The 10 most-cited articles in Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 2021

Recent attention has focused on the growing role of psychostimulants, such as methamphetamine in overdose deaths. Methamphetamine is an addictive and potent stimulant, and its use is associated with a range of physical and mental health harms, overdose, and mortality. Adding to the complexity of this resurgent methamphetamine threat is the reality that the increases in methamphetamine availability and harms are occurring in the midst of and intertwined with the ongoing opioid overdose crisis. Opioid involvement in psychostimulant-involved overdose deaths increased from 34.5% of overdose deaths in 2010 to 53.5% in 2019-an increase of more than 50%. This latest evolution of the nation's overdose epidemic poses novel challenges for prevention, treatment, and harm reduction. This narrative review synthesizes what is known about changing patterns of methamphetamine use with and without opioids in the United States, other characteristics associated with methamphetamine use, the contributions of the changing illicit drug supply to use patterns and overdose risk, motivations for couse of…

Abstract We analyze the polar sea ice distribution and the global sea level pressure (SLP) and baroclinicity distributions over the “satellite” period of 1979–2020. In the Arctic, there are statistically significant sea ice extent (SIE) decreases in all calendar months, and the annual mean has lost 2.22 million km 2 over the four decades. The Antarctic SIE, in marked contrast, increased up to 2014, then commenced a remarkable retreat (the annual mean ice extent decreased by 2.03 million km 2 in the 3 years to 2017), and subsequently increased to near its long‐term average value in 2020. The shifts in seasonal‐mean SLP patterns are consistent with a warming planet. At the synoptic scale, we diagnose the changes in the baroclinicity, the mechanism by which cyclones, fronts, and other weather systems are generated. Through a novel presentation, we give an overview of the relative roles of changes in the vertical shear and static stability in influencing the global trends in baroclinicity. In both the Arctic and Antarctic regions, baroclinicity is shown to have increased in each season…

Oceanic heat sources disturb the atmosphere, which, to come back to its initial state, disperses waves. These waves affect the climate in remote regions, characterizing the teleconnection patterns. In this study, we describe eight teleconnection patterns that affect South America climate: the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO), the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO), the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO), the Tropical Atlantic Dipole (TAD), the South Atlantic Dipole (SAD), the Southern Annular Mode (SAM), the Madden-Julian Oscillation (MJO), and the Indian Ocean Dipole (IOD). Precipitation and winds at 850-hPa anomalies, considering these teleconnection patterns in ENSO neutral periods, are also presented. Overall, southeastern South America and the north sector of the North and Northeast regions of Brazil are the most affected areas by the teleconnection patterns. In general, there is a precipitation dipole pattern between these regions during each teleconnection pattern.

Given the rising incidence of stroke, several technology-driven methods for rehabilitation have recently been developed. Virtual reality (VR) is a promising therapeutic technology among them. We recently developed a neuroscientifically grounded VR system to aid recovery of motor function poststroke. The developed system provides unilateral and bilateral upper extremity (UE) training in a fully immersive virtual environment that may stimulate and activate mirror neurons (MNs) in the brain necessary for UE rehabilitation. Twenty-three participants were randomized to a VR group (n = 12) to receive VR intervention (8 h within 2 weeks) plus 8-h occupational therapy (OT) or a control group (n = 11) to receive time-matched OT alone. Treatment effects on motor recovery and cortical reorganization were investigated using the Barthel Index (BI), Fugl-Meyer Upper Extremity (FM-UE), and resting-state fMRI. Both groups significantly improved BI (P < 0.05), reflecting the recovery of UE motor function. The VR group revealed significant improvements on FM-UE scores (P < 0.05) than the control…

CMIP5 models have been shown to exhibit rapid cooling events in their projections of the North Atlantic subpolar gyre. Here, we analyze the CMIP6 archive, searching for such rapid cooling events in the new generation of models. Four models out of 35 exhibit such instabilities. The climatic impacts of these events are large on decadal timescales, with a substantial effect on surface temperature over Europe, precipitation pattern in the tropics-most notably the Sahel and Amazon regions-and a possible impact on the mean atmospheric circulation. The mechanisms leading to these events are related to the collapse of deep convection in the subpolar gyre, modifying profoundly the oceanic circulation. Analysis of stratification in the subpolar gyre as compared with observations highlights that the biases of the models explain relatively well the spread in their projections of surface temperature trends: models showing the smallest stratification biases over the recent period also show the weakest warming trends. The models exhibiting abrupt cooling rank among the 11 best models for this…

