Search Results (1,092)

Livestock production occupies a paradoxical position with respect to climate change: farm animals are highly vulnerable to heat stress, feed and water scarcity, and climate-sensitive disease, while the sector contributes an estimated 14.5% of anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions, most of which is biogenic methane from enteric fermentation. This review evaluates the evidence for precision livestock farming (PLF)—continuous, automated, real-time monitoring of individual animals’ health, welfare, production and environmental impact—across dairy and beef cattle, small ruminants, pigs, and poultry. For mitigation, precision feeding and additive-dosing strategies have been associated with enteric methane reductions of approximately 10–25%; for adaptation, wearable and non-invasive sensors have been reported to detect heat-stress-related behavioural changes before productivity losses become apparent, and smart climate-control systems have been associated with housing energy-use reductions of roughly 5–10%. Much of this evidence derives from single-farm, small-sample or short-duration studies and should be read as indicative rather than generalisable. Adoption remains constrained by high investment costs, limited interoperability, insufficient technical support, and uneven applicability to extensive and smallholder systems. We conclude that PLF is a valuable enabling technology that, combined with genetic, nutritional, and management strategies, can strengthen the resilience and environmental sustainability of livestock systems under a changing climate. Full article

Journalism and media studies increasingly describe a communication environment in which news, explanation and public orientation are accessed through search engines, social feeds, notifications, short-form video, platform summaries, podcasts and conversational artificial intelligence. Existing accounts identify attention scarcity, information overload, platform power, news avoidance and AI disruption, yet they do not fully explain why some communicative practices become less sustainable while faster forms of orientation expand under the same conditions. This conceptual paper develops an integrative theoretical synthesis across media practice theory, deep mediatization, platform studies, digital journalism, digital reading research, cognitive load theory, acceleration studies and AI-mediated communication. It proposes latency mismatch as a middle-range mechanism of temporal selection. Latency mismatch occurs when the time a practice requires to generate stable understanding exceeds the continuity intervals that a media environment makes available, rewards or treats as reasonable, especially when lower-latency alternatives provide sufficient orientation. The concept clarifies how platformized journalism and media environments govern not only visibility and attention but also the durations through which information becomes meaningful, trustworthy and actionable. It reframes long-form news reading, investigative engagement and other high-latency practices as structurally vulnerable but socially necessary conditions of public knowledge. Full article

Closely related Aspergillus section Nigri species are difficult to resolve taxonomically, while short-read comparisons may be influenced by reference-genome choice. We applied reciprocal genome projection to 31 whole-genome sequencing libraries representing South African clinical section-Nigri isolates, Japanese and USA A. niger-labeled isolates, and A. welwitschiae-labeled isolates. Reads were aligned independently to A. niger ATCC 1015 and A. welwitschiae Aspwel1, followed by reference-specific differential-representation and KEGG analyses. Species-level classification showed substantial overlap between A. niger and A. welwitschiae. The A. welwitschiae–South African comparison identified 44 and 59 effect-qualified features under the respective projections, including 20 reciprocal feature pairs defining a reference-robust A. welwitschiae-associated core. The clinical Japanese–South African comparison identified 116 and 127 features, with 14 concordant KEGG orthologs involving sterol modification, protein prenylation, cofactor metabolism, redox processing, cell-wall turnover and ribosome maturation. No pathway remained significant after false discovery-rate correction; nominal pathway signals were reference-sensitive. Reciprocal projection, therefore, recovered localized cohort-associated genomic differentiation while identifying reference-conditioned effects. These findings represent differential genomic-read representation and do not independently establish copy-number variation, pathway activity, virulence or antifungal resistance. Full article

