Search Results (43)

(1) Background: The “Bider” marking refers to the symmetrical black stripes distributed on the shoulder blades of Dun Mongolian horses, representing an ancestral trait of significant genetic value. However, the molecular mechanisms underlying its formation remain unclear. This study aims to elucidate the molecular basis of these markings by comparing transcriptomic differences in skin tissues from variously pigmented areas of Mongolian horses’ “Bider” patterns. (2) Methods: Using three Dun Mongolian horses as subjects, skin tissue samples were collected from their shoulders (dark-marked and light-marked areas), dorsal midline, and croup regions for transcriptome sequencing. Differentially expressed genes were identified based on sequencing data, followed by Gene Ontology (GO) functional annotation and Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) pathway enrichment analysis. Key findings were validated through quantitative reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (qRT-PCR). (3) Results: The sequencing yielded approximately 893 million high-quality clean reads, with an overall alignment rate exceeding 96%. A total of 140 to 775 differentially expressed genes were identified. GO enrichment analysis revealed that these genes were significantly enriched in biological processes related to pigment metabolism, skin and hair follicle development, signal transduction (including calcium and cyclic guanosine monophosphate (cGMP) signaling), and immune regulation. KEGG analysis further indicated that multiple pathways closely associated with pigment regulation, including the calcium signaling pathway, tyrosine metabolism, cyclic adenosine monophosphate (cAMP) signaling pathway, and melanoma pathway, were significantly enriched across different tissue comparison groups, suggesting their potential key roles in coat color phenotype formation. The reliability of the sequencing data was corroborated by the results of qRT-PCR validation. (4) Conclusions: This study conducted a transcriptome analysis of skin samples from various pigmented regions of the Dun Mongolian horse’s Bider marking, revealing that the formation of this marking is associated with the differential expression of numerous genes and is co-regulated by multiple pigment-related signaling pathways. Full article

(1) Background: The dun coat color, a wild-type phenotype in horses characterized by pigment dilution and primitive markings, is regulated by TBX3. This study explored the expression and localization of TBX3 in the Bider marking (a primitive mark unique to the shoulder of horses); (2) Methods: We compared skin tissues from Bider-marked and non-Bider dun Mongolian horses. Samples were collected from the Bider area (dark-colored/light-colored shoulder), dorsal midline, and croup. Histological staining, qRT-PCR, and Western blotting were used to analyze pigment distribution and TBX3 expression at mRNA and protein levels; (3) Results: Histology revealed asymmetric pigment deposition in hair shafts from light-colored areas of both Bider and non-Bider horses, whereas dark areas showed symmetric distribution. qRT-PCR and Western blotting showed TBX3 expression was significantly higher in the shoulder of non-Bider horses compared to Bider horses. Conversely, Bider horses exhibited higher TBX3 levels in all other sampled areas. Immunohistochemistry localized TBX3 protein to the epidermis and hair follicle bulbs in both groups; (4) Conclusions: In dun Mongolian horses, TBX3 expression differences between dark and light skin areas correlate with Bider markings. TBX3 is implicated in this specific pigment marking, though its upstream regulation requires further study. These findings provide key insights into the mechanism behind Bider marking formation. Full article

Body measurement plays a crucial role in cattle breeding selection. Traditional manual measurement of cattle body size is both time-consuming and labor-intensive. Current automatic body measurement methods require expensive equipment, involve complex operations, and impose high computational costs, which hinder efficient measurement and broad application. To overcome these limitations, this study proposes an efficient automatic method for cattle body measurement. Lateral and dorsal image datasets were constructed by capturing cattle keypoints characterized by symmetry and relatively fixed positions. A lightweight SCW-YOLO keypoint detection model was designed to identify keypoints in both lateral and dorsal cattle images. Building on the detected keypoints, 11 body measurements—including body height, chest depth, abdominal depth, chest width, abdominal width, sacral height, croup length, diagonal body length, cannon circumference, chest girth, and abdominal girth—were computed automatically using established formulas. Experiments were performed on lateral and dorsal datasets from 61 cattle. The results demonstrated that the proposed method achieved an average relative error of 4.7%. Compared with the original model, the parameter count decreased by 58.2%, compute cost dropped by 68.8%, and model size was reduced by 57%, thus significantly improving lightweight efficiency while preserving acceptable accuracy. Full article

