Adult trematodes of two species of the genus Plagiorchis were found in the southern Far East of Russia: one species in the intestine of a naturally infected Japanese large-footed bat (Myotis macrodactylus) and the other in a golden hamster (Mesocricetus auratus) experimentally infected with metacercariae collected from a stonefly. On the basis of morphological and molecular studies, the trematode individuals found in the bat were identified as Plagiorchis koreanus, which confirms that this species is cosmopolitan. The trematodes reared in the hamster were similar in their morphological features to the European Plagiorchis eutamiatis. However, due to the lack of nucleotide sequences for this species from the type region, the southern Far East of Russia trematodes, found in this study, were provisionally designated as Plagiorchis cf. eutamiatis. In addition, the phylogenetic reconstruction based on a mitochondrial marker revealed inconsistency of the data obtained from cercariae diagnosed as a single species, Plagiorchis elegans. Our data also indicate that the specimens available in the NCBI database referred to as Plagiorchis multiglandularis and Plagiorchis neomidis belong to the same species.

This study aimed to investigate the effects of infant formula supplements on Bifidobacterium level in the infant gut through a systematic review and network meta-analysis (NMA) of randomized controlled trials (RCTs).

Systematic review included PubMed, EMBASE, MEDLINE, Scopus, Web of Science, and Cochrane CENTRAL to identify RCTs evaluating the effects of formulas supplemented with prebiotics, probiotics, synbiotics, β-palmitic acid, or combinations of β-palmitic acid with prebiotics on infant gut Bifidobacterium levels. A meta-analysis compared bifidogenic effects to standard formula. The main outcome was the relative abundance (RA) of Bifidobacterium in fecal samples measured by various microbiota assessment techniques, with effect sizes as mean differences and standard deviations. An overall effect estimate was derived using a random-effects model. NMA assessed formula effects using breastfeeding as the reference.

Nineteen studies were included. Compared to standard formula, supplementation with prebiotics (p < 0.0001), synbiotics (p < 0.0001), β-palmitic acid (p = 0.0005), or β-palmitic acid combined with prebiotics (p < 0.0001) significantly increased Bifidobacterium levels in the infant gut. Probiotic supplementation showed no significant effect (p = 0.9755). NMA and p-score ranking, comparing formulas to breastmilk, indicated that prebiotic-supplemented formulas with the lowest ranking p-score (0.2764), most closely resembled breastfeeding’s bifidogenic effect. However, prebiotics and probiotics were analyzed as broad categories, and group variability may affect outcomes. In conclusion, formula supplementation with prebiotics, synbiotics, β-palmitic acid, or combinations of β-palmitic acid with prebiotics increased the RA of Bifidobacterium in infant’s gut, with prebiotic formula most closely mimicking the bifidogenic effects of breastfeeding.

The Đurđevac Sands constitute a wide area of small-scale dune relief in the Podravina (NE Croatia), located along the central part of the southern Drava River valley. Even though it has been the subject of earlier investigations, the timing and characteristics of aeolian activity and pedogenesis remain unclear. In this study, field investigations and laboratory methods are combined to gather information on past aeolian systems in the southern part of the Pannonian Basin. The results indicate that weak soil formation during the Bølling-Allerød interstadial stabilized the dunes after the first episode of aeolian activity that took place since ca. 18 ka. The source material for dune building is thought to be fluvial sand from the Drava River, which was blown from exposed terraces. During the Younger Dryas and/or Early Holocene, a new phase of aeolian activity is recorded, with material showing stronger evidence of weathering compared to the underlying aeolian material. Finally, during the Mid and/or Late Holocene, dunes were overbuilt once again with fresh unweathered sand. In general, these new findings obtained from the Đurđevac Sands area correlate rather well with other regions in the Pannonian Basin, in terms of the timing and characteristics of soil formation and aeolian activity.

This manuscript documents the Presidential Address of Jan Janoušek as the incoming President of the Association for European Paediatric and Congenital Cardiology (AEPC) 2025–2028.

The Levine–Tristram signature admits a µ-variable extension for µ-component links: it was first defined as an integer-valued function on $(S^1\setminus\{1\})^\mu$, and recently extended to the full torus $\mathbb{T}^\mu$. The aim of the present article is to study and use this extended signature. Firstly, we show that it is constant on the connected components of the complement of the zero locus of some renormalized Alexander polynomial. Then, we prove that the extended signature is a concordance invariant on an explicit dense subset of $\mathbb{T}^\mu$. Finally, as an application, we present an infinite family of three-component links with the following property: these links are not concordant to their mirror image, a fact that can be detected neither by the non-extended signatures, nor by the multivariable Alexander polynomial, nor by the Milnor triple linking number.

