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Reasons for performing study Cervical synovial folds have been suggested as a potential cause of neck pain in humans. Little is known about the extent and characteristics of cervical synovial folds in horses. Objectives The objective of this explorative study was to determine the frequency of synovial folds in equine cervical articular process joints and to provide a characterisation of the size and morphology of the synovial folds. Methods Equine cervical articular process joints from 6 horses were included in the study, ranging from cervical vertebra 2 ( C2) to cervical vertebra 7 ( C7) bilaterally. The articular process joints were dissected, and the cranial and caudal synovial folds of each joint were measured and embedded in paraffin. Synovial folds were analysed histologically and classified according to type, as adipose, fibrous and mixed type. Factors potentially influencing fold size were investigated, including joint number (from C2/ C3 to C6/ C7), fold type, position of fold within the joint (cranial or caudal) and side of neck (right or left). Results Synovial folds were identified in 98% of cervical articular process joints examined. The width of the synovial folds varied from 4 to 41 mm, and the height from 1 to 17.8 mm. Thirty-eight per cent of the synovial folds were of adipose type, 41% of fibrous type and 21% of mixed type. Synovial fold size was significantly influenced by the side of the neck and fold type. Conclusions and potential relevance This study provides a characterisation of the frequency, size and morphology of equine cervical synovial folds in 6 horses. Synovial folds were present in 98% of the cervical articular process joints examined, and the size of the synovial folds indicates that they could be damaged by acute injury or chronic disease in the cervical articular process joints. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract Background Haemostatic alterations are commonly detected in human and canine cancer patients. Previous studies have described haemostatic dysfunction in canine patients with haemangiosarcomas and carcinomas, and haemostasis has been assessed in dogs with various malignant and benign neoplasias. Few studies have addressed the effect of cancer type and progression of disease on the presence of haemostatic alterations in canine patients. The objective of the present study was to evaluate haemostatic variables of coagulation and fibrinolysis in a group of canine cancer patients, and to compare haemostatic changes to the cancer type and progression of disease. Methods The study population consisted of 71 dogs with malignant neoplasia presented to the University Hospital for Companion Animals, Faculty of Life Sciences, University of Copenhagen, Denmark. The study was designed as a prospective observational study evaluating the haemostatic function in canine cancer patients stratified according to type of cancer disease and disease progression. The coagulation response was evaluated by thromboelastrography (TEG), platelet count, activated partial thromboplastin time (aPTT), prothombin time (PT), fibrinogen and antithrombin (AT); and fibrinolysis by d-dimer and plasminogen. Results Hypercoagulability was the most common haemostatic dysfunction found. Non mammary carcinomas had increased clot strength (TEG G), aPTT and fibrinogen compared to the other groups. When stratifying the patients according to disease progression dogs with distant metastatic disease exhibited significantly increased fibrinogen, and d-dimer compared to dogs with local invasive and local non-invasive cancers. Conclusion Hypercoagulability was confirmed as the most common haemostatic abnormality in canine cancer patients and haemostatic dysfunction in canine cancer patients was found related to the cancer type and progression of disease. Increase in TEG G, aPTT and fibrinogen were observed in non-mammary carcinomas and were speculated to overall represent a proinflammatory response associated with the disease. Dogs with distant metastatic disease exhibited increased fibrinogen and d-dimer. Future studies are needed to elucidate the clinical importance of these results.

