A Tamed Euler Scheme for SDEs with Non-Locally Integrable Drift Coefficient

In this article we show that for SDEs with a drift coefficient that is non-locally integrable, one may define a tamed Euler scheme that converges in L p at rate 1/2 to the true solution. The taming is required in this case since one cannot expect the regular Euler scheme to have finite moments in L p. Our proof strategy involves controlling the inverse moments of the distance of scheme and the true solution to the singularity set. We additionally show that our setting applies to the case of two scalar valued particles with singular interaction kernel. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first work to prove strong convergence of an Euler-type scheme in the case of non-locally integrable drift.</p

Use of a spot-check protocol to measure ventricular response rate in dogs with atrial fibrillation: Ventricular rate spot-check protocol in dogs with atrial fibrillation

Introduction: Fast ventricular response rates (VRR) have negative prognostic value in atrial fibrillation (AF). Therapeutic recommendations for canine AF rely on measurements of VRR from ambulatory electrocardiograms (aECG). Materials methods: Data from aECG of dogs with AF were prospectively acquired alongside VRR measurements obtained at home using a smartphone-based ECG device between 7:00 and 23:00. From these data, three protocols were outlined: (A) five predetermined spot-checks, (B) three six-hourly spot-checks, and (C) three eight-hourly spot-checks. The performance of the protocols was compared with aECG using mesor, mean and median VRR. The presence of circadian variation was explored using cosinor analysis.Results: Eighteen aECG were analysed, and 14 were used to test the spot-check protocols. The protocols showed moderate to strong correlation with aECG, with protocol B performing best (mean, r=0.84, P=&lt;0.0001, bias -22.96, limits of agreement (LOA) 24.4; median, r=0.90, P=&lt;0.0001, bias -24.48, LOA 22.04). Using a mean VRR &lt; 125 beats per minute (bpm) as cut-off, 10/14 dogs (71.4%) hadinadequate VRR control. All protocols correctly identified these dogs, with protocol A performing best for mean VRR &gt; 140 bpm. Circadian variation in VRR was identified in 17/18 dogs (94%).Limitations: Small population, high prevalence of inadequate VRR, non-standardised treatment, potential measurement artefact, lack of outcome data and precise temporal alignment with aECG recordings.Conclusions: Spot-check protocols offer a practical, affordable alternative to aECG for VRR assessment in dogs with AF. We have established that mean VRR &gt; 140 bpm in the protocol predicts inadequate rate control on aECG

Human DNA recovery in the context of wildlife crime: Comparison of trace DNA collection methods from wildlife specimens

Forensic DNA analysis, used for the purposes of species, sex, individual, and, geographic determination of wildlife is one of the most applied forensic techniques in, wildlife crime investigations. However, in most other criminal investigations forensic, DNA analysis refers to human DNA profiling for the purposes of identifying victims, and/or perpetrators. The ability to recover human DNA profiles from the surfaces of, wildlife specimens, such as ivory or fur, opens up opportunities for identification of, individuals involved in wildlife crimes in the absence of other evidence types. This, study aimed to compare the effectiveness of four different human touch DNA recovery, methods, cotton swabs, flocked swabs, foam swabs, and minitapes, from the surfaces, of a range of wildlife derivatives. Groups of four participants handled ivory, elephant, skin, snake skin, conch shell, antler, and antelope fur. DNA was subsequently, collected extracted, quantified, and profiled. Foam swabs, a non-traditional method of, touch DNA recovery, recovered the highest average DNA concentrations and number, of alleles across all specimen types acting as an effective cross-substrate recovery, method. Flocked swabs performed as the second-best recovery method for all, specimens except when sampling from antelope fur. Minitapes and cotton swabs, showed comparatively poor performance during this study despite being the two most,common DNA recovery techniques currently employed by law enforcement. Ivory, yielded the highest average human DNA concentrations but paradoxically produced a, significantly lower number of donor alleles. Our results indicate fresh touch DNA, deposits are recoverable from multiple wildlife specimens and recommend that, attempted recovery of touch DNA should be a routine consideration by forensic, practitioners during wildlife crime investigations.</p

Flexural behaviour of steel beams with double corrugated webs: Experimental and analytical investigations

