The Role of Innate Immune Response and Microbiome in Resilience of Dairy Cattle to Disease: The Mastitis Model

Animal health is affected by many factors such as metabolic stress, the immune system, and epidemiological features that interconnect. The immune system has evolved along with the phylogenetic evolution as a highly refined sensing and response system, poised to react against diverse infectious and non-infectious stressors for better survival and adaptation. It is now known that high genetic merit for milk yield is correlated with a defective control of the inflammatory response, underlying the occurrence of several production diseases. This is evident in the mastitis model where high-yielding dairy cows show high disease prevalence of the mammary gland with reduced effectiveness of the innate immune system and poor control over the inflammatory response to microbial agents. There is growing evidence of epigenetic effects on innate immunity genes underlying the response to common microbial agents. The aforementioned agents, along with other non-infectious stressors, can give rise to abnormal activation of the innate immune system, underlying serious disease conditions, and affecting milk yield. Furthermore, the microbiome also plays a role in shaping immune functions and disease resistance as a whole. Accordingly, proper modulation of the microbiome can be pivotal to successful disease control strategies. These strategies can benefit from a fundamental re-appraisal of native cattle breeds as models of disease resistance based on successful coping of both infectious and non-infectious stressors

Feeding Pre-weaned Calves With Waste Milk Containing Antibiotic Residues Is Related to a Higher Incidence of Diarrhea and Alterations in the Fecal Microbiota

The cows receiving antibiotics for intra-mammary infection (IMI) produce milk that cannot be marketed. This is considered waste milk (WM), and a convenient option for farmers is using it as calf food. However, adding to the risk of selecting resistant bacteria, residual antibiotics might interfere with the gut microbiome development and influence gastrointestinal health. We assessed the longitudinal effect of unpasteurized WM containing residual cefalexin on calf intestinal health and fecal microbiota in an 8-week trial. After 3 days of colostrum, six calves received WM and six calves received bulk tank milk (BM) for 2 weeks. For the following 6 weeks, all 12 calves received milk substitute and starter feed. Every week for the first 2 weeks and every 2 weeks for the remaining 6 weeks, we subjected all calves to clinical examination and collected rectal swabs for investigating the fecal microbiota composition. Most WM calves had diarrhea episodes in the first 2 weeks of the trial (5/6 WM and 1/6 BM), and their body weight was significantly lower than that of BM calves. Based on 16S rRNA gene analysis, WM calves had a lower fecal microbiota alpha diversity than that in BM calves, with the lowest p-value at Wk4 (p < 0.02), 2 weeks after exposure to WM. The fecal microbiota beta diversity of the two calf groups was also significantly different at Wk4 (p < 0.05). Numerous significant differences were present in the fecal microbiota taxonomy of WM and BM calves in terms of relative normalized operational taxonomic unit (OTU) levels, affecting five phyla, seven classes, eight orders, 19 families, and 47 genera. At the end of the trial, when 6 weeks had passed since exposure to WM, the phyla Bacteroidetes, Firmicutes, and Saccharibacteria were lower, while Chlamydiae were higher in WM calves. Notably, WM calves showed a decrease in beneficial taxa such as Faecalibacterium, with a concomitant increase in potential pathogens such as Campylobacter, Pseudomonas, and Chlamydophila spp. In conclusion, feeding pre-weaned calves with unpasteurized WM containing antibiotics is related to a higher incidence of neonatal diarrhea and leads to significant changes in the fecal microbiota composition, further discouraging this practice in spite of its short-term economic advantages

Effects of blue, orange and white lights on growth, chlorophyll fluorescence, and phycocyanin production of Arthrospira platensis cultures

The aim of this study was to evaluate the effects of different light colors on growth, pigment composition, and photosynthetic performance of Arthrospira platensis. Results showed that under orange light the biomass productivity increased due to the capability of A. platensis to fully absorb this portion of the light spectrum. Under blue light, phycocyanin increased continuously up to 13.2% ± 1.96 of dry weight at day 5, while under orange and white lights the phycocyanin content resulted lower, 7.1 ± 0.39 and 6.7% ± 1.58 of dry weight, respectively. Chlorophyll fluorescence measurements showed the maximum electron transport rate (rETRmax) in cells grown under orange light. The results of this study indicated that the orange light increased both growth and phycocyanin productivities, while blue light increased mostly the phycocyanin content, while biomass productivity was much lower. Further increase of phycocyanin content was observed shifting the light illuminating the cultures from orange to blue, attaining a raise in phycocyanin content from 8.6% to 12.5% of dry weight within 48 h from the start of the illumination with blue light. Within the same period of time no growth was observed indicating that the synthesis of phycocyanin can be decoupled from growth. This study provides useful physiological information regarding the effects of different light spectra on growth, phycocyanin, and photosynthetic performance, as a prerequisite to optimize the production of high value pigments from cultures of A. platensis

