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Agricultural intensification simplifies natural landscapes and frequently results in the loss of biodiversity. Wetlands are highly productive and may offset these losses, but the amount of wetland area needed to support declining avian species on farmland is unknown. Using an avian aerial insectivore, the Tree Swallow (Tachycineta bicolor (Vieillot, 1808)), we tested whether a gradient of pond area (visible surface water in wetland basins within 500 m of nest boxes; range 0.2%-30% pond area) at cropland and grassland sites was related to aquatic insect biomass, reproductive success, and adult female or nestling body condition. Aquatic insect biomass was ~2-8 times higher at the cropland sites with intermediate (5.2%) pond areas than at sites with the highest (15.6%) and lowest (0.2%) pond areas. Swallow clutch initiation date was ~3-4 days earlier, and nestling body condition and model-predicted first-year survival were ~10% higher among cropland sites with more pond area and were comparable to birds hatched at grassland sites. Loss of ponds due to agricultural drainage can reduce aquatic insect prey during the breeding season with apparent individual and demographic consequences for insectivorous birds. Overall, the results suggest that where wetlands are conserved, intensive croplands can sustain Tree Swallow populations. Key words: aerial insects, aquatic subsidy, individual quality, nestling mass, pond, Tachycineta bicolor, Tree Swallow L'agriculture intensive simplifie les paysages naturels et entraine souvent une perte de biodiversite. Si les milieux humides sont tres productifs et peuvent compenser de telles pertes, la superficie de milieux humides requise pour soutenir des especes aviaires en declin dans des terres agricoles n'est pas connue. Nous utilisons un insectivore aerien, l'hirondelle bicolore (Tachycineta bicolor (Vieillot, 1808)), pour verifier si un gradient de superficie d'etangs (eau de surface visible dans des bassins de milieux humides en deca de 500 m de nichoirs; superficies d'etangs allant de 0,2 % a 30 %) dans des sites de terre cultivee et de prairie est associe a la biomasse d'insectes aquatiques, au succes de reproduction et a l'embonpoint des femelles adultes ou des oiseaux niais. La biomasse d'insectes aquatiques est d'environ 2 a 8 fois plus grande dans le site de terre cultivee caracterise par une superficie d'etangs intermediate (5,2 %) que dans les sites presentant la plus grande (15,6 %) et la plus faible (0,2 %) superficies d'etangs. La date d'initiation de la ponte des hirondelles est de ~3-4 jours plus hative et l'embonpoint des oiseaux niais et leur taux de survie modelise durant leur premiere annee sont de ~10 % plus eleves dans les sites de terre cultivee de plus grande superficie d'etangs et sont comparables a ceux d'oiseaux eclos dans les sites de prairie. La disparition d'etangs due au drainage agricole peut reduire la biomasse d'insectes aquatiques proies durant la periode de nidification, ce qui se traduit par d'apparentes consequences individuelles et demographiques pour les oiseaux insectivores. Globalement, les resultats indiqueraient que, la ou les milieux humides sont conserves, les terres en culture intensive pourraient soutenir des populations d'hirondelles bicolores. [Traduit par la Redaction] Mots-cles : insectes aeriens, subsides aquatiques, qualite individuelle, masse des oiseaux niais, etang, Tachycineta bicolor, hirondelle bicolore, Introduction Global declines in biodiversity are being driven by the loss and degradation of natural habitats and a rapidly changing climate (Mantyka-Pringle et al. 2012; Selwood et al. 2015; Srinivasan [...]

INTRODUCTION: Topical atropine eye drops at low concentrations have been shown to slow myopia progression in East Asian studies. This study explored the effect of atropine 0.01% eye drops on controlling myopia progression in a multiethnic cohort of children in the USA. METHODS: A multicenter retrospective case-control study (n = 198) quantified the effect of adding nightly atropine 0.01% eye drops to treatment as usual on the progression of childhood (ages 6-15 years) myopia. Cases included all children treated with atropine for at least 1 year. Controls were matched to cases on both age (± 6 months) and baseline spherical equivalent refraction (SER) (± 0.50 diopters, D) at treatment initiation. The primary endpoint was the average SER myopia progression after 1, 1.5, and 2 years of therapy. A secondary outcome was the percentage of subjects with a clinically significant worsening of myopia, defined as a greater than - 0.75 D SER increase in myopia. RESULTS: The average baseline SERs for the atropine (n = 100) and control (n = 98) groups were similar (- 3.1 ± 1.9 D and - 2.8 ± 1.6 D, respectively) (p = 0.23). The average SER increase from baseline was significantly less for the atropine group than the control group at year 1 (- 0.2 ± 0.8 D compared with - 0.6 ± 0.4 D, p

