Mapping quantitative trait loci regions associated with Marek's disease on chicken autosomes by means of selective DNA pooling.

Marek's Disease (MD), which can result in neurological damage and tumour formation, has large effects on the economy and animal welfare of the poultry industry worldwide. Previously, we mapped autosomal MD QTL regions (QTLRs) by individual genotyping of an F population from a full-sib advanced intercross line. We further mapped MD QTLRs on the chicken Z chromosome (GGZ) using the same F population, and by selective DNA pooling (SDP) of 8 elite egg production lines.

Detection of fungal sequences in human brain: rDNA locus amplification and deep sequencing.

The aetiology of Alzheimer's disease (AD) and Parkinson's disease (PD) are unknown and tend to manifest at a late stage in life; even though these neurodegenerative diseases are caused by different affected proteins, they are both characterized by neuroinflammation. Links between bacterial and viral infection and AD/PD has been suggested in several studies, however, few have attempted to establish a link between fungal infection and AD/PD. In this study we adopted a nanopore-based sequencing approach to characterise the presence or absence of fungal genera in both human brain tissue and cerebrospinal fluid (CSF).

0.5T MRI as a competitor to CT for sinus imaging.

The goal of this study was to determine how radiologists' rating of image quality when using 0.5T Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) compares to Computed Tomography (CT) for visualization of pathology and evaluation of specific anatomic regions within the paranasal sinuses. 42 patients with clinical CT scans opted to have a 0.

Continual deep reinforcement learning with task-agnostic policy distillation.

Central to the development of universal learning systems is the ability to solve multiple tasks without retraining from scratch when new data arrives. This is crucial because each task requires significant training time. Addressing the problem of continual learning necessitates various methods due to the complexity of the problem space.

Experimental evidence of high tick infestation limiting chick growth and survival in a colonial seabird.

While numerous studies have established correlations between parasite load and negative effects on their hosts, establishing causality is more challenging because parasites can directly compromise host condition and survival or simply opportunistically thrive on an already weakened host. Here, we evaluated whether Ixodes uriae, a widespread seabird tick, can cause a decrease in growth parameters (body mass, bill length and growth rates) and survival of chicks of a colonially seabird, the black-browed albatross (Thalassarche melanophris) breeding on New Island (West Falkland). To investigate this, we daily removed the ticks from 28 randomly selected chicks during their first 14 days of life (treated chicks) and compared their growth and survival with 49 chicks of a control group.

Night flight facilitates late breeding catch-up in a long-distance migratory seabird.

Long-distance migrants must optimise their timing of breeding to capitalise on resources at both breeding and over-wintering sites. In species with protracted breeding seasons, departing earlier on migration might be advantageous, but is constrained by the ongoing breeding attempt. Here we investigated how breeding timing affects migratory strategies in the Manx shearwater (Puffinus puffinus), a trans-hemispheric migratory seabird with large temporal variation in the onset of breeding.

Single unit-derived connectivity networks in tuberous sclerosis complex reveal propensity for network hypersynchrony driven by tuber-tuber interactions.

Network hypersynchrony is emerging as an important system-level mechanism underlying seizures, as well as cognitive and behavioural impairments, in children with structural brain abnormalities. We investigated patterns of single neuron action potential behaviour in 206 neurons recorded from tubers, transmantle tails of tubers and normal looking cortex in 3 children with tuberous sclerosis. The patterns of neuronal firing on a neuron-by-neuron (autocorrelation) basis did not reveal any differences as a function of anatomy.

Strength and Poisson's ratio of fused filament fabrication parts made from carbon filler enhanced PEEK compounds at elevated temperatures.

Engineering plastics are finding widespread applications across a broad temperature spectrum, with additive manufacturing (AM) having now become commonplace for producing aerospace-grade components from polymers. However, there is limited data available on the behavior of plastic AM parts exposed to elevated temperatures. This study focuses on investigating the tensile strength, tensile modulus and Poisson's ratio of parts manufactured using fused filament fabrication (FFF) and polyetheretherketone (PEEK) plastics doped with two additives: short carbon fibers (SCFs) and multi-wall carbon nanotubes (MWCNTs).

