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This volume presents reports from three recent scientific meetings on special topics. The first report discusses scientific perspectives on individuals’ drive to consume, presented at the conference "The Interdisciplinary Science of Consumption: Mechanisms of Allocating Resources Across Disciplines" at the University of Michigan in May 2010. Sponsored by Rackham Graduate School and the Department of Psychology at the University of Michigan, the conference included presentations on human, primate, and rodent models and spanned multiple domains of consumption, including reward seeking, delay discounting, food-sharing reciprocity, and the consumption and display of material possessions across the life span.The next report comes from the one-day symposium by the Centre for Immunity, Infection, and Evolution (CIIE) entitled "Wild Immunology," held at the University of Edinburgh, UK in June 2011. Funded by the Wellcome Trust, the CIIE aims to connect evolutionary biology and ecology with research in immunology and infectious diseases in order to gain an interdisciplinary perspective on challenges to global health. The central question of the symposium was "Why should we try to understand infection and immunity in wild systems?" Specifically, presenters explored how the immune response operates in the wild and how multiple coinfections and commensalism affect immune responses and host health in these wild systems. The symposium brought together a broad program of speakers, ranging from laboratory immunologists to infectious disease ecologists, working on wild birds, feral animals, wild and laboratory rodents, and on questions ranging from the dynamics of coinfection to how commensal bacteria affect the development of the immune system.The final report discusses the work presented at "Advancing Drug Discovery for Schizophrenia," a conference sponsored by the New York Academy of Sciences and with support from the National Institute of Mental Health, the Life Technologies Foundation, and the Josiah Macy Jr. Foundation. The meeting, at the New York Academy of Sciences in March of 2011, included individual talks and panel discussions and highlighted basic, clinical, and translational research approaches, all of which contribute to the overarching goal of enhancing the pharmaceutical armamentarium for treating schizophrenia.  The meeting report surveys work by the vanguard of schizophrenia research in such topics as genetic and epigenetic approaches, small molecule therapeutics, and the relationships between target genes, neuronal function, and symptoms of schizophrenia.NOTE: Annals volumes books or as a journal. For information on institutional journal subscriptions, please visit http://ordering.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/subs.asp?ref=1749-6632&doi=10.1111/(ISSN)1749-6632.ACADEMY MEMBERS: Please contact the New York Academy of Sciences directly to place your order (www.nyas.org). Members of the New York Academy of Science receive full-text access to Annals online and discounts on print volumes. Please visit http://www.nyas.org/MemberCenter/Join.aspx for more information about becoming a member.

This volume presents two meeting reports from recent scientific conferences and a third paper of draft consensus guidelines for treating Shwachman-Diamond syndrome. The first meeting report, "Advances in Bipolar Disorder: Selected Sessions from the International Conference on Bipolar Disorder," covers the 9th International Conference on Bipolar Disorder (ICBD) held in Pittsburgh, PA, June 9–11, 2011. The conference focused on a number of important issues concerning the diagnosis of bipolar disorders across the life span, advances in neuroscience, treatment strategies for bipolar disorders, early intervention, and medical comorbidity. This meeting report presents key points from the sessions including: strategies for moving biology forward; bipolar disorder and the forthcoming new DSM-5 nomenclature; management of bipolar disorders—both theory and intervention, with an emphasis on the medical comorbidities; and a review of several key task force reports commissioned by the International Society for Bipolar Disorder (ISBD). The second meeting report covers the Sixth International Congress on Shwachman-Diamond Syndrome (SDS), the only multidisciplinary forum devoted specifically to SDS, held at the New York Academy of Sciences June 28–30, 2011.  SDS is an autosomal recessive genetic disorder involving multiple organ systems and affecting children and young adults. The meeting report explores the most important recent advances in our understanding of the clinical features, current management, and treatment of SDS, and the molecular function of SBDS in hematopoiesis, leukemogenesis, and organogenesis. The third paper in this volume presents draft consensus guidelines for diagnosis, evaluation, and treatment of Shwachman-Diamond syndrome.  Evidence-based conclusions were made whenever possible. However, as in other rare diseases, the data are often anecdotal. Therefore, recommendations were also based upon the consensus of experienced clinicians from Canada, Europe, and the United States during and following an international SDS conference.  New recommendations regarding diagnosis and management have been made reflecting advances in understanding the genetic basis and clinical manifestations of the disease. NOTE: Annals volumes are available for sale as individual books or as a journal. For information on institutional journal subscriptions, please visit http://ordering.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/subs.asp?ref=1749-6632&doi=10.1111/(ISSN)1749-6632.ACADEMY MEMBERS: Please contact the New York Academy of Sciences directly to place your order (www.nyas.org). Members of the New York Academy of Science receive full-text access to Annals online and discounts on print volumes. Please visit http://www.nyas.org/MemberCenter/Join.aspx for more information about becoming a member.

This Annals volume includes scholarly summaries of scientific achievement by winners and finalists candidates of the 2011 Prix Galien USA awards for achievement in pharmaceutical science. Contributions by GlaxoSmithKline, Amgen, Pfizer, and Janssen Biotech present advances in biotechnology and pharmaceutical agents that combat a range of diseases.NOTE: Annals volume are available for sale as individual books or as a journal. For information on institutional journal subscriptions, please visit: http://ordering.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/subs.asp?ref=1749-6632&doi=10.111/(ISSN)1749-6632ACADEMY MEMBERS: Please contact the New york Academy of Sciences directly to place your order (www.nyas.org). Members of the New York Academy of Sciences receive full-text access to Annals online and discounts on print volumes. Please visit http://www.nyas.org/MemberCenter/Join.aspx for more information about becoming a member.

