Our research group demonstrated that vitamin A restriction affected meat quality of Angus cross and Simmental steers. Therefore, the aim of this study is to highlight the genotype variations in response to dietary vitamin A levels. Commercial Angus and Simmental steers (n = 32 per breed; initial BW = 337.2 ± 5.9 kg; ~8 months of age) were fed a low-vitamin A (LVA) (1017 IU/kg DM) backgrounding diet for 95 days to reduce hepatic vitamin A stores. During finishing, steers were randomly assigned to treatments in a 2 × 2 factorial arrangement of genotype × dietary vitamin A concentration. The LVA treatment was a finishing diet with no supplemental vitamin A (723 IU vitamin A/kg DM); the control (CON) was the LVA diet plus supplementation with 2200 IU vitamin A/kg DM. Blood samples were collected at three time points throughout the study to analyze serum retinol concentration. At the completion of finishing, steers were slaughtered at a commercial abattoir. Meat characteristics assessed were intramuscular fat concentration, color, Warner-Bratzler shear force, cook loss and pH. Camera image analysis was used for determination of marbling, 12th rib back fat and longissimus muscle area (LMA). The LVA steers had lower (P < 0.001) serum retinol concentration than CON steers. The LVA treatment resulted in greater (P = 0.03) average daily gain than the CON treatment, 1.52 and 1.44 ± 0.03 kg/day, respectively; however, there was no effect of treatment on final BW, DM intake or feed efficiency. Cooking loss and yield grade were greater and LMA was smaller in LVA steers (P < 0.05). There was an interaction between breed and treatment for marbling score (P = 0.01) and percentage of carcasses grading United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) Prime (P = 0.02). For Angus steers, LVA treatment resulted in a 16% greater marbling score than CON (683 and 570 ± 40, respectively) and 27% of LVA Angus steers graded USDA Prime compared with 0% for CON. Conversely, there was no difference in marbling score or USDA Quality Grades between LVA and CON for Simmental steers. In conclusion, feeding a LVA diet during finishing increased marbling in Angus but not in Simmental steers. Reducing the vitamin A level of finishing diets fed to cattle with a high propensity to marble, such as Angus, has the potential to increase economically important traits such as marbling and quality grade without negatively impacting gain : feed or yield grade.

Reducing dietary CP content is an effective approach to reduce animal nitrogen excretion and save protein feed resources. However, it is not clear how reducing dietary CP content affects the nutrient digestion and absorption in the gut of ruminants, therefore it is difficult to accurately determine how much reduction in dietary CP content is appropriate. This study was conducted to investigate the effects of reduced dietary CP content on N balance, intestinal nutrient digestion and absorption, and rumen microbiota in growing goats. To determine N balance, 18 growing wether goats (25.0 ± 0.5 kg) were randomly assigned to one of three diets: 13.0% (control), 11.5% and 10.0% CP. Another 18 growing wether goats (25.0 ± 0.5 kg) were surgically fitted with ruminal, proximate duodenal, and terminal ileal fistulae and were randomly assigned to one of the three diets to investigate intestinal amino acid (AA) absorption and rumen microbiota. The results showed that fecal and urinary N excretion of goats fed diets containing 11.5% and 10.0% CP were lower than those of goats fed the control diet (P < 0.05). When compared with goats fed the control diet, N retention was decreased and apparent N digestibility in the entire gastrointestinal tract was increased in goats fed the 10% CP diet (P < 0.05). When compared with goats fed the control diet, the duodenal flow of lysine, tryptophan and phenylalanine was decreased in goats fed the 11.5% CP diet (P < 0.05) and that of lysine, methionine, tryptophan, phenylalanine, leucine, glutamic acid, tyrosine, essential AAs (EAAs) and total AAs (TAAs) was decreased in goats fed the 10.0% CP diet (P < 0.05). When compared with goats fed the control diet, the apparent absorption of TAAs in the small intestine was increased in goats fed the 11.5% CP diet (P < 0.05) and that of isoleucine, serine, cysteine, EAAs, non-essential AAs, and TAAs in the small intestine was increased in goats fed the 10.0% CP diet (P < 0.05). When compared with goats fed the control diet, the relative richness of Bacteroidetes and Fibrobacteres was increased and that of Proteobacteria and Synergistetes was decreased in the rumen of goats fed a diet with 10.0% CP. In conclusion, reducing dietary CP content reduced N excretion and increased nutrient utilization by improving rumen fermentation, enhancing nutrient digestion and absorption, and altering rumen microbiota in growing goats.

