Nutritional management for reproductive efficiency

Nutrition influences reproductive efficiency and the survival of lambs and weaners but the costs of supplementary feeding or maintaining low stocking rates are not justified by the resulting income from higher lamb weaning rates and reduced weaner mortality. The current practice of segmenting the ewe flock using ultrasound scanning to determine the number of foetuses still results in groups of ewes with a wide range of condition scores and with widely differing nutritional requirements. This report describes an approach to precision management of pregnant ewes and weaners that is based on the e-sheep platform of technologies and uses computer-directed drafting for nutritional management of individual animals and walk-through weighing to monitor changing nutritional status. It is estimated that the cost of feeding a thousand-ewe flock can be reduced from $14,000 for feeding all animals to$3300 for targeted feeding of 25% of ewes requiring additional nutrition and 20% of weaners at risk of dying. The cost of the targeted feeding strategy is more than justified by the value of additional 12-month-old animals, which is $9000. The e-sheep precision nutrition system is not attractive to industry at this stage because of the cost of the e-sheep infrastructure, the perceived complexity of the technology and the requirement for further research, but it is expected to be a commercial option within three years

Biologically Informed Individual-Based Network Model for Rift Valley Fever in the US and Evaluation of Mitigation Strategies

Citation: Scoglio, C. M., Bosca, C., Riad, M. H., Sahneh, F. D., Britch, S. C., Cohnstaedt, L. W., & Linthicum, K. J. (2016). Biologically Informed Individual-Based Network Model for Rift Valley Fever in the US and Evaluation of Mitigation Strategies. Plos One, 11(9), 26. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0162759Rift Valley fever (RVF) is a zoonotic disease endemic in sub-Saharan Africa with periodic outbreaks in human and animal populations. Mosquitoes are the primary disease vectors; however, Rift Valley fever virus (RVFV) can also spread by direct contact with infected tissues. The transmission cycle is complex, involving humans, livestock, and multiple species of mosquitoes. The epidemiology of RVFV in endemic areas is strongly affected by climatic conditions and environmental variables. In this research, we adapt and use a network-based modeling framework to simulate the transmission of RVFV among hypothetical cattle operations in Kansas, US. Our model considers geo-located livestock populations at the individual level while incorporating the role of mosquito populations and the environment at a coarse resolution. Extensive simulations show the flexibility of our modeling framework when applied to specific scenarios to quantitatively evaluate the efficacy of mosquito control and livestock movement regulations in reducing the extent and intensity of RVF outbreaks in the United States

Exploiting lipid and polymer nanocarriers to improve the anticancer sonodynamic activity of chlorophyll

Sonodynamic therapy is an emerging approach that uses low-intensity ultrasound to activate a sonosensitizer agent triggering its cytotoxicity for selective cancer cell killing. Several molecules have been proposed as sonosensitizer agents, but most of these, as chlorophyll, are strongly hydrophobic with a low selectivity towards cancer tissues. Nanocarriers can help to deliver more efficiently the sonosensitizer agents in the target tumor site, increasing at the same time their sonodynamic effect, since nanosystems act as cavitation nuclei. Herein, we propose the incorporation of unmodified plant-extracted chlorophyll into nanocarriers with different composition and structure (i.e., liposomes, solid lipid nanoparticles and poly(lactic-co-glycolic acid) nanoparticles) to obtain aqueous formulations of this natural pigment. The nanocarriers have been deeply characterized and then incubated with human prostatic cancer cells (PC-3) and spheroids (DU-145) to assess the influence of the different formulations on the chlorophyll sonodynamic effect. The highest sonodynamic cytotoxicity was obtained with chlorophyll loaded into poly(lactic-co-glycolic acid) nanoparticles, showing promising results for future clinical investigations on sonodynamic therapy

SWCNT-porphyrin nano-hybrids selectively activated by ultrasound: an interesting model for sonodynamic applications

Sonodynamic therapy (SDT) is an innovative anticancer approach, based on the excitation of a given molecule (usually a porphyrin) by inertial acoustic cavitation that leads to cell deathviathe production of reactive oxygen species (ROS). This study aims to prepare and characterize nanosystems based on porphyrin grafted carbon nanotubes (SWCNTs), to understand some aspects of the mechanisms behind the SDT phenomenon. Three different porphyrins have been covalently linked to SWCNTs using either Diels-Alder or 1,3-dipolar cycloadditions. ROS production and cell viability have been evaluated upon ultrasound irradiation. Despite the low porphyrin content linked on the SWCNT, these systems have shown high ROS production and high tumour-cell-killing ability. The existence of a PET (photoinduced electron transfer)-like process would appear to be able to explain these observations. Moreover, the demonstrated ability to absorb light limits the impact of side effects due to light-excitation

Dose-dependent AGO1-mediated inhibition of the miRNA165/166 pathway modulates stem cell maintenance in Arabidopsis shoot apical meristem

