Sequential thermal analysis allows for deconvoluting the refractory nature and complexity of carbon mixtures embedded in mineral matrices for subsequent offline stable carbon and radiocarbon (14C) isotope analyses. Originally developed to separate Holocene from more ancient sedimentary organic matter to improve dating of marine sediments, the Ramped Pyrolysis and Oxidation (RPO) apparatus, or informally, the “dirt burner” is now used to address pressing questions in the broad field of biogeochemistry. The growing interest in the community now necessitates improved handling and procedures for routine analyses of difficult sample types. Here we report on advances in CO2 purification during sample processing, modifications to the instrumentation at the National Ocean Sciences Accelerator Mass Spectrometry (NOSAMS) facility, and introduce sodium bicarbonate procedural standards with differing natural abundance 14C signatures for blank assessment. Measurements from different environmental samples are used to compare the procedure to the different generations of sequential thermal analyses. With this study, we aim to improve the standardization of the procedures and prepare this instrumentation for innovations in online stable carbon isotopes and direct AMS-interface measurements in the future.

We present U–Pb dates from peridotitic pyrope-rich garnet from four mantle xenoliths entrained in a kimberlite from Bultfontein, South Africa. Garnet dates magmatic emplacement due to the high mantle residence temperatures of the source material prior to eruption, which were most likely above the closure temperature for the pyrope U–Pb system. We determine a U–Pb date of 84.0 ± 8.1 Ma for the emplacement of the Bultfontein kimberlite from garnet in our four xenolith samples. The date reproduces previous dates obtained from other mineral-isotope systems (chiefly Rb–Sr in phlogopite). Garnet can be dated despite extremely low concentrations of U (median ∼0.05 μg/g), because concentrations of common Pb are often low or non-detectable. This means that sub-concordant garnets can be dated with moderate precision using very large laser-ablation spots (130 μm) measured by quadrupole inductively coupled plasma – mass spectrometry (LA-Q-ICP-MS). Our strategy demonstrates successful U–Pb dating of a U-poor mineral due to high initial ratios of U to common Pb in some grains, and the wide spread of isotopic compositions of grains on a concordia diagram. In addition, the analytical protocol is not complex and uses widely available analytical methods and strategies. This new methodology has some advantages and disadvantages for dating kimberlite emplacement versus established methods (U-based decay systems in perovskite and zircon, or Rb- or K-based systems in phlogopite). However, this method has unique promise for its potential application to detrital diamond prospecting and, more speculatively, to the dating of pyrope inclusions in diamond.

Sipping, an early form of alcohol initiation, is associated with aspects of psychopathology and personality that reflect long-term risk for harmful alcohol use. In the Adolescent Brain and Cognitive Development cohort (N = 11,872), sipping by age 9–10 was concurrently associated with impulsivity, other aspects of externalizing, and prodromal schizophrenia symptoms. Still, these associations were cross-sectional in nature, leaving open the possibility that these features of psychopathology and personality might not reflect long-term risk for alcohol consumption and related harm across development. Here, we attempted to replicate baseline concurrent associations across three waves of data to extend concurrent associations to prospective ones. Most cross-sectional associations replicated across waves, such that impulsivity, other aspects of externalizing, reward sensitivity (e.g., surgency, sensation seeking), and prodromal schizophrenia symptoms were associated with increased odds of having sipped alcohol by the age of 12. Nevertheless, not all concurrent associations replicated prospectively; impulsigenic features did not reflect long-term risk for sipping. Thus, some psychopathology features appeared to reflect stable risk factors, whereas others appeared to reflect state-dependent risk factors. All told, sipping might not reflect long-term risk for harmful alcohol use, and the nature of sipping may change across development.

This paper proposes a framework for comprehensive, collaborative, and community-based care (C4) for accessible mental health services in low-resource settings. Because mental health conditions have many causes, this framework includes social, public health, wellness and clinical services. It accommodates integration of stand-alone mental health programs with health and non-health community-based services. It addresses gaps in previous models including lack of community-based psychotherapeutic and social services, difficulty in addressing comorbidity of mental and physical conditions, and how workers interact with respect to referral and coordination of care. The framework is based on task-shifting of services to non-specialized workers. While the framework draws on the World Health Organization’s Mental Health Gap Action Program and other global mental health models, there are important differences. The C4 Framework delineates types of workers based on their skills. Separate workers focus on: basic psychoeducation and information sharing; community-level, evidence-based psychotherapeutic counseling; and primary medical care and more advanced, specialized mental health services for more severe or complex cases. This paper is intended for individuals, organizations and governments interested in implementing mental health services. The primary aim is to provide a framework for the provision of widely accessible mental health care and services.

Voters prefer political candidates who are currently in office (incumbents) over new candidates (challengers). Using the premise of query theory (Johnson, Häubl & Keinan, 2007), we clarify the underlying cognitive mechanisms by asking whether memory retrieval sequences affect political decision making. Consistent with predictions, Experiment 1 (N= 256) replicated the incumbency advantage and showed that participants tended to first query information about the incumbent. Experiment 2 (N= 427) showed that experimentally manipulating participants’ query order altered the strength of the incumbency advantage. Experiment 3 (N= 713) replicated Experiment 1 and, in additional experimental conditions, showed that the effects of incumbency can be overridden by more valid cues, like the candidates’ ideology. Participants queried information about ideologically similar candidates earlier and also preferred these ideologically similar candidates. This is initial evidence for a cognitive, memory-retrieval process underling the incumbency advantage and political decision making.

