Line breaks are ubiquitous in continuous text, as in this article. Despite this prevalence, their effects on parsing and interpretation have been markedly understudied in previous research on written language processing. To shed light on these effects, we conducted a self-paced reading and an eye-tracking study in which participants read multiline texts that contained direct object–subject ambiguity, a type of temporary clause boundary ambiguity. Within these texts, we manipulated the placement of line breaks so that they either regularly coincided or clashed with clause boundaries. We hypothesised that this manipulation would cause readers to adjust their parsing strategies and interpretative commitments. Results revealed that the way in which text is segmented through line breaks can significantly affect how readers parse syntactically ambiguous structures. While coinciding line breaks and clause boundaries helped readers arrive at the correct analysis of the ambiguous structures, cases of line break and clause boundary clash led readers down the garden path during online processing, and in some cases also impacted their comprehension. Findings are discussed in terms of their implications for the importance of text segmentation in real-world settings, such as books, educational material and digital content.

Routine electroencephalograms (EEGs) assess brain function, but can be time-consuming, resource-intensive and setting-restrictive. Brain vital signs (BVS) evaluation, derived from EEG-based event-related potentials (ERPs), offers a rapid, standardized evaluation of cognitive function. In this study, 20 outpatients with cognitive complaints underwent both routine EEGs and BVS evaluation. While only 4 participants showed abnormal EEG results, 11 had at least one of the six BVS out-of-range, suggesting increased sensitivity to cognitive impairment. This commentary discusses the feasibility and potential value of standardized BVS evaluation as a simple objective method for cognitive function evaluation.

Biodiversity knowledge gaps and biases persist across low-income tropical regions. Genetic data are essential for addressing these issues, supporting biodiversity research and conservation planning. To assess progress in wildlife genetic sampling within the Philippines, I evaluated the scope, representativeness, and growth of publicly available genetic data and research on endemic vertebrates from the 1990s through 2024. Results showed that 82.3% of the Philippines’ 769 endemic vertebrates have genetic data, although major disparities remain. Reptiles had the least complete coverage but exhibited the highest growth, with birds, mammals, and amphibians following in that order. Species confined to smaller biogeographic subregions, with narrow geographic ranges, or classified as threatened or lacking threat assessments were disproportionately underrepresented. Research output on reptiles increased markedly, while amphibian research lagged behind. Although the number of non-unique authors in wildlife genetics studies involving Philippine specimens has grown steeply, Filipino involvement remains low. These results highlight the uneven and non-random distribution of wildlife genetic knowledge within this global biodiversity hotspot. Moreover, the limited participation of Global South researchers underscores broader inequities in wildlife genomics. Closing these gaps and addressing biases creates a more equitable and representative genetic knowledge base and supports its integration into national conservation efforts aligned with global biodiversity commitments.

There is concern amongst the public, equestrians, animal welfare organisations, and horse-sport governing bodies regarding the welfare of performance horses, but equestrian culture appears slow to change. The present study seeks to increase our understanding of human factors underlying the persistence of welfare-compromising management and training practices within the performance horse world. Individual, semi-structured interviews focused on equestrians’ attitudes were conducted with 22 equestrians from classical equestrian disciplines in the US, Canada, and the UK. Interview transcripts were analysed using reflexive thematic analysis. Five main themes were identified: perception of welfare issues; conflicting conceptions of a good life; objectification of the horse; instrumentalisation of horse care; and enculturation. Participants perceived and were concerned about horse welfare, but expressed dissonance-reducing strategies, including trivialisation, reframing and justification. Participants shared conflicting conceptions of a good life and described how equestrian activities may infringe upon horse welfare. Objectification of horses was among the attitudinal factors identified that may permit persistence of harmful practices, while the instrumentalisation of care theme showed how management practices often focused on performance and the horse’s job more than care about the horse. Finally, enculturation (the process of adopting attitudes and behaviours of a culture) in equestrianism may be fundamental to maintaining practices and attitudes that compromise horse welfare. These findings provide an enhanced understanding of why horse welfare issues persist in classical equestrian disciplines and may inform future human behaviour change strategies to promote improved horse welfare.