Light is a critical component of indoor plant cultivation, as different wavelengths can influence both the physiology and morphology of plants. Furthermore, fertilization and seeding density can also potentially interact with the light recipe to affect production outcomes. However, maximizing production is an ongoing research topic, and it is often divested from resource use efficiencies. In this study, three species of microgreens-kohlrabi; mustard; and radish-were grown under five light recipes; with and without fertilizer; and at two seeding densities. We found that the different light recipes had significant effects on biomass accumulation. More specifically, we found that Far-Red light was significantly positively associated with biomass accumulation, as well as improvements in height, leaf area, and leaf weight. We also found a less strong but positive correlation with increasing amounts of Green light and biomass. Red light was negatively associated with biomass accumulation, and Blue light showed a concave downward response. We found that fertilizer improved biomass by a factor of 1.60 across species and that using a high seeding density was 37% more spatially productive. Overall, we found that it was primarily the main effects that explained microgreen production variation, and there were very few instances of significant interactions between light recipe, fertilization, and seeding density. To contextualize the cost of producing these microgreens, we also measured resource use efficiencies and found that the cheaper 24-volt LEDs at a high seeding density with fertilizer were the most efficient production environment for biomass. Therefore, this study has shown that, even with a short growing period of only four days, there was a significant influence of light recipe, fertilization, and seeding density that can change morphology, biomass accumulation, and resource input costs.

Climate models predict decreasing precipitation and increasing air temperature, causing concern for the future of cocoa in the major producing regions worldwide. It has been suggested that shade could alleviate stress by reducing radiation intensity and conserving soil moisture, but few on-farm cocoa studies are testing this hypothesis. Here, for 33 months, we subjected twelve-year cocoa plants in Ghana to three levels of rainwater suppression (full rainwater, 1/3 rainwater suppression and 2/3 rainwater suppression) under full sun or 40 % uniform shade in a split plot design, monitoring soil moisture, physiological parameters, growth, and yield. Volumetric soil moisture (ϴ w ) contents in the treatments ranged between 0.20 and 0.45 m 3 m -3 and increased under shade. Rainwater suppression decreased leaf water potentials (ѱ w ), reaching -1.5 MPa in full sun conditions indicating severe drought. Stomatal conductance (g s ) was decreased under the full sun but was not affected by rainwater suppression, illustrating the limited control of water loss in cocoa plants. Although pre-dawn chlorophyll fluorescence (F v /F m ) indicated photoinhibition, rates of photosynthesis (P n ) were highest in full sun. On the other hand, litter fall was highest in the full sun and under water stress, while diameter growth and carbon accumulation increased in the shade but was negatively affected by rainwater suppression. Abortion of fruits and damage to pods were high under shade, but dry bean yield was higher compared to under the full sun. The absence of interactions between shade treatments and rainwater suppression suggests that shade may improve the performance of cocoa, but not sufficiently to counteract the negative effects of water stress under field conditions., Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest The authors declare no conflict of interest., (Copyright © 2023 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

Deep rooting winter wheat genotypes can reduce nitrate leaching losses and increase N uptake. We aimed to investigate which deep root traits are correlated to deep N uptake and to estimate genetic variation in root traits and deep 15 N tracer uptake. In 2 years, winter wheat genotypes were grown in RadiMax, a semifield root-screening facility. Minirhizotron root imaging was performed three times during the main growing season. At anthesis, 15 N was injected via subsurface drip irrigation at 1.8 m depth. Mature ears from above the injection area were analysed for 15 N content. From minirhizotron image-based root length data, 82 traits were constructed, describing root depth, density, distribution and growth aspects. Their ability to predict 15 N uptake was analysed with the least absolute shrinkage and selection operator (LASSO) regression. Root traits predicted 24% and 14% of tracer uptake variation in 2 years. Both root traits and genotype showed significant effects on tracer uptake. In 2018, genotype and the three LASSO-selected root traits predicted 41% of the variation in tracer uptake, in 2019 genotype and one root trait predicted 48%. In both years, one root trait significantly mediated the genotype effect on tracer uptake. Deep root traits from minirhizotron images can predict deep N uptake, indicating the potential to breed deep-N-uptake-genotypes., (© 2021 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.)

