The ability to sustain attention is a major achievement in human development and is generally believed to be the developmental product of increasing self-regulatory and endogenous (i.e., internal, ...top-down, voluntary) control over one’s attention and cognitive systems 1–5. Because sustained attention in late infancy is predictive of future development, and because early deficits in sustained attention are markers for later diagnoses of attentional disorders 6, sustained attention is often viewed as a constitutional and individual property of the infant 6–9. However, humans are social animals; developmental pathways for seemingly non-social competencies evolved within the social group and therefore may be dependent on social experience 10–13. Here, we show that social context matters for the duration of sustained attention episodes in one-year-old infants during toy play. Using head-mounted eye tracking to record moment-by-moment gaze data from both parents and infants, we found that when the social partner (parent) visually attended to the object to which infant attention was directed, infants, after the parent’s look, extended their duration of visual attention to the object. Looks to the same object by two social partners is a well-studied phenomenon known as joint attention, which has been shown to be critical to early learning and to the development of social skills 14, 15. The present findings implicate joint attention in the development of the child’s own sustained attention and thus challenge the current understanding of the origins of individual differences in sustained attention, providing a new and potentially malleable developmental pathway to the self-regulation of attention.
•We used head-mounted eye tracking to record gaze data in child-parent free play•Infants extend their sustained attention when a parent attends to the same object•Parent-child social interactions influence the development of sustained attention•The development of seemingly non-social competencies depends on social experience
Using head-mounted eye tracking to record gaze data from both parents and infants, Yu and Smith find that infants extend their sustained attention to an object when a mature social partner also shows visual attention to that object, suggesting a pathway through which social interactions may influence the development of sustained attention.
Aedes aegypti and A. albopictus mosquitoes are vectors of important human disease viruses, including dengue, yellow fever, chikungunya and Zika. Pyrethroid insecticides are widely used to control ...adult Aedes mosquitoes, especially during disease outbreaks. Herein, we review the status of pyrethroid resistance in A. aegypti and A. albopictus, mechanisms of resistance, fitness costs associated with resistance alleles and provide suggestions for future research. The widespread use of pyrethroids has given rise to many populations with varying levels of resistance worldwide, albeit with substantial geographical variation. In adult A. aegypti and A. albopictus, resistance levels are generally lower in Asia, Africa and the USA, and higher in Latin America, although there are exceptions. Susceptible populations still exist in several areas of the world, particularly in Asia and South America. Resistance to pyrethroids in larvae is also geographically widespread. The two major mechanisms of pyrethroid resistance are increased detoxification due to P450-monooxygenases, and mutations in the voltage sensitive sodium channel (Vssc) gene. Several P450s have been putatively associated with insecticide resistance, but the specific P450s involved are not fully elucidated. Pyrethroid resistance can be due to single mutations or combinations of mutations in Vssc. The presence of multiple Vssc mutations can lead to extremely high levels of resistance. Suggestions for future research needs are presented.
Display omitted
•Pyrethroid insecticides continue to be the primary means for control of adult Aedes.•Resistance to pyrethroids has been found throughout the world, but levels vary.•Resistance is primarily due to mutations in Vssc and P450-mediated detoxification.•Multiple Vssc mutations can result in highly resistant populations.•Numerous areas will require more study in order to slow the evolution of resistance.
The quality and quantity of individuals' social relationships has been linked not only to mental health but also to both morbidity and mortality.
This meta-analytic review was conducted to determine ...the extent to which social relationships influence risk for mortality, which aspects of social relationships are most highly predictive, and which factors may moderate the risk.
Data were extracted on several participant characteristics, including cause of mortality, initial health status, and pre-existing health conditions, as well as on study characteristics, including length of follow-up and type of assessment of social relationships.