Background: Rare diseases collectively affect millions of children worldwide and are a major cause of pediatric morbidity, mortality, and lifelong disability. Although most have a genetic basis, obtaining a timely molecular diagnosis remains challenging because of substantial clinical and genetic heterogeneity. Advances in genomic medicine are transforming rare disease diagnosis and establishing genomics as the center of precision medicine. Methods: This review summarizes current evidence on genomic approaches for pediatric rare diseases, including established and emerging sequencing technologies, their clinical applications, implementation challenges, and future directions. Results: Whole-genome sequencing is increasingly being adopted as a first-line genomic test for suspected rare genetic disorders, particularly when the phenotype is heterogeneous or does not point to a specific diagnosis. Conventional cytogenetic and targeted molecular techniques remain important complementary approaches for selected phenotypes, variant classes, and orthogonal confirmation. Gene panels are effective for well-defined phenotypes, whereas whole-exome sequencing remains a high-yield approach for genetically heterogeneous disorders, particularly when whole-genome sequencing is not available or is not clinically indicated. Long-read whole-genome sequencing expands diagnostic capacity by detecting structural variants, repeat expansions, complex rearrangements, and non-coding pathogenic variants that frequently escape short-read technologies. Emerging multi-omics approaches further improve variant interpretation and help resolve previously unsolved cases. Beyond diagnosis, molecular findings guide personalized clinical management, genetic counselling, reproductive planning, and access to targeted therapies and genotype-driven clinical trials. However, broad implementation is constrained by challenges in variant interpretation, ethical and legal considerations, data governance, workforce capacity, cost, and inequitable access to genomic services. Artificial intelligence, international data-sharing initiatives, and coordinated healthcare networks are helping overcome these barriers and improve diagnostic equity. Conclusions: Whole-genome sequencing is increasingly emerging as a first-line genomic strategy for pediatric rare diseases, while complementary technologies, expert phenotyping, and iterative data interpretation remain essential for comprehensive and accurate diagnosis and equitable access to genomic medicine. Full article

This paper estimates the short-run relationship between real output growth and unemployment in Albania over 1992–2023 and asks how sensitive that relationship is to the way crisis episodes are dated. Albania offers a demanding test: a transition economy with high informality, extensive self-employment and sustained emigration, whose sample contains three major shocks in three decades. We estimate first-difference specifications in which the change in the unemployment rate is regressed on output growth, with a lagged dependent variable capturing persistence and separate indicators for the three crisis episodes. Because conventional standard errors are unreliable at this sample size, we report alternative estimators alongside bootstrap inference and a full set of residual and stability diagnostics. Our main practical result concerns crisis dating. Crisis dummies are conventionally dated to the year a crisis began internationally, but for a small open economy whose transmission is indirect, the year in which a shock reaches domestic activity need not be that year. Albania did not contract in 2008 or 2009. We date the financial-crisis indicator from an external chronology of transmission—credit growth, non-performing loans, exports, investment, remittances and the fiscal stance—assembled from contemporaneous institutional sources and fixed before estimation, which places the arrival of the crisis in the Albanian economy in 2009 and 2010. The estimated crisis coefficient is highly sensitive to that choice: a 2008-dated indicator produces the best-fitting specification in this paper on every information criterion together with a large negative coefficient; the conventional 2008–2009 window straddles the turning point and returns an estimate indistinguishable from zero; the 2009–2010 window returns a positive one. These coefficients are individually imprecise, and their intervals overlap, so we do not claim that the data identify any one dating as correct, and we do not treat the sign of an estimate as evidence for or against a window. Our claim is narrower: the substantive conclusion a reader would draw about the crisis is determined by a specification choice that the data cannot settle, so the window has to be fixed ex ante on transmission evidence and its consequences reported. We demonstrate this for Albania and do not assert that published work on other countries is affected; we specify the test that would settle it. The dating choice leaves the estimated Okun coefficient itself almost unchanged. That coefficient is negative in every specification, estimator, subsample and phase definition we report, with a normal-times impact estimate of approximately −0.21, smaller in absolute value than the range reported for advanced economies. Its statistical significance is sensitive to the mode of inference: under the null-imposed bootstrap we regard as most appropriate at this sample size, the coefficient is not significant at conventional levels in the specification that carries that estimate. The evidence for the sign of the relationship is considerably stronger than the evidence for its magnitude, and comparisons of level with advanced-economy estimates should be read against that. The three crisis coefficients are large but imprecisely estimated, and restrictions of equality between them are not rejected, so we report them as descriptive magnitudes and do not rank the episodes. We validate the modeled unemployment series against the national Labour Force Survey over the years in which both exist and re-estimate the model on the national series; the crisis coefficients and the crisis-dating pattern are essentially unchanged. We do not detect a structural break at the 1997 pyramid-scheme collapse once dynamics and crisis indicators are jointly modeled, and we do not detect cyclical asymmetry, though the confidence intervals are wide enough that both are failures to detect rather than evidence of stability or symmetry. Full article

