Responses of intraspecific metabolic scaling to temperature and activity differ between water- and air-breathing ectothermic vertebrates.

Metabolism underpins all life-sustaining processes and varies profoundly with body size, temperature and locomotor activity. A current theory explains some of the size-dependence of metabolic rate (its mass exponent, b) through changes in metabolic level (L). We propose two predictive advances that: (a) combine the above theory with the evolved avoidance of oxygen limitation in water-breathers experiencing warming, and (b) quantify the overall magnitude of combined temperatures and degrees of locomotion on metabolic scaling across air- and water-breathers.

Evaluation of racial and ethnic heterogeneity in the associations of sleep quality and sleep apnea risk with cognitive function and cognitive decline.

Introduction: The prevalence of poor sleep quality and sleep apnea differs by race and ethnicity and may contribute to racial disparities in cognitive aging. We investigated whether sleep quality and sleep apnea risk were associated with cognitive function and decline and whether the associations differed by race/ethnicity.

Methods: Participants from the Kaiser Healthy Aging and Diverse Life Experiences (KHANDLE; = 1690; mean age: 75.

Development of a 3D printed phantom for commissioning and quality assurance of multiple brain targets stereotactic radiosurgery.

Single plan techniques for multiple brain targets (MBT) stereotactic radiosurgery (SRS) are now routine. Patient specific quality assurance (QA) for MBT poses challenges due to the limited capabilities of existing QA tools which necessitates several plan redeliveries. This study sought to develop an SRS QA phantom that enables flexible MBT patient specific QA in a single delivery, along with complex SRS commissioning.

Stereotactic body radiotherapy for early-stage lung cancer: a systematic review on the choice of photon energy and linac flattened/unflattened beams.

SBRT is an effective local treatment for patients with early-stage non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). This treatment is currently used in patients who have poor lung function or who decline surgery. As SBRT usually has small PTV margins, reducing the beam-on-time (BOT) is beneficial for accurate dose delivery by minimising intrafraction motion as well as improved patient comfort.

Radiotherapy planning of spine and pelvis using single-energy metal artifact reduction corrected computed tomography sets.

Metal artifacts produce incorrect Hounsfield units and impact treatment planning accuracy. This work evaluates the use of single-energy metal artifact reduction (SEMAR) algorithm for treatment planning by comparison to manual artifact overriding. CT datasets of in-house 3D-printed spine and pelvic phantoms with and without metal insert(s) and two treated patients with metal implants were analysed.

Pragmatic approaches to handling practice effects in longitudinal cognitive aging research.

Introduction: The challenge of accounting for practice effects (PEs) when modeling cognitive change was amplified by the COVID-19 pandemic, which introduced period and mode effects that may bias the estimation of cognitive trajectory.

Methods: In three Kaiser Permanente Northern California prospective cohorts, we compared predicted cognitive trajectories and the association of grip strength with cognitive decline using three approaches: (1) no acknowledgment of PE, (2) inclusion of a wave indicator, and (3) constraining PE based on a preliminary model (APM) fit using a subset of the data.

Results: APM-based correction for PEs based on balanced, pre-pandemic data, and with current age as the timescale produced the smallest discrepancy between within-person and between-person estimated age effects.

Negative and positive interspecific interactions involving jellyfish polyps in marine sessile communities.

Sessile marine invertebrates on hard substrates are one of the two canonical examples of communities structured by competition, but some aspects of their dynamics remain poorly understood. Jellyfish polyps are an important but under-studied component of these communities. We determined how jellyfish polyps interact with their potential competitors in sessile marine hard-substrate communities, using a combination of experiments and modelling.

The clinical burden of extremely preterm birth in a large medical records database in the United States: complications, medication use, and healthcare resource utilization.

Introduction: Approximately 5% of global preterm births are extremely premature (EP), defined as occurring at less than 28 weeks gestational age. Advances in care have led to an increase in the survival of EP infants during the neonatal period. However, EP infants have a higher risk of developing complications such as bronchopulmonary dysplasia (BPD), intraventricular hemorrhage (IVH), and retinopathy of prematurity (ROP).