Background: Despite the established importance of prescribing steroids to children with croup, many physicians in Korean emergency departments (EDs) do not adhere to this recommendation. This study aimed to evaluate treatment appropriateness by investigating steroid prescription rates and potentially low-value interventions such as salbutamol nebulizers and radiographs and to compare dedicated pediatric emergency centers (DPECs) and general emergency centers (GECs) to understand treatment trends for croup in Korea. Methods: This retrospective cohort study analyzed a 5% random sample of the National Health Screening Program for Infants and Children (NHSPIC) cohort linked to the National Health Insurance Service database (2008–2015). The study included children with a primary diagnosis of croup and excluded children who were prescribed oral or steroid injections within three days before their ED visit. The primary outcome was steroid prescription rate; secondary outcomes included comparisons of management patterns between DPECs and GECs. Results: The overall steroid prescription rate was 56.9%. Steroid prescribing was slightly higher in DPECs than in GECs (61.2% vs. 56.3%, p = 0.131). In contrast, DPECs had lower prescription rates for salbutamol nebulizers (4.5% vs. 12.7%, p < 0.001), chest radiographs (65.3% vs. 78.7%, p < 0.001), and cervical spine radiographs (4.5% vs. 12.6%, p < 0.001). Steroid prescription rates showed no significant temporal trend, while potentially low-value interventions decreased significantly. Conclusions: Only about half of children with croup in Korean EDs received steroids. DPECs were associated with lower use of potentially low-value interventions, suggesting more guideline-concordant practice. Education and implementation of standardized national croup clinical guidelines are needed to optimize care. Full article

The Peruano de Paso is a horse breed renowned for its smooth gait, traditionally selected based on breeders’ empirical knowledge. Recently, the frequency of chestnut horses, a recessive trait, has increased substantially within the official studbook. This study evaluated whether preference for chestnut coat colour has influenced morphological traits and genetic diversity within the breed. A total of 8376 records of seven morphological traits, collected by the Peruano de Paso Breeders Association over eight years, were analysed, along with a pedigree including 41,357 individuals. Morphological traits were studied through univariate genetic models that considered potential heterogeneity of additive genetic variance between chestnut and non-chestnut horses. Results indicated moderate to high heritability estimates across traits. No significant differences were observed between groups, except for croup width, with heritability of 0.28 ± 0.08 in chestnuts and 0.44 ± 0.08 in non-chestnuts. Genetic correlations between groups could not be precisely estimated due to limited data. The main effect of selection for chestnut coat colour was a reduction in genetic variability, an increase in inbreeding and relatedness. However, this selection has had little impact on morphology, indicating that the traits valued by breeders remain almost unaffected despite the loss of diversity. Full article

This study examines the associations between linearly scored phenotypic traits and auction sales prices of young event horses in Ireland, aiming to identify key traits influencing market value. Data from 307 horses sold at public auctions (2022–2023) were analysed using regression analysis, binary optimisation, and Principal Component Analysis (PCA). Regression identified Head–neck Connection, Quality of Legs, Walk length of Stride, and Scope as highly significant predictors of sales price (p < 0.001), with Length of Croup, Trot Elasticity, Trot Balance, and Take-off Direction also significant (p < 0.05). Optimised regression reduced the number of relevant traits from 37 to 8, streamlining evaluation. PCA highlighted eight principal traits, including Scope, Elasticity, and Canter Impulsion, explaining 61.19% of variance in the first four components. These results demonstrate that specific conformation, movement, and athleticism traits significantly affect auction outcomes. The findings provide actionable insights for breeders and stakeholders, suggesting that targeted selection for high-impact traits could accelerate genetic progress and improve market returns. Furthermore, these traits could underpin the development of economic or buyer indices to enhance valuation accuracy and transparency, with potential application across equestrian disciplines to align breeding objectives with market demands. Full article

