The 10 most-cited articles in Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 2024

While humans sometimes do show the capability of correcting their own erroneous guesses with self-critiquing, there seems to be no basis for that assumption in the case of LLMs.

The Hadley circulation (HC) is a global-scale atmospheric feature with air descending in the subtropics and ascending in the tropics, which plays a fundamental role in Earth's climate because it transports energy polewards and moisture equatorwards. Theoretically, as a consequence of anthropogenic climate change, the HC is expected to expand polewards, while indications on the HC strength are equivocal, as weakening and strengthening are expected in response to different mechanisms. In fact, there is a general agreement among reanalyses and climate simulations that the HC has significantly widened in the last four decades and it will continue widening in the future, but there is no consensus on past and future changes of the HC strength. Substantial uncertainties are produced by the effects of natural variability, structural deficiencies in climate models and reanalyses, and the influence of other forcing factors, such as anthropogenic aerosols, black carbon, and stratospheric and tropospheric ozone. The global HC can be decomposed into three regional HCs, associated with ascending…

To effectively tackle loneliness in youth, prevention and intervention strategies should be based on solid evidence regarding risk and protective factors in this age group. This systematic literature review identifies and narratively synthesizes longitudinal studies of risk and protective factors for loneliness in children and adolescents aged below 25 years. A systematic literature search was conducted in October 2023 using PsycINFO and MEDLINE, resulting in n = 398 articles, with n = 105 articles meeting the inclusion criteria. The examined factors included demographic (e.g., gender), socioeconomic (e.g., income sufficiency), social (e.g., peer acceptance), mental health (e.g., depression), physical health (e.g., disabilities), health behavior (e.g., sport participation), and psychological factors (e.g., shyness). Additionally, adverse childhood experiences (e.g., child maltreatment) and environmental factors (e.g., neighborhood characteristics) were investigated. Despite the wide range of potential risk and protective factors examined, relatively few studies provided strong…

Androgens, formerly known as anabolic-androgenic steroids, mimic the effects of testosterone and are being increasingly abused for nonmedical purposes such as body and performance enhancement. Androgen abuse is associated with increased mortality, and multisystem adverse effects have been reported, including cardiovascular toxicity, infertility, hypogonadism, hepatotoxicity, and mental health disorders. Men may present with the negative health consequences of androgen abuse even despite cessation for a number of years. There is frequently a reluctance to disclose androgen abuse, and substances are often sourced from the black market, which is not regulated and where the products sold may be counterfeit. All men should be encouraged to stop androgen abuse. Managing associated adverse effects will be organ-specific and is complex due to physical and neuropsychiatric symptoms, substance dependence, and high rates of relapse. Given the broad reach and prolonged adverse effects of androgen abuse, clinicians across medical specialties should have an awareness of androgen abuse, its…

Swiftly halting ongoing motor actions is essential to react to unforeseen and potentially perilous circumstances. However, the neural bases subtending the complex interplay between emotions and motor control have been scarcely investigated. Here, we used an emotional stop signal task (SST) to investigate whether specific neural circuits engaged by action suppression are differently modulated by emotional signals with respect to neutral ones. Participants performed an SST before and after the administration of one session of repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) over the pre-supplementary motor cortex (pre-SMA), the right inferior frontal gyrus (rIFG), and the left primary motor cortex (lM1). Results show that rTMS over the pre-SMA improved the ability to inhibit prepotent action (i.e., better action control) when emotional stimuli were presented. In contrast, action control in a neutral context was fostered by rTMS over the rIFG. No changes were observed after lM1 stimulation. Intriguingly, individuals with higher impulsivity traits exhibited enhanced motor control…

