Background: Diabetes burnout represents a unique experience that shares some similarities with other psychological concepts. Differentiating diabetes burnout from depression symptoms is a challenging issue. This study aims to examine diabetes burnout profiles and their association with depression.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFFollowing the relaxation of COVID-19 restrictions, other respiratory viruses such as influenza and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), whose transmission were decreased due to COVID-19 precautions, are rising again. Because of similar clinical features and reported co-infections, multiplex detection of SARS-CoV-2, influenza A/B, and RSV is required to use specific treatments. This study assessed an extraction-free sample preparation (heat treatment at 95°C for 3 minutes) for multiplex detection using rRT-PCR.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe advent of nanopore-based sensors based on resistive pulse sensing gave rise to a remarkable breakthrough in the detection and characterization of nanoscale species. Some strong correlations have been reported between the resistive pulse characteristics and the particle's geometrical and physical properties. These correlations are commonly used to obtain information about the particles in commercial devices and research setups.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPrecision livestock farming technologies, such as automatic milk feeding machines, have increased the availability of on-farm data collected from dairy operations. We analyzed feeding records from automatic milk feeding machines to evaluate the genetic background of milk feeding traits and bovine respiratory disease (BRD) in North American Holstein calves. Data from 10,076 preweaning female Holstein calves were collected daily over a period of 6 yr (3 yr included per-visit data), and daily milk consumption (DMC), per-visit milk consumption (PVMC), daily sum of drinking duration (DSDD), drinking duration per-visit, daily number of rewarded visits (DNRV), and total number of visits per day were recorded over a 60-d preweaning period.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFResilience, when defined as the capacity of an animal to respond to short-term environmental challenges and to return to the prechallenge status, is a dynamic and complex trait. Resilient animals can reinforce the capacity of the herd to cope with often fluctuating and unpredictable environmental conditions. The ability of modern technologies to simultaneously record multiple performance measures of individual animals over time is a huge step forward to evaluate the resilience of farm animals.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFMicrofluidic systems have been extensively studied in recent years as potential alternatives for problematic conventional methods of sperm selection. However, despite the widespread use of simple straight channels in these systems, the impact of channel geometry on selected sperm quality has not been thoroughly investigated. To explore this further, we designed and fabricated serpentine microchannels with different radii of curvature, inspired by the tortuous structure of the cervix.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIn situations of negative energy balance (NEB) due to feed scarcity or high physiological demands, body energy reserves (BRs), mainly stored in adipose tissues, become the main sources of energy for ruminants. The capacity to mobilise and restore such BRs in response to different challenges is of major concern in the current context of breeding for resilience. Body condition score (BCS) is a common, practical indicator of BR variations throughout successive productive cycles, and quantitative tools for characterising such dynamics at the individual level are still lacking.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe Open Science movement aims at ensuring accessibility, reproducibility, and transparency of research. The adoption of Open Science practices in animal science, however, is still at an early stage. To move ahead as a field, we here provide seven practical steps to embrace Open Science in animal science.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFLiquid marbles are droplets enwrapped by a layer of hydrophobic micro/nanoparticles. Due to the isolation of fluid from its environment, reduction in evaporation rate, low friction with the surfaces, and capability of manipulation even on hydrophilic surfaces, liquid marbles have attracted the attention of researchers in digital microfluidics. This study investigates the manipulation of ferrofluid liquid marbles (FLMs) under DC and pulse width-modulated (PWM) magnetic fields generated by an electromagnet for the first time.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFMater Sci Eng C Mater Biol Appl
February 2021
Separating cells from the body and cultivating them in vitro will alter the function of cells. Therefore, for optimal cell culture in the laboratory, conditions similar to those of their natural growth should be provided. In previous studies, it has been shown that the use of cellular shape at the culture surface can regulate cellular function.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFHigh-producing ruminants need high-concentrate diets to satisfy their nutrient requirements and meet performance objectives. However, such diets induce sub-acute ruminal acidosis (SARA), which will adversely affect dry matter intake and lead to lower production performance. This work develops a novel modelling approach to quantify the capacity of dairy goats to adapt to a high-concentrate diet challenge at the individual level.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPhys Chem Chem Phys
November 2020
