Ruminants are completely dependent on their microbiota for feed digestion and consequently, their viability. It is therefore tempting to hypothesize a connection between the composition and abundance ...of resident rumen bacterial taxa and the physiological parameters of the host. Using a pyrosequencing approach, we characterized the rumen bacterial community composition in 15 dairy cows and their physiological parameters. We analyzed the degree of divergence between the different animals and found that some physiological parameters, such as milk yield and composition, are highly correlated with the abundance of various bacterial members of the rumen microbiome. One apparent finding was a strong correlation between the ratio of the phyla Firmicutes to Bacteroidetes and milk-fat yield. These findings paralleled human studies showing similar trends of increased adiposity with an increase in Bacteroidetes. This correlation remained evident at the genus level, where several genera showed correlations with the animals' physiological parameters. This suggests that the bacterial community has a role in shaping host physiological parameters. A deeper understanding of this process may allow us to modulate the rumen microbiome for better agricultural yield through bacterial community design.
Celotno besedilo
Dostopno za:
DOBA, IZUM, KILJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, SIK, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
Organocatalytic reactions enabled by N-heterocyclic carbenes (NHC) are detailed. A number of chiral zolium precatalysts are listed in order to demonstrate the diversity of these catalysts.
Background
Strongyloidiasis is a gut infection with Strongyloides stercoralis which is common world wide. Chronic infection usually causes a skin rash, vomiting, diarrhoea or constipation, and ...respiratory problems, and it can be fatal in people with immune deficiency. It may be treated with ivermectin or albendazole or thiabendazole.
Objectives
To assess the effects of ivermectin versus benzimidazoles (albendazole and thiabendazole) for treating chronic strongyloides infection.
Search methods
We searched the Cochrane Infectious Diseases Group Specialized Register (24 August 2015); the Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials (CENTRAL), published in the Cochrane Library; MEDLINE (January 1966 to August 2015); EMBASE (January 1980 to August 2015); LILACS (August 2015); and reference lists of articles. We also searched the metaRegister of Controlled Trials (mRCT) using 'strongyloid*' as a search term, reference lists, and conference s.
Selection criteria
Randomized controlled trials of ivermectin versus albendazole or thiabendazole for treating chronic strongyloides infection.
Data collection and analysis
Two review authors independently extracted data and assessed risk of bias in the included trials. We used risk ratios (RRs) with 95% confidence intervals (CIs) and fixed‐ or random‐effects models. We pooled adverse event data if the trials were sufficiently similar in their adverse event definitions.
Main results
We included seven trials, enrolling 1147 participants, conducted between 1994 and 2011 in different locations (Africa, Southeast Asia, America and Europe).
In trials comparing ivermectin with albendazole, parasitological cure was higher with ivermectin (RR 1.79, 95% CI 1.55 to 2.08; 478 participants, four trials, moderate quality evidence). There were no statistically significant differences in adverse events (RR 0.80, 95% CI 0.59 to 1.09; 518 participants, four trials, low quality evidence).
In trials comparing ivermectin with thiabendazole, there was little or no difference in parasitological cure (RR 1.07, 95% CI 0.96 to 1.20; 467 participants, three trials, low quality evidence). However, adverse events were less common with ivermectin (RR 0.31, 95% CI 0.20 to 0.50; 507 participants; three trials, moderate quality evidence).
In trials comparing different dosages of ivermectin, taking a second dose of 200 μg/kg of ivermectin was not associated with higher cure in a small subgroup of participants (RR 1.02, 95% CI 0.94 to 1.11; 94 participants, two trials).
Dizziness, nausea, and disorientation were commonly reported in all drug groups. There were no reports of serious adverse events or death.
Authors' conclusions
Ivermectin results in more people cured than albendazole, and is at least as well tolerated. In trials of ivermectin with thiabendazole, parasitological cure is similar but there are more adverse events with thiabendazole.
16 April 2019
Update pending
Studies awaiting assessment
The CIDG is currently examining a new search conducted in April 2019 for potentially relevant studies. These studies have not yet been incorporated into this Cochrane Review.
Quantum mechanics allows events to happen with no definite causal order: this can be verified by measuring a causal witness, in the same way that an entanglement witness verifies entanglement. Here, ...we realize a photonic quantum switch, where two operations Aover ^ and Bover ^ act in a quantum superposition of their two possible orders. The operations are on the transverse spatial mode of the photons; polarization coherently controls their order. Our implementation ensures that the operations cannot be distinguished by spatial or temporal position-further it allows qudit encoding in the target. We confirm our quantum switch has no definite causal order by constructing a causal witness and measuring its value to be 18 standard deviations beyond the definite-order bound.
