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We present a novel metric for measuring relative connection between parts of a city using geotagged Twitter data as a proxy for co-occurrence of city residents. We find that socioeconomic similarity is a significant predictor of this connectivity metric, which we call "linkage strength": neighborhoods that are similar to one another in terms of residents' median income, education level, and (to a lesser extent) immigration history are more strongly connected in terms of the of people who spend time there, indicating some level of homophily in the way that individuals choose to move throughout a city's districts.

ABSTRACT Objective: To evaluate pulmonary function and functional capacity in children and adolescents with sickle cell disease. Methods: This was a cross-sectional study involving 70 children and adolescents (8-15 years of age) with sickle cell disease who underwent pulmonary function tests (spirometry) and functional capacity testing (six-minute walk test). The results of the pulmonary function tests were compared with variables related to the severity of sickle cell disease and history of asthma and of acute chest syndrome. Results: Of the 64 patients who underwent spirometry, 15 (23.4%) showed abnormal results: restrictive lung disease, in 8 (12.5%); and obstructive lung disease, in 7 (10.9%). Of the 69 patients who underwent the six-minute walk test, 18 (26.1%) showed abnormal results regarding the six-minute walk distance as a percentage of the predicted value for age, and there was a ≥ 3% decrease in SpO2 in 36 patients (52.2%). Abnormal pulmonary function was not significantly associated with any of the other variables studied, except for hypoxemia and restrictive lung disease. Conclusions: In this sample of children and adolescents with sickle cell disease, there was a significant prevalence of abnormal pulmonary function. The high prevalence of respiratory disorders suggests the need for a closer look at the lung function of this population, in childhood and thereafter.

For social interaction to be successful, two conditions must be met: the motivation to initiate it and the ability to maintain it. This study uses both optogenetic and chemogenetic approaches to reveal the specific neural pathways that selectively influence those two social interaction components. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Oxytocin is a neuropeptide that is important for maternal physiology and childcare, including parturition and milk ejection during nursing1–6. Suckling triggers the release of oxytocin, but other sensory cues—specifically, infant cries—can increase the levels of oxytocin in new human mothers7, which indicates that cries can activate hypothalamic oxytocin neurons. Here we describe a neural circuit that routes auditory information about infant vocalizations to mouse oxytocin neurons. We performed in vivo electrophysiological recordings and photometry from identified oxytocin neurons in awake maternal mice that were presented with pup calls. We found that oxytocin neurons responded to pup vocalizations, but not to pure tones, through input from the posterior intralaminar thalamus, and that repetitive thalamic stimulation induced lasting disinhibition of oxytocin neurons. This circuit gates central oxytocin release and maternal behaviour in response to calls, providing a mechanism for the integration of sensory cues from the offspring in maternal endocrine networks to ensure modulation of brain state for efficient parenting.Experiments in mice identify a neural circuit that relays information about infant cries from the maternal auditory thalamus to hypothalamic oxytocin neurons to induce the release of oxytocin and modulate maternal behaviour. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Assessing the neurological and behavioral effects of drugs is important in developing pharmacological treatments, as well as understanding the mechanisms associated with neurological disorders. Herein, we present a miniaturized, wireless neural probe system with the capability of delivering drugs for the real-time investigation of the effects of the drugs on both behavioral and neural activities in socially interacting mice. We demonstrate wireless drug delivery and simultaneous monitoring of the resulting neural, behavioral changes, as well as the dose-dependent and repeatable responses to drugs. Furthermore, in pairs of mice, we use a food competition assay in which social interaction was modulated by the delivery of the drug, and the resulting changes in their neural activities are analyzed. During modulated food competition by drug injection, we observe changes in neural activity in mPFC region of a participating mouse over time. Our system may provide new opportunities for the development of studying the effects of drugs on behaviour and neural activity. Technologies for monitoring electrophysiological effects of drugs in behaving animals have limitations. Here the authors report a wireless neural probe system with drug delivery capability for real-time monitoring of drug effects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Oxytocin (OXT) and arginine vasopressin (AVP) support a broad range of behaviors and homeostatic functions including sex-specific and context-appropriate social behaviors. Although the alterations of these systems have been linked with social-related disorders such as autism spectrum disorder, their formation and developmental dynamics remain largely unknown. Using novel brain clearing techniques and 3D imaging, we have reconstructed the specification of oxytocinergic and vasopressinergic circuits in the developing mouse brain with unprecedented cellular resolution. A systematic quantification indicates that OXT and AVP neurons in the hypothalamus display distinctive developmental dynamics and high cellular plasticity from embryonic to early postnatal stages. Our findings reveal new insights into the specification and consolidation of neuropeptidergic systems in the developing CNS. Madrigal and Jurado use brain clearing techniques and 3D imaging to generate high-resolution reconstructions of oxytocinergic and vasopressinergic circuits in the developing mouse brain, which are known to play a crucial role in social behaviours. They provide insight into the specification and consolidation of these circuits from embryonic to early postnatal stages of