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The primary purpose of this study was to examine whether 2D:4D ratios (a putative measure of prenatal androgen exposure) could be determined using participant-submitted hand images. The secondary purpose was to examine whether 2D:4D ratio was associated with pro-environmental behaviors, attitudes, and empathy, given the recent literature linking sex to environmental attitudes and actions. Participants (The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s10211-022-00401-5.

Aim To evaluate a web-based tool for estimating and explaining three scenarios for expected survival time to people with advanced cancer (patients), their family members (FMs), and other healthcare professionals (HCPs). Methods Thirty-three oncologists estimated the “median survival of a group of similar patients” for patients seeking quantitative prognostic information. The web-based tool generated worst-case, most likely, and best-case scenarios for survival based on the oncologist’s estimate. Oncologists presented the scenarios to each patient and provided a printed summary to patients, FMs, and HCPs. Attitudes to the information were assessed by questionnaires. Observed survival for each patient was compared with the oncologist’s estimated survival and the three scenarios. Results Prognosis was discussed with 222 patients: median age 67 years; 61% male; most common primary sites pancreas 15%, non-small-cell lung 15%, and colorectal 12%. The median (range) for observed survival times was 9 months (0.5–43) and for oncologist’s estimated survival times was 12 months (2–96). Ninety-one percent of patients, 91% of FMs, and 84% of HCPs agreed that it was helpful having life expectancy explained as three scenarios. The majority (77%) of patients judged the information presented about their life expectancy to be the same or better than they had expected before the consultation. The survival estimates met a priori criteria for calibration, precision, and accuracy. Conclusions Patients, FMs, and HCPs found it helpful to receive personalized prognostic information formatted as three scenarios for survival. It was feasible, acceptable, and safe to use a web-based resource to do this.

Bergmann’s and Allen’s rules state that endotherms should be larger and have shorter appendages in cooler climates. However, the drivers of these rules are not clear. Both rules could be explained by adaptation for improved thermoregulation, including plastic responses to temperature in early life. Non-thermal explanations are also plausible as climate impacts other factors that influence size and shape, including starvation risk, predation risk, and foraging ecology. We assess the potential drivers of Bergmann’s and Allen’s rules in 30 shorebird species using extensive field data (>200,000 observations). We show birds in hot, tropical northern Australia have longer bills and smaller bodies than conspecifics in temperate, southern Australia, conforming with both ecogeographical rules. This pattern is consistent across ecologically diverse species, including migratory birds that spend early life in the Arctic. Our findings best support the hypothesis that thermoregulatory adaptation to warm climates drives latitudinal patterns in shorebird size and shape.

Regulating body temperature is a critical function for many animals. Ectotherms use multiple thermoregulatory behaviours, including habitat selection, sun-shade shuttling, posture, orientation, gaping, and panting. According to thermoregulatory control theory, gaping and postural behaviours should act in coordination with microhabitat selection, providing a fine-tuned counterbalance to more costly behaviours. However, gaping and panting have also been considered indicators of stress in lizards, which would counter a homeostatic thermoregulatory interpretation, especially during expression of voluntary behaviours. Careful adjustments in rostral orientation toward warmth have been observed in bearded dragons, analogous to well-described solar gain and solar avoidance postures in the wild. Little is known about the sensory drivers of these behaviours. Although skin temperature changes faster than core, it is not uniform across the body, and is subject to evaporative cooling, and thus could be crucial to directing behavioural thermoregulatory decision making. To examine the subtle coordination between thermoregulatory behaviours, and to test if inhibiting gaping would lead to thermoregulatory compensatory behaviours, bearded dragon lizards (Pogona vitticeps) were allowed to behaviourally thermoregulate, while their ability to show spontaneous gaping behaviour was disrupted non-pharmacologically. Gaping acted in concert with thermoregulatory behaviours, although at lower rates than predicted from earlier steady-state models, suggesting that respiratory cooling mechanisms are perceived as costly. Bearded dragons enhanced their rostral orientation to heat when gaping was inhibited, while reducing their selected temperatures in a thermal gradient. Combined, these observations indicate the presence of coordination between these various thermoregulatory behaviours.

