Accuracy of genomic selection for age at puberty in a multi‐breed population of tropically adapted beef cattle

Genomic selection is becoming a standard tool in livestock breeding programs, particularly for traits that are hard to measure. Accuracy of genomic selection can be improved by increasing the quantity and quality of data and potentially by improving analytical methods. Adding genotypes and phenotypes from additional breeds or crosses often improves the accuracy of genomic predictions but requires specific methodology. A model was developed to incorporate breed composition estimated from genotypes into genomic selection models. This method was applied to age at puberty data in female beef cattle (as estimated from age at first observation of a corpus luteum) from a mix of Brahman and Tropical Composite beef cattle. In this dataset, the new model incorporating breed composition did not increase the accuracy of genomic selection. However, the breeding values exhibited slightly less bias (as assessed by deviation of regression of phenotype on genomic breeding values from the expected value of 1). Adding additional Brahman animals to the Tropical Composite analysis increased the accuracy of genomic predictions and did not affect the accuracy of the Brahman predictions.     

Effects of Nigella sativa L. and Urtica dioica L. on selected mineral status and hematological values in CCl4-treated rats

This study was designed to investigate the effects of Nigella sativa L. (NS), known as black seed, or/and Urtica dioica L. (UD), known as stinging nettle root, treatments on serum Na, K, Cl, and Ca levels and some hematological values of CCl₄-treated rats. Sixty healthy male Sprague-Dawley rats, weighing 250–300 g, were randomly allotted into 1 of 4 experimental groups: A (CCl₄-only treated), B (CCl₄+UD treated), C (CCl₄+NS treated), and D (CCl₄+UD+NS treated), each containing 15 animals. All groups received CCl₄ (0.8 mL/kg of body weight, subcutaneously, twice a week for 90 d starting d 1). In addition, B, C, and D groups also received the daily ip injection of 0.2 mL/kg NS and/or 2 mL/kg UD oils for 45 d starting d 46. Group A, on the other hand, received only 2 mL/kg normal saline solution for 45 d starting d 46. Blood samples for the biochemical analysis were taken by cardiac puncture from five randomly chosen rats in each treatment group at the beginning, d 45, and d 90 of the experiment. The CCl₄ treatment for 45 d significantly (p<0.05) increased the serum K and Ca and decreased (p<0.05) the red blood cell count (RBC), white blood cell count (WBC), packed cell volume (PCV), and Hb levels without changing (p>0.05) the serum Na and Cl levels. NS or UD treatments (alone or combination) for 45 d starting d 46 significantly (p<0.05) decreased the elevated serum K and Ca levels and also increased (p<0.05) the reduced RBC, WBC, PCV, and Hb levels. It is concluded that NS and/or UD treatments might ameliorate the CCl₄-induced disturbances of anemia, some minerals, and body’s defense mechanism in CCl₄-treated rats.     

尖峰岭热带山地雨林主要神类能量背景值测定分析

本文报道了海南岛尖峰岭热带山地雨林主要树种６７种、灌木及大型木质藤本植物１６种的各器官的热值。结果表明,热带森林主要种类的热值差异甚大,即使相同属内的一些种类,均具有明显的差异,这种差异与植物种的生物学特性有关,即在生活型的分类系统中,芽位越高的植物其热值越高,但在同一树种中,不同个体大小的植株,其差异不明显;不同植物种的根系热值也差异不大。一般情况下,树叶的热值较大,树干、树皮、树枝和根系次之。已初步证明了部分热带植物含有较多的硅、锰、铁、钙等元素,它们在样品燃烧后形成了颗粒状的剩余物,这是一个值得更深入探讨的新问题。     

Automatic Detection of Severely and Mildly Infected COVID-19 Patients with Supervised Machine Learning Models

