Plunge-diving into dynamic body acceleration and energy expenditure in the Peruvian booby.

Daily energy expenditure (DEE) is the result of decisions on how to allocate time among activities (resting, commuting, and foraging) and the energy costs of those activities. Dynamic body acceleration (DBA), which measures acceleration associated with movement, can be used to estimate DEE. Previous studies of DBA-DEE correlations in birds occurred on species foraging below their thermoneutral zone, potentially decoupling the DBA-DEE relationship. We used doubly-labelled water (DLW) to validate the use of DBA on plunge-diving seabirds, Peruvian boobies (Sula variegata), foraging in waters above their thermoneutral zone (>19 °C). Mass-specific DEEDLW in boobies was 1.12 kJ/d/g, and higher in males than in females. DBA alone provided the best fitting model to estimate mass-specific DEEDLW compared to models partitioned per activity and time-budget models. Nonetheless, the model parametrizing activity at and away of their onshore breeding colony was the most parsimonious model (r=0.6). This r value, although high, is lower than all other avian studies, implying that temperature is not the main cause of DBA-DEE decoupling in birds. Time at the colony (∼80% of the day) was the largest contributor to DEE as it was the most time-consuming activity and involved nest defense. However, foraging was the most power-consuming activity (4.6 times higher activity-specific metabolic rate than resting at the colony), and commuting-flight was higher than in other gliding seabirds. In short, DBA alone can act as a proxy for DEE, opening avenues to measure the conservation energetics of this seabird in the rapidly-changing Peruvian Humboldt Current System.

Corrigendum to "Cloning and functional analysis of 1-deoxy-D-xylulose-5-phosphate synthase (DXS) in Santalum album L" [Gene 851 (2023) 146762].

There are typographical errors with the pictures and tables in the original text, and these should be corrected in this corrigendum. The authors state that these corrections do not affect the methods, results, or conclusions of the original text.

Functions and mechanisms of non-histone protein acetylation in plants.

Lysine acetylation, an evolutionarily conserved post-translational protein modification, is reversibly catalyzed by lysine acetyltransferases and lysine deacetylases. Lysine acetylation, which was first discovered on histones, mainly functions to configure the structure of chromatin and regulate gene transcriptional activity. Over the past decade, with advances in high-resolution mass spectrometry, a vast and growing number of non-histone proteins modified by acetylation in various plant species have been identified. Lysine acetylation of non-histone proteins is widely involved in regulating biological processes in plants such as photosynthesis, energy metabolism, hormone signal transduction and stress responses. Moreover, in plants, lysine acetylation plays crucial roles in regulating enzyme activity, protein stability, protein interaction and subcellular localization. This review summarizes recent progress in our understanding of the biological functions and mechanisms of non-histone protein acetylation in plants. Research prospects in this field are also noted.

Role of Rubus chingii BBX gene family in anthocyanin accumulation during fruit ripening.

The B-box (BBX) family, which is a class of zinc finger transcription factors, exhibits special roles in plant growth and development as well as in plants' ability to cope with various stresses. Even though Rubus chingii is an important traditional medicinally edible plant in east Asia, there are no comprehensive studies of BBX members in R. chingii. In this study, 32 RcBBX members were identified, and these were divided into five groups. A collinearity analysis showed that gene duplication events were common, and when combined with a motif analysis of the RcBBX genes, it was concluded that group V genes might have undergone deletion of gene fragments or mutations. Analysis of cis-acting elements revealed that each RcBBX gene contained hormone-, light-, and stress-related elements. Expression patterns of the 32 RcBBX genes during fruit ripening revealed that highest expression occurred at the small green fruit stage. Of note, the expression of several RcBBX genes increased rapidly as fruit developed. These findings, combined with the expression profiles of anthocyanin biosynthetic genes during fruit ripening, allowed us to identify the nuclear-targeted RcBBX26, which positively promoted anthocyanin production in R. chingii. The collective findings of this study shed light on the function of RcBBX genes in different tissues, developmental stages, and in response to two abiotic stresses.

The undeclared use of third-party service providers in academic publishing is unethical: an epistemic reflection and scoping review.

There is a substantial body of scientific literature on the use of third-party services (TPS) by academics to assist as "publication consultants" in scholarly publishing. TPS provide a wide range of scholarly services to research teams that lack the equipment, skills, motivation, or time to produce a paper without external assistance. While services such as language editing, statistical support, or graphic design are common and often legitimate, some TPS also provide illegitimate services and send unsolicited e-mails (spam) to academics offering these services. Such illegitimate types of TPS have the potential to threaten the integrity of the peer-reviewed scientific literature. In extreme cases, for-profit agencies known as "paper mills" even offer fake scientific publications or authorship slots for sale. The use of such illegitimate services as well as the failure to acknowledge their use is an ethical violation in academic publishing, while the failure to declare support for a TPS can be considered a form of contract fraud. We discuss some literature on TPS, highlight services currently offered by ten of the largest commercial publishers and expect authors to be transparent about the use of these services in their publications. From an ethical/moral (i.e., non-commercial) point of view, it is the responsibility of editors, journals, and publishers, and it should be in their best interest to ensure that illegitimate TPS are identified and prohibited, while publisher-employed TPS should be properly disclosed in their publications.