Context: Respiratory morbidity is a leading cause of children’s consultations with general practitioners. Auscultation, the act of listening to breath sounds, is a crucial diagnostic method for respiratory system diseases. Problem: Parents and caregivers often lack the necessary knowledge and experience to identify subtle differences in children’s breath sounds. Furthermore, obtaining reliable feedback from young children about their physical condition is challenging. Methods: The use of a human–artificial intelligence (AI) tool is an essential component for screening and monitoring young children’s respiratory diseases. Using clinical data to design and validate the proposed approaches, we propose novel methods for recognizing and classifying children’s breath sounds. Different breath sound signals were analyzed in the time domain, frequency domain, and using spectrogram representations. Breath sound detection and segmentation were performed using digital signal processing techniques. Multiple features—including Mel–Frequency Cepstral Coefficients (MFCCs), Linear Prediction Coefficients (LPCs), Linear Prediction Cepstral Coefficients (LPCCs), spectral entropy, and Dynamic Linear Prediction Coefficients (DLPCs)—were extracted to capture both time and frequency characteristics. These features were then fed into various classifiers, including K-Nearest Neighbor (KNN), artificial neural networks (ANNs), hidden Markov models (HMMs), logistic regression, and decision trees, for recognition and classification. Main Findings: Experimental results from across 120 infants and preschoolers (2 months to 6 years) with respiratory disease (30 asthma, 30 croup, 30 pneumonia, and 30 normal) verified the performance of the proposed approaches. Conclusions: The proposed AI system provides a real-time diagnostic platform to improve clinical respiratory management and outcomes in young children, thereby reducing healthcare costs. Future work exploring additional respiratory diseases is warranted. Full article

The evaluation of external pelvimetry measurements and the genetic factors influencing them is essential for improving morphological characteristics and reproductive performance in cattle. This study represents the first comprehensive analysis of the association between single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) and external pelvimetry traits in Romanian Simmental cattle, a breed recognized for its distinctive pelvic morphology. The relationship between single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) and external pelvimetry traits—including croup height (CH), buttock height (BH), croup width (CW), rump angle (RA), and croup length (CL)—was examined in Simmental cows. From an initial set of 110 SNPs, 33 markers were retained after applying quality control filters, including a minor allele frequency (MAF) greater than 0.05 and Hardy–Weinberg equilibrium. These SNPs, located on multiple chromosomes, were identified within intronic, exonic, or regulatory regions of relevant genes such as CLSTN2, DPYD, FBXL7, FBXL13, SEMA6A, RUNX2, FSTL4, DST, DCBLD2, FRMD6, CAV2.3, ABL2, SH3BP4, RSBN1L,and SAMD12, suggesting that these genetic variants may influence the development and morphology of the pelvic bones. Statistical analysis revealed significant relationships between certain allele variants and croup measurements, highlighting that the presence of alternative alleles can modify their morphological traits. Notably, the G allele in CLSTN2 reduced croup height by 5.74 cm (p = 0.0227), while the T allele in RUNX2 decreased rump angle by 4.49° (p = 0.0119). Full article

Background/Objectives: Human parainfluenza virus type 1 (hPIV-1) is a major cause of serious respiratory diseases in young children. Annually, hPIV-1 results in approximately 10,000 hospitalizations in the United States due to croup, bronchiolitis, and/or pneumonia, and 10,000 deaths worldwide due to acute lower respiratory tract infections among children less than 5 years of age. Despite the burden of disease, no vaccine for hPIV-1 is currently approved. Sendai virus (SeV) is a murine PIV-1. It has structural similarities with hPIV-1 and is currently under clinical development as an hPIV-1 Jennerian vaccine. Attributes of SeV include the following: (a) needleless delivery, (b) rapid and durable serum antibody responses after a single intranasal administration, (c) durable IgG and IgA responses in the nasal mucosa, and (d) use as a platform for recombinant vaccines against multiple pediatric pathogens. Evaluation of the tolerability, safety, and immunogenicity of intranasal SeV in healthy adults and seropositive children 3 to 6 years of age was previously conducted and supported vaccine advancement to evaluation in younger children. Methods: Three seropositive children 1 to 2 years of age received a single intranasal dose of 5 × 10⁵ EID₅₀ SeV (SENDAI, Clinicaltrials.gov NCT00186927). Adverse events were collected for 28 days post-vaccine administration using diary cards and participants were followed for six months in total. Sera were collected longitudinally for clinical laboratory and virus-specific antibody tests. Nasal swabs were collected longitudinally for virus and mucosal antibody tests. Results: Intranasal SeV was well tolerated, with only mild grade 1–2 events that resolved spontaneously. No serious adverse events, medically attended adverse events, or adverse events causing protocol termination were reported. One participant had positive nasal swabs for inoculated SeV during the first week after vaccination. Although children had measurable PIV-1-specific serum antibodies at baseline, intranasal SeV vaccination resulted in significant serum antibody increases in all participants. Similarly, there were significant increases in PIV-1-specific nasal IgG and IgA levels in all participants. Elevated antibody levels persisted through the six months of follow-up. Conclusions: Intranasal SeV was well tolerated and uniformly immunogenic in seropositive children 1 to 2 years of age. Results encourage the further evaluation of SeV and SeV-based recombinants as potential intranasal vaccines for the prevention of infection by hPIV-1 and other serious respiratory pathogens. Full article

