The feeding behaviour and Plasmodium infection of Anopheles mosquitoes in southern Ethiopia in relation to use of insecticide-treated livestock for malaria control.

Anopheles arabiensis and An. quadriannulatus species B mosquitoes were collected at sites of human and livestock housing and analysed for blood feeding patterns and infection with malaria sporozoites. A low percentage of human blood meals at some sites suggested that zooprophylaxis could be effective in reducing challenge from Plasmodium falciparum

Gradient flux measurements of sea–air DMS transfer during the Surface Ocean Aerosol Production (SOAP) experiment

Direct measurements of marine dimethylsulfide (DMS) fluxes are sparse, particularly in the Southern Ocean. The Surface Ocean Aerosol Production (SOAP) voyage in February–March 2012 examined the distribution and flux of DMS in a biologically active frontal system in the southwest Pacific Ocean. Three distinct phytoplankton blooms were studied with oceanic DMS concentrations as high as 25 nmol L−1. Measurements of DMS fluxes were made using two independent methods: the eddy covariance (EC) technique using atmospheric pressure chemical ionization–mass spectrometry (API-CIMS) and the gradient flux (GF) technique from an autonomous catamaran platform. Catamaran flux measurements are relatively unaffected by airflow distortion and are made close to the water surface, where gas gradients are largest. Flux measurements were complemented by near-surface hydrographic measurements to elucidate physical factors influencing DMS emission. Individual DMS fluxes derived by EC showed significant scatter and, at times, consistent departures from the Coupled Ocean–Atmosphere Response Experiment gas transfer algorithm (COAREG). A direct comparison between the two flux methods was carried out to separate instrumental effects from environmental effects and showed good agreement with a regression slope of 0.96 (r2 = 0.89). A period of abnormal downward atmospheric heat flux enhanced near-surface ocean stratification and reduced turbulent exchange, during which GF and EC transfer velocities showed good agreement but modelled COAREG values were significantly higher. The transfer velocity derived from near-surface ocean turbulence measurements on a spar buoy compared well with the COAREG model in general but showed less variation. This first direct comparison between EC and GF fluxes of DMS provides confidence in compilation of flux estimates from both techniques, as well as in the stable periods when the observations are not well predicted by the COAREG model

Sleep Promotes Phonological Learning in Children Across Language and Autism Spectra

Purpose: Establishing stable and flexible phonological representations is a key component of language development and one which is thought to vary across children with neurodevelopmental disorders affecting language acquisition. Sleep is understood to support the learning and generalization of new phonological mappings in adults, but this remains to be examined in children. This study therefore explored the time course of phonological learning in childhood and how it varies by structural language and autism symptomatology. / Method: Seventy-seven 7- to 13-year-old children, 30 with high autism symptomatology, were included in the study; structural language ability varied across the sample. Children learned new phonological mappings based on synthesized speech tokens in the morning; performance was then charted via repetition (without feedback) over 24 hr and followed up 4 weeks later. On the night following learning, children's sleep was monitored with polysomnography. / Results: A period of sleep but not wake was associated with improvement on the phonological learning task in childhood. Sleep was associated with improved performance for both trained items and novel items. Structural language ability predicted overall task performance, though language ability did not predict degree of change from one session to the next. By contrast, autism symptomatology did not explain task performance. With respect to sleep architecture, rapid eye movement features were associated with greater phonological generalization. / Conclusions: Children's sleep was associated with improvement in performance on both trained and novel items. Phonological generalization was associated with brain activity during rapid eye movement sleep. This study furthers our understanding of individual differences in the acquisition of new phonological mappings and the role of sleep in this process over childhood. / Supplemental Material: https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.11126732

Methanethiol, dimethyl sulfide and acetone over biologically productive waters in the southwest Pacific Ocean

