This study evaluated the effects of combining Bacillus species with hydrolysed and inactive Torula yeast on rumen fermentation of tropical forages in vitro. Exp. 1 assessed different combinations of direct-fed microbials (DFM) and hydrolysed/inactive yeast on the ruminal fermentation of Urochloa brizantha hay in a randomised block design (3×3 factorial scheme). Treatments included: 1) Negative control, no DFM inclusion (NC); 2) B. subtilis and B. licheniformis (SL); 3) B. subtilis, B. licheniformis, B. amyloliquefaciens and B. coagulans (SLAC); 4) Hydrolysed Torula yeast (HY); 5) dry inactive Torula yeast (IY); 6) B. subtilis, B. licheniformis and dry inactive Torula yeast (SL+IY); 7) B. subtilis, B. licheniformis and hydrolysed Torula yeast (SL+HY); 8) B. subtilis, B. licheniformis, B. amyloliquefaciens, B. coagulans and dry inactive Torula yeast (SLAC+IY) and 9) B. subtilis, B. licheniformis, B. amyloliquefaciens, B. coagulans and hydrolysed Torula yeast (SLAC+HY). Bacillus and yeast interaction affected the total short-chain fatty acids (SCFA) and SCFA profile. In treatments without Bacillus, IY resulted in higher isovalerate compared to treatments without yeast (NC). The no yeast treatment also had lower isovalerate concentration than other treatments (HY, IY). Exp. 2 and Exp. 3 evaluated NC, SL, SLAC, SL+HY and SLAC+IY plus SLAC+HY in low- and medium-quality forage. For low-quality forage, SLAC+IY + SLAC+HY had the highest NH3-N concentration, while SL+HY yielded the highest total SCFA. In medium-quality forage, SL+HY showed the highest total SCFA. The combination of Bacillus species and HY may enhance total SCFA and NH3-N in the rumen, improving nutrient utilisation in grazing beef cattle.

The relationship between the uncertainty of outcome hypothesis (UOH), where fans prefer games that are expected to be closely contested, and attendance is investigated in four non-AQ football conferences. The teams in these smaller conferences play games against each other and against bigger, more prominent schools in the elite AQ conferences. Using the betting market point spread as a proxy for uncertainty of outcome, two key points concerning the UOH emerge: college football fans in these conferences prefer less uncertainty of outcome both when their team is a home favorite and when their team is a home underdog.

We compare detailed observations of multiple H2O maser transitions around the red supergiant star VY CMa with models to constrain the physical conditions in the complex outflows. The temperature profile is consistent with a variable mass loss rate but the masers are mostly concentrated in dense clumps. High-excitation lines trace localised outflows near the star.

Gaining a deeper understanding into the underlying mechanisms associated with intestinal function and immunity during the weaning transition is critical to help shed new light into applied nutrition approaches to improve piglet performance and health during this critical life-stage transition. The transient anorexia triggered at weaning leads to compromised intestinal barrier function and a localized inflammatory response. Considering barrier function, specific nutrient fractions appear to have a significant impact on the development and function of the immune and microbial systems around weaning. Understanding the specific impact of nutrients in the small intestine and hindgut is important for helping to bring more focus and consistency to nutritional approaches to support health and immunity during the weaning transition period. The challenge continues to be how to translate these modes of action into practical and scalable approaches for swine nutrition. We will focus specifically on practical nutritional approaches to influence intestinal immunity through lipid, protein and antioxidant nutrition.

The use of ground granulated blast furnace slag (ggbs) is well established in many cement applications where it provides enhanced durability, including high resistance to chloride penetration, resistance to sulphate attack and protection against alkali silica reaction (ASR). The use of ggbs in soil stabilization is, however, still a novel process in the UK although it has been used in South Africa. This paper reports on efforts to extend the use of ggbs to highway and other foundation layers by determining the beneficial effect which it has on the reduction of expansion due to the presence of sulphates. The paper describes the results of laboratory tests on lime-stabilized kaolinite containing different levels of added sulphate to which different amounts of ggbs have been added. The tests determine the strength development of compacted cylinders, moist cured in a humid environment at 30°C, and the linear expansion of these moist cured cylinders on soaking in water. The results illustrate that small additions of ggbs to sulphate containing clays which are stabilized with lime reduce substantially their expansion when exposed to water and have no significant deleterious effect on strength development.