Across 148 studies (308,849 participants), the random effects weighted average effect size was OR = 1.50 (95% CI 1.42 to 1.59), indicating a 50% increased likelihood of survival for participants with stronger social relationships. This finding remained consistent across age, sex, initial health status, cause of death, and follow-up period. Significant differences were found across the type of social measurement evaluated (p<0.001); the association was strongest for complex measures of social integration (OR = 1.91; 95% CI 1.63 to 2.23) and lowest for binary indicators of residential status (living alone versus with others) (OR = 1.19; 95% CI 0.99 to 1.44).
The influence of social relationships on risk for mortality is comparable with well-established risk factors for mortality. Please see later in the article for the Editors' Summary.
This systematic review includes epidemiological studies of neuropathic pain within the general population. There is a wide range of incidence and prevalence rates.
Most patients with neuropathic pain ...symptoms present and are managed in primary care, with only a minority being referred for specialist clinical assessment and diagnoses. Previous reviews have focused mainly on specific neuropathic pain conditions based in specialist settings. This is the first systematic review of epidemiological studies of neuropathic pain in the general population. Electronic databases were searched from January 1966 to December 2012, and studies were included where the main focus was on neuropathic pain prevalence and/or incidence, either as part of a specific neuropathic pain-related condition or as a global entity in the general population. We excluded studies in which data were extracted from pain or other specialist clinics or focusing on specific population subgroups. Twenty-one articles were identified and underwent quality assessment and data extraction. Included studies differed in 3 main ways: method of data retrieval, case ascertainment tool used, and presentation of prevalence/incidence rates. This heterogeneity precluded any meta-analysis. We categorised comparable incidence and prevalence rates into 2 main subgroups: (1) chronic pain with neuropathic characteristics (range 3–17%), and (2) neuropathic pain associated with a specific condition, including postherpetic neuralgia (3.9–42.0/100,000 person–years PY), trigeminal neuralgia (12.6–28.9/100,000 PY), painful diabetic peripheral neuropathy (15.3–72.3/100,000 PY), glossopharyngeal neuralgia (0.2–0.4/100,000 PY). These differences highlight the importance of a standardised approach for identifying neuropathic pain in future epidemiological studies. A best estimate of population prevalence of pain with neuropathic characteristics is likely to lie between 6.9% and 10%.
•Testosterone maintains BTB, meiosis, Sertoli–spermatid adhesion and spermiation.•Testosterone acts via classical and non-classical pathways.•Testosterone regulates PTM, Leydig, and Sertoli cells via ...the androgen receptor.•The combined regulation of many genes by testosterone supports spermatogenesis.
Testosterone is essential for maintaining spermatogenesis and male fertility. However, the molecular mechanisms by which testosterone acts have not begun to be revealed until recently. With the advances obtained from the use of transgenic mice lacking or overexpressing the androgen receptor, the cell specific targets of testosterone action as well as the genes and signaling pathways that are regulated by testosterone are being identified. In this review, the critical steps of spermatogenesis that are regulated by testosterone are discussed as well as the intracellular signaling pathways by which testosterone acts. We also review the functional information that has been obtained from the knock out of the androgen receptor from specific cell types in the testis and the genes found to be regulated after altering testosterone levels or androgen receptor expression.
The urban heat island (UHI), a common phenomenon in which surface temperatures are higher in urban areas than in surrounding rural areas, represents one of the most significant human-induced changes ...to Earth's surface climate. Even though they are localized hotspots in the landscape, UHIs have a profound impact on the lives of urban residents, who comprise more than half of the world's population. A barrier to UHI mitigation is the lack of quantitative attribution of the various contributions to UHI intensity (expressed as the temperature difference between urban and rural areas, ΔT). A common perception is that reduction in evaporative cooling in urban land is the dominant driver of ΔT (ref. 5). Here we use a climate model to show that, for cities across North America, geographic variations in daytime ΔT are largely explained by variations in the efficiency with which urban and rural areas convect heat to the lower atmosphere. If urban areas are aerodynamically smoother than surrounding rural areas, urban heat dissipation is relatively less efficient and urban warming occurs (and vice versa). This convection effect depends on the local background climate, increasing daytime ΔT by 3.0 ± 0.3 kelvin (mean and standard error) in humid climates but decreasing ΔT by 1.5 ± 0.2 kelvin in dry climates. In the humid eastern United States, there is evidence of higher ΔT in drier years. These relationships imply that UHIs will exacerbate heatwave stress on human health in wet climates where high temperature effects are already compounded by high air humidity and in drier years when positive temperature anomalies may be reinforced by a precipitation-temperature feedback. Our results support albedo management as a viable means of reducing ΔT on large scales.
