Identifying the Factors That Drive Health Service Utilization Among Healthy and Non-Healthy Agers in a Sample of Older Ethiopians: A Cross-Sectional Study.

Background And Aims: Population aging is associated with the rising incidence of chronic illness. This presents a significant challenge to healthcare systems, particularly in developing countries, as untreated chronic conditions can lead to years of disability and loss of independence straining health budgets and resources. Promoting healthy aging can be one avenue for mitigating these challenges.

How Important Is Informed Natal Dispersal for Modelling the Demographic and Genetic Effects of Environmental Variability?

Dispersal is a fundamental ecological process that influences population dynamics and genetic diversity and is therefore an important component of the models used to simulate population responses to environmental change. We considered informed dispersal in relation to settlement location, where individuals could optimise selection of settlement location with regard to per capita resource availability and investigated the importance of this type of informed dispersal for simulated demography and genetic diversity under different biological and environmental scenarios. We used an individual-based simulation model scaled with reference to the ecology of small mammals in fire prone savanna ecosystems.

Extensive Tracking of Nomadic Waterbird Movements Reveals an Inland Flyway.

Waterbirds are highly mobile and have the ability to respond to environmental conditions opportunistically at multiple scales. Mobility is particularly crucial for aggregate-nesting species dependent on breeding habitat in arid and semi-arid wetlands, which can be ephemeral and unpredictable. We aimed to address knowledge gaps about movement routes for aggregate-nesting nomadic waterbird species by tracking them in numbers sufficient to make robust assessment of their movement patterns.

Use of a Truffle Dog Provides Insight Into the Ecology and Abundant Occurrence of (Pyronemataceae) in Western Oregon, USA.

Hypogeous fungi ("truffles") are challenging to study because they produce underground sporocarps that may not be located during traditional fungal surveys. Commercially valuable truffles are located using scent-detection dogs trained on truffles. However, the dogs are not necessarily limited to commercial truffle species when trained on other taxa of interest.

Reversing the decline of threatened koala () populations in New South Wales: Using genomics to enhance conservation outcomes.

Genetic management is a critical component of threatened species conservation. Understanding spatial patterns of genetic diversity is essential for evaluating the resilience of fragmented populations to accelerating anthropogenic threats. Nowhere is this more relevant than on the Australian continent, which is experiencing an ongoing loss of biodiversity that exceeds any other developed nation.

Otolith radiocarbon signatures provide distinct migration history of walleye pollock around Hokkaido, Japan in the North-Western Pacific.

Trace elements and stable isotope ratios in otoliths have been used as proxies for the migration history of teleosts; however, their application in oceanic fishes remains limited. This study reports the first use of radiocarbons in otoliths to evaluate the horizontal migration histories of an oceanic fish species, the walleye pollock . We conducted radiocarbon analyses of three stocks sourced from Hokkaido, Japan.

subcapsular splenic abscess and associated empyema in the setting of tocilizumab therapy: A case report.

We report a case of subcapsular splenic abscess and associated empyema after recent commencement of tocilizumab, masquerading as musculoskeletal pain. This highlights the importance of considering unusual underlying infections in patients on tocilizumab.

callsync: An R package for alignment and analysis of multi-microphone animal recordings.

To better understand how vocalisations are used during interactions of multiple individuals, studies are increasingly deploying on-board devices with a microphone on each animal. The resulting recordings are extremely challenging to analyse, since microphone clocks drift non-linearly and record the vocalisations of non-focal individuals as well as noise. Here we address this issue with callsync, an R package designed to align recordings, detect and assign vocalisations to the caller, trace the fundamental frequency, filter out noise and perform basic analysis on the resulting clips.

Reorganization of bird communities along a rainforest elevation gradient during a strong El Niño event in Papua New Guinea.

The El Niño 2015 event, most extreme since 1997, led to severe droughts in tropical wet Papua New Guinea (PNG), reducing May to October dry season rainfall by 75% in the lowlands and 25% in the highlands. Such droughts are likely to have significant effects on terrestrial ecosystems, but they have been poorly explored in Papua New Guinea. Here, we report changes in bird community composition prior to, during, and after the 2015 El Niño event along the elevational gradient ranging from 200 m to 2700 m a.

Referral practices and treatment of obstructive sleep apnea in pregnancies with obesity.

Objective: Obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) affects maternal and neonatal health during pregnancy. This study aimed to identify characteristics and comorbidities associated with sleep clinic referral in high-risk pregnancies with Body Mass Index (BMI) ≥35 kg/m.

Method: Retrospective cohort study for individuals in a high-risk pregnancy clinic at a tertiary Australian hospital from 1 January to 31 December 2020 with BMI≥35 kg/m.

The role of climatic variables on nest evolution in tanagers.

Avian nests are fundamental structures in avian reproduction and face strong selective forces. Climatic conditions are likely to have shaped the evolution of specific nest traits, but evidence is scarce at a macroevolutionary level. The Thraupidae family (commonly known as tanagers) is an ideal clade to understand the link between nest architecture and climate because it presents wide variation in nest traits.

Influence of molecular marker type on estimating effective population size and other genetic parameters in a critically endangered parrot.

