Background: Obesity has been associated with human obstructive sleep apnoea and canine brachycephalic obstructive airway syndrome. To the authors’ knowledge the effect of body condition score (BCS) on structures of the oropharynx , nasopharynx and upper airway of the horse has not been investigated. Objectives: To investigate the effect of BCS on tongue area and height, soft palate angle and basihyoid depth in the horse. Study Design: Retrospective, analytical, cross-sectional. Methods: Computed tomographic (CT) images of the head of 44 horses were assessed. DICOM viewing software was used to measure head length, basihyoid-skin depth, soft palate angle (SPA), midline tongue area and dorsoventral height (DVH) of the tongue in two locations. BCS were assigned at the time of CT examinations. Results: Increased BCS led to an increased mean SPA (mean difference=2.56 ˚ ; P=0.019) and increased median basihyoid depth (mean difference=0.246cm; P=0.006). Following adjustments made for the effect of head length on tongue measures, significant correlation was identified between SPA and tongue area (Spearman’s r=0.544; P=0.007); SPA and DVH of the tongue at the level of the hard palate (Spearman’s r=0.562; P=0.004) and SPA and DVH of the tongue at the lingual process of the basihyoid bone (Spearman’s r=0.690; P<0.001). No significant correlation was identified between variables with sex or age of horses. Conclusions: Increased BCS increases SPA and basihyoid bone depth. Increases in tongue size measurements increase SPA. Results from this study warrant further investigation into the clinical significance of the effects of BCS on the upper airways of the horse.

The liver is one of the most important organs in the human body. It performs many important functions, including being responsible for the metabolism of most drugs, which is often associated with its drug-induced damage. Currently, there are no ideal pharmacological models that would allow the evaluation of the effect of newly tested drugs on the liver in preclinical studies. Moreover, the influence of hepatic metabolism on the effectiveness of the tested drugs is rarely evaluated. Therefore, in this work we present an advanced model of the liver, which reflects most of the morphologically and metabolically important features of the liver in vivo, namely: three-dimensionality, cellular composition, presence of extracellular matrix, distribution of individual cell types in the structure of the liver model, high urea and albumin synthesis efficiency, high cytochrome p450 activity. In addition, the work, based on the example of commonly used anticancer drugs, shows how important it is to take into account hepatic metabolism in the effective assessment of their impact on the target organ, in this case cancer.

Astragaloside IV (AS-IV) is the most active monomer in the traditional Chinese herbal medicine Radix Astragali, which has a wide range of antiviral, anti-inflammatory, and anti-fibrosis pharmacological effects, and shows protective effect in acute lung injury. This study utilized the immunofluorescence, flow cytometry, ELISA, RT-qPCR, Western blot and Hematoxylin and eosin(H&E) staining methods to investigate the mechanism of AS-IV in reducing viral pneumonia caused by influenza A virus (IAV) in A549 cells and BALB/c mice. The results showed that AS-IV suppressed ROS production in influenza virus-infected A549 cells in a dose-dependent manner, and subsequently inhibited the activation of NLRP3 inflammasome and Caspase-1, decreased IL-1β and IL-18 secretion. In BALB/c mice infected with Poly (I: C), oral administration of AS-IV can significantly reduce Poly (I: C)-induced acute pneumonia and lung pathological injury. Which provides a new therapeutic strategy for influenza virus infection.

Homoploid hybrid speciation is challenging to document because hybridization can lead to outcomes other than speciation. Thus, some authors have argued that establishment of homoploid hybrid speciation should include evidence that reproductive barriers isolating the hybrid neo-species from its parental species were derived from hybridization. While this criterion is difficult to satisfy, several recent papers have successfully employed a common pipeline to identify candidate genes underlying such barriers and (in one case) to validate their function. We describe this pipeline, its application to several plant and animal species, and what we have learned about homoploid hybrid speciation as a consequence. We argue that—-given the ubiquity of admixture and the polygenic basis of reproductive isolation—-homoploid hybrid speciation could be much more common and more protracted than suggested by earlier conceptual arguments and theoretical studies.