Loneliness and social isolation as risk factors for CVD A recent meta-analysis has shown that loneliness and social isolation are risk factors for coronary heart disease and stroke. 1 These latest ...findings, specific to cardiovascular outcomes, are consistent with substantial research indicating broad health risks (eg, immune functioning, cardiovascular functioning, cognitive decline) associated with the quantity and quality of social relationships-including several meta-analyses documenting mortality risk. 2 3 In the most comprehensive of these, 3 the overall odds for mortality was 1.50, similar to the risk from light smoking and exceeding the risks conferred by hypertension and obesity. ...the epidemiological data suggest that having more and better quality social relationships is linked to decreased health risks and having fewer and poorer quality relationships increased risk. 2 3 Research has also documented the influence of social connections (including measures specific to loneliness and isolation) on multiple pathways involved in both the development and progression of coronary heart disease and stroke. ...assessments should include objective/quantitative aspects of relationships (eg, network size, marital status), as well as more subjective/qualitative aspects (eg, loneliness, social support, perceived relationship quality).
The coordination of visual attention among social partners is central to many components of human behavior and human development. Previous research has focused on one pathway to the coordination of ...looking behavior by social partners, gaze following. The extant evidence shows that even very young infants follow the direction of another's gaze but they do so only in highly constrained spatial contexts because gaze direction is not a spatially precise cue as to the visual target and not easily used in spatially complex social interactions. Our findings, derived from the moment-to-moment tracking of eye gaze of one-year-olds and their parents as they actively played with toys, provide evidence for an alternative pathway, through the coordination of hands and eyes in goal-directed action. In goal-directed actions, the hands and eyes of the actor are tightly coordinated both temporally and spatially, and thus, in contexts including manual engagement with objects, hand movements and eye movements provide redundant information about where the eyes are looking. Our findings show that one-year-olds rarely look to the parent's face and eyes in these contexts but rather infants and parents coordinate looking behavior without gaze following by attending to objects held by the self or the social partner. This pathway, through eye-hand coupling, leads to coordinated joint switches in visual attention and to an overall high rate of looking at the same object at the same time, and may be the dominant pathway through which physically active toddlers align their looking behavior with a social partner.
The present article shows that infant and dyad differences in hand-eye coordination predict dyad differences in joint attention (JA). In the study reported here, 51 toddlers ranging in age from 11 to ...24 months and their parents wore head-mounted eye trackers as they played with objects together. We found that physically active toddlers aligned their looking behavior with their parent and achieved a substantial proportion of time spent jointly attending to the same object. However, JA did not arise through gaze following but rather through the coordination of gaze with manual actions on objects as both infants and parents attended to their partner's object manipulations. Moreover, dyad differences in JA were associated with dyad differences in hand following.
We collected kinematic Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) surface height data, on a 750‐km ground‐based traverse of the flat interior of the Antarctic ice sheet, for comparison with Ice, ...Cloud, and Land Elevation Satellite‐2 (ICESat‐2) surface heights. Vertical errors in the GNSS data are estimated to be 5.6 cm, comparable to results from a previous traverse and with year‐to‐year comparisons. Comparisons of the GNSS heights and 6 months of ICESat‐2 ATL03 photon‐based heights and ATL06 segment‐based heights indicate that the accuracy and precision of ICESat‐2 data are comparable to that of results from the ICESat mission: ATL03 is currently accurate to better than 5 cm with better than 13 cm of surface measurement precision, while ATL06 is currently accurate to better than 3 cm with better than 9 cm of surface measurement precision.
PDF
