In Vitro Predictions of Acute Fish Toxicity for Development of Sustainable Crop Protection Products.

New agrochemicals must demonstrate safety to numerous ecological systems, including aquatic systems, and aquatic vertebrate toxicity is typically evaluated by using the in vivo acute fish toxicity (AFT) test. Here, we investigated two alternative in vitro assays using a cell line isolated from rainbow trout () gill tissue: (i) adenosine triphosphate (ATP) luminescence and (ii) cell painting. The former assay measures cytotoxicity, while the latter measures changes in cellular morphology in response to chemical exposure.

Leveraging In Silico Structure-Activity Models to Predict Acute Honey Bee () Toxicity for Agrochemicals.

In the realm of crop protection products, ensuring the safety of pollinators stands as a pivotal aspect of advancing sustainable solutions. Extensive research has been dedicated to this crucial topic as well as new approach methodologies in toxicity testing. Hence, within the agricultural and chemical industries, prioritizing pollinator safety remains a constant objective during the development of predictive tools.

Butenolide Insecticide Flupyradifurone Affects Honey Bee Worker Antiviral Immunity and Survival.

Honey bees face many environmental stressors, including exposure to pesticides and pathogens. A novel butenolide pesticide, flupyradifurone, was recently introduced to the US and shown to have a bee-friendly toxicity profile. Like the much-scrutinized neonicotinoids that preceded it, flupyradifurone targets the insect nervous system.

Nuclear translocation of vitellogenin in the honey bee ().

Unlabelled: Vitellogenin (Vg) is a conserved protein used by nearly all oviparous animals to produce eggs. It is also pleiotropic and performs functions in oxidative stress resistance, immunity, and, in honey bees, behavioral development of the worker caste. It has remained enigmatic how Vg affects multiple traits.

Context-dependent influence of threat on honey bee social network dynamics and brain gene expression.

Adverse social experience affects social structure by modifying the behavior of individuals, but the relationship between an individual's behavioral state and its response to adversity is poorly understood. We leveraged naturally occurring division of labor in honey bees and studied the biological embedding of environmental threat using laboratory assays and automated behavioral tracking of whole colonies. Guard bees showed low intrinsic levels of sociability compared with foragers and nurse bees, but large increases in sociability following exposure to a threat.

Social immunity in honey bees: royal jelly as a vehicle in transferring bacterial pathogen fragments between nestmates.

Social immunity is a suite of behavioral and physiological traits that allow colony members to protect one another from pathogens, and includes the oral transfer of immunological compounds between nestmates. In honey bees, royal jelly is a glandular secretion produced by a subset of workers that is fed to the queen and young larvae, and which contains many antimicrobial compounds. A related form of social immunity, transgenerational immune priming (TGIP), allows queens to transfer pathogen fragments into their developing eggs, where they are recognized by the embryo's immune system and induce higher pathogen resistance in the new offspring.

Social immunity in honey bees: royal jelly as a vehicle in transferring bacterial pathogen fragments between nestmates.

Social immunity is a suite of behavioral and physiological traits that allow colony members to protect one another from pathogens, and includes the oral transfer of immunological compounds between nestmates. In honey bees, royal jelly is a glandular secretion produced by a subset of workers that is fed to the queen and young larvae, and which contains many antimicrobial compounds. A related form of social immunity, transgenerational immune priming (TGIP), allows queens to transfer pathogen fragments into their developing eggs, where they are recognized by the embryo's immune system and induce higher pathogen resistance in the new offspring.

Pesticide-Virus Interactions in Honey Bees: Challenges and Opportunities for Understanding Drivers of Bee Declines.

Honey bees are key agricultural pollinators, but beekeepers continually suffer high annual colony losses owing to a number of environmental stressors, including inadequate nutrition, pressures from parasites and pathogens, and exposure to a wide variety of pesticides. In this review, we examine how two such stressors, pesticides and viruses, may interact in additive or synergistic ways to affect honey bee health. Despite what appears to be a straightforward comparison, there is a dearth of studies examining this issue likely owing to the complexity of such interactions.

A protocol for co-creating research project lay summaries with stakeholders: guideline development for Canada's AGE-WELL network.

Background: Funding bodies increasingly require researchers to write lay summaries to communicate projects' real-world relevance to the public in an accessible way. However, research proposals and findings are generally not easily readable or understandable by non-specialist readers. Many researchers find writing lay summaries difficult because they typically write for fellow subject specialists or academics rather than the general public or a non-specialist audience.

Honey bee virus causes context-dependent changes in host social behavior.

Anthropogenic changes create evolutionarily novel environments that present opportunities for emerging diseases, potentially changing the balance between host and pathogen. Honey bees provide essential pollination services, but intensification and globalization of honey bee management has coincided with increased pathogen pressure, primarily due to a parasitic mite/virus complex. Here, we investigated how honey bee individual and group phenotypes are altered by a virus of concern, Israeli acute paralysis virus (IAPV).

