Feeding whole prey to felids has shown to benefit their gastrointestinal health. Whether this effect is caused by the chemical or physical nature of whole prey is unknown. Fifteen domestic cats, as a model for strict carnivores, were either fed minced mice (MM) or whole mice (WM), to determine the effect of food structure on digestibility, mean urinary excretion time (MUET) of 15N, intestinal microbial activity and fermentation products. Faeces samples were collected after feeding all cats a commercially available extruded diet (EXT) for 10 d before feeding for 19 d the MM and WM diets with faeces and urine collected from day 11 to 15. Samples for microbiota composition and determination of MUET were obtained from day 16 to 19. The physical structure of the mice diet (minced or not) did not affect large intestinal fermentation as total SCFA and branched-chain fatty acid (BCFA), and most biogenic amine (BA) concentrations were not different (P > 0·10). When changing from EXT to the mice diets, the microbial community composition shifted from a carbolytic (Prevotellaceae) to proteolytic (Fusobacteriaceae) profile and led to a reduced faecal acetic to propionic acid ratio, SCFA, total BCFA (P < 0·001), NH3 (P = 0·04), total BA (P < 0·001) and para-cresol (P = 0·08). The results of this study indicate that food structure within a whole-prey diet is less important than the overall diet type, with major shifts in microbiome and decrease in potentially harmful fermentation products when diet changes from extruded to mice. This urges for careful consideration of the consequences of prey-based diets for gut health in cats.

Results of stabilization for the higher order of the Kadomtsev-Petviashvili equation are presented in this manuscript. Precisely, we prove with two different approaches that under the presence of a damping mechanism and an internal delay term (anti-damping) the solutions of the Kawahara–Kadomtsev–Petviashvili equation are locally and globally exponentially stable. The main novelty of this work is that we present the optimal constant, as well as the minimal time, that ensures that the energy associated with this system goes to zero exponentially.

It is consistent relative to an inaccessible cardinal that ZF+DC holds, and the hypergraph of isosceles triangles on $\mathbb {R}^2$ has countable chromatic number while the hypergraph of isosceles triangles on $\mathbb {R}^3$ has uncountable chromatic number.

Infrastructures are central to processes of state formation. The revival of materialism in International Relations has made an important contribution to our understanding of states through careful analysis of the politics of infrastructure and state building. Yet, to date, engagement with the state-theoretical tradition associated with the work of Antonio Gramsci, Nicos Poulantzas, and Bob Jessop has been absent. Through comparison with the external-relational ontology of Bruno Latour and actor-network theory (ANT), this article argues that state theory and its internal-relational ontology avoids reifying the state while providing an analysis of infrastructure and state formation sensitive to the historical reproduction of social orders over time. Developing Gramsci’s concept of the ‘integral state’, it emphasises the necessary interpenetration between civil society, the state apparatus, and the creation of infrastructure. These conceptual arguments are illustrated through an analysis of the United States’ development of nuclear infrastructures during the early Cold War period, in the internal relations between infrastructure and the integral state are explored through Civil Defense Education programmes. Clarifying the internal relations of past, present, and potential future forms of socio-technical order is an important task for rethinking the politics of technological design in International Relations.

The whitefly, Bemisia tabaci (Gennadius) is documented as a major pest on soybean. It was reported that whitefly response towards its hosts and their cultivars varies, and is mediated through various host-related factors. Considering the significance of leaf morphological characteristics in influencing the host–whitefly responses, the present investigation was conducted in screen-house conditions to study the prevailing variations in leaf morphological characteristics of soybean genotypes and their role in governing the adult whitefly attractiveness and oviposition preference. In the multiple-choice test, the whitefly population (eggs, nymphs and adults) was found to be lowest in moderately resistant genotypes (SL 1028 and SL 1074) compared to highly susceptible (DS 3105) and susceptible genotypes (SL 688, SL 958 and SL 1113). The foliar trichomes were characterized using scanning electron microscopy and leaf area, leaf lamina thickness and leaf shape data were acquired using standard procedures. To determine the factors involved in the resistance/susceptible responses towards whitefly, Pearson correlation was applied between the morphological characteristics and the whitefly population. The results show that the leaf area, trichome density, trichome length and trichome angle showed a significant positive correlation with the whitefly population, whereas leaf lamina thickness was negatively correlated. Thus, for developing whitefly-resistant germplasm, breeders should choose genotypes having narrow and thick leaves with sparse, short and flat trichomes.