Compensatory gain describes an accelerated growth seen in animals following a period of nutrient restriction. Methionine (Met) is the second limiting amino acid in typical swine diets and is essential for muscle growth. This study was conducted to determine (1) if a Met-deficient diet can cause growth retardation in growing pigs, (2) if returning to a normal feeding can yield compensatory gain in the pigs previously fed the Met-deficient diet, and (3) if this Met-deficiency followed by the normal feeding program affects carcass characteristics. Twenty individually-penned crossbred young barrows were randomly allotted to two dietary treatments (n = 10). One Met-deficient (D1) and one Met-adequate (D2) diets were formulated based on corn and soybean meal and fed to respective pigs for 31 days. After that, all pigs were fed the same commercial grower-finisher diet until market weight (around 125 kg), then slaughtered, and carcass characteristics measured. The D1 and D2 pigs began with similar body weights (23.5 vs. 23.6 kg; P = 0.935), but after 31-days on the dietary treatments, D1 pigs were lighter than D2 pigs (51.6 vs. 55.0 kg; P = 0.102). After feeding the normal diet for 55 days, D1 and D2 pigs had similar body weights (122.7 vs. 122.6 kg; P = 0.989). In terms of carcass characteristics, however, D1 pigs had thicker back-fat (at 10th rib; 2.95 vs. 2.51 cm; P = 0.015), heavier belly weight (11.0 vs. 9.6 kg; P = 0.005), lighter ham weights (untrimmed: 20.8 vs. 21.6 kg; P = 0.043; trimmed: 19.6 vs. 20.6 kg; P = 0.016), lighter picnic shoulder weight (8.72 vs. 9.80 kg; P = 0.041), lighter total lean cut weight (51.8 vs. 53.8 kg; P = 0.055), and lower lean cut percentage (56.4 vs. 59.0%; P = 0.012). These results indicate that the Met-deficient diet produced growth-retarded pigs, which showed compensatory gain after the normal feeding. At slaughter, the pigs previously fed the Met-deficient diet had more fat and less lean tissue than their non-deficient counterparts.

Plasmodium knowlesi has risen in importance as a zoonotic parasite that has been causing regular episodes of malaria throughout South East Asia. The P. knowlesi genome sequence generated in 2008 highlighted and confirmed many similarities and differences in Plasmodium species, including a global view of several multigene families, such as the large SICAvar multigene family encoding the variant antigens known as the schizont-infected cell agglutination proteins. However, repetitive DNA sequences are the bane of any genome project, and this and other Plasmodium genome projects have not been immune to the gaps, rearrangements and other pitfalls created by these genomic features. Today, long-read PacBio and chromatin conformation technologies are overcoming such obstacles. Here, based on the use of these technologies, we present a highly refined de novo P. knowlesi genome sequence of the Pk1(A+) clone. This sequence and annotation, referred to as the ‘MaHPIC Pk genome sequence’, includes manual annotation of the SICAvar gene family with 136 full-length members categorized as type I or II. This sequence provides a framework that will permit a better understanding of the SICAvar repertoire, selective pressures acting on this gene family and mechanisms of antigenic variation in this species and other pathogens.

The 7 and 13-valent pneumococcal conjugate vaccines (PCVs) have reduced the incidence of invasive pneumococcal disease (IPD) in children in many countries. The objective of this work was to assess the impact of PCVs and potential herd-protection in older adults in Ireland. IPD notification and typing data from adults ⩾65 years of age from July 2007 to June 2016 was assessed using national surveillance data. There was a 94% reduction in PCV7 serotypes from 2007–2008 to 2015–2016, incidence rate ratio (IRR 0·05, P < 0·0001). However, there was no decline in the additional PCV13 (PCV13-7) serotypes over the same period (IRR 0·90) nor in comparison with the pre-PCV13 period 2009–2010 (IRR 0·92). The incidence of serotypes in the 23-valent pneumococcal polysaccharide vaccine only (PPV23-PCV13) and non-vaccine types (NVTs) increased significantly (IRR 2·17, P = 0·0002 and IRR 3·43, P = 0·0001 respectively). Consequently, the overall IPD incidence rate in adults has remained relatively unchanged (from 28·66/100 000 to 28·88/100 000, IRR 1·01, P = 0·9477). Serotype 19A and NVTs were mainly responsible for penicillin resistance in recent years. The decline of PCV7 serotypes indicate that the introduction of PCV7 resulted in herd-protection for adults. However, increases in PPV23-PCV13 and NVTs suggest that changes in vaccination strategy amongst older adults are needed to build on the success of PCVs in children.

