Zoonotic potential of guinea pigs: Outbreak of cryptosporidiosis combined with chlamydiosis in a breeding guinea pig herd.

In a guinea pig herd with 26 breeding animals, several individuals of all age categories died (16/26) after three animals had been newly introduced from another herd. Furthermore, the population suffered of apathy, anorexia, severe weight loss and conjunctivitis, as well as abortions and stillbirths. At the same time, the owner experienced a SARS-CoV-2 infection with pneumonia, which was confirmed by taking a PCR test. Chlamydia caviae was detected from the conjunctiva and vagina/uterus in one juvenile animal together with an intestinal Cryptosporidium wrairi infection. Oocysts were found histologically in the small intestine, which was confirmed by PCR. C. wairi is a parasite adapted to guinea pigs with zoonotic potential, which causes diarrhoea with frequent deaths in larger guinea pig herds. C. caviae is also a zoonotic pathogen and often the cause of conjunctivitis, pneumonia and abortions in guinea pigs and can lead to upper respiratory tract disease, conjunctivitis but also severe pneumonia in humans. The increased death cases and the clinical signs could be traced back to an infection with Cryptosporidium wrairi, complicated by a co-infection of C. caviae. We suspect that the abortions were caused by C. caviae, but since the population was treated with various antibiotics effective against chlamydial infections, it was no longer possible to verify this by PCR testing. Unfortunately, more animals succumbed and finally only two animals of the originally 26 were left. With this case report, we would like to point out to veterinarians that guinea pigs can be an important source of zoonotic infections for various pathogens, especially since they are popular pets and often come into close contact with children where hygiene might not always be strictly followed

Genome-wide association study for 13 udder traits from linear type classification in cattle

Udder conformation traits are known to correlate with the incidence of clinical mastitis and the length of productive life. The results of a genome-wide association study based on imputed high-density genotypes of 1,637 -Brown Swiss sires and de-regressed breeding values for 13 udder traits are presented here. For seven traits significant signals could be observed in five regions on BTA3, BTA5, BTA6, BTA17, and BTA25. For fore udder length and teats diameter significant SNPs were found in a known region around 90 Mb on BTA6. For the trait rear udder height significant SNPs are positioned in the coding region of the SNX29gene. Several significant SNPs around 62 Mb on BTA17 are associated with the traits rear udder width, frontteat placement and rear teat placement. The function of potential candidate genes and the influence of substructure will be addressed as next steps

Promising practices for dealing with complexity in research for development

The need to deal with complexity is getting increasingly attention in research for development projects implemented through transboundary research partnerships between organisations from the Global North and the Global South. However, less is known about aspects beyond the systems under study that still affect complexity in the research project. We conducted an experience capitalization of five transboundary research partnerships undertaking research in 14 countries in the Global South. We found that the combination of multiple contexts, the cultural and disciplinary diversity of the transboundary research partnerships, and the set of rules and proceedings from the funding mechanism affect the levels of complexity. We further identified that a transdisciplinary approach and several related practices, like intercultural communication or integrative partnerships, are promising ways of dealing with complexity. Current structures in research for development need to improve in order to fully use the potential of transdisciplinarity for sustainability transformatio

Perceived state of self during motion can differentially modulate numerical magnitude allocation.

Although a direct relationship between numerical-allocation and spatial-attention has been proposed, recent research suggests these processes are not directly coupled. In keeping with this, spatial attention shifts induced either via visual or vestibular motion can modulate numerical allocation in some circumstances but not in others. In addition to shifting spatial attention, visual or vestibular motion-paradigms also (i) elicit compensatory eye-movements which themselves can influence numerical-processing and (ii) alter the perceptual-state of-"self", inducing changes in bodily self-consciousness impacting upon cognitive mechanisms. Thus, the precise mechanism by which motion modulates numerical-allocation remains unknown. We sought to investigate the influence that different perceptual experiences of motion have upon numerical magnitude allocation whilst controlling for both eye-movements and task-related effects. We first used optokinetic visual-motion stimulation (OKS) to elicit the perceptual experience of either "visual world" or "self"-motion during which eye movements were identical. In a second experiment we used a vestibular protocol examining the effects of perceived and subliminal angular rotations in darkness, which also provoked identical eye movements. We observed that during the perceptual experience of "visual-world" motion, rightward OKS biased judgments towards smaller numbers, whereas leftward OKS biased judgments towards larger numbers. During the perceptual experience of "self-motion", judgments were biased towards larger numbers irrespective of the OKS direction. Contrastingly, vestibular motion perception was found not to modulate numerical magnitude allocation, nor was there any differential modulation when comparing "perceived" versus "subliminal" rotations. We provide a novel demonstration that magnitude-allocation can be differentially modulated by the perceptual state of-self during visual-motion. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved

Combination Service for Time-variable Gravity Fields: operational GRACE-FO combination and validation of Chinese GRACE time-series

