Key concepts and a world-wide look at plant recruitment networks.

Plant-plant interactions are major determinants of the dynamics of terrestrial ecosystems. There is a long tradition in the study of these interactions, their mechanisms and their consequences using experimental, observational and theoretical approaches. Empirical studies overwhelmingly focus at the level of species pairs or small sets of species.

Multicomponent body composition of university club sport athletes.

Background: The body composition of National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) athletes is well documented but no such data exist for university club sports athletes. Additionally, the majority of norms for NCAA athletes were created from individual methods requiring assumptions.

Objective: This study used a four-component (4C) model to measure the body composition of university club sports athletes.

A ten-year historical analysis of urban PM and exceedance filters along the Northern Wasatch Front, UT, USA.

The Great Salt Lake (Utah, USA) is reducing in size, which raises several ecological concerns, including the effect of an increasing area of dry playa exposed by the retreating lake. This study focuses solely on concerns about the toxicity of metals in the dust blowing off the playa. Although considerable efforts have been made to understand aeolian dust in urban areas along the Wasatch Front, located just east and south of the Great Salt Lake, there is still a need to consolidate existing research and to conduct a compositional analysis of the dust found in these urban areas.

Antiracist activism for immigrant rights and healthy coping: Initial evidence for a community-based framework.

Racist and xenophobic policies in the United States (e.g., family separations and lack of access to protected immigration statuses for undocumented immigrants) have historically excluded immigrants of color from accessing full civil rights, thus contributing to widening racial inequities in the US.

The genome of the solitary bee Tetrapedia diversipes (Hymenoptera, Apidae).

Tetrapedia diversipes is a Neotropical solitary bee commonly found in trap-nests, known for its morphological adaptations for floral oil collection and prepupal diapause during the cold and dry season. Here, we present the genome assembly of T. diversipes (332 Mbp), comprising 2,575 scaffolds, with 15,028 predicted protein-coding genes.

The Change in Child Sexual Abuse Victimization Among Chinese Children and Adolescents (2000-2022): A Cross-Temporal Meta-Analysis.

Limited meta-analytical research has examined the epidemiology of child sexual abuse (CSA) victimization among Chinese children and adolescents over the past two decades. It is crucial to evaluate how the incidence of CSA has changed over time in response to the significant policy and sociocultural changes since 2013. This study employed a cross-temporal meta-analysis to explore the trend of CSA victimization among Chinese children and adolescents from 2000 to 2022.

Specific hydroxylation and glucuronidation of 2'-hydroxyflavanone by Streptomyces coeruleorubidus NRRL B-2569.

Flavonoids constitute a class of natural compounds with varied bioactivities. Nevertheless, the potential health benefits of flavonoids for humans are often compromised by their low water solubility and limited bioavailability. In this study, four derivatives, namely 2',5'-dihydroxyflavanone (2), 5'-dihydroxyflavone-2'-O-β-d-glucuronide (3), and two isomers of hydroxyflavanone-2'-O-β-d-glucuronide (4 and 5), were biosynthesized from substrate 2'-hydroxyflavanone (1) through the specific hydroxylation and glucuronidation using Streptomyces coeruleorubidus NRRL B-2569.

ACT for OCD: An Example of ACT and Values-Based Exposures.

Exposure exercises as seen in cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) and exposure and response prevention (ERP) are standard in the treatment of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). In the last two decades, additional research has been conducted on acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) and the ways that exposure exercises are conducted from an ACT model. Empirical support for conducting exposures from an ACT model exists.

Perceptions of substance use disorder in rural areas: how the brain disease model impacts public stigma.

Background: Rural communities are disproportionately affected by substance use disorder (SUD) and public stigma impedes access to and utilization of treatment and support services.

Methods: This study compares data from a 2020 study conducted in rural Ohio (N = 173) with results from a recent study conducted in South Dakota (N = 41) on publicly-held stigmatizing views of SUD. South Dakota participants were recruited at several public events across the state via convenience sampling between August 2022-February 2023 to complete a survey.

