CARACTERÍSTICAS DE CARCAÇA E QUALIDADE DA CARNE DE CORDEIROS ALIMENTADOS COM DIFERENTES TEORES DE TORTA DE SOJA EM SUBSTITUIÇÃO AO FARELO DE SOJA

Objetivou-se avaliar a substituição do farelo de soja pela torta de soja sobre as características de carcaça e qualidade da carne de cordeiros Santa Inês. Foram utilizados 29 machos inteiros, com 23,63 ± 2,44 kg de peso vivo, 80 dias de idade, distribuídos de maneira inteiramente casualizada, submetidos a cinco dietas, sendo que as dietas variaram nos teores de substituição do farelo de soja pela torta de soja de 0, 25, 50, 75 e 100%. Para cada teor de substituição foram utilizados seis animais, mas no teor de 25%, cinco animais. Foram realizadas avaliações das carcaças e retirou-se o Longissimus dorsi para análises da qualidade da carne. As características da carcaça não foram afetadas pelos diferentes teores de torta de soja. Observou-se efeito quadrático para a força de cisalhamento e efeito linear decrescente para a intensidade de odor, mas não foram observadas diferenças nos demais parâmetros. A substituição do farelo de soja pela torta de soja pode ser realizada sem prejuízo à maioria das características da carcaça e de carne e altos teores de torta de soja na dieta podem resultar em benefícios às qualidades sensoriais da carne de cordeiros recebendo dietas concentradas. Palavras-chave: análise sensorial; biodiesel; força de cisalhamento; morfometria; Santa Inês

Large expert-curated database for benchmarking document similarity detection in biomedical literature search

Document recommendation systems for locating relevant literature have mostly relied on methods developed a decade ago. This is largely due to the lack of a large offline gold-standard benchmark of relevant documents that cover a variety of research fields such that newly developed literature search techniques can be compared, improved and translated into practice. To overcome this bottleneck, we have established the RElevant LIterature SearcH consortium consisting of more than 1500 scientists from 84 countries, who have collectively annotated the relevance of over 180 000 PubMed-listed articles with regard to their respective seed (input) article/s. The majority of annotations were contributed by highly experienced, original authors of the seed articles. The collected data cover 76% of all unique PubMed Medical Subject Headings descriptors. No systematic biases were observed across different experience levels, research fields or time spent on annotations. More importantly, annotations of the same document pairs contributed by different scientists were highly concordant. We further show that the three representative baseline methods used to generate recommended articles for evaluation (Okapi Best Matching 25, Term Frequency-Inverse Document Frequency and PubMed Related Articles) had similar overall performances. Additionally, we found that these methods each tend to produce distinct collections of recommended articles, suggesting that a hybrid method may be required to completely capture all relevant articles. The established database server located at https://relishdb.ict.griffith.edu.au is freely available for the downloading of annotation data and the blind testing of new methods. We expect that this benchmark will be useful for stimulating the development of new powerful techniques for title and title/abstract-based search engines for relevant articles in biomedical research.Peer reviewe

CARCASS CHARACTERISTICS AND MEAT QUALITY OF LAMBS FED WITH DIFFERENT LEVELS OF SOYBEAN CAKE IN REPLACEMENT OF SOYBEAN MEAL

The objective of this study was to evaluate the replacement of soybean meal by soybean cake on carcass characteristics and meat quality of Santa Ines lambs. Twenty-nine intact males were used, weighing 23.63 ± 2.44 kg, at 80 days of age, distributed randomly, submitted to five diets, with the diets differing in the levels of substitution of soybean meal by soybean cake (0, 25, 50, 75 and 100%). Each diet was provided to six animals, except the 25% diet, in which five animals were used. Carcass characteristics were evaluated, and the Longissimus dorsi was removed for meat quality analysis. The different levels of soybean cake did not affect carcass characteristics. Regarding the characteristics of meat, there was a quadratic effect for the shear force and negative linear effect on flavor intensity, but no significant differences on the other parameters were observed. Replacement of soybean meal for soybean cake can be made without affecting most of the carcass and meat characteristics, and high levels of soybean cake in the diet can improve the meat sensorial quality of lambs receiving concentrated diets. Keywords: biodiesel; morphometry; Santa Ines; sensorial analysis; shear force

Gasdermin-D activation by SARS-CoV-2 triggers NET and mediate COVID-19 immunopathology

Abstract: Background: The release of neutrophil extracellular traps (NETs) is associated with inflammation, coagulopathy, and organ damage found in severe cases of COVID-19. However, the molecular mechanisms underlying the release of NETs in COVID-19 remain unclear. Objectives: We aim to investigate the role of the Gasdermin-D (GSDMD) pathway on NETs release and the development of organ damage during COVID-19. Methods: We performed a single-cell transcriptome analysis in public data of bronchoalveolar lavage. Then, we enrolled 63 hospitalized patients with moderate and severe COVID-19. We analyze in blood and lung tissue samples the expression of GSDMD, presence of NETs, and signaling pathways upstreaming. Furthermore, we analyzed the treatment with disulfiram in a mouse model of SARS-CoV-2 infection. Results: We found that the SARS-CoV-2 virus directly activates the pore-forming protein GSDMD that triggers NET production and organ damage in COVID-19. Single-cell transcriptome analysis revealed that the expression of GSDMD and inflammasome-related genes were increased in COVID-19 patients. High expression of active GSDMD associated with NETs structures was found in the lung tissue of COVID-19 patients. Furthermore, we showed that activation of GSDMD in neutrophils requires active caspase1/4 and live SARS-CoV-2, which infects neutrophils. In a mouse model of SARS-CoV-2 infection, the treatment with disulfiram inhibited NETs release and reduced organ damage. Conclusion: These results demonstrated that GSDMD-dependent NETosis plays a critical role in COVID-19 immunopathology and suggests GSDMD as a novel potential target for improving the COVID-19 therapeutic strategy

Neotropical freshwater fisheries : A dataset of occurrence and abundance of freshwater fishes in the Neotropics

The Neotropical region hosts 4225 freshwater fish species, ranking first among the world's most diverse regions for freshwater fishes. Our NEOTROPICAL FRESHWATER FISHES data set is the first to produce a large-scale Neotropical freshwater fish inventory, covering the entire Neotropical region from Mexico and the Caribbean in the north to the southern limits in Argentina, Paraguay, Chile, and Uruguay. We compiled 185,787 distribution records, with unique georeferenced coordinates, for the 4225 species, represented by occurrence and abundance data. The number of species for the most numerous orders are as follows: Characiformes (1289), Siluriformes (1384), Cichliformes (354), Cyprinodontiformes (245), and Gymnotiformes (135). The most recorded species was the characid Astyanax fasciatus (4696 records). We registered 116,802 distribution records for native species, compared to 1802 distribution records for nonnative species. The main aim of the NEOTROPICAL FRESHWATER FISHES data set was to make these occurrence and abundance data accessible for international researchers to develop ecological and macroecological studies, from local to regional scales, with focal fish species, families, or orders. We anticipate that the NEOTROPICAL FRESHWATER FISHES data set will be valuable for studies on a wide range of ecological processes, such as trophic cascades, fishery pressure, the effects of habitat loss and fragmentation, and the impacts of species invasion and climate change. There are no copyright restrictions on the data, and please cite this data paper when using the data in publications