In the domain of natural language processing (NLP), a primary challenge pertains to the process of Chinese tokenization, which remains challenging due to the lack of explicit word boundaries in written Chinese. The existing tokenization methods often treat each Chinese character as an indivisible unit, neglecting the finer semantic features embedded in the characters, such as radicals. To tackle this issue, we propose a novel token representation method that integrates radical-based features into the process. The proposed method extends the vocabulary to include both radicals and original character tokens, enabling a more granular understanding of Chinese text. We also conduct experiments on seven datasets covering multiple Chinese natural language processing tasks. The results show that our method significantly improves model performance on downstream tasks. Specifically, the accuracy of BERT on the BQ Croups dataset was enhanced to 86.95%, showing an improvement of 1.65% over the baseline. Additionally, the BERT-wwm performance demonstrated a 1.28% enhancement, suggesting that the incorporation of fine-grained radical features offers a more efficacious solution for Chinese tokenization and paves the way for future research in Chinese text processing. Full article

Due to complex geological conditions and external environmental factors, the structural safety of tunnels faces many challenges. In order to achieve real-time monitoring and early warning for tunnel safety, this paper proposes a semi-supervised clustering algorithm, named SSCME. First, in the traditional concept drift detection stage, this algorithm improves traditional methods by utilizing data distribution to calculate the concept deviation and accurately identify four different types of concept drift. Second, in the incremental update stage, the EM algorithm is further optimized to remove the outlier data used for incrementally updating the classifier, thus resolving the sensitivity issue of DBSCAN in parameter selection. Finally, a large number of sensors are installed in multiple tunnels to collect data and construct datasets. The experimental results on multiple datasets demonstrate that, compared with existing baseline methods, this algorithm has higher effectiveness and reliability. Full article

Water scarcity and soil degradation pose challenges to sustainable agriculture. Phosphogypsum, a low-cost solid waste, shows potential as a soil amendment, but its impact on water saving and soil quality need further study. This research assessed the effects of phosphogypsum application rates (CK: no phosphogypsum, 0.075%, 0.15%, 0.3% and 0.6%) on soil infiltration, water retention, salinity, soil quality, crop yield and irrigation water productivity (IWP) to identify the optimal rate. Phosphogypsum application altered pore structure and water potential gradients, slowing wetting front migration, increasing infiltration duration (102 to 158 min), cumulative infiltration (17.37 to 27.44 cm) (p < 0.05) and soil water content (18.25% to 24.33%) (p < 0.05) as the rate increased from CK to 0.6%. It also enhanced water retention by enhancing soil aggregation and reducing evaporation.By promoting the formation and stabilization of soil aggregates, phosphogypsum application (CK to 0.6%) reduced bulk density from 1.20 g/cm³ to 1.12 g/cm³ (p < 0.05), while porosity, available nitrogen and urease activity increased by 3.70%, 39.42% and 82.61%, respectively (p < 0.05). These enhancements provided a strong foundation for improved crop performance. Specifically, phosphogypsum enhanced yield through three pathways: (1) improving soil physical properties, which influenced soil nutrients and then improved enzyme activities; (2) directly affecting soil nutrients, which impacted enzyme activities and increased yield; and (3) directly boosting enzyme activities, leading to increased yield. The comprehensive benefits of phosphogypsum initially increased and then decreased, with an optimal application rate of 0.45% determined through TOPSIS, a method that ranks alternatives based on their proximity to an ideal solution, considering factors including soil quality, crop yield and IWP. These findings confirm the feasibility of phosphogypsum as an effective resource to enhance water efficiency and soil quality, promoting sustainable agricultural practices. Full article