The present study was designed to detect three single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) located on 22q11 that was thought as being of particularly importance for genetic research into schizophrenia. We recruited a total of 176 Chinese family trios of Han descent, consisting of mothers, fathers and affected offspring with schizophrenia for the genetic analysis. The transmission disequilibrium test (TDT) showed that of three SNPs, rs10314 in the 3′-untranslated region of the CLDN5 locus was associated with schizophrenia (χ2 = 4.75, P = 0.029). The other two SNPs, rs1548359 present in the CDC45L locus centromeric of rs10314 and rs739371 in the 5′-flanking region of the CLDN5 locus, did not show such an association. The global chi-square (χ2) test showed that the 3-SNP haplotype system was not associated with schizophrenia although the 1-df test for individual haplotypes showed that the rs1548359(C)-rs10314(G)-rs739371(C) haplotype was excessively non-transmitted (χ2 = 5.32, P = 0.02). Because the claudin proteins are a major component for barrier-forming tight junctions that could play a crucial role in response to changing natural, physiological and pathological conditions, the CLDN5 association with schizophrenia may be an important clue leading to look into a meeting point of genetic and environmental factors.

Language disorders are considered part of the symptoms of the autism spectrum disorders (ASD) since the first descriptions by Kanner. Providing language therapy services to children with ASD is a challenge in countries such as Brazil, where besides geographic and social-cultural diversity there is a lack of enough professionals with adequate training. Therefore university-related services have a fundamental role in filling this gap.

This presentation will describe the various initiatives by such a service is São Paulo, one of the world's largest metropolitan areas. This specialized service provides language assessment, diagnosis and weekly therapy to children with ASD since 1986. During this period ASD's complexity became clear and demanded the inclusion of other activities such as: multiprofessional colaboration; interdisciplinary research; out-reaching and mentoring of teachers with children and adolescents with ASD in their classes; systematic meetings with parents; use of tele-health resources to increase the number of services provided to this population; editing and distribution of brochures to improve the awareness about ASD and development of assessment tools adapted to the Brazilian reality.

These initiatives were conducted whithin the context of scientific research, therefore providing elements to evidence-based-practice. Many of the researches were associated to 37 Master and Doctorate projetcs and were published in scientific journals (115 papers). Also, during this period many professionals had their specialized training and are now teaching in other universities.

Today 80 children and adolescents attend to weekly language therapy sessions and 12 undergraduate, 8 graduate students, 3 post-doctorate and 2 researches comprise the team.

Current available antidepressants exhibit low remission rate with a long response lag time. Growing evidence has demonstrated acute sub-anesthetic dose of ketamine exerts rapid, robust, and lasting antidepressant effects. However, a long term use of ketamine tends to elicit its adverse reactions. The present study aimed to investigate the antidepressant-like effects of intermittent and consecutive administrations of ketamine on chronic unpredictable mild stress (CUMS) rats, and to determine whether ketamine can redeem the time lag for treatment response of classic antidepressants. The behavioral responses were assessed by the sucrose preference test, forced swimming test, and open field test. In the first stage of experiments, all the four treatment regimens of ketamine (10 mg/kg ip, once daily for 3 or 7 consecutive days, or once every 7 or 3 days, in a total 21 days) showed robust antidepressant-like effects, with no significant influence on locomotor activity and stereotype behavior in the CUMS rats. The intermittent administration regimens produced longer antidepressant-like effects than the consecutive administration regimens and the administration every 7 days presented similar antidepressant-like effects with less administration times compared with the administration every 3 days. In the second stage of experiments, the combination of ketamine (10 mg/kg ip, once every 7 days) and citalopram (20 mg/kg po, once daily) for 21 days caused more rapid and sustained antidepressant-like effects than citalopram administered alone. In summary, repeated sub-anesthestic doses of ketamine can redeem the time lag for the antidepressant-like effects of citalopram, suggesting the combination of ketamine and classic antidepressants is a promising regimen for depression with quick onset time and stable and lasting effects.

