The feline immunodeficiency virus (FIV) is a retrovirus with global impact and distribution, affecting both domestic and wild cats. This virus can cause severe and progressive immunosuppression ...culminating in the death of felids. Since the discovery of FIV, only one vaccine has been commercially available. This vaccine has proven efficiency against FIV subtypes A and D, whereas subtype B (FIV-B), found in multiple continents, is not currently preventable by vaccination. We, therefore, developed and evaluated a vaccine prototype against FIV-B using the recombinant viral vector modified vaccinia virus Ankara (MVA) expressing the variable region V1–V3 of the FIV-B envelope protein. We conducted preclinical tests in immunized mice (C57BL/6) using a prime-boost protocol with a 21 day interval and evaluated cellular and humoral responses as well the vaccine viability after lyophilization and storage. The animals immunized with the recombinant MVA/FIV virus developed specific splenocyte proliferation when stimulated with designed peptides. We also detected cellular and humoral immunity activation with IFN-y and antibody production. The data obtained in this study support further development of this immunogen and testing in cats.
Invasive Candida albicans infections are a serious health threat for immunocompromised individuals. Fluconazole is most commonly used to treat these infections, but resistance due to the ...overexpression of multidrug efflux pumps is of grave concern. This study evaluated the ability of five synthetic organotellurium compounds to reverse the fluconazole resistance of C. albicans clinical isolates. Compounds 1 to 4, at <10 μg/ml, ameliorated the fluconazole resistance of Saccharomyces cerevisiae strains overexpressing the major C. albicans multidrug efflux pumps Cdr1p and Mdr1p, whereas compound 5 only sensitized Mdr1p-overexpressing strains to fluconazole. Compounds 1 to 4 also inhibited efflux of the fluorescent substrate rhodamine 6G and the ATPase activity of Cdr1p, whereas all five of compounds 1 to 5 inhibited Nile red efflux by Mdr1p. Interestingly, all five compounds demonstrated synergy with fluconazole against efflux pump-overexpressing fluconazole-resistant C. albicans clinical isolates, isolate 95-142 overexpressing CDR1 and CDR2, isolate 96-25 overexpressing MDR1 and ERG11, and isolate 12-99 overexpressing CDR1, CDR2, MDR1, and ERG11 Overall, organotellurium compounds 1 and 2 were the most promising fluconazole chemosensitizers of fluconazole-resistant C. albicans isolates. Our data suggest that these novel organotellurium compounds inhibit pump efflux by two very important and distinct families of fungal multidrug efflux pumps: the ATP-binding cassette transporter Cdr1p and the major facilitator superfamily transporter Mdr1p.
Meson-meson amplitudes are important on their own and also play key roles in analyses of heavy-meson and tau decays. In this work we propose a new phenomenological model suited to all SU(3) mesonic ...twobody final-state interactions up to energies around 2 GeV. It is aimed at replacing those entering the old isobar model, produced in the 1960s, long before the development of QCD. The only similarity between our new proposal and amplitudes used in the isobar model concerns vector resonances in the elastic regime. In other situations, especially those involving scalar resonances and coupled channels, the isobar model is not compatible with post-QCD dynamics. In order to support these claims convincingly and to motivate our approach, we consider applications to the ππ amplitude and compare our version with the isobar model in several different instances. We also show that the new model provides a clear indication of the mechanism responsible for the sharp rise observed in the ππ phase around 1 GeV. The phenomenological amplitudes proposed here are suited to any number of resonances in a given channel and rely just on masses and coupling constants as free parameters. Concerning theory, they incorporate chiral symmetry at low energies, include coupled channels, and respect unitarity whenever appropriate.