With age, parasympathetic activity decreases, while sympathetic activity increases. Thus, the typical older adult has low heart rate variability (HRV) and high noradrenaline levels. Younger adults with this physiological profile tend to be unhappy and stressed. Yet, with age, emotional experience tends to improve. Why does older adults' emotional well-being not suffer as their HRV decreases? To address this apparent paradox, I present the autonomic compensation model. In this model, failing organs, the initial phases of Alzheimer's pathology, and other age-related diseases trigger noradrenergic hyperactivity. To compensate, older brains increase autonomic regulatory activity in the pregenual prefrontal cortex (PFC). Age-related declines in nerve conduction reduce the ability of the pregenual PFC to reduce hyperactive noradrenergic activity and increase peripheral HRV. But these pregenual PFC autonomic compensation efforts have a significant impact in the brain, where they bias processing in favor of stimuli that tend to increase parasympathetic activity (e.g., stimuli that increase…

This review summarizes the implementation characteristics of parenting interventions to promote early child development (ECD) outcomes from birth to 3 years. We included 134 articles representing 123 parenting trials (PROSPERO record CRD42022285998). Studies were conducted across high-income (62%) and low-and-middle-income (38%) countries. The most frequently used interventions were Reach Up and Learn, Nurse Family Partnership, and Head Start. Half of the interventions were delivered as home visits. The other half used mixed settings and modalities (27%), clinic visits (12%), and community-based group sessions (11%). Due to the lack of data, we were only able to test the moderating role of a few implementation characteristics in intervention impacts on parenting and cognitive outcomes (by country income level) in the meta-analysis. None of the implementation characteristics moderated intervention impacts on cognitive or parenting outcomes in low- and middle-income or high-income countries. There is a significant need in the field of parenting interventions for ECD to consistently…

Organismal solutions to natural challenges can spark creative engineering applications. However, most engineers are not experts in organismal biology, creating a potential barrier to maximally effective bioinspired design. In this review, we aim to reduce that barrier with respect to a group of organisms that hold particular promise for a variety of applications: snakes. Representing >10% of tetrapod vertebrates, snakes inhabit nearly every imaginable terrestrial environment, moving with ease under many conditions that would thwart other animals. To do so, they employ over a dozen different types of locomotion (perhaps well over). Lacking limbs, they have evolved axial musculoskeletal features that enable their vast functional diversity, which can vary across species. Different species also have various skin features that provide numerous functional benefits, including frictional anisotropy or isotropy (as their locomotor habits demand), waterproofing, dirt shedding, antimicrobial properties, structural colors, and wear resistance. Snakes clearly have much to offer to the fields of…

This chapter of the New York City Panel on Climate Change 4 (NPCC4) report provides a comprehensive description of the different types of flood hazards (pluvial, fluvial, coastal, groundwater, and compound) facing New York City and provides climatological context that can be utilized, along with climate change projections, to support flood risk management (FRM). Previous NPCC reports documented coastal flood hazards and presented trends in historical and future precipitation and sea level but did not comprehensively assess all the city's flood hazards. Previous NPCC reports also discussed the implications of floods on infrastructure and the city's residents but did not review the impacts of flooding on the city's natural and nature-based systems (NNBSs). This-the NPCC's first report focused on all drivers of flooding-describes and profiles historical examples of each type of flood and summarizes previous and ongoing research regarding exposure, vulnerability, and risk management, including with NNBS and nonstructural measures.

It has been more than a century since Pío del Río-Hortega first characterized microglia in histological stains of brain tissue. Since then, significant advances have been made in understanding the role of these resident central nervous system (CNS) macrophages. In particular, it is now known that microglia can sense neural activity and modulate neuronal circuits accordingly. We review the mechanisms by which microglia detect changes in neural activity to then modulate synapse numbers in the developing and mature CNS. This includes responses to both spontaneous and experience-driven neural activity. We further discuss activity-dependent mechanisms by which microglia regulate synaptic function and neural circuit excitability. Together, our discussion provides a comprehensive review of the activity-dependent functions of microglia within neural circuits in the healthy CNS, and highlights exciting new open questions related to understanding more fully microglia as key components and regulators of neural circuits.