The impact of synchronising the collection and supply of breast milk produced during the day and night on improving long-term health outcomes for preterm infants is discussed, focusing on breast milk as a valuable source of melatonin, an essential synchroniser of biological rhythms.

Ochetosoma heterocoelium (Travassos, 1921) was collected from the mouth and oesophagus of a pit viper, Bothrops moojeni Hoge, 1966 in São Sebastião do Paraíso Farm (21°51’48.26" S, 48°26’56.78" W), municipality of Boa Esperança do Sul, São Paulo State, Brazil. In this study, we provide the first molecular characterisation of this digenean using 28S rDNA and COI sequences, and its phylogenetic position within the Plagiorchiida is assessed. Furthermore, new morphological features are added to the diagnosis of the species, and scanning electron microscopy photomicrographs are presented. Sequences of the 28S rRNA gene of O. heterocoelium were successfully obtained and aligned with 35 digenean species belonging to Plagiorchiida. Only three congeners – O. aniarum (Leidy, 1890), O elongatum (Seo et al. 2024), and O. kansense (Crow, 1913) – have been sequenced for this molecular marker. The newly sequenced individuals of O. heterocoelium are 98.7% and 99.4% similar to O. aniarum and O. kansensis, respectively, and Ochetosoma is not recovered as a monophyletic group. Dasymetra nicolli Holl and Allison, 1935 and Lechriorchis tygarti Talbot, 1933 are nested with Ochetosoma.

For almost eight decades, productivity in the United States agricultural sector has substantially increased, in large extent due to the adoption of technological innovations. Despite the increased utilization of technology, questions remain regarding which producers are more likely to adopt a greater number of technological innovations. This research seeks to understand how commodity diversification strategies, farm characteristics, producer perceptions of risk, conservation, information sources, climate adaptation, and producer demographic characteristics are associated with technology adoption among beef cattle producers in the Southeast United States. Utilizing data from an online survey and an Ordered Probit model, we show that beef cattle producers who also produce fruit have an increased probability of adopting a greater number of technologies. The opposite effect is found for other commodities such as vegetables, row crops, and other livestock. Policy recommendations are also discussed.

A new species of Tereancistrum Kritsky, Thatcher & Kayton, 1980, collected from the gills of Brycon nattereri (Bryconidae) in the Cerrado, in the state of Goiás, Brazil, is described based on morphological and molecular data, based on the mitochondrial cytochrome c oxidase subunit 1 (COI) gene region. Tereancistrum campanum n. sp. is distinguished from all its congeners by the unique ‘bell-shaped’ accessory piece in the male copulatory complex. Molecular analysis revealed that the specimens analyzed formed a distinct group from other Tereancistrum sequences and that the sequences of Tereancistrum kerri showed genetic divergence when compared to T. campanum n. sp., confirming the molecular distinction between the two species. This study also expands the knowledge of parasitic diversity in the Tocantins-Araguaia River Basin and extends the geographical distribution of the genus Tereancistrum. The combination of morphological and genetic data was essential for delimiting this new species, highlighting the importance of integrative approaches in understanding the diversity of monogeneans in freshwater fish in Brazil.

Here, we present a comprehensive morphological and molecular phylogenetic analysis of Clinostomum sp. (Digenea: Clinostomidae) metacercariae parasitizing two freshwater fish species from Southeast Brazil: Serrasalmus spilopleura (piranha) and Callichthys callichthys (tambuatá). The morphological examination revealed distinct characteristics of metacercariae in each host. Using the cytochrome c oxidase I (COI) gene barcode region, we obtained DNA sequences that allowed for accurate phylogenetic placement. Phylogenetic analyses revealed that Clinostomum sp. HM41 (metacercariae), isolated from S. spilopleura, exhibited 86% similarity to Ithyoclinostomum yamagutii, while Clinostomum sp. HM125 (metacercariae), from C. callichthys, showed 98.7% similarity to Clinostomum sp. Cr_Ha1. The phylogenetic trees constructed through Bayesian Inference and Maximum Likelihood methods indicated high biodiversity within the Clinostomum genus and strong support for distinct lineages. These findings enhance our understanding of the diversity and ecological distribution of Clinostomum species in South American freshwater environments.

