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This paper investigates the relationship between morphological productivity and neological intuition, defined as the ability to identify novel words as such. It can be hypothesised that the more productive a word-formation process is, the less salient the neologisms it forms will be. We test this hypothesis experimentally on neologisms formed with prefixes and suffixes of variable productivity. Three experiments are conducted, involving lexical identification and reading tasks with eye tracking, to provide a comprehensive description of neological intuition. The negative correlation between productivity and neological salience is supported by experimental results, but only in the case of suffixed neologisms, as opposed to prefixed ones. The effect of affix type on neological intuition can be explained by differences in the grammatical nature of prefixes and suffixes. Broadly speaking, investigating the linguistic factors of neological intuition provides an original approach to both linguistic and psycholinguistic issues related to word structure and lexical processing.

Despite the increased use of different types of gender-fair forms in French, studies investigating how they are interpreted when presented in a sentence remain few. To fill this gap, we conducted a pre-registered study using a timed sentence evaluation task to examine the possibility of speakers’ establishing an anaphoric relationship between a gendered anaphoric expression (femmes ‘women’ or hommes ‘men’) and non-stereotyped role nouns as antecedents. The antecedents were presented in their masculine form or in one out of three different gender-fair forms (complete double forms: les voisines et voisins ‘the neighbours.FEM and neighbours.MASC’, contracted double forms: les voisin·es ‘the neighbours.MASC·FEM’, or gender-neutral forms: le voisinage ‘the neighbourhood’). In line with previous findings, the masculine form led to a male bias in the participants’ mental representations of gender. All three examined gender-fair forms resolved this bias, but comparisons of the different forms to each other revealed differences between them. The results show that complete double forms lead to equally balanced mental representations of gender while contracted double forms slightly favour representation of women. Finally, gender-neutral forms result in a small male bias, although significantly smaller than the one produced by the masculine form. The results are discussed in relation to the mental models theory and provide new and important insights on how gender-fair forms in French are interpreted.

Abstract Sexual dimorphism arises because of divergent fitness optima between the sexes. Phenotypic divergence between sexes can range from mild to extreme. Fireflies, bioluminescent beetles, present various degrees of sexual dimorphism, with species showing very mild sexual dimorphism to species presenting female-specific neoteny, posing a unique framework to investigate the evolution of sexually dimorphic traits across species. In this work, we present novel assembled genomes of two firefly species, Lamprohiza splendidula and Luciola italica, species with different degrees of sexual dimorphism. We uncover high synteny conservation of the X-chromosome across ~ 180 Mya and find full X-chromosome dosage compensation in our two fireflies, hinting at common mechanism upregulating the single male X-chromosome. Different degrees of sex-biased expressed genes were found across two body parts showing different proportions of expression conservation between species. Interestingly, we do not find X-chromosome enrichment of sex-biased genes, but retrieve autosomal enrichment of sex-biased genes. We further uncover higher nucleotide diversity in the intronic regions of sex-biased genes, hinting at a maintenance of heterozygosity through sexual selection. We identify different levels of sex-biased gene expression divergence including a set of genes showing conserved sex-biased gene expression between species. Divergent and conserved sex-biased genes are good candidates to test their role in the maintenance of sexually dimorphic traits.

Abstract Urbanization gradients are increasingly used in ecological studies to discover responses of species communities to different intensities of human-induced habitat transformation. Here, we investigated patterns of bat communities against the background of different urbanization levels using a priori defined urbanization categories based on distance classes (5 km intervals) along a linear transect from the urban core of the city of Berlin westwards into the rural outskirts of the state of Brandenburg. Using linear-mixed effects models, we found that “distance class”, as a proxy for urbanization level, is a meaningful and suitable predictor of bat species richness and diversity. We observed an unexpectedly sudden increase in bat species richness and diversity and changes in species-specific activity levels relatively close to the urban center at the transition between urban and peri-urban areas. This change suggests a relevant influence of the peri-urban areas as a “buffer zone” for specific bat species not able to adapt to the heavily modified inner core of the metropolitan area. Although we could demonstrate that anthropogenic noise and artificial light have the potential to predict the variability of bat species activity along the urban–rural gradient, the actual influence on observed shifts in the bat community needs further research.