Spatial co-distribution of tuberculosis prevalence and low BCG vaccination coverage in Ethiopia.

While bacille-calmette-guerin (BCG) vaccination is one of the recommended strategies for preventing tuberculosis (TB), its coverage is low in several countries, including Ethiopia. This study investigated the spatial co-distribution and drivers of TB prevalence and low BCG coverage in Ethiopia. This ecological study was conducted using data from a national TB prevalence survey and the Ethiopian demographic and health survey (EDHS) to map the spatial co-distribution of BCG vaccination coverage and TB prevalence.

Use of large language models as artificial intelligence tools in academic research and publishing among global clinical researchers.

With breakthroughs in Natural Language Processing and Artificial Intelligence (AI), the usage of Large Language Models (LLMs) in academic research has increased tremendously. Models such as Generative Pre-trained Transformer (GPT) are used by researchers in literature review, abstract screening, and manuscript drafting. However, these models also present the attendant challenge of providing ethically questionable scientific information.

A stacked CNN and random forest ensemble architecture for complex nursing activity recognition and nurse identification.

Nursing activity recognition has immense importance in the development of smart healthcare management and is an extremely challenging area of research in human activity recognition. The main reasons are an extreme class-imbalance problem and intra-class variability depending on both the subject and the recipient. In this paper, we apply a unique two-step feature extraction, coupled with an intermediate feature 'Angle' and a new feature called mean min max sum to render the features robust against intra-class variation.

Accurate calculation of the content volume, density and original weight of museum curated eggs.

Worldwide museums hold collections of eggshells representing material for descriptive studies. However, an obstacle to this is the lack of information about the original contents and weight of the entire egg (W). This study aimed to fill this gap though development of a methodological mechanism for calculating the volume of the egg interior (V), its density (D) and W.

Assessment of resilient modulus of soil using hybrid extreme gradient boosting models.

Accurate estimation of the soil resilient modulus (M) is essential for designing and monitoring pavements. However, experimental methods tend to be time-consuming and costly; regression equations and constitutive models usually have limited applications, while the predictive accuracy of some machine learning studies still has room for improvement. To forecast M efficiently and accurately, a new model named black-winged kite algorithm-extreme gradient boosting (BKA-XGBOOST) is proposed.

Rapid optical determination of salivary cortisol responses in individuals undergoing physiological and psychological stress.

Traditional methods for management of mental illnesses in the post-pandemic setting can be inaccessible for many individuals due to a multitude of reasons, including financial stresses and anxieties surrounding face-to-face interventions. The use of a point-of-care tool for self-management of stress levels and mental health status is the natural trajectory towards creating solutions for one of the primary contributors to the global burden of disease. Notably, cortisol is the main stress hormone and a key logical indicator of hypothalamic-pituitary adrenal (HPA) axis activity that governs the activation of the human stress system.

Microplastic hotspots mapped across the Southern Ocean reveal areas of potential ecological impact.

Marine microplastic is pervasive, polluting the remotest ecosystems including the Southern Ocean. Since this region is already undergoing climatic changes, the additional stress of microplastic pollution on the ecosystem should not be considered in isolation. We identify potential hotspot areas of ecological impact from a spatial overlap analysis of multiple data sets to understand where marine biota are likely to interact with local microplastic emissions (from ship traffic and human populations associated with scientific research and tourism).

Toward mechanistic understanding of wettability alteration in carbonate rocks in the presence of nanoparticles, gelatin biopolymer, and core-shell nanocomposite of FeO@gelatin.

Because a significant portion of oil remains in carbonate reservoirs, efficient techniques are essential to increase oil recovery from carbonate reservoirs. Wettability alteration is crucial for enhanced oil recovery (EOR) from oil-wet reservoirs. This study investigates the impact of different substances on the wettability of dolomite and calcite rocks.

