Adjustable wind selectivity in shearwaters implies knowledge of the foraging landscape.

Understanding the movements of highly mobile animals is challenging because of the many factors they must consider in their decision-making. Many seabirds, for example, are adapted to use winds to travel long distances at low energetic cost but also potentially benefit from targeting specific foraging hotspots. To investigate how an animal makes foraging decisions, given the inevitable trade-off between these factors, we tracked over 600 foraging trips of breeding Manx shearwaters (Puffinus puffinus; N = 218 individuals) using GPS accelerometers.

Utilization and quality of primary and specialized palliative homecare in nursing home residents vs. community dwellers: a claims data analysis.

Background: There are hardly any data on the extent to which nursing home residents are provided with palliative homecare. We want to add evidence by comparing nursing home residents (who had been living in a nursing home for at least one year) and nursing-care-dependent community dwellers in terms of utilization and quality of palliative homecare.

Methods: We conducted a population-based study with nationwide claims data from deceased beneficiaries of a large German health insurance provider.

MICCAI-CDMRI 2023 QuantConn Challenge Findings on Achieving Robust Quantitative Connectivity through Harmonized Preprocessing of Diffusion MRI.

White matter alterations are increasingly implicated in neurological diseases and their progression. International-scale studies use diffusion-weighted magnetic resonance imaging (DW-MRI) to qualitatively identify changes in white matter microstructure and connectivity. Yet, quantitative analysis of DW-MRI data is hindered by inconsistencies stemming from varying acquisition protocols.

Molecular dynamics simulations of uranyl and plutonyl cations in a task-specific ionic liquid.

Ionic liquids (ILs) are a unique class of solvents with potential applications in advanced separation technologies relevant to the nuclear industry. ILs are salts with low melting points and a wide range of tunable physical properties, such as viscosity, hydrophobiciy, conductivity, and liquidus range. ILs have negligible vapor pressure, are often non-flammable, and can have high thermal stability and a wide electrochemical window, making them attractive for use in separations processes relevant to the nuclear industry.

Predictive Blood Biomarkers of Targeted Intervention for Chronic Mental Health Symptoms following Traumatic Brain Injury.

The purpose of this study was to assess the performance of predictive blood biomarkers for responsiveness to targeted treatments for chronic psychological issues years after traumatic brain injury (TBI). Targeted Evaluation Action and Monitoring of TBI was a prospective 6-month interventional trial of participants with chronic TBI sequelae ( = 95). Plasma biomarkers were analyzed pre-intervention: glial fibrillary acidic protein (GFAP), tau, hyperphosphorylated tau Thr231 (p-Tau), von Willebrand factor (vWF), brain lipid-binding protein (BLBP), ubiquitin C-terminal hydrolase-L1 (UCH-L1), vascular endothelial growth factor-a (VEGFa), and claudin-5 (CLDN5).

An enhanced Eco1 retron editor enables precision genome engineering in human cells from a single-copy integrated lentivirus.

Retrons are a retroelement class found in diverse prokaryotes that can be adapted to augment CRISPR-Cas9 genome engineering technology to efficiently rewrite short stretches of genetic information in bacteria and yeast; however, efficiency in human cells has been limited by unknown factors. We identified non-coding RNA (ncRNA) instability and impaired Cas9 activity as major contributors to poor retron editor efficiency. We re-engineered the Eco1 ncRNA to incorporate an exoribonuclease-resistant RNA pseudoknot from the Zika virus 3' UTR and devised an RNA processing strategy using Csy4 ribonuclease to liberate the sgRNA and ncRNA.

Time-division multiplexing (TDM) sequence removes bias in T estimation and relaxation-diffusion measurements.

Purpose: To compare the performance of multi-echo (ME) and time-division multiplexing (TDM) sequences for accelerated relaxation-diffusion MRI (rdMRI) acquisition and to examine their reliability in estimating accurate rdMRI microstructure measures.

Method: The ME, TDM, and the reference single-echo (SE) sequences with six TEs were implemented using Pulseq with single-band (SB) and multi-band 2 (MB2) acceleration factors. On a diffusion phantom, the image intensities of the three sequences were compared, and the differences were quantified using the normalized RMS error (NRMSE).

Time-division multiplexing (TDM) sequence removes bias in T2 estimation and relaxation-diffusion measurements.

Purpose: To compare the performance of multi-echo (ME) and time-division multiplexing (TDM) sequences for accelerated relaxation-diffusion MRI (rdMRI) acquisition and to examine their reliability in estimating accurate rdMRI microstructure measures.

Method: The ME, TDM, and the reference single-echo (SE) sequences with six echo times (TE) were implemented using Pulseq with single-band (SB-) and multi-band 2 (MB2-) acceleration factors. On a diffusion phantom, the image intensities of the three sequences were compared, and the differences were quantified using the normalized root mean squared error (NRMSE).

Kinetic Monte Carlo Analysis Reveals Non-mean-field Active Site Dynamics in Cu-Zeolite-Catalyzed NO Reduction.