Human granulocytotropic anaplasmosis (HGA) is a zoonotic tick-borne bacterial infection caused by Anaplasma phagocytophilum. While most cases are reported from North America, HGA has been recognized as an emerging disease in several regions of the world in recent decades. Most available data comes from case reports, case series and retrospective studies, while prospective studies and clinical trials are largely lacking. To obtain a clearer picture of the currently known epidemiologic distribution, clinical and paraclinical presentation, diagnostic aspects, complications, therapeutic aspects, and outcomes of HGA, we systematically reviewed the literature and analyzed and summarized the data. Cases of HGA are reported from all continents except from Antarctica. HGA primarily presents as an unspecific febrile illness (88.5% of the cases) often accompanied by thrombocytopenia (71.8% of the cases), abnormal liver injury tests (66.7% of the cases), and leukopenia (49.8% of the cases). Although we found complications reported in a total of 40.5% of the reviewed cases and severe and even life-threatening complications are not infrequent (e.g. acute renal failure 9.8%, multi organ failure 7.5%, ARDS 6.3%, a.o.), sequelae are rare (2.1% of the cases) and lethality is low (3.0% of the cases). Treatment with doxycycline shows a rapid response, with the fever subsiding in the majority of patients within one day of starting treatment. Unlike in human monocytotropic ehrlichiosis (HME), reports of opportunistic infections complicating HGA are rare. HGA during pregnancy does not appear to be associated with unfavorable outcomes. In addition, our analysis provides some evidence that HGA may differ in clinical aspects and laboratory characteristics in different regions of the world. Overall, the data analyzed indicates a non-negligible bias in reporting/publication, so a certain degree of caution is required when generalizing the data.

Abstract Reciprocal Copy Number Variants (CNVs) at the 16p11.2 locus confer high risk for autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and other neurodevelopmental disorders (NDDs). Morphometric MRI studies have revealed large and pervasive volumetric alterations in carriers of a 16p11.2 deletion. However, the specific neuroanatomical mechanisms underlying such alterations, as well as their developmental trajectory, are still poorly understood. Here we explored differences in microstructural brain connectivity between 24 children carrying a 16p11.2 deletion and 66 typically developing (TD) children between 2 and 8 years of age. We found a large pervasive increase of intra-axonal volume widespread over a high number of white matter tracts. Such microstructural alterations in 16p11.2 deletion children were already present at an early age, and led to significant changes in the global efficiency and integration of brain networks mainly associated to language, motricity and socio-emotional behavior, although the widespread pattern made it unlikely to represent direct functional correlates. Our results shed light on the neuroanatomical basis of the previously reported increase of white matter volume, and align well with analogous evidence of altered axonal diameter and synaptic function in 16p11.2 mice models. We provide evidence of a prevalent mechanistic deviation from typical maturation of brain structural connectivity associated with a specific biological risk to develop ASD. Future work is warranted to determine how this deviation contributes to the emergence of symptoms observed in young children diagnosed with ASD and other NDDs.

Abstract: Introduction: Social and contextual factors play an important role for elite athletes’ mental health. In the present study, we examined how young elite athletes’ coach-athlete relationship appraisals are associated with and longitudinally predict general and athlete-specific burnout symptoms and whether mental toughness moderates the association between the coach-athlete relationship and burnout symptoms. Methods: In this prospective study, data were collected twice within a 6 to 10-month interval. The sample consisted of 295 athletes attending Swiss Olympic Partner Schools (186 boys, 109 girls), with a mean age of 16.73±1.38 years. The following instruments were applied: Coach-Athlete Relationship Questionnaire (CART-Q), Athlete Burnout Questionnaire (ABQ), Shirom-Melamed Burnout Measure (SMBM), and Mental Toughness Questionnaire (MTQ). Cross-lagged panel analyses were performed to examine reciprocal relationships across time. Interaction effects were tested via hierarchical regression analyses. Results: Cross-sectionally, athletes who perceived their coach-athlete relationship as negative reported more general and athlete-specific burnout symptoms. Burnout symptoms were relatively stable across time, which made it difficult to explain further variance via coach-athlete relationship appraisals in the prospective analyses. While higher mental toughness scores were associated with fewer burnout symptoms in the cross-sectional analyses, higher mental toughness did not moderate the association between the coach-athlete relationship and burnout symptoms. Conclusion: The coach-athlete relationship plays an important role in athletes’ mental health. Therefore, coaches need the ability to develop effective relationships with their athletes, including thoughtful and respectful communication about issues specific to sport and life generally.

