We present a new radio detection from the Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder (ASKAP) Evolutionary Map of the Universe (EMU) survey associated with the Reflection Nebula (RN) VdB-80. The radio detection is determined to be a previously unidentified Hii region, now named Lagotis. The RN is located towards Monoceros, centred in the molecular cloud feature known as the ‘Crossbones’. The 944 M̃Hz EMU image shows a roughly semicircular Hii region with an integrated flux density of 30.2±0.3 mJy. The Hii region is also seen at 1.4 GHz by NRAO VLA Sky Survey (NVSS), yielding an estimated spectral index of 0.65±0.51, consistent with thermal radio emission. Gaia Data Release 3 (DR3) and Two Micron All Sky Survey (2MASS) data give a distance to the stars associated with the Hii region of ∼960 pc. This implies a size of 0.76×0.68(±0.09) pc for the Hii region. We derive an Hii region electron density of the bright radio feature to be 26 cm−3, requiring a Lyman-alpha photon flux of 1045.6 s−1, which is consistent with the expected Lyman flux of HD46060, the B2 ii type star which is the likely ionising star of the region. The derived distance to this region implies that the Crossbones feature is a superposition of two filamentary clouds, with Lagotis embedded in the far cloud.

In Michigan, United States of America, where Asian parasitoids were released to manage emerald ash borer, Agrilus planipennis Fairmaire (Coleoptera: Buprestidae), we monitored four native parasitoids that also attack the invasive beetle – Atanycolus cappaerti Marsh and Strazanac, A. simplex (Cresson), and Spathius laflammei Provancher (all Hymenoptera: Braconidae), and Phasgonophora sulcata Westwood (Hymenoptera: Chalcididae) – using yellow pan traps and tree dissections. Adult A. cappaerti, followed by A. simplex, had the broadest seasonal activity, S. laflammei was captured primarily in the first half of the growing season, and P. sulcata was restricted to mid-summer. Adult abundances of native species varied among years but, except for P. sulcata, were never significantly lower than the established Asian emerald ash borer larval parasitoids, Tetrastichus planipennisi Yang (Hymenoptera: Eulophidae) and Spathius galinae Belokobylskij and Strazanac (Hymenoptera: Braconidae). Densities of emerald ash borer larvae parasitised by A. cappaerti or P. sulcata did not differ significantly from those of the two Asian species. Although adult A. simplex and S. laflammei were frequently captured, we did not confirm parasitisation of any emerald ash borer larvae by these two species, suggesting that they rarely attack emerald ash borer. We did not find any negative correlations between adult or immature parasitoid abundance of any parasitoid species, suggesting that any interspecific competition that may be occurring is negligible.

Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is a chronic autoimmune inflammatory disease that affects the joints. Treatments are symptomatic and can induce side effects in some patients. In this sense and based on previous studies, our aim was to investigate the ex vivo immunoregulatory effect of the laminated layer (LL) during rheumatoid arthritis. LL is the outside layer of parasitic cyst of the helminth Echinococcus granulosus.

Our main objective was to study the effect of LL on nitric oxide (NO) and cytokines production, matrix metalloproteinases (MMPs) activities, inducible NO synthase (iNOS) and nuclear factor κappa B (NF-κB) expression. In this context, cultures of peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMC) from Algerian RA patients in active (ARA) and inactive (IRA) stage of the disease were stimulated with LL extract (50, 100, 150μg/mL). However, PBMC from ARA patients were stimulated with methotrexate (MTX; 0.5μg/mL) and biological disease modifying anti-rheumatic drugs (bDMARDs): anti-TNFα (10μg/mL), anti-IL6 (10μg/mL), anti-CD20 (10μg/mL), alone or combined with LL (50μg/mL).

Our results showed that LL reduced NO, TNF-α, and IL-17A production, MMP9/2 activities, and iNOS/NF-κB expression in PBMC from ARA patients. Concomitantly, LL increases IL-10 and TGF-β1 production in the same cultures. Interestingly, the decrease in NO production induced by bDMARDs was greater in association with LL.

Collectively, our findings indicate a strong immunoregulatory effect of LL on NO, MMPs, and cytokines. LL probably acts through the NF-κB pathway. The development of biodrugs derived from LL of E. granulosus could be a potential candidate to modulate inflammation during RA.

