Maternal hyperglycemia is associated with higher risk of metabolic diseases in offspring. Despite various hypotheses, the exact mechanisms remain unclear and the neural implication is yet to be fully investigated. The hypothalamus plays a critical role in energy regulation. In utero exposure to maternal hyperglycemia might selectively affect the developing hypothalamus. To test this hypothesis, we investigated associations between in utero exposure to maternal hyperglycemia and hypothalamic volume at 10–12 years of age. We included 82 mother–child pairs from the Gen3G prospective birth cohort, followed up 10–12 years after birth. Women underwent a 75g Oral Glucose Tolerance Test (OGTT) at 24–30 weeks of gestation, and we calculated the area-under-the-curve of glucose (AUCgluc) from maternal glucose measurements at fasting, 1h and 2h during OGTT to reflect prenatal hyperglycemia exposure. During the follow-up visit at 10–12 years of age, a subsample of children (n = 82) completed 3 T brain magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to quantify brain volumes with FreeSurfer 7. We used Pearson correlations and partial correlations with adjustments to test associations between the AUCgluc and offspring hypothalamic brain volumes. We found that higher maternal AUCgluc was associated with greater total offspring hypothalamic volume (r = 0.30; p = 0.006). In comparison, no other brain region was significantly correlated with the maternal AUCgluc. Correlations remain significant when adjusted for maternal or offspring’s variables. Overall, we found that higher maternal glycemic response following OGTT in pregnancy appears associated with larger offspring hypothalamic volume. Our results suggest that prenatal exposure to hyperglycemia may lead to hypothalamic programming.

While M. NourbeSe Philip is often regarded as a black-feminist language poet, her concern about place is equally significant and deserves more critical attention. This essay reads Philip as an Afro-Caribbean poet of place and ponders the geographical implications of her abstract, black-feminism-inspired poetry. Specifically, I focus on her reasoning about “center” and how it engenders formal or verbal matrices in her poems. For Philip, “center” denotes not only the metropole dominating the periphery, but also a place of sufficient being, wholeness, and self-becoming. The second sense of “center” marks the telos of her poetics of place, which, I argue, consists in prevalent and ambiguous uses of the preposition “in” in works like She Tries and Zong!. Center entails an inwardness in response to colonialism-begotten displacement, and Philip’s choreography of “in” affords possibilities for conceptualizing the “placedness” of the Caribbean as well as blackness and black femininity in place.

In June 1838, five female dancers and three male musicians left Pondicherry for France, from where they travelled onwards to England, Austria, Belgium, and Germany. As they travelled, the dancers became bayadères, a European hegemonic construct that shaped Indian women as both sexual property and morally debauched. Through this racialised construct, Europeans, in particular the British and French, became positioned as morally superior to India and therefore legitimate imperialists. Within this context, I am interested in how images of the languid arms of the Indian temple dancers function as a site of archival resistance to their co-optation as the bayadère. I suggest that a close reading of the newspaper illustrations and affiliated articles, noticing details and making connections, undercuts the dancers’ repeated sexualisation and their refusal to be confined to the space demarcated for them in European hegemonic narratives. I argue that this archival resistance also counters the later dominant caste appropriation and embodiment of the temple dancer’s artistic practice as a form of Indian classical dance.

Infertility and involuntary childlessness are often accompanied by psychological distress. Such distress exhibits gendered patterns: women typically experience greater infertility-related suffering, including while they undergo procedures like IVF, and when such procedures fail. Early feminist critics of reproductive technologies sought to locate and address this suffering in the totality of women’s experience under patriarchy. Contemporarily, a liberal approach to this issue emphasizes the importance of an individual’s reproductive autonomy to engage in infertility procedures as they see fit. In this paper, I suggest that a hidden assumption within this liberal argument, serving as an operant justification for the development and provision of assisted reproductive technologies (ARTs), is that ARTs promote welfare, or well-being, through the alleviation of infertility-related distress. I explore whether ARTs do appropriately attend to welfare and so meet this justificatory aim. I suggest that IVF, where it is not successful, that is, in the vast majority of cases, does not serve to promote well-being. A comprehensive picture of welfare requires examining the social context in which infertility-related distress operates and in which well-being is thus compromised. Such considerations are essential to forming a holistic picture of well-being and in assessing whether ARTs can meet their welfarist aims.

