bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
The Anthropocene condition: evolving through social–ecological transformations
Authors: Ellis Erle C. 
Published: November 2023

Anthropogenic planetary disruptions, from climate change to biodiversity loss, are unprecedented challenges for human societies. Some societies, social groups, cultural practices, technologies and institutions are already disintegrating or disappearing as a result. However, this coupling of socially produced environmental challenges with disruptive social changes—the Anthropocene condition—is not new. From food-producing hunter–gatherers, to farmers, to urban industrial food systems, the current planetary entanglement has its roots in millennia of evolving and accumulating sociocultural capabilities for shaping the cultured environments that our societies have always lived in (sociocultural niche construction). When these transformative capabilities to shape environments are coupled with sociocultural adaptations enabling societies to more effectively shape and live in transformed environments, the social–ecological scales and intensities of these transformations can accelerate through a positive feedback loop of ‘runaway sociocultural niche construction’. Efforts to achieve a better future for both people and planet will depend on guiding this runaway evolutionary process towards better outcomes by redirecting Earth's most disruptive force of nature: the power of human aspirations. To guide this unprecedented planetary force, cultural narratives that appeal to human aspirations for a better future will be more effective than narratives of environmental crisis and overstepping natural boundaries.
This article is part of the theme issue ‘Evolution and sustainability: gathering the strands for an Anthropocene synthesis’.
Our fragile future under the cumulative cultural evolution of two technologies
Authors: Efferson Charles , Richerson Peter J. , Weinberger Vanessa P. 
Published: November 2023

We derive and analyse a model with unusual features characterizing human activities over the long-run. First, human population dynamics draw heavily on consumer–resource modelling in ecology in that humans must consume biological resources to produce new humans. Second, the model also draws heavily from economic growth theory in that humans do not simply consume biological resources; they also produce the resources they consume. Finally, humans use two types of technology. Consumption technology affects the rate at which humans can extract resources. Production technology controls how effectively humans convert labour into new resources. The dynamics of both types of technology are subject to cumulative cultural evolutionary processes that allow both technological progress and regress. The resulting model exhibits a wide range of dynamical regimes. That said, the system is routinely sensitive to initial conditions, with wildly different outcomes given the same parameter values. Moreover, the system exhibits a basic fragility in the sense that human activities often lead to the endogenous extinction of the human species. This can happen gently, or it can follow periods of explosive human activity with super-exponential growth that ends in collapse.This article is part of the theme issue ‘Evolution and sustainability: gathering the strands for an Anthropocene synthesis’.
Cities of the Anthropocene: urban sustainability in an eco-evolutionary perspective
Authors: Alberti Marina 
Published: November 2023

Cities across the globe are driving systemic change in social and ecological systems by accelerating the rates of interactions and intensifying the links between human activities and Earth's ecosystems, thereby expanding the scale and influence of human activities on fundamental processes that sustain life. Increasing evidence shows that cities not only alter biodiversity, they change the genetic makeup of many populations, including animals, plants, fungi and microorganisms. Urban-driven rapid evolution in species traits might have significant effects on socially relevant ecosystem functions such as nutrient cycling, pollination, water and air purification and food production. Despite increasing evidence that cities are causing rapid evolutionary change, current urban sustainability strategies often overlook these dynamics. The dominant perspectives that guide these strategies are essentially static, focusing on preserving biodiversity in its present state or restoring it to pre-urban conditions. This paper provides a systemic overview of the socio-eco-evolutionary transition associated with global urbanization. Using examples of observed changes in species traits that play a significant role in maintaining ecosystem function and resilience, I propose that these evolutionary changes significantly impact urban sustainability. Incorporating an eco-evolutionary perspective into urban sustainability science and planning is crucial for effectively reimagining the cities of the Anthropocene.
This article is part of the theme issue ‘Evolution and sustainability: gathering the strands for an Anthropocene synthesis’.
Reducing global inequality increases local cooperation: a simple model of group selection with a global externality
Authors: Safarzynska Karolina , Smaldino Paul E. 
Published: November 2023