Frozen and Invariant Quantum Discord under Local Dephasing Noise

In this chapter, we intend to explore and review some remarkable dynamical properties of quantum discord under various different open quantum system models. Specifically, our discussion will include several concepts connected to the phenomena of time invariant and frozen quantum discord. Furthermore, we will elaborate on the relation of these two phenomena to the non-Markovian features of the open system dynamics and to the usage of dynamical decoupling protocols.Comment: 29 pages, 8 figure

Achievement of Target Gain Larger than Unity in an Inertial Fusion Experiment

On December 5, 2022, an indirect drive fusion implosion on the National Ignition Facility (NIF) achieved a target gain Gtarget of 1.5. This is the first laboratory demonstration of exceeding scientific breakeven (or Gtarget\u3e1) where 2.05 MJ of 351 nm laser light produced 3.1 MJ of total fusion yield, a result which significantly exceeds the Lawson criterion for fusion ignition as reported in a previous NIF implosion [H. Abu-Shawareb et al. (Indirect Drive ICF Collaboration), Phys. Rev. Lett. 129, 075001 (2022)PRLTAO0031-900710.1103/PhysRevLett.129.075001]. This achievement is the culmination of more than five decades of research and gives proof that laboratory fusion, based on fundamental physics principles, is possible. This Letter reports on the target, laser, design, and experimental advancements that led to this result

Automated operative workflow analysis of endoscopic pituitary surgery using machine learning: development and preclinical evaluation (IDEAL stage 0)

OBJECTIVE: Surgical workflow analysis involves systematically breaking down operations into key phases and steps. Automatic analysis of this workflow has potential uses for surgical training, preoperative planning, and outcome prediction. Recent advances in machine learning (ML) and computer vision have allowed accurate automated workflow analysis of operative videos. In this Idea, Development, Exploration, Assessment, Long-term study (IDEAL) stage 0 study, the authors sought to use Touch Surgery for the development and validation of an ML-powered analysis of phases and steps in the endoscopic transsphenoidal approach (eTSA) for pituitary adenoma resection, a first for neurosurgery. METHODS: The surgical phases and steps of 50 anonymized eTSA operative videos were labeled by expert surgeons. Forty videos were used to train a combined convolutional and recurrent neural network model by Touch Surgery. Ten videos were used for model evaluation (accuracy, F1 score), comparing the phase and step recognition of surgeons to the automatic detection of the ML model. RESULTS: The longest phase was the sellar phase (median 28 minutes), followed by the nasal phase (median 22 minutes) and the closure phase (median 14 minutes). The longest steps were step 5 (tumor identification and excision, median 17 minutes); step 3 (posterior septectomy and removal of sphenoid septations, median 14 minutes); and step 4 (anterior sellar wall removal, median 10 minutes). There were substantial variations within the recorded procedures in terms of video appearances, step duration, and step order, with only 50% of videos containing all 7 steps performed sequentially in numerical order. Despite this, the model was able to output accurate recognition of surgical phases (91% accuracy, 90% F1 score) and steps (76% accuracy, 75% F1 score). CONCLUSIONS: In this IDEAL stage 0 study, ML techniques have been developed to automatically analyze operative videos of eTSA pituitary surgery. This technology has previously been shown to be acceptable to neurosurgical teams and patients. ML-based surgical workflow analysis has numerous potential uses-such as education (e.g., automatic indexing of contemporary operative videos for teaching), improved operative efficiency (e.g., orchestrating the entire surgical team to a common workflow), and improved patient outcomes (e.g., comparison of surgical techniques or early detection of adverse events). Future directions include the real-time integration of Touch Surgery into the live operative environment as an IDEAL stage 1 (first-in-human) study, and further development of underpinning ML models using larger data sets

