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Nonhuman primates are an essential part of tropical biodiversity and play key roles in many ecosystem functions, processes, and services. However, the impact of climate variability on nonhuman primates, whether anthropogenic or otherwise, remains poorly understood. In this study, we utilized age‐structured matrix population models to assess the population viability and demographic variability of a population of geladas (Theropithecus gelada) in the Simien Mountains, Ethiopia with the aim of revealing any underlying climatic influences. Using data from 2008 to 2019 we calculated annual, time‐averaged, and stochastic population growth rates (λ) and investigated relationships between vital rate variability and monthly cumulative rainfall and mean temperature. Our results showed that under the prevailing environmental conditions, the population will increase (λs = 1.021). Significant effects from rainfall and/or temperature variability were widely detected across vital rates; only the first year of infant survival and the individual years of juvenile survival were definitively unaffected. Generally, the higher temperature in the hot‐dry season led to lower survival and higher fecundity, while higher rainfall in the hot‐dry season led to increased survival and fecundity. Overall, these results provide evidence of greater effects of climate variability across a wider range of vital rates than those found in previous primate demography studies. This highlights that although primates have often shown substantial resilience to the direct effects of climate change, their vulnerability may vary with habitat type and across populations. This study used matrix population models and moving window climate analysis to explore the effects of rainfall and temperature variability on the vital rates of a population of geladas (Theropithecus gelada) in the Simien Mountains of Ethiopia. The higher temperature in the hot‐dry season generally led to decreased survival and increased fecundity, while higher rainfall in the hot‐dry season generally led to increased survival and fecundity. These widespread effects were contrary to prior similar primate research, highlighting that the vulnerability of primates to local climate change may vary with habitat type and population.

Mitochondrial and plastid functions depend on coordinated expression of proteins encoded by genomic compartments that have radical differences in copy number of organellar and nuclear genomes. In polyploids, doubling of the nuclear genome may add challenges to maintaining balanced expression of proteins involved in cytonuclear interactions. Here, we use ribo-depleted RNA sequencing (RNA-seq) to analyze transcript abundance for nuclear and organellar genomes in leaf tissue from four different polyploid angiosperms and their close diploid relatives. We find that even though plastid genomes contain <1% of the number of genes in the nuclear genome, they generate the majority (69.9 to 82.3%) of messenger RNA (mRNA) transcripts in the cell. Mitochondrial genes are responsible for a much smaller percentage (1.3 to 3.7%) of the leaf mRNA pool but still produce much higher transcript abundances per gene compared to nuclear genome. Nuclear genes encoding proteins that functionally interact with mitochondrial or plastid gene products exhibit mRNA expression levels that are consistently more than 10-fold lower than their organellar counterparts, indicating an extreme cytonuclear imbalance at the RNA level despite the predominance of equimolar interactions at the protein level. Nevertheless, interacting nuclear and organellar genes show strongly correlated transcript abundances across functional categories, suggesting that the observed mRNA stoichiometric imbalance does not preclude coordination of cytonuclear expression. Finally, we show that nuclear genome doubling does not alter the cytonuclear expression ratios observed in diploid relatives in consistent or systematic ways, indicating that successful polyploid plants are able to compensate for cytonuclear perturbations associated with nuclear genome doubling.

Assigning gene function from genome sequences is a rate-limiting step in molecular biology research. A protein's position within an interaction network can potentially provide insights into its molecular mechanisms. Phylogenetic analysis of evolutionary rate covariation (ERC) in protein sequence has been shown to be effective for large-scale prediction of functional relationships and interactions. However, gene duplication, gene loss, and other sources of phylogenetic incongruence are barriers for analyzing ERC on a genome-wide basis. Here, we developed ERCnet, a bioinformatic program designed to overcome these challenges, facilitating efficient all-versus-all ERC analyses for large protein sequence datasets. We simulated proteome datasets and found that ERCnet achieves combined false positive and negative error rates well below 10% and that our novel “branch-by-branch” length measurements outperforms “root-to-tip” approaches in most cases, offering a valuable new strategy for performing ERC. We also compiled a sample set of 35 angiosperm genomes to test the performance of ERCnet on empirical data, including its sensitivity to user-defined analysis parameters such as input dataset size and branch-length measurement strategy. We investigated the overlap between ERCnet runs with different species samples to understand how species number and composition affect predicted interactions and to identify the protein sets that consistently exhibit ERC across angiosperms. Our systematic exploration of the performance of ERCnet provides a roadmap for design of future ERC analyses to predict functional interactions in a wide array of genomic datasets. ERCnet code is freely available at https://github.com/EvanForsythe/ERCnet.

