Electrolytic lesions within central complex neuropils of the cockroach brain affect negotiation of barriers

Animals must negotiate obstacles in their path in order to successfully function within natural environments. These actions require transitions from walking to other behaviors, many of which are more involved than simple reflexes. For these behaviors to be successful, insects must evaluate objects in their path and then use that information to change posture or re-direct leg movements. Some of this control may occur within a region of the brain known as the central complex (CC). We used discrete electrolytic lesions to examine the role of certain sub-regions of the CC in various obstacle negotiation behaviors. We found that cockroaches with lesions to the protocerebral bridge (PB) and ellipsoid body (EB) exhibit abnormalities in turning and dealing with shelf-like objects; whereas, individuals with lesions to the fan-shaped body (FB) and lateral accessory lobe (LAL), exhibit abnormalities of those behaviors as well as climbing over blocks and up walls to a horizontal plane. Abnormalities in block climbing include decreased success rate, changes in climbing strategy, and delayed response to the block. Increases in these abnormal behaviors were significant in individuals with lesions to the FB and LAL. Although turning abnormalities are present in individuals with lesions to the LAL, EB and the lateral region of the FB, there are some differences in how these deficits present. For instance, the turning deficits seen in individuals with lateral FB lesions only occurred when turning in the direction opposite to the side of the brain on which the lesion occurred. By contrast, individuals with lesions to the EB and LAL exhibited turning abnormalities in both directions. Lesions in the medial region of the FB did not result in directional turning deficits, but in abnormalities in block climbing

Antenna Showers with Hadronic Initial States

We present an antenna shower formalism including contributions from initial-state partons and corresponding backwards evolution. We give a set of phase-space maps and antenna functions for massless partons which define a complete shower formalism suitable for computing observables with hadronic initial states. We focus on the initial-state components: initial-initial and initial-final antenna configurations. The formalism includes comprehensive possibilities for uncertainty estimates. We report on some preliminary results obtained with an implementation in the Vincia antenna-shower framework.Comment: 9 pages, 5 figure

Analysis of the cause for Salmonella spread from bacteriological sampling of stall surroundings

The cause for Salmonella spread and reinfection was tried to be analysed and identified from bacteriological sampling of stall surroundings in 50 fattening farms and closed farms that had shown an increased prevalence of Salmonella detected by meat-juice-examination. In the bacteriological examination 388 samples of the stall surroundings were analysed. Only in 5 (3x rodent droppings, 1x stall dust and 1x animal feed) samples Salmonelfa Typhimurium was isolated. Generally, it was impossible to ascertain the reasons for Salmonella spread and reinfection in a farm with a positive meat-juice sample based on pathogen identification

Timelike Dipole-Antenna Showers with Massive Fermions

We present a complete formalism for final-state (timelike) dipole-antenna showers including fermion masses, but neglecting polarization and finite-width effects. We make several comparisons of tree-level expansions of this shower algorithm to fixed-order matrix elements for hadronic Z decays, up to and including Z to 6 partons, to which the algorithm can be consistently matched over all of phase space. We also compare to analytical resummations at the NLL level. The shower algorithm has been implemented in the publicly available VINCIA plugin to the PYTHIA 8 event generator, which enables us to compare to experimental data at the fully hadronized level. We also include comparisons to selected observables in b-tagged Z decays.Comment: 50 pages; v3: corrected typo in eq.(35

Computer-Assisted 3D Kinematic Analysis of All Leg Joints in Walking Insects

High-speed video can provide fine-scaled analysis of animal behavior. However, extracting behavioral data from video sequences is a time-consuming, tedious, subjective task. These issues are exacerbated where accurate behavioral descriptions require analysis of multiple points in three dimensions. We describe a new computer program written to assist a user in simultaneously extracting three-dimensional kinematics of multiple points on each of an insect's six legs. Digital video of a walking cockroach was collected in grayscale at 500 fps from two synchronized, calibrated cameras. We improved the legs' visibility by painting white dots on the joints, similar to techniques used for digitizing human motion. Compared to manual digitization of 26 points on the legs over a single, 8-second bout of walking (or 106,496 individual 3D points), our software achieved approximately 90% of the accuracy with 10% of the labor. Our experimental design reduced the complexity of the tracking problem by tethering the insect and allowing it to walk in place on a lightly oiled glass surface, but in principle, the algorithms implemented are extensible to free walking. Our software is free and open-source, written in the free language Python and including a graphical user interface for configuration and control. We encourage collaborative enhancements to make this tool both better and widely utilized