Genetics is a fast-moving field, and for conservation practitioners or ecologists, it can be bewildering. The choice of marker used in studies is fundamental; in the literature, preference has recently shifted from microsatellites to single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) loci. Understanding how marker type affects estimates of population genetic parameters is important in the context of conservation, especially because the accuracy of estimates has a bearing on the actions taken to protect threatened species.

Risk factors and cognitive correlates of white matter hyperintensities in ethnically diverse populations without dementia: The COSMIC consortium.

Introduction: White matter hyperintensities (WMHs) are an important imaging marker for cerebral small vessel diseases, but their risk factors and cognitive associations have not been well documented in populations of different ethnicities and/or from different geographical regions.

Methods: We investigated how WMHs were associated with vascular risk factors and cognition in both Whites and Asians, using data from five population-based cohorts of non-demented older individuals from Australia, Singapore, South Korea, and Sweden ( = 1946). WMH volumes (whole brain, periventricular, and deep) were quantified with UBO Detector and harmonized using the ComBat model.

Integrative single-cell expression and functional studies unravels a sensitization to cytarabine-based chemotherapy through HIF pathway inhibition in AML leukemia stem cells.

Relapse remains a major challenge in the clinical management of acute myeloid leukemia (AML) and is driven by rare therapy-resistant leukemia stem cells (LSCs) that reside in specific bone marrow niches. Hypoxia signaling maintains cells in a quiescent and metabolically relaxed state, desensitizing them to chemotherapy. This suggests the hypothesis that hypoxia contributes to the chemoresistance of AML-LSCs and may represent a therapeutic target to sensitize AML-LSCs to chemotherapy.

The relationship between body mass index and sleep in women with risk factors for gestational diabetes mellitus.

Background: Both obesity and sleep disorders are common among women during pregnancy. Although prior research has identified a relationship between obesity and sleep disorders, those findings are from women later in pregnancy.

Objective: To explore the relationships between self-reported sleep duration, insufficient sleep and snoring with body mass index (BMI) among multiethnic women at risk of gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM)in early pregnancy.

Outcomes of robotic modified Freyer's prostatectomy in an Australian patient cohort.

Introduction: The study aims to demonstrate the feasibility, safety and efficacy of robotic simple prostatectomy (RSP) using the modified Freyer's approach in an Australian patient cohort. Although RSP is performed in several Australian centres, there is a paucity of published Australian data.

Methods: We reviewed prospectively collected perioperative and outcomes data for patients who underwent a robotic modified Freyer's prostatectomy (RMFP) from June 2019 to March 2022.

The evolution of eavesdropping on heterospecific alarm calls: Relevance, reliability, and personal information.

Interceptive eavesdropping on the alarm calls of heterospecifics provides crucial information about predators. Previous research suggests predator discrimination, call relevance, reliability, and reception explain when eavesdropping will evolve. However, there has been no quantitative analysis to scrutinize these principles, or how they interact.

Invasive wild deer exhibit environmental niche shifts in Australia: Where to from here?

Invasive species have established populations around the world and, in the process, characteristics of their realized environmental niches have changed. Because of their popularity as a source of game, deer have been introduced to, and become invasive in, many different environments around the world. As such, deer should provide a good model system in which to test environmental niche shifts.

Drought, fire, and rainforest endemics: A case study of two threatened frogs impacted by Australia's "Black Summer".

Deepening droughts and unprecedented wildfires are at the leading edge of climate change. Such events pose an emerging threat to species maladapted to these perturbations, with the potential for steeper declines than may be inferred from the gradual erosion of their climatic niche. This study focused on two species of amphibians- and (Limnodynastidae)-from the Gondwanan rainforests of eastern Australia that were extensively affected by the "Black Summer" megafires of 2019/2020 and the severe drought associated with them.

Empirical landscape genetic comparison of single nucleotide polymorphisms and microsatellites in three arid-zone mammals with high dispersal capacity.

Landscape genetics is increasingly transitioning away from microsatellites, with single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) providing increased resolution for detecting patterns of spatial-genetic structure. This is particularly pertinent for research in arid-zone mammals due to challenges associated with unique life history traits, such as boom-bust population dynamics and long-distance dispersal capacities. Here, we provide a case study comparing SNPs versus microsatellites for testing three explicit landscape genetic hypotheses (isolation-by-distance, isolation-by-barrier, and isolation-by-resistance) in a suite of small, arid-zone mammals in the Pilbara region of Western Australia.

Whole-mitochondrial genomes of provide insights in evolution and detection.

Infectious fungal diseases can have devastating effects on wildlife health and a detailed understanding of the evolution of related emerging fungal pathogen along with the ability to detect them in the wild is considered indispensable for effective management strategies. Several fungi from the genera and are emerging pathogens of reptiles and have been observed to cause disease in a wide range of taxa. has become a particularly important pathogen of Australian reptiles with an increasing number of herpetofauna being reported with cases of infection from across the country.

Environmental and topographic drivers of amphibian phylogenetic diversity and endemism in the Iberian Peninsula.

Understanding the ecological and evolutionary processes driving biodiversity patterns and allowing their persistence is of utmost importance. Many hypotheses have been proposed to explain spatial diversity patterns, including water-energy availability, habitat heterogeneity, and historical climatic refugia. The main goal of this study is to identify if general spatial drivers of species diversity patterns of phylogenetic diversity (PD) and phylogenetic endemism (PE) at the global scale are also predictive of PD and PE at regional scales, using Iberian amphibians as a case study.