Recent methane surges reveal heightened emissions from tropical inundated areas.

Record breaking atmospheric methane growth rates were observed in 2020 and 2021 (15.2±0.5 and 17.

AI allows pre-screening of FGFR3 mutational status using routine histology slides of muscle-invasive bladder cancer.

Pathogenic activating mutations in the fibroblast growth factor receptor 3 (FGFR3) drive disease maintenance and progression in urothelial cancer. 10-15% of muscle-invasive and metastatic urothelial cancer (MIBC/mUC) are FGFR3-mutant. Selective targeting of FGFR3 hotspot mutations with tyrosine kinase inhibitors (e.

INSIHGT: an accessible multi-scale, multi-modal 3D spatial biology platform.

Biological systems are complex, encompassing intertwined spatial, molecular and functional features. However, methodological constraints limit the completeness of information that can be extracted. Here, we report the development of INSIHGT, a non-destructive, accessible three-dimensional (3D) spatial biology method utilizing superchaotropes and host-guest chemistry to achieve homogeneous, deep penetration of macromolecular probes up to centimeter scales, providing reliable semi-quantitative signals throughout the tissue volume.

Cerebellar-driven cortical dynamics can enable task acquisition, switching and consolidation.

The brain must maintain a stable world model while rapidly adapting to the environment, but the underlying mechanisms are not known. Here, we posit that cortico-cerebellar loops play a key role in this process. We introduce a computational model of cerebellar networks that learn to drive cortical networks with task-outcome predictions.

Alleviating batch effects in cell type deconvolution with SCCAF-D.

Cell type deconvolution methods can impute cell proportions from bulk transcriptomics data, revealing changes in disease progression or organ development. But benchmarking studies often use simulated bulk data from the same source as the reference, which limits its application scenarios. This study examines batch effects in deconvolution and introduces SCCAF-D, a computational workflow that ensures a Pearson Correlation Coefficient above 0.

Minimal presynaptic protein machinery governing diverse kinetics of calcium-evoked neurotransmitter release.

Neurotransmitters are released from synaptic vesicles with remarkable precision in response to presynaptic calcium influx but exhibit significant heterogeneity in exocytosis timing and efficacy based on the recent history of activity. This heterogeneity is critical for information transfer in the brain, yet its molecular basis remains poorly understood. Here, we employ a biochemically-defined fusion assay under physiologically relevant conditions to delineate the minimal protein machinery sufficient to account for various modes of calcium-triggered vesicle fusion dynamics.

Infinitesimal optical singularity ruler for three-dimensional picometric metrology.

Optical metrology with picometer-scale precision in three-dimensional space is of considerable importance in modern physics and state of the art technology, optical interference is an effective method, but techniques with rapid spatial variation have the potential to enhance measurement precision, which will be required as measurement dimensions decrease. Here, the concept of the vanishingly small optical phase singularity ruler is introduced. Inspired by the well-known plumb-line technique used to locate the centroid, an analogous singularity line technique is proposed to locate the optical singularity with a precision of ~4.

Deep neural networks and humans both benefit from compositional language structure.

Deep neural networks drive the success of natural language processing. A fundamental property of language is its compositional structure, allowing humans to systematically produce forms for new meanings. For humans, languages with more compositional and transparent structures are typically easier to learn than those with opaque and irregular structures.

DDX18 coordinates nucleolus phase separation and nuclear organization to control the pluripotency of human embryonic stem cells.

Pluripotent stem cells possess a unique nuclear architecture characterized by a larger nucleus and more open chromatin, which underpins their ability to self-renew and differentiate. Here, we show that the nucleolus-specific RNA helicase DDX18 is essential for maintaining the pluripotency of human embryonic stem cells. Using techniques such as Hi-C, DNA/RNA-FISH, and biomolecular condensate analysis, we demonstrate that DDX18 regulates nucleolus phase separation and nuclear organization by interacting with NPM1 in the granular nucleolar component, driven by specific nucleolar RNAs.