Introduction In 2010, the Canadian province of British Columbia (BC) initiated the Seek and Treat for Optimal Prevention of HIV/AIDS (STOP HIV/AIDS) program to improve HIV testing, linkage to care, and treatment uptake, thereby operationalizing the HIV Treatment as Prevention (TasP) framework at the population-level. In this analysis, we evaluated self-reported HIV care experiences and therapeutic outcomes among people diagnosed with HIV prior to and after implementation of this provincial program. Methods A cross-sectional analysis was performed on the baseline data of a cohort of people living with HIV (PLWH) (19 years and older) in the province of BC sampled from July 2016 to September 2018. All participants consented to linking their survey data to the provincial HIV treatment registry. Individuals diagnosed with HIV from January 1 2000—December 31 2009 were classified as pre-intervention and those diagnosed January 1 2010—December 31 2018 as post-intervention cohorts. Bivariate analyses were run using Chi-square and Wilcoxon Rank Sum tests. Cox proportional hazards regression model demonstrates time to antiretroviral therapy (ART) initiation (from HIV baseline) and virological suppression (2 consecutive plasma viral load measurements Results Of the 325 participants included in this analysis, 198 (61%) were diagnosed with HIV in the pre-intervention era and 127 (39%) in the post-intervention era. A higher proportion of participants in post-intervention era were diagnosed at walk-in clinics (45% vs. 39%) and hospitals (21% vs. 11%) (vs pre-intervention) (p = 0.042). Post-intervention participants had initiated ART with less advanced HIV disease (CD4 count 410 vs. 270 cells/ul; p = 0.001) and were less likely to experience treatment interruptions at any point in the 5 years after HIV diagnosis (17% vs. 48%; p Conclusions We found favourable treatment experiences and more timely ART initiation and virologic suppression after a targeted TasP provincial program. Our results illustrate the importance of accessible low-barrier HIV testing and treatment in tackling the HIV epidemic.

An amendment to this paper has been published and can be accessed via the original article.

Background We modified and evaluated an advance care planning (ACP) intervention, which had been shown to improve compliance with patient’s end of life (EoL) wishes, in a different patient population. Methods Patients with incurable cancer, and a Family Member (FM), were randomised one-to-one to usual care or usual care plus an ACP intervention, between April 2014 and January 2017. Oncologists and participants were non-blinded. ACP was based on the Respecting Patient Choices model, with an offer to provide individualised ranges for typical, best-case and worst-case scenarios for survival time. Seven facilitators (two oncology nurses, two nurses and three allied health professionals) delivered the intervention within 2 weeks of study enrolment. The primary outcome measure, assessed by interviewing the FM 3 months after patient death, was the FM perception that the patient’s wishes were discussed, and met. Results Six hundred and sixty-five patients from seven Australian metropolitan oncology centres were referred for consideration by their oncologists, 444 (67%) met the study inclusion criteria and were approached by a study researcher. Two hundred and eight patients (47%) and their FM entered the trial as dyads. Fifty-three (46%) dyads in the ACP group and 63 (54%) dyads in the usual-care group had complete primary outcome data (p = 0.16). Seventy-nine patients and 53 FMs attended an ACP discussion. Mean length of discussion was 57 min. FMs from 23 (43%) dyads allocated to ACP and 21 (33%) dyads allocated usual care reported the patient’s EoL wishes were discussed and met (difference 10%, 95% CI: −2 to 8, p = 0.27). There were no differences in EoL care received, patient satisfaction with care; FM satisfaction with care or with death; or FM well being. Rates of palliative care referral were high in both groups (97% vs 96%). Conclusions A formal ACP intervention did not increase the likelihood that EoL care was consistent with patients’ preferences.

Ultrasound (US)-guided access for venous catheter placement has previously been shown to improve success rates and decrease access-related complications. The purpose of this study was to determine the feasibility of US-guided versus traditional vascular access approaches during implantation of cardiac implantable electronic devices (CIEDs). We evaluated outcomes for 816 consecutive patients undergoing new CIED implantation between May 2013 and April 2016 at a single institution with respect to use of US guidance for vascular access (137 with US guidance versus 679 with traditional access techniques). The primary outcome was a composite of procedural complications including deep vein thrombosis, pneumothorax, or hematoma. There was no cross-over between US guidance and traditional access. The overall complication rate was 3.6% (2.2% in US, 3.8% in non-US). The use of US was associated with a decrease in fluoroscopy time (r = −0.17, p