The flow-induced vibration (FIV) of an airfoil freely undergoing two-degrees-of-freedom (2-DOF) motions of plunging and pitching is numerically investigated as a function of the reduced velocity and pivot location in a two-dimensional free-stream flow. This investigation covers a wide parameter space spanning the flow reduced velocity range of $0<U^{\ast }=U/(\,f_{n}c)\leqslant 10$ and the pivot location range of $0\leqslant x\leqslant 1$ , where $U$ is the free-stream velocity, $f_{n}$ is the natural frequency of the system set equal in the plunge and pitch directions, $c$ is the chord length of the foil and $x$ is the normalised distance of the pivot point from the leading edge. The numerical simulations were performed by employing an immersed boundary method at a low Reynolds number ( $Re=Uc/\unicode[STIX]{x1D708}=400$ , with $\unicode[STIX]{x1D708}$ the kinematic viscosity of the fluid). Through detailed analyses of the dynamics of the 2-DOF vibrations and wake states, a variety of FIV response regimes are identified, including four regions showing synchronisation or near-synchronisation responses (labelled as S‐I, S‐II, S‐III and S‐IV) and four transition regimes (labelled as T‐I, T‐II, T‐III and T‐IV) that show intermittent, switching or chaotic responses, in the $x{-}U^{\ast }$ space.

The technology around generating efficient and sustainable energy is rapidly evolving; hydrogen and fuel cells are versatile examples within a portfolio of options. This article provides an overview of the early-stage materials R&D in hydrogen and fuel cells at the US Department of Energy (DOE) Fuel Cell Technologies Office within the Office of Energy Efficiency & Renewable Energy. The article highlights technology status and progress toward achieving DOE targets, discusses R&D needs and challenges, and provides specific examples where advanced materials research is relevant to addressing those challenges. For broader context, materials R&D advances are discussed in the context of DOE’s H2@Scale initiative, which is enabling innovations to generate cost-competitive hydrogen as an energy carrier, enabling renewables, as well as nuclear, fossil fuels, and the grid, to enhance the economics of both baseload power plants and intermittent solar and wind, enhancing resiliency and avoiding curtailment.

Staphylococcus aureus has been recognised as one of the important zoonotic pathogens. However, knowledge about the epidemiology and genetic characteristics of S. aureus in rabbits was limited. The aim of this study was to determine the characteristics of 281 S. aureus isolated from dead rabbits of nine rabbit farms in Fujian Province, China. All the isolates were characterised by multi-locus sequencing typing, detection of virulence factors and antimicrobial susceptibility test. The results showed that the 281 isolates were grouped into two sequence types, ST121 (13.52%, 38/281) and ST398 (86.48%, 243/281). Surprisingly, the ST121 strains were only recovered from the lung samples from one of the nine rabbit farms studied. In the 281 isolates, the virulence genes of nuc, hla, hlb, clfA, clfB and fnbpA were positive, whereas the sea, seb, tsst, eta and etb genes were negative. Notably, the 38 ST121 isolates carried the pvl gene. All the 281 isolates were methicillin-susceptible S. aureus, and the isolates were susceptible to most of the used antibiotics, except for streptomycin, kanamycin, azithromycin and penicillin, and the resistance rates of which were 23.84%, 19.57%, 16.01% and 11.03%, respectively. This study first described the epidemiology and characteristics of S. aureus in rabbits in Fujian Province, which will help in tracking the evolution of epidemic strains and preventing the rabbit–human transmission events.

The takeoff-mass of a two-stage-to-orbit Rocket-Based Combined Cycle Engine-Rocket (RBCC-RKT) launch vehicle is a crucial factor in its comprehensive performance. This paper optimizes the takeoff-mass together with the trajectory by reformulating it to a nonlinear optimal control problem. The range of the second stage rocket mass is considered as a process constraint. When the scopes of initial and terminal states are specified, the problem can be solved by using the Gauss pseudo-spectral method (GPM). In order to reduce the convergent difficulty caused by using table data, the data in different stages are utilized by employing an integrated interpolation strategy through the optimization. Simulation results show that the mass can be effectively optimized to meet the inertia mass ratio constraint of the first-stage, and the separation of Mach number and altitude can be optimized at the same time.