SummaryMales and females often age at different rates resulting in longevity 'gender gaps', where one sex outlives the other. Why the sexes have different lifespans is an age-old question, still fiercely debated today. One cellular process related to lifespan, which is known to differ according to sex, is the rate at which the protective telomere chromosome caps are lost. In humans, men have shorter lifespans and greater telomere shortening. This has led to speculation in the medical literature that sex-specific telomere shortening is one cause of sex-specific mortality. However, telomere shortening may be a cause for and ⁄ or a consequence of the processes that govern survival, and to infer general principles from single-taxon studies may be misleading. Here, we review recent work on telomeres in a variety of animal taxa, including those with reverse sexual lifespan dimorphism (i.e., where males live longer), to establish whether sex-specific survival is generally associated with sex differences in telomere dynamics. By doing this, we attempt to tease apart the potential underlying causes for sex differences in telomere lengths in humans and highlight targets for future research across all taxa.

Context There is concern that exposure therapy, an evidence-based cognitivebehavioral treatment for posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), may be inappropriate because of risk of relapse for patients with co-occurring substance dependence.Objective To determine whether an integrated treatment for PTSD and substance dependence, Concurrent Treatment of PTSD and Substance Use Disorders Using Prolonged Exposure (COPE), can achieve greater reductions in PTSD and substance dependence symptom severity compared with usual treatment for substance dependence.Design, Setting, and Participants Randomized controlled trial enrolling 103 participants who met DSM-IV-TR criteria for both PTSD and substance dependence. Participants were recruited from 2007-2009 in Sydney, Australia; outcomes were assessed at 9 months postbaseline, with interim measures collected at 6 weeks and 3 months postbaseline.Interventions Participants were randomized to receive COPE plus usual treatment (n=55) or usual treatment alone (control) (n=48). COPE consists of 13 individual 90minute sessions (ie, 19.5 hours) with a clinical psychologist. Main Outcome MeasuresChange in PTSD symptom severity as measured by the Clinician-Administered PTSD Scale (CAPS; scale range, 0-240) and change in severity of substance dependence as measured by the number of dependence criteria met according to the Composite International Diagnostic Interview version 3.0 (CIDI; range, 0-7), from baseline to 9-month follow-up. A change of 15 points on the CAPS scale and 1 dependence criterion on the CIDI were considered clinically significant. ResultsFrom baseline to 9-month follow-up, significant reductions in PTSD symptom severity were found for both the treatment group (mean difference, −38.24 [95% CI, −47.93 to −28.54]) and the control group (mean difference, −22.14 [95% CI, −30.33 to −13.95]); however,thetreatmentgroupdemonstratedasignificantlygreaterreductioninPTSDsymptom severity (mean difference, −16.09 [95% CI, −29.00 to −3.19]). No significant between-group difference was found in relation to improvement in severity of substance dependence (0.43 vs 0.52; incidence rate ratio, 0.85 [95% CI, 0.60 to 1.21), nor were there any significant between-group differences in relation to changes in substance use, depression, or anxiety. ConclusionAmong patients with PTSD and substance dependence, the combined use of COPE plus usual treatment, compared with usual treatment alone, resulted in improvement in PTSD symptom severity without an increase in severity of substance dependence.

Explaining variation in life expectancy between individuals of the same age is fundamental to our understanding of population ecology and life history evolution. Variation in the length and rate of loss of the protective telomere chromosome caps has been linked to cellular lifespan. Yet, the extent to which telomere length and dynamics predict organismal lifespan in nature is still contentious. Using longitudinal samples taken from a closed population of Acrocephalus sechellensis (Seychelles warblers) studied for over 20 years, we describe the first study into life-long adult telomere dynamics (1-17 years) and their relationship to mortality under natural conditions (n = 204 individuals). We show that telomeres shorten with increasing age and body mass, and that shorter telomeres and greater rates of telomere shortening predicted future mortality. Our results provide the first clear and unambiguous evidence of a relationship between telomere length and mortality in the wild, and substantiate the prediction that telomere length and shortening rate can act as an indicator of biological age further to chronological age when exploring life history questions in natural conditions.

