What determines transfer of carbon from plants to mycorrhizal fungi?

Biological Market Models are common evolutionary frameworks to understand the maintenance of mutualism in mycorrhizas. 'Surplus C' hypotheses provide an alternative framework where stoichiometry and source-sink dynamics govern mycorrhizal function. A critical difference between these frameworks is whether carbon transfer from plants is regulated by nutrient transfer from fungi or through source-sink dynamics. In this review, we: provide a historical perspective; summarize studies that asked whether plants transfer more carbon to fungi that transfer more nutrients; conduct a meta-analysis to assess whether mycorrhizal plant growth suppressions are related to carbon transfer; and review literature on cellular mechanisms for carbon transfer. In sum, current knowledge does not indicate that carbon transfer from plants is directly regulated by nutrient delivery from fungi. Further, mycorrhizal plant growth responses were linked to nutrient uptake rather than carbon transfer. These findings are more consistent with 'Surplus C' hypotheses than Biological Market Models. However, we also identify research gaps, and future research may uncover a mechanism directly linking carbon and nutrient transfer. Until then, we urge caution when applying economic terminology to describe mycorrhizas. We present a synthesis of ideas, consider knowledge gaps, and suggest experiments to advance the field.

Peer conformity and competition shape how business managers evaluate withdrawals from Russia amid the Ukraine War.

States have long used economic sanctions in response to violations of international law as a strategy to restore order. Increasingly, firms also reject doing business with violators. In response to the war in Ukraine, hundreds of multinational corporations voluntarily withdrew from Russia, even when policymakers were still debating the extent of sanctions. How did firm managers evaluate whether to withdraw from the Russian market? Using a survey experiment with Japanese firm managers conducted three months after the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, we explore how peer effects-information on what other firms are doing in response to the crisis-influence support for withdrawal of business activity with Russia. Our findings show that information about withdrawal by other firms from a diverse set of countries promotes peer conformity that increases support. In contrast, information about ongoing business with Russia by Chinese firms fosters competition that reduces support. Market exposure moderates these reactions, although the concern about peer behavior does not appear to be driven by a reputation mechanism. Our research provides insight into how business actors perceive the strategic interplay of peer influence and market dynamics in the context of geopolitical conflicts.

Interplay between sanctions, donor conditionality, and food insecurity in complex emergencies: the case of Syria.

Thirteen years into conflict, Syria remains one of the world's major humanitarian crises. Food insecurity has reached unprecedented levels in the country, with millions of civilians facing starvation and hunger. The key drivers of this are conflict-related, nature-induced, and, importantly, man-made policies. Semi-comprehensive sanctions against the country and donor conditionality vis-à-vis humanitarian operators' work are prime examples of the latter. These policies are inextricably linked with food insecurity in Syria and have direct and indirect impacts on it. Understanding the ongoing crisis as a complex emergency, this paper examines the interplay between sanctions, donor conditionality, and food insecurity, an understudied subject in the Syrian context. It explores how sanctions and donor conditionality influence three key dimensions of food security, namely, availability, affordability and economic access, and utilisation, and subsequently worsen the conditions confronting the Syrian population. The paper contributes to discussions on food security in conflict settings and how sanctions negatively affect civilians in targeted countries.

Social sanctions in response to injunctive norm violations.

Injunctive social norms are societal standards for how people are expected to behave. When individuals transgress these norms, they face social sanctions for their behavior. These sanctions can take many forms ranging from verbal or non-verbal reactions and from disapproval to ostracism. We review the stable characteristics and situational variables that affect a bystander's tendency to enact social sanctions against someone who violates an injunctive social norm. Stable characteristics include the bystander's extraversion, altruism, the belief that others can change their behavior, and their cultural background. Situational factors include the extent to which the violated norm implicates the bystander, the social hierarchies among the bystander and transgressor, the presence of additional bystanders, and (when applicable) the bystander's relationship to the victim of the norm violation. We also discuss the costs that a bystander can incur by attempting to enact social sanctions. We conclude with a discussion of the application of social sanctions to enforce pro-social social norms.

Direct and indirect effects of economic sanctions on health: a systematic narrative literature review.

