High temperatures are associated with decreased immune system performance in a wild primate.

Rising temperatures due to climate change are predicted to threaten the persistence of wild animals, but there is little evidence that climate change has pushed species beyond their thermal tolerance. The immune system is an ideal avenue to assess the effects of climate change because immune performance is sensitive to changes in temperature and immune competency can affect reproductive success. We investigate the effect of rising temperatures on a biomarker of nonspecific immune performance in a wild population of capuchin monkeys and provide compelling evidence that immune performance is associated with ambient temperature.

Outcomes for standalone anterolateral corpectomy for thoracolumbar burst fractures.

There is a paucity of data available on the context preceding anterior fusion failure or the need for a posterior fusion, the timing of the second operation, or any correlation between the different instrumentation and failure rates. A retrospective chart review was performed of 131 identified patients who underwent anterolateral corpectomy and fusion for a thoracolumbar burst fracture from 2000 to 2012 in a single institution. 96 patients had clinical and radiographic follow up of greater than two months.

Psychometric Properties of the Parental Stress Scale in Swedish Parents of Children with and without Neurodevelopmental Conditions.

Background: Parents of children with neurodevelopmental conditions (NDC) are at risk of experiencing elevated levels of parental stress. Access to robust instruments to assess parental stress is important in both clinical and research contexts. Objective: We aimed to evaluate the psychometric properties of a Swedish version of the Parental Stress Scale (PSS), completed by parents of 3- to 17-year-old children, with and without NDCs.

Information Ecology: an integrative framework for studying animal behavior.

Information is simultaneously a valuable resource for animals and a tractable variable for researchers. We propose the name Information Ecology to describe research focused on how individual animals use information to enhance fitness. An explicit focus on information in animal behavior is far from novel - we simply build on these ideas and promote a unified approach to how and why animals use information.

A care ethics approach to a reduced ability to eat.

Patients with advanced cancer often experience a reduced ability to eat, which may result in tensions between patients and family members. Often with advanced cancer diagnoses, patients' appetites decline markedly, while family members focus on nutritional intake with the hope that this will postpone death. This hope might cause tensions between the patient and family; the family may expect healthcare professionals to encourage the patient to eat more, whereas the patient needs to be supported in their reduced ability to eat.

Vascularization underlies differences in sexually selected skin coloration in a wild primate.

Male reproductive competition can select for condition-dependent, conspicuous traits that signal some aspect of fighting ability and facilitate assessment of potential rivals. However, the underlying mechanisms that link the signal to a male's current condition are difficult to investigate in wild populations, often requiring invasive experimental manipulation. Here, we use digital photographs and chest skin samples to investigate the mechanisms of a visual signal used in male competition in a wild primate, the red chest patch in geladas (Theropithecus gelada).

Awareness and Actual Knowledge of Palliative Care Among Older People: A Dutch National Survey.

Context: Lack of public knowledge of palliative care may be a barrier to timely use of palliative care and hinder engagement in advance care planning (ACP). Little research has been conducted on (the relationship between) awareness and actual knowledge of palliative care.

Objectives: To determine awareness and actual knowledge of palliative care and explore factors that contribute to knowledge of palliative care among older people.

Urinary neopterin reflects immunological variation associated with age, helminth parasitism, and the microbiome in a wild primate.

Neopterin, a product of activated white blood cells, is a marker of nonspecific inflammation that can capture variation in immune investment or disease-related immune activity and can be collected noninvasively in urine. Mounting studies in wildlife point to lifetime patterns in neopterin related to immune development, aging, and certain diseases, but rarely are studies able to assess whether neopterin can capture multiple concurrent dimensions of health and disease in a single system. We assessed the relationship between urinary neopterin stored on filter paper and multiple metrics of health and disease in wild geladas (Theropithecus gelada), primates endemic to the Ethiopian highlands.

End of life in general practice: trends 2009-2019.

Objectives: To assess possible trends between 2009 and 2019 in the Netherlands of palliative care indicators: the provision of palliative care or treatment, hospitalisations in the last month before death, use of specialised palliative care services and place of death.

Methods: The study design was a repeated retrospective cross-sectional design with questionnaires filled in by general practitioners within a clustered sample of 67 Sentinel practices. Patients whose death was non-sudden, and thus could have received palliative care, between 1 January 2009 and 31 December 2019 were included in the study, resulting in 3121 patients.

A novel statovirus identified in fecal samples from wild geladas in the Ethiopian highlands.

We present a novel statovirus in geladas (Theropithecus gelada), graminivorous primates endemic to the Ethiopian highlands. Using a high-throughput sequencing approach, we identified contiguous sequences in feces from two adult female geladas in the Simien Mountains National Park, Ethiopia, that share similarities to statoviruses. Our phylogenetic analysis of the whole genome, as well as the RNA-dependent RNA polymerase (RdRp) and capsid protein (CP) amino acid sequences, revealed that the gelada statoviruses cluster with those from other primates (laboratory populations of Macaca nemestrina and Macaca mulatta).

