bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Effect of supplementation of distillers dried grain with solubles (DDGS) to straw-based diet on performance, carcass characteristics, and meat quality in Nellore ram lambs
Authors: Reddy P. Vishnu Vardhan , Reddy Y. Ramana , Ramana J. V , Babu D. Suresh , Srinivasa D. , Reddy G. Vijaya Bhaskar , Devarapalli Srikala 
Published: August 2024

Abstract

Straw-based diets supplemented with different levels of distillers’ dried grain with solubles (DDGS) were assessed in growing sheep through a growth trial. In a completely randomized design, twenty-four growing ram lambs (16.07±1.78 kg; 4 m old) received either a basal diet (sorghum stover) supplemented with a concentrate mix (18% crude protein) at 2% body weight (D1) or a basal diet supplemented with DDGS at 1% (D2), 1.5% (D3), or 2% (D4) of their body weight for 90 days. While the total feed intake was comparable (P>0.05) among the lambs fed different experimental diets, the D3 and D4 diets significantly improved the average daily gain by 36.20% and 49.33%, respectively, and reduced the feed conversion ratio by 30.10% and 32.90%, respectively, compared to the D1 diet. Although the D3 and D4 groups showed statistically similar growth performance, the D3-fed lambs had a lower cost-effective gain at ₹76.30/kg than did the D4 group at ₹89.79/kg. The D4 group displayed significantly greater pre-slaughter, empty body, and carcass weights (P<0.05). Nonetheless, the dressing percentage, wholesale cut yield, and meat composition were not significantly different (P>0.05) among the different dietary groups. Similarly, there were no significant differences (P>0.05) in the wholesale cut yield, body wall thickness, loin eye area, visceral organ yield, meat-to-bone ratio, or meat chemical composition among the four dietary treatments. It was concluded from the present study that supplementing DDGS at 1.5% of body weight to a stover-based diet in growing ram lambs seems to be a viable and economical option.
Distribution of C30 carotenoid biosynthesis genes suggests habitat adaptation function in insect-adapted and nomadic Lactobacillaceae
Authors: Lebeer Sarah , Legein Marie , Eilers Tom , Temmermans Jari , Dillen Jelle , Vandendriessche Ine , Sandra Koen , Bron Peter , Wittouck Stijn 
Published: August 2024

Abstract

Carotenoids are membrane-bound pigments that are essential for photosynthesizing plants and algae. These specialized metabolites are widely applied in food, feed and cosmetics because of their antioxidant and anti-inflammatory properties. The production of carotenoids, particularly C30 forms, has also been documented in a few non-photosynthetic prokaryotes. However, our understanding of the function, distribution and ecology of these compounds beyond photosynthesizing organisms is limited. In this study, we performed an eco-evolutionary analysis of terpenoid biosynthetic gene clusters in the Lactobacillaceae family, an important family of beneficial bacteria with diverse lifestyles and habitats. Hereto, 4203 dereplicated genomes were screened for terpenoid biosynthesis genes, resulting in detection of crtMN genes in 28/361 (7.7%) species in 14/34 (41.2%) genera. These genes encode the key enzymes that transform two farnesyl pyrophosphate molecules into the C30 carotenoid 4,4’-diaponeurosporene. These crtMN genes appeared to be convergently gained within Fructilactobacillus, and horizontally transferred across species and genera, e.g. from Lactiplantibacillus to Levilactobacillus. Subsequently, in our in-house Lactobacillaceae culture collection from various habitats (n = 575), the phenotype was confirmed in 87% of the isolates predicted to have the crtMN genes (27/31). Nomadic and insect-adapted species, particularly those isolated from vegetable fermentations, such as Lactiplantibacillus, and floral habitats, such as Fructilactobacillus, were capable of C30 carotenoid biosynthesis, while vertebrate-associated species, such as those from the vagina, lacked this trait. This habitat association aligned with the observations that C30 carotenoid-producing strains were more resistant to oxidative and UV-stress. Taken together, this study revealed that C30 carotenoid biosynthesis plays a role in habitat adaptation and is scattered across Lactobacillaceae in line with this habitat adaptation.
“Bears are like family”: Indigenous knowledge of human-polar bear coexistence amidst rapid social-ecological change
Authors: Miller Katharina , Berg Georgina , Churchill Indigenous Knowledge Keepers of , Lickers Michael , Henri Dominique 
Published: August 2024