Group-structured models often explain the evolution of prosocial activities in terms of selection acting at both individual and group levels. Such models do not typically consider how individuals' behaviours may have consequences beyond the boundaries of their groups. However, many behaviours affect global environmental variables, including climate change and ecosystem fragility. Against this background, we propose a simple model of multi-level selection in the presence of global externalities. In our model, group members can cooperate in a social dilemma with the potential for group-level benefits. The actions of cooperators also have global consequences, which can be positive (a global good) or negative (a global bad). We use simulations to consider scenarios in which the effects of the global externality either are evenly distributed, or have stronger influences on either the rich or the poor. We find that the global externality promotes the evolution of cooperation only if it either disproportionately benefits the poor or disproportionately reduces the payoffs of the rich. If the global externality primarily harms the poor, it undermines the evolution of prosocial behaviour. Understanding this effect is important given concerns that poorer households are more vulnerable to climate change impacts.
This article is part of the theme issue ‘Evolution and sustainability: gathering the strands for an Anthropocene synthesis’.
Innovation for sustainability: how actors are myopically caught in processes of co-evolution
Authors: Kemp René , van Lente Harro 
Published: November 2023

In this paper, we argue that the development, uptake and adoption of innovations resembles an evolutionary process of variation, selection and retention (within broader processes of co-evolution) in which actors are myopically caught. We do so in four steps. First, we review in what ways socio-technical evolution resembles biological evolution. Second, we argue that in socio-technical evolution so-called ‘configurations that work’ can be viewed as evolutionary units, which are subject to selection pressures, variation and human-made couplings between variation and selection. This explains why innovation is often cumulative, based on variation and recombination. Third, we discuss how producers, consumers, governments and scientists are myopically caught in processes of co-evolution. While humans are capable of imagining the need for system change and details of desired systems, they are less capable of accepting the concomitant higher costs and inconveniences and adopt new interpretive schemes. Fourth, in a pluralist world, steering is done by all kind of actors, including those who actively resist transformative change. Because of this, steering by government and coalitions of change can achieve little more than a modulation of ongoing dynamics, despite disturbing evidence of a run-away climate, mass extinction, pervasive ecological degradation and steady depletion of resources. A new consciousness of the Anthropocene can evoke fundamental changes in science and the economy if—and only if—they are sufficiently carried by institutional changes and new practices.
This article is part of the theme issue ‘Evolution and sustainability: gathering the strands for an Anthropocene synthesis’.
Engineering water exchange is a safe and effective method for magnetic resonance imaging in diverse cell types
Authors: Miller Austin D.C. , Chowdhury Soham P. , Hanson Hadley W. , Linderman Sarah K. , Ghasemi Hannah I. , Miller Wyatt D. , Morrissey Meghan A. , Richardson Chris D. , Gardner Brooke M. , Mukherjee Arnab 
Published: November 2023

AbstractAquaporin-1 (Aqp1), a water channel, has garnered significant interest for cell-based medicine and in vivo synthetic biology due to its ability to be genetically encoded to produce magnetic resonance signals by increasing the rate of water diffusion in cells. However, concerns regarding the effects of Aqp1 overexpression and increased membrane diffusivity on cell physiology have limited its widespread use as a deep-tissue reporter. In this study, we present evidence that Aqp1 generates strong diffusion-based magnetic resonance signals without adversely affecting cell viability or morphology in diverse cell lines derived from mice and humans. Our findings indicate that Aqp1 overexpression does not induce ER stress, which is frequently associated with heterologous expression of membrane proteins. Furthermore, we observed that Aqp1 expression had no detrimental effects on native biological activities, such as phagocytosis, immune response, insulin secretion, and tumor cell migration in the analyzed cell lines. These findings should serve to alleviate any lingering safety concerns regarding the utilization of Aqp1 as a genetic reporter and should foster its broader application as a noninvasive reporter for in vivo studies.
Socioeconomic resources in youth are linked to divergent patterns of network integration and segregation across the brain’s transmodal axis
Authors: Michael Cleanthis , Taxali Aman , Angstadt Mike , Kardan Omid , Weigard Alexander , Molloy M. Fiona , McCurry Katherine L. , Hyde Luke W. , Heitzeg Mary M. , Sripada Chandra 
Published: November 2023