Animal-level responses to weather variability in US dairy systems are well described, but the potential of housing and other farm management practices (for example, fans and sprinklers) to moderate the impacts of weather remains uncertain. Here we assess the influence of historical variation in the temperature-humidity index (THI) on milk yields using monthly state-level yield data and high-resolution daily weather data over 1981-2018. We find that milk yields are compromised by exposure to both extreme heat (>79 THI) and cold (<39 THI), causing average daily yield decreases of around 3.7% and 6.1%, respectively, relative to optimal conditions (65-69 THI). Colder regions are more sensitive to heat extremes, and warm regions are more sensitive to cold extremes. Sensitivity to THI has reduced dramatically over time. Climate trends contributed modestly (around 0.1% over 38 years) to rising yields in most states via alleviating cold stress, although more extreme future conditions may negate these benefits., (© 2021. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Limited.)

Plant reproduction in red clover requires cross-fertilization via insect pollination. However, the influences of visitation rate and timing on maximizing ovule utilization are yet to be determined. We aimed to study the influences of visitation rate, flowering stage, and self-incompatibility on reproductive success. We applied hand and honey bee pollination in the study of eight red clover cultivars with two ploidy levels released between 1964 and 2001. In hand pollination, increasing the visitation rates (from 10 to 80 pollinated florets per flower head) increased the seed number per flower head but reduced the seed number per pollinated floret. Different flowering stages (early, middle, and full flowering) did not influence the seed number per pollinated floret significantly. There was a marked difference in reproductive success depending on the ploidy level, with 0.52 seeds per pollinated floret in diploid and 0.16 in tetraploid cultivars. During the cultivar release history, seed number per pollinated floret seemed to decrease in diploid cultivars, whereas it increased in tetraploids. In honey bee pollination, diploid cultivars had more two-seeded florets than tetraploids. Different visitation rates and the stochastic nature of pollen transfer resulted in difficulties when the plant reproductive success between hand and bee pollination was compared. A maximum of 0.27 seeds per pollinated floret were produced in hand pollination compared to the 0.34 in honey bee pollination. In spite of this, hand pollination provided a valuable method for studying the pollination biology and reproduction of red clover. Future studies may employ hand pollination to unravel further aspects of the low reproductive success with the future perspective of improving seed number per pollinated floret in tetraploid red clover., Competing Interests: The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest., (Copyright © 2021 Jing, Kryger, Markussen and Boelt.)

Analyzing the progression of Alzheimer's disease (AD) is challenging due to lacking sensitivity in currently available measures. AD stages are typically defined based on cognitive cut-offs, but this results in heterogeneous patient groups. More accurate modeling of the continuous progression of the disease would enable more accurate patient prognosis. To address these issues, we propose a new multivariate continuous-time disease progression (MCDP) model. The model is formulated as a nonlinear mixed-effects model that aligns patients based on their predicted disease progression along a continuous latent disease timeline. The model is evaluated using long-term follow-up data from 2152 participants in the Alzheimer's Disease Neuroimaging Initiative. The MCDP model was used to simultaneously model three cognitive scales; the Alzheimer's Disease Assessment Scale-cognitive subscale, the Mini-Mental State Examination, and the Clinical Dementia Rating scale-sum of boxes. Compared with univariate modeling and previously proposed multivariate disease progression models, the MCDP model showed superior ability to predict future patient trajectories. Finally, based on the multivariate disease timeline estimated using the MCDP model, the sensitivity of the individual items of the cognitive scales along the different stages of disease was analyzed. The analysis showed that delayed memory recall items had the highest sensitivity in the early stages of disease, whereas language and attention items were sensitive later in disease., (© 2021 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.)

Background: Methods to compare events defined as newly occurring characters in development has advanced vertebrate developmental research but events are not easily extrapolated into traditional staging systems used in biomedical research., Results: First, we scored 95 porcine embryos in the age range of 15 to 33 days post conception by stereomicroscopy using to a slightly modified version of the Standard Event System (SES). Subsequent statistical clustering allowed the embryos to be grouped into 15 clusters. Staging of the same embryos in a way that generally follow the description of external features of human embryos in the Carnegie stages 10 to 23 allowed us to describe 14 stages of porcine embryonic development that correlate to the Carnegie stages of human development with minor species differences. When arranged by average age, the statistic clusters had a distribution that correlated well with the stages produced by the Carnegie-based staging system., Conclusions: Statistical analysis of developmental events allow grouping of porcine embryos into clusters that can be extrapolated into a Carnegie-based staging system, thus serving the dual purpose of facilitating the use of the pig as a biomedical model animal and providing data for integrating porcine developmental events into a phylogenetic context., (© 2020 Wiley Periodicals LLC.)

