Paleontology provides insights into the history of the planet, from the origins of life billions of years ago to the biotic changes of the Recent. The scope of paleontological research is as vast as it is varied, and the field is constantly evolving. In an effort to identify “Big Questions” in paleontology, experts from around the world came together to build a list of priority questions the field can address in the years ahead. The 89 questions presented herein (grouped within 11 themes) represent contributions from nearly 200 international scientists. These questions touch on common themes including biodiversity drivers and patterns, integrating data types across spatiotemporal scales, applying paleontological data to contemporary biodiversity and climate issues, and effectively utilizing innovative methods and technology for new paleontological insights. In addition to these theoretical questions, discussions touch upon structural concerns within the field, advocating for an increased valuation of specimen-based research, protection of natural heritage sites, and the importance of collections infrastructure, along with a stronger emphasis on human diversity, equity, and inclusion. These questions offer a starting point—an initial nucleus of consensus that paleontologists can expand on—for engaging in discussions, securing funding, advocating for museums, and fostering continued growth in shared research directions.

We present the first results from the COS-EDGES survey, targeting the kinematic connection between the interstellar medium and multi-phase circumgalactic medium (CGM) in nine isolated, near-edge-on galaxies at $z\sim0.2$, each probed along its major axis by a background quasar at impact parameters of $D=13-38$ kpc. Using VLT/UVES and HST/COS quasar spectra, we analyse Mgi, Mgii, Hi, Cii, Ciii, and Ovi absorption relative to galaxy rotation curves from Keck/LRIS and Magellan/MagE spectra. We find that low ionisation absorption for 8/9 galaxies lies below the halo escape velocity, indicating bound inflow or recycling gas, while 6/9 galaxies have high ionisation gas reaching above the halo escape velocity, suggesting some unbound material. We find that at lower $D/R_{\textrm{vir}}$ ($0.12\leq D/R_{\textrm{vir}} \leq0.20$), over 80% of absorption in all ions lies on the side of systemic velocity matching disk rotation, and the optical-depth–weighted median velocity ($v_{abs}$) is consistent with the peak rotation speed. At higher $D/R_{\textrm{vir}}$ ($0.21\leq D/R_{\textrm{vir}} \leq0.31$), the kinematics diverge by ionisation state: For the low ionisation gas, the amount of co-rotating absorption remains above 80%, yet $v_{abs}$ drops to roughly 60% of the galaxy rotation speed. For the high ionisation gas (Ovi), only 60% of the absorption is consistent with co-rotation and $v_{abs}$ drops to 20% of the galaxy rotation speed. Furthermore, the velocity widths, corresponding to 50% of the total optical depth ($\Delta v_{50}$) for low ionisation gas is up to 1.8 times larger in the inner halo than at larger radii, while for Ciii and Ovi $\Delta v_{50}$ remains unchanged with distance. The 90% optical-depth width ($\Delta v_{90}$) shows a modest decline with radius for low ionisation gas but remains constant Ciii and Ovi. At high $D/{R}_{\textrm{vir}}$, both $\Delta v_{50}$ and $\Delta v_{90}$ increase with ionisation potential. These results suggest a radially dependent CGM kinematic structure: the inner halo hosts cool, dynamically broad gas tightly coupled to disk rotation, whereas beyond $\gtrsim 0.2 R_{\textrm{vir}}$, particularly traced by Ovi and Hi, the CGM shows weaker rotational alignment and lower relative velocity dispersion. Therefore, low-ionisation gas likely traces extended co-rotating gas, inflows and/or recycled accretion, while high-ionisation gas reflects a mixture of co-rotating, lagging, discrete collisionally ionised structures and volume-filling warm halo, indicating a complex kinematic stratification of the multi-phase CGM.

Objectives/Goals: Cerebral amyloid angiopathy (CAA) characterized by the accumulation of amyloid-beta in the cerebrovasculature, affects blood vessel integrity leading to brain hemorrhages and an accelerated cognitive decline in Alzheimer’s disease patients. In this study, we are conducting a genome-wide association study to identify genetic risk factors for CAA. Methods/Study Population: We genotyped 1253 additional AD cases using and curated existing genome-wide genotype data from 110 AD and 502 non-AD donors from the Mayo Clinic Brain Bank. We performed QC and imputation of all datasets. We conducted GWAS in AD only (N =  1,363), non-AD only, as well as the combined cohort (N = 1,865) by testing imputed variant dosages for association with square root transformed CAA using linear regression, adjusting for relevant covariates. To assess associations in the context of major CAA risk factors, we performed interaction analysis with APOEe4 presence and sex; and pursued stratified analyses. We collected peripheral gene expression measures using RNA isolated from 188 PAXgene tube samples of 95 donors collected across multiple time points. More than 1/3 of these participants have MRI measures collected. Results/Anticipated Results: Variants at the APOE locus were identified as the most significant in our study. In addition, several other variants with suggestive association were found under the main model adjusting for AD neuropathology (Braak and Thal). LINC-PINT splice variant remained associated with lower CAA scores in AD cases without the APOEe4 risk allele. To enhance the robustness of our findings, we are pursuing further expansion of our study cohort. In the periphery, we expect to identify expression changes associated with neuroimaging indicators of CAA and determine if variants and genes discovered via GWAS are implicated in these changes. Discussion/Significance of Impact: We expect this study will provide further insight into the genetic architecture underlying risk for CAA both in the context of significant AD pathology and without. Characterization of genetic variants and functional outcomes in the context of neuropathology may lead to new avenues of research aimed at identifying biomarkers and therapies to treat CAA