Despite tremendous progress in understanding the nature of the immune system, the full diversity of an organism's antibody repertoire is unknown. We used high-throughput sequencing of the variable ...domain of the antibody heavy chain from 14 zebrafish to analyze VDJ usage and antibody sequence. Zebrafish were found to use between 50 and 86% of all possible VDJ combinations and shared a similar frequency distribution, with some correlation of VDJ patterns between individuals. Zebrafish antibodies retained a few thousand unique heavy chains that also exhibited a shared frequency distribution. We found evidence of convergence, in which different individuals made the same antibody. This approach provides insight into the breadth of the expressed antibody repertoire and immunological diversity at the level of an individual organism.
In the scale-up of quantum computers, the framework underpinning fault-tolerance generally relies on the strong assumption that environmental noise affecting qubit logic is uncorrelated (Markovian). ...However, as physical devices progress well into the complex multi-qubit regime, attention is turning to understanding the appearance and mitigation of correlated - or non-Markovian - noise, which poses a serious challenge to the progression of quantum technology. This error type has previously remained elusive to characterisation techniques. Here, we develop a framework for characterising non-Markovian dynamics in quantum systems and experimentally test it on multi-qubit superconducting quantum devices. Where noisy processes cannot be accounted for using standard Markovian techniques, our reconstruction predicts the behaviour of the devices with an infidelity of 10
. Our results show this characterisation technique leads to superior quantum control and extension of coherence time by effective decoupling from the non-Markovian environment. This framework, validated by our results, is applicable to any controlled quantum device and offers a significant step towards optimal device operation and noise reduction.
"Wellbeing and Resilience Education" engages with the immediate impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and the theoretical and applied elements of wellbeing and resilience education. It explores the ...implications for students, teachers, and teaching from a transdisciplinary and international perspective. Featuring thirteen chapters written by 27 academics from across the globe, it includes new transdisciplinary research by organisational psychologists, psychologists, neuroscientists, policy experts and education researchers. The book comprises a wide range of topics including: appreciative inquiry, educational leadership, refugee education, resilience education, designing online courses, teacher wellbeing and community responses during the COVID-19 pandemic. This timely volume will be of interest to academics, initial teacher educators, postgraduate students, school leaders and policymakers researching the field of wellbeing, resilience, education, schools, and schooling.
Understanding many processes, e.g., fusion experiments, planetary interiors, and dwarf stars, depends strongly on microscopic physics modeling of warm dense matter and hot dense plasma. This complex ...state of matter consists of a transient mixture of degenerate and nearly free electrons, molecules, and ions. This regime challenges both experiment and analytical modeling, necessitating predictive ab initio atomistic computation, typically based on quantum mechanical Kohn-Sham density functional theory (KS-DFT). However, cubic computational scaling with temperature and system size prohibits the use of DFT through much of the warm dense matter regime. A recently developed stochastic approach to KS-DFT can be used at high temperatures, with the exact same accuracy as the deterministic approach, but the stochastic error can converge slowly and it remains expensive for intermediate temperatures ( < 50 eV ). We have developed a universal mixed stochastic-deterministic algorithm for DFT at any temperature. This approach leverages the physics of KS-DFT to seamlessly integrate the best aspects of these different approaches. We demonstrate that this method significantly accelerated self-consistent field calculations for temperatures from 3 to 50 eV, while producing stable molecular dynamics and accurate diffusion coefficients.
Mental health stigma is a substantial problem all over the world. Although many interventions to reduce stigma exist, there is considerable methodological variability, making it difficult for ...decision-makers to determine what strategies are the most effective and what characteristics make them so. To this end, we conducted a meta-analysis on intergroup contact strategies and examined several potential moderators. We searched 5 databases for published and unpublished studies and retrieved 101 studies from 24 countries that could be included in the analyses. Ninety studies assessed outcomes immediately after the intervention (n = 15,826), 33 in the short-term (n = 3,697), and 7 in the medium-term (n = 842). The effect of contact was significant and small-to-medium in size at all three timepoints, d = −0.384, −0.334, and −0.526, respectively. Intervention effectiveness did not differ between contact with or without an educational component, different contact mediums, or the mental illness of the outgroup member. However, the effect of contact was stronger in non-Western countries and in university students and health professionals compared to community members. These results may inform policy-makers of the most effective and suitable stigma-reduction initiatives to invest in and can guide researchers towards important avenues for future research.
•Contact reduces stigma post-intervention in the immediate-, short- and medium-term.•Contact-based education is no more effective at reducing stigma than contact alone.•Face-to-face, imagined, video, and presentation contact reduce stigma equivalently.•Contact with one mental illness reduces stigma against other mental illnesses.•The effect of contact on long-term behavioral outcomes requires investigation.
PDF