The clinical burden of extremely preterm birth in a large medical records database in the United States: Mortality and survival associated with selected complications.

Background: Preterm birth is a leading cause of infant mortality, particularly for those born extremely prematurely (EP; <28 weeks' gestational age [GA]). Survivors are predisposed to complications such as bronchopulmonary dysplasia (BPD), chronic lung disease (CLD), intraventricular hemorrhage (IVH), and retinopathy of prematurity (ROP).

Aims: To examine the epidemiology, complications, and mortality/survival among EP infants.

Comparison of conventional versus customised Eurosil-4 Pink bolus for radiotherapy of the chest wall.

Introduction: In radiotherapy, the presence of air gaps near a tumour can lead to underdose to the tumour. In this study, the impact of air gaps on dose to the surface was evaluated. 3D-printing was used to construct a Eurosil-4 Pink bolus customised to the patient and its dosimetric properties were compared with that of Paraffin wax bolus.

Shrinking body sizes in response to warming: explanations for the temperature-size rule with special emphasis on the role of oxygen.

Body size is central to ecology at levels ranging from organismal fecundity to the functioning of communities and ecosystems. Understanding temperature-induced variations in body size is therefore of fundamental and applied interest, yet thermal responses of body size remain poorly understood. Temperature-size (T-S) responses tend to be negative (e.

A new framework for growth curve fitting based on the von Bertalanffy Growth Function.

All organisms grow. Numerous growth functions have been applied to a wide taxonomic range of organisms, yet some of these models have poor fits to empirical data and lack of flexibility in capturing variation in growth rate. We propose a new VBGF framework that broadens the applicability and increases flexibility of fitting growth curves.

Association Between Maternal Exposure to Magnetic Field Nonionizing Radiation During Pregnancy and Risk of Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder in Offspring in a Longitudinal Birth Cohort.

Importance: An association between maternal exposure to magnetic field (MF) nonionizing radiation during pregnancy and the risk of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) has been reported in both animal and human studies.

Objectives: To determine whether maternal exposure to high levels of MF nonionizing radiation is associated with an increased risk of ADHD in offspring by using more accurate measurements of MF nonionizing radiation levels and physician-diagnosed ADHD, rather than self-reports, and to determine whether the association differs for the subtypes of ADHD with or without immune-related comorbidities.

Design, Setting, And Participants: A longitudinal birth cohort study was conducted at Kaiser Permanente Northern California among 1482 mother-child pairs whose mothers were participants of an existing birth cohort and whose level of exposure to MF nonionizing radiation was captured during pregnancy in 2 studies conducted from October 1, 1996, to October 31, 1998, and from May 1, 2006, to February 29, 2012.

Selection for increased male size predicts variation in sexual size dimorphism among fish species.

Variation in the degree of sexual size dimorphism (SSD) among taxa is generally considered to arise from differences in the relative intensity of male-male competition and fecundity selection. One might predict, therefore, that SSD will vary systematically with (1) the intensity of sexual selection for increased male size, and (2) the intensity of fecundity selection for increased female size. To test these two fundamental hypotheses, we conducted a phylogenetic comparative analysis of SSD in fish.

Ecological pressures and the contrasting scaling of metabolism and body shape in coexisting taxa: cephalopods versus teleost fish.

Metabolic rates are fundamental to many biological processes, and commonly scale with body size with an exponent ( b) between 2/3 and 1 for reasons still debated. According to the 'metabolic-level boundaries hypothesis', b depends on the metabolic level ( L). We test this prediction and show that across cephalopod species intraspecific b correlates positively with not only L but also the scaling of body surface area with body mass.

A synthesis of major environmental-body size clines of the sexes within arthropod species.

Body size at maturity often varies with environmental conditions, as well as between males and females within a species [termed Sexual Size Dimorphism (SSD)]. Variation in body size clines between the sexes can determine the degree to which SSD varies across environmental gradients. We use a meta-analytic approach to investigate whether major biogeographical and temporal (intra-annually across seasons) body size clines differ systematically between the sexes in arthropods.

