Apical hook opening of plant seedlings: Unfolding the role of auxin and the cell wall.

Apical hook opening is crucial for seedling establishment and is regulated by unequal distribution of the hormone auxin through unknown mechanisms. In this issue of Developmental Cell, Walia et al. demonstrate that apical hook opening is an output of tissue-wide forces; auxin and cell wall integrity (CWI) signaling interact to restrict elongation to the concave side of the apical hook.

Reusable vs Single Use: what Are the Device Trade-Offs in Improving Sustainability.

As autoinjector requirements become increasingly diverse and pharma companies look for quicker routes to market, with lower costs and improved sustainability, there is an increasing trend towards devices with a reusable element. The flexibility in reusable elements can be beneficial for pharma companies with access to these platforms, allowing a relatively rapid transition between different drug combinations. However, it can also lead to devices designed to cover a wide range of requirements which are over designed for their actual more limited end use.

The changing landscape of text mining: a review of approaches for ecology and evolution.

In ecology and evolutionary biology, the synthesis and modelling of data from published literature are commonly used to generate insights and test theories across systems. However, the tasks of searching, screening, and extracting data from literature are often arduous. Researchers may manually process hundreds to thousands of articles for systematic reviews, meta-analyses, and compiling synthetic datasets.

Performance of wearable sleep trackers during nocturnal sleep and periods of simulated real-world smartphone use.

Goal And Aims: To test sleep/wake transition detection of consumer sleep trackers and research-grade actigraphy during nocturnal sleep and simulated peri-sleep behavior involving minimal movement.

Focus Technology: Oura Ring Gen 3, Fitbit Sense, AXTRO Fit 3, Xiaomi Mi Band 7, and ActiGraph GT9X.

Reference Technology: Polysomnography.

Parental Experiences with Newborn Screening and Gene Replacement Therapy for Spinal Muscular Atrophy.

Background: Spinal muscular atrophy (SMA) is a genetic neurodegenerative disorder with onset predominantly in infants and children. In recent years, newborn screening and three treatments, including gene replacement therapy (Onasemnogene abeparvovec-xioi), have become available in the United States, aiding in the diagnosis and treatment of children with SMA.

Objective: To evaluate parents' experiences with newborn screening and gene replacement therapy and to explore best practices for positive newborn screen disclosure and counseling of families.

Selecting a sleep tracker from EEG-based, iteratively improved, low-cost multisensor, and actigraphy-only devices.

Aims: Evaluate the performance of 6 wearable sleep trackers across 4 classes (EEG-based headband, research-grade actigraphy, iteratively improved consumer tracker, low-cost consumer tracker).

Focus Technology: Dreem 3 headband, Actigraph GT9X, Oura Ring Gen3, Fitbit Sense, Xiaomi Mi Band 7, Axtro Fit3.

Reference Technology: In-lab polysomnography with 3-reader, consensus sleep scoring.

Country differences in nocturnal sleep variability: Observations from a large-scale, long-term sleep wearable study.

Study Objectives: Country or regional differences in sleep duration are well-known, but few large-scale studies have specifically evaluated sleep variability, either across the work week, or in terms of differences in weekday and weekend sleep.

Methods: Sleep measures, obtained over 50 million night's sleep from ∼220,000 wearable device users in 35 countries, were analysed. Each person contributed an average of ∼242 nights of data.

One day you too will be older: Teaching empathy to physical therapy students with an older adult simulator suit.

The purpose of this study was to determine the effect of an older adult simulation suit on empathy in physical therapy students. The study used a mixed-methods design. An older adult simulator suit was designed for use in this study.

The value of large-scale studies of sleep and cognition.

Large-scale, global studies providing representative characterisation of sleep and its relation to cognitive performance are rare. In a recent study using a video game to assess spatial navigation, Coutrot and colleagues found that, among participants aged 54-70 years, optimal wayfinding performance was associated with a self-reported sleep duration of 7 h. The results also showed that, while the effects of age and gender on sleep duration were consistent across countries, geography and/or culture significantly modulated sleep duration, a finding that merits further study.

Assessing Changes in Synaptic Plasticity Using an Awake Closed-Head Injury Model of Mild Traumatic Brain Injury.

Mild traumatic brain injuries (mTBIs) are a prevalent health issue in North America. There is increasing pressure to utilize ecologically valid models of closed-head mTBI in the preclinical setting to increase translatability to the clinical population. The awake closed-headed injury (ACHI) model uses a modified controlled cortical impactor to deliver closed-headed injury, inducing clinically relevant behavioral deficits without the need for a craniotomy or the use of an anesthetic.

The effects of search-irrelevant working memory content on visual search.

Previous experiments investigating visual search have shown that distractors that are semantically related to a search target can capture attention and slow the search process. In two experiments, we examine if distractors exactly matching, or semantically related to, search-irrelevant information held in working memory (WM) can also influence visual search while ruling out potential effects of color similarity. Participants first viewed and memorized an image of an everyday object, then they determined if a target item was present or absent in a two-object search array.

Past and future uses of text mining in ecology and evolution.

Ecology and evolutionary biology, like other scientific fields, are experiencing an exponential growth of academic manuscripts. As domain knowledge accumulates, scientists will need new computational approaches for identifying relevant literature to read and include in formal literature reviews and meta-analyses. Importantly, these approaches can also facilitate automated, large-scale data synthesis tasks and build structured databases from the information in the texts of primary journal articles, books, grey literature, and websites.

Spontaneous mind-wandering tendencies linked to cognitive flexibility in young adults.

Despite that previous studies have investigated mind wandering using task-switching paradigms, the association between the tendency to mind wander and cognitive flexibility remains largely unexplored. The present study investigated the relationship between self-reported spontaneous mind-wandering tendencies and task-switching performance in young adults. Seventy-nine university students performed a forced task-switching and a voluntary task-switching paradigm and then completed a battery of questionnaires.

Reconceptualizing mind wandering from a switching perspective.

Mind wandering is a universal phenomenon in which our attention shifts away from the task at hand toward task-unrelated thoughts. Despite it inherently involving a shift in mental set, little is known about the role of cognitive flexibility in mind wandering. In this article we consider the potential of cognitive flexibility as a mechanism for mediating and/or regulating the occurrence of mind wandering.

WOX going on: CLE peptides in plant development.

The development of plant tissues requires cell-cell communication facilitated by chemical and peptide hormones, including small signaling peptides in the CLAVATA3/EMBRYO-SURROUNDING REGION (CLE) family. The paradigmatic CLE signaling peptide CLAVATA3 regulates the size of the shoot apical meristem and the expression of the stem cell-promoting WUSCHEL transcription factor through an unknown mechanism. This review discusses recent advances in CLE signaling, showing that CLE pathways are conserved in bryophytes, that CLE peptides in Arabidopsis thaliana regulate stem cell identity and cell division in root tissues, and connections to auxin biosynthesis in regulating flower and leaf development.

BAM1/2 receptor kinase signaling drives CLE peptide-mediated formative cell divisions in roots.

Cell division is often regulated by extracellular signaling networks to ensure correct patterning during development. In , the SHORT-ROOT (SHR)/SCARECROW (SCR) transcription factor dimer activates ; () to drive formative divisions during root ground tissue development. Here, we show plasma-membrane-localized BARELY ANY MERISTEM1/2 (BAM1/2) family receptor kinases are required for -dependent formative divisions and expression, but not -dependent ground tissue specification.