Metabolic decisions in development and disease-a Keystone Symposia report

There is an increasing appreciation for the role of metabolism in cell signaling and cell decision making. Precise metabolic control is essential in development, as evident by the disorders caused by mutations in metabolic enzymes. The metabolic profile of cells is often cell-type specific, changing as cells differentiate or during tumorigenesis. Recent evidence has shown that changes in metabolism are not merely a consequence of changes in cell state but that metabolites can serve to promote and/or inhibit these changes. Metabolites can link metabolic pathways with cell signaling pathways via several mechanisms, for example, by serving as substrates for protein post-translational modifications, by affecting enzyme activity via allosteric mechanisms, or by altering epigenetic markers. Unraveling the complex interactions governing metabolism, gene expression, and protein activity that ultimately govern a cell's fate will require new tools and interactions across disciplines. On March 24 and 25, 2021, experts in cell metabolism, developmental biology, and human disease met virtually for the Keystone eSymposium, “Metabolic Decisions in Development and Disease.” The discussions explored how metabolites impact cellular and developmental decisions in a diverse range of model systems used to investigate normal development, developmental disorders, dietary effects, and cancer-mediated changes in metabolism

School Effects on the Wellbeing of Children and Adolescents

Well-being is a multidimensional construct, with psychological, physical and social components. As theoretical basis to help understand this concept and how it relates to school, we propose the Self-Determination Theory, which contends that self-determined motivation and personality integration, growth and well-being are dependent on a healthy balance of three innate psychological needs of autonomy, relatedness and competence. Thus, current indicators involve school effects on children’s well-being, in many diverse modalities which have been explored. Some are described in this chapter, mainly: the importance of peer relationships; the benefits of friendship; the effects of schools in conjunction with some forms of family influence; the school climate in terms of safety and physical ecology; the relevance of the teacher input; the school goal structure and the implementation of cooperative learning. All these parameters have an influence in promoting optimal functioning among children and increasing their well-being by meeting the above mentioned needs. The empirical support for the importance of schools indicates significant small effects, which often translate into important real-life effects as it is admitted at present. The conclusion is that schools do make a difference in children’s peer relationships and well-being

Nothing Lasts Forever: Environmental Discourses on the Collapse of Past Societies

The study of the collapse of past societies raises many questions for the theory and practice of archaeology. Interest in collapse extends as well into the natural sciences and environmental and sustainability policy. Despite a range of approaches to collapse, the predominant paradigm is environmental collapse, which I argue obscures recognition of the dynamic role of social processes that lie at the heart of human communities. These environmental discourses, together with confusion over terminology and the concepts of collapse, have created widespread aporia about collapse and resulted in the creation of mixed messages about complex historical and social processes

Autistic children's language imitation shows reduced sensitivity to ostracism

In dialogue, speakers tend to imitate, or align with, a partner’s language choices. Higher levels of alignment facilitate communication and can be elicited by affiliation goals. Since autistic children have interaction and communication impairments, we investigated whether a failure to display affiliative language imitation contributes to their conversational difficulties. We measured autistic children’s lexical alignment with a partner, following an ostracism manipulation which induces affiliative motivation in typical adults and children. While autistic children demonstrated lexical alignment, we observed no affiliative influence on ostracised children’s tendency to align, relative to controls. Our results suggest that increased language imitation—a potentially valuable form of social adaptation—is unavailable to autistic children, which may reflect their impaired affective understanding