I felt like I was drunk and had a car accident, but I swar I did not consume alchool: A case reportMauer A.A. Gonçalves1,2; Maria Elena Lopez1; Cláudia Ignoto1;Humberto Morais2,3*1Luanda Medical Center. Luanda. Angola2Centro de Estudos Avançados em Educação e Formação Médica, Faculdade de Medicina da Universidade Agostinho Neto. Luanda. Angola3Hospital Militar Principal/Instituto Superior. Luanda. Angola*Correspondence:Corresponding author:*Humberto Morais – Hospital Militar Principal/Instituto Superior,Rua Pedro Miranda 40-42 Maianga Luanda Republic of AngolaEmail: [email protected] Tele móvel: +244923520937Acknowledgments: ”None”Funding: ”None”Conflict of interest: ”NoneWritten informed consent was obtained from the patients to publish this report following the journal’s patient consent policy

Using a common protocol across seven countries in the European Union/European Economic Area, we estimated XBB.1.5 monovalent vaccine effectiveness (VE) against COVID-19 hospitalisation and death in ≥65-year-olds, during October-November 2023. We linked electronic records to construct retrospective cohorts and used Cox models to estimate adjusted Hazard Ratios and derive VE. VE for COVID-10 hospitalisation and death was, respectively, 67% (95%CI: 60-72) and 68% (95%CI: 44-82) in 65–79-year-olds, and 64% (95%CI: 49-75) and 74% (95%CI: 56-85) in ≥80-year-olds. Results indicate that periodic vaccination of individuals ≥65 years has an ongoing benefit, and support the current vaccination strategies in the EU/EEA.

Alpha oscillations are associated with various cognitive functions. However, the determinants of alpha power variation remain ambiguous, primarily due to its inconsistent associations with autonomic responses and subjective states under different experimental conditions. To thoroughly examine the correlations between alpha power variation and these factors, we implemented a range of experimental conditions, encompassing attentional and emotional tasks, as well as a resting state. In addition to the electroencephalogram data, we gathered a suite of autonomic response measurements and subjective ratings. We employed multivariate linear regression analysis, utilizing autonomic responses and subjective reports as predictors of alpha power. We also subtracted the aperiodic components for better estimation of the power of periodic alpha oscillations. Our results demonstrated that the combined use of autonomic response measurements and subjective ratings effectively predicted the periodic alpha power variation across a range of conditions. These predictions were supported by leave-one-participant-out cross-validation, confirming that multivariate linear relationships can be generalized to new participants. This study demonstrates the links of alpha power variations with autonomic responses and subjective states, suggesting that during investigations of the cognitive functions of alpha oscillations, it is important to consider the potential influences of autonomic responses and subjective states on alpha oscillations.

A document by Chris Soulsby. Click on the document to view its contents.

Vascular diseases are a leading cause of death and disability worldwide. Despite having precursor conditions like peripheral arterial disease (PAD), they are often only diagnosed after the onset of strokes or heart attacks. Low-cost, portable, non-invasive, point-of-care (POC) assessment of deep vascular function benefits PAD diagnosis, especially in low-and-middle-income countries. Doppler ultrasound-based blood flow measurements can diagnose PAD, albeit, with limited sensitivity and specificity. To overcome this, here, we propose the first-of-its-kind photoacoustic-and-ultrasound (PAUS) imaging system that integrates a multiwavelength pulsed laser diode (PLD) with a compact ultrasound data acquisition system. The portable PLD-PAUS system was validated for deep tissue imaging using tissue phantoms, and for multispectral photoacoustic imaging using an atherosclerosis mimicking phantom. Further, we demonstrated high-contrast volumetric in-vivo photoacoustic imaging of rodent abdominal vasculature and quantified vessel reactivity due to hypercapnia stimulation. The multiparametric functional and molecular imaging capabilities of the PLD-PAUS system holds promise for POC applications.

This study is novel in that it quantitatively exams the impact of human brucellosis, an endemic zoonotic disease in Malta from 1919 until 1954, and the impact on reproductive loss through stillbirths. Based on regression analysis, brucellosis had a statistically significant effect (t = 2.8986, p = 0.0039) on stillbirth rate for males, but the effect of brucellosis on stillbirths is not statistically significant for females (p = 0.9103). This paper points to the importance of brucellosis, one of the most common zoonotic diseases, as having implications for health burden in women and fetuses in the contemporary context; this relationship has been largely ignored in the literature.

