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Free-roaming cats are a common element of urban landscapes worldwide, often causing controversy regarding their impacts on ecological systems and public health. We monitored cats within natural habitat fragments in the Chicago metropolitan area to characterize population demographics, disease prevalence, movement patterns and habitat selection, in addition to assessing the possible influence of coyotes on cats. The population was dominated by adults of both sexes, and 24% of adults were in reproductive condition. Annual survival rate was relatively high (S=0.70, SE=0.10), with vehicles and predation the primary causes of death. Size of annual home range varied by sex, but not reproductive status or body weight. We observed partitioning of the landscape by cats and coyotes, with little interspecific overlap between core areas of activity. Coyotes selected for natural habitats whereas cats selected for developed areas such as residences. Free-roaming cats were in better condition than we predicted, but their use of natural habitat fragments, and presumably their ecological impact, appeared to be limited by coyotes through intraguild competition.

With increasing urbanization, some animals are adapting to human-dominated systems, offering unique opportunities to study individual adaptation to novel environments. One hypothesis for why some wildlife succeed in urban areas is that they are subsidized with anthropogenic food. Here, we combine individual-level movement patterns with diet composition based on stable isotope analysis to assess the degree to which a rapidly growing population of coyotes (Canis latrans) in Chicago consumes anthropogenic resources. We used telemetry to classify coyotes into three groups based on social class and home range composition: (1) residents with home ranges in urban nature preserves; (2) residents with home ranges that had a high proportion of urban land; and (3) transients that had relatively large home ranges and variable use of urban land. We found that natural and anthropogenic resources in this system can be reliably partitioned with carbon isotopes. Mixing models revealed that resident coyotes associated with most urban nature preserves consumed trace to minimal amounts of anthropogenic resources, while coyotes that live in the urban matrix consume moderate (30-50 %) to high (>50 %) proportions of anthropogenic resources. Lastly, we found evidence of prey switching between natural and anthropogenic resources and a high degree of inter-individual variation in diet among coyotes. In contrast to the expectation that urban adaptation may dampen ecological variation, our results suggest individuality in movement and diet exemplifies the successful establishment of coyotes in urban Chicago. Our study also suggests that direct anthropogenic food subsidization is not a prerequisite for successful adaptation to urban environments.

Human granulocytic anaplasmosis is a tickborne infection characterized by fever, thrombocytopenia, leukopenia, transaminitis, or a combination of those. Treatment must be prompt and appropriately targeted to prevent clinical decompensation. We discuss an unusual cluster of 16 probable cases in Ontario, Canada, during June-August 2021.

Climate change is altering interspecific interactions globally, yet community-level responses are difficult to predict due to both the direct and indirect effects of changing abiotic and biotic conditions. Snowshoe hares (Lepus americanus) are particularly vulnerable to decreasing snow cover and resultant camouflage mismatch. This species shares a suite of predators with alternative prey species including porcupines (Erethizon dorsatum) and ruffed grouse (Bonasa umbellus), and all three species historically exhibited synchronized population dynamics. Recently, the community has become partially disassembled, notably with the loss of snowshoe hares and associated enemy-mediated indirect interactions resulting from declining snow duration. Specifically, we hypothesized that the extirpation of hares in the early 1990s indirectly increased predation pressure on ruffed grouse and porcupines. To test our hypothesis, we experimentally translocated 96 snowshoe hares to a site within a regional ecotone between northern and southern forests where snowshoe hares were recently extirpated and monitored community members before, during, and after translocation. Ruffed grouse were only loosely associated with the biotic interactions that linked porcupines and snowshoe hares, likely due to predation occurring from avian predators and strong negative direct effects of declining winter snow depths. In contrast, predation of neonate porcupines was virtually non-existent following repatriation, compared with periods without hares. This abrupt attenuation of predation did not increase overall survival due to increased non-predation mortality from cold, early spring weather. Porcupines directly benefited from warming winters: decreased snow cover increased adult survival and warmer temperatures around parturition increased maternal condition and reduced non-predation causes of mortality for neonates. Our experimental manipulation suggests that enemy-mediated indirect interactions were likely to be important features of this community; however, climate change has disrupted these interactions, resulting in extirpation of a central prey species (snowshoe hare) and increased predation of an alternative prey species (porcupine). We show complex effects from climate change with some species directly and negatively affected, while others benefited from direct effects of warming winters, but suffered negative effects from indirect interactions. Due to absent snowshoe hares and associated biotic interactions, continued persistence of this community module is unlikely, potentially resulting in altered no-analog communities along trailing edge distributions.

The Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) statement, published in 2009, was designed to help systematic reviewers transparently report why the review was done, what the authors did, and what they found. Over the past decade, advances in systematic review methodology and terminology have necessitated an update to the guideline. The PRISMA 2020 statement replaces the 2009 statement and includes new reporting guidance that reflects advances in methods to identify, select, appraise, and synthesise studies. The structure and presentation of the items have been modified to facilitate implementation. In this article, we present the PRISMA 2020 27-item checklist, an expanded checklist that details reporting recommendations for each item, the PRISMA 2020 abstract checklist, and the revised flow diagrams for original and updated reviews.

