Drinking by sea snakes from oceanic freshwater lenses at first rainfall ending seasonal drought

Acquisition of fresh water (FW) is problematic for FW-dependent animals living in marine environments that are distant from sources of FW associated with land. Knowledge of how marine vertebrates respond to oceanic rainfall, and indeed the drinking responses of vertebrates generally following drought, is extremely scant. The Yellow-bellied Sea Snake (Hydrophis platurus) is the only pelagic species of squamate reptile and ranges across the Indo-Pacific oceans, having one of the largest geographic distributions of any vertebrate species. It requires FW and dehydrates at sea during periods of drought. Here we report drinking behaviors of sea snakes precisely at the transition from dry to wet season when rainfall first impacted the ocean following 6 months of seasonal drought. We show that the percentage of sea snakes that voluntarily drank FW in the laboratory when captured over eight successive days decreased from 80% to 13% before and after rainfall commenced, respectively. The percentage of snakes that drank immediately following capture exhibited a significant linear decline as the earliest rains of the wet season continued. Drinking by snakes indicates thirst related to dehydration, and thus thirsty snakes must have dehydrated during the previous six months of drought. Hence, the progressive decline in percentage of thirsty snakes indicates they were drinking from FW lenses associated with the first rainfall events of the wet season. These data reinforce the importance of accessing oceanic FW from precipitation, with implications for survival and distribution of pelagic populations that might be subjected to intensifying drought related to climate change

Learning from arts and humanities approaches for building climate resilience in the UK

Summary:•This chapter shares insights from five arts and humanities-led UK Climate Resilience Programme projects, presenting key learnings and pathways for future research and policy interventions. •We highlight the significant potential of place-based arts and humanities approaches for working with and engaging communities in building climate resilience and driving climate action.•We underline the importance of generating genuine two-way dialogue, knowledge exchange and co-creation between academics, practitioners, and community members. •We point to the importance of robustly and reflexively assessing the effectiveness of arts and humanities-led engagement.•We argue that working collectively to develop more integrated climate and arts/cultural policy is imperative in supporting future long-term climate resilience

Transforming Learning: Challenges and Opportunities through School Libraries

Researchers will share papers exploring the SIG theme, Transforming Learning: Challenges and Opportunities through School Libraries. This interactive SIG session includes presentation of each research paper followed by open dialogue and Q&A regarding issues raised by the papers, implications for practice, and future areas for research. The following papers were selected for presentation: Teachers’ Perceptions of Students’ News Literacy (Lesley S. J. Farmer), Lead Like a Librarian (Pamela Harland), Challenges and Opportunities: Transforming Learning through Implementation of the 2018 National School Library Standards for Learners, School Librarians, and School Libraries (Carl A. Harvey II, Jen R. Spisak, Karla B. Collins, and Audrey P. Church), and Discourses of Adolescence/ts and Collection Development (Jenna Spiering and Kate Lechtenberg)

Tau isoform-specific enhancement of L-type calcium current and augmentation of afterhyperpolarization in rat hippocampal neurons

Accumulation of tau is observed in dementia, with human tau displaying 6 isoforms grouped by whether they display either 3 or 4 C-terminal repeat domains (3R or 4R) and exhibit no (0N), one (1N) or two (2N) N terminal repeats. Overexpression of 4R0N-tau in rat hippocampal slices enhanced the L-type calcium (Ca(2+)) current-dependent components of the medium and slow afterhyperpolarizations (AHPs). Overexpression of both 4R0N-tau and 4R2N-tau augmented Ca(V)1.2-mediated L-type currents when expressed in tsA-201 cells, an effect not observed with the third 4R isoform, 4R1N-tau. Current enhancement was only observed when the pore-forming subunit was co-expressed with Ca(V)β3 and not Ca(V)β2a subunits. Non-stationary noise analysis indicated that enhanced Ca(2+) channel current arose from a larger number of functional channels. 4R0N-tau and Ca(V)β3 were found to be physically associated by co-immunoprecipitation. In contrast, the 4R1N-tau isoform that did not augment expressed macroscopic L-type Ca(2+) current exhibited greatly reduced binding to Ca(V)β3. These data suggest that physical association between tau and the Ca(V)β3 subunit stabilises functional L-type channels in the membrane, increasing channel number and Ca(2+) influx. Enhancing the Ca(2+)-dependent component of AHPs would produce cognitive impairment that underlie those seen in the early phases of tauopathies

Physical activity and dietary behaviour in a population-based sample of British 10-year old children: the SPEEDY study (Sport, Physical activity and Eating behaviour: environmental Determinants in Young people).

