Evolutionary conservation and metabolic significance of autophagy in algae.

Autophagy is a highly conserved 'self-digesting' mechanism used in eukaryotes to degrade and recycle cellular components by enclosing them in a double membrane compartment and delivering them to lytic organelles (lysosomes or vacuoles). Extensive studies in plants have revealed how autophagy is intricately linked to essential aspects of metabolism and growth, in both normal and stress conditions, including cellular and organelle homeostasis, nutrient recycling, development, responses to biotic and abiotic stresses, senescence and cell death. However, knowledge regarding autophagic processes in other photosynthetic organisms remains limited.

Environmental Injustice and Electronic Waste in Ghana: Challenges and Recommendations.

Electronic waste (e-waste) or discarded electronic devices that are unwanted, not working, or have reached their end of life pose significant threats to human and environmental health. This is a major concern in Africa, where the majority of e-waste is discarded. In the year 2021, an estimated 57.

Hypometabolism to survive the long polar night and subsequent successful return to light in the diatom Fragilariopsis cylindrus.

Diatoms, the main eukaryotic phytoplankton of the polar marine regions, are essential for the maintenance of food chains specific to Arctic and Antarctic ecosystems, and are experiencing major disturbances under current climate change. As such, it is fundamental to understand the physiological mechanisms and associated molecular basis of their endurance during the long polar night. Here, using the polar diatom Fragilariopsis cylindrus, we report an integrative analysis combining transcriptomic, microscopic and biochemical approaches to shed light on the strategies used to survive the polar night.

The transcriptional co-regulators NBCL1 and NBCL2 redundantly coordinate aerial organ development and root nodule identity in legumes.

Medicago truncatula NODULE ROOT1 (MtNOOT1) and Pisum sativum COCHLEATA1 (PsCOCH1) are orthologous genes belonging to the NOOT-BOP-COCH-LIKE (NBCL) gene family which encodes key transcriptional co-regulators of plant development. In Mtnoot1 and Pscoch1 mutants, the development of stipules, flowers, and symbiotic nodules is altered. MtNOOT2 and PsCOCH2 represent the single paralogues of MtNOOT1 and PsCOCH1, respectively.

Implementing Antibiotic Stewardship in a Network of Urgent Care Centers.

Background: Most antibiotics are prescribed in outpatient settings, including urgent care clinics (UCCs); however, few UCCs have described implementing antibiotic stewardship. This study describes interventions to reduce total antibiotic and azithromycin use in a UCC network.

Methods: The researchers conducted a prospective performance improvement project in five UCCs in Delaware, with > 40 providers and > 75,000 visits annually.

Assessing an intervention to improve the safety of automatic stop orders for inpatient antimicrobials.

Background: Automatic stop orders (ASOs) for antimicrobials have been recommended as a component of antimicrobial stewardship programs, but may result in unintentional treatment interruption due to failure of providers to re-order an antimicrobial medication. We examined the impact of a multifaceted intervention designed to reduce the potential harms of interrupting antimicrobial treatment due to ASOs.

Methods: An intervention was implemented that included pharmacist review of expiring antimicrobials as well as provider education to encourage use of a long-term antimicrobial order set for commonly used prophylactic antimicrobials.

Statewide Antibiotic Stewardship: : An eBrightHealth Choosing Wisely Initiative.

Objective: To implement a collaborative statewide antibiotic stewardship initiative in both the ambulatory and inpatient settings.

Methods: Five participating Delaware health systems each convened internal team(s) to translate the vision set forth by the eBrightHealth LLC Choosing Wisely Work Group into clinical action through process improvement efforts at their institutions. The teams focused on implementing antibiotic time-outs, and on improving antibiotic prescribing for upper respiratory infections in ambulatory settings.

Potential Reporting Bias in Neuroimaging Studies of Sex Differences.

