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A minimum unit price (MUP) of AUD$1.30 per standard drink was implemented in 2018 in the Northern Territory (NT), Australia, to reduce the availability of cheap alcohol. Despite evidence of its efficacy in decreasing alcohol consumption and harms, the MUP was repealed on 1 March 2025. This study aimed to determine the immediate impacts of the MUP repeal on the price of off-premises (i.e. takeaway) alcohol in Darwin, NT, assessing the proportion of products available <$1.30 per standard drink after the repeal in March 2025, identifying whether these products were pre-existing or new to market, and analysing any broader shifts in the price distribution across all alcoholic products that could be attributable to the repeal. Observational study of all alcoholic products available from three large alcohol retailer websites. Darwin, NT, between October 2024 and March 2025. Price per standard drink was estimated, and fixed-effects panel quantile regression was used to test for price differences. Within one month of the repeal, no beer or spirits, 5.1% of all wine and 2.5% of all ciders were available <$1.30 per standard drink, including 67.6% of the 37 wine products in vessels &#x2265;1&#xa0;L. Of the products identified at <$1.30 per standard drink, most had been available in previous months (i.e. not new or restocked). Quantile regression results showed a downward shift in price across the market for all product types, including beer and spirits, which were priced substantially above the $1.30 threshold at all percentiles. The largest reductions were observed for cheaper spirits, beer, cider and wine &#x2265;1&#xa0;L, ranging from $0.08 at the 20th percentile for spirits to $0.48 for wine &#x2265;1&#xa0;L at the 10th percentile. The minimum unit price repeal in Northern Territory, Australia, in March 2025 resulted in an immediate increase in the availability of cheap alcohol products and a downward shift in the overall price of alcohol in the off-premises market, particularly for lower-priced products.

Empirical conclusions depend not only on data but also on analytic decisions. Many-analyst studies have quantified this dependence: independent teams testing the same hypothesis on the same dataset regularly reach conflicting conclusions. But such studies require costly human coordination. We show that fully autonomous AI analysts built on large language models (LLMs) can, cheaply and at scale, produce the analytic dispersion observed in human many-analyst studies. In our framework, each AI analyst independently executes a complete analysis pipeline on a fixed dataset and hypothesis; a separate AI auditor screens every run for methodological validity. Across three datasets, AI analyst-produced analyses exhibit substantial dispersion in effect sizes, [Formula: see text]-values, and conclusions. This dispersion can be traced to identifiable analytic choices in preprocessing, model specification, and inference that vary systematically across LLM and persona conditions. Critically, the outcomes are steerable: reassigning the analyst persona or LLM shifts the distribution of results even among methodologically sound runs. These results highlight a central challenge for AI-automated empirical science: when defensible analyses are cheap to generate, evidence becomes abundant and vulnerable to selective reporting. The same capability also helps address it: treating analyst results as distributions makes analytic uncertainty visible, and deploying AI analysts against a published specification can reveal how much disagreement stems from underspecified design choices. Taken together, our results motivate a transparency norm: AI-generated analyses should be accompanied by multiverse-style reporting and full disclosure of the prompts used, on par with code and data.

In this study feather hydrolysate served as the sole nitrogen source for the cultivation of Spirulina (Limnospira platensis) replacing nitrate used in the standard medium. Although Spirulina is well known for its excellent nutritional content ideal for food and animal feed application and it allows a climate smart production system, its wide use remains limited because of high production cost. The growth medium used for cultivation where nitrate serves as the nitrogen source has significant contribution to the high production cost. Therefore, the use of cheaper growth substrates could help lower production cost and make Spirulina biomass accessible to most users. The feather hydrolysate used in this study was prepared through microbial solubilization which also resulted in the production of a protease that has properties suitable for different industrial applications. The whole feather hydrolysate and the enzyme-free feather hydrolysate obtained after recovery of the enzyme supported good growth of Spirulina equivalent to nitrate in the standard medium. Currently the poultry industry releases huge quantities of feather as waste posing serious risks of environmental pollution. The results of this study, therefore, indicate that feather could serve as a cheap substrate to produce an industrially important enzyme while the enzyme free hydrolysate serve as a substrate for the cultivation of Spirulina. This process, in addition to lowering production costs, could help to reduce environmental pollution. Therefore, integration of feather hydrolysis, enzyme production, and Spirulina cultivation could lead to a circular bioeconomy offering huge environmental and economic benefits.