Dietary fiber shapes both gut microbial community structure and the fermentable substrates available to resident taxa, yet how fiber deprivation reshapes taxonomic representation and predicted functional potential remains incompletely resolved. We performed an in silico re-analysis of publicly deposited 16S rRNA gene data from 15 female C57BL/6 mice distributed across three dietary cohorts—fiber-replete (F), no-fiber (NF), and no-fiber with exogenous short-chain fatty acid supplementation (NF-SCFA)—using processed taxonomic profiles and PICRUSt-derived KO/EC and KEGG pathway representations. No new animals, sequencing, enzyme assays, metabolomics, or direct SCFA measurements were generated. The F cohort exhibited the highest alpha-diversity summaries (observed features, Shannon, Simpson) and higher read-count representation for fiber-associated taxa, including Clostridium and Bifidobacterium, whereas NF profiles showed elevated representation of Ligilactobacillus in several samples. Beta-diversity analyses (PERMANOVA, PCoA) revealed that F communities were compositionally distinct from both fiber-deprived cohorts, while NF and NF-SCFA remained similar to one another. Among 52 differentially represented KO/EC features mapped across 31 KEGG pathway groups, 19 were F-preferential and 33 NF-preferential, spanning carbohydrate, pyruvate, propanoate, and butanoate metabolism. Critically, the NF-SCFA cohort failed to recapitulate the F-like taxonomic or functional pattern, indicating that exogenous SCFA supplementation alone does not restore fiber-associated community structure. These findings describe associations and predicted functional potential rather than demonstrated enzyme activity, metabolite concentration, or SCFA output, and should be interpreted as hypothesis-generating. The results identify candidate taxa and pathways warranting direct biochemical, transcriptomic, and strain-resolved validation before conclusions about fiber-dependent SCFA biosynthesis can be established. Full article

Background/Objectives: Wearable powered gait orthoses are prescribed as assistive equipment, on the premise that torque at an impaired joint improves walking while the device is worn; the device also adds mass. Where a hip module and a knee–ankle–foot module can be worn together, the combined configuration places the mass of both on one limb, and whether its walking cost exceeds that of either module alone has not been tested under a common protocol. Methods: We analysed individual participant data from two previously published prospective studies, neither of which compared configurations. Forty-three adults with central neurological gait impairment, enrolled during 2024, were trained over six supervised sessions with a bilateral hip orthosis (HO, n = 13), a unilateral knee–ankle–foot orthosis (KAFO, n = 15), or both worn together (HKAFO, n = 15); the primary 6MWT analysis was performed on the complete-case subsample (n = 41, with HO n = 12, KAFO n = 14, HKAFO n = 15). The assisted–unassisted differential was computed per participant as (device-assisted − unassisted)/unassisted × 100; negative values indicate a shorter distance with the device. Results: No statistically significant baseline differences were detected across the three groups. The six-minute walk differential was larger for the HKAFO than for either single-region configuration at baseline (−24.9% versus −6.0% and −7.6%; Kruskal–Wallis p = 0.008) and after six sessions (−17.1% versus −5.9% and −4.3%; p = 0.012), whereas the two single-region configurations were indistinguishable at both assessments (p = 0.397 and 0.916). Short-distance gait speed did not differ between configurations (p = 0.290 and 0.457). Conclusions: The walking cost of the combined configuration was associated with a larger assisted–unassisted differential than that of either constituent module. We propose that this reflects the mass carried on a single limb rather than a shortfall in assistance, a reading these data support but cannot establish in the absence of kinematic or metabolic measurements. These findings should be regarded as hypothesis-generating and require prospective replication in a larger, adequately powered cohort. Full article

