An antiviral effect of lithium has been proposed, but never investigated for coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). Using electronic health records of 26 554 patients with documented serum lithium levels during the pandemic, we show that the 6-month COVID-19 infection incidence was lower among matched patients with ‘therapeutic’ (0.50–1.00) versus ‘subtherapeutic’ (0.05–0.50) lithium levels (hazard ratio (HR) = 0.82, 95% CI 0.69–0.97, P = 0.017) and among patients with ‘therapeutic’ lithium levels versus matched patients using valproate (HR = 0.79, 95% CI 0.67–0.92, P = 0.0023). Lower rates of infection were observed for both new COVID-19 diagnoses and positive polymerase chain reaction tests, regardless of underlying psychiatric diagnosis and vaccination status.

One of the most famous public figures in later nineteenth-century Australia was Giuseppe Garibaldi. The man known as the ‘hero of two worlds’ – Europe and South America – was in fact also the hero of a third. The nature of Garibaldi's iconic status in the Australian colonies was complex, multi-faceted, and fractured and it occurred at a moment when the notion of celebrity was being transformed amid what was effectively a fundamental democratization of the public sphere in the Anglophone world. As such, it provides an important opportunity to ponder the implications of what has been called ‘intimacy at a distance’.

video observation of oral gastric eversion in a free-living caribbean reef shark (carcharhinus perezi) shows voluntary gastric eversion followed by retraction not only occurs, but is extremely rapid (lasting ∼0.3 s). eversion may occur by stomach relaxation–oesophageal contraction coupled with increased abdominal pressures to enable prolapse, and retraction by a mechanism analogous to suction feeding. this behaviour provides a ‘cleansing’ function for removing indigestible food particles, parasites or mucus from the stomach lining. sharks, and possibly other animals with similar gut morphologies, may use this technique to help maintain a healthy alimentary tract.

The relationship between nationalism and the land, observes Philip Bull in his recent study of the Irish land question, “formed a nexus which was so strong that the one issue became effectively a metaphor for the other.” Any student of nineteenth-century Irish politics can appreciate the force of this eloquent conclusion. Nevertheless, the preoccupation with the land by contemporaries and historians alike has relegated an important strand of economic nationalism devoted to manufacturing industry to a footnote in Irish history. The fate of manufacturing industry in the aftermath of the Union of 1800 is the subject of controversy among scholars suggesting, at the very least, substantial regional and sectoral variations. Contemporaries, however, were in little doubt that Irish manufacturing industry was suffering from terminal decline, a perception that had formed a regular reprise in public comment throughout the previous century. As John O’Connell wrote in 1849 “the question of Irish manufacturing has been, for more than a century and a half, one of the chief grounds of bitterness and bickerings” between Ireland and England.

Few places in early nineteenth-century Britain had as grim a reputation as the Manchester suburb of Ancoats. In this concentration of “dark, satanic mills” and festering slums were some of the worst social problems of the Industrial Revolution. Angus Reach, a journalist with the Morning Chronicle, who visited Ancoats in the late 1840s, described it as “entirely an operative colony” containing “some of the most squalid-looking streets, inhabited by swarms of the most squalid-looking people which I have ever seen.” While making his way through this “labyrinth,” Reach saw no promise of anything better. Even the handful of chapels seemed to complement the scene of hopelessness; in a pathetically futile attempt to carry the eye up to a vision of something better their “infinitesimal” Gothic arches and ornaments only served to reinforce “the grimy nakedness” of the surrounding factories.

A preliminary investigation of the defect structure of the monoclinic zeta phase, within the interfacial region of Fe-Zn couples, has been performed using cross-section transmission electron microscopy (TEM). Twin boundaries and dislocations have been unambiguously identified, however, examples of defects which, as of yet are unknown, are also presented. The monoclinic zeta phase was found to twin by a rotation of 180° about the normal to the (110) plane.