Cardiovascular-kidney-metabolic (CKM) syndrome recognises the connection between metabolic conditions (particularly obesity, diabetes and metabolic dysfunction-associated fatty liver disease), chronic kidney disease and cardiovascular disease. There is a high and growing prevalence of CKM syndrome. While genetic and epigenetic factors predispose to CKM syndrome, the emergence of disease is heavily influenced by social determinants of health and individual behaviours. The pathophysiology of CKM syndrome is driven by insulin resistance, inflammation, oxidative stress and vascular dysfunction. Urinary albumin:creatinine ratio is a relatively cheap and accessible biomarker of CKM syndrome, which can be used to identify and monitor disease trajectory. Primary and secondary prevention is relevant across the life course. Healthy behaviours, including diet, physical activity, sleep and stress management are important. There are established and emerging drugs that are effective across a range of metabolic conditions and that confer reno- and cardio-protective effects. Remission may be achievable.

Consumption of cheap, adulterated alcohol containing high congener levels (e.g., aldehydes, esters, fusel alcohols, methanol) takes a major socioeconomic toll, highlighting the need for on-site analysis. Handheld chemical profiling of spirits is feasible via Raman spectrometry, but its applicability is limited by dark packaging as well as unverified accuracy for low-alcoholic products and homemade distillates. To address this shortcoming, we examine the resonance behavior of metal-phenolic film-coated quartz crystal microbalances in response to the saturated vapor of five commercial or homemade fermented and distilled beverages (beer, white wine, red wine, whiskey and grape brandy). Validated across 270 trials, the sensor demonstrated superior repeatability in chemical characterization of the drinks at mild and room temperatures, maintaining minimal error of ~&#x2009;0.2-3.6%. Competitive vapor sorption leads to non-linear quantitative detection upon injection of 0.25-2.5 mL methanol into the alcoholic drinks. Under optimal temperature of the beer and grape brandy (6-16&#xa0;&#xb0;C), however, the sensor demonstrates a linear relationship with increasing methanol levels. It achieves a detection limit of ~&#x2009;0.13&#xa0;g/100 mL, a value 7.4 times lower than the current EU permissible dose. This outcome emphasizes the resilience of our technology in point-of-use quality assessment of beverages, counteracting counterfeit alcohol trading.

Ensuring the permanent containment of CO2 in geological formations necessitates robust methods for conformance control. Lately, attention is being shifted towards the use of cheap and environmentally-friendly composite materials, wherein the stability and viscosifying power in situ remains a challenge. In this study, a family of interpenetrating network composites was formulated by crosslinking polyacrylamide in a hydrophobically-modified cellulose sulphate solution to form a gel. The stability and mechanical properties of the gel were investigated using turbidimetry and molecular dynamics simulation. The hydrophobically-modified cellulose sulphates attained reasonable stability in saline conditions typical of the subsurface environment. They had moderate compatibility with crosslinked polyacrylamide, which was further improved by guanidine hydrochloride, leading to a more cohesive interpenetrating network at a representative reservoir temperature. In the same vein, the tertiary amine salt also improved the quality of the gel after exposure to CO2, where they demonstrated enhanced thickening and elasticity with CO2 in an ionic environment. With this stability in the presence of CO2 and improved mechanical properties in situ harsh reservoir conditions, these novel interpenetrating network gels stand as a promising material for increasing CO2 storage security in subsurface formations.

