Pollen-Derived Fatty Acids and Amino Acids Mediate Variance in Pollinator Visitation.

Pollinators help maintain functional landscapes and are sensitive to floral nutritional quality. Both proteins and lipids influence pollinator foraging, but the role of individual biochemical components in pollen remains unclear. We conducted an experiment comprising common garden plots of six plant species (Asteraceae, Rosaceae, Onagraceae, Boraginaceae, and Plantaginaceae).

Direct and indirect effects of land use on microbiomes of trap-nesting solitary bee larvae and nests.

Introduction: The global decline in biodiversity and insect populations highlights the urgent need to conserve ecosystem functions, such as plant pollination by solitary bees. Human activities, particularly agricultural intensification, pose significant threats to these essential services. Changes in land use alter resource and nest site availability, pesticide exposure and other factors impacting the richness, diversity, and health of solitary bee species.

Perception, regulation, and effects on longevity of pollen fatty acids in the honey bee, Apis mellifera.

For successful cross-pollination, most flowering plants rely on insects as pollinators and attract them by offering rewards, predominantly nectar and pollen. Bees-a highly important pollinator group-are especially dependent on pollen as their main source of essential nutrients, including proteins, lipids, and sterols. Fatty acids (FAs) in particular play a pivotal role as fundamental energy source, contributing to membrane structure integrity, cellular homeostasis, and cognitive processes.

Electrical impedance tomography monitoring in adult ICU patients: state-of-the-art, recommendations for standardized acquisition, processing, and clinical use, and future directions.

Electrical impedance tomography (EIT) is an emerging technology for the non-invasive monitoring of regional distribution of ventilation and perfusion, offering real-time and continuous data that can greatly enhance our understanding and management of various respiratory conditions and lung perfusion. Its application may be especially beneficial for critically ill mechanically ventilated patients. Despite its potential, clear evidence of clinical benefits is still lacking, in part due to a lack of standardization and transparent reporting, which is essential for ensuring reproducible research and enhancing the use of EIT for personalized mechanical ventilation.

Bumblebees under stress: Interacting effects of pesticides and heatwaves on colony development and longevity.

Pollinator decline is linked to intensified agricultural practices, pathogens, climate change, and several other factors. We investigated the combined impact of heat and pesticide stress on food consumption, survival, and reproductive fitness of bumble bees. As climate change is expected to intensify heatwaves, we simulated a present-day and a future heatwave scenario (as expected in 50 years).

Time-variant left ventricle models for intracardiac impedance analysis.

Cardiovascular diseases are a leading cause of mortality worldwide. Thus, critically ill patients require continuous monitoring of cardiovascular indicators, such as the left ventricular volume (LVV). Although continuous hemodynamic monitoring of patients is desirable, due to technical limitations, current measurement technologies either require manual intervention of the physician or only provide inaccurate results.

Landscape heterogeneity correlates with bee and pollen diversity while size and specialization degree explain species-specific responses of wild bees to the environment.

Access to adequate pollen sources in agricultural landscapes is critical for the nutrition and development of bees. The type and quantity of pollen available to bees and may be determined by local plant diversity, land-use intensity and landscape structure but different bee species likely respond differently to these parameters. Identifying community and specific responses is therefore imperative to understand pollinator population dynamics in agricultural landscapes.

Long-term impact of scheduled regular endoscopic interventions for patients with primary sclerosing cholangitis.

Background: Primary sclerosing cholangitis (PSC) is associated with biliary obstructions that can require endoscopic retrograde cholangiopancreatography (ERCP). While the beneficial effects of ERCP are well documented, follow-up interventional strategies are less defined, and their long-term impact is debated.

Methods: We evaluated the outcome of a scheduled program of ERCP-guided interventions that have been developed and implemented at our tertiary liver center for more than 20 years.

Acetylcholine and choline in honey bee (Apis mellifera) worker brood food are seasonal and age-dependent.

Nursing honeybees produce brood food with millimolar concentrations of acetylcholine (ACh), which is synthesized through head gland secretions mixed with honey stomach contents. While we previously demonstrated the necessity of ACh for proper larval development, the dynamics of ACh levels throughout ontogenesis and their seasonal variations have remained unclear until now. Our HPLC analysis reveals dependencies of choline and ACh levels on larval development days (LDDs), influenced by seasonal (April-September) variations.

Progress in electrical impedance tomography and bioimpedance.

. This focus collection aims at presenting recent advances in electrical impedance tomography (EIT), including algorithms, hardware, and clinical applications..

Separation of ventilation and perfusion of electrical impedance tomography image streams using multi-dimensional ensemble empirical mode decomposition.