Aggression in early childhood has been found to predict negative outcomes later in life, including delinquency and psychopathology. The present study explored associations between young children's language, self-regulation, and physical aggression. A community sample of 126 preschool children aged 3 to 6 years (M = 4.87 years, SD = 0.87; 59% boys) and their mothers participated in the study. Children's physical aggression and self-regulation were measured by the parents' report. Children completed measures of intelligence and language. Their language abilities negatively predicted physical aggression. Children's self-regulation--specifically, inhibitory self-control and emergent metacognition--mediated the relationship between language and physical aggression. The results suggest that, among young children, physical aggression is related to an understanding of language meaning and how that understanding is used to interpret and communicate. The specific language delays implicated may lead to physical aggression through a lag in inhibitory self-control and emergent metacognition. Implications of these findings for assessment and early intervention are highlighted.

A key function of the hippocampus and entorhinal cortex is to bridge events that are discontinuous in time, and it has been proposed that medial entorhinal cortex (mEC) supports memory retention by sustaining the sequential activity of hippocampal time cells. Therefore, we recorded hippocampal neuronal activity during spatial working memory and asked whether time cells depend on mEC inputs. Working memory was impaired in rats with mEC lesions, but the occurrence of time cells and of trajectory-coding cells in the stem did not differ from controls. Rather, the main effect of mEC lesions was an extensive spatial coding deficit of CA1 cells, which included inconsistency over time and reduced firing differences between positions on the maze. Therefore, mEC is critical for providing stable and distinct spatial information to hippocampus, while working memory (WM) maintenance is likely supported either by local synaptic plasticity in hippocampus or by activity patterns elsewhere in the brain.

Hookworms are one of the most prevalent and important parasites, infecting ~500 million people worldwide. Hookworm disease is among the leading causes of iron-deficiency anemia in the developing world and is associated with significant growth stunting and malnutrition. In humans, hookworms appear to impair memory and other forms of cognition, although definitive data are hard to come by. Here we study the impact of a human hookworm parasite, Ancylostoma ceylanicum, on cognition in hamsters in a controlled laboratory setting. We developed tests that measure long-term memory in hamsters. We find that hookworm-infected hamsters were fully capable of detecting a novel object. However, hookworm-infected hamsters were impaired in detecting a displaced object. Defects could be discerned at even at low levels of infection, whereas at higher levels of infection, hamsters were statistically unable to distinguish between displaced and non-displaced objects. These spatial memory deficiencies could not be attributed to defects in infected hamster mobility or to lack of interest. We also found that hookworm infection resulted in reproducible reductions in diversity and changes in specific taxanomic groups in the hamster gut microbiome. These data demonstrate that human hookworm infection in a laboratory mammal results in a specific, rapid, acute, and measurable deficit in spatial memory, and we speculate that gut alterations could play some role in these cognitive deficits. Our findings highlight the importance of hookworm elimination and suggest that finer tuned spatial memory studies be carried out in humans.

