Comparison of the Meat Quality of Turopolje, German Landrace x Turopolje and German Landrace x Pietrain Pigs

Aim of the study was to evaluate, if the mixed breed German Landrace x Turopolje (L x T) was suitable for conventional fattening and the production of high quality palatable meat. Hence, we chose to study the carcass characteristics of three different breeds: true bred Turopolje (T x T) (n=15), an autochthonous Croatian breed, German Landrace x Pietrain (L x P) (n=19), a typical German pig hybrid and German Landrace x Turopolje (L x T) (n=23) as mixed breed. All three breeds were kept in a conventional fattening indoor system. The data consisted of the chemical and physical values of the carcass and the difference between breeds during breeding and fattening. All pigs were fattened with a conventional ad libidum feeding system. The feed consisted of an optimal mixture for the fattening of L x P. The daily feed intake and the weight from birth until the end of the fattening was recorded every 14 days. The quality of the carcass was evaluated at the age of 20 and 25 weeks. The measurement of the carcass was based on the “Richtlinie für die Stationsprüfung auf Mastleistung, Schlachtkörperwert und Fleischbeschaffenheit beim Schwein” published by the national German control office. L x T showed the lowest feed intake per kg carcass compared to the other breeds. The quality of meat was characterized by pH, conductance, intramuscular fat and water holding capacity. L x T showed a trend for a lower conductance in week 25. The value of pH and water holding capacity was not significant between the breeds. Surprisingly, the intramuscular fat of L x T was by trend higher compared to L x P and significantly lower than T x T (p < 0.05). L x T had by trend a higher carcass weight and a larger carcass length compared to L x P, which was significantly higher than T x T (p < 0.05). In conclusion, the new breed L x T seems to be suitable for an indoor fattening system and produces a high quality palatable meat. The energy and protein intake should be slightly reduced, which would reduce the cost of meat production

Association between plasma tau and postoperative delirium incidence and severity: a prospective observational study

BACKGROUND: Postoperative delirium is associated with increases in the neuronal injury biomarker, neurofilament light (NfL). Here we tested whether two other biomarkers, glial fibrillary acidic protein (GFAP) and tau, are associated with postoperative delirium. METHODS: A total of 114 surgical patients were recruited into two prospective biomarker cohort studies with assessment of delirium severity and incidence. Plasma samples were sent for biomarker analysis including tau, NfL, and GFAP, and a panel of 10 cytokines. We determined a priori to adjust for interleukin-8 (IL-8), a marker of inflammation, when assessing associations between biomarkers and delirium incidence and severity. RESULTS: GFAP concentrations showed no relationship to delirium. The change in tau from preoperative concentrations to postoperative Day 1 was greater in patients with postoperative delirium (P<0.001) and correlated with delirium severity (ρ=0.39, P<0.001). The change in tau correlated with increases in IL-8 (P<0.001) and IL-10 (P=0.0029). Linear regression showed that the relevant clinical predictors of tau changes were age (P=0.037), prior stroke/transient ischaemic attack (P=0.001), and surgical blood loss (P<0.001). After adjusting for age, sex, preoperative cognition, and change in IL-8, tau remained significantly associated with delirium severity (P=0.026). Using linear mixed effect models, only tau (not NfL or IL-8) predicted recovery from delirium (P<0.001). CONCLUSIONS: The change in plasma tau was associated with delirium incidence and severity, and resolved over time in parallel with delirium features. The impact of this putative perioperative neuronal injury biomarker on long-term cognition merits further investigation. CLINICAL TRIAL REGISTRATION: NCT02926417 and NCT03124303

Cohort study of electroencephalography markers of amyloid-tau-neurodegeneration pathology