Real-Time Location Systems (RTLSs) are promising precision livestock farming tools and have been employed in behavioural studies across various farm animal species. However, their application in research with fattening pigs is so far unexplored. The implementation of these systems has great potential to gain insight into pigs’ spatial behaviour such as the use of functional areas and pigs’ proximity to each other as indicators for social relationships. The aim of this study was therefore to validate the accuracy, precision, and data quality of the commercial Noldus Information Technology BV TrackLab system. We conducted different measurement sets: first, we performed static measurements in 12 pens at four different locations in each pen at three heights each using a single ultra-wideband tag (UWB). We recorded unfiltered x- and y-coordinates at 1 Hz. We repeated these measurements with six tags aligned in a 2 × 3 grid with varied spacing to test interference between the tags. We also tested dynamic performance by moving the tags along the centre line of the pens. Finally, we measured the data quality with 55 growing pigs in six pens, including the identification of location 'jumps' from the inside to the outside of the pen. Each pen housed ten animals fitted with a UWB tag attached to their farm ear tag. We collected data for 10 days and analysed seven 24-h periods of raw and filtered data. The mean accuracy of the RTLS measurements was 0.53 m (precision: 0.14 m) for single and 0.46 m (precision: 0.07 m) for grouped tags. Accuracy improved with increasing measurement height for single tags but less clearly for grouped tags (P [height single] = 0.01; P [height grouped] = 0.22). When tags were fitted to animals, 63.3% of the filtered data was lost and 21.8% of the filtered location estimates were outside the pens. Altogether, the TrackLab system was capable of fairly accurate and precise assignment of the functional areas where individual animals were located, but was insufficient for the analysis of social relationships. Furthermore, the frequent occurrence of gaps in signal transmission and the overall high data loss rates presented significant limitations. Additionally, the challenging hardware requirements for attaching sensors to the animals underline the need for further technological advances in RTLS for the application with growing-finishing pigs.

A common goal for gender-fair language policies is to promote terms that elicit balanced activation of gender categories. Expanding previous research on the activation of feminine versus masculine categories through person nouns, we used a word-picture response priming design with gendered human faces as target stimuli, to explore whether a simultaneous activation of more than one gender category can be captured empirically. Focusing on Norwegian (Bokmål), we tested whether reading stereotypical (i.e. role nouns, e.g. “care givers”) and categorical gendered person nouns (i.e. name pairs, e.g. “Elin and Sandra”) facilitates the categorisation of face pairs that match the gender of the designated people. In Experiment 1 (N = 32), gender-specific (feminine or masculine) word primes were tested, before gender-balanced word primes (non-stereotyped role nouns; pairs of a female and a male name) were added in Experiment 2 (N = 39). In both experiments, the visual targets were pairs of faces (two female faces, two male faces, or one male and one female face). Consistent with previous results for English, we found gender-specific priming effects, supporting the notion that gender categories activated by linguistic stimuli may also exert influence outside of language processing. Most importantly, mixed-gender faces were successfully primed by non-stereotypical role nouns providing initial support for the idea of a balanced activation of gender categories.

Behavioural complexity is likely to reflect how animals cope with their environment. A large behavioural repertoire and the ability to flexibly apply these behaviours provide an individual with a greater likelihood of adapting to its (captive) environment. Here, we developed a procedure to aggregate different behavioural measures into a condensed measure of behavioural complexity based on 14 features, which were previously proposed (e.g. number of behaviours, Shannon diversity index) as well as some new features of behavioural complexity (e.g. variances of within and between transition durations). To test the measure, artificial behavioural sequences with potentially varying complexity were created using an individual-based modelling approach. With a Principal Component Analysis, the features extracted from these sequences could be reduced to two components (‘general complexity’ and ‘state variability’) explaining 59.64 and 27.68% of the total variance, respectively. The effect of the aspects of the artificial behavioural sequences on ‘general complexity’ and ‘transitions variability’ were analysed using linear mixed-effects models. The number of behavioural categories and the proportion of short behavioural states had the largest effect on the components. Both components were increasing with a greater number of behavioural categories, whereas the proportion of short behavioural states the opposite effect on the components. We also tested the approach on real data-sets. The principle components were not identical to the ones from the simulation. Yet, we found consistencies and similarities in the loadings. The approach for an aggregated measure of behavioural complexity developed here could form the basis of an individual-based animal welfare indicator for intensively kept animals.

