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Mild cognitive impairment progresses slowly and may be reversible, providing a window of opportunity for intervention before it progresses to Alzheimer's disease, at which point treatments, at best, ameliorate symptoms with little efficacy towards delaying disease progression. The gut and brain communicate through the gut-brain axis, and derangement of the gut microbiome has been shown to promote neuroinflammation, a process intricately linked to pathological progression to mild cognitive impairment and subsequent neurocognitive diseases. In preclinical trials, probiotics modulated the gut microbiome in a way that was neuroprotective. We aim to test our hypothesis that probiotic supplementation can improve cognition in those with mild cognitive impairment. A literature search of electronic databases PubMed/MEDLINE using terms such as \"Probiotics\" and \"Cognitive dysfunction\" or \"Alzheimer's disease\" or \"Mild Cognitive Impairment\" was done to identify all randomized controlled trials that tested our hypothesis. The effects of daily doses of , , or a mixture of both on clinical cognitive tests were assessed in five trials. All studies but one demonstrated a statistically significant improvement in total cognitive test scores, while all studies showed a significant improvement over the placebo in at least one cognitive subdomain. An overall trend suggested greater improvement in those more severely impaired at baseline. Thus, probiotics may be effective in improving cognition in those with mild cognitive impairment. However, larger-scale multicenter clinical trials should confirm the present findings using a standardized approach.

Gov. Sonny Perdue's sewer money can save Atlanta's ratepayers $100 million to $200 million in borrowing costs over 30 years, according to your editorial (\"With state's offer on tap, city must act on sewers,\" Dec. 24). Ten times this amount can be saved by scrapping Atlanta's ill-conceived tunnel plan. Yes, the sewer system is in disrepair, but Mayor Shirley Franklin --- an honest, hardworking and courageous leader who is just the transfusion her great city needed --- is taking the bull by the horns. Middle-class people from Brunswick to Dalton, from Bainbridge to Augusta, should rally to the cause of our Atlanta. I am totally against the state or federal government offering any kind of funds to alleviate Atlanta's sewer crisis (\"Perdue offers sewer money,\" Page One, Dec. 24).

BY 1774 JAMES BOSWELL was an advocate in good practice, the head of a growing family, and a member of Johnson's best-known club-- \"The Club.\"

Male reproductive traits such as ejaculate size and quality, are expected to decline with advancing age due to senescence. It is however unclear whether this expectation is upheld across taxa. We perform a meta-analysis on 379 studies, to quantify the effects of advancing male age on ejaculate traits across 157 species of non-human animals. Contrary to predictions, we find no consistent pattern of age-dependent changes in ejaculate traits. This result partly reflects methodological limitations, such as studies sampling a low proportion of adult lifespan, or the inability of meta-analytical approaches to document non-linear ageing trajectories of ejaculate traits; which could potentially lead to an underestimation of senescence. Yet, we find taxon-specific differences in patterns of ejaculate senescence. For instance, older males produce less motile and slower sperm in ray-finned fishes, but larger ejaculates in insects, compared to younger males. Notably, lab rodents show senescence in most ejaculate traits measured. Our study challenges the notion of universal reproductive senescence, highlighting the need for controlled methodologies and a more nuanced understanding of reproductive senescence, cognisant of taxon-specific biology, experimental design, selection pressures, and life-history. A key assumption of ageing research is that old males are less fertile. A meta-analysis of ejaculate traits challenges this, by showing senescence is not consistently observed across 157 species of animals, but is specific to only certain taxa and ejaculate traits. The study also highlights methodological factors that might modulate the evidence for reproductive senescence.