The contributions of maternal age heterogeneity to variance in lifetime reproductive output

© The Author(s), 2022. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in van Daalen, S. F., Hernandez, C. M., Caswell, H., Neubert, M. G., & Gribble, K. E. The contributions of maternal age heterogeneity to variance in lifetime reproductive output. American Naturalist,199(5), (2022): 603-616, https://doi.org/10.1086/718716.Variance among individuals in fitness components reflects both genuine heterogeneity between individuals and stochasticity in events experienced along the life cycle. Maternal age represents a form of heterogeneity that affects both the mean and the variance of lifetime reproductive output (LRO). Here, we quantify the relative contribution of maternal age heterogeneity to the variance in LRO using individual-level laboratory data on the rotifer Brachionus manjavacas to parameterize a multistate age × maternal age matrix model. In B. manjavacas, advanced maternal age has large negative effects on offspring survival and fertility. We used multistate Markov chains with rewards to quantify the contributions to variance in LRO of heterogeneity and of the stochasticity inherent in the outcomes of probabilistic transitions and reproductive events. Under laboratory conditions, maternal age heterogeneity contributes 26% of the variance in LRO. The contribution changes when mortality and fertility are reduced to mimic more ecologically relevant environments. Over the parameter space where populations are near stationarity, maternal age heterogeneity contributes an average of 3% of the variance. Thus, the contributions of maternal age heterogeneity and individual stochasticity can be expected to depend strongly on environmental conditions; over most of the parameter space, the variance in LRO is dominated by stochasticity.K.E.G. was supported by grant 5K01AG049049 from the National Institute on Aging, by National Science Foundation (NSF) CAREER grant IOS-1942606, and by the Bay and Paul Foundations. H.C. and S.F.v.D. were supported by the European Research Council through Advanced Grants 322829 and 788195 and by the Dutch Research Council through grant ALWOP.2015.100. S.F.v.D. was furthermore supported by the Postdoctoral Scholar Program at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, with funding provided by the Doherty Foundation. C.M.H. was supported by an NSF Graduate Research Fellowship. M.G.N. received funding from the Paul MacDonald Fye Chair for Excellence in Oceanography at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution

Diminished: Canadian women's experiences of electroshock

Sherpa Romeo ungraded journal. Open access article. Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported LIcense (CC BY-ND 3.0)“Diminished” is the result of a two-year feminist inquiry into the gendered experience of electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) in Canada. This paper focuses on seven women’s experiences with electroshock and how it affected their lives. It raises pressing questions for Canadian feminists about the apparent dispensability of women’s minds, with the purpose being to re-ignite feminist interest in women’s experiences of psychiatry in general and the damaging effects of electroshock in particularYe

Modulation of Inflammation by Extracellular Granzyme A.

Granzyme A (GrA) has long been recognized as one of the key players in the induction of cell death of neoplastic, foreign or infected cells after granule delivery by cytotoxic cells. While the cytotoxic potential of GrA is controversial in current literature, accumulating evidence now indicates roles for extracellular GrA in modulating inflammation and inflammatory diseases. This paper aims to explore the literature presenting current knowledge on GrA as an extracellular modulator of inflammation by summarizing (i) the presence and role of extracellular GrA in several inflammatory diseases, and (ii) the potential molecular mechanisms of extracellular GrA in augmenting inflammation

Shallow Dark Matter Cusps in Galaxy Clusters

We study the evolution of the stellar and dark matter components in a galaxy cluster of $10^{15} \, \rm{M_{\odot}}$ from $z=3$ to the present epoch using the high-resolution collisionless simulations of Ruszkowski & Springel (2009). At $z=3$ the dominant progenitor halos were populated with spherical model galaxies with and without accounting for adiabatic contraction. We apply a weighting scheme which allows us to change the relative amount of dark and stellar material assigned to each simulation particle in order to produce luminous properties which agree better with abundance matching arguments and observed bulge sizes at $z=3$. This permits the study of the effect of initial compactness on the evolution of the mass-size relation. We find that for more compact initial stellar distributions the size of the final Brightest Cluster Galaxy grows with mass according to $r\propto M^{2}$, whereas for more extended initial distributions, $r\propto M$. Our results show that collisionless mergers in a cosmological context can reduce the strength of inner dark matter cusps with changes in logarithmic slope of 0.3 to 0.5 at fixed radius. Shallow cusps such as those found recently in several strong lensing clusters thus do not necessarily conflict with CDM, but may rather reflect on the initial structure of the progenitor galaxies, which was shaped at high redshift by their formation process.Comment: 8 pages, 4 figures, submitted to MNRA