Fire is a significant agent of landscape transformation on Earth, and a dynamic and ephemeral process that is challenging to map. Difficulties include the seasonality of native vegetation in areas ...affected by fire, the high levels of spectral heterogeneity due to the spatial and temporal variability of the burned areas, distinct persistence of the fire signal, increase in cloud and smoke cover surrounding burned areas, and difficulty in detecting understory fire signals. To produce a large-scale time-series of burned area, a robust number of observations and a more efficient sampling strategy is needed. In order to overcome these challenges, we used a novel strategy based on a machine-learning algorithm to map monthly burned areas from 1985 to 2020 using Landsat-based annual quality mosaics retrieved from minimum NBR values. The annual mosaics integrated year-round observations of burned and unburned spectral data (i.e., RED, NIR, SWIR-1, and SWIR-2), and used them to train a Deep Neural Network model, which resulted in annual maps of areas burned by land use type for all six Brazilian biomes. The annual dataset was used to retrieve the frequency of the burned area, while the date on which the minimum NBR was captured in a year, was used to reconstruct 36 years of monthly burned area. Results of this effort indicated that 19.6% (1.6 million km2) of the Brazilian territory was burned from 1985 to 2020, with 61% of this area burned at least once. Most of the burning (83%) occurred between July and October. The Amazon and Cerrado, together, accounted for 85% of the area burned at least once in Brazil. Native vegetation was the land cover most affected by fire, representing 65% of the burned area, while the remaining 35% burned in areas dominated by anthropogenic land uses, mainly pasture. This novel dataset is crucial for understanding the spatial and long-term temporal dynamics of fire regimes that are fundamental for designing appropriate public policies for reducing and controlling fires in Brazil.
We propose an approach to describe the D+→K−K+K+ decay amplitude, based on chiral effective Lagrangians, which can be used to extract information about KK¯ scattering. It relies on factorization and ...its main novel feature is the role played by multimeson interactions characteristic of chiral symmetry. Our trial function is an alternative to the widely used isobar model and includes both nonresonant three-body interactions and two-body rescattering amplitudes, based on coupled channels and resonances, for S- and P-waves with isospin 0 and 1. The latter are unitarized in the K-matrix approximation and represent the only source of complex phases in the problem. The nonresonant component, given by chiral symmetry as a real polynomium, is an important prediction of the model, which goes beyond the (2+1) approximation. Our approach allows one to disentangle the two-body scalar contributions with different isospins, associated with the f0(980) and a0(980) channels. We show how the KK¯ amplitude can be obtained from the decay D+→K−K+K+ and discuss extensions to other three-body final states.
The aim of this study was to evaluate the agronomic performance of sorghum grown in different combinations of row spacing and plant density, as well as possible interferences on silage quality. No ...other study dedicated to identifying the interference of plant spatial arrangement on the cultivation of silage material has been developed in the productive context of the Amazon Biome, making it necessary to understand the behavior of the studied factors. The treatments were arranged in a split-plot scheme: the plots corresponded to three row spacings (0.45 m, 0.60 m, and 0.75 m) and subplots at four densities (105,000, 120,000, 135,000, and 150,000 plants ha−1). The agronomic and productivity characteristics of sorghum and the fermentative and bromatological characteristics of forage and silage were evaluated. The sorghum plants showed an increase in plant height and green and dry mass yield when using higher densities (p < 0.05). For the culm diameter variable, an isolated effect of the factors was observed, with reduced diameter when grown closer to inter-row spacing or using higher plant densities. No effect of the factors was found (p > 0.05) for morphological plant components. In silage, wider spacing promoted higher dry matter content. Regarding crude protein in the silage, higher percentages were obtained at closer spacing and higher plant density. The sorghum growing in dense conditions is indicated, given the positive performance in productivity and bromatological composition.