Situated at the intersection of technology and medicine, the Internet of Things (IoT) holds the promise of addressing some of healthcare's most pressing challenges, from medical error, to chronic drug shortages, to overburdened hospital systems, to dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic. However, despite considerable recent technological advances, the pace of successful implementation of promising IoT healthcare initiatives has been slow. To inspire more productive collaboration, we present here a simple—but surprisingly underrated—problem-oriented approach to developing healthcare technologies. To further assist in this effort, we reviewed the various commercial, regulatory, social/cultural, and technological factors in the development of the IoT. We propose that fog computing—a technological paradigm wherein the burden of computing is shifted from a centralized cloud server closer to the data source—offers the greatest promise for building a robust and scalable healthcare IoT ecosystem. To this end, we explore the key enabling technologies that underpin the fog architecture, from the sensing layer all the way up to the cloud. It is our hope that ongoing advances in sensing, communications, cryptography, storage, machine learning, and artificial intelligence will be leveraged in meaningful ways to generate unprecedented medical intelligence and thus drive improvements in the health of many people.

Abstract: Introduction: Finding ways to efficiently monitor the balance between recovery and stress is one of the most frequent requests from coaches and athletes and probably one of the best ways to prevent maladaptive psychological and physiological states. Therefore, the purpose of the present study was to monitor recovery-stress states of adolescent elite athletes across an entire school year using the 32-item Acute Recovery and Stress Scale (ARSS), and to examine the predictive value of recovery and stress states for depressive symptoms, burnout symptoms, and insomnia symptoms. Methods: Data are based on a 10-month longitudinal observational study. The sample consisted of 135 adolescent elite athletes (Mage=16.8 years) recruited from Swiss Olympic Partner Schools. The participants completed the ARSS 19 times (every second week), the Patient Health Questionnaire (PHQ-9), the Shirom-Melamed Burnout Measure (SMBM) and the Insomnia Severity Index (ISI) at baseline and follow-up. Results: Participants reported higher recovery than stress states across the entire school year. However, lower recovery and higher stress states significantly predicted mental health problems as indexed by depressive, burnout and insomnia symptoms. The predictive power of recovery and stress states was similar for depressive and burnout symptoms. For insomnia symptoms, only recovery state was a significant predictor. Conclusion: Our study highlights that a short psychometric instrument allows longitudinal monitoring of recovery-stress states. Coaches are encouraged to implement such an instrument to identify periods that are characterized by high stress and/or low recovery. Continuous monitoring may allow the timely implementation of prevention and intervention strategies in the training process.

In this work, we investigated the technical feasibility of 'on-demand' production of selected drugs to cover their demand for a time window of 90 days. We focused on two sub-processes 'automated chemical synthesis' and 'formulation in micropellets' to enable personalized dosing. The production of drugs 'on-demand' is challenging, important, but also attractive. Switzerland could thus gain access to an additional instrument for increasing resilience for supply-critical drugs. The biggest challenge in the case study presented here is the scalability of automated chemical synthesis and the application range of micropellet formulations.

Animal pigmentation plays a key role in many biological interactions, including courtship and predator avoidance. Sympatric benthic and limnetic ecotypes of threespine stickleback (Gasterosteus aculeatus) exhibit divergent pigment patterns. To test whether differential predation by cutthroat trout contributes to the differences in pigmentation seen between the ecotypes, we used a within-generation selection experiment on F2 benthic-limnetic hybrids. After 10 months of differential selection, we compared the pigmentation of fish under trout predation to control fish not exposed to trout predation. We found that stickleback exhibited more lateral barring in ponds with trout predation. Ponds with trout were also less turbid, and a greater degree of barring was negatively correlated with the magnitude of turbidity across pond replicates. A more benthic diet, a proxy for habitat use, was also correlated with greater lateral barring and green dorsal pigmentation. These patterns suggest that differential exposure to cutthroat trout predation may explain the divergence in body pigmentation between benthic and limnetic ecotypes.

