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The identification of additional Late Miocene (MN10, Late Vallesian) Decennatherium rex cranial remains at Batallones-10 (Torrejón de Velasco, Madrid Basin, Spain) provides valuable insights into the ontogenetic variability of this extinct giraffe. Most recovered specimens are adults, making the discovery of calves significant. The 2022 excavation yielded two juvenile hemimandibles, a maxilla, and a juvenile ossicone, likely from different individuals. The dental material represents one of the youngest specimens in the Batallones complex, with an estimated age of 4 months to 4.5 years, based on molar eruption stages seen in modern giraffes. The ossicone, resembling that of an adult male in shape but much smaller, mirrors the growth patterns in extant giraffes, where juvenile ossicones share adult proportions but are smaller. This ossicone was detached from the skull, typical for juveniles, as ossicones do not fuse with the cranial roof until later. This discovery broadens our understanding of giraffe ontogeny and includes the first giraffe calf ossicone found in the Iberian fossil record. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Palliative care focuses on the prevention of worsening health, improving the quality of the patient's life, and the relief of suffering, and therefore has a considerable impact on both the patient suffering from a life-threatening or potentially life-threatening illness and on their family. Spirituality, as the dimension of human life involving the search for meaning, purpose, and transcendence, and connection with oneself, others, and the sacred, could be essential in supporting these patients. The aim of this study was to synthesise the scientific evidence describing the interventions and/or activities undertaken to meet the spiritual needs of the palliative patient., Methods: A literature search was carried out across the following databases: PubMed, LILACS, Scopus, and Web of Science. The PRISMA statement was used to guide this review., Results: Twenty-four articles were included. The thematic categories included spiritual needs at the end of life, the influence of music and dance as palliative care, care for family caregivers, and the comparison between counselling and dignity therapy., Conclusions: Interventions in the biopsychosocial-spiritual spheres impact on the patient's peace of mind and promote the acceptance of a "good death". Healthcare personnel play an essential role in the way their patients prepare for the moment of death, and the meaning and values they convey help them to accompany and welcome patients. Last but not least, universities can play a crucial role by training nurses to integrate spiritual interventions such as music and dance, or by considering the family as a unit of care. The systematic review protocol was registered in the Prospective International Register of Systematic Reviews (PROSPERO) under protocol number CRD42023490852.

Advances in artificial intelligence (AI) raise important questions about whether people view moral evaluations by AI systems similarly to human-generated moral evaluations. We conducted a modified Moral Turing Test (m-MTT), inspired by Allen et al. (Exp Theor Artif Intell 352:24-28, 2004) proposal, by asking people to distinguish real human moral evaluations from those made by a popular advanced AI language model: GPT-4. A representative sample of 299 U.S. adults first rated the quality of moral evaluations when blinded to their source. Remarkably, they rated the AI's moral reasoning as superior in quality to humans' along almost all dimensions, including virtuousness, intelligence, and trustworthiness, consistent with passing what Allen and colleagues call the comparative MTT. Next, when tasked with identifying the source of each evaluation (human or computer), people performed significantly above chance levels. Although the AI did not pass this test, this was not because of its inferior moral reasoning but, potentially, its perceived superiority, among other possible explanations. The emergence of language models capable of producing moral responses perceived as superior in quality to humans' raises concerns that people may uncritically accept potentially harmful moral guidance from AI. This possibility highlights the need for safeguards around generative language models in matters of morality., (© 2024. The Author(s).)