Explore the vast range of titles available.

Since the 1960s, East African athletes, mainly from Kenya and Ethiopia, have dominated long-distance running events in both the male and female categories. Further demographic studies have shown that two ethnic groups are overrepresented among elite endurance runners in each of these countries: the Kalenjin, from Kenya, and the Oromo, from Ethiopia, raising the possibility that this dominance results from genetic or/and cultural factors. However, looking at the life history of these athletes or at loci previously associated with endurance athletic performance, no compelling explanation has emerged. Here, we used a population approach to identify peaks of genetic differentiation for these two ethnicities and compared the list of genes close to these regions with a list, manually curated by us, of genes that have been associated with traits possibly relevant to endurance running in GWAS studies, and found a significant enrichment in both populations (Kalenjin, P = 0.048, and Oromo, P = 1.6x10 -5 ). Those traits are mainly related to anthropometry, circulatory and respiratory systems, energy metabolism, and calcium homeostasis. Our results reinforce the notion that endurance running is a systemic activity with a complex genetic architecture, and indicate new candidate genes for future studies. Finally, we argue that a deterministic relationship between genetics and sports must be avoided, as it is both scientifically incorrect and prone to reinforcing population (racial) stereotyping.

Porcine epidemic diarrhea (PED) has caused tremendous losses to the United States pig industry since 2013. From 2014, outbreaks were also reported from Central Europe. To characterize the Central European PEDV strains regarding their virulence in suckling piglets, and to assess the protective effect of maternally derived antibodies (MDA), four trial groups were randomly assigned, each consisting of two pregnant sows and their litter. To induce MDA in a subset of piglets, two sows received a cell culture-adapted PEDV strain, and another two sows were inoculated with field material from German PED outbreaks. Four sows stayed naïve. Subsequently, all piglets were inoculated with the corresponding PEDV strains at an age of 3 to 6 days, and virus shedding, clinical signs and occurrence of specific antibodies were assessed. Piglets without MDA showed a morbidity of 100% and low lethality, while almost all MDA-positive piglets stayed clinically healthy and showed considerably lower virus shedding. Taken together, the Central European PEDV strains showed rather low virulence under experimental conditions, and pre-inoculation of sows led to a solid protection of their offspring. The latter is the prerequisite for a sow vaccination concept that could help to prevent PED induced losses in the piglet sector.

Subject-specific finite element models have been used to predict stress-state and fracture risk in individual patients. While many studies analysed quasi-axial loading configurations, only few works simulated sideways load configurations, such as those arising in a fall. The majority among these latter directly predicted bone strength, without assessing elastic strain prediction accuracy. The aim of the present work was to evaluate if a subject-specific finite element modelling technique from CT data that accurately predicted strains in quasi-axial loading configurations is suitable to accurately predict strains also when applying low magnitude loads in sideways configurations. To this aim, a combined numerical–experimental study was performed to compare finite element predicted strains with strain-gauge measurements from three cadaver proximal femurs instrumented with sixteen strain rosettes and tested non-destructively under twelve loading configurations, spanning a wide cone (0–30° for both adduction and internal rotation angles) of sideways fall scenarios. The results of the present study evidenced a satisfactory agreement between experimentally measured and predicted strains (R2 greater than 0.9, RMSE% lower than 10%) and displacements. The achieved strain prediction accuracy is comparable to those obtained in state of the art studies in quasi-axial loading configurations. Still, the presence of the highest strain prediction errors (around 30%) in the lateral neck aspect would deserve attention in future studies targeting bone failure.

Most data sets of ichthyoplankton contain a high frequency of zeros, and, not considering the possible inflation of zero counts, as in most studies, may result in incorrect model predictions. Thus, we modeled abundance of Engraulis anchoita eggs and larvae sampled during 18 oceanographic cruises conducted between 1974 and 2010 using zero-inflated (ZI) models. ZI models are mixture models with 2 components: (1) containing false zeros (due to design, survey or observer errors) modeled using a binomial generalized linear model (GLM); (2) containing abundance data that may produce zeros (true zeros), and modeled with a negative binomial GLM (ZINB). Although ZINB has been used in other areas of research, we are not aware of its previous use for ichthyoplankton. Common to larvae and eggs, the probability of false zeros was lowest in the southern area of the southeastern Brazilian Bight and higher at deeper station depths. The probability of false zeros was higher in 0.505 mm mesh-size samples than in 0.333 mm mesh only for eggs. Egg and larval abundance was negatively related to temperature in the count portion of the model; only larval abundance was negatively related to salinity. Egg abundance was higher in years sampled with 0.333 mm mesh under conditions of moderate/strong El Niño. The high interannual variability in the abundance and distribution of eggs emphasizes the importance of long-term studies to better understand patterns of fluctuations in the occurrence of ichthyoplankton that are related to environmental conditions.