Alfalfa is a widely cultivated forage crop with high nutritional value, and it relies heavily on pollinators for successful reproduction owing to its keel petal structure. Numerous studies have shown the differences in pollinator diversity at different landscapes and/or regions, subsequently impacting plant reproduction. However, there is still insufficient evidence on variation in pollinator diversity at different sites with different landscapes and its effects on alfalfa reproduction. In this study, we investigated the diversity and abundance of floral visitors, and their impacts on alfalfa seed yield, across three sites represented by different landscapes, i.e. urban (Gongzhuling), semi-natural grassland (Changling), and farmland (Harbin) in north-eastern China. Our results showed that the diversity and abundance of all visitors, including bees in Changling were significantly higher than those of the other two sites. Changes in visitor diversity and abundance of alfalfa were closely related to climate variables, with positive effects of air temperature, and complex effects of precipitation. Meanwhile, the differences in pollinators may also be attributed to landscape types due to different habitat heterogeneity. Alfalfa seed yield in Changling was also significantly higher than that in the other two sites. Among these factors, air temperature, and diversity of floral visitors, particularly bees were positively related to alfalfa seed yield, indicating that pollinators combined with climate have an important contribution to changes in alfalfa seed yield. The findings from this study emphasise the importance of conserving pollinators to sustain and even enhance alfalfa yields, especially in the context of climate change and alterations in landscape types.

When did marriage become strongly assortative? I use a uniquely suitable database from Quebec 1800–1970 to provide the long-run perspective necessary to answer this question. First, I develop a novel method that reveals that marriage was highly assortative as far back as the early nineteenth century. Next, I show this matching depends on the individual human capital of women, not just on family backgrounds. Finally, I show that mothers had an effect on child outcomes independent of the fathers. Thus, despite deeply conservative gender norms, marriage matching—and women—have always mattered for social mobility.

Seabirds are largely used as indicators of Ocean health and are final hosts of several helminth parasites. However, the helminth fauna of seabirds is still poorly studied. Here, we quantified the diversity of gastrointestinal parasites in 52 individuals belonging to 10 seabird species with different habitat preferences and feeding strategies from the North-East Atlantic and Antarctica. Fresh carcasses were collected in Northern France and at Svarthamaren (Dronning Maud Land, Antarctica), helminth parasites were extracted from the gastrointestinal tract, and were identified by morphological inspection and DNA barcoding. In total, we identified 13 helminth taxa. North-East Atlantic seabirds hosted parasites from four helminth groups (Acanthocephala, Cestoda, Nematoda, Trematoda), while Antarctic seabirds hosted Acanthocephala and Cestoda only. The largest parasite diversity was found in northern fulmars Fulmarus glacialis (9 species), European shags Gulosus aristotelis (5 species), razorbills Alca torda (4 species), and black-legged kittiwakes Rissa tridactyla (4 species). Co-infections with multiple parasite species in single hosts were common. Oceanic diving species were found to be the most parasite-poor, with common guillemots Uria aalge and Atlantic puffins Fratercula arctica hosting no parasites. In contrast, oceanic surface-feeding seabirds had a large parasite diversity, which notably included trematodes, and was comparable to that of coastal species. To the best of our knowledge, this study identified 9 new host-parasite associations: Andracantha sp. in northern fulmars and south polar skuas Stercorarius maccormicki, C. septentrionale in northern fulmars and black-legged kittiwakes, a species of Microphallidae in black-legged kittiwakes, Cardiocephaloides longicollis in European shags, Cryptocotyle lingua in Sandwich terns Thalasseus sandvicensis, and a clophyllidean species in south polar skuas and Antarctic petrels Thalassoica antarctica.