PURPOSE: To describe the clinical and intraoperative findings of an anatomic abnormality in children that resembles sagging eye syndrome documented in older adults and that led to recurrent esotropia after surgery. METHODS: We reviewed records of 4 patients with substantial recurrent esotropia after bilateral medial rectus recession who required subsequent surgery combining lateral rectus resection with correction of the anatomic abnormality affecting the lateral rectus path. Binocular alignment was sequentially analyzed. RESULTS: Three young patients (2-3 years of age) presented with acquired esotropia but minimal cycloplegic refractive error. The fourth patient (14 years of age) initially had moderate hyperopia and partially accommodative esotropia, but subsequently developed marked bilateral overelevation in adduction. In all patients, esotropia recurred within 5Δ of preoperative deviation after bilateral medial rectus recession. Surgical exposure demonstrated that bilateral lateral rectus paths were inferiorly displaced more than one-half tendon width from their normal paths near the globes equator, despite normal scleral insertions. Equatorial myopexy and lateral rectus resection resulted in stable esotropia correction. CONCLUSIONS: Lateral rectus sag in children creates a type of acquired esotropia and overelevation in adduction poorly responsive to standard surgery but correctable with lateral rectus resection and equatorial myopexy that normalizes the lateral rectus path through permanent scleral fixation.

Current models of ocular mechanics do not fully account for potentially large globe translations associated with eye rotation. Such combined motion can be measured using magnetic resonance imaging in axial planes. We imaged orbits of normal volunteers fixating horizontally eccentric targets. These data indicate that the human eye acts as if it rotates eccentrically about a varying point typically anterior to the geometric globe center, but significantly lateral in abduction and medial in adduction. Assumed eccentricity of the ocular rotational center would vary the torque lever arms for the horizontal rectus muscles, with an appreciably smaller relative lever arm for the medial rectus muscle in adduction than would be the case for oculocentric rotation. Such variation in ocular rotational center might alter muscle torque without commensurate change in muscle tension, as appears to happen in convergence.

Objectives Large Language Models (LLMs) have been proposed as a solution to address high volumes of Patient Medical Advice Requests (PMARs). This study addresses whether LLMs can generate high quality draft responses to PMARs that satisfies both patients and clinicians with prompt engineering. Materials and Methods We designed a novel human-involved iterative processes to train and validate prompts to LLM in creating appropriate responses to PMARs. GPT-4 was used to generate response to the messages. We updated the prompts, and evaluated both clinician and patient acceptance of LLM-generated draft responses at each iteration, and tested the optimized prompt on independent validation data sets. The optimized prompt was implemented in the electronic health record production environment and tested by 69 primary care clinicians. Results After 3 iterations of prompt engineering, physician acceptance of draft suitability increased from 62% to 84% (P  <.001) in the validation dataset (N  = 200), and 74% of drafts in the test dataset were rated as "helpful." Patients also noted significantly increased favorability of message tone (78%) and overall quality (80%) for the optimized prompt compared to the original prompt in the training dataset, patients were unable to differentiate human and LLM-generated draft PMAR responses for 76% of the messages, in contrast to the earlier preference for human-generated responses. Majority (72%) of clinicians believed it can reduce cognitive load in dealing with InBasket messages. Discussion and Conclusion Informed by clinician and patient feedback synergistically, tuning in LLM prompt alone can be effective in creating clinically relevant and useful draft responses to PMARs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The hippocampus is critically involved in the acquisition and retrieval of spatial memories. Even though some memories become independent of the hippocampus over time, expression of spatial memories have consistently been found to permanently depend on the hippocampus. Recent studies have focused on the adjacent medial entorhinal cortex (MEC), as it provides major projections to the hippocampus. These studies have shown that lesions of the MEC disrupt spatial processing in the hippocampus and impair spatial memory acquisition on the watermaze task. MEC lesions acquired after learning the watermaze task also disrupt recently acquired spatial memories. However, the effect of MEC lesions on remotely acquired memories is unknown. The current study examined the effect of MEC lesions on recent and remote memory retrieval using three hippocampus-dependent tasks: the watermaze, trace fear conditioning, and novel object recognition. MEC lesions caused impaired retrieval of recently and remotely acquired memory for the watermaze. Rats with MEC lesions also showed impaired fear memory when exposed to the previously conditioned context or the associated tone, and this reduction was seen both when the lesion occurred soon after trace fear condition and when it occurred a month after conditioning. In contrast, MEC lesions did not disrupt novel object recognition. These findings indicate that even with an intact hippocampus, rats with MEC lesions cannot retrieve recent or remote spatial memories. In addition, the involvement of the MEC in memory extends beyond is role in navigation and place memory.