This study evaluated the effect of different medium-chain to long-chain fatty acid (MCFA/LCFA, M/L) ratios on growth performance, intestinal function, antioxidant capacity, and gut microbiota in piglets. A total of 250 piglets were randomly assigned to five groups with five replicates, each containing ten pigs. The diets, containing varying amounts of MCFA-rich coconut oil and LCFA-rich soybean oil, resulted in M/L ratios of 0, 2.1%, 4.2%, 8.8%, and 33.8%. Results showed that both final body weight and average daily weight gain increased as the M/L ratio increased (P < 0.05), while the 8.8% M/L ratio diet exhibited the lowest feed-to-gain ratio (P < 0.05). As the M/L ratio increases, the contents of SOD and GSH-Px were increased and MDA was decreased in serum (P <0.05). The 8.8% and 33.8% M/L diets improved ileal and jejunal morphology (P < 0.05), as indicated by greater villus height and villus height/crypt depth ratios. Furthermore, increasing M/L ratios from 0 to 33.8% increased expression of tight junction proteins occludin and ZO-1 in the jejunum (P < 0.05). The 33.8% M/L ratio reduced microbial α-diversity (P < 0.05), while 8.8% M/L diet significantly increased the abundance of beneficial bacteria (e.g., Lactobacilli, Prevotella) and decreased harmful bacteria (e.g., Escherichia-Shigella, Enterococcus) in the cecum (P < 0.05). In summary, our study found that 8.8% of dietary M/L ratios significantly improved growth performance, likely through modulating intestinal function, antioxidant activity, and gut microbial composition.

To reveal the community structuring mechanism of the pebble interstitial macrofauna, we examined the community structure and its relationship with abiotic environmental factors on a pebble beach in Honshu, central Japan (northwest Pacific). Throughout the year-round survey, we found 66 species from 18 classes in 9 phyla, most of which were either endemic or undescribed species. This is a noticeably higher species diversity compared to the common theory (quite low biodiversity) for pebble beaches and also indicates independence from other environments. Moreover, the communities were divided into five groups through clustering, which were significantly explained by sediment particle size and tidal level using RDA (Redundancy Analysis). However, their interpretabilities were moderate, suggesting that the community structure was moderately controlled by environmental factors. This could be owing to the optimization of the benefit of interspecific ecological niche isolation and the cost of recovering from the disturbance. Consequently, the present study reveals the presence of diverse and unique macrobenthic communities that inhabit the pebble beach environment in Japan and are controlled by the abiotic environmental characteristics of microhabitats.

This study investigated yeast diversity and physicochemical changes during the production of Kargı Tulum cheese, a traditional Turkish cheese. Samples were collected at six key stages, from raw milk to the final product, and analysed for parameters including pH, titratable acidity, dry matter, fat, salt, protein, water-soluble protein and maturation index. During ripening, pH values ranged from 3.03 ± 0.017 to 3.70 ± 0.017, while titratable acidity increased from 0.91% ± 0.16% to 3.33% ± 0.17%. Dry matter and fat content increased significantly, reaching 50.41% ± 1.56% and 33.50% ± 5.41%, respectively. Salt content ranged from 0.58% ± 0.08% to 3.03% ± 0.58%, and protein content from 3.70% ± 0.93% to 20.63% ± 1.16%. The maturation index increased from 5.54% ± 0.71% to 16.26% ± 4.35%, indicating ongoing proteolysis. A total of 42 yeast isolates were phenotypically characterized and grouped by sugar fermentation ability, growth and salt tolerance. Internal transcribed spacer region sequencing identified key yeast species, including Kazachstania unispora, Pichia fermentans, Kluyveromyces lactis, Pichia membranifaciens and Geotrichum candidum. These species play significant roles in cheese maturation, contributing to flavour and texture. The results emphasize the importance of indigenous yeast populations in traditional cheese production and offer insights for improving fermentation and ripening processes to enhance cheese quality.

This article examines the place of habit in the medical thought and practices of 18th-century Britain. Scholars, including Steven Shapin and Phil Withington, have shown that habit was important to the broadly humoral understandings of health, disease, and regimen that dominated in Europe for much of the early modern period. In this article, I offer the first sustained attempt to understand the role of habit in the medical thought of 18th-century Britain, focusing on the influential Scottish physician William Cullen. For the first time engaging with all of Cullen’s work on habit, including his correspondence, pathological lectures, and clinical lectures, I show that medics of the 18th century developed a new understanding of habit, linked to changing ideas about the nervous system. Increasingly, they emphasised the role that habit could play in causing the periodical return of bodily functions, even when there appeared to be no plausible physical cause. In so doing, medics engaged with one of the key debates of the 18th century – the contested notion that human nature itself might be contingent on social and environmental conditions. For them, habit provided the means by which society could quite literally change the body. These ideas come through clearly in the striking suggestion – hitherto unnoticed – that menstruation was the product of habit, arising not from nature but from culture. Discussions of menstruation reveal the political stakes of habit, with links to highly contested debates about the role that bodies of different genders might play in society.

