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Ulcerative colitis (UC) is a debilitating inflammatory bowel disease characterized by intestinal inflammation, barrier dysfunction, and dysbiosis, with limited treatment options available. This study systematically investigates the therapeutic potential of a synbiotic composed of galactooligosaccharides (GOS) and Limosilactobacillus reuteri in a murine model of colitis, revealing that GOS and L. reuteri synergistically protect against intestinal inflammation and barrier dysfunction by promoting the synthesis of pentadecanoic acid, an odd-chain fatty acid, from Bacteroides acidifaciens . Notably, the synbiotic, B. acidifaciens , and pentadecanoic acid are each capable of suppressing intestinal inflammation and enhancing tight junction by inhibiting NF-κB activation. Furthermore, similar reduction in B. acidifaciens and pentadecanoic acid levels are also observed in the feces from both human UC patients and lipopolysaccharide-induced intestinal inflammation in pigs. Our findings elucidate the protective mechanism of the synbiotic and highlight its therapeutic potential, along with B. acidifaciens and pentadecanoic acid, for UC and other intestinal inflammatory disorders. Here, Yujun Wu and colleagues report that a synbiotic composed of galactooligosaccharides and Limosilactobacillus reuteri alleviates gut inflammation in animals by enriching pentadecanoic acid synthesis from Bacteroides acidifaciens , showing potential for treating ulcerative colitis.

The emergence of drug-resistant genes and concerns about food safety caused by the overuse of antibiotics are becoming increasingly prominent. There is an urgent need for effective alternatives to antibiotics in the fields of livestock production and human medicine. Antimicrobial peptides can effectively replace antibiotics to kill pathogens and enhance the immune functions of the host, and pathogens cannot easily produce genes that are resistant to them. The ability of antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) to kill pathogens is associated with their structure and physicochemical properties, such as their conformation, electrical charges, hydrophilicity, and hydrophobicity. AMPs regulate the activity of immunological cells and stimulate the secretion of inflammatory cytokines via the activation of the NF-κB and MAPK signaling pathways. However, there are still some limitations to the application of AMPs in the fields of livestock production and human medicine, including a restricted source base, high costs of purification and expression, and the instability of the intestines of animals and humans. This review summarizes the information on AMPs as effective antibiotic substitutes to improve the immunological functions of the host through suppressing pathogens and regulating inflammatory responses. Potential challenges for the commercial application of AMPs in animal husbandry and human medicine are discussed.

Many studies have reported that dietary fibers play a crucial role in promoting intestinal health of the host, since it strengthens functions of epithelial barrier and meanwhile maintains intestinal homeostasis of the host by modulating gut microbiota and short‐chain fatty acid (SCFA) production. Pig is a good animal model to study effects of dietary fiber on gut health and microbial community. This review has summarized the relevant knowledge available based on roles of various dietary fibers in gut health and energy metabolism of pigs and humans. Evidences summarized in our review indicated that modulating intestinal microbial composition and SCFA production by consuming specific dietary fibers properly could be conducive to health improvement and disease prevention of the host. However, types of dietary fiber from edible foods exert divergent impacts on gut health, energy metabolism, microbial composition, and SCFA production. Therefore, more attention should be focused on different responses of various dietary fibers intake on host metabolism and health. Modulating intestinal microbial composition and short‐chain fatty acid (SCFA) production by regulating specific dietary fibers intake properly could be conducive to host health improvement and disease prevention. Types of dietary fiber from edible foods exert divergent impacts on gut health, microbial composition, and SCFA production.

Light-induced thermoelastic spectroscopy (LITES) is a promising optical approach for gas sensing, which uses a quartz tuning fork (QTF) as a photothermal detector, instead of a commercial photodetector. Since the QTF has the advantages of low cost, small size, high resonance frequency, high-quality factor (Q-factor), and a wide spectral response range, and the LITES sensor has received extensive attention and obtained great development. This review paper summarizes and discusses the advances of the QTF-based, state-of-the-art LITES gas sensing technique in recent years and presents the development prospects of LITES sensor in the future.