This article puts Christina Sharpe’s theories of “the wake” and “wake work” and Kevin Quashie’s theory of “Black aliveness” in conversation with Peace Peloton, a nonprofit organization promoting Black businesses and community through the activities of cycling and neighborhood events. The author reads Peace Peloton’s gatherings and the draft of turbulent air produced by their pelotons, or groups of bicyclists in motion, as radical Black performances and what Sharpe calls “wake work.” Acts of resistance and resilience enacted in the aftermath—the wake—of the Transatlantic slave trade, Peace Peloton’s rides and gatherings as “wake work” reject the ontological othering of Black bodies and being and dynamize what it means to be in a wake. Enacting Quashie’s sense of “worldmaking,” Peace Peloton’s “wake work” challenges presumptions of the outdoors and road cycling as white spaces, for white people, and reclaims for Black worldmaking once majority Black, now gentrified spaces of commerce and leisure. An interdisciplinary look into a cultural expression that has heretofore gone unexamined, this chapter weaves into its application of contemporary Afrodiasporic theory the history of redlining, cycling physics, writing on Blackness and the outdoors, Alexis Pauline Gumb’s short story “Bluebellow,” and Fedeke N. Castor’s Spiritual Citizenship: Transnational Pathways from Black Power to Ifa in Trinidad. It is through this ambitious and innovative interpretative lens that the author illuminates Peace Peloton’s “wake work” and Black worldmaking and situates them within the broader corpus of Afrodiasporic literature and cultural expressions. Full article

High-resolution air pollutant measurement in Antarctica remains limited, particularly for short-term variability and episodic enhancements associated with local field activities, atmospheric processes, and long-range transport. This study presents minute-scale observations of trace gases and particulate matter collected during a short Antarctic field campaign from May to June 2023. The dataset includes NO₂, O₃, CO, SO₂, PM_2.5, and PM₁₀, with supplementary total volatile organic compound (TVOC) measurements available for May. Raw observations were quality-organized, aggregated to hourly and daily means, and examined for temporal variability, diurnal behavior, pollutant relationships, and short-duration pollution events. Across 58,652 valid observations, surface O₃ showed relatively stable concentrations compared with the other pollutants, while NO₂, CO, SO₂, PM_2.5, and PM₁₀ displayed episodic enhancements. Median concentrations were 11.05 ppb for NO₂, 38.17 ppb for O₃, 30.61 ppb for CO, 0.01 ppb for SO₂, 6.29 µg m⁻³ for PM_2.5, and 7.29 µg m⁻³ for PM10. PM2.5 and PM10 were strongly correlated, with a median PM_2.5/PM₁₀ ratio of approximately 0.96, suggesting that fine particles contributed substantially to particulate mass during much of the campaign. Event detection based on pollutant-specific hourly 95th percentile thresholds identified 142 single-pollutant enhancement events and 30 multi-pollutant concurrent events. TVOC observations were highly zero-inflated, with only about 1.9% nonzero readings and a short-lived elevated episode around 9 to 10 May; therefore, TVOC was treated as ancillary and interpreted cautiously. These results demonstrate that even short Antarctic field campaigns can capture meaningful high-resolution pollutant variability and episodic enhancements. Because reference-grade co-location was not available under Antarctic conditions, the reported concentrations are interpreted as calibrated sensor estimates, with emphasis placed on temporal variability rather than reference-equivalent absolute concentrations. The results apply only to the May–June 2023 campaign and are not intended to represent seasonal, annual, continent-wide, or long-term Antarctic air quality; they provide useful observational evidence of short-term atmospheric variability in a remote polar environment and highlight the importance of transparent event detection and cautious interpretation of short-duration sensor records. Full article

Single-nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) arrays provide reproducible, accurate, and scalable genotyping for rice research and cultivar development. This review critically evaluates the design and development of major rice SNP platforms and defines their value within a rapidly changing genotyping landscape. In contrast to earlier platform-centered summaries, this review connects array selection with the complete breeding pathway from germplasm assessment and locus discovery to functional validation, marker-assisted transfer, genomic selection, varietal authentication, and pre-breeding. SNP arrays are compared with genotyping-by-sequencing, double-digest restriction site-associated DNA sequencing, low-pass sequencing, whole-genome resequencing, targeted sequencing, and long-read sequencing in terms of cost, throughput, data completeness, computational demand, marker discovery, and population transferability. Candidate-locus validation through gene-expression analysis, haplotype analysis, near-isogenic lines, RNA interference, transgenic complementation, clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats/CRISPR-associated protein (CRISPR/Cas) editing, and field evaluation is also examined. Pangenome resources and the contributions of structural variants, presence/absence variations, and copy number variations to probe design and trait analysis receive particular attention. The review further assesses ascertainment bias, weak detection of rare alleles, genotype-cluster errors, limited portability across distant germplasm, and reduced genomic prediction across populations or environments. Future priorities include multi-omics integration, climate-resilient rice improvement, modular panels, imputation anchor loci, and economical deployment through low-density assays, shared facilities, and kompetitive allele-specific polymerase chain reaction conversion. The value of SNP arrays is greatest when stable genotype calls, large sample numbers, and repeated use across breeding cycles are required. Their practical contribution should be judged by prediction accuracy, selection cost, cycle duration, donor-segment control, realized genetic gain, and cultivar deployment. Full article