The names of Athenian warships are a valuable source for cultural history, but scholars have long laboured without a sense of how these names were chosen. In a recent article, the present author has suggested that naval architects (master craftsmen elected by the Athenian Assembly) were responsible for naming each vessel they built. This explanation applies to the great majority of Athenian warship names known to us, but exceptions to the rule remain. Naval architects cannot have named vessels they did not build, and we know of several foreign-built ships (e.g., captured or donated ships) in the Athenian fleet. Vessels with the special status of ‘sacred triremes’ must also have followed their own unique naming procedure. Such exceptional cases are the subject of this paper.

Proverbs exist in a plethora of languages to express worldly wisdom, frequently in a metaphorical way. A number of proverbs are documented in more than one language since speakers adopt them from cultures they have been in contact with. The focus of the present study is on animal proverbs in English which have a foreign equivalent in another language, such as French, Latin, Greek, Japanese or Arabic. The Oxford Dictionary of Proverbs (henceforth referred to as the ODP), edited by Jennifer Speake in 2015, is a valuable source for collecting the variety of animal proverbs which have become established in English over time.

In this paper, we study intersection configurations – which describe the behaviour of multiple (finite) intersections of subgroups with respect to finite generability – in the realm of free and free times free-abelian (FTFA) groups. We say that a configuration is realizable in a group $G$ if there exist subgroups $H_1,\ldots, H_k \leqslant G$ realizing it. It is well known that free groups ${\mathbb {F}_{n}}$ satisfy the Howson property: the intersection of any two finitely generated subgroups is again finitely generated. We show that the Howson property is indeed the only obstruction for multiple intersection configurations to be realizable within nonabelian free groups. On the contrary, FTFA groups ${\mathbb {F}_{n}} \times \mathbb {Z}^m$ are well known to be non-Howson. We also study multiple intersections within FTFA groups, providing an algorithm to decide, given $k\geq 2$ finitely generated subgroups, whether their intersection is again finitely generated and, in the affirmative case, compute a ‘basis’ for it. We finally prove that any intersection configuration is realizable in an FTFA group ${\mathbb {F}_{n}} \times \mathbb {Z}^m$, for $n\geq 2$ and large enough $m$. As a consequence, we exhibit finitely presented groups where every intersection configuration is realizable.

Menges (2022) seeks to identify the kind of blame that should be at issue in debates between skeptics and anti-skeptics about responsibility. Menges argues that such blame is constituted by responses that the target has a claim against, and by the blamer’s thought that they have forfeited this claim due to their bad action and state while engaged in that action. I identify a class of blame responses that Menges mistakenly excludes and offer an alternative, more general, account in which the distinctive feature of controversial blame isn’t claim forfeiture, but the defeat of reasons grounded in the target’s interests.

Orthoamphibole, clinoamphibole and magnetite are common minerals in altered rocks associated spatially with Palaeoproterozoic volcanogenic massive sulfide (VMS) deposits in Colorado, USA and metamorphosed to the amphibolite facies. These altered rocks are dominated by the assemblage orthoamphibole (anthophyllite/gedrite)–cordierite–magnetite±gahnite±sulfides. Magnetite also occurs in granitoids, banded iron formations, quartz garnetite, and in metallic mineralisation consisting of semi-massive pyrite, pyrrhotite, chalcopyrite, and sphalerite with subordinate galena, gahnite and magnetite; amphibole also occurs in amphibolite. The precursor to the anthophyllite/gedrite–cordierite assemblages was probably the assemblage quartz–chlorite formed from hydrothermal ore-bearing fluids (~250° to 400°C) associated with the formation of metallic minerals in the massive sulfide deposits.

Element–element variation diagrams for amphibole, magnetite and ilmenite based on LA-ICP-MS data and Principal Component Analysis (PCA) for orthoamphiboles and magnetite show a broad range of compositions which are primarily dependent upon the nature of the host rock associated spatially with the deposits. Although discrimination plots of Al/(Zn+Ca) vs Cu/(Si+Ca) and Sn/Ga vs Al/Co for magnetite do not indicate a VMS origin, the concentration of Al+Mn together with Ti+V and Sn vs Ti support a hydrothermal rather than a magmatic origin for magnetite. Principal Component Analyses also show that magnetite and orthoamphibole in metamorphosed altered rocks and sulfide zones have distinctive eigenvalues that allow them to be used as prospective pathfinders for VMS deposits in Colorado. This, in conjunction with the contents of Zn and Al in magnetite, Zn and Pb in amphibole, ilmenite and magnetite, the Cu content of orthoamphibole and ilmenite, and possibly the Ga and Sn concentrations of magnetite constitute effective exploration vectors.