Because it is manifest that ‘the world’, traditionally said to be God’s good creation, is shot through with profound ‘wrongs’, the question arises about the sense in which the physical creation is good in and of itself, for its own sake. This essay first briefly argues that theological strategies attempting to ground creation’s goodness in either God’s relating to reconcile sinful humankind or in God’s relating in eschatological blessing are inadequate, and then urges that it can be adequately grounded in a doctrine of creation that shifts focus from offering a causal explanation of the existence of ‘the world’ to description of what it is to be ‘creature’, backed by an exegetical shift in how the text that traditionally warrants doctrines of creation, Genesis 1:1-2:25, is read. That shift entails acknowledgement of two theological aporias, one of which it is important to stress is theologically insoluble, while the other is soluble.

In The Epistemology of Disasters and Social Change (2024)—an energetic dovetail of disaster sociology and feminist epistemology—Pascoe and Stirling claim there is no such thing as a natural disaster, as all disasters are the product/result of human construction. They use Audre Lorde’s poem, “A Litany for Survival” to anchor their project and focus on Lorde’s understanding of the relationship between poetry, knowledge, and survival to critique dominant the disaster imaginaries. I suggest that a more accurate use of “A Litany for Survival” leans toward a phenomenological epistemology of surviving, rather than a focus on the survivor.

Stone-carved “wheels of Dhamma” (dhammacakkas) symbolizing the Buddha’s enduring teachings constitute an aesthetic corpus of objects once raised on columns set in ornate bases. These dhammacakkas were produced in central Thailand in the second half of the first millennium during the Dvāravatī period. Some carry Pali inscriptions which bear witness to the state of the Pali textual tradition in central Siam in the seventh to ninth centuries. Given that no Pali manuscripts from South or Southeast Asia from this early period survive, these epigraphic witnesses are extremely important. This research article presents inscriptions inscribed on a Dvāravatī-period dhammacakka and an octagonal pillar recovered in Thailand’s Chainat province. A closer examination of the epigraphs has allowed us to give improved readings of the available fragments. This has enabled us to present what may be described as the oldest extant recension of the core passages of the Pali Dhammacakkappavattana, Gotama the Buddha’s first teaching.

Exhaustive physical exercise can impact intestinal health, affecting permeability, inflammation, and the production of short-chain fatty acids (SCFA). Dietary modifications, such as the consumption of whey protein concentrate (WPC) and curcumin (CCM), can modulate these effects due to their anti-inflammatory and antioxidant properties. This study evaluated the impact of WPC+CCM and CCM in Wistar rats submitted to exhaustive exercise (EE). Forty-eight male Wistar rats (age:12 weeks) were randomly divided into 6 groups (n=8). After 4 weeks on diet, rats from EE groups were submitted to an exhaustive swimming test. Twenty-four hours later, animals from all experimental groups were euthanized, and had feces collected from the cecum. The colon was dissected for interest analysis. SCFA, oxidative stress, real-time polymerase chain reaction, and histomorphometry analyses were performed. The results showed that the SCFA content remained stable, malondialdehyde levels did not vary, but the WPC+CCM group showed higher carbonylated protein concentration. Nitric oxide decreased in the treated groups, while antioxidant enzymes increased in the WPC+CCM and CCM groups, except for glutathione, which decreased. The expression of Nrf2, NF-κB, and occludin were maintained, and the expression of claudin increased after physical stress with the consumption of WPC+CCM. CCM increased mucosal thickness and preserved goblet cells. In conclusion, WPC+CCM prevented increased oxidative stress and inflammation and preserved the production of SCFA, antioxidant activity, and intestinal integrity of rats after exhaustive exercise.