The exponential race model embodied in the theory of visual attention (TVA) and the power law generalization of the sample size model (SSPL) provide competing accounts of the mechanisms that determine how exposure duration, set size, and attention influence how many items enter visual short-term memory (VSTM). In the exponential race model, items compete for entry into VSTM in a processing race with exponentially distributed processing times. The most recent version of the sample size model assumes that target sensitivity measured by d ' increases monotonically as a function of exposure duration and decreases as a power function of set size. Here we compare the two models in a new experiment with letters and Gabor patches and with data from five previously published experiments. This was done by applying TVA to the two-alternative forced-choice method (2AFC), which forms the basis of the experimental work on the sample size model. Both models fitted individual participants' proportions of correct trials quite well, and overall the fits by the two models were almost indistinguishable. This was confirmed by formal pairwise comparison of TVA and SSPL by the Akaike information criterion and the Bayesian information criterion measures. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

Datasets are sometimes divided into distinct subsets, e.g. due to multi-center sampling, or to variations in instruments, questionnaire item ordering or mode of administration, and the data analyst then needs to assess whether a joint analysis is meaningful. The Principal Component Analysis-based Data Structure Comparisons (PCADSC) tools are three new non-parametric, visual diagnostic tools for investigating differences in structure for two subsets of a dataset through covariance matrix comparisons by use of principal component analysis. The PCADCS tools are demonstrated in a data example using European Social Survey data on psychological well-being in three countries, Denmark, Sweden, and Bulgaria. The data structures are found to be different in Denmark and Bulgaria, and thus a comparison of for example mean psychological well-being scores is not meaningful. However, when comparing Denmark and Sweden, very similar data structures, and thus comparable concepts of well-being, are found. Therefore, inter-country comparisons are warranted for these countries., Competing Interests: No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s)., (© 2020 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.)

We determined how conidia of arthropod-pathogenic fungi on leaves affected the behavior of two predators-Orius majusculus (Hemiptera: Anthocoridae) and Phytoseiulus persimilis (Acari: Phytoseiidae)-when offered a choice between preying on two-spotted spider mites, Tetranychus urticae (Acari: Tetranychidae), in the presence or absence of infective conidia of Metarhizium brunneum (Ascomycota: Hypocreales) and Neozygites floridana (Entomophthoromycota: Neozygitaceae). The results indicate no significant relation between the presence of conidia and predator behavior. The only indication of interference is between the generalists O. majusculus and M. brunneum, with a trend towards more time spent feeding and more prey encounters turning into feeding events on leaf discs without conidia than on leaf discs with conidia. Our results show that the presence of fungal conidia does not alter the preying behavior of the predators, and using predators and fungi together is not limited by any interference between organisms in the short term.

Entomophthoralean fungi are insect pathogenic fungi and are characterized by their active discharge of infective conidia that infect insects. Our aim was to study the effects of temperature on the discharge and to characterize the variation in the associated temporal pattern of a newly discovered Pandora species with focus on peak location and shape of the discharge. Mycelia were incubated at various temperatures in darkness, and conidial discharge was measured over time. We used a novel modification of a statistical model (pavpop), that simultaneously estimates phase and amplitude effects, into a setting of generalized linear models. This model is used to test hypotheses of peak location and discharge of conidia. The statistical analysis showed that high temperature leads to an early and fast decreasing peak, whereas there were no significant differences in total number of discharged conidia. Using the proposed model we also quantified the biological variation in the timing of the peak location at a fixed temperature., Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.