Online closed-loop real-time tES-fMRI for brain modulation: A technical report.

Recent studies suggest that transcranial electrical stimulation (tES) can be performed during functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). The novel approach of using concurrent tES-fMRI to modulate and measure targeted brain activity/connectivity may provide unique insights into the causal interactions between the brain neural responses and psychiatric/neurologic signs and symptoms, and importantly, guide the development of new treatments. However, tES stimulation parameters to optimally influence the underlying brain activity may vary with respect to phase difference, frequency, intensity, and electrode's montage among individuals.

Using an on-site laboratory for fecal steroid analysis in wild white-faced capuchins.

Hormone laboratories located "on-site" where field studies are being conducted have a number of advantages. On-site laboratories allow hormone analyses to proceed in near-real-time, minimize logistics of sample permits/shipping, contribute to in-country capacity-building, and (our focus here) facilitate cross-site collaboration through shared methods and a shared laboratory. Here we provide proof-of-concept that an on-site hormone laboratory (the Taboga Field Laboratory, located in the Taboga Forest Reserve, Costa Rica) can successfully run endocrine analyses in a remote location.

Multiomics analysis of rheumatoid arthritis yields sequence variants that have large effects on risk of the seropositive subset.

Objectives: To find causal genes for rheumatoid arthritis (RA) and its seropositive (RF and/or ACPA positive) and seronegative subsets.

Methods: We performed a genome-wide association study (GWAS) of 31 313 RA cases (68% seropositive) and ~1 million controls from Northwestern Europe. We searched for causal genes outside the HLA-locus through effect on coding, mRNA expression in several tissues and/or levels of plasma proteins (SomaScan) and did network analysis (Qiagen).

Leveling with Tinbergen: Four levels simplified to causes and consequences.

In 1963, Niko Tinbergen published his foundational manuscript identifying the four questions we ask in animal behavior-how does the behavior emerge across the lifespan (development); how does it work (mechanism); how and why did it evolve (evolution); and why is it adaptive (function). Tinbergen clarified that these 'levels of analysis' are complementary, not competing, thereby avoiding many fruitless scientific debates. However, the relationships among the four levels was never established.

Ventral cervico-thoracic meningeal cyst resulting in myelopathy: Case report and literature review.

Background: Spinal meningeal (dural) cysts rarely cause spinal cord compression and/or myelopathy.

Case Description: A 38-year-old male presented with 6 weeks of worsening bilateral lower extremity paresthesias and an unsteady gait. Notably, the patient was involved in a snowmobile accident 7 years ago that resulted in trauma to his thoracic spine for which he had undergone a corpectomy and posterior fusion.

Bridging Captive and Wild Studies: Behavioral Plasticity and Social Complexity in .

Cognitive ethology explores the ability of animals to flexibly adapt their behavior to rapid physical and social environment fluctuations. Although there is a historical dichotomy between field and captive studies, recently, a growing interest in questions that sit at the intersection of cognitive and adaptive perspectives has helped bridge this divide. By focusing on , we discuss the three main reasons why this hybrid approach is extremely successful.

Dominance style is a key predictor of vocal use and evolution across nonhuman primates.

Animal communication has long been thought to be subject to pressures and constraints associated with social relationships. However, our understanding of how the nature and quality of social relationships relates to the use and evolution of communication is limited by a lack of directly comparable methods across multiple levels of analysis. Here, we analysed observational data from 111 wild groups belonging to 26 non-human primate species, to test how vocal communication relates to dominance style (the strictness with which a dominance hierarchy is enforced, ranging from 'despotic' to 'tolerant').

The Goldilocks effect: female geladas in mid-sized groups have higher fitness.

The cost-benefit ratio of group living is thought to vary with group size: individuals in 'optimally sized' groups should have higher fitness than individuals in groups that are either too large or too small. However, the relationship between group size and individual fitness has been difficult to establish for long-lived species where the number of groups studied is typically quite low. Here, we present evidence for optimal group size that maximizes female fitness in a population of geladas ().

Biomass burning aerosols in most climate models are too absorbing.

Uncertainty in the representation of biomass burning (BB) aerosol composition and optical properties in climate models contributes to a range in modeled aerosol effects on incoming solar radiation. Depending on the model, the top-of-the-atmosphere BB aerosol effect can range from cooling to warming. By relating aerosol absorption relative to extinction and carbonaceous aerosol composition from 12 observational datasets to nine state-of-the-art Earth system models/chemical transport models, we identify varying degrees of overestimation in BB aerosol absorptivity by these models.