To determine the long-term effects of transition milk (TRANS), 30 female Holstein calves were allocated to two feeding groups (n = 15/group) after colostrum intake, receiving either 12 L of TRANS of their dam or 12 L of milk replacer (MR) per day. After 5 d of differential feeding, all calves received 12 L of MR/d. Until calving, heifers were weighed monthly. After calving, BW was recorded twice daily after milking. Body condition (BCS) and back fat thickness (BFT) were scored biweekly. Milk yield was recorded twice daily until d 200 in milk. Milk composition (protein, fat, and lactose), as well as somatic cell count (SCC) were analysed biweekly. Blood samples were taken 3 weeks before calving, at the day of calving and 3 weeks thereafter. Oxidative status was assessed as ferric reducing ability of plasma (FRAP) for antioxidative capacity, and as reactive oxygen metabolites via the dROM assay. Oxidative damage of lipids was measured via the thiobarbituric acid-reactive substances (TBARS) assay; peroxidized proteins were assessed using the advanced oxidation protein products (AOPP) assay. Performance until first insemination did not differ between the groups, as well as BW development until the first weeks of lactation. From week 7 of lactation onwards, TRANS had less BW than MR heifers but tended to have a higher BCS. Milk yield and composition did not differ between both treatments. Marker for oxidative stress showed typical patterns of increasing antioxidants before calving and increase in prooxidants after calving in both treatment groups. The results indicate that feeding TRANS in the first 5 days of life had no long-term effects on performance in the first lactation, except for lower postpartum BW in heifers fed TRANS than MR, under the current rearing and management conditions.

Dieting is a global emerging trend in recent years as more people strive to adhere to food restriction plans for weight management in obese people and to achieve desired slim body. This strategy may have unforeseen repercussions in females that may affect reproductive potential. Therefore, we aimed to investigate the impact of dietary stress on reproductive hormone levels, histoarchitecture of the ovary, autophagy and apoptosis markers in the rat ovary. Data suggest that dietary stress caused due to food deprivation decreased body weight and relative ovary weight, luteinising hormone (LH), follicular stimulating hormone (FSH) and estradiol-17β levels. The dietary stress reduced number of primary follicles, altered the histoarchitecture of the ovary, increased number of fragmented and irregular shape oocytes. Dietary stress induced autophagy signaling by inhibiting mTOR and increasing Lamp-1, LC-3 and Beclin-1 in the ovarian follicles. In addition, dietary stress induced proapoptotic signaling pathway by decreasing Bcl-2 and increasing Bax as well as Cytochrome-c expressions in the ovary. Taken together, these finding suggest that dietary stress caused due to food deprivation reduced reproductive hormones level, induced autophagy and apoptotic signaling pathways that affected histoarchitecture of the ovary, ovarian function, oocyte quality and thereby reproductive potential.

In this paper, we build some ergodic theorems involving the function $\Omega $, where $\Omega (n)$ denotes the number of prime factors of a natural number n counted with multiplicities. As a combinatorial application, it is shown that for any $k\in \mathbb {N}$ and every $A\subset \mathbb {N}$ with positive upper Banach density, there are $a,d\in \mathbb {N}$ such that $a,a+d,\ldots, a+kd,a+\Omega(d)\in A.$

Building on two recent contributions to this journal, this paper investigates the possible connections between Hadrian’s tour of the north-western provinces in a.d. 121–23, the expeditio Britannica, the disappearance of the Ninth Legion, the Hadrianic fire of London and the cessation of work at several sites along Hadrian’s Wall. These events are discussed as independent elements, their date ranges each narrowed to what is normally expected. The convergence of evidence invites a fresh examination of the possibility that a major security crisis erupted following the imperial visit of a.d. 122. Potential causes and consequences are briefly explored, including the apparent suppression of this ignominious episode.

This Perspective article addresses the issue of recovery in mental health research, policy and practice from a service user/survivor perspective. In doing so, it brings to bear a fundamentally different viewpoint to that which has dominated psychiatric history, one based on lived experience rather than the ideological allegiances of its founders. The article addresses the modern history of Western mental health provision, its over dependence on medicalised individual understandings of wellbeing, the limitations this has imposed and the challenges it has been subjected to. The issue of recovery is examined in its historical context, exploring its strengths and weaknesses. The latter weaknesses have been magnified by the association of recovery by different governments, nationally and internationally, with pressing mental health service users and others experiencing distress into employment; this is often poor quality and unsupported employment. The article puts this in the broader context of a number of values and principles underpinning both the developing psychiatric system survivor movement and the emerging international interest in Mad Studies. In doing so, the article offers a basis for the radical reform of both understandings of madness and mental distress, recognition of their holistic relations and more helpful routes to offering support and engaging with the lived experience and experiential knowledge of mental health service users.