Phenolic compounds may reduce oxidative stress and inflammation, but evidence on inflammatory markers is limited. This study investigated associations between phenolic compounds intake and ten inflammatory markers in the Brazilian Longitudinal Study of Adult Health (ELSA-Brasil). The cross-sectional analysis included participants from the full cohort (n 14 151) and a São Paulo subsample (n 681). Food intake was assessed using a semiquantitative FFQ, and phenolic content was estimated from Phenol-Explorer and Brazilian Food Composition Database. Logistic regression models compared the highest v. lowest tertiles of phenolic intake for high-sensitivity C-reactive protein (hs-CRP), glycoprotein acetylation (GlycA), monocyte chemoattractant protein-1 (MCP-1), E-selectin, transforming growth factor β1, TNF α, IL-6, IL-10, fibrinogen and leptin levels. Inflammatory markers were dichotomised as low (tertiles 1–2) or high (tertile 3), except hs-CRP (> 3 mg/l). Multiple testing was corrected using P < 0·0036. Mean age was 52·1 years for hs-CRP/GlycA and 45·6 years for other markers. Compared with T1, participants in T3 of total phenolics, phenolic acids and flavonoids had 14 %, 18 % and 18 % lower odds of elevated hs-CRP, respectively. For GlycA, higher intakes of phenolic acids, stilbenes and other phenolics were associated with 18–48 % lower odds of high levels (all P ≤ 0·003). Higher intake of hydroxybenzoic acids and stilbenes was associated with lower E-selectin levels, while phenolic acid intake showed an inverse association with MCP-1. No associations were observed for other markers. Higher intakes of phenolic compounds were associated with lower systemic inflammation, suggesting a role in preventing inflammation-related chronic diseases.

Urinary iodine concentration (UIC) is the principal biomarker for assessing iodine status; however, it is subject to marked fluctuations and practical challenges. This proof-of-concept study evaluated protein-corrected salivary iodide (SI/P) as a potential alternative biomarker, comparing it with spot UIC in distinguishing between iodine-deficient and iodine-adequate individuals, assessing its responsiveness to short-term dietary iodine restriction and exploring its correlation with 24 h urinary iodine excretion (UIE). Twenty-six participants were categorised into low-iodine (n 17) and high-iodine (n 9) groups based on 24 h UIE collected on Day-1. Postprandial spot urine and unstimulated saliva samples were collected under habitual diet (Day-1) and low-iodine diet (Day-2). SI/P was significantly higher in the high-iodine group at all time points on both Day-1 (post-breakfast [1-PB]: 61·28 v. 27·89 µg/g, P = 0·03; post-lunch [1-PL]: 71·03 v. 27·4 µg/g, P = 0·003; post-dinner [1-PD]: 114·13 v. 31·58 µg/g, P = 0·002) and Day-2 (2-PB: 81·86 v. 26·51 µg/g, P = 0·013; 2-PL: 54·56 v. 18·83 µg/g, P < 0·001; 2-PD: 38·2 v. 18·79 µg/g, P = 0·043), whereas UIC only differed significantly post-dinner on Day-1 (156·15 v. 36·63 µg/l, P = 0·009). SI/P also showed stronger correlation with 24 h UIE (1-PB: r = 0·65, P = 0·001; 1-PL: r = 0·70, P < 0·001; 1-PD: r = 0·67, P < 0·001; 2-PB: r = 0·70, P < 0·001; 2-PL: r = 0·65, P = 0·001; 2-PD: r = 0·50, P = 0·01) compared with UIC (1-PB: r = 0·49, P = 0·011; 1-PL: r = 0·38, P = 0·055; 1-PD: r = 0·58, P = 0·002; 2-PB: r = 0·68, P < 0·001; 2-PL: r = 0·52, P = 0·007; 2-PD: r = 0·44, P = 0·027). Unlike UIC, which is primarily suited for population-level monitoring, SI/P demonstrated stable performance irrespective of diet/sampling time, suggesting utility as a reliable, individual-level biomarker of iodine status.

Worldviews can serve as a resource or an obstacle when navigating intellectual and existential challenges encountered in life. My objective in this article is to identify and analyse the various ways in which people’s worldviews can shift, break down, evolve, or be strengthened by their life experiences. The proposed model of worldview formation identifies five outcomes that an encounter with what I refer to as existentially significant life events can have: worldview compartmentalisation, integration, revision, conversion, and confirmation. I will explain the content and function of these categories, provide concrete examples, and discuss their rationality.

While the structure of proteins can now be predicted from sequence with high certainty, the prediction of protein functional dynamics remains to be achieved. Progress towards this goal will require a much larger experimental database of the relationships among sequence, dynamics, and function than currently available. Dynamic transitions that are key to protein function and turnover remain difficult to access and characterize because they have significantly higher free energy than the folded states of proteins and hence are not populated. To access these higher free energy states, proteins must be perturbed. High temperatures often lead to aggregation, while chemical denaturants, because they interact with the entire protein backbone, tend to smooth protein conformational landscapes. In contrast, high hydrostatic pressure represents a continuous and reversible variable that can perturb protein structure locally around internal cavities, leading to partial structural disruption, populating these higher energy states sufficiently for their characterization.