Abstract

Polar bears are coming into northern communities more frequently, and human-polar bear conflict is increasing. However, in the community of Churchill, Manitoba, people live alongside polar bears with high tolerance and reciprocal respect. Through this case study, we explored human–polar bear coexistence in the community through Indigenous voices, documented change, and provided recommendations as future visions to inform inclusive management and research strategies: elevate Indigenous knowledge, support proactive management and less invasive research, cultivate a culture of coexistence, improve education and safety awareness, and protect polar bears to support tourism. We used community-based participatory research, coproduction of knowledge, hands back, hands forward, and storytelling, mixing methods from the social sciences and Indigenous ways of knowing. Our study revealed coexistence may be a tool to bridge social and ecological knowledge, examine and facilitate wildlife conservation, and promote well-being through applied research on global issues at the local level.
Prenatal stress mediates tissue specific programming of 11β-hydroxysteroid dehydrogenase type 1 expression in diet-induced obese and dietary resistant rats
Authors: MohanKumar Sheba , Balasubramanian Priya , Varde Pratibha , Murugan Abarna , Palaniyappan ArunKumar , Chuang Yen-Jun , MohanKumar Puliyur 
Published: August 2024

Abstract

Background The link between uterine stress and fetal programming of metabolic diseases in the offspring is well established. However, susceptibility to prenatal stress-induced programming of metabolic diseases is not uniform across population. We have previously reported that diet-induced obese rats (DIO) are more susceptible to develop metabolic diseases in response to prenatal stress and postnatal HF diet challenge when compared to dietary resistant rats (DR), but the mechanism behind this phenomenon is unclear. In the present study, we hypothesized that prenatally stressed DIO rats will have alterations in stress axis and 11βHSD1 expression, which in turn predisposes them to metabolic disorders.Methods Pregnant DIO and DR rats were divided into 2 groups: control (normal pregnancy) and prenatal stress (restraint stress during the last week of gestation) groups. The male offspring were weaned onto chow diet until 9 weeks of age and then shifted to either chow or HF diet (45% calories from fat) for 1 week. Following 1 week of chow/HF diet treatment, the animals were sacrificed, and tissues were collected for assessing stress axis activity and 11βHSD1 expression.Results Prenatal stress activated stress axis with increased NE levels in the PVN and CRH levels in the median eminence in both DIO and DR rats. Though there was no change in either circulating CORT levels or adrenal gland weight, 11βHSD1 protein expression increased significantly in adipose tissue of prenatally stressed DIO and DR offspring compared to controls. Baseline levels of 11βHSD1 protein in the adipose tissue were higher in DIO than DR animals implicating a role for 11βHSD1 in the development of obesity. Postnatal HF diet did not have any additive effect on prenatal stress-induced changes.Conclusion Our results suggest that stress axis activation with induction of adipose tissue 11βHSD1 might be involved in the fetal origins of metabolic diseases.
Equatorial convection controls boreal summer intraseasonal oscillations in the present and future climates
Authors: Kottapalli Aditya , Vinayachandran P. N. 
Published: August 2024