Clarifying middle authorship contributions to reduce abuses in science publishing and assessment of top-ranked SJR biochemistry and pharmacology journals' authorship criteria.

So-called "middle authors," being neither the first, last, nor corresponding author of an academic paper, have made increasing relative contributions to academic scholarship over recent decades. No work has specifically and explicitly addressed the roles, rights, and responsibilities of middle authors, an authorship position which we believe is particularly vulnerable to abuse via growing phenomena such as paper mills. Responsible middle authorship requires transparent declarations of intellectual and other scientific contributions that journals can and should require of co-authors and established guidelines and criteria to achieve this already exist (ICMJE/CRediT). Although publishers, editors, and authors need to collectively uphold a situation of shared responsibility for appropriate co-authorship, current models have failed science since verification of authorship is impossible, except through blind trust in authors' statements. During the retraction of a paper, while the opinion of individual co-authors might be noted in a retraction notice, the retraction itself practically erases the relevance of co-author contributions and position/status (first, leading, senior, last, co-corresponding, etc.). Paper mills may have successfully proliferated because individual authors' roles and responsibilities are not tangibly verifiable and are thus indiscernible. We draw on a historical example of manipulated research to argue that authors and editors should publish publicly available, traceable contributions to the intellectual content of an article-both classical authorship or technical contributions-to maximize both visibility of individual contributions and accountability. To make our article practically more relevant to this journal's readership, we reviewed the top 50 Q1 journals in the fields of biochemistry and pharmacology, as ranked by the SJR, to appreciate which journals adopted the ICMJE or CRediT schools of authorship contribution, finding significant variation in adhesion to ICMJE guidelines nor the CRediT criteria and wording of author guidelines.

Temporal Analysis of Pharmaceuticals as Emerging Contaminants in Surface Water and Wastewater Samples: A Case Study.

Pharmaceuticals in the environment are a global concern, with studies in all continents highlighting their widespread occurrence and potential ecological impacts, revealing their presence, fate, and associated risks in aquatic ecosystems. Despite typically occurring at low concentrations (ranging from ng/L to µg/L), advancements in analytical methods and more sensitive equipment have enabled the detection of a higher number of pharmaceuticals. In this study, surface and wastewater samples were extracted using solid phase extraction and analyzed using ultra-high-performance liquid chromatography with tandem mass spectrometry. Among the therapeutic classes investigated, nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs/analgesics, antibiotics, and psychiatric drugs showed a higher number of detected pharmaceuticals. Concentrations ranged from below method detection limit (

Beyond disclaimers: the need for a curation-based model of PubMed.

According to its own description, the biomedical meta-database PubMed exists "with the aim of improving health-both globally and personally." Unfortunately, PubMed contains an increasing amount of low-quality research that may detract from this goal. Currently, PubMed warns its users and protects itself from such problems with a disclaimer stating that the presence of any article, book, or document in PubMed does not imply an endorsement of, or concurrence with, its contents by the NLM, the National Institutes of Health (NIH), or the U.S. Federal Government. However, we are critical of a "disclaimer-only" stance and encourage PubMed to take further action against low-quality research being found and indexed in its database, and thus available for use. To address this problem, we offer two lines of reasoning to argue that PubMed should not function merely as a passive index of health-related research. Instead, we first argue that only trustworthy published research is able to further PubMed's goal of health improvement. Secondly, on the basis of surveys, we argue that researchers place a high level of trust in articles that are referenced in this meta-database. We cannot expect any one set of actors to ensure trustworthy content on PubMed, which requires collective responsibility among authors, peer reviewers, editors, and indexers alike. Instead, we propose a curation-based model that incorporates three mechanisms of collaborative content curation: open expert feedback on indexed content, journal auditing, and constant transparent reassessment of indexed entities.

ChatGPT as an "author": Bibliometric analysis to assess the validity of authorship.