ABSTRACT: Milking stall dimensions have not been adapted to the increase in cow body size caused by selection for better milking performance over the past decades. Improper milking stall dimensions might limit cow comfort, could lead to stress responses during milking and thus could negatively affect cow welfare. A crossover study was conducted in an experimental milking parlor that was converted from a herringbone (HB) to a side-by-side (SBS) parlor. The milking stall dimensions were modified in length and width and for HB also in depth (perpendicular distance between rump rail and breast rail). The stall dimensions applied during the experiments ranged from much smaller than common in European dairy farming to much larger. Treatments were applied for 2 wk per milking parlor type. In each milking parlor type, a total of 30 cows, kept in 2 groups were observed during milking for behavioral and physiological stress responses and for milking performance. In addition, milk cortisol levels and somatic cell counts were measured at the end of the 2-wk period. Outcome variables were selected based on a principal component analysis and analyzed using mixed effects models reflecting the experimental design. The results showed that the first cow per milking batch required more time (on average >40 s) to enter very small HB stalls than to enter small, large and very large stalls (

The perceived gender ratio of 422 role nouns was evaluated by Chinese- ('N' = 80), Finnish- ('N' = 77), and Russian-speaking ('N' = 134) students using an 11-point rating scale with counterbalanced scale anchors. Data were collected online between 2015 and 2019, via a self-administered questionnaire. The dataset contains all role nouns in English together with their Chinese, Finnish, and Russian translations, as well as by-item analyses. The data set expands previous data sets and provides social scientists with gender ratio information when selecting social or occupational roles as stimulus materials for experimentation, especially for cross-linguistic or cross-cultural studies.

Research often conceptualises complex social factors as being distinct binary categories (e.g., female vs male, feminine vs masculine). While this can be appropriate, the addition of an ‘overlapping’ category (e.g., non-binary, gender neutral) can contextualise the ‘binary’, both for participants (allowing more complex conceptualisations of the categories than the ‘either/or’ conceptualisation in binary tasks), and for the results (by providing a neutral baseline for comparison). However, it is not clear what the best response setup for such a task would be. In this study, we explore this topic through comparing a unimanual (N = 34) and a bimanual response setup (N = 32) for use with a three-alternative choice response time task. Crucially, one of the stimulus categories (‘mixed’) was composed of stimulus elements from the other two stimulus categories used in that task (Complex Task). A reference button task was included to isolate the motoric component of response registration (Simple Task). The results of the simple task indicated lower motoric costs for the unimanual compared to the bimanual setup. However, when statistically controlling for these motoric costs in the complex task, the bimanual setup had a lower error rate and faster response times than the unimanual setup. Further, in the complex task error rates and response times were higher for the mixed than the matched stimuli, indicating that responding to mixed stimuli is more challenging for encoding and/or decision making processes. This difference was more pronounced in the unimanual than the bimanual setup. Taken together these results indicate that the unimanual setup is more adequate for the reference button task, whereas the intricacy of overlapping categories in the complex task is better contained in the bimanual setup, i.e. when some response alternatives are allocated to one hand and other alternatives to the other hand.

Experimental procedures involving farm animals are often associated with stress due to restraining. Stress can be reduced through use of positive reinforcement training, which then serves as refinement according to the 3Rs principles. Trainer skills, however, may influence the feasibility and success of animal training. The potential influence of trainer skills as well as the education of animal trainers are rarely described in literature but are necessary information for the implementation of positive reinforcement training as a refinement measure. To investigate the effect of educational programmes on animal trainers, we compared the training success of two groups of participants in training goats to elicit a behaviour that would allow simulated venipuncture. One group was educated in a two-day workshop while the other was provided with specific literature for self-instructed learning. Training success was evaluated using an assessment protocol developed for this study. A greater training success in the WORKSHOP GROUP, reflected by objective and subjective measures, was clearly supported statistically. In addition, 73 versus only 13% of the participants of the WORKSHOP GROUP and the self-instructed BOOK GROUP, respectively, stated that they could completely implement the knowledge gained in the course of this study. Our results indicate that more intensively educated trainers can train animals more successfully. In conclusion, if animal training is implemented as refinement, animal caretakers should receive instruction for positive reinforcement training.