Germline TP53 mutation carriers are at high risk of developing a range of cancers. Effective cancer risk management is an important issue for these individuals. We assessed the psychosocial impact in TP53 mutation carriers of WB-MRI screening as part of the Surveillance in Multi-Organ Cancer (SMOC+) protocol, measuring their unmet needs, anxiety and depression levels as well as cancer worry using psychological questionnaires and in-depth interviews about their experiences of screening. We present preliminary psychosocial findings from 17 participants during their first 12 months on the trial. We found a significant reduction in participants' mean anxiety from baseline to two weeks post WB-MRI (1.2, 95% CI 0.17 to 2.23 p = 0.025), indicative of some benefit. Emerging qualitative themes show most participants are emotionally supported and contained by the screening program and are motivated by their immediate concern about staying alive, despite being informed about the current lack of evidence around efficacy of screening for people with TP53 mutations in terms of cancer morbidity or mortality. For those that do gain emotional reassurance from participating in the screening study, feelings of abandonment by the research team are a risk when the study ends. For others, screening was seen as a burden, consistent with the relentless nature of cancer risk associated with Li-Fraumeni syndrome, though these patients still declared they wished to participate due to their concern with staying alive. Families with TP53 mutations need ongoing support due to the impact on the whole family system. These findings suggest a comprehensive multi-organ screening program for people with TP53 mutations provides psychological benefit independent of an impact on cancer morbidity and mortality associated with the syndrome. The benefits of a multi-organ screening program will be greater still if the screening tests additionally reduce the cancer morbidity and mortality associated with the syndrome. These findings may also inform the care of individuals and families with other multi-organ cancer predisposition syndromes.

Science is a very special form of storytelling, one in which the stories told have to be testable against empirical observation. But the world is a complicated place; and, to provide a coherent account of it, scientists often find themselves obliged to join up their observable dots using untestable or as-yet-untested lines. This is a necessary part of constructing many valuable and predictive scientific scenarios; and it is perfectly good procedure as long as the assumptions involved are fully compatible with what is known and testable. But it also means that, in formulating their ideas about how the world works (or worked), scientists must remain keenly aware not only of what is and is not assumption in those complex ideas, but of how untested elements may color their beliefs. The contributions to this volume cover many interesting examples of how assumptions have affected ideas in diverse areas of the paleosciences, both practical and theoretical, and they serve together as a salutary reminder that vigilance and a willingness to rethink are always in order.

Many ideas have been put forward for the adaptive value of the cassowary casque; and yet, its purpose remains speculative. Homeothermic animals elevate body temperature through metabolic heat production. Heat gain must be offset by heat loss to maintain internal temperatures within a range for optimal performance. Living in a tropical climate, cassowaries, being large bodied, dark feathered birds, are under thermal pressure to offload heat. We tested the original hypothesis that the casque acts as a thermal window. With infrared thermographic analyses of living cassowaries over an expansive range of ambient temperatures, we provide evidence that the casque acts as a thermal radiator, offloading heat at high temperatures and restricting heat loss at low temperatures. Interestingly, at intermediate temperatures, the casque appears thermally heterogeneous, with the posterior of the casque heating up before the front half. These findings might have implications for the function of similar structures in avian and non-avian dinosaurs.

Australia’s Integrated Marine Observing System (IMOS, imos.org.au) is research infrastructure to establish an enduring observing program for Australian oceanic waters and shelf seas. The observations cover physical, biological, and chemical variables to address themes of multi-decadal ocean change, climate variability and weather extremes, boundary currents and inter-basin flows, continental shelf processes and ecosystem responses. IMOS observations are collected by national facilities based on various platform types and operated by partner institutions around the country. In this paper we describe the infrastructure and workflows developed to manage and distribute the data to the public. We highlight the existing standards and open-source software we have adopted, and the contributions we have made. To demonstrate the value of this infrastructure we provide some illustrations of use and uptake. All IMOS data are freely and openly available to the public via the Ocean Portal ( https://imos.aodn.org.au ). All IMOS-developed software is open-source and accessible at https://github.com/aodn .

Opinions have varied wildly as to whether the roots of language run extremely deep in the human lineage, or, alternatively, whether this unprecedented capacity is a recent acquisition. The question has been exacerbated by the fact that language itself does not preserve, so that its possession by earlier hominids has had to be inferred from indirect material proxies. Here I argue that while most technological putative proxies from the Paleolithic are certainly evidence of highly complex cognitive states among our precursors, virtually none of them can reliably be taken as witness to the specific symbolic cognitive style that human beings share today—and with which language is intricately intertwined. Symbolic reasoning can only be confidently inferred from explicitly symbolic objects. These latter only became integral to hominid societies within the tenure of anatomically modern Homo sapiens, and their appearance marked an extreme inflection in the tempo of change as seen in the archaeological record. I thus suggest that the neural capacity for symbolic reasoning and language was acquired during the major developmental reorganization that gave rise to the highly anatomically distinctive H. sapiens some 200 thousand years ago, but that that the new potential was not exploited until about 100 thousand years later, when it was released by what was necessarily a cultural stimulus. Most probably, this stimulus was the spontaneous invention of externalized structured language. This brings the origin of language into the realm of exaptation and emergence—both of them familiar evolutionary phenomena requiring no special explanation—and excludes the long-term fine-tuning of language and human reasoning by natural selection.