Ten novel isocoumarins, including four pairs of enantiomers, were isolated from Artemisia dubia var. subdigitata (Asteraceae). Com-pounds 1, 2 and 3a/3b possessed a unique 6/6/6-tricyclic system comprising an unusual 1-(2-methylcyclohexyl) propan-1-one moiety fused with isocoumarin core skeleton. Compounds 4a/4b were characterized as an unexpected 2,5-dimethylcyclohexan-1-one scaffold, and compounds 5a/5b and 6a/6b were rare 1,2-seco-isocoumarin. Their structures and absolute configurations were elucidated through spectroscopic data, X-ray crystallography, ECD and NMR calculations with DP4+ analyses. Plausible biosynthetic pathways were proposed from the naturally occurring isocoumarin. Network pharmacological analysis suggested that the targets of compound 1 were significantly enriched in the cell cycle and PI3K-Akt signaling pathway. The molecular docking revealed that compound 1 had high binding affinity with CDK2 (total score: 6.8717). Furthermore, compounds 1 and 2 exhibited inhibitory activity on three human hepa-toma cell lines, with inhibitory ratios of 85.1% and 84.5% (HepG2), 88.2% and 87.3% (Huh7), and 69.2% and 69.1% (SK-Hep-1) at 200 μM, respectively.

Experiments have shown that predation risk effects on prey fitness can be highly contingent on environmental conditions, suggesting a potential difficulty in generalizing risk effects on prey abundance in natural settings. We examine this problem with a novel approach. Rather than study the influence of a particular controlled factor, we examined the influence on risk effects of study conditions that would likely be deemed inconsequential, i.e., to factors incidental to a study. If such incidental factors influence can influence the magnitude and even direction of risk effects, this suggests risk effects on prey population density are profoundly influenced by context in natural communities. We compared results of multiple experiments conducted under similar conditions, objectives, measurables and implementation, and which captured much of the complexity of natural systems (e.g., they were performed with diverse prey assemblages (≥11 taxa) over multiple prey generations). There was consistently no risk effect of fish on some zooplankton prey abundance, but great variability effect on other prey including combinations of negative, absent or positive effects on the same prey’s abundance. We review mechanisms that could underlie these results. Our findings highlight the need to understand the mechanisms linking trait responses to fitness and, ultimately, to abundance of prey, to understand risk effects across studies and systems.

Rosa laevigata, being the only species in the Rosa genus within the Rosaceae family, possesses significant nutritional and medicinal value. Moreover, it exhibits a vast genetic diversity, particularly among wild populations. Such abundant genetic variability provides favorable conditions for the cultivation, development, and utilization of superior Rosa laevigata varieties in China. In this research, 265 records of geographic distribution and 47 environmental variables were collected. These data were then combined with the future climate predictions generated by the general circulation model (GFDL-ESM4) and three Shared Socio-economic Pathways (SSP1_RCP2.6, SSP3_RCP7.0, SSP5_RCP8.5) to forecast the current and future geographical distribution of Rosa laevigata. The results indicate a consistently high yield of Rosa laevigata in China, both presently and in the future. The optimal parameter combination, determined by using the corrected Akaike Information Criterion as the index, was selected as the feature class LQ with a regularized multiplier of 1.0. According to these findings, Rosa laevigata is currently distributed across the southern provinces of China, with Chongqing, Sichuan, Guizhou, and Guangxi being the most suitable regions. Furthermore, compared to the current climatic conditions, the growing area of Rosa laevigata is expected to expand in the future. This expansion primarily occurs in a north-western direction, resulting in an overall increase in the plant’s distribution area. Notably, Qinghai experienced a reduction in its low-impact zone area. Several variables such as annual potential evapotranspiration (annualPET), isothermality (Bio3), mean daily maximum air temperature of the warmest month (Bio5), precipitation seasonality (Bio15), and snow cover days (scd), among others, greatly influence the potential distribution of Rosa laevigata.

Phenotypic covariation among suites of traits may constrain or promote diversification both within and between species, yet few studies have empirically investigated this relationship. In this study we investigate whether phenotypic covariation of craniofacial traits is associated with diversification in an adaptive radiation of pupfishes found only on San Salvador Island, Bahamas (SSI). The full radiation of pupfishes includes generalist, durophagous, and lepidophagous pupfish species. We compare phenotypic variation and covariation (i.e., P matrix) between 1) allopatric populations of generalist pupfish from neighboring islands and estuaries in the Caribbean, 2) SSI pupfish populations not containing the full radiation of fishes, and 3) SSI pupfish populations containing the full radiation in sympatry. Additionally, we interrogate the patterns observed in the P-matrices of two independent F2 hybrid crosses derived from the two most morphologically distinct members of the radiation to make inferences about the underlying mechanisms contributing to the variation in craniofacial traits in SSI pupfishes. We found that the P matrix of SSI generalist populations not found in sympatry with specialists exhibited higher levels of mean trait correlation, constraints, and integration with simultaneously lower levels of flexibility compared to generalist populations on other Caribbean islands and sympatric populations of all three species found on SSI. We also document that while many craniofacial traits appear to be produced via additive genetic effects, variation in key traits such as head depth, maxilla length, and lower jaw length may be produced via non-additive genetic mechanisms. Ultimately, this study suggests that differences in phenotypic covariation significantly contribute to producing and maintaining organismal diversity.