Pluripotent stem cells localized in proliferating growth centers, the meristems, are the origin of life-long organ formation and growth in higher plants. In the shoot apical meristem of Arabidopsis thaliana, the closely related ARGONAUTE proteins AGO1 and ZLL/AGO10 bind miR165/166 species to regulate mRNAs of HD-ZIP III transcription factors that are essential to maintaining stem cells. Several genetic studies showed that AGO1 and ZLL/AGO10 act redundantly to maintain stem cells. By contrast, the reported biochemical data suggested antagonistic functions: AGO1 utilizes miR165/166 to slice HD-ZIP III mRNAs, whereas ZLL/AGO10 promotes degradation of miR165/166 and thus stabilizes HD-ZIP III mRNAs. How these different functions are balanced in stem cell regulation has remained enigmatic. Here, we show that autorepression of AGO1 through miR168-mediated slicing of its own RNA is required to maintain the ability of AGO1 to suppress HD-ZIP III mRNAs. Increased AGO1 expression, either in the miR168a-2 mutant or by transgenic expression, inhibits this ability despite the presence of high levels of miR165/166, effectively uncoupling HD-ZIP III and miR165/166 expression. AGO1 activity can be restored, however, by increasing the levels of chaperones SQN and HSP90, which promote assembly of RNA-induced silencing complex (RISC). This suggests that cellular abundance of SQN and HSP chaperones limits AGO1-mediated RNA interference in shoot meristem stem cell regulation. Localized misexpression of AGO1 indicates that the cells surrounding the shoot meristem primordium play a crucial role in stem cell development. Taken together, our study provides a framework that reconciles biochemical and genetic data, showing that restriction of AGO1 levels by miR168-mediated autorepression is key to RISC homeostasis and the function of AGO1 in stem cell regulation.Fei Du, Wen Gong, Sonia Bosca, Matthew Tucker, Herve, Vaucheret, and Thomas Lau

Chemiluminescence of the Reaction System Ce(IV) - Non-Steroidal Anti-Inflammatory Drugs Containing Europium(III) Ions and its Application to the Determination of Naproxen in Pharmaceutical Preparations and Urine

The chemiluminescence (CL) of oxidation of non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) by Ce(IV) ions, was recorded in the presence and absence europium(III) ions, in solution of pH ~ 4 of solution. Kinetic curves and CL emission spectra of the all studied systems were discussed. CL of measurable intensity was observed in the Ce(IV)–NP–Eu(III) reaction system only in acidic solutions. The CL spectrum rcegistered for this system shows emission bands, typical of Eu(III) ions, with maximum at λ ~ 600 nm. The chemiluminescent method, based on Eu(III) emission in reaction system of NP-Ce(IV)–Eu(III) in acid solution was therefore used for the determination of naproxen in mixture of non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs

Measurement of the cross-section and charge asymmetry of WW bosons produced in proton-proton collisions at s=8\sqrt{s}=8 TeV with the ATLAS detector

This paper presents measurements of the $W^+ \rightarrow \mu^+\nu$ and $W^- \rightarrow \mu^-\nu$ cross-sections and the associated charge asymmetry as a function of the absolute pseudorapidity of the decay muon. The data were collected in proton--proton collisions at a centre-of-mass energy of 8 TeV with the ATLAS experiment at the LHC and correspond to a total integrated luminosity of 20.2~\mbox{fb^{-1}}. The precision of the cross-section measurements varies between 0.8% to 1.5% as a function of the pseudorapidity, excluding the 1.9% uncertainty on the integrated luminosity. The charge asymmetry is measured with an uncertainty between 0.002 and 0.003. The results are compared with predictions based on next-to-next-to-leading-order calculations with various parton distribution functions and have the sensitivity to discriminate between them.Comment: 38 pages in total, author list starting page 22, 5 figures, 4 tables, submitted to EPJC. All figures including auxiliary figures are available at https://atlas.web.cern.ch/Atlas/GROUPS/PHYSICS/PAPERS/STDM-2017-13

Search for chargino-neutralino production with mass splittings near the electroweak scale in three-lepton final states in √s=13 TeV pp collisions with the ATLAS detector

A search for supersymmetry through the pair production of electroweakinos with mass splittings near the electroweak scale and decaying via on-shell W and Z bosons is presented for a three-lepton final state. The analyzed proton-proton collision data taken at a center-of-mass energy of √s=13  TeV were collected between 2015 and 2018 by the ATLAS experiment at the Large Hadron Collider, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 139  fb−1. A search, emulating the recursive jigsaw reconstruction technique with easily reproducible laboratory-frame variables, is performed. The two excesses observed in the 2015–2016 data recursive jigsaw analysis in the low-mass three-lepton phase space are reproduced. Results with the full data set are in agreement with the Standard Model expectations. They are interpreted to set exclusion limits at the 95% confidence level on simplified models of chargino-neutralino pair production for masses up to 345 GeV