BACKGROUND: The SPEEDY study was set up to quantify levels of physical activity (PA) and dietary habits and the association with potential correlates in 9-10 year old British school children. We present here the analyses of the PA, dietary and anthropometry data. METHODS: In a cross-sectional study of 2064 children (926 boys, 1138 girls) in Norfolk, England, we collected anthropometry data at school using standardised procedures. Body mass index (BMI) was used to define obesity status. PA was assessed with the Actigraph accelerometer over 7 days. A cut-off of > or = 2000 activity counts was used to define minutes of moderate-to-vigorous PA (MVPA). Dietary habits were assessed using the Health Behaviour in School Children food questionnaire. Weight status was defined using published international cut-offs (Cole, 2000). Differences between groups were assessed using independent t-tests for continuous data and chi-squared tests for categorical data. RESULTS: Valid PA data (>500 minutes per day on > or = 3 days) was available for 1888 children. Mean (+/- SD) activity counts per minute among boys and girls were 716.5 +/- 220.2 and 635.6 +/- 210.6, respectively (p < 0.001). Boys spent an average of 84.1 +/- 25.9 minutes in MVPA per day compared to 66.1 +/- 20.8 among girls (p < 0.001), with an average of 69.1% of children accumulating 60 minutes each day. The proportion of children classified as overweight and obese was 15.0% and 4.1% for boys and 19.3% and 6.6% for girls, respectively (p = 0.001). Daily consumption of at least one portion of fruit and of vegetables was 56.8% and 49.9% respectively, with higher daily consumption in girls than boys and in children from higher socioeconomic backgrounds. CONCLUSION: Results indicate that almost 70% of children meet national PA guidelines, indicating that a prevention of decline, rather than increasing physical activity levels, might be an appropriate intervention target. Promotion of daily fruit and vegetable intake in this age group is also warranted, possibly focussing on children from lower socioeconomic backgrounds.RIGHTS : This article is licensed under the BioMed Central licence at http://www.biomedcentral.com/about/license which is similar to the 'Creative Commons Attribution Licence'. In brief you may : copy, distribute, and display the work; make derivative works; or make commercial use of the work - under the following conditions: the original author must be given credit; for any reuse or distribution, it must be made clear to others what the license terms of this work are

Home-Based Work and Home-Based Workers (1800-2021)

Home-Based Work and Home-Based Workers (1800-2021) is about the past and present of home-based work and homebased workers between 1800 and 2021 from a global perspective.; Readership: All interested in social and economic history, and especially in the past and present of home-based work and homebased workers

COVID-19 and Informal Work in 11 Cities: Recovery Pathways Amidst Continued Crisis

The majority of the global workforce – 61% – is informal and has been disproportionately impacted by measures to prevent the spread of COVID-19 and by the accompanying economic downturn. The focus on aggregate job and livelihood losses masks the multiple drivers behind these losses that are leaving labour markets in general, but particularly in developing countries, without a viable path to recovery. The global informal workforce is diverse, and understanding experiences of workers in different contexts and sectors is required to design effective recovery policies. This Working Paper reflects the findings from the longitudinal study of nearly 2,000 informal workers in 11 cities around the world. Surveys and in-depth interviews were conducted with domestic workers, home-based workers, street vendors and market traders, and waste pickers in mid-2020 and then again in mid-2021. The findings reveal the differentiated pathways of impact and thus recovery for different groups of informal workers approximately a year and a half into the pandemic. The study shows that the economic fallout of the COVID-19 crisis remains deep and persistent for workers at the base of the economy

Yoga jam: remixing Kirtan in the Art of Living

Yoga Jam are a group of musicians in the United Kingdom who are active members of the Art of Living, a transnational Hindu-derived meditation group. Yoga Jam organize events—also referred to as yoga raves and yoga remixes—that combine Hindu devotional songs (bhajans) and chants (mantras) with modern Western popular musical genres, such as soul, rock, and particularly electronic dance music. This hybrid music is often played in a clublike setting, and dancing is interspersed with yoga and meditation. Yoga jams are creative fusions of what at first sight seem to be two incompatible phenomena—modern electronic dance music culture and ancient yogic traditions. However, yoga jams make sense if the Durkheimian distinction between the sacred and the profane is challenged, and if tradition and modernity are not understood as existing in a sort of inverse relationship. This paper argues that yoga raves are authenticated through the somatic experience of the modern popular cultural phenomenon of clubbing combined with therapeutic yoga practices and validated by identifying this experience with a reimagined Vedic tradition

Identification of 12 new susceptibility loci for different histotypes of epithelial ovarian cancer.

To identify common alleles associated with different histotypes of epithelial ovarian cancer (EOC), we pooled data from multiple genome-wide genotyping projects totaling 25,509 EOC cases and 40,941 controls. We identified nine new susceptibility loci for different EOC histotypes: six for serous EOC histotypes (3q28, 4q32.3, 8q21.11, 10q24.33, 18q11.2 and 22q12.1), two for mucinous EOC (3q22.3 and 9q31.1) and one for endometrioid EOC (5q12.3). We then performed meta-analysis on the results for high-grade serous ovarian cancer with the results from analysis of 31,448 BRCA1 and BRCA2 mutation carriers, including 3,887 mutation carriers with EOC. This identified three additional susceptibility loci at 2q13, 8q24.1 and 12q24.31. Integrated analyses of genes and regulatory biofeatures at each locus predicted candidate susceptibility genes, including OBFC1, a new candidate susceptibility gene for low-grade and borderline serous EOC