Atmospheric methanethiol (MeSHa), dimethyl sulfide (DMSa) and acetone (acetonea) were measured over biologically productive frontal waters in the remote southwest Pacific Ocean in summertime 2012 during the Surface Ocean Aerosol Production (SOAP) voyage. MeSHa mixing ratios varied from below the detection limit (<10ppt) up to 65ppt and were 3%–36% of parallel DMSa mixing ratios. MeSHa and DMSa were correlated over the voyage(R2=0.3,slope=0.07)with a stronger correlation over a coccolithophore-dominated phytoplankton bloom (R2= 0.5, slope 0.13). The diurnal cycle for MeSHa shows similar behaviour to DMSa with mixing ratios varying by a factor of ∼2 according to time of day with the minimum levels of both MeSHa and DMSa occurring at around 16:00LT (local time, all times in this paper are in local time). A positive flux of MeSH out of the ocean was calculated for three different nights and ranged from 3.5 to 5.8µmolm−2 d−1, corresponding to 14%–24% of the DMS flux (MeSH/(MeSH+DMS)). Spearman rank correlations with ocean biogeochemical parameters showed a moderate to-strong positive, highly significant relationship between both MeSHa and DMSa with seawater DMS (DMSsw) and a moderate correlation with total dimethylsulfoniopropionate (total DMSP). A positive correlation of acetonea with water temperature and negative correlation with nutrient concentrations are consistent with reports of acetone production in warmer subtropical waters. Positive correlations of acetonea with cryptophyte and eukaryotic phytoplankton numbers, and high-molecular-weight sugars and chromophoric dissolved organic matter (CDOM), suggest an organic source. This work points to a significant ocean source of MeSH, highlighting the need for further studies into the distribution and fate of MeSH, and it suggests links between atmospheric acetone levels and biogeochemistry over the midlatitude ocean. In addition, an intercalibration of DMSa at ambient levels using three independently calibrated instruments showed ∼15%–25% higher mixing ratios from an atmospheric pressure ionisation chemical ionisation mass spectrometer (mesoCIMS) compared to a gas chromatograph with a sulfurchemiluminescencedetector(GC-SCD)and proton transfer reaction mass spectrometer (PTR-MS). Some differences were attributed to the DMSa gradient above the sea surface and differing approaches of integrated versus discrete measurements. Remaining discrepancies were likely due to different calibrationscales,suggesting that further investigation of the stability and/or absolute calibration of DMSstandards used at sea is warranted

Sleep promotes phonological learning in children across language and autism spectra

\ua9 2019 The Authors.Purpose: Establishing stable and flexible phonological representations is a key component of language development and one which is thought to vary across children with neurodevelopmental disorders affecting language acquisition. Sleep is understood to support the learning and generalization of new phonological mappings in adults, but this remains to be examined in children. This study therefore explored the time course of phonological learning in childhood and how it varies by structural language and autism symptomatology. Method: Seventy-seven 7-to 13-year-old children, 30 with high autism symptomatology, were included in the study; structural language ability varied across the sample. Children learned new phonological mappings based on synthesized speech tokens in the morning; performance was then charted via repetition (without feedback) over 24 hr and followed up 4 weeks later. On the night following learning, children’s sleep was monitored with polysomnography. Results: A period of sleep but not wake was associated with improvement on the phonological learning task in childhood. Sleep was associated with improved performance for both trained items and novel items. Structural language ability predicted overall task performance, though language ability did not predict degree of change from one session to the next. By contrast, autism symptomatology did not explain task performance. With respect to sleep architecture, rapid eye movement features were associated with greater phonological generalization. Conclusions: Children’s sleep was associated with improvement in performance on both trained and novel items. Phonological generalization was associated with brain activity during rapid eye movement sleep. This study furthers our understanding of individual differences in the acquisition of new phonological mappings and the role of sleep in this process over childhood

Neural Responses to Novel and Existing Words in Children with Autism Spectrum and Developmental Language Disorder

\ua9 2021, the Authors.The formation of new phonological representations is key in establishing items in the mental lexicon. Phonological forms become stable with repetition, time and sleep. Atypicality in the establishment of new word forms is characteristic of children with developmental language disorder (DLD) and autism spectrum disorder (ASD), yet neural changes in response to novel word forms over time have not yet been directly compared in these groups. This study measured habituation of event-related-potentials (ERPs) to novel and known words within and between two sessions spaced 24 hours apart in typically developing (TD) children, and their peers with DLD or ASD. We hypothesised that modulation of the auditory N400 amplitude would mark real-time changes in lexical processing with habituation evident within and across sessions in the TD group, while the DLD group would show attenuated habituation within sessions, and the ASD group attenuated habituation between sessions. Twenty-one typically developing children, 19 children with ASD, and 16 children with DLD listened passively to known and novel words on two consecutive days, while ERPs were recorded using dry electrodes. Counter to our hypotheses, no habituation effect emerged within sessions. However, responses did habituate between sessions, with this effect being reduced in the DLD group, indicating less pre-activation of lexical representations in response to words encountered the previous day. No differences in change over time were observed between the TD and ASD groups. These data are in keeping with theories stressing the importance of sleep-related consolidation in word learning

