Führt Zufütterung von Esparsette zu einer höheren Effizienz bei eiweissreicher Herbstweide?

Schlussfolgerung: Esparsette … • erhöht die Proteineffizienz bei graslandbasierter Fütterung. • kann kurzzeitig zu einer Verbesserung der Leistung in Bezug auf Milch-, Eiweiss- und Fettmenge führen. • führt dauerhaft aber zu einer geringeren Milchleistung. • beeinflusst keine weiteren Milchparameter

Towards Standardized Mobility Reports with User-Level Privacy

The importance of human mobility analyses is growing in both research and practice, especially as applications for urban planning and mobility rely on them. Aggregate statistics and visualizations play an essential role as building blocks of data explorations and summary reports, the latter being increasingly released to third parties such as municipal administrations or in the context of citizen participation. However, such explorations already pose a threat to privacy as they reveal potentially sensitive location information, and thus should not be shared without further privacy measures. There is a substantial gap between state-of-the-art research on privacy methods and their utilization in practice. We thus conceptualize a standardized mobility report with differential privacy guarantees and implement it as open-source software to enable a privacy-preserving exploration of key aspects of mobility data in an easily accessible way. Moreover, we evaluate the benefits of limiting user contributions using three data sets relevant to research and practice. Our results show that even a strong limit on user contribution alters the original geospatial distribution only within a comparatively small range, while significantly reducing the error introduced by adding noise to achieve privacy guarantees

Generalizability and reach of a randomized controlled trial to improve oral health among home care recipients: comparing participants and nonparticipants at baseline and during follow-up

Background The generalizability of randomized controlled trials (RCTs) with a low response can be limited by systematic differences between participants and nonparticipants. This participation bias, however, is rarely investigated because data on nonparticipants is usually not available. The purpose of this article is to compare all participants and nonparticipants of a RCT to improve oral health among home care recipients at baseline and during follow-up using claims data. Methods Seven German statutory health and long-term care insurance funds invited 9656 home care recipients to participate in the RCT MundPflege. Claims data for all participants (n = 527, 5.5% response) and nonparticipants (n = 9129) were analyzed. Associations between trial participation and sex, age, care dependency, number of Elixhauser diseases, and dementia, as well as nursing, medical, and dental care utilization at baseline, were investigated using multivariable logistic regression. Associations between trial participation and the probability of (a) moving into a nursing home, (b) being hospitalized, and (c) death during 1 year of follow-up were examined via Cox proportional hazards regressions, controlling for baseline variables. Results At baseline, trial participation was positively associated with male sex (odds ratio 1.29 [95% confidence interval 1.08–1.54]), high (vs. low 1.46 [1.15–1.86]) care dependency, receiving occasional in-kind benefits to relieve caring relatives (1.45 [1.15–1.84]), having a referral by a general practitioner to a medical specialist (1.62 [1.21–2.18]), and dental care utilization (2.02 [1.67–2.45]). It was negatively associated with being 75–84 (vs. < 60 0.67 [0.50–0.90]) and 85 + (0.50 [0.37–0.69]) years old. For morbidity, hospitalizations, and formal, respite, short-term, and day or night care, no associations were found. During follow-up, participants were less likely to move into a nursing home than nonparticipants (hazard ratio 0.50 [0.32–0.79]). For hospitalizations and mortality, no associations were found. Conclusions For half of the comparisons, differences between participants and nonparticipants were observed. The RCT’s generalizability is limited, but to a smaller extent than one would expect because of the low response. Routine data provide a valuable source for investigating potential differences between trial participants and nonparticipants, which might be used by future RCTs to evaluate the generalizability of their findings. Trial registrati German Clinical Trials Register DRKS00013517. Retrospectively registered on June 11, 2018

On-farm examination of sainfoin supplementation effects in dairy cows in a roughage-based feeding system: Indicators of protein utilisation