BACKGROUND: Economic sanctions are defined as restrictions imposed by other countries against individuals, groups, or governments of other countries. These sanctions have a detrimental impact on the economies of countries and can also limit access to healthcare services for people as a secondary consequence. This study aims to systematically review the literature to examine the direct and indirect effects of economic sanctions on health through a narrative synthesis. METHODS: This systematic literature review was limited to papers published between January 1990 and July 2023. Relevant documents published in English and Persian were searched for in databases including Cochrane Library, PubMed, Embase, Scopus, Web of Science, SID, Magiran, and Irandoc. The direct and indirect effects of sanctions on health were classified using two frameworks proposed by the World Health Organization (WHO): the Health System Building Blocks and "Social Determinants of Health". RESULTS: Out of a total of 18,219 articles, 59 were selected based on inclusion criteria. The effects of sanctions were divided into direct and indirect groups. Direct effects encompassed seven main themes: access to essential medicine, medical products, vaccines and technologies; financing; health workforce; service delivery; research and health information systems; health outcomes; and financial risk protection. Indirect effects also were classified into six main themes: socioeconomic status; food and agricultural products; stress; early life conditions; high-risk behaviors and addiction; and transport. Most studies focused on the access to medicines, food, economic and social status. CONCLUSIONS: Economic sanctions have had profoundly negative impacts on all aspects of the healthcare system. The international community must address these effects on health and take necessary measures to prevent or mitigate them, particularly in ensuring the provision of basic and essential healthcare needs for individuals and communities.

OFAC, Famine, and the Sanctioning of Afghanistan: A Catastrophic Policy Success.

On August 15, 2021, American military forces withdrew from Kabul, and the sanctioning of Afghanistan began. Marred by the usual problems-ineffective, counterproductive, unwieldy-these sanctions revealed three additional puzzles. First, although grounded in targeted sanctions, they transformed into de facto comprehensive sanctions. Secondly, that transformation was instantaneous and unprompted. Thirdly, a near-famine followed within weeks. I make nested analytical, functional, and explanatory arguments. The analytical argument is that targeted sanctions are best understood not as tools of international coercion but primarily as domestic regulations. The functional argument is that the Office of Foreign Asset Control (OFAC) uses tactical and strategic ambiguity to maximize its regulatory reach over financial intuitions, humanitarian aid organizations, and money transfer organizations. The explanatory argument returns to the puzzles. I argue that, without any signal from OFAC, which was the signal, and reflecting OFAC's regulatory domination, when the Taliban took Kabul, the international financial community, humanitarian aid organizations, and remittance providers all dissociated from Afghanistan with immediate effect and particularly acute consequences on food entitlements.

A bibliometric analysis of global research on united nations security council sanctions (1990-2023).

UNSC sanctions have been referred to as a powerful tool increasingly used by the UNSC to maintain international peace and security based on Chapter VII of the United Nations Charter. This study conducts a bibliometric analysis to provide a comprehensive overview of the current research status, developments trends, and research hotspots in UNSC sanctions research from 1990 to 2023. This study uses CiteSpace to visualize and analyze datasets of 345 articles about UNSC sanctions obtained from the Web of Science (WOS) database. The research on UNSC sanctions has three stages: the initial development stage (1990-2006), the transitional development stage (2007-2017), and the rapid development stage (2018-2023). This study describes UNSC sanctions research status, trends, hotspots, and distributions of publications by journal sources, disciplines, countries, institutions, and authors. It also describes the knowledge-based mapping and research hotspots on UNSC sanctions, including keywords, citation burst, keyword clusters, keyword clusters timeline view, cited references, intellectual base, and descriptive analysis. In addition, this study analyzed UNSC sanctions research divided into four domain categories: implementation, human rights, impacts, and specific regimes. The results showed that the topic of UNSC sanctions was multidisciplinary research and that scholars from different research disciplines had different focuses on UNSC sanctions. This study offers valuable insights into the current hot topics within the field of UNSC sanctions and offers recommendations for future research directions.

Who holds the reins? Context-dependent resource allocation in the mutualism between fig trees and their fig wasp pollinators.

