Serotonin is a neurochemical with evolutionarily conserved roles in orchestrating nervous system function and behavioural plasticity. A dramatic example is the rapid transformation of desert locusts from cryptic asocial animals into gregarious crop pests that occurs when drought forces them to accumulate on dwindling resources, triggering a profound alteration of behaviour within just a few hours. The onset of crowding induces a surge in serotonin within their thoracic ganglia that is sufficient and necessary to...

Morganucodon mandible CT slice videoMorganucodon.mpgKuehneotherium mandible CT scan videoKuehneotherium.mpg

The current distribution of Bantu languages is commonly considered to be a consequence of a relatively recent population expansion (3-5 kya) in Central Western Africa. While there is a substantial consensus regarding the centre of origin of Bantu languages (the Benue River Valley, between South East Nigeria and Western Cameroon), the identification of the area from where the population expansion actually started, the relation between the processes leading to the spread of languages and peoples...

A fossil priapulid, Eximipriapulus globocaudatus new genus new species, is described from the Cambrian Chengjiang Lagerstätte of Yunnan, China. The exceptional preservation of the animal reveals morphological details that allow direct comparison with extant priapulids. The body is divisible into a partially eversible pharynx, a smooth collar, a scalid-bearing introvert, a neck with triangular scalids, an unsegmented trunk with annulations, and a distinctly expanded terminal region. Several specialized regions of the alimentary canal are recognized:...

Niche and neutral processes drive community assembly and metacommunity dynamics, but their relative importance might vary with the spatial scale. The contribution of niche processes is generally expected to increase with increasing spatial extent at a higher rate than that of neutral processes. However, the extent to what community composition is limited by dispersal (usually considered a neutral process) over increasing spatial scales might depend on the dispersal capacity of composing species. To investigate the...

Do the complex processes of angiogenesis during organism development ultimately lead to a near optimal coronary vasculature in the organs of adult mammals? We examine this hypothesis using a powerful and universal method, built on physical and physiological principles, for the determination of globally energetically optimal arterial trees. The method is based on simulated annealing, and can be used to examine arteries in hollow organs with arbitrary tissue geometries. We demonstrate that the approach can...

BACKGROUND: General anaesthesia is usually associated with unconsciousness. 'Awareness' is when patients have postoperative recall of events or experiences during surgery. 'Wakefulness' is when patients become conscious during surgery, but have no postoperative recollection of the period of consciousness. OBJECTIVES: To evaluate the efficacy of two types of anaesthetic interventions in reducing clinically significant awareness: - anaesthetic drug regimens; and - intraoperative anaesthetic depth monitors. SEARCH METHODS: We searched the Cochrane Central Register of Controlled...

Stern has criticized a body of work from several groups that have independently studied the so-called “Kyriacou and Hall” courtship song rhythms of male Drosophila melanogaster, claiming that these ultradian ∼60-s cycles in the interpulse interval (IPI) are statistical artifacts that are not modulated by mutations at the period (per) locus [Stern DL (2014) BMC Biol 12:38]. We have scrutinized Stern’s raw data and observe that his automated song pulse-detection method identifies only ∼50% of...

This dataset contains time series observations of surface-atmosphere exchanges of net ecosystem carbon dioxide exchange (NEE), sensible heat (H) and latent heat (LE), and momentum (τ) for a managed lowland deep peat soil in the East Anglian Fens, England, UK. The site is managed for the production of horticultural salad crops. Measurements were made between the 22nd June 2012 and 1st January 2020 during which lettuce, leek, celery, sugar beet and potatoes crops were grown...

In the first 20 orbits of the Juno spacecraft around Jupiter, we have identified a variety of wave-like features in images made by its public-outreach camera, JunoCam. Because of Juno’s unprecedented and repeated proximity to Jupiter’s cloud tops during its close approaches, JunoCam has detected more wave structures than any previous surveys. Most of the waves appear in long wave packets, oriented east-west and populated by narrow wave crests. Spacing between crests were measured as...