A meta-analysis of soil incubation studies from the permafrost zone suggests that thawing under aerobic conditions, which releases CO 2 , will strengthen the permafrost carbon feedback more than waterlogged systems, which releases CO 2 and CH 4 . Increasing temperatures in northern high latitudes are causing permafrost to thaw 1 , making large amounts of previously frozen organic matter vulnerable to microbial decomposition 2 . Permafrost thaw also creates a fragmented landscape of drier and wetter soil conditions 3 , 4 that determine the amount and form (carbon dioxide (CO 2 ), or methane (CH 4 )) of carbon (C) released to the atmosphere. The rate and form of C release control the magnitude of the permafrost C feedback, so their relative contribution with a warming climate remains unclear 5 , 6 . We quantified the effect of increasing temperature and changes from aerobic to anaerobic soil conditions using 25 soil incubation studies from the permafrost zone. Here we show, using two separate meta-analyses, that a 10 °C increase in incubation temperature increased C release by a factor of 2.0 (95% confidence interval (CI), 1.8 to 2.2). Under aerobic incubation conditions, soils released 3.4 (95% CI, 2.2 to 5.2) times more C than under anaerobic conditions. Even when accounting for the higher heat trapping capacity of CH 4 , soils released 2.3 (95% CI, 1.5 to 3.4) times more C under aerobic conditions. These results imply that permafrost ecosystems thawing under aerobic conditions and releasing CO 2 will strengthen the permafrost C feedback more than waterlogged systems releasing CO 2 and CH 4 for a given amount of C.

Reproducibility in research can be compromised by both biological and technical variation, but most of the focus is on removing the latter. Here we investigate the effects of biological variation in HeLa cell lines using a systems-wide approach. We determine the degree of molecular and phenotypic variability across 14 stock HeLa samples from 13 international laboratories. We cultured cells in uniform conditions and profiled genome-wide copy numbers, mRNAs, proteins and protein turnover rates in each cell line. We discovered substantial heterogeneity between HeLa variants, especially between lines of the CCL2 and Kyoto varieties, and observed progressive divergence within a specific cell line over 50 successive passages. Genomic variability has a complex, nonlinear effect on transcriptome, proteome and protein turnover profiles, and proteotype patterns explain the varying phenotypic response of different cell lines to Salmonella infection. These findings have implications for the interpretation and reproducibility of research results obtained from human cultured cells. Systems-wide analysis of HeLa cell lines from 13 labs identifies substantial molecular and phenotypic variability.

Low-resolution infrared spectroscopy from JWST confirms the presence of SiC and likely metallic iron dust around asymptotic giant branch (AGB) stars in the Sextans A dwarf galaxy, which has a metallicity ∼1%–7% Z⊙. While metal-poor carbon-rich AGB stars are known to produce copious amounts of amorphous carbon dust owing to the dredge up of newly synthesized carbon, this is the first time that Si- and Fe-bearing dust has been detected at this extreme metallicity. Of the six AGB stars observed, one is an intermediate-mass (∼1.2–4 M⊙) carbon star showing SiC dust, and another is an oxygen-rich M-type star with mass ∼4–5 M⊙ that is likely undergoing hot bottom burning. The infrared excess of the M-type star is strong, but featureless. We tested multiple dust species, and found that it is best fit with metallic iron dust. Assuming its dust-production rate stays constant over the final 2–3 × 104 yr of its evolution, this star will produce ∼0.9–3.7 times the iron dust mass predicted by models, with the range depending on the adopted stellar mass. The implications for dust production in high-redshift galaxies are potentially significant, especially regarding the assumed dust species used in dust evolution models and the timescale of AGB dust formation. Stars on the upper end of the AGB mass range can begin producing dust as early as 30–50 Myr after they form, and they may therefore rival dust production by supernovae at high redshift.

Brain and nervous system cancers are the 5th most common cancer category in the United States and have a very low survival rate. Spatial analysis techniques can be employed to understand the distribution of rates and generate hypotheses about etiologies. The purpose of this study is to identify geographic patterns, time trends, and sex differences in mortality-incidence rate ratios, incidence rates, and mortality rates of brain and nervous system cancers. Cancer data were sourced from the CDC Wonder Cancer database, including age-adjusted mortality-incidence rate ratios, age-adjusted incidence and mortality rates for all age groups and demographics in the United States. MIRR data were available from 1999 to 2018 which were split into four, five-year aggregated time windows to have adequate case numbers for time trend analyses. We further conducted joinpoint regression analysis for 1999–2022 (incidence) and 1999–2023 (mortality) by state and sex to identify changes in trends over time. Incidence-mortality rate ratios varied across the United States, with the highest ratios from 1999 to 2003, calculated to be around 0.67 for the different demographics studied. Since 2004, the mortality rates have remained consistent with some variation between states, with little improvement in the incidence-mortality rate ratio. From 2014 to 2018, females had significantly lower incidence and mortality rates compared to men. The average mortality rate for females was 3.7 per 100,000 compared to the mortality rate for males which was 5.5 per 100,000. Average incidence showed the same pattern with a rate of 5.6 per 100,000 in females compared to 7.7 per 100,000 in males. The Northeast region of the United States showed the highest incidence and lowest mortality. There were 12 states that saw a directional change in incidence, and 14 a directional change in mortality during the study window. Females were more likely to have a directional change in mortality, and males a directional change in incidence trends. Further research should investigate reasons for the sex and state differences in brain cancer incidence and mortality rates and how regional factors contribute to survival. •Trends in brain cancer incidence and mortality have not changed much over time in the United States.•There is a higher risk of diagnosis and death in men compared to women.•Regions with higher incidence but lower mortality may be due to closer proximity to cancer treatment centers.