Background Several species of Aspidosperma plants are referred to as remedies for the treatment of malaria, especially Aspidosperma nitidum . Aspidosperma pyrifolium , also a medicinal plant, is used as a natural anti-inflammatory. Its fractionated extracts were assayed in vitro for activity against malaria parasites and for cytotoxicity. Methods Aspidosperma pyrifolium activity was evaluated against Plasmodium falciparum using extracts in vitro. Toxicity towards human hepatoma cells, monkey kidney cells or human monocytes freshly isolated from peripheral blood was also assessed. Anti-malarial activity of selected extracts and fractions that presented in vitro activity were tested in mice with a Plasmodium berghei blood-induced infection. Results The crude stem bark extract and the alkaloid-rich and ethyl acetate fractions from stem extract showed in vitro activity. None of the crude extracts or fractions was cytotoxic to normal monkey kidney and to a human hepatoma cell lines, or human peripheral blood mononuclear cells; the MDL 50 values of all the crude bark extracts and fractions were similar or better when tested on normal cells, with the exception of organic and alkaloidic-rich fractions from stem extract. Two extracts and two fractions tested in vivo caused a significant reduction of P. berghei parasitaemia in experimentally infected mice. Conclusion Considering the high therapeutic index of the alkaloidic-rich fraction from stem extract of A. pyrifolium , it makes the species a candidate for further investigation aiming to produce a new anti-malarial, especially considering that the active extract has no toxicity, i.e., no mutagenic effects in the genototoxicity assays, and that it has an in vivo anti-malarial effect. In its UPLC-HRMS analysis this fraction was shown to have two major components compatible with the bisindole alkaloid Leucoridine B, and a novel compound, which is likely to be responsible for the activity against malaria parasites demonstrated in in vitro tests.

The illegal capture and trade of wild birds have long been threats to biodiversity. The rehabilitation and release of confiscated animals may be a useful conservation tool in species management. However, differences between populations regarding health (e.g., different pathogens) and adaptation (e.g., local adaptation) must be taken into account, since both can negatively impact the recipient population. In this pilot study, we used two of the most illegally trafficked Brazilian wild passerine species, namely the red-crested cardinal (Paroaria coronata) and green-winged saltator (Saltator similis) as case studies and assessed some of the health threats that the release of confiscated passerines may pose to free-living birds. We also investigated the level of difference in mitochondrial genetic structure among populations living in different ecoregions. Blood, feces, and oropharyngeal swabs from confiscated (n = 115) and free-living (n = 120) passerines from the release sites were tested for the Newcastle disease virus, Salmonella spp., and Mycoplasma gallisepticum. These are considered major avian diseases by the Brazilian National Avian Health Program. We analyzed mtDNA to study the difference in genetic structure between populations using samples from 127 free-living passerines. We found no evidence of the Newcastle disease virus or Salmonella spp. in confiscated or free-living passerines from either species. However, the levels of infection with M. galissepticum detected in our study for red-crested cardinals and green-winged saltators calls for a high degree of caution in captive release programs. The difference in genetic structure between populations occurring in different regions was low, and was not significant between those from the Pampa/Subtropical Grasslands region. These results suggest that it may be possible to establish a cost-effective and sensitive protocol for releasing confiscated songbirds, provided that further genome-wide studies indicate that the functional genetic diversity among (at least some of the) populations is also low.

We present the study of an end-to-end multi-track reconstruction algorithm for the central drift chamber of the Belle II experiment at the SuperKEKB collider using Graph Neural Networks for an unknown number of particles. The algorithm uses detector hits as inputs without pre-filtering to simultaneously predict the number of track candidates in an event and their kinematic properties. In a second step, we cluster detector hits for each track candidate to pass to a track fitting algorithm. Using a realistic full detector simulation including beam-induced backgrounds and detector noise taken from actual collision data, we find significant improvements in track finding efficiencies for tracks in a variety of different event topologies compared to the existing baseline algorithm used in Belle II. For events involving a hypothetical long-lived massive particle with a mass in the GeV-range, decaying uniformly along its flight direction into two charged particles, the GNN achieves a combined track finding and fitting charge efficiency of 85.4% per track, with a fake rate of 2.5%, averaged over the full detector acceptance. In comparison, the baseline algorithm achieves 52.2% efficiency and a fake rate of 4.1%. This is the first end-to-end multi-track machine learning algorithm for a drift chamber detector that has been utilized in a realistic particle physics environment.

We consider an involutive system associated with a smooth and closed 1-form defined on the n -dimensional torus. We show the non-global solvability of the system by assuming a certain geometric condition on the global primitive of the imaginary part of this 1-form. We use this result to characterize completely the global solvability of certain partially coupled systems.

Triatomine bugs are the insect vectors of Trypanosoma cruzi, the etiological agent of Chagas disease. These insects are known to aggregate inside shelters during daylight hours and it has been demonstrated that within shelters, the aggregation is induced by volatiles emitted from bug feces. These signals promote inter-species aggregation among most species studied, but the chemical composition is unknown. In the present work, feces from larvae of the three species were obtained and volatile compounds were identified by solid phase microextraction-gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (SPME-GC-MS). We identified five compounds, all present in feces of all of the three species: Triatoma infestans, Panstrongylus megistus and Triatoma brasiliensis. These substances were tested for attractivity and ability to recruit insects into shelters. Behaviorally active doses of the five substances were obtained for all three triatomine species. The bugs were significantly attracted to shelters baited with blends of 160 ng or 1.6 µg of each substance. Common compounds were found in the feces of vectors of Chagas disease that actively recruited insects into shelters, which suggests that this blend of compounds could be used for the development of baits for early detection of reinfestation with triatomine bugs.

We present the novel implementation of a non-differentiable metric approximation and a corresponding loss-scheduling aimed at the search for new particles of unknown mass in high energy physics experiments. We call the loss-scheduling, based on the minimisation of a figure-of-merit related function typical of particle physics, a Punzi-loss function, and the neural network that utilises this loss function a Punzi-net. We show that the Punzi-net outperforms standard multivariate analysis techniques and generalises well to mass hypotheses for which it was not trained. This is achieved by training a single classifier that provides a coherent and optimal classification of all signal hypotheses over the whole search space. Our result constitutes a complementary approach to fully differentiable analyses in particle physics. We implemented this work using PyTorch and provide users full access to a public repository containing all the codes and a training example.