For Pierre Hadot, inventor of ‘Philosophy as a Way of Life’ (PWL), scholasticism, of which Aquinas is usually seen as the arch-representative, was not only the opposite of PWL but the agent of its destruction. I argue that Hadot’s view of Aquinas results from confusing ‘philosophy’ in the broad sense, which is how it needs to be understood in relation to PWL, with ‘philosophy’ in the narrower sense that it had for Aquinas himself. When Aquinas’s life and work is examined with this distinction in mind, he is seen to be as much an exponent of PWL as the medieval and modern thinkers (Boethius of Dacia, Dante, Montaigne, Kant, Nietzsche) usually cited by Hadot and his followers. This conclusion puts into doubt the historical narrative proposed by exponents of PWL. But some of Hadot’s own remarks leave room for a restricted version of PWL, stripped of its historical narrative and suggestions about the content of a philosophical life. This pure methodological Philosophy as a Way of Life, MPWL, does not make the unsustainable claims of PWL and helps to show how analytical, historical and more broadly philosophical approaches to Aquinas can be brought together.

Recent work by Michael O. Hardimon and Quayshawn Spencer defends a minimalist (or deflationary) biological realism about race. Their approach has two distinct features. First, unlike revisionist biological race, minimalist biological races are a conception of race that correspond to our ordinary race concepts. Second, unlike hereditarian or essentialist accounts, minimalist biological races are not claimed to be robustly explanatory. This paper argues against their account of the biological genuineness of race. I argue the minimalist biological conception of race lacks the explanatory constraints of genuine biological kinds. Rather, minimalist biological races are gerrymandered kinds.

Statistical criteria of fairness, though controversial, bring attention to the multiobjective nature of many predictive modelling problems. In this paper, I consider how epistemic and non-epistemic values impact the design of machine learning algorithms that optimize for more than one normative goal. I focus on a major design choice between biased search strategies that directly incorporate priorities for various objectives into an optimization procedure, and unbiased search strategies that do not. I argue that both reliably generate Pareto optimal solutions such that various other values are relevant to making a rational choice between them.

Understanding the developmental and occupational histories of Ancestral Maya settlements is crucial for interpreting their roles in broader social, political, and economic dynamics. This article presents 62 new accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) 14C dates from residential groups in the outlying settlement zone at Alabama, a major inland Ancestral Maya center in East-Central Belize. Alabama is a rare example of a “boomtown” in the Maya lowlands, experiencing rapid development primarily during the 8th and 9th century CE, corresponding to the Late to Terminal Classic periods. Using Bayesian stratigraphic sequence models, we construct detailed developmental and occupational histories for the townsite, clarifying the timing of its development, occupation, and abandonment. Our analysis reveals complex residential histories, confirming a rapid tempo of Late and Terminal Classic settlement growth and indicating continuities in occupation into the 10th century CE and beyond. Furthermore, we identify two separate periods of occupation during the Early Classic (cal AD 345–545) and the Late Postclassic (cal AD 1325–1475), demonstrating that parts of the settlement were inhabited at different intervals over many centuries. These results offer the first detailed deep-history perspective for the East-Central Belize region, establishing a framework that addresses challenges in chronology-building posed by poor pottery preservation and the complexities of earthen-core architecture at the site and enabling future chronological modeling in this lesser-known frontier of the eastern Maya lowlands.

Given an automorphism ϕ of a group G, the map $(g,h) \mapsto gh\phi(g)^{-1}$, defines a left action of G on itself, whose orbits are called the ϕ-twisted conjugacy classes. In this paper, we consider two interesting aspects of this action for mapping class groups, namely, the existence of a dense orbit and the count of orbits. Generalising the idea of the Rokhlin property, a topological group is said to exhibit the twisted Rokhlin property if, for each automorphism ϕ of the group, there exists a ϕ-twisted conjugacy class that is dense in the group. We provide a complete classification of connected orientable infinite-type surfaces without boundaries whose mapping class groups possess the twisted Rokhlin property. Additionally, we prove that the mapping class groups of the remaining surfaces do not admit any dense ϕ-twisted conjugacy class for any automorphism ϕ. This supplements the recent work of Lanier and Vlamis on the Rokhlin property of big mapping class groups. Regarding the count of twisted conjugacy classes, we prove that the number of ϕ-twisted conjugacy classes is infinite for each automorphism ϕ of the mapping class group of a connected orientable infinite-type surface without boundary.