Dose and time response of ruminally infused algae on rumen fermentation characteristics, biohydrogenation and Butyrivibrio group bacteria in goats

Background: Micro-algae could inhibit the complete rumen BH of dietary 18-carbon unsaturated fatty acid (UFAs). This study aimed to examine dose and time responses of algae supplementation on rumen fermentation, biohydrogenation and Butyrivibrio group bacteria in goats. Methods: Six goats were used in a repeated 3 x 3 Latin square design, and offered a fixed diet. Algae were infused through rumen cannule with 0 (Control), 6.1 (L-Alg), or 18.3 g (H-Alg) per day. Rumen contents were sampled on d 0, 3, 7, 14 and 20. Results: H-Alg reduced total volatile fatty acid concentration and acetate molar proportion (P 0.10), while H-Alg reduced the total bacteria abundance (P < 0.05). However, this was induced by a significant difference between control and H-Alg on d 14 (-4.43 %). Afterwards, both treatments did not differ as increased variation in the H-Alg repetitions, with in some cases a return of the bacterial abundance to the basal level (d 0). Conclusions: Changes in rumen fermentation and 18-carbon UFAs metabolism in response to algae were related to the supplementation level, but there was no evidence of shift in ruminal biohydrogenation pathways towards t10-18:1. L-Alg mainly induced a transient effect on rumen biohydrogenation of 18-carbon UFAs, while H-Alg showed an acute inhibition and these effects were not associated with the known hydrogenating bacteria

Effectiveness of quality physical education in improving students' manipulative skill competency

AbstractPurposeThis study aimed to examine the extent to which the quality physical education teaching (QPET) practices contributed to improving 4th- and 5th-grade students' manipulative skill competency.MethodsParticipants were 9 elementary physical education (PE) teachers and their 4th- and 5th-grade students (n = 2709–3420). The students' skill competency was assessed with 3 manipulative skills using PE metrics assessment rubrics. The PE teachers' levels of QPET were assessed by coding 63 videotaped lessons using the assessing quality teaching rubrics (AQTR), which consisted of 4 essential dimensions including task design, task presentation, class management, and instructional guidance. Codes were confirmed through inter-rater reliability (82.4%, 84.5%, and 94%). Data were analyzed through descriptive statistics, multiple R2 regression models, and independent sample t tests.ResultsThis study indicated that the 4 essential dimensions of QPET were all significant contributors to students' manipulative skill competency. These predictors were significantly higher for boys than for girls in soccer and striking skills, while they were significantly higher for girls than for boys in throwing skill competency. Of the 4 essential dimensions of QPET, task presentation played the most significant role in contributing to all 3 skill competencies for both boys and girls. Further, students who experienced high QPET were significantly more skillfully competent than those students who did not have this experience.ConclusionIt was concluded that the QPET practices played a significantly critical role in contributing to students' manipulative skill competency

Comparison of Faecal Microbial Community of Lantang, Bama, Erhualian, Meishan, Xiaomeishan, Duroc, Landrace, and Yorkshire Sows

The objective of this study was to investigate differences in the faecal microbial composition among Lantang, Bama, Erhualian, Meishan, Xiaomeishan, Duroc, Landrace, and Yorkshire sows and to explore the possible link of the pig breed with the gut microbial community. Among the sows, the Meishan, Landrace, Duroc, and Yorkshire sows were from the same breeding farm with the same feed. Fresh faeces were collected from three sows of each purebred breed for microbiota analysis and volatile fatty acid (VFA) determination. Denaturing gradient gel electrophoresis (DGGE) analysis revealed that samples from Bama, Erhualian, and Xiaomeishan sows, which from different farms, were generally grouped in one cluster, with similarity higher than 67.2%, and those from Duroc, Landrace, and Yorkshire sows were grouped in another cluster. Principal component analysis of the DGGE profile showed that samples from the foreign breeds and the samples from the Chinese indigenous breeds were scattered in two different groups, irrespective of the farm origin. Faecal VFA concentrations were significantly affected by the pig breed. The proportion of acetate was higher in the Bama sows than in the other breeds. The real-time PCR analysis showed that 16S rRNA gene copies of total bacteria, Firmicutes and Bacteroidetes were significantly higher in the Bama sows compared to Xiaomeishan and Duroc sows. Both Meishan and Erhualian sows had higher numbers of total bacteria, Firmicutes, Bacteroidetes and sulphate-reducing bacteria as compared to Duroc sows. The results suggest that the pig breed affects the composition of gut microbiota. The microbial composition is different with different breeds, especially between overseas breeds (lean type) and Chinese breeds (relatively obese type)