AbstractSocioeconomic resources (SER) calibrate the developing brain to the current context, which can confer or attenuate risk for psychopathology across the lifespan. Recent multivariate work indicates that SER levels powerfully influence intrinsic functional connectivity patterns across the entire brain. Nevertheless, the neurobiological meaning of these widespread alterations remains poorly understood, despite its translational promise for early risk identification, targeted intervention, and policy reform. In the present study, we leverage the resources of graph theory to precisely characterize multivariate and univariate associations between household SER and the functional integration and segregation (i.e., participation coefficient, within-module degree) of brain regions across major cognitive, affective, and sensorimotor systems during the resting state in 5,821 youth (ages 9-10 years) from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) Study. First, we establish that decomposing the brain into profiles of integration and segregation captures more than half of the multivariate association between SER and functional connectivity with greater parsimony (100-fold reduction in number of features) and interpretability. Second, we show that the topological effects of SER are not uniform across the brain; rather, higher SER levels are related to greater integration of somatomotor and subcortical systems, but greater segregation of default mode, orbitofrontal, and cerebellar systems. Finally, we demonstrate that the effects of SER are spatially patterned along the unimodal-transmodal gradient of brain organization. These findings provide critical interpretive context for the established and widespread effects of SER on brain organization, indicating that SER levels differentially configure the intrinsic functional architecture of developing unimodal and transmodal systems. This study highlights both sensorimotor and higher-order networks that may serve as neural markers of environmental stress and opportunity, and which may guide efforts to scaffold healthy neurobehavioral development among disadvantaged communities of youth.
Ammonia-oxidizing archaea and bacteria differentially contribute to ammonia oxidation in soil under precipitation gradients and land legacy
Authors: Sarkar Soumyadev , Kazarina Anna , Hansen Paige M. , Ward Kaitlyn , Hargreaves Christopher , Reese Nicholas , Ran Qinghong , Kessler Willow , de Souza Ligia F.T. , Loecke Terry D. , Sarto Marcos V. M. , Rice Charles W. , Zeglin Lydia H. , Sikes Benjamin A. , Lee Sonny T.M. 
Published: November 2023

AbstractBackgroundGlobal change has accelerated the nitrogen cycle. Soil nitrogen stock degradation by microbes leads to the release of various gases, including nitrous oxide (N2O), a potent greenhouse gas. Ammonia-oxidizing archaea (AOA) and ammonia-oxidizing bacteria (AOB) participate in the soil nitrogen cycle, producing N2O. There are outstanding questions regarding the impact of environmental processes such as precipitation and land use legacy on AOA and AOB structurally, compositionally, and functionally. To answer these questions, we analyzed field soil cores and soil monoliths under varying precipitation profiles and land legacies.ResultsWe resolved 28 AOA and AOB metagenome assembled genomes (MAGs) and found that they were significantly higher in drier environments and differentially abundant in different land use legacies. We further dissected AOA and AOB functional potentials to understand their contribution to nitrogen transformation capabilities. We identified the involvement of stress response genes, differential metabolic functional potentials, and subtle population dynamics under different environmental parameters for AOA and AOB. We observed that AOA MAGs lacked a canonical membrane-bound electron transport chain and F-type ATPase but possessed A/A-type ATPase, while AOB MAGs had a complete complex III module and F-type ATPase, suggesting differential survival strategies of AOA and AOB.ConclusionsThe outcomes from this study will enable us to comprehend how drought-like environments and land use legacies could impact AOA– and AOB-driven nitrogen transformations in soil.
Unveiling the neural dynamics of conscious perception in rapid object recognition
Authors: Motlagh Saba Charmi , Joanisse Marc , Wang Boyu , Mohsenzadeh Yalda 
Published: November 2023