AIM: Changes in bird clutch and egg sizes across geographical gradients are issues often debated among ecologists, where latitudinal cline is a central issue in several discussions. There is an understanding that these patterns are primarily driven by climatic characteristics, where latitude acts as a proxy. Many studies attempt to analyse local climatic factors causing variation in life history traits but face methodological limitations. Here, as few studies have been able to, we achieve a robust dataset that covers a large territorial extent to answer this main biogeographical question. LOCATION: American continent (New World). METHODS: We approached the geographically widespread Tyrannus genus (kingbirds) and collected breeding data from 35 scientific egg collections in South and Central America, USA, and Europe. After several data checking layers, including spatial, temporal and taxonomic checking, we analysed the relationship between kingbird’s clutch and egg sizes with different climatic scales. RESULTS: The analyses of 1358 clutches and 4750 eggs confirmed that kingbird’s clutch and egg sizes increase towards the poles. Both breeding traits vary according to main climates, regional sub-climates, and local temperature and precipitation conditions. Regions with more climatic variation had the largest clutches, but sites with colder winters did not have the largest clutches. Tyrannus egg size increased in environments with less extreme dry periods. The increase of egg size with latitude can be explained by the significant relationship between larger eggs with sites with lower temperatures. MAIN CONCLUSIONS: Our findings suggest a robust correlation of residual variation in breeding traits with climatic conditions at both regional and local levels. Highly locally adapted species using climatic parameters as cues should also respond to interannual weather variations. With current discussions about climate change’s effects on ecosystems, the insights provided in this work can assist in understanding how species will cope under future climate scenarios.

Investigations into sensory coding in the visual system have typically relied on the use of either simple, unnatural visual stimuli, or natural images. Simple stimuli, such as Gabor patches, have been effective when looking at single neurons in early visual areas such as V1, but seldom produce large responses from mid-level visual neurons or neural populations with diverse tuning. Many types of “naturalistic” image models have been developed recently which bridge the gap between overly-simple stimuli and experimentally infeasible natural images. These stimuli can vary along a large number of feature dimensions, introducing new challenges when trying to map those features to neural activity. This “curse of dimensionality” is exacerbated when neural responses are themselves high-dimensional, such as when recording neural populations with implanted multielectrode arrays. We propose a method that searches high-dimensional stimulus spaces for characterizing neural population manifolds in a closed-loop experimental design. Stimuli were generated using a deep neural network in each block by using neural responses to previous stimuli to make predictions about the relationship between the latent space of the image model and neural responses. We found that these latent variables from the deep generative image model explained stronger linear relationships with neural activity than various alternative forms of image compression. This result reinforces the potential for deep generative image models for efficient characterization of high-dimensional tuning manifolds for visual neural populations.

Good ’ s Syndrome Combined withCMVGastro enteritis: A Case Report and Literature ReviewXiaoran li, Yanbin Liu∗Authors Affiliation: Center of Infectious Diseases, West China Hospital of Sichuan University, 37# Guo Xue Xiang, Chengdu 610041,Sichuan , China∗Corresponding author:[email protected]

Solvation, the result of the complicated interplay between solvent-solute and solvent-internal interactions, is one of the most important chemical processes. Consequently, a complete theoretical understanding of solvation seems a heroic task. However, it is possible to elucidate fundamental solvation mechanisms by looking into simpler systems, such as ion solvation in atomic baths. In this work, we study ion solvation by calculating the ground state properties of a single ion in a neutral bath from the high-density regime to the low-density regime, finding common ground for these two, in principle, disparate regimes. Our results indicate that a single $^{174}$Yb$^+$ ion in a bath of $^{7}$Li atoms forms a coordination complex at high densities with a coordination number of 8, with strong electrostriction, characteristic of the snowball effect. On the contrary, treating the atomic bath as a dilute quantum gas at low densities, we find that the short range of the ion-atom interaction plays a significant role in the physics of many-body bound states and polarons. Furthermore, in this regime, we explore the role of a putative ion trap, which drastically affects the binding mechanism of the ion and atoms from a quantum gas. Therefore, our results give a novel insight into the universality of ion-neutral systems in the ultracold regime and the possibilities of observing exotic many-body effects.