Background/Objectives: The Mongolian horse, one of the oldest and most genetically diverse breeds, exhibits a wide variety of coat colors and patterns, including both wild-type and unique features. A notable characteristic of dun Mongolian horses is the presence of Bider markings—symmetrical, black-mottled patterns observed on the shoulder blades. These markings are also seen in Przewalski’s horses. The dun coat color, a common wild-type phenotype in domestic horses, is characterized by pigment dilution with distinct dark areas and is regulated by mutations in the TBX3 gene. This study aimed to investigate the role of TBX3 in the development of Bider markings in dun Mongolian horses. Methods: Skin tissue samples were collected from three key anatomical regions of dun Mongolian horses with Bider markings: the croup, dorsal midline, and shoulder. Histological staining was conducted to examine the skin and hair follicle structure and pigment distribution. RT-qPCR was used to measure TBX3 mRNA expression, while immunoblotting and immunohistochemistry were employed to analyze TBX3 protein levels and localization. Results: Hematoxylin and eosin staining revealed the skin and hair follicle structures, including the epidermis, hair shaft, and hair bulb across different stages of the hair growth cycle. Differences in pigmentation were observed across the sampling sites. The croup and the light-colored area of the shoulder showed asymmetrical pigmentation, while the dorsal midline and dark-colored area of the shoulder displayed symmetrical pigmentation. TBX3 mRNA expression levels were significantly higher in the croup compared to the shoulder and dorsal midline; however, corresponding TBX3 protein expression did not show significant differences. Immunohistochemical analysis localized TBX3 protein predominantly in the hair bulb and epidermis. Conclusions: This study demonstrates region-specific differences in TBX3 expression that correlate with pigmentation patterns in dun Mongolian Bider horses. These findings provide valuable insights into the molecular mechanisms underlying Bider markings, offering a deeper understanding of the genetic regulation of coat color and primitive markings in equines. Full article

Background/Objectives: With the advent of the field of pediatric emergency medicine, studies on the differences in treatment patterns between pediatricians and emergency medicine (EM) physicians in various pediatric conditions have been accumulating. This study aimed to compare croup (acute laryngotracheobronchitis) management patterns between pediatricians and EM physicians to enhance pediatric emergency care and inform the training of future specialists. Methods: A retrospective review of medical records was conducted for 1676 previously healthy children diagnosed with croup who visited a single pediatric emergency department (PED) of a tertiary university-affiliated hospital in South Korea, from March 2019 to February 2023. Patient characteristics, management patterns, and the impact of physician specialty on emergency care were analyzed. Results: EM physicians used injected dexamethasone monotherapy in 30.54% of the cases, more frequently than the 3.57% among pediatricians. In contrast, pediatricians used a combination of nebulized epinephrine and dexamethasone in 88.29% of the cases, compared with 67.71% for EM physicians. The appropriate use of nebulized epinephrine based on the Westley Croup Score was significantly higher in the EM physician group (77.64% vs. 57.89%, p < 0.001). Pediatricians also prescribed oral antibiotics and corticosteroids more frequently (25.13% vs. 3.13% and 81.54% vs. 22.69%, respectively; p < 0.001 for both). Despite these differences, there were no significant disparities in PED length of stay or 48 h revisit rates. Conclusions: EM physicians adhered more closely to currently accepted management algorithms for croup management. These findings underscore the need for standardized, evidence-based pediatric emergency care and provide valuable insights for training programs in this field. Full article

Accurate and efficient access to Mongolian horse body size information is an important component in the modernization of the equine industry. Aiming at the shortcomings of manual measurement methods, such as low efficiency and high risk, this study converts the traditional horse body measure measurement problem into a measurement keypoint localization problem and proposes a top-down automatic Mongolian horse body measure measurement method by integrating the target detection algorithm and keypoint detection algorithm. Firstly, the SimAM parameter-free attention mechanism is added to the YOLOv8n backbone network to constitute the SimAM–YOLOv8n algorithm, which provides the base image for the subsequent accurate keypoint detection; secondly, the coordinate regression-based RTMPose keypoint detection algorithm is used for model training to realize the keypoint localization of the Mongolian horse. Lastly, the cosine annealing method was employed to dynamically adjust the learning rate throughout the entire training process, and subsequently conduct body measurements based on the information of each keypoint. The experimental results show that the average accuracy of the SimAM–YOLOv8n algorithm proposed in this study was 90.1%, and the average accuracy of the RTMPose algorithm was 91.4%. Compared with the manual measurements, the shoulder height, chest depth, body height, body length, croup height, angle of shoulder and angle of croup had mean relative errors (MRE) of 3.86%, 4.72%, 3.98%, 2.74%, 2.89%, 4.59% and 5.28%, respectively. The method proposed in this study can provide technical support to realize accurate and efficient Mongolian horse measurements. Full article