ObjectivesWhen the prognosis of COVID-19 disease can be detected early, the intense-pressure and loss of workforce in health-services can be partially reduced. The primary-purpose of this article is to determine the feature-dataset consisting of the routine-blood-values (RBV) and demographic-data that affect the prognosis of COVID-19. Second, by applying the feature-dataset to the supervised machine-learning (ML) models, it is to identify severely and mildly infected COVID-19 patients at the time of admission.Material and methodsThe sample of this study consists of severely (n = 192) and mildly (n = 4010) infected-patients hospitalized with the diagnosis of COVID-19 between March-September, 2021. The RBV-data measured at the time of admission and age-gender characteristics of these patients were analyzed retrospectively. For the selection of the features, the minimum-redundancy-maximum-relevance (MRMR) method, principal-components-analysis and forward-multiple-logistics-regression analyzes were used. The features set were statistically compared between mild and severe infected-patients. Then, the performances of various supervised-ML-models were compared in identifying severely and mildly infected-patients using the feature set.ResultsIn this study, 28 RBV-parameters and age-variable were found as the feature-dataset. The effect of features on the prognosis of the disease has been clinically proven. The ML-models with the highest overall-accuracy in identifying patient-groups were found respectively, as follows: local-weighted-learning (LWL)-97.86%, K-star (K*)-96.31%, Naive-Bayes (NB)-95.36% and k-nearest-neighbor (KNN)-94.05%. Also, the most successful models with the highest area-under-the-receiver-operating-characteristic-curve (AUC) values in identifying patient groups were found respectively, as follows: LWL-0.95%, K*-0.91%, NB-0.85% and KNN-0.75%.ConclusionThe findings in this article have significant a motivation for the healthcare professionals to detect at admission severely and mildly infected COVID-19 patients.     

秦岭山地松栎混交林主要木本植物组成及更新特征

采用样方法对秦岭南坡中段松栎混交林主要木本植物组成及天然更新特征进行了研究.结果表明:(1)松栎混交林乔木层物种共计40种,油松、锐齿槲栎和华山松为优势种,重要值分别为35.19％、31.99％和8.12％,漆树、栓皮栎和楝木为亚优势种.(2)更新层木本植物共计87种,其中乔木幼苗34种,占总数的39.08％,灌木物种也有一定优势地位,优势种有锐齿槲栎、悬钩子和菝葜等,高度级较小的更新苗在群落内占有较大比例.(3)优势乔木更新特征不同,锐齿槲栎幼苗和幼树密度显著高于油松和华山松,且锐齿槲栎幼苗密度显著高于其幼树,但油松幼苗与幼树、华山松幼苗与幼树间无明显差异.(4)混交林内锐齿槲栎径级结构呈近似倒“J”形分布,种群稳定;油松和华山松种群均呈近似正态分布,大径级个体群相对稳定,但林下幼树不足.该研究结果提示,松栎混交林下油松和华山松更新不良,这将不利于其长期存留于群落中,虽然锐齿槲栎从幼苗到幼树的发育过程中存在更新障碍,但并未影响其种群整体更新,若无大规模干扰,锐齿槲栎将维持逆“J”型的更新方式并成为松栎混交林群落中的第一优势种.     

Reproductive systems in conifer seed orchards

Summary In order to quantify female and male fitness values of clones in a Pinus sylvestris L. seed orchard, multilocus-genotypes of parental clones were compared with those of open pollinated seeds in the bulked orchard crop. Female and male contributions to individual seeds were distinguished by observing enzyme gene loci active in both endosperm and embryo tissue. Seed probes from two successive flowering periods were surveyed. The female and male fitnesses of five parental clones measured relative to the population mean were derived. The contributions of four clones were found to be sexually asymmetric. One clone, for instance, made exclusively female contributions in one flowering period. Variations existed in fitness values between clones. Deviations in sex specificity occurred between flowering periods: one clone contributed asymmetrically in both periods, but in sexually reversed proportions. A method to comprehensively quantify and illustrate the observed phenomena is proposed.     

Erythropoietin in Cerebrospinal Fluid: Age-related Reference Values and Relevance in Neurological Disease

We aimed to establish age-related reference values for Erythropoietin (EPO) in cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) and to evaluate concentrations in neurological diseases. CSF and serum EPO was measured in controls with tension-type headache (CTTH), in patients with ALS, dementia and depression using ELISA technique. Stability experiments showed CSF EPO to be stable for two and a half months and over two thaw/freeze cycles. A positive correlation of CSF EPO with age was found (P < 0.01). We found a CSF/serum EPO concentration ratio of 0.126, pointing towards an intrathecal synthesis of EPO. The ALS group showed significantly lowered CSF EPO compared to age-matched CTTH (P < 0.012), whereas the dementia and depression group showed no significant differences compared to CTTH. The establishment of age-related reference values in a large cohort of controls will improve the interpretation of future CSF EPO evaluations in neurological diseases. The authors have not reported any conflicts of interest.     

Discounting and the environment should current impacts be weighted differently than impacts harming future generations?