Early gut microbiome development may impact brain and behavioral development. Using a nonhuman primate model (Macaca mulatta), we investigated the association between social environments and the gut microbiome on infant neurodevelopment and cognitive function. Infant rhesus monkeys (n = 33) were either mother-peer-reared (MPR) or nursery-reared (NR). Neurodevelopmental outcomes, namely emotional responsivity, visual orientation, and motor maturity, were assessed with the Primate Neonatal Neurobehavioral Assessment (PNNA) at 14–30 days. Cognitive development was assessed through tasks evaluating infant reward association, cognitive flexibility, and impulsivity at 6–8 months. The fecal microbiome was quantified from rectal swabs via 16S rRNA sequencing. Factor analysis was used to identify “co-abundance factors” describing patterns of microbial composition. We used multiple linear regressions with AIC Model Selection and differential abundance analysis (MaAsLin2) to evaluate relationships between co-abundance factors, microbiome diversity, and neuro-/cognitive development outcomes. At 30 days of age, a gut microbiome co-abundance factor, or pattern, with high Prevotella and Lactobacillus (β = −0.88, p = 0.04, AIC Weight = 68%) and gut microbiome alpha diversity as measured by Shannon diversity (β = −1.33, p = 0.02, AIC Weight = 80%) were both negatively associated with infant emotional responsivity. At 30 days of age, being NR was also associated with lower emotional responsivity (Factor 1 model: β = −3.13, p < 0.01; Shannon diversity model: β = −3.77, p < 0.01). The infant gut microbiome, along with early-rearing environments, may shape domains of neuro-/cognitive development related to temperament.

Geoarchaeological research as part of the AHRC funded Living with Monuments (LwM) project investigated the upper Kennet river system across the Avebury World Heritage landscape. The results demonstrate that in the early–mid-Holocene (c. 9500–1000 bc) there was very low erosion of disturbed soils into the floodplain, with floodplain deposits confined to a naturally forming bedload fluvial deposit aggrading in a shallow channel of inter-linked deeper pools. At the time of the Neolithic monument building in the 4th–early 3rd millennium bc, the river was wide and shallow with areas of presumed braid plain. Between c. 4000 and 1000 bc, a human induced signature of soil erosion became a minor component of fluvial sedimentation in the Kennet palaeo-channel but it was small scale and localised. This strongly suggests that there is little evidence of widespread woodland removal associated with Neolithic farming and monument building, despite the evidently large timber requirements for Neolithic sites like the West Kennet palisade enclosures. Consequently, there was relatively light human disturbance of the hinterland and valley slopes over the longue durée until the later Bronze Age/Early Iron Age, with a predominance of pasture over arable land. Rather than large Neolithic monument complexes being constructed within woodland clearings, representing ancestral and sacred spaces, the substantially much more open landscape provided a suitable landscape with areas of sarsen spreads potentially easily visible. During the period c. 3000–1000 bc, the sediment load within the channel slowly increased with alluvial deposition of increasingly humic silty clays across the valley floor. However, this only represents small-scale landscape disturbance. It is from the Late Bronze Age–Early Iron Age when the anthropogenic signal of human driven alluviation becomes dominant and overtakes the bedload fluvial signal across the floodplain, with localised colluvial deposits on the floodplain margins. Subsequently, the alluvial archive describes more extensive human impact across this landscape, including the disturbance of loessic-rich soils in the catchment. The deposition of floodplain wide alluvium continues throughout the Roman, medieval, and post-medieval periods, correlating with the development of a low-flow, single channel, with alluvial sediments describing a decreasing energy in the depositional environment.

Karl Barth's Theology of the Reformed Confessions characterised those catechetical texts as more ethical in orientation and more horizontal in focus than the corresponding Lutheran symbols. By examining both primary and secondary sources, this paper shows that while Barth legitimately illumines a key element of the Reformed witness regarding a connection between faith and life, his polemical eye may also distort his perspective on its distinctiveness, likely owing to contextual factors related to his self-fashioning a Reformed identity in his early academic service at the predominantly Lutheran University of Göttingen and alongside his colleague, Emanuel Hirsch.

Tippins et al. (2023) challenge I-O psychologists to more actively – in Miller’s oft-quoted APA presidential address – “give psychology away.” Their article provides stirring examples of the impact several of our colleagues have made in giving psychology away. In thinking about how to encourage and facilitate more of us to volunteer, we’d like to share several thoughts on our roles as I-Os, both as individuals and as a community. In particular, we propose that volunteerism is an expression of our calling as I-Os; suggest five roles we can play as individuals; discuss three roles for the community at-large; and conclude with a call to action.