Glaciers experience periodic variations in flow velocity called surges, each of which influences the glacier’s characteristics and the occurrence of downstream disasters (e.g., ice-dammed lake outburst floods). The Karakoram region contains many surging glaciers, yet there are few comprehensive studies of multiple surge cycles. In this work, Landsat, topographic map, Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM), TerraSAR-X/TanDEM-X, ITS_LIVE, and Sentinel-1 glacier velocity data were used to systematically analyze the characteristics of Kyagar Glacier since the 1970s. Three surging events were identified, with active phases in 1975–1978, 1995–1997, and 2014–2016. The timing of these surges was similar, with a cycle of 19–20 years, an active phase of 3–4 years, and a quiescent phase of 16–17 years. During the quiescent phase, a large amount of ice accumulates in the lower part of the accumulation zone, and the terminal of the tongue thins significantly. According to the most recent surge event (2014–2016), glacier flow accelerated suddenly in the active phase and reached a maximum velocity of 2 ± 0.08 m d−1. Then, the glacier terminal thickened sharply, the reservoir zone thinned by 12 ± 0.2 m, and the terminal receiving zone thickened by 28 ± 0.2 m. The glacier may have entered a quiescent phase after July 2016. The glacier surge causes a large amount of material to transfer from upstream to downstream, forming an ice dam and creating conditions for a glacial lake outburst flood (GLOF). At the termination of the active phase, the subglacial drainage channel became effective, triggering the GLOF. For a period of the quiescent phase, the glacier ablation intensifies and the GLOF repeats constantly. One surge caused 7–8 GLOFs, and then a continuous reduction in the ice dam elevation. Eventually, the ice dam disappeared, and the GLOF no longer continued before the next glacier-surging event.

The global livestock production system faces significant challenges for sustainable development, including feed resource shortage and environmental pressures. Precision animal nutrition is crucial in addressing these challenges, in which the mathematical model is an indispensable tool. The traditional mathematical models exhibit certain limitations, particularly in accommodating the emerging demands of precision nutrition and feeding for individuals. New technologies, especially big data and artificial intelligence (AI), have shown great potential to mitigate the above shortcomings. This review has summarized the current landscape and applications of big data and AI‐powered modeling in animal nutrition and feeding, covering techniques including intelligent data acquisition, in vitro kinetics and multi‐omics data mining, data augmentation, advanced and explainable machine learning algorithms, multi‐objective and heuristic algorithms, and life cycle assessment‐based sustainability evaluation with case studies in pigs and alternative feed ingredients. Furthermore, this review has introduced the next‐generation model techniques, including those based on large language models, multi‐agents, and embodied AI robots, depicted the potential translation of the advancements from animal nutrition to human health, and discussed the limitations of AI‐powered modeling techniques. These pioneering techniques will provide new tools and paradigms for research and practices in animal nutrition and further promote animal husbandry's sustainable development. This review summarizes the current landscape of big data and AI‐powered modeling in animal nutrition, covering techniques including intelligent data acquisition, data augmentation, explainable machine learning, heuristic algorithms, and life cycle assessment‐based sustainability evaluation. Furthermore, this review introduces the next‐generation model techniques, such as those based on large language models and multi‐agents, and depicts the potential advancements in translation from animal nutrition to human health.

Wuwei Shexiang Pill (WSP) is a Tibetan traditional medicine, which has been demonstrated to exhibit potent anti-inflammatory and anti-gout effects. However, the specific pharmacological mechanism is not elucidated clearly. In the present study, liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry (LC-MS)-based metabolomics was applied to investigate the alteration of serum metabolites induced by WSP treatment in MSU-induced gouty rats. Subsequently, bioinformatics was utilized to analyze the potential metabolic pathway of the anti-gout effect of WSP. The pharmacodynamic data discovered that WSP could ameliorate ankle swelling and inflammatory cell infiltration, as well as downregulate the protein expression of IL-1β, p-NF-κB p65, and NLRP3 in the synovial membrane and surrounding tissues of gouty ankles. LC-MS-based metabolomics revealed that there were 30 differential metabolites in the serum between sham-operated rats and gouty ones, which were mainly involved in the metabolism of fructose and mannose, primary bile acid biosynthesis, and cholesterol metabolism. However, compared to the model group, WSP treatment upregulated 11 metabolic biomarkers and downregulated 31 biomarkers in the serum. KEGG enrichment analysis found that 27 metabolic pathways contributed to the therapeutic action of WSP, including linoleic acid metabolism, phenylalanine metabolism, and pantothenate and CoA biosynthesis. The comprehensive analysis-combined network pharmacology and metabolomics further revealed that the regulatory network of WSP against gout might be attributed to 11 metabolites, 7 metabolic pathways, 39 targets, and 49 active ingredients of WSP. In conclusion, WSP could ameliorate the inflammation of the ankle in MSU-induced gouty rats, and its anti-gout mechanism might be relevant to the modulation of multiple metabolic pathways, such as linoleic acid metabolism, phenylalanine metabolism, and pantothenate and CoA biosynthesis. This study provided data support for the secondary development of Chinese traditional patent medicine.