Copper-exchanged chabazite (Cu-CHA) zeolites are the preferred catalysts for the selective catalytic reduction of NO with NH. The low temperature (473 K) SCR mechanism proceeds through a redox cycle between mobile and ammonia-solvated Cu(I) and Cu(II) complexes, as demonstrated by multiple experimental and computational investigations. The oxidation step requires two Cu(I) to migrate into the same cage to activate O and form a binuclear Cu(II)-di-oxo complex.

Behavioural plasticity compensates for adaptive loss of cricket song.

Behavioural flexibility might help animals cope with costs of genetic variants under selection, promoting genetic adaptation. However, it has proven challenging to experimentally link behavioural flexibility to the predicted compensation of population-level fitness. We tested this prediction using the field cricket Teleogryllus oceanicus.

The effect of measurement error on the positive predictive value of PSW methods for SLD identification: How buffer zones dispel the illusion of inaccuracy.

Patterns of Strengths and Weaknesses (PSW) methods are widely used for identifying specific learning disabilities (SLDs). Several researchers, however, have reported that the diagnostic accuracy of PSW methods is unacceptably low when strict thresholds were used to identify students with SLDs. We believe these findings give a misleading impression of the magnitude of the diagnostic errors that are likely to arise in PSW assessments.

Climbing the Hydrogen Evolution Volcano with a NiTi Shape Memory Alloy.

Alkaline water electrolysis is a sustainable way to produce green hydrogen using renewable electricity. Even though the rates of the cathodic hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) are 2-3 orders of magnitude less under alkaline conditions than under acidic conditions, the possibility of using non-precious metal catalysts makes alkaline HER appealing. We identify a novel and facile route for substantially improving HER performance via the use of commercially available NiTi shape memory alloys, which upon heating undergo a phase transformation from the monoclinic martensite to the cubic austenite structure.

Observation and Characterization of Vibrationally Active Surface Species Accessed with Nonthermal Nitrogen Plasmas.

Polycrystalline Ni, Pd, Cu, Ag, and Au foils exposed to nonthermal plasma (NTP)-activated N are found to exhibit a vibrational feature near 2200 cm in polarization-modulation infrared reflection-absorption spectroscopy (PM-IRAS) observations that are not present in the same materials exposed to N under nonplasma conditions. The feature is similar to that reported elsewhere and is typically assigned to chemisorbed N. We employ a combination of temperature-dependent experiments, sequential dosing, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy, isotopic labeling, and density functional theory calculations to characterize the feature.

Sequence-based identification of amyloidogenic β-hairpins reveals a prostatic acid phosphatase fragment promoting semen amyloid formation.

β-Structure-rich amyloid fibrils are hallmarks of several diseases, including Alzheimer's (AD), Parkinson's (PD), and type 2 diabetes (T2D). While amyloid fibrils typically consist of parallel β-sheets, the anti-parallel β-hairpin is a structural motif accessible to amyloidogenic proteins in their monomeric and oligomeric states. Here, to investigate implications of β-hairpins in amyloid formation, potential β-hairpin-forming amyloidogenic segments in the human proteome were predicted based on sequence similarity with β-hairpins previously observed in Aβ, α-synuclein, and islet amyloid polypeptide, amyloidogenic proteins associated with AD, PD, and T2D, respectively.

Machine learning reveals singing rhythms of male Pacific field crickets are clock controlled.

Circadian rhythms are ubiquitous in nature and endogenous circadian clocks drive the daily expression of many fitness-related behaviors. However, little is known about whether such traits are targets of selection imposed by natural enemies. In Hawaiian populations of the nocturnally active Pacific field cricket (, males sing to attract mates, yet sexually selected singing rhythms are also subject to natural selection from the acoustically orienting and deadly parasitoid fly, .

Migratory bats are sensitive to magnetic inclination changes during the compass calibration period.

The Earth's magnetic field is used as a navigational cue by many animals. For mammals, however, there are few data to show that navigation ability relies on sensing the natural magnetic field. In night-time migrating bats, experiments demonstrating a role for the solar azimuth at sunset in the calibration of the orientation system suggest that the magnetic field is a candidate for their compass.

Nucleation of α-Synuclein Amyloid Fibrils Induced by Cross-Interaction with β-Hairpin Peptides Derived from Immunoglobulin Light Chains.

Heterologous interactions between different amyloid-forming proteins, also called cross-interactions, may have a critical impact on disease-related amyloid formation. β-hairpin conformers of amyloid-forming proteins have been shown to affect homologous interactions in the amyloid self-assembly process. Here, we applied two β-hairpin-forming peptides derived from immunoglobulin light chains as models to test how heterologous β-hairpins modulate the fibril formation of Parkinson's disease-associated protein α-synuclein (αSyn).

Childcare Subsidy Employment and Copayment Requirements and Child Maltreatment.

Economic support programs for low-income families may play an important role in preventing child abuse and neglect. In the United States, childcare subsidies are provided to low-income families who meet certain requirements to offset the high cost of childcare. States have flexibility in setting many policies related to the provision of childcare subsidies, which results in a great deal of variation in how the programs operate between states.