Mutualisms are consumer-resource interactions, in which goods and services are exchanged. Biological market theory states that exchanges should be regulated by both partners. However, most studies on mutualisms are one-sided, focusing on the control exercised by host organisms on their symbionts. In the brood-site pollination mutualism between fig trees and their symbiont wasp pollinators, galled flowers are development sites for pollinator larvae and are exchanged for pollination services. We determined if pollinator galls influenced resource allocation to fig inflorescences called syconia and considered feedbacks from the host tree. We experimentally produced syconia containing only seeds (S), only pollinator galls (G) or seeds and galls (SG) with varying number of introduced female pollinator wasps, i.e., foundress wasps. Biomass allocation to syconia was affected by foundress numbers and treatment groups; SG treatments received highest biomass allocation at low foundress numbers, and both G and SG treatments at high foundress numbers. Seeds are important determinants of allocation at low foundress numbers; galls are likely more influential at high foundress numbers. Most allocation in the G and SG treatment was to the syconium wall, likely as protection from parasitoids and temperature/humidity fluctuations. Dry mass of individual seeds and wasps (except at low foundress numbers) was unchanged between treatment groups, indicating seeds and wasps regulate resource flow into them, with lower flow into galls containing the smaller males compared to females commensurate with sexual dimorphism. We demonstrate the importance of considering the direct role of symbionts in accessing resources and controlling exchanges within mutualisms.

Metamicrobiome diversity promotes the evolution of host-microbial mutualisms.

Ecological theory suggests that a host organism's internal spatial structure can promote the persistence of mutualistic microbes by allowing for the turnover of tissue occupied by non-beneficial or cheating microbes. This type of regulation, whereby a host preferentially rewards tissue occupied by beneficial members of its microbiome but sanctions tissue occupied by non-beneficial cheaters, is expected to generate a competition-extinction trade-off by allowing beneficial microbes to experience a lower extinction rate than competitively dominant cheaters. Using an adaptive dynamics approach, we demonstrate that although ecologically stable, microbial regulation via sanctioning is not stable in any evolutionary sense, as each individual host will be under pressure to reduce the costs incurred from cheater suppression in order to maximize its own fitness at the expense of the rest of the host population. However, increasing the diversity of non-beneficial cheaters in the host population metamicrobiome can lead to an increase in the relative fitness of hosts that actively sanction non-performing tissue, thus facilitating the evolutionary emergence and persistence of such strategies in host-microbial systems. These counter-intuitive results demonstrate how diversity at multiple levels of biological organization and spatiotemporal scales can interact to facilitate the establishment and maintenance of mutualistic relationships.

Medical Sanctions Against Russia: Arresting Aggression or Abrogating Healthcare Rights?

Since 2022, the EU, US, and other nations have imposed medical sanctions on Russia to block the export of pharmaceuticals and medical devices and curtail clinical trials to degrade Russia's military capabilities. While international law proscribes sanctions that cause a humanitarian crisis, an outcome averted in Russia, the military effects of medical sanctions have been lean. Strengthening medical sanctions risks violating noncombatant and combatant rights to healthcare. Each group's claim is different. Noncombatants and severely injured soldiers who cannot return to duty enjoy the right to adequate health care that sanctions cannot undermine. Combatants falling captive enjoy the same medical care that adversaries provide their own troops. Combatants yet to renounce hostilities, however, have no claim to medical attention and remain subject to sanctions. Nevertheless, medical sanctions prove unworkable in this complex environment of conflicting rights and command no place in a sustainable sanction regime.

Dynamic spillover effects between EU economic sanctions against Russia, oil prices, and share prices of energy companies in third countries: evidence from China and the USA.

This study establishes a comprehensive suite of sanction indices and employs the time-varying vector autoregressive dynamic spillover index (TVP-VAR-DY) model, to examine the spillover effects of EU economic sanctions against Russia on oil prices and share prices of third-country energy companies, as well as takes China and the USA as examples for analysis. The findings indicate that sanctions targeting the energy sector are the primary drivers of volatility in oil prices and energy company stock prices. The impact on Chinese energy firms' stock prices is more pronounced, while the effects on their American counterparts are more enduring. The indirect impact of EU sanctions on Russia on China is greater than that of the USA. Both direct and indirect sanctions exhibit comparable spillover effects on oil and stock prices. Direct sanctions have better explanatory power for stock price fluctuations, while indirect sanctions have better explanatory power for oil price fluctuations.

Counter-terrorism and humanitarian action: UK INGO responses since 2015.