Basal bark application involves applying an oil-soluble herbicide in an oil carrier to the lower 0 to 45-cm of woody stems. For triclopyr, basal bark application typically requires the butoxyethyl ester formulation; however, this cannot be applied when standing water is present, which is common in seasonally flooded wetlands. Recently, the intermediate oil and water-soluble triclopyr acid formulation was registered for use in aquatic sites, allowing for basal bark applications in wetlands where standing water is present. Recent studies indicated that flooding after basal bark treatment can result in triclopyr release to surface waters and subsequent non-target injury. Elevated band application height (i.e., treating a higher band on each stem) may reduce non-target injury potential; however, this modified application technique has not been well tested on woody invasive species. To evaluate this approach, a field study on Schinus terebinthifolia was conducted near Melbourne and Wimauma, FL on well-established and juvenile rootstocks. Treatments included triclopyr acid at 17, 34, and 69 g L-1 applied in an oil carrier and treatment band heights of 0 to 45-cm and 61 to 107-cm from the ground line. At Melbourne, both band heights treated with 34 or 69 g L-1 resulted in 75 to 100% mortality of mature rootstocks. However, triclopyr applied at 17 g L-1 to the low and elevated band heights resulted in 70 and 11% mortality, respectively. All treatments resulted in 90 to 100% mortality at Wimauma, where the rootstocks were juvenile and much smaller. These findings indicate elevated band heights may be a useful approach for woody plant control and may support an effective management strategy in inundated wetlands that provides better prevention of non-target injury.

While the pathophysiology affecting patients after Fontan palliation versus those with orthostatic intolerance is quite different, a common therapeutic approach exists. Exercise training, specifically augmenting the lower extremity skeletal muscle pump, improves the suboptimal haemodynamics of “preload failure” and thus clinical outcomes for each patient group. In this review, we will describe the problematic physiology affecting these patients, examine the anatomy and haemodynamics of the skeletal muscle pump, and finally review how exercise benefits both groups of patients through augmentation of musculovenous force.

Although higher-level constructs often fail to explain the mechanisms underlying motivation, we argue that purely mechanistic approaches have limitations. Lower-level neural data help us identify “biologically plausible” mechanisms, while higher-level constructs are critical to formulate measurable behavioral outcomes when constructing computational models. Therefore, we propose that a multi-level, multi-measure approach is required to fully unpack the black box of motivated behavior.

We present the first results from a new backend on the Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder, the Commensal Realtime ASKAP Fast Transient COherent (CRACO) upgrade. CRACO records millisecond time resolution visibility data, and searches for dispersed fast transient signals including fast radio bursts (FRB), pulsars, and ultra-long period objects (ULPO). With the visibility data, CRACO can localise the transient events to arcsecond-level precision after the detection. Here, we describe the CRACO system and report the result from a sky survey carried out by CRACO at 110-ms resolution during its commissioning phase. During the survey, CRACO detected two FRBs (including one discovered solely with CRACO, FRB 20231027A), reported more precise localisations for four pulsars, discovered two new RRATs, and detected one known ULPO, GPM J1839 $-$10, through its sub-pulse structure. We present a sensitivity calibration of CRACO, finding that it achieves the expected sensitivity of 11.6 Jy ms to bursts of 110 ms duration or less. CRACO is currently running at a 13.8 ms time resolution and aims at a 1.7 ms time resolution before the end of 2024. The planned CRACO has an expected sensitivity of 1.5 Jy ms to bursts of 1.7 ms duration or less and can detect $10\times$ more FRBs than the current CRAFT incoherent sum system (i.e. 0.5 $-$2 localised FRBs per day), enabling us to better constrain the models for FRBs and use them as cosmological probes.

Age estimates from bomb 14C dating conflict with a well-recognized age reading protocol (grinding, polishing and staining in the sagittal plane) for otoliths of European eel (Anguilla anguilla). Proper alignment of calculated hatch years for 14C measurements taken from the earliest otolith growth—among the smallest otolith extractions to date for successful 14C analysis due to the advent of gas-AMS—was not achieved using age estimates from an accepted method. The realignment of otolith 14C values to a tropical bomb 14C reference chronology, which is most applicable to the Sargasso Sea as the natal origin of European eel, led to an increase of the original age estimates by 8 to 32 years. A maximum age of approximately 46 years was determined for the European eel specimen with the most massive otolith, of which mass is a reasonable proxy for age and was instrumental in identifying age estimate discrepancies. By extending the otolith mass-to-age relationships from this study to the most massive otoliths available from archived otoliths of Norway, an increase of up to several decades from the original otolith age estimates was discovered, leading to support for a potential lifespan of 70–100 years in the natural environment.