A case study was conducted with the objective to determine the effects of the tanniferous legume sainfoin (Onobrychis viciifolia) on protein utilisation of dairy cows, which were exposed to excessive dietary crude protein during autumn pasture grazing in a zero-concentrate feeding system. The study was conducted under practical conditions, deliberately accepting a certain lack of controllable variables. In order to assess a system applicable in practice, relatively small amounts of sainfoin were offered, and graded supply levels were compared by varying the duration of offer instead of dietary concentration. Within one dairy herd of 60 Swiss Fleckvieh cows, 30 individuals were chosen and randomly allocated to three groups balanced for milk yield, milk urea concentration, days in milk and parity. Over a period of 5 weeks, 2 kg per cow and day of sainfoin pellets were provided either intermittently, for 2 × 5 days (SST) in weeks 3 and 5 of the experiment or continuously over 35 days (SLT). A control group (CON) received 2 kg per cow and day of ryegrass pellets during the 5 weeks. The entire herd grazed on a protein-rich natural sward and was kept overnight in an open-space barn receiving fresh grass and hay ad libitum. Experimental pellets were offered individually twice per day in buckets. Feed, milk, faeces and urine samples were collected in weeks 0 (baseline), 3 and 5. Milk was analysed for fat, protein and urea, urine for purine derivatives, creatinine and nitrogen, and faeces for protein, fibre and particle fractions. During three sampling weeks, chewing activity was recorded by sensor halters. Treatment SST increased rumination time in the first half of the day, which was the only treatment effect on intake and rumination behaviour. Milk fat and protein yields were greater in SST compared to CON, but no treatment effect on concentration and yield of milk urea was found. The proportion of particle fractions in faeces was smaller in both sainfoin treatments compared to CON. In urine, the ratio of purine derivatives to creatinine tended to be higher in SST than in CON, and total urinary nitrogen excretion was lower, indicating a slightly better protein efficiency in SST. In summary, the study revealed small positive effects on protein metabolism and yield when sainfoin was applied short-term over two short periods, whereas long-term application had no effect

OpenMS – An open-source software framework for mass spectrometry

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Mass spectrometry is an essential analytical technique for high-throughput analysis in proteomics and metabolomics. The development of new separation techniques, precise mass analyzers and experimental protocols is a very active field of research. This leads to more complex experimental setups yielding ever increasing amounts of data. Consequently, analysis of the data is currently often the bottleneck for experimental studies. Although software tools for many data analysis tasks are available today, they are often hard to combine with each other or not flexible enough to allow for rapid prototyping of a new analysis workflow.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>We present OpenMS, a software framework for rapid application development in mass spectrometry. OpenMS has been designed to be portable, easy-to-use and robust while offering a rich functionality ranging from basic data structures to sophisticated algorithms for data analysis. This has already been demonstrated in several studies.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>OpenMS is available under the Lesser GNU Public License (LGPL) from the project website at <url>http://www.openms.de</url>.</p

Multisensory games-based learning - lessons learnt from olfactory enhancement of a digital board game

Serious games are becoming an alternative educational method in a variety of fields because of their potential to improve the quality of learning experiences and to facilitate knowledge acquisition and content understanding. Moreover, entertainment-driven learners are more easily motivated to benefit from the learning process through meaningful activities defined in a game context. Interfacing educational computer games with multisensorial interfaces allows for a seamless integration between virtual and physical environments. Multisensorial cues can improve memory and attention and increase the cognitive and sensory-motor performance. Despite of the increasing knowledge in sensory processes, multisensory experiences and interactions in computer based instruction remain insufficiently explored and understood. In this paper, we present a multisensory educational game - Fragrance Channel - and we investigate how enabling olfaction can contribute to users' learning performance, engagement and quality of experience. We compare results obtained after experiencing Fragrance Channel in the presence and absence of olfactory feedback on both a mobile and a PC. A knowledge test administered before and immediately after showed that our proposed educational game led to an improvement of performance in all the explored conditions. Subjective measurements carried out after the olfactory experience showed that students enjoyed the scenario and appreciated it as being relevant.European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation programm

Dire wolves were the last of an ancient New World canid lineage

Dire wolves are considered to be one of the most common and widespread large carnivores in Pleistocene America1, yet relatively little is known about their evolution or extinction. Here, to reconstruct the evolutionary history of dire wolves, we sequenced five genomes from sub-fossil remains dating from 13,000 to more than 50,000 years ago. Our results indicate that although they were similar morphologically to the extant grey wolf, dire wolves were a highly divergent lineage that split from living canids around 5.7 million years ago. In contrast to numerous examples of hybridization across Canidae2,3, there is no evidence for gene flow between dire wolves and either North American grey wolves or coyotes. This suggests that dire wolves evolved in isolation from the Pleistocene ancestors of these species. Our results also support an early New World origin of dire wolves, while the ancestors of grey wolves, coyotes and dholes evolved in Eurasia and colonized North America only relatively recently

31st Annual Meeting and Associated Programs of the Society for Immunotherapy of Cancer (SITC 2016) : part two