Corrugated web steel beams (CWSBs) have been widely used in engineering structures due to the benefits of light weight and superior bearing capacity. Normally, traditional CWSBs where prefabricated floor slabs are installed on the top flange of the steel beams, resulting in the reduction of ceiling height, and increasing waste of available space and material. In view of this, an innovative steel beam with double corrugated webs (SBDCW) which can be applied in ordinary frame and heavy-duty frame structures, was developed to solve the above typical limitations for conventional CWSB structures. To investigate the effect of thin-walled corrugated steel webs (TCSWs) on the flexural of SBDCWs, flexural tests of seven specimens while varying the critical parameters were conducted to reveal the failure modes of SBDCWs and collaborative work mechanism between TCSWs and flanges. The test results showed that there was a shear lag effect in steel flanges, and the accordion effect of TCSWs was observed based on the strain analysis of web. Subsequently, a finite element model was developed and a parameter study was also conducted to further evaluate the influences of web thickness, web angle and beam height on the flexural behavior of SBDCWs. Furthermore, an analytical method for predicting the ultimate flexural capacity of SBDCWs was proposed fully taking into account the shear lag effect of flanges, contribution and accordion effect of TCSWs. The calculated results were in good agreement with the test and FEA values, indicating that the proposed methods can accurately predict ultimate flexural capacity of SBDCWs. In summary, this research can provide references and foundations for the design, investigation and application of thin-walled CWSBs in ordinary and heavy-duty frame structures

Spatial and social cognition jointly determine multimodal demonstrative reference:Experimental evidence from Turkish and Spanish

All languages in the world have demonstrative terms such as ‘this’ and ‘that’ in English, which have traditionally been treated as spatial words. Here we aim to provide experimental evidence that demonstrative choice is jointly determined by spatial considerations (e.g., whether the referent is near or far) and socio-cognitive factors (e.g., the listener's attention focus). We also test whether demonstrative choice varies depending on the speaker's use of pointing, to provide evidence for a multimodal account of demonstrative systems. We focus on the Turkish system and compare it with the Spanish one to better understand the cross-linguistic variability of 3-term demonstrative systems. Corpus studies have suggested that the Turkish proximal ‘bu’ and distal ‘o’ mark a spatial contrast between near and far space, whereas the medial ‘şu’ is used to direct the listener's attention to a new referent. Supporting this analysis, an online experiment using a picture-based demonstrative-choice task revealed that the medial form ‘şu’ was preferred when the listener was looking at the wrong object. The results of a second experiment using video stimuli further showed that the medial ‘şu’ was preferred when the speaker pointed to the referent to direct the listener's attention, whereas the proximal demonstrative was used in near space and the distal in far space, mostly in joint attention and without pointing. The results of a third experiment in Spanish showed radically different patterns of demonstrative-pointing use. The medial ‘ese’ was preferred in joint attention, whereas the proximal ‘este’ and distal ‘aquel’ were selected to direct the listener's attention towards the intended referent but without an effect of pointing. Our results confirm that demonstrative choice within a given system is determined by both spatial and socio-cognitive factors, interacting with pointing patterns and varying across languages. Leveraging recent experimental work in several languages, we interpret these findings as further evidence for the weighted parameters framework (e.g., referent position and listener attention), which explains demonstrative choice beyond previous categorical analyses

Human DNA recovery in the context of wildlife crime: Comparison of trace DNA collection methods from wildlife specimens

Forensic DNA analysis, used for the purposes of species, sex, individual, and, geographic determination of wildlife is one of the most applied forensic techniques in, wildlife crime investigations. However, in most other criminal investigations forensic, DNA analysis refers to human DNA profiling for the purposes of identifying victims, and/or perpetrators. The ability to recover human DNA profiles from the surfaces of, wildlife specimens, such as ivory or fur, opens up opportunities for identification of, individuals involved in wildlife crimes in the absence of other evidence types. This, study aimed to compare the effectiveness of four different human touch DNA recovery, methods, cotton swabs, flocked swabs, foam swabs, and minitapes, from the surfaces, of a range of wildlife derivatives. Groups of four participants handled ivory, elephant, skin, snake skin, conch shell, antler, and antelope fur. DNA was subsequently, collected extracted, quantified, and profiled. Foam swabs, a non-traditional method of, touch DNA recovery, recovered the highest average DNA concentrations and number, of alleles across all specimen types acting as an effective cross-substrate recovery, method. Flocked swabs performed as the second-best recovery method for all, specimens except when sampling from antelope fur. Minitapes and cotton swabs, showed comparatively poor performance during this study despite being the two most,common DNA recovery techniques currently employed by law enforcement. Ivory, yielded the highest average human DNA concentrations but paradoxically produced a, significantly lower number of donor alleles. Our results indicate fresh touch DNA, deposits are recoverable from multiple wildlife specimens and recommend that, attempted recovery of touch DNA should be a routine consideration by forensic, practitioners during wildlife crime investigations.</p