Background/Objectives: Obesity is a complex disease involving the accumulation of an excessive amount of body fat. It is a condition that develops when energy intake and expenditure are out of balance. Inflammation and hypertrophy are caused by the storage of too much white adipose tissue, resulting in adiposity, which also secretes several pro-inflammatory cytokines. Several marketed drugs used to treat obesity have many side effects from long-term ingestion. Other therapeutic compounds from marine sources have already been established for treating obesity. In this paper, the main aim is to establish the anti-obesity effect of derived omega-3 fatty acids, i.e., 20:3(n-3)11-14-17 Icosa Trienoic Acid from Setipinna phasa oil. Methods: In the present investigation, inbred male Swiss albino mice were segregated into six categories as Control, Positive Control, Obese Control, and 20:3(n-3)11-14-17 Icosa Trienoic Acid treated groups with three different doses: Treatment 1, Treatment 2 and Treatment 3. To establish the potentiality of extracted fatty acid, different parameters would be considered, such as body weight, lipid composition and different obesity and obesity-associated inflammation markers. Results: After the isolated compound from Setipinna phasa oil was applied to the treated mice group, it decreased their body weight and serum lipid profile by 39.05%, 62.69%, 62.72%, and 78.46% compared to obese mice. They also had lower levels of uric acid, Serum Glutamic-Oxaloacetic Transaminase, Serum Glutamic Pyruvic Transaminase, and Alkaline Phosphatase, at 67.52%, 57.09%, 64.80%, and 43.99%, than the obese group. Accordingly, the treated group's expression of genes linked to obesity and pro-inflammatory cytokines was downregulated. The isolated compound affected both anti-inflammatory and anti-obesity markers' increased expression. Conclusions: After the experiments, it was found that the possibility of using fatty acids might be helpful as an anti-inflammatory and anti-obesity therapeutic strategy. This therapeutic strategy will be cheap and cost-effective.

The development of highly efficient and practical methods for the incorporation of stable isotopes into organic molecules are valuable for the pharmaceutical industry. The introduction of deuterium or 13C atoms can enable the direct tracing of the drug molecule without substantially altering its structure or function, and the introduction of CD3- or 13C-labeled methyl into drug molecules is one of the most commonly employed methodology. However, the key issue that plagues the current research area is the lack of highly efficient, cheap and practical reagent. Herein, methyl-d3-N,N'-diisopropylcarbamimidate (MDIC-d3), methyl-13C-N,N'-diisopropylcarbamimidate (MDIC-13C) and methyl-13C-d3-N,N'-diisopropylcarbamimidate (MDIC-13CD3), synthesized via reaction of diisopropylcarbodiimide with the corresponding stable isotope labelled methanols, have been developed for the efficient d3-methylation, 13C-methylation and 13CD3-methylation of complex molecules bearing several possible reactive sites with good selectivity, high-level deuterium and 13C incorporation, and good functional group tolerance under external base-free conditions. Additionally, these reagents can also be employed for the highly efficient isotope-labeled methylation of arenes via palladium-catalyzed Suzuki-Miyaura type cross-coupling.

Insulin resistance is a serious public health concern. The triglyceride-glucose (TyG) index is a simple, cheap, and reproducible surrogate of insulin resistance, and sodium-glucose cotransporter-2 (SGLT2) inhibitors have reshaped cardio-metabolic care beyond glycemic control. We followed PRISMA and registered the protocol in PROSPERO (CRD420251056341). We searched PubMed, Scopus, Web of Science, EMBASE, and Cochrane from inception to May 31st, 2026, including observational studies and clinical trials reporting baseline and follow-up TyG in adults. Two reviewers screened records, a third resolved disagreements, data were extracted with a standardized form, and quality was assessed with Cochrane RoB 2.0, the Newcastle-Ottawa Scale, and the JBI checklists. The primary outcome was within-group change in TyG pooled with random-effects (Hartung-Knapp); tests were two-sided with a significance threshold of 0.05. Twelve studies comprising thirteen study arms were included, with a total of 1845 participants. Follow-up ranged from 12 weeks to 5 years. Across studies, SGLT2 inhibitor therapy was associated with a significant reduction in TyG index (mean difference = -0.28, 95% confidence interval [-0.41; -0.14], I2 = 99.5%). Egger's test suggested possible small-study effects, whereas Begg's test and trim-and-fill analysis did not show clear evidence of publication bias; leave-one-out analyses showed that no single study materially influenced the pooled estimate. Despite heterogeneity in populations, drug choice, and follow-up duration, SGLT2 inhibitors were associated with a significant decrease in TyG, although small-study effects cannot be excluded.