With wide-field phased array feed technology, the Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder (ASKAP) is ideally suited to search for seemingly rare radio transient sources that are difficult to discover previous-generation narrow-field telescopes. The Commensal Real-time ASKAP Fast Transient (CRAFT) Survey Science Project has developed instrumentation to continuously search for fast radio transients (duration ≲ 1 second) with ASKAP, with a particular focus on finding and localising Fast Radio Bursts (FRBs). Since 2018, the CRAFT survey has been searching for FRBs and other fast transients by incoherently adding the intensities received by individual ASKAP antennas, and then correcting for the impact of frequency dispersion on these short-duration signals in the resultant incoherent sum (ICS) in real-time. This low-latency detection enables the triggering of voltage buffers, which facilitates the localisation of the transient source and the study of spectro-polarimetric properties at high time resolution. Here we report the sample of 43 FRBs discovered in this CRAFT/ICS survey to date. This includes 22 FRBs that had not previously been reported: 16 FRBs localised by ASKAP to. ≲ 1 arcsec and 6 FRBs localised to ∼ 10 arcmin. Of the new arcsecond-localised FRBs, we have identified and characterised host galaxies (and measured redshifts) for 11. The median of all 30 measured host redshifts from the survey to date is z = 0.23. We summarise results from the searches, in particular those contributing to our understanding of the burst progenitors and emission mechanisms, and on the use of bursts as probes of intervening media. We conclude by foreshadowing future FRB surveys with ASKAP using a coherent detection system that is currently being commissioned. This will increase the burst detection rate by a factor of approximately ten and also the distance to which ASKAP can localise FRBs.

Nutritional status during the developmental periods leads to predisposition to several diseases and comorbidities, highlighting metabolic and reproductive changes throughout adult life, and in the next generations. One of the experimental models used to induce undernutrition is litter size expansion, which decreases the availability of breast milk to pups and delays development. This work evaluated the effects of maternal undernutrition induced by litter size expansion, a maternal undernutrition preconception model, on the metabolic and reproductive alterations of the offspring. For this, metabolic and reproductive parameters were evaluated in male and female offspring of female rats reared in normal (NL - 10 pups: 5 males and 5 females) and large (LL - 16 pups: 8 males and 8 females) litters. Male and female offspring of LL mothers presented higher food intake than the offspring of NL mothers. Male offspring from undernourished females showed reduced body weight from lactation to adulthood, nasoanal distance in childhood, increased nasoanal distance, and decreased Lee index in adult life, while female offspring showed decreased nasoanal distance in childhood. The male offspring from LL mothers showed increased insulin plasma levels and glucose tolerance, and reduced triglycerides plasma levels, without changes in the female offspring. These results indicate that neonatal undernutrition in females predisposes their male and female offspring to develop metabolic alterations, without reproductive repercussions, and male offspring seems to be more susceptible to present these metabolic changes than females. Thus, there are sexual differences in the metabolic responses of the offspring elicited by maternal preconceptional undernutrition.

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.

The primary definitive host of the giant acanthocephalan, also known as the giant thorny-headed worm Macracanthorhynchus hirudinaceus (Pallas, 1781), is Sus scrofa. The definitive host ingests the parasite by consuming infected scarabaeoid or hydrophilid beetles. This study aimed to ascertain the presence of M. hirudinaceus in the intermediate hosts through molecular analysis. The cockchafers were collected from Elazig province of Türkiye. A total of 30 pools, comprising 10 pools for each of three districts were obtained from cockchafers collected from 10 areas. The gDNA was isolated and PCR was conducted using specific primers which amplify the mitochondrial cytochrome c oxidase subunit 1 (mt-CO1) gene of M. hirudinaceus. Then, the PCR-positive samples were sequenced, and phylogenetic and haplotype analyses were performed. A total of 300 cockchafer adults and/or larvae were collected for this study from different regions of three districts (Sivrice, Baskil, and Keban) in Elazig province of Türkiye. No PCR band was observed in any of the samples in Sivrice (0%). However, a total of 16 samples (5.3%), 10 from the Baskil (10%) and 6 from Keban (6%), showed a PCR band of 491 bp. All sequences were confirmed as M. hirudinaceus. Two distinct haplotypes were detected at two points. Of the total number of sequences, twelve were found to consist of a single haplotype. One of the two haplotypes was comprised of 10 isolates, while the other included six isolates. This study is one of the limited studies on the molecular identification and haplotyping of M. hirudinaceus in cockchafers.