This study evaluated the effects of capsaicin (CAP) supplementation on the intake, nutrient digestibility, ruminal fermentation, nitrogen balance, microbial protein synthesis and health traits of bulls managed on pasture. Eight crossbred (Holstein x Zebu) cattle averaging 313 ± 31 kg of body weight (BW) were arranged in a replicated 4 × 4 Latin square design (one square of four bulls, rumen fistulated with 4-inch silicone cannulas and one square of four non-fistulated bulls), which were kept on Pangola grass pasture (Digitaria decumbens). Each experimental period consisted of 21 days, with 7 days for data collection (no washout between periods). Bulls were randomly assigned to the following treatments: CON (control): concentrate supplementation at 0.5% live weight (BW) and no additive (CAPCIN®), or concentrate supplementation at 0.5% BW in association with CAPCIN® (NutriQuest, Campinas, Brazil) fed at the inclusion rates of 150 (CAP150), 300 (CAP300) and 450 (CAP450) mg/animal/day. Digestibilities of dry matter, organic matter and neutral detergent fibre showed quadratic responses to CAP supplementation. Rumen pH linearly increased with CAP supplementation. The numbers of lymphocytes and eosinophils were linearly increased with CAP supplementation. The use of encapsulated pepper in supplements of crossbred (Holstein x Zebu) bulls managed on D. decumbens pasture up to 450 mg/animal/day improves nutrients digestibility and ruminal fermentation and can positively influence the health status of beef cattle managed under tropical conditions.

Clastic sedimentary systems and their characteristics are assumed not to have been modified by carbonate bioclastic grains until the Phanerozoic. Here, we show that the presence of carbonate bioclasts produced by disintegrated biomineralizing metazoans modified fine-grained siliciclastic facies in the Late Ediacaran Tamengo Formation, Brazil, ca. 555–542 Ma. The analysis of both polished sections and thin sections shows that sand-sized carbonate bioclasts (< 2 mm) derived from the Ediacaran metazoan Corumbella created diverse sedimentary features later found in the Phanerozoic record, such as bioclastic-rich horizontal and low-angle cross-laminations, erosive pods and lenses, bioclastic syneresis cracks, ripples preserved by bioclastic caps, microbial lamination eroded and filled with bioclasts, and entrapped bioclasts within microbial mats. These sedimentary features would have hardly been recorded in fine siliciclastic facies without the sand-sized bioclasts. Based on these features, together with other sedimentary evidence, Corumbella depositional settings in the Tamengo Fm. are reinterpreted as mid-ramp, subtidal settings. The multi-component organization of the skeleton of Corumbella favoured disarticulation to yield a sand-sized bioclast, so in turn creating a new complexity to shallow marine clastic settings typical of Phanerozoic marine depositional systems.

Evidence-based insertion and maintenance bundles are effective in reducing the incidence of central line-associated bloodstream infections (CLABSI) in intensive care unit (ICU) settings. We studied the adoption and compliance of CLABSI prevention bundle programs and CLABSI rates in ICUs in a large network of acute care hospitals across Canada.

Visceral leishmaniasis (VL) is a tropical disease that can be fatal if acute and untreated. Diagnosis is difficult, the treatment is toxic and prophylactic vaccines do not exist. Leishmania parasites express hundreds of proteins and several of them are relevant for the host's immune system. In this context, in the present study, 10 specific T-cell epitopes from 5 parasite proteins, which were identified by antibodies in VL patients’ sera, were selected and used to construct a gene codifying the new chimeric protein called rCHI. The rCHI vaccine was developed and thoroughly evaluated for its potential effectiveness against Leishmania infantum infection. We used monophosphoryl lipid A (MPLA) and polymeric micelles (Mic) as adjuvant and/or delivery system. The results demonstrated that both rCHI/MPLA and rCHI/Mic significantly stimulate an antileishmanial Th1-type cellular response, with higher production of IFN-γ, TNF-α, IL-12 and nitrite in vaccinated animals, and this response was sustained after challenge. In addition, these mice significantly reduced the parasitism in internal organs and increased the production of IgG2a isotype antibodies. In vivo and in vitro toxicity showed that rCHI is safe for the mammalians, and the recombinant protein also induced in vitro lymphoproliferative response and production of Th1-type cytokines by human cells, which were collected from healthy subjects and treated VL patients. These data suggest rCHI plus MPLA or micelles could be considered as a vaccine candidate against VL.

Background: The Cognitive Domains and Functional Assessment Questionnaire (CDFAQ) assess cognitive and functional decline based on the DSM-5 criteria for Neurocognitive Disorders. Its accuracy has been assessed and was translated and validated into English. The informant version (CDFAQ-IV) is a 30-item questionnaire that assesses six cognitive domains with 5 items each: Complex Attention (CA), Executive Functions (EF), Learning and

Memory (LM), Language (L), Perceptual-Motor (PM) and Social Cognition. The development of CDFAQ-IV was based on theDSM-5 cognitive domains, but its factor analysis has not been done yet.

Objectives: To perform a Confirmatory Factor Analysis of the CDFAQ-IV to assess the six-factor cognitive domain model.