Elite athletes are confronted with various challenges, pressures and stressors. Due to their status as student and athlete, adolescent elite athletes are exposed to a double burden of stress (pressure to be simultaneously successful in school and elite sport), which adds to the general risk for psychological problems in this developmental period. To facilitate the combination of elite sport and education, almost all cantons in Switzerland have established schools, which offer a special track for adolescent elite athletes. We examine (i) whether adolescent elite athletes differ from controls in a series of mental health outcomes, (ii) whether links between perceived stress and mental health symptoms are particularly strong among adolescent elite athletes, and (iii) whether perceived stress and training/competitive load interact to explain variance in mental health. Cross-sectional data from 156 athletes (134 from sport classes, 22 from regular classes) and 150 non-athletic controls (peers not engaged in elite sport) were analysed. All students were recruited from Swiss Olympic Partner schools, and attended grade 10-14. In total, 5–19% of the students reported moderate-to-severe mental health symptoms. With regard to depressive, burnout and insomnia symptoms, no significant differences were found between athletes and controls. A consistent link was observed between higher stress perceptions and more frequent mental health symptoms. However, engaging in elite sport did not seem to be an additional source of distress (or vulnerability factor) among adolescents with moderate-to-high stress levels. High training/competitive load did not amplify the association between perceived stress and mental health symptoms in elite athletes. Currently, no comprehensive framework or model of care exists to support and respond to mental health needs of young elite athletes. Our findings show that it is time to address these challenges to prevent mental health issues and ensure that young athletes can flourish while developing their full potential.

Abstract Background De novo variants in the voltage-gated calcium channel subunit α1 E gene (CACNA1E) have been described as causative of epileptic encephalopathy with contractures, macrocephaly and dyskinesias. Methods Following the observation of an index patient with developmental delay and autism spectrum disorder (ASD) without seizures who had a de novo deleterious CACNA1E variant, we screened GeneMatcher for other individuals with CACNA1E variants and neurodevelopmental phenotypes without epilepsy. The spectrum of pathogenic CACNA1E variants was compared to the mutational landscape of variants in the gnomAD control population database. Results We identified seven unrelated individuals with intellectual disability, developmental regression and ASD-like behavioral profile, and notably without epilepsy, who had de novo heterozygous putatively pathogenic variants in CACNA1E. Age of onset of clinical manifestation, presence or absence of regression and degree of severity were variable, and no clear-cut genotype–phenotype association could be recognized. The analysis of disease-associated variants and their comparison to benign variants from the control population allowed for the identification of regions in the CACNA1E protein that seem to be intolerant to substitutions and thus more likely to harbor pathogenic variants. As in a few reported cases with CACNA1E variants and epilepsy, one patient showed a positive clinical behavioral response to topiramate, a specific calcium channel modulator. Limitations The significance of our study is limited by the absence of functional experiments of the effect of identified variants, the small sample size and the lack of systematic ASD assessment in all participants. Moreover, topiramate was given to one patient only and for a short period of time. Conclusions Our results indicate that CACNA1E variants may result in neurodevelopmental disorders without epilepsy and expand the mutational and phenotypic spectrum of this gene. CACNA1E deserves to be included in gene panels for non-specific developmental disorders, including ASD, and not limited to patients with seizures, to improve diagnostic recognition and explore the possible efficacy of topiramate.

Consumers’ views and concerns about the welfare of farm animals may play an important role in their decision to consume dairy, meat and/or plants as their primary protein source. As animals are killed prematurely in both dairy and beef industries, it is important to quantify and compare welfare compromises in these two sectors before the point of death. Seventy world-leading bovine welfare experts based in 23 countries were asked to evaluate the likelihood of a bovine to experience 12 states of potential welfare concern, inspired by the Welfare Quality® protocol. The evaluation focused on the most common beef and dairy production systems in the experts’ country and was carried out separately for dairy/beef calves raised for red meat, dairy/beef calves raised for veal, dairy/beef calves raised as a replacement, and for dairy/beef cows. The results show experts rated the overall likelihood of a negative welfare state (i.e. welfare risk) to be higher in animals from dairy herds than from beef herds, for all animal categories, regardless of whether they were used to produce milk, red meat or veal. These findings suggest that consuming food products derived from common dairy production systems (dairy or meat) may be more harmful to the welfare of animals than consuming products derived from common beef production systems (i.e. from animals solely raised for their meat). Raising awareness about the linkage between dairy and meat production, and the toll of milk production on the welfare state of animals in the dairy industry, may encourage a more sustainable and responsible food consumption.

In this commentary, we discuss three replicability issues that are specifically relevant to research regarding farm animal welfare: (1) Legislative action, and its potential economic consequences, should derive from robust and replicable research to benefit animals kept in an industrial setting. (2) From an ethical perspective, the use of relatively few additional animals in replication studies in farm animal welfare science can be justified in comparison with the high numbers of animals of the same species that are routinely kept in millions for production purposes. (3) Conceptually, studies in farm animal welfare science can take advantage of heterogeneous farm settings that can serve as the population for sampling and, accordingly, follow a framework that improves external validity and thus increases replicability. In light of these issues, animal welfare scientists should more strongly embrace measures to increase replicability in their research.