Background  In Life-Cycle Assessment (LCA), decision makers are often faced with tradeoffs between current and future impacts. One typical example is waste incineration, where immediate emissions to the air from the incineration process have to be weighted against future emissions of slag landfills. Long-term impacts are either completely taken into account or they are entirely disregarded in case of a temporal cut-off. Temporal cutoffs are a special case of discounting. Objective  In this paper, discounting is defined as valuing damages differently at different points of time using a positive or negative discount rate. Apart from temporal cut-offs, discounting has rarely been applied in LCA so far. It is the goal of this paper to discuss the concept of discounting and its applicability in the context of LCA. Methods  For this purpose, we first review the arguments for discounting and its principles in economic sciences. Discounting in economics can be motivated by pure time preference, productivity of capital, diminishing marginal utility of consumption, and uncertainties. The nominal discount rate additionally includes changes in the price level. These arguments and their justification are discussed in the context of environmental impacts harming future generations. Results and Discussion  It is concluded that discounting across generations because of pure time preference contradicts fundamental ethical values and should therefore not be applied in LCA. However, it has to be acknowledged that in practice decision makers often use positive discount rates because of pure time preference — either because they might profit from imposing environmental damage on others instead of themselves or because people in the far future are not of immediate concern to them. Discounting because of the productivity of capital assumes a relationship between monetary values and environmental impact. If such a relationship is accepted, discounting could be applied. However, future generations should be compensated for the environmental damage. It is likely that they would demand a higher compensation if the real per capita income increases. As both the compensation and the discount rate are related to economic growth, the overall discount rate might be close to zero. It is shown that the overall discount rate might even be negative considering that the required compensation could increase (even to infinite) if natural assets remain scarce, whereas the utility of consumption diminishes with increasing income. Uncertainties could justify both positive and negative discount rates. Since the relationship between uncertainties and the magnitude of damage is generally not exponential, we recommend to model changes in the magnitude of damage in scenario analysis instead of considering it in discounting (which requires an exponential function of time in the case of a constant discount rate). We investigated the influence of discounting in a case study of heavy metal emissions from slag landfills. It could be shown that even small discount rates of less than 1 % lead to a significant reduction of the impact score, whereas negative discount rates inflate the results. Conclusions and Recommendations  Discounting is only applicable when temporally differentiated data is available. In some cases, such a temporal differentiation is necessary to take sound decisions, especially when long emission periods are involved. An example is the disposal of nuclear or heavy metal-containing waste. In these cases, the results might completely depend on the discount rate. This paper helps to structure arguments and thus to support the decision about whether or not discounting should be applied in an LCA.     

93份贵州地方辣椒资源品质性状分析

对93份贵州地方辣椒资源的品质性状进行了分析,结果表明:粗纤维含量在22.99%~44.06%之间,牛角椒含量最高,为33.71%;粗脂肪含量在11.49%~27.46%之间,锥形椒含量最高,为21.55%;蛋白质含量在12.81%~22.97%之间,指形椒含量最高,为18.78%;辣椒素含量在0.28~7.61 mg/g之间,指形椒含量最高,为4.47 mg/g;4个指标的平均隶属度值在0.21~0.68之间,超过0.60的辣椒资源有S106、S103、S072和S016;聚类分析表明,93份辣椒资源按平均隶属度大小可分为四大类型,即高品质型、中品质型、一般品质型和特殊品质型。贵州地方辣椒种质资源品质性状分析可为辣椒种质资源的创新利用、新品种的选育奠定基础。     

Sleep quality and duration following evening intake of alpha-lactalbumin: a pilot study#

Tryptophan loading enhances sleep quality by increasing the ratio of plasma tryptophan to large neutral amino acids (TRP:LNAA) and consequently synthesis and availability of serotonin in the brain. Alpha-lactalbulmin (A-LAC) is rich in tryptophan and has the highest TRP:LNAA of all protein sources. This pilot study investigated the effect of an evening intake of A-LAC on objective and subjective sleep measures in male subjects without sleep complaints. Ten healthy male university students (aged: 26.9 ± 5.3 years; BMI: 21.7 ± 1.9 kg.m^?2) participated in a double-blind, randomized, and placebo-controlled crossover counter-balanced study. Objective (actigraphy) and subjective (sleep log) sleep measures were recorded for two nights after a standardized evening meal supplemented with either A-LAC (20 g) or a placebo of sodium caseinate (20 g) one hour before bedtime. Evening A-LAC intake resulted in increased objective and subjective total sleep time by 12.8% (p = 0.037) and 10.8% (p = 0.013), respectively, compared to placebo. Objective sleep efficiency increased by 7.0% (p = 0.028) following A-LAC with no significant effects for other sleep indices. This pilot study demonstrates the efficacy of evening A-LAC intake on sleep quality in young healthy adults, however further large-scale studies are warranted to confirm the benefit.