Methods: Older adults and their informants were invited to participate in this study. The CDFAQ-IV was applied in 292 older adults’ informants. We used the JASP for a Confirmatory Factor Analysis based on Lavaan R Packages. The confirmatory factor analysis was chosen to manual six-factor model. This study was approved by the ethics committee of UFMG.

Results: Concerning model fitness in the confirmatory factor analysis the X2 was significant (p < .001), standardized root mean square residual (SRMR) was .059 (accepted < .08) and the goodness of fit index (GFI) .984 (accepted > .9). However, the root mean square error of approximation (RMSEA) was marginal to the accepted fitness .066 (accepted < .06) and the comparative fit index CFI was .839 under the accepted cutoff (accepted > .9).

Conclusions: The six-factor model of the showed a good fit for three parameters, marginal for one and negative for the CFI. These results point to a convergence of the questionnaire and factors the DSM-5 cognitive domains. These are still preliminary results and we aim to increase our sample to further assess the confirmatory factor analysis.

Introduction: Throughout the course of the dementia, patients generally need a guardian to protect their rights due to the severity of their mental disabilities. The laws and procedures for guardianship for people with disabilities have been updated in several countries based on the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities promulgated in 2006.

Objectives: To compare the law and procedures for guardianship for people with mental disabilities of twelve countries from six continents.

Methods: Narrative review searching for civil codes/guardianship procedures, date of promulgation, scope of the guardian authority, preferred guardian, duration of the guardianship.

Results: Most countries predominantly promulgated their laws after the year 2000, being half of them updated after 2006. Most countries have two types of guardianship scopes: one concerning financial affairs and the other concerning personal affairs (such as welfare and medical care). Generally, guardianship concerning financial matters is the first to be established. In addition, most countries maintain the ward’s right to vote. In five out of twelve countries, there is an order of preference for choosing the guardian, being the spouses and adult children the preferred guardians. All these countries have the possibility of temporary guardianship. Three countries have a maximum period for guardianship with the possibility of renewal, while all others have indefinite time for guardianship duration. Only France explicitly grants the right to the ward to make medical decisions within guardianship procedures. Brazil’s Civil Code restricts guardianship to financial matters, whereas the Civil Procedure Code requires judges to define the scope of guardianship’s authority for each of the activities of the civil life. Since both codes hold equal authority, judges typically determine the extent of guardianship on a case- by-case basis.

Conclusions: Half of the nations have updated their laws after the promulgation of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.

Dementia is expected to increase worldwide and further Discussion concerning the rights of people with dementia is still needed. Although there is no ideal legal framework, the comparison of procedures from different countries may lead to valuable insights for further Discussions andassessments.

Information related to the climate, sowing time, harvest, and crop development is essential for defining appropriate strategies for agricultural activities, which helps both producers and responsible bodies. Paraná, the second largest soybean producer in Brazil, has high climatic variability, which greatly influences planting, harvesting, and crop productivity periods. Therefore, the objective of this study was to regionalize the state of Paraná, considering decennial metrics associated with climate variables and the enhanced vegetation index (EVI) during the soybean cycle. Individual and global analyses of these metrics were conducted performed using multivariate techniques. These analyses were carried out in agricultural scenarios with low, medium, and high precipitation, corresponding to harvest years 2011/2012, 2013/2014, and 2015/2016, respectively. The results obtained from the scores of the retained factors and the cluster analysis were the profile of the groups, with Group 1 presenting more favourable climatic and agronomic conditions for the development of soybean crops for the three harvest years. The opposite occurred for Groups 2 (2011/2012 and 2013/2014) and Group 3 (2015/2016). During the soybean reproductive phases (R2 – R5), precipitation values were inadequate, especially for Group 2 (2011/2012 and 2013/2014) with high water deficit, resulting in a drop in soybean productivity. The climatic and agronomic regionalization of Paraná made it possible to identify the regions most suitable for growing soybeans, the effect of climatic conditions on phenological stages, and the variability of soybean productivity in the three harvest years.

Dioctophyme renale, the giant kidney worm, is a nematode related to Trichuris sp and is distributed worldwide. These parasites locate in the kidney of their definitive hosts (mainly belonging to the order Carnivora) and have an indirect life cycle with an annelid as the main intermediate host. Humans are rarely affected, but in those that are, 1 or both kidneys are destroyed. In South America, D. renale is widespread in riparian regions where changing climatic conditions, environmental degradation, and compromised sanitation are increasing the risk of distribution of this parasite, including humans. Here, we provide the descriptions of the genetic diversity of the parasite in the region by analysing 73 adult D. renale samples collected from domestic and wild carnivores. The most common hosts were (Canis lupus familiaris) and maned wolf (Chrysocyon brachyurus Fam. Canidae) among domestic and wild carnivores, respectively. This work shows the descriptions of the genetic diversity of this parasite complementing molecular methods and classical and probabilistic phylogeography. Our results strongly suggest that this parasite has been present on the continent long enough to develop local genetic variants. Also, the phylogenies show transmission between localities and bidirectional transmission between domestic and wild species. We now have new tools to understand the ecological dynamics of this parasite such as molecular markers to study its genetic diversity as well as for identification and reporting in cryptic cases.