The aim was to investigate and clarify the cause of death of a 26-year-old male found dead in his apartment. It was known that the individual used drugs of abuse. In the apartment, the police found amongst others a "brown powder" and a glass bottle labeled with "2-methyl-2-butanol" (2m2b). Autopsy and chemical analyses were performed. The autopsy revealed unspecific morphological signs of an intoxication (cerebral swelling and cyanosis, pulmonary edema, full urine bladder). Headspace gas chromatography with flame ionization detection (HS-GC-FID) was used to determine 2m2b and ethanol. Concentrations of 245&#xa0;mg/L and 225&#xa0;mg/L 2m2b could be detected in the femoral vein blood specimen and urine, respectively. Ethanol was detected below the level of quantification (0,2&#xa0;g/L) in both matrices. The detected blood concentration of 2m2b was more than twice as high as the 2m2b concentration described as comatose in a previous published case report. However, in the presented case further analysis revealed toxic concentrations of methamphetamine and venlafaxine and also identified a previous intake of heroin and diazepam. Thus, a combined drug intoxication was assumed as cause of death. Little is known about the abuse of 2m2b as an alternative to ethanol. Since 2m2b is widely available, cheap, more potent than ethanol, while lacking its hangover effects and is likely not detected by routine HS-GC-FID methods for the detection of blood ethanol concentrations, it may be of forensic relevance.

The Euler buckling of rods is a long-studied mechanical instability, and it remains relevant to this day, as the constituent components in many biological and physical systems are linear polymers, such as microtubules or carbon nanotubes. At finite temperature, if a polymer is shorter than its persistence length, then the polymer is semiflexible, and its elasticity remains rodlike. But polymers can also stretch due to their finite extensibility, which can couple to energetically cheap bending deformations in nonlinear ways when a load is applied to the system. We show how the interplay between thermal fluctuations and nonlinear elasticity dramatically modifies the Euler buckling instability for compressed semiflexible polymers in a fixed strain ensemble. We identify a Ginzburg-like length scale beyond which thermally excited undulations lead to a softened Young's modulus, while the polymer nevertheless remains semiflexible. Both perturbative calculations and numerical Monte Carlo simulations suggest a qualitative change in several scaling properties of the buckling transition. The critical compressional strain for thermal buckling now increases with system size, in contrast to athermal buckling, where it decreases with system size. Renormalization group calculations confirm this picture, and also show that thermal buckling is controlled by a new fixed point with different critical exponents compared to classical Euler buckling.

A single spin-echo, acquired in the presence of a constant magnetic field gradient, has a phase proportional to the average velocity of the sample and an amplitude determined by the distribution of velocities for laminar flow in a pipe. If we make assumptions about symmetry, it is therefore possible to reconstruct a velocity profile from a series of spin echoes acquired with different echo times, TE = 2 &#x3c4; . The velocity profile encompasses a range of shear stresses and so describes the shear-rate dependence of the fluid viscosity, making this a rapid, non-invasive rheometric measurement. The appeal of this approach lies in its simplicity: a constant, uniform magnetic field gradient can be readily constructed using low-field permanent magnets and the resulting magnetic resonance instrument is relatively cheap and easily sited. In order to extend the range of fluids to which such a rheometer can be applied, we have designed a pre-measurement polarization unit to maximize the polarization of fluids with a long T 1 , such as aqueous solutions.

In this paper, I argue that negative genetic selection should play a significant role in space exploration and colonization, at least until therapeutic gene editing and repair technologies are cheap and effective enough to enable modification of embryos that would otherwise be selected against and discarded. I present two key reasons supporting this claim. First, there are many traits prospective parents have strong reasons to select against in the Earth context despite the lack of the significant environmental pressures present in space, and these reasons are likely to persist in the context of space exploration and colonization. Second, both in general and in the high-stakes context of space exploration and colonization, negative selection is likely to be desirable to implement. With regard to the latter context, this is because negative selection can help increase the chances of astronaut survival, mission success, and thriving space colonies by ensuring that astronauts do not have certain traits that would negatively impact those chances. For all these reasons, space bioethicists should avoid prematurely ruling out negative selection as a useful and desirable tool for ensuring that future space exploration and colonization missions have maximally effective and healthy crews.