Fast and accurate quantification of the available pasture biomass is essential to support grazing management decisions in intensively managed fields. The increasing temporal and spatial resolutions ...offered by the new generation of orbital platforms, such as Planet CubeSat satellites, have improved the capability of monitoring pasture biomass using remotely sensed data. Here, we assessed the feasibility of using spectral and textural information derived from PlanetScope imagery for estimating pasture aboveground biomass (AGB) and canopy height (CH) in intensively managed fields and the potential for enhanced accuracy by applying the extreme gradient boosting (XGBoost) algorithm. Our results demonstrated that the texture measures enhanced AGB and CH estimations compared to the performance obtained using only spectral bands or vegetation indices. The best results were found by employing the XGBoost models based only on texture measures. These models achieved moderately high accuracy to predict pasture AGB and CH, explaining 65% and 89% of AGB (root mean square error (RMSE) = 26.52%) and CH (RMSE = 20.94%) variability, respectively. This study demonstrated the potential of using texture measures to improve the prediction accuracy of AGB and CH models based on high spatiotemporal resolution PlanetScope data in intensively managed mixed pastures.
The multifaceted character of 5f electrons in actinide materials, from localized to itinerant and in between, together with their complex interactions with 6d and other conduction electron states, ...has thwarted efforts for fully understanding this class of compounds. While theoretical efforts abound, direct experimental probes of relevant electronic states and their hybridization are limited. Here we exploit the presence of sizable quadrupolar and dipolar contributions in the uranium L
-edge X-ray absorption cross section to provide unique information on the extent of spin-polarized hybridization between 5f and 6d electronic states by means of X-ray magnetic circular dichroism. As a result, we show how this 5f-6d hybridization regulates the magnetism of each sublattice in UCu
Si
and UMn
Si
compounds, demonstrating the potentiality of this methodology to investigate a plethora of magnetic actinide compounds.
The 3-min all-out test was developed and validated on a cycle ergometer using a modification of a linear mathematical equation (1/time vs. power) obtained from the original critical power model. The ...purpose of this development was to obtain, in a single test, the aerobic and anaerobic capacity parameters and identify the exercise transition moment from heavy to severe intensity. The aim of this study was to propose an adaptation of the all-out 3-min cycle ergometer to a non-motorized treadmill with tethered running. In addition, we tested the reproducibility of this adapted protocol, highlighting the need for mechanical power evaluation using a specific ergometer. Consequently, 10 physically active individuals visited the laboratory 4 times for testing and data collection. The results suggested that the protocol adaptation for the 3-min all-out test for non-motorized treadmill with tethered running was reproducible and feasible. It was also possible to show that the AO3 application in this ergometer ensures the specificity of the sports that involve the running exercise, from assessment of both aerobic and anaerobic parameters, accomplished in a single day of application.
Integrated crop–livestock systems (ICLS) are among the main viable strategies for sustainable agricultural production. Mapping these systems is crucial for monitoring land use changes in Brazil, ...playing a significant role in promoting sustainable agricultural production. Due to the highly dynamic nature of ICLS management, mapping them is a challenging task. The main objective of this research was to develop a method for mapping ICLS using deep learning algorithms applied on Satellite Image Time Series (SITS) data cubes, which consist of Sentinel-2 (S2) and PlanetScope (PS) satellite images, as well as data fused (DF) from both sensors. This study focused on two Brazilian states with varying landscapes and field sizes. Targeting ICLS, field data were combined with S2 and PS data to build land use and land cover classification models for three sequential agricultural years (2018/2019, 2019/2020, and 2020/2021). We tested three experimental settings to assess the classification performance using S2, PS, and DF data cubes. The test classification algorithms included Random Forest (RF), Temporal Convolutional Neural Network (TempCNN), Residual Network (ResNet), and a Lightweight Temporal Attention Encoder (L-TAE), with the latter incorporating an attention-based model, fusing S2 and PS within the temporal encoders. Experimental results did not show statistically significant differences between the three data sources for both study areas. Nevertheless, the TempCNN outperformed the other classifiers with an overall accuracy above 90% and an F1-Score of 86.6% for the ICLS class. By selecting the best models, we generated annual ICLS maps, including their surrounding landscapes. This study demonstrated the potential of deep learning algorithms and SITS to successfully map dynamic agricultural systems.