Tunable Supramolecular Gel Properties by Varying Thermal History.

The possibility of using differential pre-heating prior to supramolecular gelation to control the balance between hydrogen-bonding and aromatic stacking interactions in supramolecular gels and obtain consequent systematic regulation of structure and properties is demonstrated. Using a model aromatic peptide amphiphile, Fmoc-tyrosyl-leucine (Fmoc-YL) and a combination of fluorescence, infrared, circular dichroism and NMR spectroscopy, it is shown that the balance of these interactions can be adjusted by temporary exposure to elevated temperatures in the range 313-365 K, followed by supramolecular locking in the gel state by cooling to room temperature. Distinct regimes can be identified regarding the balance between H-bonding and aromatic stacking interactions, with a transition point at 333 K.

Post-9/11 drug- and alcohol- related hospitalizations among World Trade Center Health Registry enrollees, 2003-2010.

Objective: To describe patterns of drug- and alcohol-related hospitalizations among persons exposed to the 2001 World Trade Center (WTC) terrorist attacks and to assess whether 9/11-related exposures or post-9/11 post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) were associated with increased odds of hospitalization.

Methods: Data for adult enrollees in the WTC Health Registry, a prospective cohort study, were linked to New York State (NYS) administrative hospitalization data to identify alcohol- and drug-related hospitalizations from enrollment to December 31, 2010. Logistic regression was used to analyze the associations between substance use-related hospitalization, 9/11-related exposure and PTSD.

Bridging Food Webs, Ecosystem Metabolism, and Biogeochemistry Using Ecological Stoichiometry Theory.

Although aquatic ecologists and biogeochemists are well aware of the crucial importance of ecosystem functions, i.e., how biota drive biogeochemical processes and vice-versa, linking these fields in conceptual models is still uncommon.

Seasonal body size reductions with warming covary with major body size gradients in arthropod species.

Major biological and biogeographical rules link body size variation with latitude or environmental temperature, and these rules are often studied in isolation. Within multivoltine species, seasonal temperature variation can cause substantial changes in adult body size, as subsequent generations experience different developmental conditions. Yet, unlike other size patterns, these common seasonal temperature-size gradients have never been collectively analysed.

Equal temperature-size responses of the sexes are widespread within arthropod species.

Sexual size dimorphism (SSD) is often affected by environmental conditions, but the effect of temperature on SSD in ectotherms still requires rigorous investigation. We compared the plastic responses of size-at-maturity to temperature between males and females within 85 diverse arthropod species, in which individuals of both sexes were reared through ontogeny under identical conditions with excess food. We find that the sexes show similar relative (proportional) temperature-body size (T-S) responses on average.

Temperature-size responses match latitudinal-size clines in arthropods, revealing critical differences between aquatic and terrestrial species.

Two major intraspecific patterns of adult size variation are plastic temperature-size (T-S) responses and latitude-size (L-S) clines. Yet, the degree to which these co-vary and share explanatory mechanisms has not been systematically evaluated. We present the largest quantitative comparison of these gradients to date, and find that their direction and magnitude co-vary among 12 arthropod orders (r(2) = 0.

Shape shifting predicts ontogenetic changes in metabolic scaling in diverse aquatic invertebrates.

Metabolism fuels all biological activities, and thus understanding its variation is fundamentally important. Much of this variation is related to body size, which is commonly believed to follow a 3/4-power scaling law. However, during ontogeny, many kinds of animals and plants show marked shifts in metabolic scaling that deviate from 3/4-power scaling predicted by general models.

Macroevolutionary patterns of sexual size dimorphism in copepods.

Major theories compete to explain the macroevolutionary trends observed in sexual size dimorphism (SSD) in animals. Quantitative genetic theory suggests that the sex under historically stronger directional selection will exhibit greater interspecific variance in size, with covariation between allometric slopes (male to female size) and the strength of SSD across clades. Rensch's rule (RR) also suggests a correlation, but one in which males are always the more size variant sex.