Resistive pulse sensing (RPS) has proved to be a viable method for the detection and characterization of micro and nano particles. Modern fabrication methods have introduced different nanopore geometries for resistive pulse sensors. In this paper, we have numerically studied the effects of membrane thickness and the pore's cone angle, as the main geometrical parameters, on the sensing performance of the nanopores used for nanoparticle detection in the resistive pulse sensing method.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFQuantifying robustness of farm animals is essential before it can be implemented in breeding and management strategies. A generic modelling and data analysis procedure was developed to quantify the feed intake response of growing pigs to perturbations in terms of resistance and resilience. The objective of this study was to apply this procedure to quantify these traits in 155 pigs from an experiment where they received diets with or without cereals contaminated with the mycotoxin deoxynivalenol (DON).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFImproving robustness of farm animals is one of the goals in breeding programmes. However, robustness is a complex trait and not measurable directly. The objective of this study was to quantify and characterize (elements of) robustness in growing pigs.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFWhat is a good (useful) mathematical model in animal science? For models constructed for prediction purposes, the question of model adequacy (usefulness) has been traditionally tackled by statistical analysis applied to observed experimental data relative to model-predicted variables. However, little attention has been paid to analytic tools that exploit the mathematical properties of the model equations. For example, in the context of model calibration, before attempting a numerical estimation of the model parameters, we might want to know if we have any chance of success in estimating a unique best value of the model parameters from available measurements.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFVariations in energy storage and expenditure are key elements for animals adaptation to rapidly changing environments. Because of the multiplicity of metabolic pathways, metabolic crossroads and interactions between anabolic and catabolic processes within and between different cells, the flexibility of energy stores in animal cells is difficult to describe by simple verbal, textual or graphic terms. We propose a mathematical model to study the influence of internal and external challenges on the dynamic behavior of energy stores and its consequence on cell energy status.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFDifferentiation of stem cells into mature cells through the use of physical approaches is of great interest. Here, we prepared smart nanoenvironments by cell-imprinted substrates based on chondrocytes, tenocytes, and semifibroblasts as templates and demonstrated their potential for differentiation, redifferentiation, and transdifferentiation. Analysis of shape and upregulation/downregulation of specific genes of stem cells, which were seeded on these cell-imprinted substrates, confirmed that imprinted substrates have the capability to induce specific shapes and molecular characteristics of the cell types that were used as templates for cell-imprinting.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFExtending lactation by voluntarily delaying rebreeding aims to improve fertility and milk production in the modern dairy cow. Previous studies have shown that increased energy concentrations in the ration induced greater total milk yield and lactation persistency defined by the duration and the shape of the lactation curve. In this paper, we hypothesized that increasing the supply of energy during the early lactation mobilization period would have a positive carryover effect on milk production during extended lactation.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIn this work, we report a nanofluidic gating mechanism that uses the thermal effect for modulating the ionic transport inside nanofluidic channels. The control of the ionic transport inside a nanochannel is demonstrated using electrical conductivity. A thermal gate controls the ionic transport more effectively than most of the other gating mechanisms previously described in the scientific literature.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFElectrical measurement is a widely used technique for the characterization of nanofluidic devices. The electrical conductivity of electrolytes is known to be dependent on temperature. However, the similarity of the temperature sensitivity of the electrical conductivity for bulk and nanochannels has not been validated.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPhys Chem Chem Phys
February 2015
Nanochannel conductance measurements are commonly performed to characterize nanofluidic devices Theoretical analysis and experimental investigations imply that the nanochannel conductance does not follow the macro-scale models. It is generally accepted that the conductance of nanochannels deviates from the bulk and trend to a constant value at low concentrations. In this work, we present an improved model for the nanochannel conductance that takes into account the surface chemistry of the nanochannel wall.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIn this work, the modeling of the digestion in the small intestine is developed by investigating specifically the effects of dietary fiber. As our previous model, this new version takes into account the three main phenomena of digestion: transit of the bolus, degradation of feedstuffs and absorption through the intestinal wall. However the two main physiochemical characteristics of dietary fiber, namely viscosity and water holding capacity, lead us to substantially modify our initial model by emphasizing the role of water and its intricated dynamics with dry matter in the bolus.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFA microfluidic platform is developed for the synthesis of monodisperse, 100 nm, chitosan based nanoparticles using nanogelation with ATP. The resulting nanoparticles tuned and enhanced transport and electrochemical properties of Nafion based nanocomposite membranes, which is highly favorable for fuel cell applications.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFWe describe a mathematical model of digestion in the small intestine. The main interest of our work is to consider simultaneously the different aspects of digestion i.e.
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