Receptor Kinases and Signal Pathway in the Arbuscular Mycorrhizal Symbiosis

Most terrestrial plants establish symbiotic interactions with arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF) to acquire phosphorus and nitrogen nutrients. The current understanding regarding how plants recognize symbiotic signals has now been updated. Plant Lysin-Motif receptor kinases, that is, rice OsCERK1 and OsMYR1 or orthologs from other plants, perceive Myc factor, a lipochitooligosaccharide from AMF, to initiate symbiotic signaling pathway. The Myc factor receptor model is quite similar to the known Nod factor receptors required for rhizobial symbiosis and chitin receptors for chitin-triggered immunity. Thus, the open question is how plants use similar receptor complexes to recognize structurally similar molecules to induce different signaling pathways. Upon recognition of Myc/Nod factors signaling, LysM receptors could activate the symbiosis receptor kinase (SymRK), which is an essential component of common symbiotic signaling pathway (CSSP) for both mycorrhizal symbiosis and rhizobial symbiosis. Downstream of SymRK, a clear module in the CSSP by CCaMK-CYCLOPS-DELLA was identified to promote both mycorrhizal symbiosis by activating the expression of RAM1, and rhizobial symbiosis by forming a complex with NSP1/NSP2 to regulate the expression of NIN. In this chapter, we discussed the roles of receptor kinases and CSSP in mycorrhizal symbiosis, as well as in rhizobial symbiosis

Metabolome-Microbiome Responses of Growing Pigs Induced by Time-Restricted Feeding

Time-restricted feeding (TRF) mode is a potential strategy in improving the health and production of farm animals. However, the effect of TRF on microbiota and their metabolism in the large intestine of the host remains unclear. Therefore, the present study aimed to investigate the responses of microbiome and metabolome induced by TRF based on a growing-pig model. Twelve crossbred growing barrows were randomly allotted into two groups with six replicates (1 pig/pen), namely, the free-access feeding group (FA) and TRF group. Pigs in the FA group were fed free access while the TRF group were fed free access within a regular time three times per day at 07:00–08:00, 12:00–13:00, and 18:00–19:00, respectively. Results showed that the concentrations of NH4-N, putrescine, cadaverine, spermidine, spermine, total biogenic amines, isobutyrate, butyrate, isovalerate, total SCFA, and lactate were increased while the pH value in the colonic digesta and the concentration of acetate was decreased in the TRF group. The Shannon index was significantly increased in the TRF group; however, no significant effects were found in the Fisher index, Simpson index, ACE index, Chao1 index, and observed species between the two groups. In the TRF group, the relative abundances of Prevotella 1 and Eubacterium ruminantium group were significantly increased while the relative abundances of Clostridium sensu sticto 1, Lactobacillus, and Eubacterium coprostanoligenes group were decreased compared with the FA group. PLS-DA analysis revealed an obvious and regular variation between the FA and TRF groups, further pathway enrichment analysis showed that these differential features were mainly enriched in pyrimidine metabolism, nicotinate and nicotinamide metabolism, glycerolipid metabolism, and fructose and mannose metabolism. In addition, Pearson's correlation analysis indicated that the changes in the microbial genera were correlated with the colonic metabolites. In conclusion, these results together indicated that although the overall microbial composition in the colon was not changed, TRF induced the gradient changes of the nutrients and metabolites which were correlated with certain microbial genera including Lactobacillus, Eubacterium_ruminantium group, Eubacterium coprostanoligenes group, Prevotella 1, and Clostridium sensu sticto 1. However, more studies are needed to understand the impacts of TRF on the health and metabolism of growing pigs

Minangkabau culture in the mirror of randai theatre plays

Předmětem disertační práce je kultura etnika Minangkabau, jehož domovskou oblastí je současná indonéská provincie Západní Sumatra, nicméně jeho diaspora pokrývá celé indonéské souostroví a zasahuje rovněž do sousední Malajsie, Singapuru a dalších částí světa. Minangská kultura je v disertaci nahlížena z perspektivy her minangského lidového divadla randai, které vzniklo jako součást mužské iniciace, aby se později stalo jedním z významných symbolických výrazových prostředků minangské identity. Disertační práce využívá ukázek z vybraných, autorkou v terénu v jejich autentickém kontextu zaznamenaných her randai, jako příkladů k výkladu klíčových kulturních konceptů, jež tvoří jádro kultury etnika Minangkabau, a zabývá se rovněž historicko-sociálními souvislostmi, které vedly k jejich formování do současné podoby. Předmětem výkladu jsou za prvé společenské postavení a klíčové společenské role žen v kontextu společenského systému založeného na principech matrilineárního příbuzenství ve srovnání s postavením a rolemi mužů, za druhé základní východiska minangské etnopsychologie, na nichž je založeno genderové rozlišení společenských rolí, jakož i odlišné postupy socializace, za třetí institucionalizovaná dočasná migrace jako součást mužské iniciace a konečně vztah adatu, (systému norem, hodnot a vzorů pro chování...The dissertation thesis is focused on the culture of the ethnic group Minangkabau, whose home territory is situated in the present-day Indonesian province of West Sumatra, yet whose diaspora, reaching its highest density in the islands of Sumatra and Java, recently covers the whole of the Indonesian archipelago, overlapping to the neighbouring countries of Malaysia, Singapore, and beyond. In the thesis, Minangkabau culture is viewed through the looking glass of the Minang folk theatre randai, which traces its origins to the iniciation of young Minang males, yet which has with time transformed into an important means of symbolic expression of the Minang identity. Selected randai plays recorded by the author in their authentic social context are used to provide examples for the explanation of some of the key concepts that form the core of Minang culture, while socio-historical conditions are considered for the influence they have had upon the shaping of these concepts to their present form. Topics that are subject to explanation include the following: the social position and the key social roles performed by women in the context of a system of social organization based on the principals of matrilineal kinship, relative to the position and roles of men; basic principals of Minang ethnopsychology as source of...Institute of EthnologyÚstav etnologieFilozofická fakultaFaculty of Art