Background The immunological escape of tumors represents one of the main ob- stacles to the treatment of malignancies. The blockade of PD-1 or CTLA-4 receptors represented a milestone in the history of immunotherapy. However, immune checkpoint inhibitors seem to be effective in specific cohorts of patients. It has been proposed that their efficacy relies on the presence of an immunological response. Thus, we hypothesized that disruption of the PD-L1/PD-1 axis would synergize with our oncolytic vaccine platform PeptiCRAd. Methods We used murine B16OVA in vivo tumor models and flow cytometry analysis to investigate the immunological background. Results First, we found that high-burden B16OVA tumors were refractory to combination immunotherapy. However, with a more aggressive schedule, tumors with a lower burden were more susceptible to the combination of PeptiCRAd and PD-L1 blockade. The therapy signifi- cantly increased the median survival of mice (Fig. 7). Interestingly, the reduced growth of contralaterally injected B16F10 cells sug- gested the presence of a long lasting immunological memory also against non-targeted antigens. Concerning the functional state of tumor infiltrating lymphocytes (TILs), we found that all the immune therapies would enhance the percentage of activated (PD-1pos TIM- 3neg) T lymphocytes and reduce the amount of exhausted (PD-1pos TIM-3pos) cells compared to placebo. As expected, we found that PeptiCRAd monotherapy could increase the number of antigen spe- cific CD8+ T cells compared to other treatments. However, only the combination with PD-L1 blockade could significantly increase the ra- tio between activated and exhausted pentamer positive cells (p= 0.0058), suggesting that by disrupting the PD-1/PD-L1 axis we could decrease the amount of dysfunctional antigen specific T cells. We ob- served that the anatomical location deeply influenced the state of CD4+ and CD8+ T lymphocytes. In fact, TIM-3 expression was in- creased by 2 fold on TILs compared to splenic and lymphoid T cells. In the CD8+ compartment, the expression of PD-1 on the surface seemed to be restricted to the tumor micro-environment, while CD4 + T cells had a high expression of PD-1 also in lymphoid organs. Interestingly, we found that the levels of PD-1 were significantly higher on CD8+ T cells than on CD4+ T cells into the tumor micro- environment (p < 0.0001). Conclusions In conclusion, we demonstrated that the efficacy of immune check- point inhibitors might be strongly enhanced by their combination with cancer vaccines. PeptiCRAd was able to increase the number of antigen-specific T cells and PD-L1 blockade prevented their exhaus- tion, resulting in long-lasting immunological memory and increased median survival

Effects of dietary sainfoin on feeding, rumination, and faecal particle composition in dairy cows

An experiment was conducted to test whether dietary sainfoin (Onobrychis viciifolia), a plant containing condensed tannins, affects feeding and rumination behaviour of dairy cows fed different roughage-only diets. Out of a herd of sixty lactating Swiss Fleckvieh cows, twenty-nine were chosen for a 6-week experiment. Cows were fed pasture, fresh cut grass and hay. During week 1 (baseline) and weeks 2-4, they had access to pasture for 4 hours during day, and received approximately 6 kg DM/day fresh grass and 4 kg DM/day hay in barn. In week 5 and 6, daily pasture allowance was 2 h; hay offer was doubled. In week 2-6, each cow individually received respectively 1 kg of pelleted feed in the morning and in the evening. Ten cows received ryegrass pellets in week 2, 3 and 5, and sainfoin pellets in week 4 and 6 (sainfoin short term; SST). Nine cows were fed sainfoin (Sainfoin long term; SLT) and another ten ryegrass pellets (Control; C) during the whole term. Rumination and feeding behaviour was measured with RumiWatch® sensor halters during week 1, 4, and 6. Individual faeces samples (4 per cow/week in week 1, 4 and 6) were analysed for particle fractions (wet sieving at 4.0, 2.0, 1.0, and 0.3 mm). Data was evaluated with a general linear model using group and week as fixed factors; baseline data served as covariate. Compared to week 4, all cows showed an increased duration of feeding (15.5% ) and a decreased ruminating activity (14.2% ) in week 6 (p<0.001). Feeding sainfoin pellets (SLT and SST) led to decreased feeding time (2.0-4.6%) and increased rumination time (4.4-6.5%) compared to C (p<0.05) in both weeks. Total particle proportion in faecal DM was lower in SST and SLT by 11.7% compared to C (p<0.05). Also the proportion of the 1.0 - 0.3 mm fraction was lower in faeces of SST and SLC (p<0.05). Milk yields, fat and protein contents were not affected. Results indicate effects of sainfoin supplements on eating behaviour and digestion even when roughage composition varies. This approach could be further used to develop targeted feeding aimed at improving digestion and feed efficiency in low-input dairy systems