AbstractOur brain excels at recognizing objects, even when they flash by in a rapid sequence. However, the neural processes determining whether a target image in a rapid sequence can be recognized or not remained elusive. We used electroencephalography (EEG) to investigate the temporal dynamics of brain processes that shape perceptual outcomes in these challenging viewing conditions. Using naturalistic images and advanced multivariate pattern analysis (MVPA) techniques, we probed the brain dynamics governing conscious object recognition. Our results show that although initially similar, the processes for when an object can or cannot be recognized diverge around 180ms post-appearance, coinciding with feedback neural processes. Decoding analyses indicate that object categorization can occur at ∼120ms through feedforward mechanisms. In contrast, object identification is resolved at ∼190ms after target onset, suggesting involvement of recurrent processing. These findings underscore the importance of recurrent neural connections in object recognition and awareness in rapid visual presentations.
MoveR: an R package for easy processing and analysis of animal video-tracking data
Authors: Petitjean Quentin , Lartigue Silène , Cointe Mélina , Ris Nicolas , Calcagno Vincent 
Published: November 2023

AbstractAnimal movement and behavior are critical to understanding ecological and evolutionary processes. Recent years have witnessed an increase in methodological and technological innovations in video-tracking solutions for phenotyping animal behavior. Although these advances enable the collection of high-resolution data describing the movement of multiple individuals, analyzing and interpreting them remains challenging due to their complexity, heterogeneity, and noisiness. Here, we introduce MoveR, an R package for importing, filtering, visualizing, and analyzing data from common video-tracking solutions. MoveR includes flexible tools for polishing data, removing tracking artifacts, subsetting and plotting individual paths, and computing different movement and behavior metrics.Metadata
Investigating egocentric tuning in hippocampal CA1 neurons using simulated data
Authors: Carpenter Jordan , Blackstad Jan Sigurd , Tingley David , Normand Valentin A. , Moser Edvard I. , Moser May-Britt , Dunn Benjamin A. 
Published: November 2023

AbstractNavigation requires integrating sensory information with a stable schema to create a dynamic map of an animal’s position using egocentric and allocentric coordinate systems. In the hippocampus, place cells encode allocentric space, but their firing rates may also exhibit directional tuning within egocentric or allocentric reference frames. We compared experimental and simulated data to assess the prevalence of tuning to egocentric bearing (EB) among hippocampal cells in rats foraging in an open field. Using established procedures, we confirmed egocentric modulation of place cell activity in recorded data; however, simulated data revealed a high false positive rate. When we accounted for false positives by comparing with shuffled data that retain correlations between the animal’s direction and position, only a very low number of hippocampal neurons appeared modulated by EB. Our study highlights biases affecting false positive rates and provides insights into the challenges of identifying egocentric modulation in hippocampal neurons.
In vivo and in silicoexperiment onMitragyna speciosaoffers new insight of antidiabetic potentials
Authors: Hossain Mohammad Uzzal , Hossain Md. Shahadat , Dey Shajib , Naimur Rahman A.B.Z. , Chowdhury Zeshan Mahmud , Bhattacharjee Arittra , Ahammad Ishtiaque , Islam Md. Nazrul , Moniruzzaman Md. , Hosen Md. Billal , Ahmed Istiak , Das Keshob Chandra , Keya Chaman Ara , Salimullah Md. 
Published: November 2023