Electroencephalography signatures of amyloid-β, tau and neurodegenerative pathologies would aid in screening for, tracking progression of, and critically, understanding the pathogenesis of dementia. We hypothesized that slowing of the alpha peak frequency, as a signature of hyperpolarization-activated cyclic nucleotide gated ‘pacemaker’ channel activity, would correlate with amyloid and tau pathology burden measured by amyloid (Pittsburgh Compound B) and tau (MK-6240) positron emission tomography or CSF biomarkers. We also hypothesized that EEG power would be associated with neurodegeneration (CSF neurofilament light and hippocampal volume). Wakeful high-density EEG data were collected from 53 subjects. Both amyloid-β and tau pathology were associated with slowing in the alpha peak frequency [Pittsburgh Compound B (+) vs. Pittsburgh Compound B (−) subjects, P = 0.039 and MK-6240 (+) vs. MK-6240 (−) subjects, P = 0.019]. Furthermore, slowing in the peak alpha frequency correlated with CSF Aβ42/40 ratio (r2 = 0.270; P = 0.003), phosphoTau (pTau181, r2 = 0.290; P = 0.001) and pTau181/Aβ42 (r2 = 0.343; P < 0.001). Alpha peak frequency was not associated with neurodegeneration. Higher CSF neurofilament light was associated with lower total EEG power (r2 = 0.136; P = 0.018), theta power (r2 = 0.148; P = 0.014) and beta power (r2 = 0.216; P = 0.002); the latter was also associated with normalized hippocampal volume (r2 = 0.196; P = 0.002). Amyloid-tau and neurodegenerative pathologies are associated with distinct electrophysiological signatures that may be useful as mechanistic tools and diagnostic/treatment effect biomarkers in clinical trials

Middleborns disadvantaged? testing birth-order effects on fitness in pre-industrial finns

Parental investment is a limited resource for which offspring compete in order to increase their own survival and reproductive success. However, parents might be selected to influence the outcome of sibling competition through differential investment. While evidence for this is widespread in egg-laying species, whether or not this may also be the case in viviparous species is more difficult to determine. We use pre-industrial Finns as our model system and an equal investment model as our null hypothesis, which predicts that (all else being equal) middleborns should be disadvantaged through competition. We found no overall evidence to suggest that middleborns in a family are disadvantaged in terms of their survival, age at first reproduction or lifetime reproductive success. However, when considering birth-order only among same-sexed siblings, first-, middle-and lastborn sons significantly differed in the number of offspring they were able to rear to adulthood, although there was no similar effect among females. Middleborn sons appeared to produce significantly less offspring than first-or lastborn sons, but they did not significantly differ from lastborn sons in the number of offspring reared to adulthood. Our results thus show that taking sex differences into account is important when modelling birth-order effects. We found clear evidence of firstborn sons being advantaged over other sons in the family, and over firstborn daughters. Therefore, our results suggest that parents invest differentially in their offspring in order to both preferentially favour particular offspring or reduce offspring inequalities arising from sibling competition

Interactive molecular dynamics in virtual reality from quantum chemistry to drug binding: An open-source multi-person framework

© 2019 Author(s). As molecular scientists have made progress in their ability to engineer nanoscale molecular structure, we face new challenges in our ability to engineer molecular dynamics (MD) and flexibility. Dynamics at the molecular scale differs from the familiar mechanics of everyday objects because it involves a complicated, highly correlated, and three-dimensional many-body dynamical choreography which is often nonintuitive even for highly trained researchers. We recently described how interactive molecular dynamics in virtual reality (iMD-VR) can help to meet this challenge, enabling researchers to manipulate real-time MD simulations of flexible structures in 3D. In this article, we outline various efforts to extend immersive technologies to the molecular sciences, and we introduce "Narupa," a flexible, open-source, multiperson iMD-VR software framework which enables groups of researchers to simultaneously cohabit real-time simulation environments to interactively visualize and manipulate the dynamics of molecular structures with atomic-level precision. We outline several application domains where iMD-VR is facilitating research, communication, and creative approaches within the molecular sciences, including training machines to learn potential energy functions, biomolecular conformational sampling, protein-ligand binding, reaction discovery using "on-the-fly" quantum chemistry, and transport dynamics in materials. We touch on iMD-VR's various cognitive and perceptual affordances and outline how these provide research insight for molecular systems. By synergistically combining human spatial reasoning and design insight with computational automation, technologies such as iMD-VR have the potential to improve our ability to understand, engineer, and communicate microscopic dynamical behavior, offering the potential to usher in a new paradigm for engineering molecules and nano-architectures