Population trends of insect pollinators in a species-rich tropical rainforest: stable trends but contrasting patterns across taxa.

Recent reports of insect decline have raised concerns regarding population responses of ecologically important groups, such as insect pollinators. Additionally, how population trends vary across pollinator taxonomic groups and degree of specialization is unclear. Here, we analyse 14 years of abundance data (2009-2022) for 38 species of native insect pollinators, including a range of Coleoptera, Lepidoptera and Hymenoptera specialists and generalists from the tropical rainforest of Barro Colorado Island, Panama.

Wavelength Sensitive Plastic Photodissolution: Elucidating Quantum Yield Trends for Solar Activation Spectra.

Plastic photodissolution into dissolved organic carbon (DOC) is a key proposed loss pathway for plastic in aquatic environments. However, the specific solar excitation wavelengths that drive photodissolution remain unknown, limiting our ability to model and predict photodissolution rates in natural aquatic environments. To better understand the impact of solar excitation wavelength on plastic photodissolution rates, we measured the wavelength sensitivity of photodissolution for a variety of transparent and semitransparent commercial and postconsumer plastic films with wide-spanning polymer chemistries.

Positive Selection Shapes Breast Cancer Tumor Suppressor Genes: Unveiling Insights into BRCA1, BRCA2, and MDC1 Stability.

Worldwide, breast cancer is the leading cause of death in women with cancers. Given this situation, new approaches to treatment are urgently needed. Tumor Suppressor Genes (TSGs) defects play a crucial role in tumor development, and recent studies propose their reactivation as a promising way for clinical intervention in breast cancer.

The Benefits of Robustness in Measures of Spatiotemporal Stability: An Investigation in Childhood Apraxia of Speech.

Purpose: When using the spatiotemporal index (STI) to measure variability across repetitions of the same stimulus, researchers will typically screen and remove productions that contain errors or disfluencies. However, this screening process is highly subjective, reduces the amount of data available, and may generate samples that are less representative of true speech difficulties. In this study, we quantify the degree to which the STI is skewed by the inclusion of highly deviating productions and whether alternative calculations could better facilitate their inclusion.

Binding Strength and Transport Kinetics of Organic Dyes into Different Live Diatoms Using Second Harmonic Scattering Spectroscopy.

Dye-contaminated wastewater poses serious environmental risks to ecosystems and human health. Diatoms, algae with nanoporous frustules (cell walls), offer promising potential for wastewater remediation due to their high surface area and adsorption properties. While dead diatom biomass is well-studied for biosorption, research on living diatoms' bioaccumulation and biotransformation potential is limited, with gaps in kinetic and equilibrium modeling of dye adsorption.

Factorial experiment to identify two-way interactions between temperature, harvesting period, hydraulic retention time, and light intensity that influence the biomass productivity and phosphorus removal efficiency of a microalgae-bacteria biofilm.

Rotating algae biofilm reactors (RABRs) can reduce energy requirements for wastewater reclamation but require further optimization for implementation at water resource recovery facilities (WRRF). Optimizing RABR operation is challenging because conditions at WRRF change frequently, and disregarding interaction terms related to these changes can produce incorrect conclusions about RABR behavior. This study evaluated the two-way interaction and main effects of four factors on the biomass productivity and phosphorus removal efficiency of a microalgae-bacteria biofilm grown in municipal anaerobic digester centrate, with factor levels and operating conditions selected to mimic a pilot RABR at a WRRF in Utah.

Sexual selection promotes reproductive isolation in barn swallows.

Despite the well-known effects of sexual selection on phenotypes, links between this evolutionary process and reproductive isolation, genomic divergence, and speciation have been difficult to establish. We unravel the genetic basis of sexually selected plumage traits to investigate their effects on reproductive isolation in barn swallows. The genetic architecture of sexual traits is characterized by 12 loci on two autosomes and the Z chromosome.

Automated Scoring of the Speech Intelligibility Test Using Autoscore.