Numerous functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies have reported sex differences. To empirically evaluate for evidence of excessive significance bias in this literature, we searched for published fMRI studies of human brain to evaluate sex differences, regardless of the topic investigated, in Medline and Scopus over 10 years. We analyzed the prevalence of conclusions in favor of sex differences and the correlation between study sample sizes and number of significant foci identified.

Raman and Energy Dispersive Spectroscopy (EDS) Analyses of a Microsubstance Adhering to a Fiber of the Turin Shroud.

The Raman spectrum of a microsubstance, smeared on a fiber coming from the Shroud of Turin, was compared with numerous spectra published for old or modern pigment dyes, whole bloods, dried bloods, red blood cells, albumin, very ancient blood stains, and various "degradation" products of heme. Within the wavenumber measure accuracy, it is shown that all Raman lines detected above background could correspond to vibration frequencies found in biliverdin-derived compounds except a weak line that we tentatively attributed to amide I. Biliverdin is known as an oxidative ring cleavage product of the heme of blood.

Extended treatment for cigarette smoking cessation: a randomized control trial.

Aim: To test the potential benefit of extending cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) relative to not extending CBT on long-term abstinence from smoking.

Design: Two-group parallel randomized controlled trial. Patients were randomized to receive non-extended CBT (n = 111) or extended CBT (n = 112) following a 26-week open-label treatment.

I can time with a little help from my friends: effect of social enrichment on timing processes in Pigeons (Columba livia).

There is evidence that impulsive decision-making is associated with errors in timing. However, there has been little attempt to identify the putative mechanism responsible for impulsive animals' timing errors. One means of manipulating impulsivity in non-human animals is providing different levels of access to conspecifics.

Drivers who self-estimate lower blood alcohol concentrations are riskier drivers after drinking.

Rationale: Alcohol increases the tendency for risky driving in some individuals but not others. Little is known about the factors underlying this individual difference. Studies find that those who underestimate their blood alcohol concentration (BAC) following a dose of alcohol tend to be more impulsive and report greater willingness to drive after drinking than those who estimate their BACs to be greater than their actual BAC.

Who are the real bird brains? Qualitative differences in behavioral flexibility between dogs (Canis familiaris) and pigeons (Columba livia).

Pigeons given a simultaneous spatial discrimination reversal, in which a single reversal occurs at the midpoint of each session, consistently show anticipation prior to the reversal as well as perseveration after the reversal, suggesting that they use a less effective cue (time or trial number into the session) than what would be optimal to maximize reinforcement (local feedback from the most recent trials). In contrast, rats (Rattus norvegicus) and humans show near-optimal reversal learning on this task. To determine whether this is a general characteristic of mammals, in the present research, pigeons (Columba livia) and dogs (Canis familiaris) were tested with a simultaneous spatial discrimination mid-session reversal.

Simulated driving performance under alcohol: Effects on driver-risk versus driver-skill.

Background: Those who place their vehicles closer to others on the roadway are said to have high risk acceptance, and this contributes to motor vehicle crashes. However, the effect of alcohol on this risky driving behavior is understudied. Behavioral mechanisms that contribute to risky driving are also not well understood.

Alcohol cues impair learning inhibitory signals in beer drinkers.

Background: Models of drug addiction emphasize the reciprocal influence of incentive-motivational properties of drug-related cues and poor impulse control resulting in drug use. Recent studies have shown that alcohol-related cues can impair response inhibition. What is unknown is whether these cues also disrupt learning of inhibitory associations.

Self-regulatory depletion in dogs: insulin release is not necessary for the replenishment of persistence.

It has been hypothesized that self-control is constrained by a limited energy resource that can be depleted through exertion. Once depleted, this resource can be replenished by the consumption or even the taste of glucose. For example, the need to inhibit reduces subsequent persistence at problem solving by humans and dogs, an effect that is not observed when a glucose drink (but not a placebo) is administered following initial inhibition.

Suboptimal choice by pigeons may result from the diminishing effect of nonreinforcement.