Human monocytotropic ehrlichiosis (HME) is a tick-borne bacterial infection caused by Ehrlichia chaffeensis. Most available data come from case reports, case series and retrospective studies, while prospective studies and clinical trials are largely lacking. To obtain a clearer picture of the currently known epidemiologic distribution, clinical and paraclinical presentation, diagnostic aspects, complications, therapeutic aspects, and outcomes of HME, we systematically reviewed the literature and analyzed and summarized the data. Cases of HME are almost exclusively reported from North America. Human infections due to other (non-chaffeensis) Ehrlichia spp. are rare. HME primarily presents as an unspecific febrile illness (95% of the cases), often accompanied by thrombocytopenia (79.1% of the cases), leukopenia (57.8% of the cases), and abnormal liver function tests (68.1% of the cases). Immunocompromized patients are overrepresented among reviewed HME cases (26.7%), which indicates the role of HME as an opportunistic infection. The incidence of complications is higher in immunocompromized compared to immunocompetent cases, with ARDS (34% vs 19.8%), acute renal failure (34% vs 15.8%), multi organ failure (26% vs 14.9%), and secondary hemophagocytic lymphohistiocytosis (26% vs 14.9%) being the most frequent reported. The overall case fatality is 11.6%, with a significant difference between immunocompetent (9.9%) and immunocompromized (16.3%) cases, and sequelae are rare (4.2% in immunocompetent cases, 2.5% in immunocompromised cases). Author summary: Human monocytotropic ehrlichiosis (HME) is a bacterial disease caused by Ehrlichia chaffeensis which is transmitted by tick bites and exclusively reported from Northern America. Infections with other Ehrlichia bacteria are rare, and only very rarely are such cases reported from outside North America. Most cases of HME are likely to be asymptomatic, and symptomatic cases of HME can be easily overlooked or confused as they present primarily as a non-specific febrile illness. Patients with a weakened immune system (e.g. organ transplant patients) are more susceptible to HME and show more complications when compared to patients with a normal immune system. Although response to antimicrobial treatment is usually fast and effective, complications may arise (particularly in patients with a weakened immune system) and the outcome even be fatal. Since most available data on HME comes from case reports, case series and retrospective studies, data on several aspects of the disease remains patchy. To obtain a better overview on various aspect of HME we systematically reviewed the existing literature and compiled and analyzed the reported data on epidemiology, clinical presentation, complications, diagnosis, treatment, and outcome of HME. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract Background Sensory processing atypicalities are frequent in Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) and neurodevelopmental disorders (NDD). Different domains of sensory processing appear to be differentially altered in these disorders. In this study, we explored the sensory profile of two clinical cohorts, in comparison with a sample of typically developing children. Methods Behavioral responses to sensory stimuli were assessed using the Sensory Processing Measure (parent-report questionnaire). We included 121 ASD children, 17 carriers of the 16p11.2 deletion (Del 16p11.2) and 45 typically developing (TD) children. All participants were aged between 2 and 12 years. Additional measures included the Tactile Defensiveness and Discrimination Test-Revised, Wechsler Intelligence Scales and Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule (ADOS-2). Statistical analyses included MANCOVA and regression analyses. Results ASD children score significantly higher on all SPM subscales compared to TD. Del16p11.2 also scored higher than TD on all subscales except for tactile and olfactory/taste processing, in which they score similarly to TD. When assessing sensory modulation patterns (hyper-, hypo-responsiveness and seeking), ASD did not significantly differ from del16p11.2. Both groups had significantly higher scores across all patterns than the TD group. There was no significant association between the SPM Touch subscale and the TDDT-R. Limitations Sensory processing was assessed using a parent-report questionnaire. Even though it captures observable behavior, a questionnaire does not assess sensory processing in all its complexity. The sample size of the genetic cohort and the small subset of ASD children with TDDT-R data render some of our results exploratory. Divergence between SPM Touch and TDDT-R raises important questions about the nature of the process that is assessed. Conclusions Touch and olfaction/taste seem to be particularly affected in ASD children compared to del16p11.2. These results indicate that parent report measures can provide a useful perspective on behavioral expression. Sensory phenotyping, when combined with neurobiological and psychophysical methods, might have the potential to provide a better understanding of the sensory processing in ASD and in other NDD.