Institutional caregiving is associated with significant deviations from species-expected caregiving, altering the normative sequence of attachment formation and placing children at risk for long-term emotional difficulties. However, little is known about factors that can promote resilience following early institutional caregiving. In the current study, we investigated how adaptations in affective processing (i.e., positive valence bias) and family-level protective factors (i.e., secure parent–child relationships) moderate risk for internalizing symptoms in previously institutionalized (PI) youth. Children and adolescents with and without a history of institutional care performed a laboratory-based affective processing task and self-reported measures of parent–child relationship security. PI youth were more likely than comparison youth to show positive valence biases when interpreting ambiguous facial expressions. Both positive valence bias and parent–child relationship security moderated the association between institutional care and parent-reported internalizing symptoms, such that greater positive valence bias and more secure parent–child relationships predicted fewer symptoms in PI youth. However, when both factors were tested concurrently, parent–child relationship security more strongly moderated the link between PI status and internalizing symptoms. These findings suggest that both individual-level adaptations in affective processing and family-level factors of secure parent–child relationships may ameliorate risk for internalizing psychopathology following early institutional caregiving.

We describe the performance of the Boolardy Engineering Test Array, the prototype for the Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder telescope. Boolardy Engineering Test Array is the first aperture synthesis radio telescope to use phased array feed technology, giving it the ability to electronically form up to nine dual-polarisation beams. We report the methods developed for forming and measuring the beams, and the adaptations that have been made to the traditional calibration and imaging procedures in order to allow BETA to function as a multi-beam aperture synthesis telescope. We describe the commissioning of the instrument and present details of Boolardy Engineering Test Array’s performance: sensitivity, beam characteristics, polarimetric properties, and image quality. We summarise the astronomical science that it has produced and draw lessons from operating Boolardy Engineering Test Array that will be relevant to the commissioning and operation of the final Australian Square Kilometre Array Path telescope.

Epidemiological studies have identified increased colorectal cancer (CRC) risk with high red meat (HRM) intakes, whereas dietary fibre intake appears to be protective. In the present study, we examined whether a HRM diet increased rectal O6-methyl-2-deoxyguanosine (O6MeG) adduct levels in healthy human subjects, and whether butyrylated high-amylose maize starch (HAMSB) was protective. A group of twenty-three individuals consumed 300 g/d of cooked red meat without (HRM diet) or with 40 g/d of HAMSB (HRM+HAMSB diet) over 4-week periods separated by a 4-week washout in a randomised cross-over design. Stool and rectal biopsy samples were collected for biochemical, microbial and immunohistochemical analyses at baseline and at the end of each 4-week intervention period. The HRM diet increased rectal O6MeG adducts relative to its baseline by 21 % (P< 0·01), whereas the addition of HAMSB to the HRM diet prevented this increase. Epithelial proliferation increased with both the HRM (P< 0·001) and HRM+HAMSB (P< 0·05) diets when compared with their respective baseline levels, but was lower following the HRM+HAMSB diet compared with the HRM diet (P< 0·05). Relative to its baseline, the HRM+HAMSB diet increased the excretion of SCFA by over 20 % (P< 0·05) and increased the absolute abundances of the Clostridium coccoides group (P< 0·05), the Clostridiumleptum group (P< 0·05), Lactobacillus spp. (P< 0·01), Parabacteroides distasonis (P< 0·001) and Ruminococcus bromii (P< 0·05), but lowered Ruminococcus torques (P< 0·05) and the proportions of Ruminococcus gnavus, Ruminococcus torques and Escherichia coli (P< 0·01). HRM consumption could increase the risk of CRC through increased formation of colorectal epithelial O6MeG adducts. HAMSB consumption prevented red meat-induced adduct formation, which may be associated with increased stool SCFA levels and/or changes in the microbiota composition.