This study was conducted to determine whether differences in fiber fermentation in fiber-rich feed ingredients exist and to assess relationship between fiber fermentation and concentration of volatile fatty acids (VFA) in pig. Castrated males (barrows) were allotted randomly to six diets formulated with different amounts of wheat bran (WB), corn bran (CB), sugar beet pulp (SBP), oat bran (OB), soybean hulls (SH) or rice bran (RB). The apparent ileal digestibility (AID) of soluble dietary fiber (SDF) for OB and SH diets was greater (P < 0.05) than for the other diets. The fermentation of total dietary fiber (TDF) and insoluble dietary fiber (IDF) in the hindgut were greater (P < 0.05) for SBP and SH diets than for WB, CB, OB and RB diets. The apparent total tract digestibility (ATTD) values of all fiber components in SBP, SH and OB diets were greater (P < 0.05) than for WB, CB and RB diets. The concentration of VFA in feces was positively correlated with the ATTD of IDF and cellulose, and ATTD of IDF is the best factor for predicting fecal VFA concentration. Overall, dietary fiber source affected fermentable characteristics of fiber components in the different digestive segments of pig intestine.

How to design effective multi-view subspace clustering (MVSC) algorithms has recently become a research hotspot. In this paper, we propose a new MVSC algorithm, termed latent multi-view self-representation for clustering via the tensor nuclear norm (LMVS/TNN), which can seamlessly unify multi-view clustering and dimensionality reduction into a framework. Specifically, for each view data, LMVS/TNN learns the transformed data from the original space, which can maintain the original manifold structure, and each subspace representation matrix from the transformed latent space simultaneously. Furthermore, to use the high-order correlations and complementary information from multi-view data, LMVS/TNN constructs a third-order tensor by taking the representation matrix extracted from the transformed latent space as the frontal slice of the third-order tensor and the tensor is constrained by a new low-rank tensor constraint, i.e., the tensor nuclear norm (TNN). In addition, based on the augmented Lagrangian scheme, we develop an efficient procedure to solve LMVS/TNN. To verify the performance of LMVS/TNN, we conduct experiments on public datasets and find that LMVS/TNN outperforms some representative clustering algorithms.

Dietary nutrient digestion and utilization patterns influence pig performance and intestinal health. This study aimed to evaluate the effects of protein digestion and fiber fermentation speed among different feed ingredients on growth performance and fecal short-chain fatty acid (SCFA) concentrations in weaned pigs. A total of 192 weaned pigs (Duroc × Landrace × Yorkshire [6.87 ± 0.14 kg]) were selected and randomly divided into four dietary groups: fast-digesting protein with fast-fermenting fiber, fast-digesting protein with slow-fermenting fiber, slow-digesting protein with fast-fermenting fiber, and slow-digesting protein with slow-fermenting fiber. The results showed that cottonseed and wheat protein powders exhibited faster protein digestion than potato protein powder (p < 0.05). In vitro microbial fermentation of hawthorn powder and orange pomace resulted in greater and faster gas production and SCFA concentrations than sugarcane bagasse (p < 0.05). Orange pomace increased the abundance of Klebsiella and Escherichia–Shigella, whereas sugarcane bagasse increased the abundance of Rikenellaceae_RC9_gut_group and norank_f__Muribaculaceae. In addition, the fast-fermentation fiber tended to increase the daily weight gain and feed intake of piglets (p < 0.10), and the slow-fermentation fiber significantly reduced diarrhea incidence in pigs (p < 0.05). Fast fermentation increased acetate and valerate concentrations, and slow-digestion protein increased branched-chain SCFA and valerate contents (p < 0.05). In conclusion, there were large variations in protein digestion and fiber fermentation speed among the different common feed ingredients. Dietary protein digestion and fiber fermentation speed would affect growth performance and diarrhea incidence in weaned pigs.