Abstract

Boreal summer intraseasonal oscillation (BSISO) is the major mode of tropical variability during the Indian summer monsoon(ISM), it controls the dry and wet spells of ISM and thus is crucial for agricultural yield in the country. Understanding the future of BSISO is essential as it has been established recently that the large-scale BSISO environment enhances the probability of extreme rainfall events (EREs) enormously. In this study, the ability of Climate Model Inter Comparison Project (CMIP6) models to capture the northward propagation of boreal summer intraseasonal oscillation (BSISO) is examined using a counting algorithm. A composite moisture budget reveals the difference in moisture dynamics between the above-average-performing (AAPM) and below-average-performing (BAPM) models, AAPM composite has a more robust horizontal moisture advection ahead of the convection centre than the BAPM composite. This difference in the horizontal moisture advection between AAPM and BAPM is mainly caused by the weaker wind and moisture perturbations in the BAPM. The BAPM composite shows a weaker equatorial convection signal compared to the AAPM composite, resulting in weaker wind and moisture perturbations and a lesser number of northward propagations. Finally, we understand the future of BSISO by examining the projections of Shared Socioeconomic Pathways 370 (SSP370) from the available AAPMs. The background moisture will be enhanced uniformly in the future, leading to no substantial change in gradients. The equatorial convection enhances and broadens in the future projections, leading to very little change in the wind perturbations. This results in the enhancement of BSISO rainfall by 63\% in the Bay of Bengal and 42\% in the Arabian Sea. However, the proportion of northward propagations remains the same as moisture advection remains the same. The study implies that with a correct representation of BSISO's equatorial convection, the prediction of BSISO and extreme rainfall associated with BSISOs becomes more reliable.
Association between sleep patterns and symptoms of depression in older adults: a cross-sectional study using data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey 2007-2014
Authors: Niu Yi , Sun Yuqin , Xie Yijie , Yu Shun 
Published: August 2024

Abstract

Background
To assess the association between sleep behaviour and sleep factors (sleep duration, sleep problems, sleep disturbances) and the risk of depression in older adults.
Methods
A total of 5636 participants (2754 men and 2882 women) aged 60 years and older from the 2007–2014 waves of the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) were included. Sleep duration, sleep problems, and sleep disorders were assessed in the home by trained interviewers using the Computer-Assisted Personal Interviewing (CAPI) system. The combined sleep behaviours were referred to as 'sleep patterns (healthy, intermediate and poor)', with a 'healthy sleep pattern' defined as sleeping 7–9 hours per night with no self-reported sleep problems or sleep disorders. Intermediate and poor sleep patterns indicated 1 and 2–3 sleep problems, respectively. Logistic multiple linear regression was used to assess the association of sleep factors and sleep patterns with the risk of depressive symptoms.
Results
The overall prevalence of depression was 7.7% among the 5636 participants analysed, with the rate of depression in older women being 1.6 times higher than in older men. Compared with normal sleep duration (7–9 hours), short sleep duration (<7 hours) was associated with a higher risk of depression, but long sleep duration (> 9h) did not reach statistical significance. (Short sleep: OR: 2.04, 95% CI: 1.65–2.52; long sleep: OR: 1.47, 95% CI: 0.87–2.48). Self-reported sleep complaints, whether trouble sleeping or sleep disorder, were significantly associated with depression (sleep disturbance: OR: 0.3, 95% CI: 0.24–0.37; sleep disturbance: OR: 0.35, 95% CI: 0.27–0.45). In addition, the correlations appeared to be higher in people with poor sleep patterns (OR: 5.6, 95% CI: 4.25–7.39).
Conclusion
This nationally representative survey showed a relationship between sleep patterns and depression in older adults.
Mining spatiotemporal association rule based on prevalent sequential patterns
Authors: Wang Ling , Shen Peng , Yang Le , Gui Lingpeng 
Published: August 2024

Abstract

Spatiotemporal association rules mining algorithms can effectively mine the association relationships between spatiotemporal event patterns, which plays an important role in pollution control, weather forecasting and other fields.However,most existing association rule mining algorithms require quantitative time intervals between predefined patterns, and these algorithms do not consider sequential patterns between different spaces. To address these issues, we propose an efficient algorithm for mining spatiotemporal association rule based on prevalent sequential patterns (STARPSP). Firstly, a cross spatiotemporal sequence dataset is constructed by discretizing sequence data from different spaces to mine both sequential patterns in the same space and between different spaces. Secondly, the PrefixSpan algorithm is extended to mine spatiotemporal prevalent sequential patterns. Thirdly, spatiotemporal association rules are automatically obtained based prevalent sequential patterns with time intervals. Finally, STARPSP is compared with other spatiotemporal sequential patterns and association rules mining algorithms on three real datasets. Our experiments show that STARPSP outperforms the other algorithms with respect to both execution time and the number of generated rules. Furthermore, the rules generated by STARPSP contain more spatiotemporal information, which is critical in decision-making.
Deep Learning Models for Small Rivers Stream-Flow Forecasting and Flood Prediction
Authors: Albared Mohammed , Beise Hans-Peter , Stüber Manfred 
Published: August 2024