Background: Following the 2023 surge in popularity of large language models like ChatGPT, significant ethical discussions emerged regarding their role in academic authorship. Notable ethics organizations, including the ICMJE and COPE, alongside leading publishers, have instituted ethics clauses explicitly stating that such models do not meet the criteria for authorship due to accountability issues.Objective: This study aims to assess the prevalence and ethical implications of listing ChatGPT as an author on academic papers, in violation of existing ethical guidelines set by the ICMJE and COPE.Methods: We conducted a comprehensive review using databases such as Web of Science and Scopus to identify instances where ChatGPT was credited as an author, co-author, or group author.Results: Our search identified 14 papers featuring ChatGPT in such roles. In four of those papers, ChatGPT was listed as an "author" alongside the journal's editor or editor-in-chief. Several of the ChatGPT-authored papers have accrued dozens, even hundreds of citations according to Scopus, Web of Science, and Google Scholar.Discussion: The inclusion of ChatGPT as an author on these papers raises critical questions about the definition of authorship and the accountability mechanisms in place for content produced by artificial intelligence. Despite the ethical guidelines, the widespread citation of these papers suggests a disconnect between ethical policy and academic practice.Conclusion: The findings suggest a need for corrective measures to address these discrepancies. Immediate review and amendment of the listed papers is advised, highlighting a significant oversight in the enforcement of ethical standards in academic publishing.

Against "silent" retractions in neuroscience.

When an academic paper is published in a journal that assigns a digital object identifier (DOI) to papers, this is a de facto fait accompli. Corrections or retractions are supposed to follow a specific protocol, especially in journals that claim to follow the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) guidelines. In this paper, we highlight a case of a new, fully open access neuroscience journal that claims to be COPE-compliant, yet has silently retracted two papers since all records, bibliometrics, and PDF files related to their existence have been deleted from the journal's website. Although this phenomenon does not seem to be common in the neurosciences, we consider that any opaque corrective measures in journals whose papers could be cited may negatively impact the wider neuroscience literature and community. Instead, we encourage transparency in retraction to promote truthfulness and trustworthiness.

Prevalence of helmintic infections in Brazilian Maxakali indigenous: a repeated cross-sectional design.

BACKGROUND: The prevalence of intestinal parasites is known to be high among Amerindian populations; further, there are serious problems in the healthcare of these populations in Brazil. The Maxakali, located in the northeastern region of Minas Gerais, Brazil, is an indigenous group that still preserves many of its cultural aspects. This study aimed to compare the positivity rate of schistosomiasis and soil-transmitted helminths in this ethnic group in epidemiological surveys conducted in 1972 and 2014. METHODS: Stool parasitological examinations were performed by the Kato-Katz technique during both periods in this population. In 2014, the parasitological diagnosis was also realized with the TF-Test® technique. RESULTS: In 1972, 270 inhabitants were examined. The positivity rates were 67.4% for Schistosoma mansoni, 72.9% for hookworms, 43.7% for Ascaris lumbricoides, and 23.7% for Trichuris trichiura. In 2014, 545 individuals were examined, and the positivity rates obtained were 45.7% for S. mansoni, 22.8% for hookworms, 0.6% for A. lumbricoides, and 2.8% for T. trichiura. CONCLUSIONS: The comparison of the parasitological surveys conducted in 1972 and 2014, indicates that the indigenous Maxakali remained neglected by the health and indigenous protection authorities during these four decades. The infection rate observed in 2014 for schistosomiasis and hookworm remains high, considering the current epidemiological view of these diseases in the Brazilian population.

A switch in letters leads to the "creation" of Eszett (ß)-catenin rather than beta (ß)-catenin.

A simple replacement-most likely due to a linguistic error-of the Greek letter beta (ß) by the German letter Eszett (ß), has led to the introduction of an error in a body of literature related to beta (ß)-catenin, resulting in the "creation" of a non-existent compound and false positive, Eszett (ß)-catenin. A search on 9 December 2023 in PubMed for ß-catenin and ß-catenin revealed 395 and 45,919 results, respectively. The 25 results of ß-catenin published in 2023 were examined in more detail to appreciate the location(s) in each paper where this error had occurred. While the scientific findings of these studies do not seem to be impacted by this error, authors and editors would need to weigh the need or benefit of correcting this error.

Against Over-reliance on PRISMA Guidelines for Meta-analytical Studies.

The Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) guidelines were elaborated to allow authors of such papers to identify quality articles for inclusion in their scholarly work. However, we have identified several issues that point to an over-reliance on the PRISMA guidelines. Firstly, we question the rigor of implementation by authors and the rigor of verification by peer reviewers and editors, and whether they have screened papers to ensure adherence to the PRISMA guidelines. Secondly, we have identified cases where the PRISMA criteria led to as much as 99.97% of the published literature being ignored, suggesting that valid publications meeting these criteria might be at risk of being ignored. Thirdly, we have noted that exclusion is not only a quantitative problem-it is also a qualitative one, since the screening procedure groups all non-conforming literature into one basket. Fourthly, we have noted that seven copies of the PRISMA guidelines exist. This being the case, which one should be cited? To replace over-reliance on PRISMA screening, we encourage authors, peer reviewers, and editors to publish systematic reviews and meta-analyses that respect the dual criteria of scientific plausibility and diversity of included papers.