Infrastructure in several economies in the Global South has rapidly undergone financialization, aided and abetted by governments opening-up their infrastructure assets to global institutional investors in search of stable, predictable revenue streams. This account of financialization could be the end of the story were it not for the fact that Christophers (2015) and others have shown that institutional investors are not simply in the game of ‘finding’ value or ‘harvesting it’ from obliging states, rather they actively construct it. What often catches the eye, however, are the more overt forms of financial engineering (Ashton et al., 2012), whereas what tends to go unnoticed are the ways in which infrastructure assets are routinely ‘worked’ to generate value over time. Here, we draw attention to a slower-paced financialization of infrastructure assets where, following Chiapello (2015, 2020), investors are engaged in a continual process of evaluation and revaluation of their assets to add value over and above prevailing benchmarks. Taking the example of Canada's Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan (OTPP) and its extensive investments in Chilean water infrastructure, this article considers how a global investment fund draws on financial practices developed in the advanced economies to add value to long term infrastructure assets in the Global South. Such practices, we argue, enact a routine form of financial subordination which does not match the familiar image of wholly subservient and dominated dependent economies. Rather, the power asymmetries involved equate less to a zero-sum game and more to a game where the benefits are unequally shared between asset managers in the Global North and states in the Global South, where effectively the latter cooperate in their own submission in ways that are not always acknowledged as such.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture–Agricultural Research Service (USDA-ARS) has been a leader in weed science research covering topics ranging from the development and use of integrated weed management (IWM) tactics to basic mechanistic studies, including biotic resistance of desirable plant communities and herbicide resistance. ARS weed scientists have worked in agricultural and natural ecosystems, including agronomic and horticultural crops, pastures, forests, wild lands, aquatic habitats, wetlands, and riparian areas. Through strong partnerships with academia, state agencies, private industry, and numerous federal programs, ARS weed scientists have made contributions to discoveries in the newest fields of robotics and genetics, as well as the traditional and fundamental subjects of weed–crop competition and physiology and integration of weed control tactics and practices. Weed science at ARS is often overshadowed by other research topics; thus, few are aware of the long history of ARS weed science and its important contributions. This review is the result of a symposium held at the Weed Science Society of America’s 62nd Annual Meeting in 2022 that included 10 separate presentations in a virtual Weed Science Webinar Series. The overarching themes of management tactics (IWM, biological control, and automation), basic mechanisms (competition, invasive plant genetics, and herbicide resistance), and ecosystem impacts (invasive plant spread, climate change, conservation, and restoration) represent core ARS weed science research that is dynamic and efficacious and has been a significant component of the agency’s national and international efforts. This review highlights current studies and future directions that exemplify the science and collaborative relationships both within and outside ARS. Given the constraints of weeds and invasive plants on all aspects of food, feed, and fiber systems, there is an acknowledged need to face new challenges, including agriculture and natural resources sustainability, economic resilience and reliability, and societal health and well-being.

To explore the role environment plays in influencing galaxy evolution at high redshifts, we study $2.0\leq z<4.2$ environments using the FourStar Galaxy Evolution (ZFOURGE) survey. Using galaxies from the COSMOS legacy field with ${\rm log(M_{*}/M_{\odot})}\geq9.5$, we use a seventh nearest neighbour density estimator to quantify galaxy environment, dividing this into bins of low-, intermediate-, and high-density. We discover new high-density environment candidates across $2.0\leq z<2.4$ and $3.1\leq z<4.2$. We analyse the quiescent fraction, stellar mass and specific star formation rate (sSFR) of our galaxies to understand how these vary with redshift and environment. Our results reveal that, across $2.0\leq z<2.4$, the high-density environments are the most significant regions, which consist of elevated quiescent fractions, ${\rm log(M_{*}/M_{\odot})}\geq10.2$ massive galaxies and suppressed star formation activity. At $3.1\leq z<4.2$, we find that high-density regions consist of elevated stellar masses but require more complete samples of quiescent and sSFR data to study the effects of environment in more detail at these higher redshifts. Overall, our results suggest that well-evolved, passive galaxies are already in place in high-density environments at $z\sim2.4$, and that the Butcher–Oemler effect and SFR-density relation may not reverse towards higher redshifts as previously thought.

Studies of early fourth-millennium BC Britain have typically focused on the Early Neolithic sites of Wessex and Orkney; what can the investigation of sites located in areas beyond these core regions add? The authors report on excavations (2011–2019) at Dorstone Hill in Herefordshire, which have revealed a remarkable complex of Early Neolithic monuments: three long barrows constructed on the footprints of three timber buildings that had been deliberately burned, plus a nearby causewayed enclosure. A Bayesian chronological model demonstrates the precocious character of many of the site's elements and strengthens the evidence for the role of tombs and houses/halls in the creation and commemoration of foundational social groups in Neolithic Britain.