In the future, thoracic electrical impedance tomography (EIT) monitoring may include continuous and simultaneous tracking of both breathing and heart activity. However, an effective way to decompose an EIT image stream into physiological processes as ventilation-related and cardiac-related signals is missing.This study analyses the potential ofby application of theand a novel frequency-based combination criterion for detrending, denoising and source separation of EIT image streams, collected from nine healthy male test subjects with similar age and constitution.

Current trends in medium-chain-length polyhydroxyalkanoates: Microbial production, purification, and characterization.

Polyhydroxyalkanoates (PHAs) have gained interest recently due to their biodegradability and versatility. In particular, the chemical compositions of medium-chain-length (mcl)-PHAs are highly diverse, comprising different monomers containing 6-14 carbon atoms. This review summarizes different feedstocks and fermentation strategies to enhance mcl-PHA production and briefly discusses the downstream processing.

Breath-by-breath comparison of a novel percutaneous phrenic nerve stimulation approach with mechanical ventilation in juvenile pigs: a pilot study.

About one in three critically ill patients requires mechanical ventilation (MV). Prolonged MV, however, results in diaphragmatic weakness, which itself is associated with delayed weaning and increased mortality. Inducing active diaphragmatic contraction via electrical phrenic nerve stimulation (PNS) not only provides the potential to reduce diaphragmatic muscular atrophy but also generates physiological-like ventilation and therefore offers a promising alternative to MV.

The gamma-variate in contrast-enhanced imaging: a unified view and method from computed to electrical impedance tomography.

Modern medical imaging plays a vital role in clinical practice, enabling non-invasive visualization of anatomical structures. Dynamic contrast enhancement (DCE) imaging is a technique that uses contrast agents to visualize blood flow dynamics in a time-resolved manner. It can be applied to different modalities, such as computed tomography (CT) and electrical impedance tomography (EIT).

Pulmonary CT perfusion robustly measures cardiac output in the context of multilevel pulmonary occlusion: a porcine study.

Background: To validate pulmonary computed tomography (CT) perfusion in a porcine model by invasive monitoring of cardiac output (CO) using thermodilution method.

Methods: Animals were studied at a single center, using a Swan-Ganz catheter for invasive CO monitoring as a reference. Fifteen pigs were included.

Nutrients or resin? - The relationship between resin and food foraging in stingless bees.

Stingless bees are important pollinators in tropical forests. Yet, we know little about their foraging behavior (e.g.

A physiological model of phrenic nerve excitation by electrical stimulation.

Mechanical ventilation is essential in intensive care treatment but leads to diaphragmatic atrophy, which in turn contributes to prolonged weaning and increased mortality. One approach to prevent diaphragmatic atrophy while achieving pulmonary ventilation is electrical stimulation of the phrenic nerve. To automize phrenic nerve stimulation resulting in lung protective tidal volumes with lowest possible currents, mathematical models are required.

Sensor Fusion of Cardiorespiratory Signals Using an Adaptive Kalman Filter.

For unobtrusive monitoring of vital signs, redundant sensors are beneficial to fuse several sensor measurements which can improve the estimation of, e.g. heart rate and respiratory rate.

Shape analysis of training data for neural networks in Electrical Impedance Tomography.

Electrical Impedance Tomography (EIT) is a cost-effective and fast way to visualize dielectric properties of the human body, through the injection of alternating currents and measurement of the resulting potential on the bodies surface. However, this comes at the cost of low resolution as EIT is a non-linear ill-posed inverse problem. Recently Deep Learning methods have gained the interest in this field, as they provide a way to mimic non-linear functions.

Early Prediction of Neonatal Sepsis From Synthetic Clinical Data Using Machine Learning.

Neonatal sepsis is one of the most serious complications in neonatal intensive care units. Due to the often immature immune system, sepsis-related comorbidities are the major contributors to increased neonatal mortality. The rapid progression of the disease makes early treatment critical for patient survival.

A Physical Phantom for the Simulation of Neonatal Thermoregulation.

Preterm infants are at an increased health risk due to their low maturity. To monitor their health, vital signs are measured using contact-based methods. The adhesive sensors used to detect body temperature can damage the sensitive skin of neonates.

Hardware-in-the-loop simulation of vascular cannula interaction.

Traditionally, the functional development, testing and verification of higher level automation, control and safety functions in extracorporeal circulations systems relies very much on the conduction of animal experiments. This especially applies to functions requiring interaction with the patients physiology. Besides ethical aspects, animal experiments have the disadvantage of higher complexity, limited reproducibility and certain pathological conditions can only be represented with difficulty.