ABSTRACT The present study used mobile bags to estimate horse nutrient digestibility of tropical grasses found in semi-arid areas of the Brazilian Northeast region. Five female mixed-breed horses ...with a mean weight of 400±23 kg were assigned to a 5×5 Latin square design with five periods of seven days and five grasses: Tifton 85 hay ( Cynodon spp. ), sixweeks threeawn ( Aristida adscensionis Linn.), Alexandergrass ( Brachiaria plantaginea (Link) Hitchc), capim-de-raiz ( Chloris orthonoton Doell), and Sabi grass ( Urochloa mosambicensis ). The nutrient content of forages was determined prior to inoculation in horses and after recovery of mobile bags from feces. The digestibility coefficients were determined from the difference between the inoculated and recovered material. The dry matter, organic matter, mineral matter, crude protein, neutral detergent fiber, and acid detergent fiber contents of the grass species were analyzed. Digestibility data were subjected to analysis of variance using the Statistical Analysis System (SAS, version 9.0) software. Higher dry matter digestibility coefficients were observed in Tifton 85 (74.61%), Alexandergrass (74.30%), and capim-de-raiz (68.88%) than in sixweeks threeawn (48.40%) and Sabi grass (52.89%). The highest crude protein digestibility coefficients were found for Alexandergrass (95.70%), Tifton 85 (93.50%), and sixweeks threeawn (93.35%). Sixweeks threeawn had lower apparent mineral matter digestibility than the other grasses. The digestibility coefficients of Alexandergrass and capim-de-raiz indicate that those grasses have potential to be used in equine feed.
The seroprevalence of caprine arthritis–encephalitis virus (CAEV) in the Cariri Region of Paraíba State, Brazil, was determined in 60 goat herds using the agar gel immunodiffusion test. The overall ...seroprevalence was 8.2%, with seropositivity in 21/60 (35%) herds and 13/15 (86.6%) municipalities. Bucks had a significantly higher frequency of infection (28.3%) than does (5.9%), and bucks that originated in other states had a significantly higher frequency of infection (76.5%) than those from Paraíba State (9.3%).
Estimates indicate that cancer will become the leading cause of mortality worldwide in the future. Tumorigenesis is a complex process that involves self-sufficiency in signs of growth, insensitivity ...to anti-growth signals, prevention of apoptosis, unlimited replication, sustained angiogenesis, tissue invasion, and metastasis. Cancer stem cells (CSCs) have an important role in tumor development and resistance. Here we will approach phenotypic plasticity capacity, highly efficient DNA repair systems, anti-apoptotic machinery, sustained stemness features, interaction with the tumor microenvironment, and Notch, Wnt, and Hedgehog signaling pathways. The researches about CSCs as a target in cancer treatment has been growing. Many different options have pointed beneficial results, such as pathways and CSC-surface markers targeting. Besides its limitations, nanotherapeutics have emerged as a potential strategy in this context since they aim to improve pharmacokinetics, biodistribution, and reduce the side effects observed in traditional treatments. Nanoparticles have been studied in this field, mostly for drug delivery and a multitherapy approach. Another widely researched approaches in this area are related to heat therapy, such as photothermal therapy, photodynamic therapy and magnetic hyperthermia, besides molecular targeting. This review will contemplate the most relevant studies that have shown the effects of nanotherapeutics. In conclusion, although the studies analyzed are mostly preclinical, we believe that there is strong evidence that nanoparticles can increase the chances of a better prognosis to cancer in the future. It is also essential to transpose these findings to the clinic to confirm and better understand the role of nanotherapeutics in this context.
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•Chemotherapeutic resistance of cancer stem cells is a challenging issue.•Nano-engineered constructs based immunotherapeutic as a promising strategy to battle against cancer.•Photothermal therapy, photodynamic therapy, magnetic hyperthermia, and molecular targeting are reviewed.•Nanostructure materials-based nanomedicine, or drug vehicles have revolutionized the biomedical settings.•The advent of nanoscience impacted the concept of the modern immunotherapeutic paradigm.
The objective of this paper was to analyze the behavior of environmental and performance variables in the Lean Manufacturing versus Green Manufacturing context in a road freight transportation ...system. Thus, a survey analysis was carried out by applying a satisfaction questionnaire to evaluate the customers, workers and managers perception concerning some environmental issues. It was verified the possibility for managers to develop different sustainable strategies considering the type of commercial vehicle available in the company, the vehicle age and the eco-driving behavior among drivers. Discrete Event Simulation was also applied to investigate the behavior of typical scenarios of transport operations in the Supply Chain encompassing greenhouse gas emissions and transport time of operation routes. In order to verify which factors most influenced the emissions, an experimental project using simulation models was employed. Investigating the results, it could be seen that the behavior of the transport structures cannot be generalized, as different scenarios had different results on the performance of the Supply Chain when analyzing factors such as Types of delivery fleet, Age of the fleet and Driving style. It was also identified that some simulations that present low emission have greater transport time. Thus, the green consumer behavior will carry greater weight on manager’s decisions; this way, actions that meet the lean and green can be established in a way that both practices can add value to eco-efficiency or greater sustainability to the Supply Chain.