The construction industry faces a significant crisis with rising suicide rates and mental health issues among workers. Addressing these challenges requires both systemic changes in work practices and improved access to mental wellness resources. However, there is limited research on the perceptions of both workers and senior management towards proposed solutions to reducing psychological distress experienced in occupational settings. Understanding these perceptions is crucial to determining the needs and acceptability of different wellness interventions. Thus, this study aimed to uncover preferences for validated wellness interventions in occupational settings by exploring the attitudes of 12 senior managers and 15 frontline workers using Q-Methodology. Findings revealed that frontline workers favored personalized wellness interventions tailored to their unique situations. Additionally, notable differences were identified between frontline workers and senior managers in their views on policies and practices aimed at reducing workload pressures and enhancing accountability and communication. The data also showed that current contracting and work practices potentially hinder the implementation of interventions perceived to be most beneficial by workers and senior managers. These results provide valuable insights for future research and offer guidance to organizations on designing, implementing, and communicating effective wellness interventions.

Physicians have traditionally asked about substance use within the Social History section of the consultation note. Drawing on social science theory and using the authors’ own experiences as generalists and addiction scholars, we consider the possible unintended harms associated with this approach. The inclusion of the substance use history within the Social History reproduces the discourse of substance use disorders as “life-style choices” rather than medical conditions, and reinforces stigma among healthcare workers through the attribution of personal responsibility for complications associated with problematic substance use. The ongoing placement of the substance use history within the Social History may lead to a failure to diagnose and make appropriate management plans for clients with substance use disorders. These missed opportunities may include inadequate withdrawal management leading to discharge before medically advised, insufficient use of evidence-based pharmacotherapy and psychotherapy, polypharmacy, medical complications, and repeated admissions to hospital. We argue instead that the Substance Use History should be a stand-alone section within the consultation note. This new section would reduce the invisibility of substance use disorders within our medical systems and model that these chronic medical conditions are amenable to prevention, treatment and harm reduction through the application of evidence-based practices.

Type 2 diabetes and prediabetes are associated with a higher risk of several health conditions. We conducted a cross-sectional study to compare the prevalence of comorbidities among 88,724 adults with prediabetes and 12,071 adults with type 2 diabetes in El Paso, Texas, using data from the Paso del Norte Health Information Exchange (PHIX) from 1 January 2021, to 31 January 2023. We estimated prevalence ratios (aPR) adjusted for age decade, gender, and Hispanic ethnicity. Individuals with prediabetes, compared to type 2 diabetes, had lower adjusted prevalence of circulatory (59.1% vs. 80.4%; aPR = 0.82 [95% CI: 0.81–0.84]), genitourinary (44.9% vs. 50.5%; aPR = 0.97 [0.96–0.99]), respiratory (32.0% vs. 35.7%; aPR = 0.94 [0.92–0.97]), neurological (27.4% vs. 32.8%; aPR = 0.91 [0.88–0.94]), blood (21.2% vs. 30.5%; aPR = 0.77 [0.75–0.80]), mental (19.5% vs. 26.1%; aPR = 0.72 [0.69–0.75]), infectious (12.8% vs. 21.5%; aPR = 0.63 [0.60–0.66]), skin (12.2% vs. 14.8%; aPR = 0.82 [0.78–0.86]), and COVID-19 (10.2% vs. 11.9%; aPR = 0.86 [0.81–0.91]) diseases/conditions. Adjusted prevalence was higher among those with prediabetes for musculoskeletal (53.8% vs. 47.0%; aPR = 1.19 [1.17, 1.21]), ear (18.4% vs. 12.9%; aPR = 1.54 [1.47–1.60]), eye (11.1% vs. 7.8%; aPR = 1.52 [1.43, 1.61]), digestive (44.0% vs. 44.0%; aPR = 1.02 [1.00–1.05]), and neoplastic (14.4% vs. 14.5%; aPR = 1.12 [1.06–1.17]) diseases/conditions. People with prediabetes in El Paso, Texas, had a lower prevalence of most comorbidities than those with type 2 diabetes, suggesting that preventing prediabetes from progressing to type 2 diabetes could have a beneficial impact on comorbid disease burden.