Antibiotic resistance is a worldwide and growing clinical problem. With limited drug development in the antibacterial space, combination therapy has emerged as a promising strategy to combat multidrug-resistant bacteria. Antibacterial combinations can improve antibiotic efficacy and suppress antibacterial resistance through independent, synergistic, or even antagonistic activities. Combination therapies are famously used to treat viral and mycobacterial infections and cancer. However, antibacterial combinations are only now emerging as a common treatment strategy for other bacterial infections owing to challenges in their discovery, development, regulatory approval, and commercial/clinical deployment. Here, we focus on discovery-where the sheer scale of combinatorial chemical spaces represents a significant challenge-and discuss how combination therapy can impact the treatment of bacterial infections. Despite these challenges, recent advancements, including new in silico methods, theoretical frameworks, and microfluidic platforms, are poised to identify the new and efficacious…

Music listening provides one of the most significant abstract rewards for humans because hearing music activates the dopaminergic mesolimbic system. Given the strong link between reward, dopamine, and memory, we aimed here to investigate the hypothesis that dopamine-dependent musical reward can drive memory improvements. Twenty-nine healthy participants of both sexes provided reward ratings of unfamiliar musical excerpts that had to be remembered following a consolidation period under three separate conditions: after the ingestion of a dopaminergic antagonist, a dopaminergic precursor, or a placebo. Linear mixed modeling of the intervention data showed that the effect of reward on memory-i.e., the greater the reward experienced while listening to the musical excerpts, the better the memory recollection performance-was modulated by both dopaminergic signaling and individual differences in reward processing. Greater pleasure was consistently associated with better memory outcomes in participants with high sensitivity to musical reward, but this effect was lost when dopaminergic…

Laryngopharyngeal reflux (LPR) is a syndrome caused by reflux of gastric contents into the pharynx or larynx, which leads to symptoms of throat clearing, hoarseness, pain, globus sensation, cough, excess mucus production in the throat, and dysphonia. LPR is a challenging condition, as there is currently no gold standard for diagnosis or treatment, and thus this presents a burden to the healthcare system. Strategies for treatment of LPR are numerous. Medical therapies include proton pump inhibitors, which are first line, H2 receptor antagonists, alginates, and baclofen. Other noninvasive treatment options include lifestyle therapy and the external upper esophageal sphincter compression device. Endoscopic and surgical options include antireflux surgery, magnetic sphincter augmentation, and transoral incisionless fundoplication. Functional laryngeal disorders and laryngeal hypersensitivity can present as LPR symptoms with or without gastroesophageal reflux disease. Though there are minimal studies in this area, neuromodulators and behavioral interventions are potential treatment…

Extensive evidence supports the association between age-related hearing loss (ARHL) and cognitive decline. It is, however, unknown whether a causal relationship exists between these two, or whether they both result from shared mechanisms. This paper intends to study this relationship through a comprehensive review of MRI findings as well as evidence of cellular alterations. Our review of structural MRI studies demonstrates that ARHL is independently linked to accelerated atrophy of total and regional brain volumes and reduced white matter integrity. Resting-state and task-based fMRI studies on ARHL also show changes in spontaneous neural activity and brain functional connectivity; and alterations in brain areas supporting auditory, language, cognitive, and affective processing independent of age, respectively. Although MRI findings support a causal relationship between ARHL and cognitive decline, the contribution of potential shared mechanisms should also be considered. In this regard, the review of cellular evidence indicates their role as possible common mechanisms underlying both…

The disproportionately high rates of both infections and deaths among racial and ethnic minorities (especially Blacks and Hispanics) in the United States during the COVID-19 pandemic are consistent with the conclusion that structural inequality can produce lethal consequences. However, the nature of this structural inequality in relation to COVID-19 is poorly understood. Here, we hypothesized that two structural features, racial residential segregation and income inequality, of metropolitan areas in the United States have contributed to health-compromising conditions, which, in turn, have increased COVID-19 fatalities; moreover, that these two features, when combined, may be particularly lethal. To test this hypothesis, we examined the growth rate of confirmed COVID-19 cases and deaths in an early 30-day period of the outbreak in the counties located in each of the 100 largest metropolitan areas in the United States. The growth curves for cases and deaths were steeper in counties located in metropolitan areas where Blacks and Hispanics are residentially segregated from Whites.…