Abstract
The global network of gravitational-wave observatories now includes five detectors, namely LIGO Hanford, LIGO Livingston, Virgo, KAGRA, and GEO 600. These detectors collected data during ...their third observing run, O3, composed of three phases: O3a starting in 2019 April and lasting six months, O3b starting in 2019 November and lasting five months, and O3GK starting in 2020 April and lasting two weeks. In this paper we describe these data and various other science products that can be freely accessed through the Gravitational Wave Open Science Center at
https://gwosc.org
. The main data set, consisting of the gravitational-wave strain time series that contains the astrophysical signals, is released together with supporting data useful for their analysis and documentation, tutorials, as well as analysis software packages.
This article covers the trends in climate changes in the semiarid region of the Northeastern region of Brazil, with a spacial cutout to the sub-medium stretch of the São Francisco River Basin. As a ...methodology, the RClimdex software was used to calculate the climate extremes indices of precipitation for the period between 1964 and 2016. The results indicated changes in the rainfall patterns, denoting an increase in the number of consecutive dry days, a reduction of the total annual rainfall, and also exhibiting negative trends in the daily rainfall intensity, in the number of days with moderate, strong, and intense rain, in the number of very humid and extremely humid days, contributing to the recurrent droughts in the semiarid region of Northeastern Brazil.
The TcK2 protein kinase of Trypanosoma cruzi, the causative agent of Chagas disease, is structurally similar to the human kinase PERK, which phosphorylates the initiation factor eIF2α and, in turn, ...inhibits translation initiation. We have previously shown that absence of TcK2 kinase impairs parasite proliferation within mammalian cells, positioning it as a potential target for treatment of Chagas disease. To better understand its role in the parasite, here we initially confirmed the importance of TcK2 in parasite proliferation by generating CRISPR/Cas9 TcK2-null cells, albeit they more efficiently differentiate into infective forms. Proteomics indicates that the TcK2 knockout of proliferative forms expresses proteins including trans-sialidases, normally restricted to infective and nonproliferative trypomastigotes explaining decreased proliferation and better differentiation. TcK2 knockout cells lost phosphorylation of eukaryotic initiation factor 3 and cyclic AMP responsive-like element, recognized to promote growth, likely explaining both decreased proliferation and augmented differentiation. To identify specific inhibitors, a library of 379 kinase inhibitors was screened by differential scanning fluorimetry using a recombinant TcK2 encompassing the kinase domain and selected molecules were tested for kinase inhibition. Only Dasatinib and PF-477736, inhibitors of Src/Abl and ChK1 kinases, showed inhibitory activity with IC50 of 0.2 ± 0.02 mM and 0.8 ± 0.1, respectively. In infected cells Dasatinib inhibited growth of parental amastigotes (IC50 = 0.6 ± 0.2 mM) but not TcK2 of depleted parasites (IC50 > 34 mM) identifying Dasatinib as a potential lead for development of therapeutics for Chagas disease targeting TcK2.
ABSTRACT
We describe a search for gravitational waves from compact binaries with at least one component with mass $0.2$–$1.0 \, \mathrm{M}_\odot$ and mass ratio q ≥ 0.1 in Advanced Laser ...Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) and Advanced Virgo data collected between 2019 November 1, 15:00 utc and 2020 March 27, 17:00 utc. No signals were detected. The most significant candidate has a false alarm rate of $0.2 \, \rm {yr}^{-1}$. We estimate the sensitivity of our search over the entirety of Advanced LIGO’s and Advanced Virgo’s third observing run, and present the most stringent limits to date on the merger rate of binary black holes with at least one subsolar-mass component. We use the upper limits to constrain two fiducial scenarios that could produce subsolar-mass black holes: primordial black holes (PBH) and a model of dissipative dark matter. The PBH model uses recent prescriptions for the merger rate of PBH binaries that include a rate suppression factor to effectively account for PBH early binary disruptions. If the PBHs are monochromatically distributed, we can exclude a dark matter fraction in PBHs $f_\mathrm{PBH} \gtrsim \, 0.6$ (at 90 per cent confidence) in the probed subsolar-mass range. However, if we allow for broad PBH mass distributions, we are unable to rule out fPBH = 1. For the dissipative model, where the dark matter has chemistry that allows a small fraction to cool and collapse into black holes, we find an upper bound fDBH < 10−5 on the fraction of atomic dark matter collapsed into black holes.