There has been growing awareness in recent years of the wide-ranging negative impacts that counter-terrorism measures and sanctions impose on humanitarian action. Drawing on semi-structured interviews with the staff of international non-governmental organisations (INGOs), this paper examines these impacts on INGOs based in the United Kingdom. This is a context where a particularly complex array of laws, policies, and regulatory regimes have emerged alongside an increasingly hostile political and media setting for INGOs, creating an environment characterised by uncertainty. The paper shows that counter-terrorism measures and sanctions are leading INGOs to adopt more conservative approaches to partnership in areas controlled by proscribed groups, undermining broader commitments to the localisation agenda. The analysis reveals that perceptions of risk within INGOs vary considerably, but that despite this, INGOs have developed strategies to reduce the impacts of counter-terrorism measures, which over time, have led to improved coordination, and in some instances, a willingness to push back against regulations.

Financial sanctions and environmental, social, and governance (ESG) performance: A comparative study of ownership responses in the Chinese context.

This study conducts a comprehensive examination of the relationships between strategic investors, financial sanctions, and ESG performance in non-financial Chinese firms from 2011 to 2022. Using data from ASSET4 and the Global Sanction Database (GSDB), the study reveals that government and foreign investors significantly promote ESG performance, while family investors have a negative impact. Moreover, the findings show distinct responses among government, foreign, and family investors when confronted with financial sanctions. Specifically, both foreign and family investors demonstrate an increased engagement in CSR activities during these periods. Conversely, government investors are linked to a decrease in ESG performance amidst financial sanctions. The results make significant contributions to the fields of ownership literature, agency theory, and sanctions literature. Additionally, they provide practical implications for diverse stakeholders, including investors, managers, and policymakers.

Sanctions and economic growth: Do sanction diversity and level of development matter?

The application of economic and political sanctions becomes a vital tool of international politics to facilitate peaceful coexistence among the nations. However, the issue of the effectiveness of sanctions in creating adequate disutility to ensure compliance remains contentious. Therefore, this study assesses the effect of sanctions on the economic growth of the target states. It captures the diversity of sanctions using system Generalized Method of Moments (GMM) with extensive dataset for the period 1970-2018. The findings reveal that extensive, multilateral sanctions, and export restriction are the only sanction categories that are effective in creating disutility and reducing the real income per capita growth when targeted at the developed countries. On the other hand, limited sanctions (partial embargo) - sanctions that are targeted at specific sectors, groups, and issues such as withdrawal of foreign aid, as well as import restrictions can effectively reduce income per capita growth when imposed on developing countries while all other categories of sanctions have a positive effect on income growth in targeted developing economy. Therefore, we, conclude that the sanctions diversity, development level of the target country and sender identity play vital roles concerning the sanctions-economic growth nexus. These attributes should be considered in the application and analyses of sanctions to ensure their effectiveness. The study provided several interesting policy insights.

The emergence of division of labour through decentralized social sanctioning.

Human ecological success relies on our characteristic ability to flexibly self-organize into cooperative social groups, the most successful of which employ substantial specialization and division of labour. Unlike most other animals, humans learn by trial and error during their lives what role to take on. However, when some critical roles are more attractive than others, and individuals are self-interested, then there is a social dilemma: each individual would prefer others take on the critical but unremunerative roles so they may remain free to take one that pays better. But disaster occurs if all act thus and a critical role goes unfilled. In such situations learning an optimum role distribution may not be possible. Consequently, a fundamental question is: how can division of labour emerge in groups of self-interested lifetime-learning individuals? Here, we show that by introducing a model of social norms, which we regard as emergent patterns of decentralized social sanctioning, it becomes possible for groups of self-interested individuals to learn a productive division of labour involving all critical roles. Such social norms work by redistributing rewards within the population to disincentivize antisocial roles while incentivizing prosocial roles that do not intrinsically pay as well as others.

The long reach of juvenile and criminal legal debt: How monetary sanctions shape legal cynicism and adultification.

