The state of California, in the United States of America, has a population of nearly 40 million people and is the 5th largest economy in the world. During the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic in 2020-2021, the state experienced a medical surge that stressed its sophisticated health-care and public health system. During this period, ventilators, oxygen, and other equipment necessary for providing ventilatory support became a scarce resource in many health-care settings. When demand overwhelms supply, creative solutions are required at all levels of disaster management and health care. This study describes the disaster response by the state of California to mitigate the emergency demands for oxygen delivery resources.

Cahokia is the largest documented urban settlement in the pre-Columbian United States. Archaeological evidence suggests that the city, located near what is now East St. Louis, Illinois, began to rapidly expand starting around AD 1050. At its height, Cahokia extended across 1000 ha and included large plazas, timber palisade walls, and hundreds of monumental earthen mounds. Following several centuries of occupation, the city experienced a period of gradual abandonment from about AD 1200 to 1400. Here, we present geochemical data from a 1500-year-old sediment core from nearby Horseshoe Lake that records watershed impacts associated with the growth and decline of Cahokia. Sedimentary analysis shows a distinctive 24-cm-thick, gray, fine-grained layer formed between AD 1150 and 1220 and characterized by low carbonate δ13C, elevated sorbed metal concentrations, and higher organic matter δ15N. The deposition of this layer is contemporaneous with archaeological evidence of increased agricultural activity, earthen mound construction, and higher populations surrounding the lake. We hypothesize that these human impacts increased soil erosion, producing new sediment sources from deeper soil horizons, and shifted dissolved transport to the lake, producing lower carbonate δ13C values, higher concentrations of lead, copper, potassium, and aluminum, and increased δ15N, likely due to contributions of enriched nitrogen from sewage.

The long-term stability of mechanically exfoliated MoS2 flakes was compared for storage in the air and storage under vacuum. Significant changes in MoS2 flakes were observed for samples stored in the air, whereas similar flakes on samples stored in vacuum underwent no change. Small speckles were observed to appear on the surface of flakes stored in the air, followed by thinning and eventual decomposition of MoS2 flakes. The speckles are suspected to be formed by oxidation of MoS2 in the presence of atmospheric oxygen and water molecules, resulting in the formation of hydrated MoO3.

Glyphosate is the world's most widely used herbicide. It is nonselective and has been used to control a broad range of weed species for the past 20 yr, without the appearance of resistant weed biotypes. However, a biotype of Lolium rigidum from a field in Northern Victoria, Australia, in which glyphosate had been used for the past 15 yr, failed to be controlled by label recommended rates. Based on LD50 values from pot dose-response experiments, this biotype exhibited resistance to glyphosate and was nearly 10-fold more resistant compared to the susceptible biotypes tested. The biotype was resistant to three different salts of glyphosate. The biotype was also nearly threefold more resistant to diclofop-methyl but was susceptible to other commonly used selective and broad-spectrum herbicides. Between the two-leaf and tillering stages of development, a susceptible biotype exhibited a small but significant decrease in tolerance to glyphosate, whereas tolerance of the resistant biotype remained unchanged with age. The resistant phenotype was verified in experiments in which seed was germinated in the presence of glyphosate. Observations on shoot and root growth of seedlings in these experiments suggested that the resistance mechanism might be associated more with the shoot than with the root.