Antibodies to actin in autoimmune haemolytic anaemia

BACKGROUND: In autoimmune haemolytic anaemia (AIHA) autoreactive antibodies directed against red blood cells are upregulated leading to erythrocyte cell death. M. suis infections in pigs (IAP) induce AIHA of both the warm and the cold type. Aim of this study was to identify target autoantigens of warm autoreactive IgG antibodies. For this, sera from experimentally M. suis infected pigs were screened for autoreactivity. RESULTS: In sera of 95 % of all tested animals actin-reactive antibodies were found. The reactivity was shown to be species specific, i.e. reactivity with porcine actin was significantly higher than with rabbit-actin. Sera of animals previously immunised with the adhesion protein MSG1 of M. suis showed reactivity with actin prior to infection with M. suis indicating molecular mimicry to be involved in specific autoreactive mechanism. A potentially cross reactive epitope could be detected. CONCLUSIONS: This is the first report of autoreactive anti-actin antibodies involved in pathogenesis of autoimmune haemolytic anaemia

Effects of bovine colostrum on performance, survival, and immunoglobulin status of suckling piglets during the first days of life

Supplementation of bovine colostrum (BC) has shown to improve growth performance, intestinal development, and immune response in early-weaned pigs. Little is known about whether BC may have similar effects in neonatal piglets. In the present study, the effect of BC supplementation on mortality, growth performance, and blood parameters (plasma proteins and white blood count) of suckling piglets in the first 10 days of life was investigated under practical conditions with special emphasis on low birth weight piglets. In total, 258 newborn piglets from 30 multiparous sows in a commercial breeding unit were randomly assigned to two different treatment groups. Piglets received either 1 ml of BC orally on days 1-3 of life (group BC, n = 128) or 1 ml of saline (0.9%) (control (CON) group; n = 130). Body weight was measured on days 1, 4, and 10 of life. Blood was collected on days 1 and 4 from 60 piglets per group. No differences in mortality, body weight, and average daily weight gain were observed between treatment groups in days 1-10. However, compared to CON, particularly in low birth weight piglets the administration of BC supported (P < 0.01) their survival. Group BC exhibited lower plasma total protein (P = 0.03) and beta-globulin (P = 0.02) concentrations compared to group CON. In conclusion, BC improved low and normal birth weight piglets' survival during their first 10 days of life. Further research is needed to clarify whether the survival rate is related to earlier gut closure indicated by lower plasma protein levels, which might be beneficial due to a lower uptake of potential antigenic substances

Editorial: Neuromechanics in Movement and Disease With Physiological and Pathophysiological Implications: From Fundamental Experiments to Bio-Inspired Technologies.

SCOPUS: ed.jinfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishe

Effective exchange interaction for terahertz spin waves in iron layers

The exchange stiffness is a central material parameter of all ferromagnetic materials. Its value controls the Curie temperature as well as the dynamic properties of spin waves to a large extent. Using ultrashort spin current pulses we excite perpendicular standing spin waves (PSSW) in ultrathin epitaxial iron layers at frequencies of up to 2.4 THz. Our analysis shows that for the PSSWs the observed exchange stiffness of iron is about 20% smaller compared to the established iron bulk value. In addition, we find an interface-related reduction of the effective exchange stiffness for layers with the thickness below 10 nm. To understand and discuss the possible mechanisms of the exchange stiffness reduction we develop an analytical one-dimensional model. In doing so we find that the interface induced reduction of the exchange stiffness is mode dependent