Sanghuangporus mongolicus T. Bau is a wood-inhabiting medicinal fungus parasitic on Hemiptelea davidii, yet genomic resources for this species remain limited. Here, we generated and characterized a genome assembly from a verified monokaryotic isolate using PacBio long-read and Illumina short-read sequencing. The 34.79 Mb assembly comprised 13 contigs, with a contig N50 of 3.09 Mb and a GC content of 48.18%. BUSCO analysis recovered 98.3% complete orthologs, indicating high genome completeness. A total of 8471 protein-coding genes were predicted, including 491 genes annotated as carbohydrate-active enzymes (CAZymes), 447 transporter-related genes, and 123 cytochrome P450 genes. In addition, 16 secondary metabolite biosynthetic gene clusters were identified. A descriptive comparison with four published Sanghuangporus genomes showed that S. mongolicus had 491 CAZyme-related annotations (14.11 per Mb; 5.80 per 100 predicted protein-coding genes). Corresponding values for the other four species were 313–346 annotations, with 9.78–10.38 per Mb and 2.99–4.18 per 100 predicted genes. However, structural gene-prediction workflows differed among the five genomes, and no formal gene-family expansion analysis was conducted. Accordingly, these differences are reported descriptively and should not be interpreted as evidence of evolutionary gene-family expansion. These genomic data provide a resource for functional gene characterization and further biological studies of S. mongolicus. Full article

Hyperlocal meteorological sensing is essential for accurate solar photovoltaic forecasting, yet professional-grade meteorological stations require investments easily exceeding $1000 USD per node, making distributed deployments economically inaccessible. This work presents a modular internet of things (IoT) device based on the ESP32 microcontroller integrating temperature, humidity, luminosity, and solar panel voltage sensing in an IP68-rated enclosure at a total hardware cost of about $65 USD when components are sourced in Germany. The enclosure-mounted temperature sensor is subject to a daytime radiative-heating bias and is not a calibrated ambient-air measurement. A hybrid architecture decouples external model training, performed on a conventional computer using the software Python and the open-source library TensorFlow, from autonomous on-device inference: every 15 min, the embedded feedforward network produces a single one-step-ahead (15 min) prediction of solar panel voltage from the most recent 96 real sensor readings; the resulting sequence of 96 such predictions, logged and assembled over a full day, forms the diurnal forecast profile reported below. This is executed via a three-layer feedforward network with 3011 parameters (11.8 KB). The network is trained offline on site-collected data and deployed on the microcontroller as static weight matrices without cloud connectivity. An on-device incremental gradient descent mechanism enables model adaptation after deployment without external retraining. The system was evaluated through two field deployments: a short period of hardware and firmware validation in Ulm, Germany, and a 115-day deployment in Zapopan, Mexico, comprising 84 days of training and 31 days of autonomous operation with zero missing records (no 15 min interval failed to log a reading); a real-time-clock fault affecting the final three validation days is addressed separately below and excluded from the reported metrics. Over a clean 28-day daytime window, the embedded model attained a coefficient of determination of 0.9165 and a mean absolute error of 0.2975 V (4.65% of the operational range), outperforming a climatology baseline (skill score 0.64) while not surpassing a 24 h persistence baseline. A frozen-weight ablation confirms that the on-device update mechanism yields a small but statistically significant accuracy gain ($p=0.001$), showing that autonomous incremental learning is implementable on low-cost hardware and produces a measurable effect, without cloud connectivity. Full article