AbstractDiabetes Mellitus (DM) is a serious metabolic disease with several treatments available for managing it, however, they can be expensive and have side effects. Medicinal plants have been used for many years to treat numerous diseases.Mitragyna speciosa (M. speciosa) plant has been shown to have anti-diabetic properties in preclinical studies. Hence, this study aimed to investigate the phytochemical compositions and anti-diabetic effects ofM. speciose,using bothin vivoandin silicoapproaches. In the in vivo study, experimental diabetes was induced in Swiss albino mice using the drug alloxan (150 mg/kg). Four groups of diabetic mice were taken. Two of the groups were given extracts at doses of 200 mg/kg and 400 mg/kg respectively. Diabetic mice treated with the reference drug, glibenclamide (5mg/kg) were chosen as a positive control, and mice with only vehicles were considered as a negative control. The Oral Glucose Tolerance Test (OGTT) and the acute toxicity test were performed. In thein silicostudy, molecular docking and dynamics were performed for the identification of the plant compounds that could effectively bind with the DPP4 receptor. Analysis of the study suggested that the lethal dose (LD50) values were greater than 2000 mg/kg, indicating that a dose below this level can be selected. The OGTT results showed that both doses ofM. specioseextracts significantly reduced blood glucose levels (P<0.0001). However, neither dose exhibited a significantly higher blood glucose reduction compared to glibenclamide (5 mg/kg) (P > 0.05). Phytochemical screening and the ADMET profile analysis suggested four key compounds: Mitragynine, Corynantheidine, Corynoxine, and Speciociliatine inM. speciosa.The molecular docking analysis revealed these four compounds as potential antidiabetic agents considering their high binding affinity to the DPP4 receptor. These compounds were also found to be stable in the DPP4 binding pocket, as evidenced by the molecular dynamics simulation. Lastly, it can be demonstrated that thein silicoexperiments confirmedM. speciosaextracts to be capable of reducing blood glucose levels because of the presence of compounds.
Genetic, transcriptomic, histological, and biochemical analysis of progressive supranuclear palsy implicates glial activation and novel risk genes
Authors: Farrell Kurt , Humphrey Jack , Chang Timothy , Zhao Yi , Leung Yuk Yee , Kuksa Pavel P , Patil Vishakha , Lee Wan-Ping , Kuzma Amanda B. , Valladares Otto , Cantwell Laura B. , Wang Hui , Ravi Ashvin , Sanctis Claudia De , Han Natalia , Christie Thomas D. , Whitney Kristen , Krassner Margaret M. , Walsh Hadley , Kim SoongHo , Dangoor Diana , Iida Megan A. , Casella Alicia , Walker Ruth H. , Nirenberg Melissa J. , Renton Alan E. , Babrowicz Bergan , Coppola Giovanni , Raj Towfique , Höglinger Günter U. , Golbe Lawrence I. , Morris Huw R. , Hardy John , Revesz Tamas , Warner Tom T. , Jaunmuktane Zane , Mok Kin Y. , Rademakers Rosa , Dickson Dennis W. , Ross Owen A. , Wang Li-San , Goate Alison , Schellenberg Gerard , Geschwind Daniel H. ,   PSP genetics study group, Crary John F. , Naj Adam 
Published: November 2023

AbstractProgressive supranuclear palsy (PSP) is a rare Parkinsonian disorder characterized by problems with movement, balance, cognition, and other symptoms. PSP differs from Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and other neurodegenerative diseases displaying abnormal forms of the microtubule-associated protein tau (“tauopathies”) by the presence of pathology not only in neurons, but also in astrocytes and oligodendrocytes. Genetic contributors may mediate these differences, however much of PSP genetics remains unexplained. Here we conducted the largest genome-wide association study (GWAS) of PSP to date including 2,779 cases (2,595 neuropathologically-confirmed) and 5,584 controls and identified six independent PSP susceptibility loci with genome-wide significant (p< 5×10-8) associations including five known (MAPT,MOBP,STX6,RUNX2,SLCO1A2) and one novel locus (C4A). Integration with cell type-specific epigenomic annotations revealed a unique oligodendrocytic signature that distinguishes PSP from AD and Parkinson’s disease. Candidate PSP risk gene prioritization using expression quantitative trait loci (eQTLs) identified oligodendrocyte-specific effects on gene expression in half of the genome-wide significant loci, as well as an association with elevatedC4Aexpression in bulk brain tissue which may be driven by increasedC4Acopy number in PSP cases. Finally, histological studies demonstrated abnormal tau aggregates in oligodendrocytes that colocalize with C4 (complement) deposition. Integrating GWAS with functional studies including epigenomic and eQTL analyses, we identified potential causal roles for variation inMOBP,STX6,RUNX2,SLCO1A2, andC4Ain the pathogenesis of PSP.