Tomography from the Next Generation of Cosmic Shear Experiments for Viable f(R) Models

We present the cosmic shear signal predicted by two viable cosmological models in the framework of modified-action f(R) theories. We use f(R) models where the current accelerated expansion of the Universe is a direct consequence of the modified gravitational Lagrangian rather than Dark Energy (DE), either in the form of vacuum energy/cosmological constant or of a dynamical scalar field (e.g. quintessence). We choose Starobinsky's (St) and Hu & Sawicki's (HS) f(R) models, which are carefully designed to pass the Solar System gravity tests. In order to further support - or rule out - f(R) theories as alternative candidates to the DE hypothesis, we exploit the power of weak gravitational lensing, specifically of cosmic shear. We calculate the tomographic shear matrix as it would be measured by the upcoming ESA Cosmic Vision Euclid satellite. We find that in the St model the cosmic shear signal is almost completely degenerate with LCDM, but it is easily distinguishable in the HS model. Moreover, we compute the corresponding Fisher matrix for both the St and HS models, thus obtaining forecasts for their cosmological parameters. Finally, we show that the Bayes factor for cosmic shear will definitely favour the HS model over LCDM if Euclid measures a value larger than ~0.02 for the extra HS parameter n_HS.Comment: 26 pages, 6 figures, 2 tables; tomographic and Bayesian analyses updated and modified according to reviewer's suggestions; references update

Digital Health Solutions to Reduce the Burden of Atherosclerotic Cardiovascular Disease Proposed by the CARRIER Consortium

Digital health is a promising tool to support people with an elevated risk for atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease (ASCVD) and patients with an established disease to improve cardiovascular outcomes. Many digital health initiatives have been developed and employed. However, barriers to their large-scale implementation have remained. This paper focuses on these barriers and presents solutions as proposed by the Dutch CARRIER (ie, Coronary ARtery disease: Risk estimations and Interventions for prevention and EaRly detection) consortium. We will focus in 4 sections on the following: (1) the development process of an eHealth solution that will include design thinking and cocreation with relevant stakeholders; (2) the modeling approach for two clinical prediction models (CPMs) to identify people at risk of developing ASCVD and to guide interventions; (3) description of a federated data infrastructure to train the CPMs and to provide the eHealth solution with relevant data; and (4) discussion of an ethical and legal framework for responsible data handling in health care. The Dutch CARRIER consortium consists of a collaboration between experts in the fields of eHealth development, ASCVD, public health, big data, as well as ethics and law. The consortium focuses on reducing the burden of ASCVD. We believe the future of health care is data driven and supported by digital health. Therefore, we hope that our research will not only facilitate CARRIER consortium but may also facilitate other future health care initiatives

Measurement of the cross-section and charge asymmetry of WW bosons produced in proton-proton collisions at s=8\sqrt{s}=8 TeV with the ATLAS detector

This paper presents measurements of the $W^+ \rightarrow \mu^+\nu$ and $W^- \rightarrow \mu^-\nu$ cross-sections and the associated charge asymmetry as a function of the absolute pseudorapidity of the decay muon. The data were collected in proton--proton collisions at a centre-of-mass energy of 8 TeV with the ATLAS experiment at the LHC and correspond to a total integrated luminosity of 20.2~\mbox{fb^{-1}}. The precision of the cross-section measurements varies between 0.8% to 1.5% as a function of the pseudorapidity, excluding the 1.9% uncertainty on the integrated luminosity. The charge asymmetry is measured with an uncertainty between 0.002 and 0.003. The results are compared with predictions based on next-to-next-to-leading-order calculations with various parton distribution functions and have the sensitivity to discriminate between them.Comment: 38 pages in total, author list starting page 22, 5 figures, 4 tables, submitted to EPJC. All figures including auxiliary figures are available at https://atlas.web.cern.ch/Atlas/GROUPS/PHYSICS/PAPERS/STDM-2017-13