The European regulatory system for plant protection products-cause of a "Silent Spring" or highly advanced and protective?

Current publications that are shaping public perception repeatedly claim that residues of plant protection products (PPP) in the environment demonstrate gaps in assessing the exposure and effects of PPP, allegedly revealing the inability of the European regulatory system to prevent environmental contamination and damage such as biodiversity decline. The hypothesis is that environmental risk assessments rely on inappropriate predictive models that underestimate exposure and do not explicitly account for the impact of combinations of environmental stressors and physiological differences in stress responses. This article puts this criticism into context to allow for a more balanced evaluation of the European regulatory system for PPP.

Determination of the zebrafish embryo developmental toxicity assessment (ZEDTA) as an alternative non-mammalian approach for the safety assessment of agrochemicals.

With the US Environment Protection Agency reducing requests for (and funding of) mammalian studies alongside the proposed elimination of requests by 2035, there is an urgent need for fully validated New Approach Methods (NAMs) to fill the resultant gap for safety assessment of agrochemicals. One promising NAM for assessing the potential for human prenatal developmental toxicity potential is the Zebrafish Embryo Developmental Toxicity Assessment, a bioassay that has been used by the pharmaceutical industry for more than a decade in early-stage drug safety assessment. Despite its promise, little data has been generated to assess the validity of ZEDTA for assessing Developmental and Reproductive Toxicity of new agrochemical products.

Insights into Homogeneous Bulk Boron Doping at the Tetrahedral Site of NCM811 Cathode Materials: Structure Stabilization by Inductive Effect on TM-O-B Bonds.

Rechargeable lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) are critical for enabling sustainable energy storage. The capacity of cathode materials is a major limiting factor in the LIB performance, and doping has emerged as an effective strategy for enhancing the electrochemical properties of nickel-rich layered oxides such as NCM811. In this study, boron is homogeneously incorporated into the tetrahedral site of NCM811 through co-precipitation, leading to an inductive effect on transition metal (TM)-O-B bonds that delayed structural collapse and reduced oxygen release.

The Influence of Parental Social-Emotional Competencies on Intergenerational Child Maltreatment: A Scoping Review.

Child maltreatment is a major public and global health issue with well-documented intergenerational patterns. Social-emotional development, which is detrimentally impacted by child maltreatment, has been associated with parenting behaviors and implicated as a mechanism of intergenerational transmission of child maltreatment. This scoping review sought to synthesize information on the social-emotional skills that contribute to or protect against intergenerational maltreatment.