Honey bees as bioindicators of changing global agricultural landscapes.

There is a growing need to understand relationships between agricultural intensification and global change. Monitoring solutions, however, often do not include pollinator communities that are of importance to ecosystem integrity. Here, we put forth the honey bee as an economical and broadly available bioindicator that can be used to assess and track changes in the quality of agricultural ecosystems.

The role of Vitellogenin in the transfer of immune elicitors from gut to hypopharyngeal glands in honey bees (Apis mellifera).

Female insects that survive a pathogen attack can produce more pathogen-resistant offspring in a process called trans-generational immune priming. In the honey bee (Apis mellifera), the egg-yolk precursor protein Vitellogenin transports fragments of pathogen cells into the egg, thereby setting the stage for a recruitment of immunological defenses prior to hatching. Honey bees live in complex societies where reproduction and communal tasks are divided between a queen and her sterile female workers.

Feasibility and Participant Experiences of a Written Emotional Disclosure Intervention for Parental Caregivers of People with Psychosis.

Caregivers are at increased risk of poor health but often cannot engage with health care because of practical constraints. Writing therapies such as written emotional disclosure (WED) might represent an accessible therapy for this population. This study aimed to determine whether WED is a suitable therapy for caregivers of people with psychosis.

Differences in group size and the extent of individual participation in group hunting may contribute to differential prey-size use among social spiders.

We have previously shown that the range of prey sizes captured by co-occurring species of group-hunting social spiders correlates positively with their level of sociality. Here, we show that this pattern is probably caused by differences among species in colony size and the extent to which individuals participate in group hunting. We assess levels of participation for each species from the fraction of individuals responding to the struggling prey that partake as attackers and from the extent to which the number of attackers increases with colony size.

A Quantitative Index of Sociality and Its Application to Group-Living Spiders and Other Social Organisms.

Species are often classified in discrete categories, such as solitary, subsocial, social and eusocial based on broad qualitative features of their social systems. Often, however, species fall between categories or species within a category may differ from one another in ways that beg for a quantitative measure of their sociality level. Here, we propose such a quantitative measure in the form of an index that is based on three fundamental features of a social system: (1) the fraction of the life cycle that individuals remain in their social group, (2) the proportion of nests in a population that contain multiple vs.

Cigarette smoking, socioeconomic status, and psychosocial factors: examining a conceptual framework.

Inequalities in cigarette smoking prevalence exist, with smokers more likely to be poor and less educated. Higher socioeconomic status (SES) is associated with higher quit rates. The overall relationship between low SES and poor health, as measured by morbidity and mortality, is well established.

The frequency and significance of 'striatal toe' in parkinsonism.

A striatal toe has been defined as an apparent extensor plantar response, without fanning of the toes, in the absence of any other signs suggesting dysfunction of the cortico-spinal tract. Little is known about the frequency and significance of this sign in parkinsonian syndromes. We prospectively examined 62 patients (Parkinson's disease: other akinetic-rigid syndromes=38:24) for the presence or absence of striatal toe and extensor plantar responses, as defined by Babinski.

Familial British dementia with amyloid angiopathy: early clinical, neuropsychological and imaging findings.

Familial British dementia with amyloid angiopathy (FBD) is an autosomal dominant condition characterized by a dementia, progressive spastic tetraparesis and cerebellar ataxia with onset in the sixth decade. A point mutation in the BRI gene has been shown to be the genetic abnormality. Genealogical work with the large family originally reported by Worster-Drought and updated by Plant has identified nine generations dating back to the late eighteenth century.

The effect of pH of douching solutions on mucociliary clearance.

The effect of the pH of hypertonic saline nasal douching solutions on mucociliary clearance was studied in order to investigate the common notion that such solutions should be buffered alkaline. Thirty normal subjects were included in a randomised controlled crossover trial. Mucociliary clearance was measured by the saccharin clearance time.

Fitness, performance, and risk of injury in British Army officer cadets.

The objectives of this study were to investigate the effectiveness of the Commissioning Course (CC) to develop and maintain standards of fitness, to assess capability to perform military tasks, and to determine the relationship between fitness and risk of injury in 106 British Army officer cadets (OCdts). Aerobic fitness, muscular strength, endurance, and body composition were regularly assessed. Performance on four representative military tasks was measured at the end of the CC.

Cloning and characterisation of the rabbit 5-HT1D alpha and 5-HT1D beta receptors.

The genes encoding the rabbit 5HT1D alpha and 5HT1D beta receptors have been cloned. The deduced amino acid sequence of these receptors shows 91-92% amino acid sequence identity with their human homologues, and similar high sequence identity with homologues from other species. The receptors were transiently expressed in COS-7 cells and exhibit a pharmacological profile closely resembling their human homologues, including a higher affinity of ketanserin for the 5-HT1D alpha subtype.