We sought to assess and report harms that were observed but not disclosed previously in clinical trials of gabapentin. We reanalyzed individual participant data from six randomized parallel trials of gabapentin for neuropathic pain, and we conducted meta-analyses. Between 1996 and 2003, adult participants were assigned to gabapentin (600 mg–3,600 mg per day) or placebo for 7–14 weeks. We calculated the proportion of participants with: one or more adverse events (AEs), one or more serious AEs, discontinued, discontinued because AEs. We also estimated effects on AEs at three levels of aggregation using COSTART, a hierarchical system for classifying AEs: body system, midlevel system, preferred term. We found evidence of important harms that were neither included in published trial reports nor included in systematic reviews. Aggregating related harms led to greater confidence that gabapentin might harm the nervous system and possibly the digestive, metabolic and nutritional, respiratory, sensory, and urogenital body systems. Nervous system harms were more common than previous reports suggest. Clinical trials identified harms that were not reported publicly, and journal articles overstated uncertainty about harms. Relying on journal articles to evaluate gabapentin's harms could contribute to incomplete and misleading conclusions in systematic reviews and guidelines. To prevent bias arising from the selective nonreporting of results, journal articles should describe how to access data for all harms observed in clinical trials (e.g., by sharing individual participant data).

The methods and results of systematic reviews should be reported in sufficient detail to allow users to assess the trustworthiness and applicability of the review findings. The Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) statement was developed to facilitate transparent and complete reporting of systematic reviews and has been updated (to PRISMA 2020) to reflect recent advances in systematic review methodology and terminology. Here, we present the explanation and elaboration paper for PRISMA 2020, where we explain why reporting of each item is recommended, present bullet points that detail the reporting recommendations, and present examples from published reviews. We hope that changes to the content and structure of PRISMA 2020 will facilitate uptake of the guideline and lead to more transparent, complete, and accurate reporting of systematic reviews.

Towards improving the efficacy of radiotherapy, one approach is to target the molecules and processes mediating cellular radioresponse. Along these lines, translational control of gene expression has been established as a fundamental component of cellular radioresponse, which suggests that the molecules participating in this process (i.e., the translational machinery) can serve as determinants of radiosensitivity. Moreover, the proteins comprising the translational machinery are often overexpressed in tumor cells suggesting the potential for tumor specific radiosensitization. Studies to date have shown that inhibiting proteins involved in translation initiation, the rate-limiting step in translation, specifically the three members of the eIF4F cap binding complex eIF4E, eIF4G, and eIF4A as well as the cap binding regulatory kinases mTOR and Mnk1/2, results in the radiosensitization of tumor cells. Because ribosomes are required for translation initiation, inhibiting ribosome biogenesis also appears to be a strategy for radiosensitization. In general, the radiosensitization induced by targeting the translation initiation machinery involves inhibition of DNA repair, which appears to be the consequence of a reduced expression of proteins critical to radioresponse. The availability of clinically relevant inhibitors of this component of the translational machinery suggests opportunities to extend this approach to radiosensitization to patient care.

To ensure a systematic review is valuable to users, authors should prepare a transparent, complete, and accurate account of why the review was done, what they did (such as how studies were identified and selected) and what they found (such as characteristics of contributing studies and results of meta-analyses). [...]technological advances have enabled the use of natural language processing and machine learning to identify relevant evidence [22,23,24], methods have been proposed to synthesise and present findings when meta-analysis is not possible or appropriate [25,26,27], and new methods have been developed to assess the risk of bias in results of included studies [28, 29]. [...]the publishing landscape has transformed, with multiple avenues now available for registering and disseminating systematic review protocols [33, 34], disseminating reports of systematic reviews, and sharing data and materials, such as preprint servers and publicly accessible repositories. [...]extensions to the PRISMA 2009 statement have been developed to guide reporting of network meta-analyses [49], meta-analyses of individual participant data [50], systematic reviews of harms [51], systematic reviews of diagnostic test accuracy studies [52], and scoping reviews [53]; for these types of reviews we recommend authors report their review in accordance with the recommendations in PRISMA 2020 along with the guidance specific to the extension.

Climate change and habitat loss are recognized as important drivers of shifts in wildlife species' geographic distributions. While often considered independently, there is considerable overlap between these drivers, and understanding how they contribute to range shifts can predict future species assemblages and inform effective management. Our objective was to evaluate the impacts of habitat, climatic, and anthropogenic effects on the distributions of climate‐sensitive vertebrates along a southern range boundary in Northern Michigan, USA. We combined multiple sources of occurrence data, including harvest and citizen‐science data, then used hierarchical Bayesian spatial models to determine habitat and climatic associations for four climate‐sensitive vertebrate species (American marten [Martes americana], snowshoe hare [Lepus americanus], ruffed grouse [Bonasa umbellus] and moose [Alces alces]). We used total basal area of at‐risk forest types to represent habitat, and temperature and winter habitat indices to represent climate. Marten associated with upland spruce‐fir and lowland riparian forest types, hares with lowland conifer and aspen‐birch, grouse with lowland riparian hardwoods, and moose with upland spruce‐fir. Species differed in climatic drivers with hares positively associated with cooler annual temperatures, moose with cooler summer temperatures and grouse with colder winter temperatures. Contrary to expectations, temperature variables outperformed winter habitat indices. Model performance varied greatly among species, as did predicted distributions along the southern edge of the Northwoods region. As multiple species were associated with lowland riparian and upland spruce‐fir habitats, these results provide potential for efficient prioritization of habitat management. Both direct and indirect effects from climate change are likely to impact the distribution of climate‐sensitive species in the future and the use of multiple data types and sources in the modelling of species distributions can result in more accurate predictions resulting in improved management at policy‐relevant scales. Climate and habitat are important drivers of species' distributions. We used a variety of data sources to fit Bayesian hierarchical models and determine associations between habitat, climatic and anthropogenic conditions for four climate‐sensitive species' in Northern Michigan and predict contemporary distributions. Species were associated with multiple climate‐sensitive habitat classes, while temperature itself was a stronger predictor than more mechanistic variables of snow cover.