We establish asymptotic formulas for all the eigenvalues of the linearization problem of the Neumann problem for the scalar field equation in a finite interval

\[ \begin{cases} \varepsilon^2u_{xx}-u+u^3=0, & 0< x<1,\\ u_x(0)=u_x(1)=0. \end{cases} \]

$\varepsilon ^2u_{xx}+u-u^3=0$

$-3$

$0$

$-3$

$0$

The Paisley Cave archeological site in the Northern Great Basin has provided a rich archaeological record from 13,000 to 6000 cal yr BP, including abundant mammalian coprolites preserved in a well-dated stratigraphy. Here we analyze and contrast pollen from within coprolites and pollen in associated sediments to examine vegetation history and assess whether coprolite pollen provides unique information with respect to the coprolite producer, such as the use of specific habitats, foods, or water sources. We found that the dissimilarity of pollen assemblages between coprolites and associated sediments was greater than the serial dissimilarity between stratigraphically adjacent samples within either group. Serial dissimilarity within types was not greater for coprolites than sediments, as would be expected if there were unique pollen signatures derived from the short period (1–2 days) represented by each coprolite. Compared with sediment pollen assemblages, the coprolites had higher abundances of lighter pollen types, and some individual samples were high in wetland taxa (especially Typha). Our results are consistent with coprolite pollen representing short time periods collected as a mammal moves on the landscape, whereas sediment pollen reflects longer time periods and more regional vegetation indicators.

Tests based on heteroskedasticity robust standard errors are an important technique in econometric practice. Choosing the right critical value, however, is not simple at all: conventional critical values based on asymptotics often lead to severe size distortions, and so do existing adjustments including the bootstrap. To avoid these issues, we suggest to use smallest size-controlling critical values, the generic existence of which we prove in this article for the commonly used test statistics. Furthermore, sufficient and often also necessary conditions for their existence are given that are easy to check. Granted their existence, these critical values are the canonical choice: larger critical values result in unnecessary power loss, whereas smaller critical values lead to overrejections under the null hypothesis, make spurious discoveries more likely, and thus are invalid. We suggest algorithms to numerically determine the proposed critical values and provide implementations in accompanying software. Finally, we numerically study the behavior of the proposed testing procedures, including their power properties.

Nordic Nutrition Recommendations recommend reducing red and processed meat and increasing fish consumption, but the impact of this replacement on mortality is understudied. This study investigated the replacement of red and processed meat with fish in relation to mortality. Of 83 304 women in the Norwegian Women and Cancer Study (NOWAC) study, 9420 died during a median of 21·0 years of follow-up. The hazard ratios (HR) for mortality were estimated using Cox proportional hazards regression with analyses stratified on red and processed meat intake due to non-linearity. Higher processed meat (> 30 g/d), red and processed meat (> 50 g/d), and fatty fish consumption were associated with higher mortality, while red meat and lean fish consumption were neutral or beneficial. Among women with higher processed meat intake (> 30 g/d), replacing 20 g/d with lean fish was associated with lower all-cause (HR 0·92, 95 % CI 0·89, 0·96), cancer (HR 0·92, 95 % CI 0·88, 0·97) and CVD mortality (HR 0·82, 95 % CI 0·74, 0·90), while replacing with fatty fish was associated with lower CVD mortality (HR 0·87, 95 % CI 0·77, 0·97), but not with all-cause or cancer mortality. Replacing processed meat with fish among women with lower processed meat intake (≤ 30 g/d) or replacing red meat with fish was not associated with mortality. Replacing processed meat with lean or fatty fish may lower the risk of premature deaths in Norwegian women, but only in women with high intake of processed meat. These findings suggest that interventions to reduce processed meat intake should target high consumers.

This paper deals with some Monge–Ampère type equations involving the gradient that are elliptic in the framework of convex functions. First, we show that such equations may be obtained by minimizing a suitable functional. Moreover, we investigate a P-function associated with the solution to a boundary value problem of our generalized Monge–Ampère equation in a bounded convex domain. It will be shown that this P-function attains its maximum value on the boundary of the underlying domain. Furthermore, we show that such a P-function is actually identically constant when the underlying domain is a ball. Therefore, our result provides a best possible maximum principles in the sense of L. E. Payne. Finally, in case of dimension 2, we prove that this P-function also attains its minimum value on the boundary of the underlying domain. As an application, we will show that the solvability of a Serrin’s type overdetermined problem for our generalized Monge–Ampère type equation forces the underlying domain to be a ball.

This article examines the relationship between public services and the urban middling sort in provincial England from 1550 to 1640 through comparative case-studies of the finance and management of waterworks, the creation of new skilled roles and the cultural import of water systems in Bristol, Chester and Ipswich. It argues that the middling sort were vital in establishing public services and that water provision centred not only on its value as a material and financial resource, but also as an expanding source of patronage and social capital that shaped and entrenched the emergence of middling groups in society.