Vision-RWKV: Efficient and Scalable Visual Perception with RWKV-Like Architectures

Transformers have revolutionized computer vision and natural language processing, but their high computational complexity limits their application in high-resolution image processing and long-context analysis. This paper introduces Vision-RWKV (VRWKV), a model adapted from the RWKV model used in the NLP field with necessary modifications for vision tasks. Similar to the Vision Transformer (ViT), our model is designed to efficiently handle sparse inputs and demonstrate robust global processing capabilities, while also scaling up effectively, accommodating both large-scale parameters and extensive datasets. Its distinctive advantage lies in its reduced spatial aggregation complexity, which renders it exceptionally adept at processing high-resolution images seamlessly, eliminating the necessity for windowing operations. Our evaluations demonstrate that VRWKV surpasses ViT's performance in image classification and has significantly faster speeds and lower memory usage processing high-resolution inputs. In dense prediction tasks, it outperforms window-based models, maintaining comparable speeds. These results highlight VRWKV's potential as a more efficient alternative for visual perception tasks. Code is released at \url{https://github.com/OpenGVLab/Vision-RWKV}

Combined Genomic, Transcriptomic, Proteomic, and Physiological Characterization of the Growth of Pecoramyces sp. F1 in Monoculture and Co-culture With a Syntrophic Methanogen

In this study, the effects of a syntrophic methanogen on the growth of Pecoramyces sp. F1 was investigated by characterizing fermentation profiles, as well as functional genomic, transcriptomic, and proteomic analysis. The estimated genome size, GC content, and protein coding regions of strain F1 are 106.83 Mb, 16.07%, and 23.54%, respectively. Comparison of the fungal monoculture with the methanogen co-culture demonstrated that during the fermentation of glucose, the co-culture initially expressed and then down-regulated a large number of genes encoding both enzymes involved in intermediate metabolism and plant cell wall degradation. However, the number of up-regulated proteins doubled at the late-growth stage in the co-culture. In addition, we provide a mechanistic understanding of the metabolism of this fungus in co-culture with a syntrophic methanogen. Further experiments are needed to explore this interaction during degradation of more complex plant cell wall substrates

Demystify Transformers & Convolutions in Modern Image Deep Networks

Vision transformers have gained popularity recently, leading to the development of new vision backbones with improved features and consistent performance gains. However, these advancements are not solely attributable to novel feature transformation designs; certain benefits also arise from advanced network-level and block-level architectures. This paper aims to identify the real gains of popular convolution and attention operators through a detailed study. We find that the key difference among these feature transformation modules, such as attention or convolution, lies in their spatial feature aggregation approach, known as the "spatial token mixer" (STM). To facilitate an impartial comparison, we introduce a unified architecture to neutralize the impact of divergent network-level and block-level designs. Subsequently, various STMs are integrated into this unified framework for comprehensive comparative analysis. Our experiments on various tasks and an analysis of inductive bias show a significant performance boost due to advanced network-level and block-level designs, but performance differences persist among different STMs. Our detailed analysis also reveals various findings about different STMs, such as effective receptive fields and invariance tests. All models and codes used in this study are publicly available at \url{https://github.com/OpenGVLab/STM-Evaluation}

MM-Interleaved: Interleaved Image-Text Generative Modeling via Multi-modal Feature Synchronizer

Developing generative models for interleaved image-text data has both research and practical value. It requires models to understand the interleaved sequences and subsequently generate images and text. However, existing attempts are limited by the issue that the fixed number of visual tokens cannot efficiently capture image details, which is particularly problematic in the multi-image scenarios. To address this, this paper presents MM-Interleaved, an end-to-end generative model for interleaved image-text data. It introduces a multi-scale and multi-image feature synchronizer module, allowing direct access to fine-grained image features in the previous context during the generation process. MM-Interleaved is end-to-end pre-trained on both paired and interleaved image-text corpora. It is further enhanced through a supervised fine-tuning phase, wherein the model improves its ability to follow complex multi-modal instructions. Experiments demonstrate the versatility of MM-Interleaved in recognizing visual details following multi-modal instructions and generating consistent images following both textual and visual conditions. Code and models are available at \url{https://github.com/OpenGVLab/MM-Interleaved}.Comment: 20 pages, 9 figures, 17 table