As a source of protein and other nutrients for a growing population, edible insect production offers environmental and sustainability advantages over traditional meat production. Although around 2 billion people consume insects worldwide, Western consumers are still reluctant to practice entomophagy, hindered largely by neophobia and negative emotions. In addition to sensory quality and safety, an informational component may be crucial to consumers' decision making involving insect consumption.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAdenovirus vectors possess a good safety profile, an extensive genome, a range of host cells, high viral yield, and the ability to elicit broad humoral and cellular immune responses. Adenovirus vectors are widely used in infectious disease research for future vaccine development and gene therapy. In this study, we obtained a fowl adenovirus serotype 4 (FAdV-4) isolate from sick chickens with hepatitis-hydropericardium syndrome (HHS) and conducted animal regression text to clarify biological pathology.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPixel-level information of remote sensing images is of great value in many fields. CNN has a strong ability to extract image backbone features, but due to the localization of convolution operation, it is challenging to directly obtain global feature information and contextual semantic interaction, which makes it difficult for a pure CNN model to obtain higher precision results in semantic segmentation of remote sensing images. Inspired by the Swin Transformer with global feature coding capability, we design a two-branch multi-scale semantic segmentation network (TMNet) for remote sensing images.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFEdible insects are recognized as a potential alternative and sustainable source of high-quality protein for the human diet. Entomophagy is highly related to negative emotions that may cause reluctance to adopt insects as food in Western countries. During human interaction, a person's facial emotional expression (FEE) may influence other people's emotional responses.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFEpistatic effects are an important part of the genetic effect of complex traits in livestock. In this study, we used 218 synthetic ewes from the Xinjiang Academy of Agricultural Reclamation in China to identify interacting paired with genome-wide single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) associated with birth weight, weaning weight, and one-yearling weight. We detected 2 and 66 SNP-SNP interactions of sheep birth weight and weaning weight, respectively.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFChronic orchialgia is a common disease in department of urology and andrology. The etiology is complex, and the treatment is difficult. In severe cases, orchiectomy is even necessary.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFRecombination plays important roles in the genetic diversity and evolution of Enterovirus A71 (EV-A71). The phylogenetics of EV-A71 in mainland China found that one strain DL71 formed a new subgenotype C6 with unknown origin. This study investigated the detailed genetic characteristics of the new variant.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Lactobacillus reuteri strains are widely used as probiotics to prevent and treat inflammatory bowel disease by modulating the host's immune system. However, the underlying mechanisms by which they communicate with the host have not been clearly understood. Bacterial extracellular vesicles (EVs) have been considered as important mediators of host-pathogen interactions, but their potential role in commensals-host crosstalk has not been widely studied.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAvian pathogenic (APEC) infection in poultry causes enormous economic losses and public health risks. Bacterial outer membrane vesicles (OMVs) and nano-sized proteolipids enriched with various immunogenic molecules have gained extensive interest as novel nanovaccines against bacterial infections. In this study, after the preparation of APEC O2-derived OMVs (APEC_OMVs) using the ultracentrifugation method and characterization of them using electron microscopy and nanoparticle tracking analyses, we examined the safety and vaccination effect of APEC_OMVs in broiler chicks and investigated the underlying immunological mechanism of protection.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Probiotic Escherichia coli Nissle 1917 (EcN) has been widely studied for the treatment of intestinal inflammatory diseases and infectious diarrhea, but the mechanisms by which they communicate with the host are not well-known. Outer membrane vesicles (OMVs) are produced by Gram-negative bacteria and deliver microbial molecules to distant target cells in the host, which play a very important role in mediating bacteria-host communication. Here, we aimed to investigate whether EcN-derived OMVs (EcN_OMVs) could mediate immune regulation in macrophages.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: The well-known fact that avian pathogenic Escherichia coli (APEC) is harder to prevent due to its numerous serogroups has promoted the development of biological immunostimulatory materials as new vaccine candidates in poultry farms. Bacterial outer membrane vesicles (OMVs), known as spherical nanovesicles enriched with various immunostimulants, are naturally secreted by Gram-negative bacteria, and have gained much attention for developing effective vaccine candidates. Recent report has demonstrated that OMVs of APEC O78 can induce protective immunity in chickens.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe Brassica-specific gene MS5 mediates early meiotic progression, and its allelic variants contribute to a valuable genic male sterility three-line hybrid production system in rapeseed (Brassica napus L.). However, the underlying mechanisms of its triallelic inheritance are poorly understood.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFMS5 is a meiosis-related protein belonging to the Brassicaceae-specific domain of unknown function family and characterized by the MS5 superfamily domain (MSD). In this study, we elucidated the three-dimensional crystal structure and potential biochemical function of the MSD. It was observed that the MSD adopts a cystatin-like fold, mainly consisting of a central α-helix and four- or five-stranded antiparallel β-sheets that wrap around it.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFWith increasing demand for ready-to-eat (RTE) fresh vegetables, it is important to understand how visual information cues, both intrinsic and extrinsic, affect consumer perception of these products. This study developed an emotional and wellness lexicon related to RTE salads. Subsequent questionnaires with images of salads were used to quantify consumer (N = 150) emotional and hedonic perceptions related to green color shade, shape/size of pieces, multicolor scheme, product name, and packaging.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFVisual cues have been reported to influence taste and flavor perceptions. The objectives of this study were to evaluate the impact of visual cues (color and viscosity) of syrups on expected sweetness and bitterness perception (Study I), and on sweetness perception and sweetness liking of brewed coffee after syrup had been added, and the amount of syrups to be added to brewed coffee (Study II). For Study I, the visual stimuli were developed by varying viscosity (80, 800, and 8000 cP) and yellow index (YI) (0.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThis study aimed to investigate the effects of different levels of methionine hydroxyl analogue chelated zinc (MHA-Zn) on antioxidant capacity and liver metabolism of aged laying hens. A total of 960 57-week-old layers were fed a basal diet (Zn: 35.08 mg/kg) without extra zinc for two weeks, and then allocated to four treatments consisting of eight replicates of 30 birds each for 14 weeks.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIn this paper, we demonstrate high performance ultrathin silver (Ag) transparent electrodes with a thin MoO₃ nucleation layer based on the thermal evaporation method. The MoO₃/Ag transparent electrodes fabricated at different deposition rates were compared systematically on aspects of the transmission spectrum, surface resistance, and surface morphology. Our study indicates that with the presence of the MoO₃ nucleation layer, an Ag film of only 7 nm thick can achieve percolation and the film is porous instead of forming isolated islands.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe very low-density lipoprotein receptor (VLDLR) transports egg yolk precursors into oocytes. However, our knowledge of the distribution patterns of VLDLR variants among breeds and their relationship to egg production is still incomplete. In this study, eight single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) that account for 87% of all VLDLR variants were genotyped in Nick Chick (NC, n=91), Lohmann Brown (LohB, n=50) and Lueyang (LY, n=381) chickens, the latter being an Chinese indigenous breed.
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