The deliberations for the Pandemic Accord have opened an important moment of reflection on future approaches to pandemic preparedness. The concept had been increasingly prominent in global health discourse for several years before the pandemic and had concretised into a set of standardised mainstream approaches to the prediction of threats. Since 2019, the authors and the wider research team have led a research project on the meanings and practices of preparedness. At its close, the authors undertook 25 interviews to capture reflections of regional and global health actors’ ideas about preparedness, and how and to what extent these were influenced by Covid-19. Here, an analysis of interview responses is presented, with attention to (dis)connections between the views of those occupying positions in regional and global institutions. The interviews revealed that preparedness means different things to different people and institutions. Analysis revealed several domains of preparedness with distinct conceptualisations of what preparedness is, its purposes, and scope. Overall, there appear to be some changes in thinking due to Covid-19, but also strong continuities, especially with respect to a technical focus and an underplaying of the inequities that became evident (in terms of biosocial vulnerabilities but also global-regional disparities) and, related to this, the importance of power and politics. Here, the analysis has revealed three elements, cutting across the domains but particularly strong within the dominant framing of preparedness, which act to sideline direct engagement with power and politics in the meanings and practices of preparedness. These are an emphasis on urgent action, a focus on universal or standardised approaches, and a resort to technical interventions as solutions. A rethinking of pandemic preparedness needs to enable better interconnections across scales and attention to financing that enables more equitable partnerships between states and regions. Such transformation in established hierarchies will require explicit attention to power dynamics and the political nature of preparedness.

Sulfur stable isotope ratios (δ34S) have become increasingly common in archaeology for studying paleodiet, especially in occasions where there is a need to identify aquatic resource consumption more accurately. This is particularly relevant in the Baltic Sea region, where brackish conditions tend to mask “typical” marine carbon isotopic signals. Here we report new δ34S values for 126 human bone collagen samples which will be analyzed together with previously published data to investigate the potential of sulfur isotopes as an alternative proxy for aquatic resource consumption in historic period Estonia (ca. AD 1100‒1800). Bayesian statistical programming was used to provide quantitative dietary estimates, suggesting that the diet of the general population was predominantly terrestrial. The inclusion of δ34S as an additional dietary proxy produced generally comparable model results to the scenario that excluded δ34S. A sub-selection of samples was also radiocarbon dated and calibrated to take into account potential reservoir effects. For burials of commoners, the average contribution of 10% fish to dietary carbon does not significantly alter calibrated date ranges, even in the occasion where data on local reservoir effects is insufficient. This study has demonstrated both the potential and the pitfalls of using δ34S in this temporo-spatial context, and the new stable isotope and 14C data have shed light onto individual site-histories but also to broader cultural processes and changes that occurred during these turbulent times in this region.

New educational curricula are emerging to train physicians for healthcare in the 21st century. The University of Massachusetts Chan Medical School T.H. Chan School of Medicine (UMass Chan) implemented an MD curriculum redesign in the fall of 2022 that included seven educational pathways, including Entrepreneurship, Biomedical Innovation, and Design. This new pathway curriculum introduces students to the principles of innovation, entrepreneurship, basic engineering principles, and technology commercialization. It is modeled after the I-Corps curriculum with added material regarding engineering principles. I-Corps was initially developed by the National Science Foundation (NSF) to help scientists understand the commercial potential of their inventions. Major elements include the Business Model Canvas and Customer Discovery [19-22]. First-year (Class of 2027) and second-year (Class of 2026) pathway students were invited to participate in online surveys evaluating course material and their knowledge of course content. Initial results show that the program was well received and student self-assessment demonstrated significant improvement. Objective student knowledge also significantly improved. Novel curricula have the potential to transform medical education and prepare future physicians to practice healthcare in the 21st Century.

Astrobiology is a scientific field that is very interdisciplinary and developing very fast, with many new discoveries generating a high level of attention in both the scientific community and the public. A central goal of astrobiology is to discover life beyond Earth which is, with our current instrumentation and knowledge, arguably within our reach. However, knowledge exchange crossing disciplinary boundaries is becoming increasingly challenging due to different usage of nomenclature and scientific controversies often limited to subdisciplines. There have been some efforts to compile organized databases of terms, concepts and other relevant material within some of the subfields contributing to astrobiology, for example through manually curated online portals designed to benefit students, teachers and practitioners of astrobiology-related research. However, the developments within the subfields and the potentially premature communication of research findings are too fast for objective research portals to remain reliable and up-to-date enough to enable well-informed scientific discussions. We suggest here a novel strategy for developing an online tracers portal as a self-maintaining and self-updating information platform, that would allow not only for a relatively unbiased selection of research results, but also provide fast access to latest scientific discoveries together with potential controversies, such that users of the tracers portal can form their own opinion on all available data rather than obtaining an already filtered and potentially biased selection of information.