This volume comprises contributions from faculty and postdoctoral finalists of the 2011 New York Academy of Sciences Blavatnik Awards for Young Scientists.  The Awards celebrate the excellence of some of the most promising young scientists in New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut by acknowledging their highly innovative, multidisciplinary accomplishments in the life sciences, physical sciences, mathematics, and engineering.  Included in this volume are manuscripts of the individual finalists' areas of research, which provide a glimpse of some of today’s most compelling scholarly work.NOTE: Annals volumes are available for sale as individual books or as a journal. For information on institutional journal subscriptions, please visit http://ordering.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/subs.asp?ref=1749-6632&doi=10.1111/(ISSN)1749-6632.ACADEMY MEMBERS: Please contact the New York Academy of Sciences directly to place your order (www.nyas.org). Members of the New York Academy of Science receive full-text access to the Annals online and discounts on print volumes. Please visit http://www.nyas.org/MemberCenter/Join.aspx for more information about becoming a member.

Climate change is already beginning to affect New York State and these impacts are projected to grow. At the same time, the state has the ability to develop adaptation strategies that will address many climate-related risks, thereby reducing impacts and taking advantage of possible opportunities. The ClimAID assessment presented in this volume provides information on climate change impacts and adaptation for eight sectors in New York State: water resources, coastal zones, ecosystems, agriculture, energy, transportation, telecommunications, and public health. Observed climate trends and future climate projections were developed for seven regions across the state. Within each of the sectors, climate risks, vulnerabilities, and adaptation strategies are identified. Integrating themes across all of the sectors are equity and environmental justice and economics. Case studies are used to examine specific vulnerabilities and potential adaptation strategies in each of the eight sectors. These case studies also illustrate the linkages among climate vulnerabilities, risks, and adaptation, and demonstrate specific monitoring needs.  Stakeholder participation was critical to the ClimAID assessment process to ensure relevance to decision makers across the state. NOTE: Annals volumes are available for sale as individual books or as a journal. For information on institutional journal subscriptions, please visit http://ordering.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/subs.asp?ref=1749-6632&doi=10.1111/(ISSN)1749-6632.ACADEMY MEMBERS: Please contact the New York Academy of Sciences directly to place your order (www.nyas.org). Members of the New York Academy of Science receive full-text access to Annals online and discounts on print volumes. Please visit http://www.nyas.org/MemberCenter/Join.aspx for more information about becoming a member.

Handedness, or manual laterality of function, is thought to be both universal and unique to humans, making it a highly derived trait, based on an equally specialized neural substrate. By contrast, in various non-human species, both living and extinct, extent of lateralization varies.  All known populations of living human beings apparently favor the right hand, motorically, culturally, and symbolically, thus right-handedness is species-typical, as well as species-specific. This laterality of function is correlated with asymmetry of structure, that is, neural, skeletal and muscular, for example as manifest especially in skilled movement, such as handwriting. Human brains are lop-sided, and sagitally-paired organs (hand, foot, eye, ear, etc.) are skewed in their use, usually biased to the right; explaining this variation appears to require both cultural and environmental causal variables. To tackle these questions and advance our knowledge of this basic human trait requires genuinely multi-disciplinary input by scholars willing to think inter-disciplinarily.  Thus, participants in this Annals volume come from anthropology, archaeology, genetics, neurosciences, palaeo-anthropology, primatology, psychology, and psychiatry. NOTE: Annals volumes are available for sale as individual books or as a journal.

In the aftermaths of Hurricanes Irene, in 2011, and Sandy, in 2012, New York City has come to recognize the critical need to better prepare for future storm surges and to anticipate future trends, such as climate change and socioeconomic developments. This Annals volume presents research that assesses the costs of six different flood management strategies to anticipate long-term challenges the City will face. The proposed strategies vary from increasing resilience by upgrading building codes and introducing small scale protection measures, to creating green infrastructure asbuffer zones and large protective engineering works such as storm surge barriers. The initial investment costs of alternative strategies vary between $11.6 and $23.8 bn, maximally. This report shows that a hybrid solution, combining protection of critical infrastructure and resilience measures that can be upgraded over time, is less expensive. However, with increasing risk in the future, storm surge barriers may become cost-effective, as they can provide protection to the largest areas in both New York and New Jersey.

The behavioral and neurobiological connections between play and the development of critical cognitive functions, such as attention, remain largely unknown. We do not yet know how these connections relate to the formation of specific abilities, such as spatial ability, and to learning in formal environments, such as in the classroom. Insights into these issues would be beneficial not only for understanding play, attention, and learning individually, but also for the development of more efficacious systems for learning and for the treatment of neurodevelopmental disorders. This meeting report provides a synopsis of the conference “Play, Attention, and Learning: How Do Play and Timing Shape the Development of Attention and Facilitate Classroom Learning?,” held on June 15, 2012 and presented by the New York Academy of Sciences and the Brain Trauma Foundation. The report outlines important research steps that need to be taken in order to address critical questions about play, human activity, and cognitive functions.