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We aimed to investigate the species composition of a small mammal community and the prevalence of Echinococcus spp. in a typical endemic area of the Tibetan Plateau. One pika and five rodent species were identified based on the morphological characteristics of 1278 small mammal specimens collected during 2014–2019. Detection of Echinococcus DNA in tissue samples from small mammal specimens revealed that Ochotona curzoniae (pika, total prevalence: 6.02%, 26/432), Neodon fuscus (5.91%, 38/643), N. leucurus (2.50%, 3/120), and Alexandromys limnophilus (21.74%, 10/46) were infected by both E. multilocularis and E. shiquicus; Cricetulus longicaudatus (16.67%, 1/6) was infected by E. shiquicus; and no infection was detected in N. irene (0/15). Neodon fuscus and O. curzoniae were the two most abundant small mammal species. There was no significant difference in the prevalence of pika and the overall rodent species assemblage (6.26%, 53/846); however, the larger rodent populations suggested that more attention should be paid to their role in the transmission of echinococcosis in the wildlife reservoir, which has long been underestimated. Moreover, although DNA barcoding provides a more efficient method than traditional morphological methods for identifying large numbers of small mammal samples, commonly used barcodes failed to distinguish the three Neodon species in this study. The close genetic relationships between these species suggest the need to develop more powerful molecular taxonomic tools. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rosa roxburghii Tratt residue is rich in dietary fiber and a variety of active substances, but its dietary fiber is mainly insoluble dietary fiber, and the content of soluble dietary fiber (SDF) is low. To make full use of R. roxburghii Tratt residue, steam explosion (SE) pretreatment was used to treat the residue to determine its effect on the extraction yield of SDF and the functionality of dietary fiber (DF). Response surface methodology was used to determine the conditions of SE for optimizing the SDF extraction yield in the residue. When R. roxburghii Tratt residue was pretreated by SE at 60 mesh for 97 s, combined with 0.87 MPa, the content of SDF was increased from 9.31 ± 0.07% to 15.82 ± 0.31% in comparison with the control and DF extracted by SE showed the high cholesterol adsorption, glucose adsorption, cation exchange, nitrite adsorption, and hydroxyl radicals inhibition. Practical applications: Due to the rough texture and poor taste, the high content of DF in the Rosa roxburghii Tratt residue is often discarded during the processing of freshly squeezed juice. SE can significantly improve the utilization of DF, which is a more economical modification method. This work provides a theoretical basis for the R. roxburghii Tratt by‐product as a new source of high‐quality dietary fiber. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The transverse static load, resultant from self-weight, significantly impacts both the response and the nonlinear dynamic behavior of a flexible inclined cantilever with a large lumping tip mass under harmonic base motion. However, the transverse static load was not taken into account and the mode shape of a pure cantilever beam was directly adopted during Galerkin’s procedure in the formulations of a cantilever carrying a large lumping tip mass in many previous studies. In this paper, (1) the static load effect caused by the self-weight in an inclined cantilever is considered by using a coordinate transformation, (2) the efficacy of adopting a pure cantilever beam mode shape to analyze a cantilever beam carrying a large lumping mass is studied and (3) a recently proposed semi-analytical method named parameter-splitting multiple-scales method is extended to analyze the cantilever studied to examine its effectiveness. First, the extended Hamilton’s principle is utilized to formulate the equation of motion of the cantilever studied. After that, the mode shape of a pure cantilever and the exact mode shape of a cantilever carrying a lumping mass are separately adopted in Galerkin’s method to transform the partial differential equation into ordinary differential equations. The frequency-response curves of the discretized nonlinear differential equations obtained by the numerical continuation method and the parameter-splitting multiple-scales method are compared to address ① the transverse static load effect on the frequency-response and nonlinear dynamical behavior of the beam, ② the discrepancies between the resultant frequency-response curves obtained by using two different mode shapes and ③ the efficacy of the parameter-splitting multiple-scales method on solving strongly nonlinear practical problem. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]