Neighborhood Environment, Intrinsic Capacity and 4-Year Late-Life Functional Ability Trajectories

Knowledge on how intrinsic capacity (IC) and neighbourhood physical environment shape functional ability (FA) trajectories in later life remains understudied. We investigated the 4-year trajectories of IC and their impact on FA trajectories, and the associations between neighbourhood physical environments and FA trajectories over time among older adults. We conducted a four-wave longitudinal study from 2014-2017 in Hong Kong with 2,081 adults aged 65 and above. FA was assessed by The Chinese Lawton Instrumental Activities of Daily Living. We used cognition, affect, locomotion, sensory capacity, and vitality to capture multi-domains of IC. Neighbourhood physical environment attributes included green space, land use diversity, and facilities availability, assessed within 200- and 500-meter buffers of respondents' homes. IC and FA each decreased significantly over time. Individuals with declines in IC experienced faster declines in FA over time. Green space, the number of leisure facilities and public transport slowed the decreasing FA rate.

Linking single-cell decisions to collective behaviours in social bacteria

Social bacteria display complex behaviours whereby thousands of cells collectively and dramatically change their form and function in response to nutrient availability and changing environmental conditions. In this review, we focus on Myxococcus xanthus motility, which supports spectacular transitions based on prey availability across its life cycle. A large body of work suggests that these behaviours require sensory capacity implemented at the single-cell level. Focusing on recent genetic work on a core cellular pathway required for single-cell directional decisions, we argue that signal integration, multi-modal sensing and memory are at the root of decision making leading to multicellular behaviours. Hence, Myxococcus may be a powerful biological system to elucidate how cellular building blocks cooperate to form sensory multicellular assemblages, a possible origin of cognitive mechanisms in biological systems. This article is part of the theme issue ‘Basal cognition: conceptual tools and the view from the single cell’.

Sheep in wolves’ clothing: prey rely on proactive defences when predator and non-predator cues are similar

Predation produces intense selection and a diversity of defences. Reactive defences are triggered by predator cues, whereas proactive defences are always in effect. We assess whether prey rely on proactive defences when predator cues do not correlate well with predation risk. Many bats use echolocation to hunt insects, and many insects have evolved to hear bats. However, in species-rich environments like Neotropical forests, bats have extremely diverse foraging strategies, and the presence of echolocation corresponds only weakly to the presence of predators. We assess whether katydids that live in habitats with many non-dangerous bat species stop calling when exposed to echolocation. For 11 species of katydids, we quantified behavioural and neural responses to predator cues, and katydid signalling activity over 24 h periods. Despite having the sensory capacity to detect predators, many Neotropical forest katydids continued calling in the presence of predator cues, displaying proactive defences instead (short, infrequent calls totalling less than 2 cumulative seconds of sound per 24 h). Neotropical katydid signalling illustrates a fascinating case where trophic interactions are probably mediated by a third group: bats with alternative foraging strategies (e.g. frugivory). Although these co-occurring bats are not trophically connected, their mere presence disrupts the correlation between cue and predation risk.

Polycystin-2 ciliary extracellular vesicle release and targeting

Extracellular vesicles (EVs) are emerging as a universal means of cell-to-cell communication and hold great potential in diagnostics and regenerative therapies [1]. An urgent need in the field is a fundamental understanding of physiological mechanisms driving EV generation and function. Ciliary EVs act as signaling devices in Chlamydomonas and C. elegans [2–4]. Mammalian cilia shed EVs to eliminate unwanted receptors [5] or to retract cilia before entering the cell cycle [6]. Here we used our established C. elegans model to study sensory-evoked ciliary EV release and targeting using a fluorescently labeled EV cargo polycystin-2 (PKD-2). In C. elegans and mammals, the Autosomal Dominant Polycystic Kidney Disease (ADPKD) gene products polycystin-1 and polycystin-2 localize to cilia and EVs, act in the same genetic pathway, and function in a sensory capacity, suggesting ancient conservation [7]. We find that males deposit PKD-2-carrying EVs onto the vulva of the hermaphrodite during mating. We also show that mechanical stimulation triggers release of PKD-2-carrying EVs from cilia. To our knowledge this is the first report of mechanoresponsive nature of the ciliary EV release and of ciliary EV directional transfer from one animal to another animal. Since the polycystins are evolutionarily conserved ciliary EV cargoes, our findings suggest that similar mechanisms for EV release and targeting may occur in other systems and biological contexts.

Integrated care for older people (ICOPE): from guidelines to demonstrating feasibility

The World Health Organization (WHO) Global strategy and action plan on ageing and health (1) provides a policy framework to align health systems to the diverse needs of older populations. It promotes person-centred care that strengthen older peoples’ intrinsic capacity (physical and mental capacity) and ability to function where they live, a shift away from specialized medical treatment for each disease or condition. With its endorsement in 2016, WHO Member States recognized a pressing need to develop integrated, community-based approaches to prevent declines in intrinsic capacity. To operationalize ‘intrinsic capacity (IC)’, domains closely associated with care dependency were proposed: mobility, cognition, psychological capacity (depressive symptoms), vitality (malnutrition), and sensory capacity (hearing and vision) (2).

Institutional Aesthetics: Embodied Ways of Encountering, Evaluating, and Enacting Institutions

The cognitive turn in institutional theory has led to the systematic neglect of people’s sensory capacities. In this paper we offer a cross-level theory of the role in institutional processes of sensory and evaluative forms of knowledge. Called here the aesthetic mode, this way of knowing combines humans’ innate sensory capacity to engage the world with their learned capacity to evaluate what they encounter. We argue that people evaluate the world’s natural, social, and spiritual phenomena through the lenses of a personal aesthetic, each person’s distinct internalization of the institutional aesthetic codes of the communities in which they are in embedded. A personal aesthetic informs and animates people’s internal conversations as they evaluate the social arrangements they encounter and deliberate over how they should participate in the institutional processes of maintaining, disrupting, or creating social arrangements. Attending to people’s aesthetic ways of knowing positions us to better understand when, why, and how people deliberate about institutional values and arrangements and choose to engage in purposive institutional work. It also offers a way of conceptualizing and examining the reflexivity said to be at the heart of embedded agency. We discuss the implications for understanding of institutional work, institutional biography, and of how people experience institutional disruption and re-creation.