Connecting to smart cities : analyzing energy times series to visualize monthly electricity peak load in residential buildings

Rapidly growing energy consumption rate is considered an alarming threat to economic stability and environmental sustainability. There is an urgent need of proposing novel solutions to mitigate the drastic impact of increased energy demand in urban cities to improve energy efficiency in smart buildings. It is commonly agreed that exploring, analyzing and visualizing energy consumption patterns in residential buildings can help to estimate their energy demands. Moreover, visualizing energy consumption patterns of residential buildings can also help to diagnose if there is any unpredictable increase in energy demand at a certain time period. However, visualizing and inferring energy consumption patterns from typical line graphs, bar charts, scatter plots is obsolete, less informative and do not provide deep and significant insight of the daily domestic demand of energy utilization. Moreover, these methods become less significant when high temporal resolution is required. In this research work, advanced data exploratory and data analytics techniques are applied on energy time series. Data exploration results are presented in the form of heatmap. Heatmap provides a significant insight of energy utilization behavior during different times of the day. Heatmap results are articulated from three analytical perspectives; descriptive analysis, diagnostic analysis and contextual analysis

Nutrition-genetics interaction in nutrient utilisation of canola and lupins by Australian sheep: Prediction of wool fibre diameter

High digestibility and nutrient retention of feed on offer are important indices of protein and energy available for wool fibre synthesis or muscle accretion in sheep. The Australian national flock is predominantly based on Merino crossbreds (Fogarty et al. 2005a) where the prime lamb industry exploits crossbreeding in which 40% of the annual slaughter of about 18 million lambs is first-cross progeny from terminal sire rams mated to Merino ewes (Fogarty et al., 2005b). Utilisation of predictive models based on digestibility of protein and energy in sheep would be useful in estimating valuable quality traits such as fibre diameter since wool is a bonus in the prime lamb production sector whose primary product is meat. Our objective in this study was to investigate the interactions between sire breed and supplement on digestibility and to ascertain its accuracy in predicting wool fibre diameter. Forty first-cross Merino weaner sheep sired by Texel, Coopworth, White Suffolk, East-Friesian and Dorset sires with initial BW range of 22.9 and 31.3 kg (average of 26.8 ± 3.2 kg) were randomly assigned to four treatment groups in a 5 × 2 × 2 x 2 factorial experimental design representing 5 sire breeds, 2 supplementary feeds (canola and lupins), 2 feeding levels (1 and 2% of bodyweight) and 2 sexes (ewes and wethers). The feeding trial lasted for six weeks with an initial 3-week adjustment period and the last 7 days for faecal collection. Factorial ANOVA with orthogonal contrasts in SAS was used for statistical analysis to test for the interactions between sire breed and supplement on digestibility and wool fibre diameter. We also utilised both linear and non-linear regressions in modelling the predictive accuracy of fibre diameter from digestibility coefficients. Our results demonstrated that sire breed x level of feeding interactions significantly influenced digestibility (P<0.01) whereby Coopworth-sired sheep supplemented at 1% of their body weight recorded the highest metabolisable energy (ME) and protein (N) digestibility of 54% and 67% compared to 42% and 62% respectively, in their counterparts fed at 2% of body weight. There was a highly significant (P<0.01) effect of type of supplement x level of feeding interaction on wool fibre diameter at the end of the trial because sheep fed canola supplements at 1% of body weight had finer wool (22.1 microns) than their 2%-fed counterparts (25.4 microns). Regression of wool fibre diameter on digestibility revealed very poor prediction accuracy (R2 = 0.0087-0.169). We concluded that sire breed variation in digestibility is unlikely to be a useful predictor of genetic merit for wool fibre diameter in first cross sheep under the same management

How do markets manage water resources? An experiment

We experimentally test how a private monopoly, a duopoly and a public utility allocate water of differing qualities to households and farmers. Most of our results are in line with the theoretical predictions. Overexploitation of the resources is observed independently of the market structure. Stock depletion for the public utility is the fastest, followed by the private duopoly and private monopoly. On the positive aspects of centralized public management, we find that the average quality to price ratio offered by the public monopoly is substantially higher than that offered by the private monopoly or duopoly