Effect of 2 sex-sorting time schedules on SIT facility management

Improvements are needed in mosquito mass-rearing to effectively implement the sterile insect technique (SIT). However, managing this technique is challenging and resource intensive. SIT relies on mass rearing, sterilization, and release of adult males to reduce field populations. Maintaining an acceptable level of female presence, who can transmit viruses through biting, is crucial. Females are also essential for facility sustainability. Sex sorting plays a vital role in the production process, and our current mechanical sorting approach aims to obtain a high number of adult males with minimal female contamination within 24 h of pupation. Utilizing protandry helps control female contamination. While the 24-h sorting period achieves desired contamination levels, it may not yield enough females to sustain breeding lines, leading to increased labor costs that impact project sustainability. By delaying the sorting procedure to 48 h, we obtained sufficient females to sustain breeding lines, achieving a balance between male production and female contamination using the automatic version of the Fay-Morlan device as the sorting tool

Safety of liver resection and effect on quality of life in patients with benign hepatic disease: Single center experience

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Although liver resection has long been established for selected patients with benign hepatic disease, the success of surgical treatment of these patients cannot be evaluated exclusively through postoperative morbidity and mortality. Therefore, the aim of the study was to prove the safety of liver resection in the treatment of benign liver tumors and to evaluate the effect of surgical treatment on the patients' qauality of life.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>A total of 146 patients who underwent liver resection because of benign liver tumors were included in this study. Postoperative outcome was assessed and patients evaluated their quality of life before surgery and at the present time using the European Organization for Research and Treatment of Cancer Quality of Life Questionnaire Core-30 (QLQ C-30).</p> <p>Results</p> <p>The rate of serious (> grade 2) complications was 4.1% with no postoperative death. The quality of life assessment revealed an overall improvement of general health status after resection (0.7 vs. 0.56, p < 0.001) and additionally a significant reduction of 6 out of 9 symptoms. Furthermore, compelling benefits in the patients' social and emotional coping could be detected after surgery.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>Liver resection for benign liver disease is a safe procedure and leads to a significant improvement of quality of life in selected patients.</p

Call Cultures in Orang-Utans?

BACKGROUND: Several studies suggested great ape cultures, arguing that human cumulative culture presumably evolved from such a foundation. These focused on conspicuous behaviours, and showed rich geographic variation, which could not be attributed to known ecological or genetic differences. Although geographic variation within call types (accents) has previously been reported for orang-utans and other primate species, we examine geographic variation in the presence/absence of discrete call types (dialects). Because orang-utans have been shown to have geographic variation that is not completely explicable by genetic or ecological factors we hypothesized that this will be similar in the call domain and predict that discrete call type variation between populations will be found. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: We examined long-term behavioural data from five orang-utan populations and collected fecal samples for genetic analyses. We show that there is geographic variation in the presence of discrete types of calls. In exactly the same behavioural context (nest building and infant retrieval), individuals in different wild populations customarily emit either qualitatively different calls or calls in some but not in others. By comparing patterns in call-type and genetic similarity, we suggest that the observed variation is not likely to be explained by genetic or ecological differences. CONCLUSION/SIGNIFICANCE: These results are consistent with the potential presence of 'call cultures' and suggest that wild orang-utans possess the ability to invent arbitrary calls, which spread through social learning. These findings differ substantially from those that have been reported for primates before. First, the results reported here are on dialect and not on accent. Second, this study presents cases of production learning whereas most primate studies on vocal learning were cases of contextual learning. We conclude with speculating on how these findings might assist in bridging the gap between vocal communication in non-human primates and human speech