On the Periodic Service Scheduling Problem with Non-Uniform Demands

This paper introduces the Periodic Service Scheduling Problem with Non-uniform Demands, in which the best service policy for a set of customers with periodically recurring demand through a given finite planning horizon has to be determined. Service to customers is provided at every time period by a set of potential service providers, each of them with an activation cost and a capacity. The decisions to be made include the servers to be activated at each time period together with a service schedule and server allocation for every customer that respect the periodicity of customer demand and the capacity of the activated servers, which minimize the total cost of the activated servers. We give a first Integer Linear Programming formulation with one set of decision variables associated with each of the decisions of the problem. Afterwards, we develop a logic-based Benders reformulation where one set of variables is projected out and constraints that guarantee the feasibility of the solutions are introduced. The separation problem for the new set of constraints is studied, and an exact Branch &amp; Logic-Benders-Cut algorithm for the reformulation is proposed together with several variations and enhancements. The particular cases in which all servers are identical and in which all parameters are time-invariant are also studied. Extensive computational experiments assess the superiority of the logic-based Benders reformulation over the first formulation

Validating the children's eating behaviour questionnaire in a UK sample:A suitable tool for mothers and fathers

Children's eating behaviour is a complex construct linked to various health, social, and psychological outcomes. The Children's Eating Behaviour Questionnaire (CEBQ)assesses parents' perceptions of children's eating behaviours across eight subscales: food fussiness, enjoyment of food, food responsiveness, satiety responsiveness, desire to drink, slowness in eating, and emotional under- and overeating. Given that the initial validation of the CEBQ dates back to the early 2000s, this study aimed to (1) evaluate the psychometric properties of the CEBQ in a UK sample using current psychometric recommendations and (2) examine its measurement invariance based on parental sex. A total of 994 caregivers (196 fathers and 798 mothers) of children aged 3–5 years completed the questionnaire. The performance of the scale revealed that 23 items exhibited ceiling or floor effects or failed to meet recommended item-total correlation coefficients. Exploratory factor analysis supported an eight-factor, 34-item structure, which was confirmed via confirmatory factor analysis: X2 = 2129.845 (df = 499; p &amp;lt; 0.001), TLI = 0.911, CFI = 0.921, RMSEA = 0.083 (90 % CI 0.079–0.087) and SRMR = 0.080. All factors demonstrated adequate internal consistency (omega 3 values over 0.7). Measurement invariance testing confirmed strict invariance by parental sex, indicating the instrument performs equivalently for mothers and fathers. These findings support the use of the revised 34-item CEBQ with its eight original factors for both maternal and paternal respondents. However, future research should consider revising certain CEBQ items included to strengthen its capacity to capture variations in children's eating behaviour, and to provide a more accurate evaluation of the construct.</p

Temporal changes to intestinal microbiome induced by stroke

These data contain 16s rRNS sequencing data from faecal material taken from naive animals and animals recovered 5 days, 2 weeks and 3 months after sham or stroke surgery. There are two independent experiments included with the acronyms SCM and RSM. Abstract Stroke survivors experience a plethora of complications during recovery, including gastrointestinal symptoms. Intestinal dysfunction is reported to occur rapidly following stroke in both humans and animal models and alterations such as reduced barrier integrity, lymphocyte loss, and an altered microbiota have been suggested to contribute to poor neurological outcomes. Despite the persistence of gastrointestinal symptoms in many stroke survivors, how the intestinal environment changes over the course of stroke recovery remains poorly understood. Here, we use an experimental model of ischemic stroke to profile the gastrointestinal tract over a three month period of recovery.We have shown that experimental stroke leads to structural alterations to the colon, impaired transit times and an altered bacterial community composition. No impairments to barrier function were detected at any time point and transit times recover within 2 weeks post stroke. In contrast, structural and bacterial community alterations remain up to 3 months post stroke and are accompanied by abnormalities that develop only during chronic recovery, such as altered antibody coating of bacteria. These results suggest that the gastrointestinal system is dynamically altered over the course of experimental stroke recovery and that certain defects persist chronically after stroke

Geographic origin and post-invasion genetic divergence of Mytilus galloprovincialis in China

Biological invasions serve as natural experiments to investigate how species adapt to novel environments. The Mediterranean mussel (Mytilus galloprovincialis), a highly successful marine invader and strong biofouler, has formed dominant populations along the coast of China. However, its genetic origin, population structure, and the consequences for the genetic diversity of invasive and native populations remain unclear. To address this, we employed a 60 K SNP array to genotype 320 individuals sampled from seven geographic populations, along with 112 reference samples. The results indicate a clear genetic affinity between Chinese and Mediterranean populations (FST &lt; 0.05), while moderate differentiation was observed from Atlantic populations (FST &gt; 0.05), supporting a Mediterranean origin. Genetic differentiation was observed in Dalian, whereas Lianyungang served as a key gene flow sink from both Mediterranean origins and nearby invasive populations. Moreover, using just 20 SNPs with a Support Vector Machine (SVM) model yielded 84 % classification accuracy, closely matching the full array's performance. Our findings provide novel insights into the invasion history and post-invasion genetic dynamics of M. galloprovincialis in East Asia and highlight the utility of SNP tools for species identification, population monitoring, and pollution-related biomonitoring in marine ecosystems.</p