Pigeons prefer an alternative that provides them with a stimulus 20% of the time that predicts 10 pellets of food and a different stimulus 80% of the time that predicts 0 pellets, over an alternative that provides them with a stimulus that always predicts 3 pellets of food, even though the preferred alternative provides them with considerably less food. It appears that the stimulus that predicts 10 pellets acts as a strong conditioned reinforcer, despite the fact that the stimulus that predicts 0 pellets occurs 4 times as often. In the present research, we tested the hypothesis that early in training conditioned inhibition develops to the 0-pellet stimulus, but later in training it dissipates.

The evolution of self-control.

Cognition presents evolutionary research with one of its greatest challenges. Cognitive evolution has been explained at the proximate level by shifts in absolute and relative brain volume and at the ultimate level by differences in social and dietary complexity. However, no study has integrated the experimental and phylogenetic approach at the scale required to rigorously test these explanations.

Less means more for pigeons but not always.

When humans are asked to judge the value of a set of objects of excellent quality, they often give this set higher value than those same objects with the addition of some of lesser quality. This is an example of the affect heuristic, often referred to as the less-is-more effect. Monkeys and dogs, too, have shown this suboptimal effect.

Transitive inference by pigeons: does the geometric presentation of the stimuli make a difference?

In studies of transitive inference (TI), nonhuman animals are typically trained with the following 5-term task: A+B-, B+C-, C+D-, D+E- where the letters stand for arbitrary stimuli and [+] indicates that choice is reinforced and [-] indicates that choice is not reinforced. A TI effect is found when, given the untrained test pair BD, subjects choose B. TI effects have been found in many nonhuman species.

Six-term transitive inference with pigeons: successive-pair training followed by mixed-pair training.

In nonhuman animals, the transitive inference (TI) task typically involves training a series of four simultaneous discriminations involving, for example, arbitrary colors in which choice of one stimulus in each pair is reinforced [+] and choice of the other color is nonreinforced [-]. This can be represented as A+B-, B+C-, C+D-, D+E- and can be conceptualized as a series of linear relationships: A > B > C > D > E. After training, animals are tested on the untrained non-endpoint pair, BD.

Midsession reversals with pigeons: visual versus spatial discriminations and the intertrial interval.

Discrimination reversal learning has been used as a measure of species flexibility in dealing with changes in reinforcement contingency. In the simultaneous-discrimination, midsession-reversal task, one stimulus (S1) is correct for the first half of the session, and the other stimulus (S2) is correct for the second half. After training, pigeons show a curious pattern of choices: They begin to respond to S2 well before the reversal point (i.

Impulsivity affects suboptimal gambling-like choice by pigeons.

Pigeons prefer a low-probability, high-payoff but suboptimal alternative over a reliable low-payoff optimal alternative (i.e., one that results in more food).

Transgenerational inheritance of increased fat depot size, stem cell reprogramming, and hepatic steatosis elicited by prenatal exposure to the obesogen tributyltin in mice.

Background: We have previously shown that exposure to tributyltin (TBT) modulates critical steps of adipogenesis through RXR/PPARγ and that prenatal TBT exposure predisposes multipotent mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) to become adipocytes by epigenetic imprinting into the memory of the MSC compartment.

Objective: We tested whether the effects of prenatal TBT exposure were heritable in F2 and F3 generations.

Methods: We exposed C57BL/6J female mice (F0) to DMSO vehicle, the pharmaceutical obesogen rosiglitazone (ROSI), or TBT (5.

Environmental enrichment affects suboptimal, risky, gambling-like choice by pigeons.

Pigeons prefer a risky option with a low probability of a high payoff over a less risky option that results in more food. This finding is analogous to suboptimal human monetary gambling because in both cases there appears to be an overemphasis of the occurrence of the winning event and an underemphasis of the losing event. In the present research, we found that pigeons that were exposed to an enriched environment (a large cage with three other pigeons for 4 h a day) were less likely to show this suboptimal choice behavior compared with typically housed laboratory pigeons in a control group.