In recent years make-on-demand compound libraries (so-called Chemical Spaces) have gained more and more interest in pharmaceutical industry. Compound vendors promise cheap compounds, fast delivery, high synthetical accessibility and a large pool of novel chemical matter, fulfilling the requirements of fast Design-Make-Test cycles. Searching in ultralarge Chemical Spaces with known 2D similarity metrics, like fingerprint-based Tanimoto, substructure, or pharmacophore similarity searches, contains pitfalls due to the representation of molecules as synthons with connectivity rules. Applied to a set of almost 3000 drug-relevant queries we analyzed the ability of similarity search methods to retrieve analog compounds from Chemical Spaces, and how to best approach typical use cases in early phase drug discovery. Distinct characteristics of each similarity metric suggest orthogonal complementarity, enabling a versatile framework to diverse challenges present in hit discovery and lead expansion campaigns. Our investigations resulted in formulating practical considerations and guidelines for interpreting the scores including recommendations for thresholds for each similarity metric.

Despite the broad utility of &#x3b3;-amino alcohols, their direct and diverse synthesis from cheap, abundant feedstocks remains challenging. Here, by developing a bifunctional single-atom cobalt catalyst supported on hierarchical ordered porous carbon matrix (Co-N4/HPC), it enables hydroxyaminomethylation of nonactivated terminal alkenes with nitroarenes and formaldehyde using HCOOH reductant. This difunctionalization reaction features operational simplicity, high atom/step economy, broad substrate scope, excellent functionality tolerance, high selectivity, and catalyst reusability, offering a practical platform for the general synthesis of &#x3b3;-arylamino alcohols from bulk chemicals. Notably, the Co-N4 sites mediate mild reduction, while the mesoporous N-doped carbon support enriches formaldehyde via physical adsorption, facilitating the capture of hydroxylamines formed in situ from nitroarene reduction. Subsequent 1,3-dipolar cycloaddition of the resulting nitrones with alkenes, followed by reduction of the cycloadducts, delivers the desired products. The concept of exploiting metal-support synergy for mild reduction and efficient intermediate conversion will open a door to the further development of useful tandem reactions through rational catalyst design.

Malaria affects almost 263 million people worldwide, most of whom live in sub-Saharan countries. In a strategy to reduce malaria-related mortality and limit transmission, diagnosis in endemic areas needs to be immediately available on the field, easy to perform and cheap. Therefore, it currently heavily relies on microscopic examination of blood smears. However, several studies comparing the sensitivity of this approach with qPCR, considered as the most sensitive method albeit not available on the field, found that up to half of the infected population failed to be detected by microscopy alone because no visible parasites could be found in blood smears. These so-called submicroscopic infections pose a diagnostic challenge, yet represent a huge reservoir for malaria transmission. In this study, we hypothesized that qPCR results could be predicted by deep learning from subtle cell signals present in thin blood smear images, even in the absence of visible parasites, making a sensitive diagnostic directly available on the field using a microscope and a smartphone. To test this hypothesis, we acquired a large smartphone-based blood smear images dataset from samples tested both for microscopy and qPCR. We then focused exclusively on these "negative" slides from the microscopic diagnostic point of view, among which half were qPCR positive. A range of standard deep learning models were evaluated to best predict the qPCR result from these microscopy images, using various backbones along with various aggregation functions at the slide level, from a simple vote to Multiple Instance Learning with attention. Our results show that the qPCR results can be predicted from parasite free blood smear images with 62.0% (&#xb1;&#x2009;2.5 on 4-folds) accuracy and reaching 67.2% (&#xb1;&#x2009;9.6 on 4-folds) in sensitivity. We then used generative models to investigate the subtle morphological variations occurring in red blood cells that may contribute to predicting malaria infection in the absence of parasites. Leveraging thin blood smear and portable deep learning, we established the first proof of concept that the qPCR sensitivity can be approached through the detection of submicroscopic infections directly on the field without additional infrastructure and thus could significantly improve malaria surveillance and elimination efforts.

Herein, we report a sustainable, one-pot synthetic strategy for the synthesis of aldazines, ketazines, and quinoxalines in air using a cheap, nontoxic, and air-stable Zn-catalyst (1) bearing a redox-active tridentate arylazo pincer, 2-(4-chlorophenyldiazenyl)-1,10-phenanthroline (L). Catalyst 1 exhibits promising catalytic activity for the synthesis of a broad spectrum of aldazines, ketazines, and quinoxalines in moderate to good isolated yields, using alcohols as inexpensive starting materials. Mechanistic investigations revealed an exclusively ligand-centered redox-driven catalytic dehydrogenation of alcohols, followed by subsequent coupling reactions, in which the Zn-center serves merely as a template.