Abstract

River streamflow forecasting is essential for water resources management and flood damage mitigation. Due to their superiority at solving time series problems, several studies have evaluated deep learning models for river streamflow forecasting. However, forecasting small river flow rates, especially during flood events, is a challenge of particular difficulty due to the scarcity of data and the sudden appearance of floods. This work investigates the performance of five deep-learning models for small river streamflow forecasting and particularly focuses on flow forecasting during flood events. The models considered in this work are long short-term memory (LSTM), Gated Recurrent units (GRU), Bidirectional LSTM, 1D convolutional neural networks (1DCNN), and sequential ConvLSTM models. In addition to the standard performance metrics used to evaluate models, this work introduces and applies a new evaluation metric to measure the time effectiveness of models in the early prediction of floods, taking into account the time budget to take early actions. The models are used to forecast the flow rate values over the next 6 hours, 3 hours, and 1 hour. Kyll River, a small river in western Germany, was chosen as a case study because it was subject to several flood events. Results show that all models achieved good performance in overall small river flow forecasting. Results also show that the LSTM-based and the GRU models exhibited poor streamflow forecasting performance (accuracy and time) during normal and extreme flood periods and showed a big decrease in their performance during extreme floods. The findings of this study show that 1DCNN had the highest streamflow forecasting performance, and it reaches impressive forecast accuracy on the entire test set periods and even in normal and extreme flood periods. This suggests that the 1DCNN algorithm can be used as a part of an early flood warning and prediction system in case of both normal and extreme floods.
Effects of integrating traditional and modern healthcare system on tuberculosis diagnosis delay in Ethiopia: a clustered randomized controlled study
Authors: Amare Desalegne , Alene Kefyalew Addis , Ambaw Fentie 
Published: August 2024

Abstract

Background: Delay in tuberculosis (TB) diagnosis and treatment is a major challenge in low- and middle-income countries. We aimed to assess the effectiveness of a new approach of integrating traditional care with modern TB control programs in reducing delays in TB diagnosis and treatment.
Methods: We conducted a cluster randomized control trial involving 23 health facilities across four districts and two town administrations in northwest Ethiopia. The clusters were randomly allocated with a 1:1 ratio to intervention or control groups. We provided training for traditional and modern healthcare providers in three different rounds to enhance their knowledge, attitude, and skills towards referral systems. We used shared frailty parametric survival analysis to investigate the relationship between the outcome and exposure variables.
Results: A total of 510 participants (255 in each group) were included in the study. Delay was significantly decreased following the intervention (mean difference=23.678, P=0.008). The effect size of the intervention on patient delay, diagnosis delay, and total delays were 0.281, 0.211, and 0.213, respectively. The total delay was 4.578 per 1000 person-days. The delay in the intervention group was 4.185 per 1000 person-days and 5.031 per 1000 person-days in the control group. The median time to delay was 135 days (95% CI: 102, 223) and the total follow-up period was 55, 026 person-days of observation, with an average follow-up time of 107.894 days. The time to delay who had higher education was significantly decreased by 22.7% (δ=0.773; 95% CI: 0.617, 0.967) compared to the illiterates. Patients who travelled a far distance saw an increase of 1.026 units in delays as distance increased by one kilometer (δ =1.026; 95% CI: 1.007,1.046) compared to their counter parts. Participants with adequate knowledge significantly decreased the time to diagnosis delay by 30.4% compared to those with poor knowledge.
Conclusion: The involvement of traditional care providers in the TB control program has led to a significant decrease in patient and diagnosis delays. Higher education, distance, and knowledge about TB were found to be significantly associated with diagnosis delay. These findings underscore the importance of integrating traditional and modern healthcare systems to effectively combat TB.
Clinical trial registration
· ClinicalTrials.gov ID: NCT05236452.
· The date recruitment began: July 1, 2022.
· Registration date: July 22, 2022.
Comparative landscape genetics in two amphibians demonstrates the influence of habitat specialization in a mountain range in Northeastern Brazil
Authors: Lima Jose Henrique de Andrade , Katzenberger Marco , Gehara Marcelo , Simões Pedro Ivo 
Published: August 2024

