Modeling adult emergence and fecundity of factitious hosts under different food sources supports massive egg production management

Ephestia kuehniella (Lepidoptera, Pyralidae) and Sitotroga cerealella (Lepidoptera, Gelechiidae) are important factitious hosts used for production of biological control agents. Their differences in terms of biology and behavior require adjustments in their mass production, particularly when using corn or barley as food in grain or in bran. We modeled adult emergence, oviposition period and egg production along time after emergence, as a function of the food source. Significant differences between hosts or food type were found for these variables and for adult weight but not for sex ratio. Our results confirm the possibility of mass production of these hosts using corn or barley as food source. Integrating adult emergence patterns and age specific fecundity patterns into a single model, it is clear that rearing E. kuehniella on barley would result in the highest egg output in much shorter time than E. kuehniella on corn or S. cerealella on barley.

Correction to: The Cancer, Educate to Prevent Model-the Potential of School Environment for Primary Prevention of Cancer

The affiliation address of Dr. Helena Santos should be Faculty of Economics, University of Porto, Portugal and Dr. Luís Moreira's should be Research Unit in Education and Community Intervention - RECI & Health School of Vila Nova de Gaia - Piaget Institute.

Source identification of uranium-containing materials at mine legacy sites in Portugal

Whilst prior nuclear forensic studies have focused on identifying signatures to distinguish between different uranium deposit types, this paper focuses on providing a scientific basis for source identification of materials from different uranium mine sites within a single region, which can then be potentially used within nuclear forensics. A number of different tools, including gamma spectrometry, alpha spectrometry, mineralogy and major and minor elemental analysis, have been utilised to determine the provenance of uranium mineral samples collected at eight mine sites, located within three different uranium provinces, in Portugal. A radiation survey was initially conducted by foot and/or unmanned aerial vehicle at each site to assist sample collection. The results from each mine site were then compared to determine if individual mine sites could be distinguished based on characteristic elemental and isotopic signatures. Gamma and alpha spectrometry were used to differentiate between samples from different sites and also give an indication of past milling and mining activities. Ore samples from the different mine sites were found to be very similar in terms of gangue and uranium mineralogy. However, rarer minerals or specific impurity elements, such as calcium and copper, did permit some separation of the sites examined. In addition, classification rates using linear discriminant analysis were comparable to those in the literature.

14 Composition of Semen Extenders and Varying Seminal Plasma Concentrations Affects Formation of Neutrophil Extracellular Traps in the Bovine System

Neutrophils are recruited into the female reproductive tract following insemination to eliminate excess spermatozoa and bacteria introduced by the breeding process. In natural breeding, bovine semen is deposited in the vagina and sperm migrate into the uterus, leaving the bulk of seminal plasma (SP) behind. Current artificial insemination protocols introduce variable amounts of SP and semen extender into the uterus. Beside phagozytosis and secretion of immune modulators, polymorphonuclear neutrophils (PMN) are able to form neutrophil extracellular traps (NETs) extruding their DNA into the extracellular environment and ensnare pathogens including sperm cells. Recently, a time-dependent increase in bovine NETs formation has been reported. In the absence of SP and extender only a low degree of NETs formation by the sperm cells alone was detected (Fichtner et al. 2017 Reprod. Domest. Anim. 52(S1), 16). The aim of the present study was to investigate the effect of different semen extenders with various supplements or varying SP concentrations on NETs formation. Bovine PMN were isolated via Ficoll gradient centrifugation from peripheral blood. Semen extenders, purchased from 2 companies, were supplemented either with no animal protein or fresh egg yolk or “egg yolk-like substances” (gamma-irradiated sterile egg yolk or phospholipids as liposomes). The SP collected from ejaculates of eight 5-year-old bulls was added to the incubation medium in concentrations of 1, 3, 5, 10, 15, and 20%. For NETs induction, PMN and semen extenders or SP concentrations were co-cultured for 60 min; PMN and incubation medium alone served as negative controls. After incubation, the samples were treated with micrococcal nuclease and stained with PicoGreen. Quantification was performed by spectrofluorometric analyses using an automated plate monochrome reader (Varioscan Flash; Thermo Scientific, Waltham, MA, USA). Relative fluorescence intensities (FI in arbitrary units, AU) were calculated by subtracting the values of the negative controls from the ones obtained from the different samples. For statistical analyses, a one-way ANOVA followed by Tukey’s HSD test was used. Experiments were repeated at least 9 times. No significant differences in the relative FI were detected between the 2 animal protein-free extenders. A significantly higher FI was observed in one of the extenders supplemented with egg yolk compared with the other. The same held true for one extender completed with an egg yolk-like substance. Relative FI significantly increased from 1 to 5% SP, stayed constant up to 10%, followed by a slight decrease up to a concentration of 20%. These data indicate that formation of NETs in vitro depends on the composition of the extender itself and the protein source used by different companies. Furthermore, formation of NETs is also dependent on the dose of SP. From these results, it could be speculated that semen extenders plus additives and SP may affect fertility. The financial support of the Förderverein Bioökonomieforschung e.V. (FBF) is gratefully acknowledged.

First Measurement of Transverse-Spin-Dependent Azimuthal Asymmetries in the Drell-Yan Process

The first measurement of transverse-spin-dependent azimuthal asymmetries in the pion-induced Drell-Yan (DY) process is reported. We use the CERN SPS 190  GeV/c π^{-} beam and a transversely polarized ammonia target. Three azimuthal asymmetries giving access to different transverse-momentum-dependent (TMD) parton distribution functions (PDFs) are extracted using dimuon events with invariant mass between 4.3  GeV/c^{2} and 8.5  GeV/c^{2}. Within the experimental uncertainties, the observed sign of the Sivers asymmetry is found to be consistent with the fundamental prediction of quantum chromodynamics (QCD) that the Sivers TMD PDFs extracted from DY have a sign opposite to the one extracted from semi-inclusive deep-inelastic scattering (SIDIS) data. We present two other asymmetries originating from the pion Boer-Mulders TMD PDFs convoluted with either the nucleon transversity or pretzelosity TMD PDFs. A recent COMPASS SIDIS measurement was obtained at a hard scale comparable to that of these DY results. This opens the way for possible tests of fundamental QCD universality predictions.