Tropical tree species distributions are determined by a wide range of biotic and abiotic factors, including topography and hydrology. Tropical peat swamp forests (TPSFs) are characterized in part by small-scale variations in topography (‘hummocks’ and ‘hollows’) that create distinct microhabitats and thus may contribute to niche diversification among TPSF tree species. Using tree elevations calibrated to daily peat water levels collected using a data logger and a permutation test, we evaluated topographical microhabitat preferences for...

For species exhibiting parental care, the way in which parents adjust care behaviour to compensate for environmental change potentially influences offspring survival and, ultimately, population viability. Using the three-spined stickleback (Gasterosteus aculeatus) – a species in which males provide parental care by building and tending a nest and fanning the eggs – we examined how low dissolved oxygen (DO) levels affect paternal care, embryo development and survival. While levels of nest tending were unaffected by...

The Herefordshire (Silurian) Lagerstätte (c. 430 MYr BP) has yielded, amongst many exceptionally preserved invertebrates, a wide range of new genera belonging to crown-group Panarthropoda. Here we increase this panarthropod diversity with the lobopodian Thanahita distos, a new total-group panarthropod genus and species. This new lobopodian preserves at least nine paired, long, slender appendages, the anterior two in the head region and the posterior seven representing trunk lobopods. The body ends in a short post-appendicular...

Reconstructing the evolutionary assembly of animal body plans is challenging when there are large morphological gaps between extant sister taxa, as in the case of echinozoans (echinoids and holothurians). However, the inclusion of extinct taxa can help bridge these gaps. Here we describe a new species of echinozoan, Sollasina cthulhu, from the Silurian Herefordshire Lagerstätte, UK. S. cthulhu belongs to the ophiocistioids, an extinct group that shares characters with both echinoids and holothurians. Using physical-optical...

Long-term needs of stroke survivors (especially psychosocial needs and stroke prevention) are not adequately addressed. Self-management programmes exist but the optimal content and delivery approach is unclear. We aim to describe the process undertook to develop a structured self-management programme to address these unmet needs. Based on the Medical Research Council framework for complex interventions, the development involved three phases: “Exploring the idea”: Evidence synthesis and patient and public involvement (PPI) with stroke survivors, carers...

Long-term needs of stroke survivors (especially psychosocial needs and stroke prevention) are not adequately addressed. Self-management programmes exist but the optimal content and delivery approach is unclear. We aim to describe the process undertook to develop a structured self-management programme to address these unmet needs. Based on the Medical Research Council framework for complex interventions, the development involved three phases: “Exploring the idea”: Evidence synthesis and patient and public involvement (PPI) with stroke survivors, carers...

Additional file 1.

Additional file 5: Table S4. Unadjusted and adjusted odds ratios for an outcome of hesitancy for regular SARS-CoV-2 vaccination using complete cases (n=4030).

Additional file 2: Supplementary Figure 1.

Code used to run STR genotyping software (GangSTR, HipSTR, STRetch, ExpansionHunter, and ExpansionHunter De novo). The folder also contains supplementary files for the manuscript: " A comparison of software for analysis of rare and common short tandem repeat (STR) variation using human genome sequences from clinical and population-based samples "

We tested the effect of contrast on the perceived vehicle speed. The videos show the different visibility and environment conditions used in Experiment 1 & 2 with a vehicle driving at 50 km/h.

Additional file 1. Supplementary methods, figures, and tables.The supplementary methods include a description of the GEN-SEP and MESSI study populations, genotyping and quality control, more details of the genome-wide association study of 28-day sepsis survival and the index event bias assessment, tools for the annotation of the functional effects of the sentinel variants and the gene expression of related genes, the association of polygenic risks of sepsis with the 28-day sepsis survival, the replication of...

Abstract Background Sepsis is a severe systemic inflammatory response to infections that is accompanied by organ dysfunction and has a high mortality rate in adult intensive care units. Most genetic studies have identified gene variants associated with development and outcomes of sepsis focusing on biological candidates. We conducted the first genome-wide association study (GWAS) of 28-day survival in adult patients with sepsis. Methods This study was conducted in two stages. The first stage was performed...

Supplementary material associated with Electrochemical and Optical Monitoring of Damaged Thermal Spray Aluminium Coating in Synthetic Seawater