. However, both PyC (%) and SOC (%) varied significantly with elevation zonation (p < 0.001). The High Andes had the highest concentrations of PyC (1.3%) and SOC (14.6%), which were substantially higher than the Medium Andes (PyC = 0.17%; SOC = 6.7%) and Low Andes (PyC = 0.06%; SOC = 1.3%). Soil clay content and annual precipitation were the primary drivers of PyC, explaining 56% of the variability when combined with pH, Ca, and NDVI. PyC was positively associated with clay content (Estimate: 0.27, p < 0.001) and negatively associated with annual precipitation (Estimate: −0.18, p < 0.05). These factors may influence the physical and chemical processes that affect PyC formation and preservation in soils. This analysis provides insight into SOC and PyC variability in Andean forest soils, highlighting the substantial contribution of soil PyC to total soil carbon and its importance as persistent soil carbon under current and predicted warming conditions across the region.</p
What was the Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on the Social, Emotional and Cognitive Functioning of Adults with a Learning Disability? A Systematic Review and Understanding the experiences of the COVID-19 Pandemic and the changes following it of Adults with a Learning Disability in the UK. A Reflexive Thematic Analysis.
No full textSystematic Review: The COVID-19 pandemic had the potential to exacerbate already existing disadvantages
experienced by adults with learning disabilities, including impacting their cognitive, social
and emotional functioning. A systematic review was conducted of the quantitative evidence
base exploring the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on these three aspects of functioning
of adults with learning disabilities. The final review included nine papers. A narrative
synthesis identified variation in the results of the studies allowing only limited conclusions to
be drawn about the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on adults with a learning disability;
however all studies reporting on cognitive function found that in certain domains there had
been a negative impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on cognition. It is therefore
recommended that clinicians still consider the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic when
working with adults with Learning Disabilities. Future research in this area should focus on
changes which have lasted beyond the period of restrictions from COVID-19.
And
Empirical Paper: Background: The social model of disability poses that people with intellectual disabilities
are marginalised due to the systemic disadvantages that they face, and the COVID-19
pandemic exacerbated existing disadvantages to further disable this group. This study
proposes to explore their ongoing experiences of change following the pandemic. Methods:
To achieve these aims 7 adults with learning disabilities (AwLD) within the UK were
recruited to take part in semi-structured interviews focussing on their experience of change
following the COVID-19 restrictions. Findings: Four overarching themes were identified
using reflexive thematic analysis: 1) Experience of Change in Services, 2) The Emotional
Impact of COVID Restrictions, 3) Thinking About Social Connections and 4) Personal
Change Following COVID. Conclusions: This research demonstrates that AwLD when
supported well can show high levels of resilience and as such the use of strengths-based
approaches may bring out the best in this group. This research contributes to the existing
literature by providing perspectives now that pandemic restrictions have ceased and shown
that some AwLD had positive changes following COVID-19 as well as negative ones
Interconnections Across Palestine and Kashmir: The Politics and Economy of Indian-Israeli Settler Colonialism
No full textThe strengthening of political and economic ties between Israel and India in recent decades
has prompted the emergence of a body of academic and activist literature that has placed
Israel’s violence against Palestinians and India’s against Kashmiris in a comparative and
analogical frames. Taking the relationship beyond that of analogy and comparison, this study
seeks to explore the dynamics behind how the development of interconnections between
Israeli and Indian settler colonialism in Palestine and Kashmir play into their mutual
reinforcement. Viewing these interconnections as existing beyond the scope of Indian-Israeli
diplomatic ties, but rather as parts of wider networks of relationships that weave settler
colonial processes into the fabric of global political and economic flows, this project therefore
prompts the question of what these interconnections reveal about world capitalism in the
current century.
In addition to examining the global role of interconnections between two of the longest
running cases of colonialism instigated during the supposed era of global decolonisation, this
study’s specific focus on Israeli settler colonialism’s relationship with that of India spotlights
a key blind spot of much postcolonial literature, which fails to address the phenomenon of
postcolonial states enacting forms of colonialism and its role in contemporary worldmaking.
By examining the relationship between the cases of settler colonialism at the centre of this
study in a way that contextualises their existence within the common terrain of global
neoliberal capitalism, this study reveals how cross-colonisation entrenches settler colonial
processes deeply into said terrain. To do this, I first establish how both India and Israel
discretely entrench their respective settler colonisations of Palestine and Kashmir into the
flows of world capitalism. I then outline the dynamics that draw the two cases into contact
with one another. I use this as a base to analyse the political economy of Indian-Israeli cross
colonial interconnections in Kashmir and Palestine – an economic relationship that is
reinforced by the economic interests of other global and regional powers in the continued
colonisation of Palestine and Kashmir. After this, I analyse the role of universalist
vocabularies and narrative assemblages in embedding the economic cross-colonial linkages
into global political flows, focusing on those of the nation-state system, the global War on
Terror, and capitalist rationalism