Genomic adaptation of Mediterranean and Alpine local cattle breeds to the climate variables

Abstract. – Adaptive ability of livestock to climate variations is a factor of first importance in the context of global climate change. Domestic species such as cattle represent attractive biological models to characterize the genetic basis of short domestication history. Local cattle breeds are valuable genetic resources to decipher the molecular mechanisms of cattle adaptation to their specific environments. Using newly generated dense SNP genotyping data, we assessed the structuring of genetic diversity of 21 Mediterranean and 24 Alpine cattle breeds and performed genome‐wide association analyses with covariables discriminating the different Mediterranean and Alpine climate subtypes. This provided insights into both the demographic and adaptive histories. A detailed functional annotation of genes surrounding variants associated with climate variations highlighted several biological functions involved in Mediterranean and Alpine climate adaptation such as thermotolerance, UV protection, pathogen resistance or metabolism with strong candidate genes identified. Accordingly, our results suggest that main selective pressures affecting cattle in Mediterranean and Alpine area may have been related to variation in heat and UV exposure, in food resources availability and in exposure to pathogens. Taken together, our results highlight the genetic uniqueness of local Mediterranean and Alpine cattle breeds and strongly support conservation of these populations

Training to estimate blood glucose and to form associations with initial hunger

BACKGROUND: The will to eat is a decision associated with conditioned responses and with unconditioned body sensations that reflect changes in metabolic biomarkers. Here, we investigate whether this decision can be delayed until blood glucose is allowed to fall to low levels, when presumably feeding behavior is mostly unconditioned. Following such an eating pattern might avoid some of the metabolic risk factors that are associated with high glycemia. RESULTS: In this 7-week study, patients were trained to estimate their blood glucose at meal times by associating feelings of hunger with glycemic levels determined by standard blood glucose monitors and to eat only when glycemia was < 85 mg/dL. At the end of the 7-week training period, estimated and measured glycemic values were found to be linearly correlated in the trained group (r = 0.82; p = 0.0001) but not in the control (untrained) group (r = 0.10; p = 0.40). Fewer subjects in the trained group were hungry than those in the control group (p = 0.001). The 18 hungry subjects of the trained group had significantly lower glucose levels (80.1 ± 6.3 mg/dL) than the 42 hungry control subjects (89.2 ± 10.2 mg/dL; p = 0.01). Moreover, the trained hungry subjects estimated their glycemia (78.1 ± 6.7 mg/dL; estimation error: 3.2 ± 2.4% of the measured glycemia) more accurately than the control hungry subjects (75.9 ± 9.8 mg/dL; estimation error: 16.7 ± 11.0%; p = 0.0001). Also the estimation error of the entire trained group (4.7 ± 3.6%) was significantly lower than that of the control group (17.1 ± 11.5%; p = 0.0001). A value of glycemia at initial feelings of hunger was provisionally identified as 87 mg/dL. Below this level, estimation showed lower error in both trained (p = 0.04) and control subjects (p = 0.001). CONCLUSION: Subjects could be trained to accurately estimate their blood glucose and to recognize their sensations of initial hunger at low glucose concentrations. These results suggest that it is possible to make a behavioral distinction between unconditioned and conditioned hunger, and to achieve a cognitive will to eat by training

Evaluation of the trend of the inbreeding from 1970 to 2011 in the Bracco Italiano dog breed

The Bracco Italiano is one of the oldest pointing dog breed, used for hunting ever since the Renaissance time. In this study we analysed the pedigree information to evaluate the trend of the inbreeding of the breed in the course of time since 1970 to 2011. Pedigree records of 24,613 animals were considered. 16,832 dogs were inbreds. The average inbreeding coefficient in the reference population (23,997 animals) resulted 4.1%, while the average inbreeding of the inbreds was 6%. The inbreeding coefficient was &lt;0.05 in 9849 dogs (58.51%) whereas it was &gt;0.20 in 623 dogs (2.53%). The percentage of inbreds per year increased from 2.44% in 1976-1980 to 100% in 2003. 16 traced generations were highlighted. The evolution of inbreeding indicates a steady increase over time, from a mean value of 0.5% for dogs born in 1979, to an average value of 7.6% in dogs born in 2011. Nevertheless a regular monitoring of genetic variability of the population is important and must be adopted, in order to avoid the danger of an excessive increase of inbreeding in the future, which would result in significant inbreeding depression and in significant loss of genetic variation