In October 2010, the provincial government of Ontario, Canada enacted the Open for Business Act (OBA). A central component of the OBA is its provisions aiming to streamline the enforcement of Ontario’s Employment Standards Act (ESA). The OBA’s changes to the ESA are an attempt to manage a crisis of employment standards (ES) enforcement, arising from decades of ineffective regulation, by entrenching an individualised enforcement model. The Act aims to streamline enforcement by screening people assumed to be lacking definitive proof of violations out of the complaints process. The OBA therefore produces a new category of ‘illegitimate claimants’ and attributes administrative backlogs to these people. Instead of improving the protection of workers, the OBA embeds new racialised and gendered modes of exclusion in the ES enforcement process.

This study investigates regional variations in the factors associated with acceptance and actual experience of intimate partner violence (IPV) among married women in northern and southern Nigeria - two regions with distinct socio-cultural and economic differences. Data from the 2018 demographic and health survey are analysed to compare these two regions. The sample comprised married/living-with-partner women within the reproductive age of 15-49. Overall, a positive association exists between IPV experience and IPV acceptance, regardless of which is used as the outcome variable. Contrary to the notion that IPV is prevalent where its acceptance is high, this study finds that the reverse is true. IPV acceptance is significantly higher in the north than in the south (39.4% versus 14.7%), but the reverse is the case for the actual experience of IPV (20.1% versus 24.7%). Being employed and having access to the internet reduce the odds of IPV victimisation for women in the south, but increases the chances for northern women. Muslims in the north have significantly higher odds of IPV acceptance than their Christian counterparts in the same region, but the reverse is the case in the south. Regional differences also exist in the influence of decision-making, educational difference between spouses, and media exposure. While the cosmopolitan-success and conservative-failure hypothesis explains the regional differences in the acceptance of IPV, it fails to explain differences in the actual experience of IPV. The study provides alternative explanations for the regional differences in the experience of IPV and acceptance of it in Nigeria, and it points to the need for differing intervention programmes across regions. Notably, the study found that the association between justification of IPV and actual experience of it is bi-directional and suggests caution in making causal inferences.

The dominant paradigm of experiments in the social and behavioral sciences views an experiment as a test of a theory, where the theory is assumed to generalize beyond the experiment's specific conditions. According to this view, which Alan Newell once characterized as “playing twenty questions with nature,” theory is advanced one experiment at a time, and the integration of disparate findings is assumed to happen via the scientific publishing process. In this article, we argue that the process of integration is at best inefficient, and at worst it does not, in fact, occur. We further show that the challenge of integration cannot be adequately addressed by recently proposed reforms that focus on the reliability and replicability of individual findings, nor simply by conducting more or larger experiments. Rather, the problem arises from the imprecise nature of social and behavioral theories and, consequently, a lack of commensurability across experiments conducted under different conditions. Therefore, researchers must fundamentally rethink how they design experiments and how the experiments relate to theory. We specifically describe an alternative framework, integrative experiment design, which intrinsically promotes commensurability and continuous integration of knowledge. In this paradigm, researchers explicitly map the design space of possible experiments associated with a given research question, embracing many potentially relevant theories rather than focusing on just one. The researchers then iteratively generate theories and test them with experiments explicitly sampled from the design space, allowing results to be integrated across experiments. Given recent methodological and technological developments, we conclude that this approach is feasible and would generate more-reliable, more-cumulative empirical and theoretical knowledge than the current paradigm—and with far greater efficiency.

Adoption of cover crops in arid agroecosystems has been slow due to concerns regarding limited water resources and possible soil moisture depletion. In irrigated organic systems, potential ecosystem services from cover crops also must be considered in light of the concerns for water conservation. A constructive balance could be achieved with fall-sown small grain cover crops; however, their impacts on irrigated organic systems are poorly understood. Our first objective was to determine the ability of fall-sown small grains [cereal rye (Secale cereale L), winter wheat (Triticum aestivum L.), barley (Hordeum vulgare L.) and oat (Avena sativa L.)] to suppress winter weeds in an irrigated, organic transition field in the southwestern USA. Small grains were planted following the legume sesbania (Sesbania exaltata (Raf.) Rydb. ex A.W. Hill) during Fall 2012 and Fall 2013. In Spring 2013 and 2014, weed densities and biomass were determined within each cover crop treatment and compared against unplanted controls. Results indicated that both barley and oat were effective in suppressing winter weeds. Our second objective was to compare weed suppression and soil moisture levels among seven barley varieties developed in the western United States. Barley varieties (‘Arivat’, ‘Hayes Beardless’, ‘P919’, ‘Robust’, ‘UC603’, ‘UC937’, ‘Washford Beardless’) were fall-sown in replicated strip plots in Fall 2016. Weed densities were measured in Spring 2017 and volumetric soil moisture near the soil surface (5.1 cm depth) was measured at time intervals beginning in December 2016 and ending in March 2017. With the exception of ‘UC937’, barley varieties caused marked reductions in weed density in comparison with the unplanted control. Soil moisture content for the unplanted control was consistently lower than soil moisture contents for barley plots. Barley variety did not influence volumetric soil moisture. During the 2017–2018 growing season, we re-examined three barley varieties considered most amenable to the cropping system requirements (‘Robust’, ‘UC603’, ‘P919’), and these varieties were again found to support few weeds (≤ 5.0 weeds m−2). We conclude that several organically certified barley varieties could fill the need for a ‘non-thirsty’ cover crop that suppresses winter weeds in irrigated organic systems in the southwestern United States.