Many studies have demonstrated that stimuli that are easy to process are generally better evaluated compared to stimuli that are harder to process. It is, however, an open question whether people speaking with a foreign accent are judged to be less truthful compared to native speakers due to the greater difficulty of decoding their speech. In this paper, we provide new data to this debate by comparing the credibility of speakers of French, both with a familiar or unfamiliar native accent, and with a familiar and unfamiliar foreign accent. Our results indicate that native Native-speakers do not evaluate statements uttered with a foreign-accent as less truthful compared to a native one. Psychological area: psycholinguistics Keywords: processing fluency, foreign accent, familiarity effect, credibility, regional accent, Introduction In everyday life, people constantly have to evaluate new information and unfamiliar situations in order to be able to make decisions. According to Oppenheimer (2008), the mechanism of evaluation [...]

In the spirit of the pragmatic account of quotation and reporting offered by Macagno and Walton (2017), we outline a systematic pragmatic account of rephrasing. For this purpose, we combine two interrelated methods of inquiry into the variety of uses of rephrase as a persuasive device: (i) the annotation of rephrase types to identify locutionary and illocutionary aspects of rephrase, (ii) the crowd–sourced examination of rephrase types to investigate their perlocutionary effects. As it draws on Waltonian insights and on empirical and experimental research on the (mis)use of rephrase, our approach allows us to ground a novel theoretically–informed and data–driven pragmatic account of rephrase.

While corpus studies have shown that discourse connectives that convey the same coherence relation can display subtle differences, research on online discourse processing has only focused on a rather limited set of connectives. Yet, different connectives – for example, rare or polyfunctional ones – might elicit different reading patterns. In order to explore this assumption, we test the robustness of discourse processing for French native speakers by measuring the way they process causal and concessive sentences that are conveyed by either an appropriate or inappropriate connective. Throughout three experiments, we change important characteristics of the connectives: we first test frequently used connectives (Experiment 1), secondly less frequent ones (Experiment 2), and finally less frequent connectives that are polyfunctional and for which different functions clearly compete (Experiment 3). Our results show that the processing for incoherent items was affected for all connectives, however readers showed altered reading fluency when infrequent connectives were used. We conclude that discourse processing is quite robust and that readers are able to insert meaning conveyed by rare connectives while still showing the highest reading ease with frequent connectives.

Psycholinguistic approaches that study the effects of language on mental representations have ignored a potential role of the grammaticalization of the future (i.e., how the future manifests linguistically). We argue that the grammaticalization of the future may be an important aspect, as thinking about the future is omnipresent in our everyday life. The aim of this study was to experimentally manipulate the degree of future time references (i.e., present and future verb tense and temporal adverbials) to address their impact on the perceived location of future events. Across four experiments, two in French and two in German, no effect was found, irrespective of our verb and adverbial manipulations, and contrary to our hypotheses. Bayes factors confirmed that our null effects were not due to a lack of power. We present one of the first empirical accounts investigating the role of the grammaticalization of the future on effects of mental representations. We discuss possible reasons for these null results and illustrate further avenues for future research.

Sexual dimorphism arises because of divergent fitness optima between the sexes. Phenotypic divergence between sexes can range from mild to extreme. Fireflies, bioluminescent beetles, present various degrees of sexual dimorphism, with species showing very mild sexual dimorphism to species presenting female-specific neoteny, posing a unique framework to investigate the evolution of sexually dimorphic traits across species. In this work, we present novel assembled genomes of two firefly species, Lamprohiza splendidula and Luciola italica, species with different degrees of sexual dimorphism. We uncover high synteny conservation of the X-chromosome across ~ 180 Mya and find full X-chromosome dosage compensation in our two fireflies, hinting at common mechanism upregulating the single male X-chromosome. Different degrees of sex-biased expressed genes were found across two body parts showing different proportions of expression conservation between species. Interestingly, we do not find X-chromosome enrichment of sex-biased genes, but retrieve autosomal enrichment of sex-biased genes. We further uncover higher nucleotide diversity in the intronic regions of sex-biased genes, hinting at a maintenance of heterozygosity through sexual selection. We identify different levels of sex-biased gene expression divergence including a set of genes showing conserved sex-biased gene expression between species. Divergent and conserved sex-biased genes are good candidates to test their role in the maintenance of sexually dimorphic traits. Sexual dimorphism reflects divergent requirements between the sexes. We explore gene expression between two fireflies that show mild and extreme dimorphism. We uncover conserved and divergent gene expression, including complete dosage compensation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]