The Combination Service for Time-variable Gravity Fields (COST-G) of the International Association of Geodesy (IAG) provides combined monthly gravity fields of its associated and partner Analysis Centers (ACs). In November 2020, the combination of monthly GRACE-FO gravity fields started its operational mode, providing consolidated L2 (spherical harmonics) and L3 (gridded and post-processed) products with a latency of currently 3 months. We present an overview and quality assessment of the available products. COST-G aims at the extension of its service to include further GRACE and GRACE-FO analysis centers. In January 2020 a collaboration with representatives of five Chinese ACs was initiated, who provided GRACE time-series according to the COST-G requirements. We present the results of a test combination with the Chinese AC models, including comparison and quality assessment of all contributing time-series and validation of the combined gravity fields

Combination Service for Time-variable Gravity Fields (COST-G): operations and new developments

Since its start of operations in July 2019, IAGâ?Ts Combination Service for Time-variable Gravity fields (COST-G) is providing a complete time-series of combined monthly GRACE gravity fields and a regularly updated time-series of monthly gravity fields derived from kinematic Swarm orbits. Starting from October 2020, the COST-G product line is complemented by a time-series of operationally combined and monthly updated GRACE-FO gravity fields. All these combinations are performed by variance component estimation on the solution level. We report on new developments, i.e., a planned extension of COST-G to include Chinese analysis centers of GRACE and GRACE-FO data, a re-consideration of the combination strategy to better focus on the range of spherical harmonic coefficients most relevant for the users, and the potential application of COST-G products for orbit determination of altimeter satellites

The effect of EGM2008-based normal, normal-orthometric and Helmert orthometric height systems on the Australian levelling network

This paper investigates the normal-orthometric correction used in the definition of the Australian Height Datum, and also computes and evaluates normal and Helmert orthometric corrections for the Australian National Levelling Network (ANLN). Testing these corrections in Australia is important to establish which height system is most appropriate for any new Australian vertical datum. An approximate approach to assigning gravity values to ANLN benchmarks (BMs) is used, where the EGM2008-modelled gravity field is used to "re-construct" observed gravity at the BMs. Network loop closures (for first- and second-order levelling) indicate reduced misclosures for all height corrections considered, particularly in the mountainous regions of south eastern Australia. Differences between Helmert orthometric and normal-orthometric heights reach 44 cm in the Australian Alps, and differences between Helmert orthometric and normal heights are about 26 cm in the same region. Normal orthometric heights differ from normal heights by up to 18 cm in mountainous regions >2,000 m. This indicates that the quasigeoid is not compatible with normal-orthometric heights in Australia

The JWST-PRIMAL Legacy Survey. A JWST/NIRSpec reference sample for the physical properties and Lyman-α\alpha absorption and emission of ∼500\sim 500 galaxies at z=5.5−13.4z=5.5-13.4

One of the surprising early findings with JWST has been the discovery of a strong "roll-over" or a softening of the absorption edge of Ly$\alpha$ in a large number of galaxies at ($z\gtrsim 6$), in addition to systematic offsets from photometric redshift estimates and fundamental galaxy scaling relations. This has been interpreted as damped Ly$\alpha$ absorption (DLA) wings from high column densities of neutral atomic hydrogen (HI), signifying major gas accretion events in the formation of these galaxies. To explore this new phenomenon systematically, we assemble the JWST/NIRSpec PRImordial gas Mass AssembLy (PRIMAL) legacy survey of 494 galaxies at $z=5.5-13.4$. We characterize this benchmark sample in full and spectroscopically derive the galaxy redshifts, metallicities, star-formation rates, and ultraviolet slopes. We define a new diagnostic, the Ly$\alpha$ damping parameter $D_{\rm Ly\alpha}$ to measure and quantify the Ly$\alpha$ emission strength, HI fraction in the IGM, or local HI column density for each source. The JWST-PRIMAL survey is based on the spectroscopic DAWN JWST Archive (DJA-Spec). All the software, reduced spectra, and spectroscopically derived quantities and catalogs are made publicly available in dedicated repositories. The fraction of strong galaxy DLAs are found to be in the range $65-95\%$ at $z>5.5$. The fraction of strong Ly$\alpha$ emitters (LAEs) is found to increase with decreasing redshift, in qualitative agreement with previous observational results, and are predominantly associated with low-metallicity and UV faint galaxies. By contrast, strong DLAs are observed in galaxies with a variety of intrinsic physical properties. Our results indicate that strong DLAs likely reflect a particular early assembly phase of reionization-era galaxies, at which point they are largely dominated by pristine HI gas accretion. [abridged]Comment: 20 pages, 18 figures, 3 tables. Submitted to A&A. Comments welcome! All data and catalogs are available through the DAWN JWST Archive (DJA): https://dawn-cph.github.io/dja/ and https://github.com/keheintz/jwst-prima