Culture-independent techniques are playing a major role in exploring unique and novel microbial communities from complex ecosystems, leading to an outstanding impact on our basic understanding of the tree of life. Microbial communities are not extensively studied in layer chicken housing environments, particularly from the point of view of taxa carrying antimicrobial resistance genes, virulence genes and their functional potential. This study aimed to extract metagenomic-assembled genomes (MAGs) from the Illumina short-reads shotgun metagenomics sequenced data that originated from an Alberta poultry barn environment and then to study host tracking of antimicrobial resistance genes (ARGs) and the roles of genes involved in functions related to ammonia production, short-chain fatty acid (SCFA)-related pathways, sulfur metabolism, methane emission, stress and disinfectant-related pathways. A total of 251 high-quality MAGs were extracted, including 249 bacterial and two archaeal genomes from sequencing data of 30 metagenomic sequencing samples comprising 15 air and 15 manure samples collected from 15-layer farms. Interestingly 22 bacterial MAGs were not classified to species levels using GTDB-based classification. ARGs were mainly harbored by the genera Staphylococcus, Alistepes, Romboutsia, and Enterococcus. Bacteroides is a main taxon carrying ARGs in air samples. Ammonia production-related genes were mainly tracked in Staphylococcus, Ruminococcus and Corynebacterium genera. The assimilatory sulfate reduction genes responsible for sulfur metabolism and hydrogenase-related genes responsible for hydrogen cycling were traced from Staphylococcus originated from both air and manure. The current study provides characterizations of MAGs from a poultry housing environment by linking microbial taxa with virulence, resistance, and metabolic functions. The findings emphasize the role of microbiota in shaping gas emissions and AMR, with implications for poultry health and worker’s safety and the ultimate aim of sustainable poultry production. Full article

Background/Objectives: KDIGO supports molecular testing in selected autosomal dominant polycystic kidney disease (ADPKD) scenarios and targeted next-generation sequencing panels when broader evaluation is warranted; however, gene inclusion alone establishes neither analytical completeness nor clinical reportability. Methods: We designed and evaluated a 28-gene ADPKD-spectrum hybrid-capture panel in a 16-sample, two-configuration pilot using 694 analytical target intervals per sample. Multiplex ligation-dependent probe amplification assessed dosage in suspected PKD1-related disease or TSC2/PKD1 contiguous-gene deletion, and whole-exome sequencing selectively supported short-read reidentification. Results: In the primary eight-sample dataset, 4592/5552 observations (82.7%) had interval mean depth ≥20×, 4256/5552 (76.7%) had interval minimum depth ≥20×, and 89.6% of interval-record bases reached ≥10×. Nine genes (FLCN, GANAB, HNF1B, PRKCSH, REN, SEC61A1, TSC2, UMOD and VHL) met mean depth ≥20× throughout; six also met the minimum-depth criterion. For PKD1, 45/46 intervals met both criteria in all samples, but exon 1 remained undercovered, and nominal depth in duplicated sequence did not establish authentic-locus callability. Signals were observed at all four positive-comparator loci, although two lacked sufficient support for independent reporting. Seven of nine panel-first cases yielded observations: one HNF1B and one unique-locus PKD1 finding were supported, whereas four duplicated-sequence PKD1 findings remained confirmation-dependent. Conclusions: Responsible implementation requires explicit analytical boundaries and staged complementary testing. Full article

Periprosthetic joint infection is among the most serious complications of joint replacement, and the implant surface, where infection begins, is a rational prevention target. Antibacterial titanium surfaces act by releasing an agent, by contact killing, or by resisting adhesion. Yet the field cannot readily tell which method performs best, because efficacy is evaluated with methods that differ at every level and are rarely comparable: the same surface can read as highly effective under one assay and inactive under another, so the test rather than the material decides the verdict. This review asks where comparability is lost and what would restore it, for permanent load-bearing arthroplasty implants. We dissect the gap across in vitro assays, durability testing, surface characterization, in vivo models, clinical infection definitions, and regulatory expectations and ask whether the antibacterial–osseointegration trade-off is assessed coherently. We then propose a ten-item, stage-stratified minimum-reporting checklist and test it retrospectively on thirteen open-access studies. No study reported every item required at its stage; none related antibacterial dose to a stated cytotoxicity threshold; and studies fell short at different tiers, so their reported efficacies are not commensurable. The checklist is offered as a testable starting point for multi-stakeholder consensus, not a finished standard. Full article