Lawson Criterion for Ignition Exceeded in an Inertial Fusion Experiment

For more than half a century, researchers around the world have been engaged in attempts to achieve fusion ignition as a proof of principle of various fusion concepts. Following the Lawson criterion, an ignited plasma is one where the fusion heating power is high enough to overcome all the physical processes that cool the fusion plasma, creating a positive thermodynamic feedback loop with rapidly increasing temperature. In inertially confined fusion, ignition is a state where the fusion plasma can begin burn propagation into surrounding cold fuel, enabling the possibility of high energy gain. While scientific breakeven (i.e., unity target gain) has not yet been achieved (here target gain is 0.72, 1.37 MJ of fusion for 1.92 MJ of laser energy), this Letter reports the first controlled fusion experiment, using laser indirect drive, on the National Ignition Facility to produce capsule gain (here 5.8) and reach ignition by nine different formulations of the Lawson criterion

Overview on the phenomenon of two-qubit entanglement revivals in classical environments

The occurrence of revivals of quantum entanglement between separated open quantum systems has been shown not only for dissipative non-Markovian quantum environments but also for classical environments in absence of back-action. While the phenomenon is well understood in the first case, the possibility to retrieve entanglement when the composite quantum system is subject to local classical noise has generated a debate regarding its interpretation. This dynamical property of open quantum systems assumes an important role in quantum information theory from both fundamental and practical perspectives. Hybrid quantum-classical systems are in fact promising candidates to investigate the interplay among quantum and classical features and to look for possible control strategies of a quantum system by means of a classical device. Here we present an overview on this topic, reporting the most recent theoretical and experimental results about the revivals of entanglement between two qubits locally interacting with classical environments. We also review and discuss the interpretations provided so far to explain this phenomenon, suggesting that they can be cast under a unified viewpoint.Comment: 16 pages, 9 figures. Chapter written for the upcoming book "Lectures on general quantum correlations and their applications

Associations between daily sitting time and the combinations of lifestyle risk factors in men

Background: Understanding the reciprocal role that multiple problematic behaviours play in men's health is important for intervention delivery and for reducing the healthcare burden. Data regarding the concurrence of problematic health behaviours is currently limited but offers insights into risk profiles, and should now include total time spent sitting/day. Methods: Self-reported data on lifestyle health behaviours was collected from 232 men aged ≥18 years who engaged in a men's health promotion programme delivered by 16 English Premier League Clubs. Results: Men at risk due to high sitting display multiple concurrent lifestyle risk factors, 88.6% displayed at least two ancillary risk factors and were three times more likely to report ≥2 lifestyle risk factors (OR. =3.13, 95% confidence interval (CI). =1.52-6.42) than those with low sitting risk. Significant differences in the mean number of risk factors reported between those participants in the higher risk (2.43. ±. 0.90) and lower risk (2.13. ±. 0.96) sitting categories were also found (P=0.015). Conclusions: Hard-to-reach men displayed multiple problematic concurrent behaviours, strongly linked to total sitting time. © 2012 WPMH GmbH

Spontaneous and deliberate future thinking: A dual process account

© 2019 Springer Nature.This is the final published version of an article published in Psychological Research, licensed under a Creative Commons Attri-bution 4.0 International License. Available online at: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00426-019-01262-7.In this article, we address an apparent paradox in the literature on mental time travel and mind-wandering: How is it possible that future thinking is both constructive, yet often experienced as occurring spontaneously? We identify and describe two ‘routes’ whereby episodic future thoughts are brought to consciousness, with each of the ‘routes’ being associated with separable cognitive processes and functions. Voluntary future thinking relies on controlled, deliberate and slow cognitive processing. The other, termed involuntary or spontaneous future thinking, relies on automatic processes that allows ‘fully-fledged’ episodic future thoughts to freely come to mind, often triggered by internal or external cues. To unravel the paradox, we propose that the majority of spontaneous future thoughts are ‘pre-made’ (i.e., each spontaneous future thought is a re-iteration of a previously constructed future event), and therefore based on simple, well-understood, memory processes. We also propose that the pre-made hypothesis explains why spontaneous future thoughts occur rapidly, are similar to involuntary memories, and predominantly about upcoming tasks and goals. We also raise the possibility that spontaneous future thinking is the default mode of imagining the future. This dual process approach complements and extends standard theoretical approaches that emphasise constructive simulation, and outlines novel opportunities for researchers examining voluntary and spontaneous forms of future thinking.Peer reviewe