Characterization of CMOS Spiral Inductors

In this work "full-wave" simulations of integrated inductors are presented and compared with measurements of fabricated CMOS chips. The good agreement between measurements and simulations demonstrates the accuracy of the tool, which is, hence, a cheaper alternative to experimental characterization. Furthermore, the proposed approach may give precious hints for performance improvements, by making internal device fields and currents available for the VLSI designer and providing compact, most effective, equivalent models

Il “virus logico-linguistico” nella Scuola e nell’Università: come sconfiggerlo.

L’articolo parte da una premessa: la gravissima carenza logico-linguistica (LL), di cui soffrono percentuali altissime di studenti della Secondaria Superiore italiana, ha ormai prodotto (soprattutto nell’apprendimento delle materie scientifiche) livelli di degrado paragonabili agli effetti di un virus estremamente veloce nel diffondersi e virulento al punto tale da fare apparire irreversibili i danni di tutto ciò che raggiunge ed inquina; in particolare, fuor di metafora: Scuola ed anche Università, quest’ultima assai poco salvaguardata delle attuali protezioni. Ciò premesso l’articolo propone una metodologia fortemente innovativa [denominata “Studio Guidato” (SG)] che dimostra la reversibilità dei danni suddetti, a patto che si rinunci alla mentalità del difendersi per acquisire quella di un attacco frontale al virus, con forza superiore alla sua virulenza. Lo SG ha armi assai valide per farlo (strumenti metodologici da lungo tempo approntate) che intende utilizzare secondo tre direttrici di attacco: due orientate a colpire due difetti della didattica tradizionale (molto diffusi, ma anche abbastanza nascosti, sicchè di essi poco o nulla si parla) , la terza direttrice volta a convincere la classe docente (da tempo delusa per tanti motivi, tra cui quello di venire coinvolta da sempre in un volontariato che sembra non avere fine) che questa volta vale la pena partecipare. L’attacco è stato studiato, in una ricerca durata oltre sei anni, proprio a causa di quest’ultima direttrice, a lungo contrastata dai docenti per l’eccessivo stress a loro richiesto da una valutazione continua invero molto faticosa. Cinque lunghi anni per trovare il rimedio, poi di improvviso l’idea buona è venuta, nascosta in un ambito dall’apparenza utopistica: da lì l’abbiamo estratta dimostrandone, al contrario, la concreta sua realtà. Si chiama auto-correzione del proprio compito da parte di ciascuno studente: una sorta di uovo di Colombo che ha tenuto in scacco per un paio di anni la ricerca stessa, che poi l’ha reso distante anni-luce dall’utopia. Oggi lo consideriamo carta vincente di un progetto sperimentale mono-annuale che terrà fede al titolo di questo articolo

Direct Solution of the Inverse Stochastic Problem through Elementary Markov State Disaggregation

Existing methods to find the eigenvalue spectrum (or a reasonable approximation to it) of square matrices can be extended to Stochastic Matrices (SM). The matter is more delicate for the Inverse Eigenvalue Problem (IEP), which consists in the reconstruction of a matrix from a given eigenvalue spectrum. In this work, we present a simple method to solve a real-valued IEP for SM by constructing step-by-step the solution matrix through an elementary Markov state disaggregation method named state splitting, and based on a matrix operator. After showing some results on how the splitting operator influences the steady-state distribution of the Markov chain associated with the SM, we demonstrate that the state splitting operator has a fundamental property: when applied to a SM A of size n-by-n, it yields a SM of size (n+1)-by-(n+1), whose eigenvalue spectrum is equal to that of A, plus an additional eigenvalue belonging to a bounded interval. We use a constructive method to prove that for any spectrum made of real and positive eigenvalues, one can build up an infinite number of SM sharing this spectrum. Finally, we present a new sufficient condition to test if a given set of real values can be the spectrum of a SM constructed by the proposed method