Previous research has established the deleterious long-term effects of juvenile legal system involvement such as increased risk of criminal legal system involvement as adults. This paper examines retrospective accounts of how that process occurs by exploring the following research question: how does one's involvement in the juvenile legal system, which includes monetary sanctions, shape peoples' views of law and legal institutions and with what consequences? Based on 19 interviews with adults who have legal debt from both juvenile and criminal legal systems, the paper focuses on four aspects of the long-reaching effects of juvenile legal involvement and juvenile monetary sanctions: legal socialization, adultification, legal cynicism, and future aspirations. In all these aspects, we show the organizational constraints that shape individuals' perspectives about the law and the impact of monetary sanctions on their lives. In doing so, the paper shows how monetary sanctions associated with juvenile cases add to the cumulative disadvantage of legal system involvement.

The Impact of the No Jab No Play and No Jab No Pay Legislation in Australia: A Scoping Review.

Australia has a long history of population-based immunisation programs including legislations. This paper reports on a review of evaluations of the impact of the federal No Jab No Pay (NJNPay) and state implemented No Jab No Play (NJNPlay) legislations on childhood immunisation coverage and related parental attitudes. Five databases were searched for peer-review papers (Medline (Ovid); Scopus; PsycInfo; ProQuest; and CINAHL). Additional searches were conducted in Google Scholar and Informit (Australian databases) for grey literature. Studies were included if they evaluated the impact of the Australian NJNPay and/or NJNPlay legislations. Ten evaluations were included: nine peer-review studies and one government report. Two studies specifically evaluated NJNPlay, five evaluated NJNPay, and three evaluated both legislations. Findings show small but gradual and significant increases in full coverage and increases in catch-up vaccination after the implementation of the legislations. Full coverage was lowest for lower and higher socio-economic groups. Mandates are influential in encouraging vaccination; however, inequities may exist for lower income families who are reliant on financial incentives and the need to enrol their children in early childhood centres. Vaccine refusal and hesitancy was more evident among higher income parents while practical barriers were more likely to impact lower income families. Interventions to address access and vaccine hesitancy will support these legislations.

State-level data on TANF policy changes during the COVID-19 pandemic.

OBJECTIVE: COVID-19 mitigation measures prompted many states to revise the administration of their welfare programs. States adopted policies that varied across the U.S. to respond to the difficulties in fulfilling program requirements, as well as increased financial need. This dataset captures the changes made to Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) programs during the COVID-19 pandemic, from March 2020 through December 2020. The authors created this dataset as part of a larger study that examined the health effects of TANF policy changes during the COVID-19 pandemic. DATA DESCRIPTION: TANF is the main cash assistance program for low-income families in the U.S., but benefits are often conditional on work requirements and can be revoked if an individual is deemed noncompliant. Structural factors during the COVID-19 pandemic made meeting these criteria more difficult, so some states relaxed their rules and increased their benefits. This dataset captures 24 types of policies that state TANF programs enacted, which of the states enacted each of them, when the policies went into effect, and when applicable, when the policies ended. These data can be used to study the effects of TANF policy changes on various health and programmatic outcomes.

Development of the Russian Economy in the Medium Term: Risks and Opportunities.

The article examines the key risks of the development of the Russian economy in the medium term, resulting from the deterioration of trade and economic relations with developed countries. The most important changes in the model of functioning of the national economy are described. It is stated that restrictions on the supply of imported products have become the leading factor in the reduction of economic activity in 2022. The shifts in the formation of production, income and prices under the influence of sanctions are considered as a process of structural and technological restructuring of the Russian economy, requiring an increase in investment in the modernization of production and an increase in costs for research and development. The high dependence on imports and the technological backwardness of the Russian economy are seen as key constraints to its sustainable development in the medium term. One of the ways to compensate for the negative impact of sanctions, with a high probability, will be the replacement of high-quality resources with mass ones. It is emphasized that, taking into account the tasks of economic development, the period of loss of the quality of economic growth should not be long, and in the medium and long term, the qualitative component of growth should prevail in the formation of economic dynamics.

Dedollarization as a Direction of Russia's Financial Policy in Current Conditions.

Under financial sanctions imposed on it by the US and the EU, Russia accelerated dedollarization of the economy in order to protect its sovereignty in strategic rivalry with the US. To this end, a set of strategies has been developed, such as reducing the direct use of US dollars, cutting the share of the dollar in foreign exchange reserves, expanding nondollar funding, increasing gold reserves, as well as reserving and creating its own systems of payment and exchange of financial information. This practice is of great importance for reorganizing the dollar-dominated international monetary system and establishing a new economic and financial system.