Silvopastoral systems (SPSs) constitute a modality of agroforestry systems in which trees or shrubs, pastures and animals mutually grow, interacting with the environment, and providing several ecosystem services. This review aims to comprehensively discuss the ecosystem services provided by SPSs in different countries, highlighting the diverse ways these systems can contribute to human well-being and environmental sustainability, also emphasizing the importance of management strategies, the differences among systems and the main shortcomings and challenges to optimizing ecosystem service delivery from SPSs. The review focused on global studies, mainly those published between 2010 and 2024, directly relevant to the topic. We used Google Scholar, Scopus and Web of Science databases for literature screening. SPSs have demonstrated worldwide potential to enhance human food and forage production, nutrient cycling, soil fertility, biological nitrogen fixation, carbon sequestration, greenhouse gas mitigation, erosion control, microclimate regulation, pollination, control of pests and diseases, biodiversity, residue absorption, water quality, spiritual enrichment, recreation and aesthetic experiences. However, most ecosystem services provided by SPSs depend on climate conditions, soil type, choice of species, system design and management practices to ensure that such benefits are not provided at the cost of other important services. Interaction among components is a major challenge for system management and evaluations. Adopting SPSs has the potential to promote sustainable agriculture. Long-term studies are needed to elucidate the implications of multiple interactions within the system and their impact on ecosystem service delivery. Public policies, including evaluating ecosystem services, should be developed to promote the adoption of SPSs.

It is increasingly common to use chatbots as an interface to services. One of the main components of a chatbot is the Natural Language Understanding (NLU) model, which is responsible for interpreting the text and extracting the intent and entities present in that text. It’s possible to focus only on one of these tasks of NLU, such as intent classification. To train an NLU intent classification model, it’s generally necessary to use a considerable amount of annotated data, where each sentence of the dataset receives a label indicating an intent. Performing manually labeling data is arduous and impracticable, depending on the data volume. Thus, an unsupervised machine learning technique, such as data clustering, could be applied to find and label patterns in the data. For this task, it is essential to have an effective vector embedding representation of texts that depicts the semantic information and helps the machine understand the context, intent, and other nuances of the entire text. This paper extensively evaluates different text embedding models for clustering and labeling. We also apply some operations to improve the dataset’s quality, such as removing sentences and establishing various strategies for distance thresholds (cosine similarity) for the clusters’ centroids. Then, we trained some intent classification Models with two different architectures, one built with the Rasa framework and the other with a neural network (NN) using the attendance text from the Coronavirus Platform Service of Ceará, Brazil. We also manually annotated a dataset to be used as validation data. We conducted a study on semiautomatic labeling, implemented through clustering and visual inspection, which introduced some labeling errors to the intent classification models. However, it would be unfeasible to annotate the entire dataset manually. Nevertheless, results of competitive accuracy were still achieved with the trained models.

Tanaidaceans have a worldwide distribution, with 36 families, 316 genera, and 1575 extant species described. This study aimed to compile the resulting taxonomic information for Brazilian waters obtained to produce the available online catalogue Taxonomic Catalogue of the Brazilian Fauna. Results show 63 species described for Brazilian waters: 30 Apseudomorpha and 33 Tanaidomorpha, distributed in 46 genera and 18 families. For apseudomorphan, Kalliapseudidae is the most diverse family (12.7%), followed by Apseudidae and Parapseudidae (9.5% each). For tanaidomorphan, Typhlotanaidae is the most diverse (15.9%) followed by Leptocheliidae (9.5%) and Tanaididae (7.9%). In Brazilian waters, more than 60% of Tanaidacea species are distributed in shallow waters (42 species; 63.6%), including continental areas, and about 1/3 are recorded from deep-sea (24 species; 36.4%). Southeast Region of Brazil holds most records with 46 occurrences, followed by the Northeast Region with 19 occurrences. Our results highlight the increasing number of publications and new Brazilian tanaids species in the last 15 years, and this is directly correlated to where specialists in alpha-taxonomy, systematics/phylogeny, and ecology are based in. Our current dataset also indicates an important aspect regarding the lack of taxonomic experts of Tanaidacea worldwide, but especially in Brazil. This study gives an overview of all the information that may help elucidate future research on the taxonomic diversity of tanaidaceans in Brazil, thus it is expected that this may encourage further studies and specialists for the group.