development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We present a novel metric for measuring relative connection between parts of a city using geotagged Twitter data as a proxy for co-occurrence of city residents. We find that socioeconomic similarity is a significant predictor of this connectivity metric, which we call "linkage strength": neighborhoods that are similar to one another in terms of residents' median income, education level, and (to a lesser extent) immigration history are more strongly connected in terms of the of people who spend time there, indicating some level of homophily in the way that individuals choose to move throughout a city's districts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The economic sustainability of future mobile networks will largely depend on the strong specialization of its offered services. Network operators will need to provide added value to their tenants, by moving from the traditional one-size-fits-all strategy to a set of virtual end-to-end instances of a common physical infrastructure, named network slices, which are especially tailored to the requirements of each application. Implementing network slicing has significant consequences in terms of resource management: service customization entails assigning to each slice fully dedicated resources, which may also be dynamically reassigned and overbooked in order to increase the cost-efficiency of the system. In this paper, we adopt a data-driven approach to quantify the efficiency of resource sharing in future sliced networks. Building on metropolitan-scale real-world traffic measurements, we carry out an extensive parametric analysis that highlights how diverse performance guarantees, technological settings, and slice configurations impact the resource utilization at different levels of the infrastructure in presence of network slicing. Our results provide insights on the achievable efficiency of network slicing architectures, their dimensioning, and their interplay with resource management algorithms at different locations and reconfiguration timescales. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Our understanding of the extrinsic connections of the lateral hypothalamic area (LHA) has deepened in recent years. In particular, a series of studies using neural pathwaytracing methods to investigate the macroconnections of histologically differentiated LHA regions, have revealed that the neural connections of these regions are substantially distinct, and have robust connections with neural circuits controlling survival behaviors. To begin testing functional associations suggested by the distinct LHA region neural connections, the present study has investigated the role of the LHA juxtadorsomedial region (LHAjd) in the control of social defeat (a socially-relevant defensive behavior). Male rats received bilateral cytotoxic lesions targeted to the LHAjd. A residentintruder paradigm was then employed to investigate the effect of these lesions on defensive behavioral responses. Behavioral data were collected during three phases of testing: (1) pre-encounter habituation to testing context; (2) encounter with a dominant conspecific in the testing context; and (3) post-encounter context. Statistical analysis of behavioral measures revealed a significant decrease in risk assessment behaviors during post-encounter context testing in lesioned intruders compared to sham-lesioned and intact rats. However, changes in defensive behavioral measures during the habituation, or during resident-intruder encounters, did not reach significance. We discuss these data in relation to LHAjd (and neighboring LHA region) neural connections, and in relation to current advances in understanding of the neural control of defensive behaviors. A refined model for the neural circuits that are central to the control of socially-relevant defensive behaviors is outlined. We also consider possible broader implications of these data for disorders of behavioral control. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Laws and regulatory guidelines dealing with assisted reproductive technology in Australia and elsewhere typically operate on the principle that the physical and psychological well-being of the person who might be created using the technology must be an active consideration. An ethical/legal problem arises when future persons are protected at the expense of existing persons. This occurs when women, who create and gestate these future persons, are socially, legally and medically positioned as transgenerational vectors of harm, and are subject to pressure to act for the benefit of people who do not yet and may never come to exist. This paper explores the way women are understood, in science and law, as subject to situational and environmental harms as well as constituting a (prenatal) environment for the perpetuation of those harms. Finally, recognising that harm is itself actively gendered, this paper also explores how gendered assumptions are smuggled into legal explanations of disease and its causes and how this might impact regulatory responses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) is increasingly viewed as a strategic management tool for companies to draw in candidates. In this arena, international responsible rankings such as ‘The Great Place to Work’, ‘Family Responsible Employer Index (FREE)’ or ‘The Best Companies for Working Mothers’ put emphasis on the value of responsible behaviours, not only for surviving in the market, but also to ‘win the war for talent’. Using a sample of Spanish University students, this research aims to analyse the process of selecting responsible organizations to work and whether there is a possible future conflict of interest by students between their own and organizational values. Surprisingly, the university students assessed two opposing situations with the highest values: of looking to change employer and of letting time pass in order to ignore the conflict. The implications of the students’ assessments and the related factors which affect their decision-making criteria are explored in this article. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previously we report long lasting effects on ovary of mice prenatally exposed to flunitrazepam (FNZ), a benzodiazepine with tranquilized action. In this work we find that the FNZ don't prevent the effects on ovary prenatally exposure to stress in mice. We studied adult females born from mothers that had been stressed by immobilization on day 6 ofgestation (GD-6) or group S, and from mothers stressed also by immobilization at GD-6, but which received a single oral dose of FNZ immediately after the stress group FNZS. The control groups were the SS that received the GD-6 saline solution and the group NT non-treated. Their ovaries were extracted for histology studies and to observe the activity of 3b hydroxysteroid dehydrogenase/isomerase (3 b-HSD). The histological analysis revealed high staining affinity ovarian cell of S and FNZS. Double oocytes and apoptotic bodies were found in the secondary atretic follicles, as well as abnormal primordial, primary and secondary follicle populations, as compared to SS and NT groups. The primordial, primary, and secondary follicles were significantly reduced in the experimental groups. But the primary and secondary atretic follicles were higher in both groups, and the number of corpora lutea was lower in both groups. The activity of 3 b-HSD was abnormally increased in both FNZS- and S-groups. These findings suggest that FNZ did not counteract the impairing effects of prenatal stress on adult offspring ovarian follicles, and could rather be responsible for long lasting changes occurring during embryonic programming. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Krüppel-associated box domain-zinc finger proteins (KRAB-ZFPs) are tetrapod-specific transcriptional repressors encoded in the hundreds by the human genome. In order to explore their as yet ill-defined impact on gene expression, we developed an ectopic repressor assay, allowing the study of KRAB-mediated transcriptional regulation at hundreds of different transcriptional units. By targeting a drug-controllable KRAB-containing repressor to gene-trapping lentiviral vectors, we demonstrate that KRAB and its corepressor KAP1 can silence promoters located several tens of kilobases (kb) away from their DNA binding sites, with an efficiency which is generally higher for promoters located within 15 kb or less. Silenced promoters exhibit a loss of histone H3-acetylation, an increase in H3 lysine 9 trimethylation (H3K9me3), and a drop in RNA Pol II recruitment, consistent with a block of transcriptional initiation following the establishment of silencing marks. Furthermore, we reveal that KRAB-mediated repression is established by the long-range spreading of H3K9me3 and heterochromatin protein 1 β (HP1β) between the repressor binding site and the promoter. We confirm the biological relevance of this phenomenon by documenting KAP1-dependent transcriptional repression at an endogenous KRAB-ZFP gene cluster, where KAP1 binds to the 3′ end of genes and mediates propagation of H3K9me3 and HP1β towards their 5′ end. Together, our data support a model in which KRAB/KAP1 recruitment induces long-range repression through the spread of heterochromatin. This finding not only suggests auto-regulatory mechanisms in the control of KRAB-ZFP gene clusters, but also provides important cues for interpreting future genome-wide DNA binding data of KRAB-ZFPs and KAP1. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although some laboratories have reported that a single session of stress is able to induce a long-lasting sensitisation of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) response to further exposures to stress, we have found that a single exposure to severe emotional (immobilisation, restraint or shock) or systemic (endotoxin) stressors reduces the responsiveness of the HPA to the same, but not to a novel (heterotypic), stressor, in which case a slight sensitisation was observed. Long-term desensitisation has been found to reduce not only secretion of peripheral HPA hormones (ACTH and corticosterone), but also to reduce responses of central components of the HPA axis U-fos and CRF gene expression at the level of the para ventricular nucleus of the hypothalamus, PVN). In addition, desensitisation also applies to the impact of the stressor on food intake and. probably, to stress-induced hyperglycaemia. The development of long-term desensitisation of the HPA axis does not appear to be a universal consequence of exposure to severe stressors as it was not observed in response to insulin-induced hypoglycaemia. Whether or not the development of long-term effects of stress depend on the specific pathways activated by particular stressors remains to be tested. The observed desensitisation of the HPA axis in response to the homotypic stressor shows two special features which makes it difficult to be interpreted in terms of an habituation-like process: (a) the effect increased with time (days to weeks) elapsed between the first and second exposure to the stressor, suggesting a progressive maturational process; and (b) the stronger the stressor the greater the long-term desensitisation. Therefore, it is possible that desensitisation of the HPA axis is the sum of two different phenomena: long-term effects and habituation-like processes. The contribution of the former may be more relevant with severe stressors and longer inter stress intervals, and that of the latter with mild... [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

THE SECRET HISTORY OF SHARKS: The Rise of the Ocean's Most Fearsome Predators. John Long. 480 pp. Ballantine Books, 2024. $35.00. For anyone fascinated by the mysteries hidden beneath the [...]

I. INTRODUCTION Despite their position at the top of the ocean food chain, sharks are more vulnerable than ever thanks to the humans that fear them. (1) While most humans [...], Sharks serve invaluable roles as apex predators in the world's ocean ecosystems. However, the rise of the shark fin trade and incidental bycatch have drastically eliminated shark populations so that several species are close to extinction. Without substantial upgrades to existing international frameworks including CITES, CMS, and IPOA-Sharks, and regulatory bodies such as RFMOs, shark populations may pass beyond recovery. However, strengthening those regulations, along with expanding the U.S.'s role as a leader in shark conservation carries significant potential in protecting shark populations. Lastly, governments and conservation entities must substantially increase research and public awareness regarding the issue to ensure that there is the data and political will to serve as the foundation for the new age of shark conservation.