Persistent Effects of Landscape Context on Recruitment Dynamics During Secondary Succession of Tropical Forests.

Large-scale reforestation is promoted as an important strategy to mitigate climate change and biodiversity loss. A persistent challenge for efforts to restore ecosystems at scale is how to accelerate ecological processes, particularly natural regeneration. Yet, despite being recognized as an important barrier to the recovery of diverse plant communities in tropical agricultural landscapes, the impacts of dispersal limitation on natural regeneration in secondary forests-and especially how this changes as these forests grow older-are still poorly studied.

Conquering acceptability: A study of stakeholder inclusion practices in evaluation processes in francophone West African Countries.

Evaluation practices in the French-speaking countries of the West African Economic and Monetary Union (WAEMU) are poorly understood and infrequently documented. Our study is a descriptive analysis that elucidates how stakeholders are conceptualized and involved in evaluation processes in WAEMU. In these countries, evaluators are concerned about the weak stakeholder involvement in evaluation activity and call for greater stakeholder engagement, juxtaposed to the challenges of doing so.

Anti-HIV-1 Effect of the Fluoroquinolone Enoxacin and Modulation of Pro-Viral hsa-miR-132 Processing in CEM-SS Cells.

Background: Despite tremendous advances in antiretroviral therapy (ART) against HIV-1 infections, no cure or vaccination is available. Therefore, discovering novel therapeutic strategies remains an urgent need. In that sense, miRNAs and miRNA therapeutics have moved intensively into the focus of recent HIV-1-related investigations.

FORCE platform overcomes barriers of oligonucleotide delivery to muscle and corrects myotonic dystrophy features in preclinical models.

Background: We developed the FORCE platform to overcome limitations of oligonucleotide delivery to muscle and enable their applicability to neuromuscular disorders. The platform consists of an antigen-binding fragment, highly specific for the human transferrin receptor 1 (TfR1), conjugated to an oligonucleotide via a cleavable valine-citrulline linker. Myotonic dystrophy type 1 (DM1) is a neuromuscular disorder caused by expanded CUG triplets in the DMPK RNA, which sequester splicing proteins in the nucleus, lead to spliceopathy, and drive disease progression.

Reciprocal relationships between adolescent mental health difficulties and alcohol consumption.

The directionality of the relationship between adolescent alcohol consumption and mental health difficulties remains poorly understood. This study investigates the longitudinal relationship between alcohol use frequency, internalizing and externalizing symptoms from the ages of 11 to 17. We conducted a random-intercept cross-lagged panel model across three timepoints (ages: 11yrs, 14yrs, 17yrs; 50.