Abstract

Context Within the same geographical area, geographical distance is the most important landscape feature limiting dispersal in some species, whereas for others environmental variation, such as climate and vegetation patterns, may curtail dispersal. Such landscape effects are usually determined by the ecological traits of the species. Although very intuitive, landscape hypotheses remain poorly investigated in tropical regions. Objectives We developed a comparative landscape genetic study evaluating the association and importance of geographic and environmental landscape features on the genetic differentiation in two ecologically differing anurans, the treefrog Dendropsophus oliveirai (a reproductive habitat specialist) and the chorus frog Physalaemus cuvieri (a reproductive habitat generalist), in highland forests inserted in a dry vegetation matrix in Northeastern Brazil. Methods We applied Mantel tests and Structural Equation Modeling to assess associations between geographic distance and environmental factors on mitochondrial genetic variation of the two study species. Results We found lower genetic differentiation in P. cuvieiri, mainly associated with geographic distance along a latitudinal gradient and weakly influenced by environmental variation among highland forests. Conversely, the higher genetic differentiation in D. oliveirai was associated with a combination of geographic distance along a longitudinal gradient, environmental variation, and past climatic variation. Conclusions Idiosyncrasies in the genetic structure and associations with landscape features in the two species may have resulted from different abilities to cross the dry lowland among the mesic highland forests. Our findings also suggest selective and neutral evolutionary mechanisms conducive to intraspecific genetic variation in the study area.
Training group for parents of patients with pediatric avoidant/restricted food intake disorder sensory-based avoidance: feasibility and acceptability
Authors: Carletti Leila , Porte Chloé , Helbert Sarah , Hooreman Marie , Charpentier Firiel , Delorme Richard , Elandaloussi Yannis , Stordeur Coline , Ayrolles Anaël 
Published: August 2024

Abstract

Background
We aimed to assess the feasibility, acceptability, treatment satisfaction and preliminary efficacy of a training group for parents of patients with avoidant/restrictive food intake disorder (ARFID). The objective of our group is to enable families to co-construct knowledge and strategies that will empower them to improve children's flexibility, dietary intake and eating in social situations.
Method
The parents of 18 children (aged 5–14 years) with ARFID with sensory-based avoidance participated in a 2-day session of the training group. Feasibility and acceptability were assessed by calculating enrollment, attendance and attrition. Therapeutic alliance and perception of care benefit were assessed by the Helping Alliance Questionnaire-11 (HAQ-11S) and the Consumer Satisfaction Questionnaire (CSQ-8), and efficacy was assessed by the Clinical Global Impression Severity (CGI-S) and Improvement (CGI-I) questionnaires administered pre- and posttreatment.
Results
Of the 26 eligible families, 18 (69%) participated in the training group. Of the 18 participating families, all except for 2 (11%) completed all sessions. Both parents were invited to participate, but we observed little involvement from fathers (83% mothers attending sessions alone). Parents rated the treatment as highly satisfactory, with significant increases from the pre- to posttreatment HAQ-11S and CSQ-8 questionnaires (p < .001). Significantly decreased CGI severity scores were observed (p < .003). Qualitative evaluation suggested improved symptom understanding, increased parental empowerment and decreased isolation.
Discussion
The findings of this study provide preliminary evidence that short parent-based group treatment for ARFID patients is associated with high levels of engagement and satisfaction, decreased isolation, enhanced parental competence and increased child flexibility. Many patients with ARFID are not able to access appropriate care, and enhancing parents’ functions in daily life may improve patients’ long-term trajectories.