The cognitively-intact oldest-old (85 +) may be the most-resilient members of their birth cohort; due to survivorship effects (e.g., depletion of susceptibles), risk factors associated with brain aging biomarkers in younger samples may not generalize to the cognitively-intact oldest-old. We evaluated associations between established aging-related risk factors and brain-predicted age difference (brainPAD) in a cross-sectional c...

Rationale and objectives Overdose fatalities involving cocaine continue to rise with over 5.3 million cocaine users reported in the United States in 2022. The abuse liability of cocaine is reliant upon inhibition of dopamine ( DA ) reuptake and consequent increase in DA efflux in meso-corticolimbic circuitry that controls reward and motivation. Cocaine also increases serotonin ( 5-HT ) efflux which is integral in cocaine abuse...

Shifts in plant functional groups associated with climate change have the potential to influence peatland carbon storage by altering the amount and composition of organic matter available to aquatic microbial biofilms. The goal of this study was to evaluate the potential for plant subsidies to regulate ecosystem carbon flux (CO 2 ) by governing the relative proportion of primary producers (microalgae) and heterotrophic decompo...

Resilience of plant communities to disturbance is supported by multiple mechanisms, including ecological legacies affecting propagule availability, species’ environmental tolerances, and biotic interactions. Understanding the relative importance of these mechanisms for plant community resilience supports predictions of where and how resilience will be altered with disturbance. We tested mechanisms underlying resilience of fore...

Environmentally cued germination may play an important role in promoting coexistence in Mediterranean annual plant systems if it causes niche differentiation across heterogeneous microsite conditions. In this study, we tested how microsite conditions experienced by seeds in the field and light conditions in the laboratory influenced germination in 12 common annual plant species occurring in the understorey of the York gum-jam...

Argininosuccinate lyase (ASL) is essential for the NO-dependent regulation of tyrosine hydroxylase (TH) and thus for catecholamine production. Using a conditional mouse model with loss of ASL in catecholamine neurons, we demonstrate that ASL is expressed in dopaminergic neurons in the substantia nigra pars compacta, including the ALDH1A1 + subpopulation that is pivotal for the pathogenesis of Parkinson disease (PD). Neuronal l...

Boreal wildfires are increasing in intensity, extent, and frequency, potentially intensifying carbon emissions and transitioning the region from a globally significant carbon sink to a source. The productive southern boreal forests of central Canada already experience relatively high frequencies of fire, and as such may serve as an analog of future carbon dynamics for more northern forests. Fire–carbon dynamics in southern bor...

Fire is a primary disturbance in boreal forests and generates both positive and negative climate forcings. The influence of fire on surface albedo is a predominantly negative forcing in boreal forests, and one of the strongest overall, due to increased snow exposure in the winter and spring months. Albedo forcings are spatially and temporally heterogeneous and depend on a variety of factors related to soils, topography, climat...

Wildfire is the dominant disturbance in boreal forests and fire activity is increasing in these regions. Soil fungal communities are important for plant growth and nutrient cycling postfire but there is little understanding of how fires impact fungal communities across landscapes, fire severity gradients, and stand types in boreal forests. Understanding relationships between fungal community composition, particularly mycorrhiz...