Purpose: The purpose of the current study was to develop and test extensions to Autoscore, an automated approach for scoring listener transcriptions against target stimuli, for scoring the Speech Intelligibility Test (SIT), a widely used test for quantifying intelligibility in individuals with dysarthria.

Method: Three main extensions to Autoscore were created including a compound rule, a contractions rule, and a numbers rule. We used two sets of previously collected listener SIT transcripts ( = 4,642) from databases of dysarthric speakers to evaluate the accuracy of the Autoscore SIT extensions.

Intrinsic and environmental drivers of pairwise cohesion in wild Canis social groups.

Animals within social groups respond to costs and benefits of sociality by adjusting the proportion of time they spend in close proximity to other individuals in the group (cohesion). Variation in cohesion between individuals, in turn, shapes important group-level processes such as subgroup formation and fission-fusion dynamics. Although critical to animal sociality, a comprehensive understanding of the factors influencing cohesion remains a gap in our knowledge of cooperative behavior in animals.

Goose grubbing and warming suppress summer net ecosystem CO uptake differentially across high-Arctic tundra habitats.

Environmental changes, such as climate warming and higher herbivory pressure, are altering the carbon balance of Arctic ecosystems; yet, how these drivers modify the carbon balance among different habitats remains uncertain. This hampers our ability to predict changes in the carbon sink strength of tundra ecosystems. We investigated how spring goose grubbing and summer warming-two key environmental-change drivers in the Arctic-alter CO fluxes in three tundra habitats varying in soil moisture and plant-community composition.

Climate Extremes in Consecutive Years Impacted the Number and Fate of Duck Nests on Great Salt Lake Marshes.

The number of ground-nesting ducks in the marshes of Great Salt Lake (GSL), Utah has drastically decreased in the past few decades. One potential cause for this decline is the increase in climate extremes caused by global warming. From 2019 through 2023, GSL marshes experienced 1 year of historic spring rainfall (2019), 2 years of historic droughts (2021 and 2022), and 1 year of record snowfall (2023).

Revision of Nearctic Eparces (Hymenoptera: Ichneumonidae: Ichneumoninae): description Eparces australis Claridge & Dal Pos sp. nov., nomenclatural notes, and new records of Eparces quadriceps (Cresson, 1867).

The Nearctic species of the parasitoid wasp genus Eparces are revised. A new species, Eparces australis Claridge & Dal Pos sp. nov.

Revealing the Baja California Peninsula's Hidden Treasures: An Annotated checklist of the native bees (Hymenoptera: Apoidea: Anthophila).

To date, the knowledge of bee diversity in the Baja California Peninsula has primarily relied on large, sporadic expeditions from the first half of the 20th century. To address the knowledge gaps, we conducted extensive fieldwork from 2019 to 2023, visited entomological collections in Mexico and USA, and accessed digital databases and community science platforms to compile records. As a result of our field surveys, we identified 521 morphospecies, with 350 recognized as valid species, including 96 new records for the Baja California Peninsula and 68 new findings for Mexico, including the rediscovery of Megachile seducta Mitchell, 1934, ranked as possibly extinct.

Avenues towards reconciling wild and managed bee proponents.

Bees are crucial for food security and biodiversity. However, managed bees are increasingly considered drivers of wild bee declines, leading to stakeholder conflicts and restrictive policies. We propose avenues to reconcile wild and managed bee proponents and point out knowledge gaps that hinder the development of evidence-based policies.

Postmortem proteolysis and its indicators vary within bovine muscles: Novel insights in muscles that differ in their contractile, metabolic, and connective tissue properties.

This study assessed postmortem proteolysis over 14 d in bovine Masseter (MS), Longissimus thoracis (LT), and Cutaneous trunci (CT) muscles. First, the metabolic, contractile, and connective tissue properties were characterized to establish their intrinsic differences. The MS contained the highest levels of oxidative markers and myosin heavy chain-I (MyHC-I), whereas the CT possessed the greatest glycolytic capacity, MyHC-IIx, and connective tissue proteins (P < 0.