Made available in DSpace on 2018-11-26T16:17:19Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 0 Previous issue date: 2015-12-01 Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq) Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP) Fundação para o Desenvolvimento da UNESP (FUNDUNESP) The present study determined whether EEG and/or EMG recordings could be used to reliably define activity states in the Brazilian black and white tegu lizard (Tupinambis merianae) and then examined the interactive effects of temperature and activity states on strategies for matching O-2 supply and demand. In a first series of experiments, the rate of oxygen consumption (), breathing frequency (f (R)), heart rate (f (H)), and EEG and EMG (neck muscle) activity were measured in different sleep/wake states (sleeping, awake but quiet, alert, or moving). In general, metabolic and cardio-respiratory changes were better indictors of the transition from sleep to wake than were changes in the EEG and EMG. In a second series of experiments, the interactive effects of temperature (17, 27 and 37 A degrees C) and activity states on f (R), tidal volume (V (T)), the fraction of oxygen extracted from the lung per breath (FIO2-FEO2), f (H), and the cardiac O-2 pulse were quantified to determine the relative roles of each of these variables in accommodating changes in . The increases in oxygen supply to meet temperature- and activity-induced increases in oxygen demand were produced almost exclusively by increases in f (H) and f (R). Regression analysis showed that the effects of temperature and activity state on the relationships between f (H), f (R) and was to extend a common relationship along a single curve, rather than separate relationships for each metabolic state. For these lizards, the predictive powers of f (R) and f (H) were maximized when the effects of changes in temperature, digestive state and activity were pooled. However, the best r (2) values obtained were 0.63 and 0.74 using f (R) and f (H) as predictors of met abolic rate, respectively. Univ British Columbia, Dept Zool, Vancouver, BC V6T 1Z4, Canada Univ Estadual Paulista Rio Claro, Inst Nacl Ciencia & Tecnol Fisiol, Dept Zool, Rio Claro, SP, Brazil Brock Univ, Dept Biol Sci, St Catharines, ON L2S 3A1, Canada Univ Estadual Paulista Rio Claro, Inst Nacl Ciencia & Tecnol Fisiol, Dept Zool, Rio Claro, SP, Brazil

Made available in DSpace on 2018-11-26T16:17:19Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 0 Previous issue date: 2015-12-01 Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq) Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP) Fundação para o Desenvolvimento da UNESP (FUNDUNESP) Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada This study was designed to determine the manner in which metabolism is suppressed during dormancy in black and white tegu lizards (Tupinambis merianae). To this end, heart rate (f (H)), respiration rate (f (R)), and deep body temperature (T (b)) were continuously monitored in outdoor enclosures by radio-telemetry for nine months. There was a continuous decline in nighttime breathing and heart rate, at constant T (b), throughout the late summer and fall suggestive of an active metabolic suppression that developed progressively at night preceding the entrance into dormancy. During the day, however, the tegus still emerged to bask. In May, when the tegus made a behavioural commitment to dormancy, T (b) (day and night) fell to match burrow temperature, accompanied by a further reduction in f (H) and f (R). Tegus, under the conditions of this study, did arouse periodically during dormancy. There was a complex interplay between changes in f (H) and T (b) associated with the direct effects of temperature and the indirect effects of thermoregulation, activity, and changes in metabolism. This interplay gave rise to a daily hysteresis in the f (H)/T (b) relationship reflective of the physiological changes associated with warming and cooling as preferred T (b) alternated between daytime and nighttime levels. The shape of the hysteresis curve varied with season along with changes in metabolic state and daytime and nighttime body temperature preferences. Univ British Columbia, Dept Zool, Vancouver, BC V6T 1Z4, Canada Brock Univ, Dept Biol Sci, St Catharines, ON L2S 3A1, Canada Univ Estadual Paulista, Inst Nacl Ciencia & Tecnol Fisiol Comparada, Dept Zool, BR-13506900 Rio Claro, SP, Brazil Univ Estadual Paulista, Inst Nacl Ciencia & Tecnol Fisiol Comparada, Dept Zool, BR-13506900 Rio Claro, SP, Brazil