Telomeres play a fundamental role in the protection of chromosomal DNA and in the regulation of cellular senescence. Recent work in human epidemiology and evolutionary ecology suggests adult telomere length (TL) may reflect past physiological stress and predict subsequent morbidity and mortality, independent of chronological age.Several different methods have been developed to measure TL, each offering its own technical challenges. The aim of this review is to provide an overview of the advantages and drawbacks of each method for researchers, with a particular focus on issues that are likely to face ecologists and evolutionary biologists collecting samples in the field or in organisms that may never have been studied in this context before.We discuss the key issues to consider and wherever possible try to provide current consensus view regarding best practice with regard to sample collection and storage, DNA extraction and storage, and the five main methods currently available to measure TL.Decisions regarding which tissues to sample, how to store them, how to extract DNA, and which TL measurement method to use cannot be prescribed, and are dependent on the biological question addressed and the constraints imposed by the study system. What is essential for future studies of telomere dynamics in evolution and ecology is that researchers publish full details of their methods and the quality control thresholds they employ.

Lower visibility of female scientists, compared to male scientists, is a potential reason for the under-representation of women among senior academic ranks. Visibility in the scientific community stems partly from presenting research as an invited speaker at organized meetings. We analysed the sex ratio of presenters at the European Society for Evolutionary Biology (ESEB) Congress 2011, where all abstract submissions were accepted for presentation. Women were under-represented among invited speakers at symposia (15% women) compared to all presenters (46%), regular oral presenters (41%) and plenary speakers (25%). At the ESEB congresses in 2001–2011, 9–23% of invited speakers were women. This under-representation of women is partly attributable to a larger proportion of women, than men, declining invitations: in 2011, 50% of women declined an invitation to speak compared to 26% of men. We expect invited speakers to be scientists from top ranked institutions or authors of recent papers in high-impact journals. Considering all invited speakers (including declined invitations), 23% were women. This was lower than the baseline sex ratios of early-mid career stage scientists, but was similar to senior scientists and authors that have published in high-impact journals. High-quality science by women therefore has low exposure at international meetings, which will constrain Evolutionary Biology from reaching its full potential. We wish to highlight the wider implications of turning down invitations to speak, and encourage conference organizers to implement steps to increase acceptance rates of invited talks.

This study is the first to identify a bifactor model including a specific thought disorder factor. The findings highlight the utility of transdiagnostic treatment approaches and the importance of restructuring psychopathology in an empirically based manner.

Issues. The use of alcohol and drugs amongst young people is a serious concern and the need for effective prevention is clear. This paper identifies and describes

Background Lifestyle risk behaviours typically emerge during adolescence, track into adulthood, and commonly co-occur. Interventions targeting multiple risk behaviours in adolescents have the potential to efficiently improve health outcomes, yet further evidence is required to determine their effect. We reviewed the effectiveness of eHealth school-based interventions targeting multiple lifestyle risk behaviours. Methods In this systematic review and meta-analysis, we searched Ovid MEDLINE, Embase, PsycINFO, and the Cochrane Library databases between Jan 1, 2000, and March 14, 2019, with no language restrictions, for publications on school-based eHealth multiple health behaviour interventions in humans. We also screened the grey literature for unpublished data. Eligible studies were randomised controlled trials of eHealth (internet, computers, tablets, mobile technology, or tele-health) interventions targeting two or more of six behaviours of interest: alcohol use, smoking, diet, physical activity, sedentary behaviour, and sleep. Primary outcomes of interest were the prevention or reduction of unhealthy behaviours, or improvement in healthy behaviours of the six behaviours. Outcomes were summarised in a narrative synthesis and combined using random-effects meta-analysis. This systematic review is registered with PROSPERO, identifier CRD42017072163. Findings Of 10 571 identified records, 22 publications assessing 16 interventions were included, comprising 18 873 students, of whom on average 56•2% were female, with a mean age of 13•41 years (SD 1•52). eHealth schoolbased multiple health behaviour change interventions significantly increased fruit and vegetable intake (standard mean difference 0•11, 95% CI 0•03 to 0•19; p=0•007) and both accelerometer-measured (0•33, 0•05 to 0•61; p=0•02) and self-reported (0•14, 0•05 to 0•23; p=0•003) physical activity, and reduced screen time (-0•09,-0•17 to-0•01; p=0•03) immediately after the intervention; however, these effects were not sustained at follow-up when data were available. No effect was seen for alcohol or smoking, fat or sugar-sweetened beverage or snack consumption. No studies examined sleep or used mobile health interventions. The risk of bias in masking of final outcome assessors and selective outcome reporting was high or unclear across studies and overall we deemd the quality of evidence to be low to very low. Interpretation eHealth school-based interventions addressing multiple lifestyle risk behaviours can be effective in improving physical activity, screen time, and fruit and vegetable intake. However, effects were small and only evident immediately after the intervention. Further high quality, adolescent-informed research is needed to develop eHealth interventions that can modify multiple behaviours and sustain long-term effects.