For a migrant, returning to his or her homeland after living abroad can be much anticipated, yet also daunting, especially if return includes other family members who may have little insight into the cultural traditions and life approaches of the homeland. Drawing on both qualitative and quantitative evidence from interviews and a survey of both Latvian nationals living abroad and returnees to Latvia, the anxieties concerning first-generation family return with (mostly) second-generation children are unravelled – particularly the challenges faced by the children. The paper explores the difference between an imagined family return to the homeland and the lived experience. Anxieties especially concern children’s readiness for school – lack of home-country language skills, curriculum disparities and the often unsympathetic attitude of teaching staff towards returnee pupils. Preparation in advance, a resilient mindset and an avoidance of comparisons with the host country are found to reduce return anxiety for both parents and children and to ease (re)integration into the homeland setting. Home-country government initiatives offering support measures to returnees also help to mitigate the challenges of return.

This introductory paper sets the scene for the special issue. It describes the rationale for the collection – which has to do with the multiple geopolitical, economic and health-related events of the past 30 years – and summarises some of the overarching changes in East–West migration dynamics within and beyond Europe over this period. However, this introductory article and the nine papers that follow also challenge and nuance the predominant East–West framing of recent intra-European migration. They identify numerous other trends: return migration and immigration into CEE countries, intra-CEE migrations and a range of issues relating to the impacts of migration on children and youth.

Parental work migration can pose important risks for adolescents, such as joining inappropriate peer-groups, poor results in education or school drop-out. It can also facilitate positive changes in young people’s behaviour, as many become aware of the sacrifices their parents make to provide them with a better lifestyle and education and behave responsibly in return. Given that the literature highlights both negative and positive transformations related to parents’ migration, our aim is to address the impact of migration on adolescents left behind in rural Romania from their own perspective. We focus on teenagers’ experiences of separation from their mother, father or both, in different situations (family life, communication and rela-tionships, caring and concern for others, school achievements, future migration plans). Young people’s agency – their capacity to self-educate and organise themselves to perform well at school and in everyday activities following parental migration – is less studied in Romania. Thus, in addition to making the reality of these adolescents better known, our approach provides information that can be turned into policy solutions aimed at improving their life quality.

Whilst the extant scholarship offers a detailed exploration of why return migrants enter self-employment or engage in business initiatives in general, we know relatively little about their involvement in transnational economic activities which connect the previous destination coun-try with the origin one and how they compare to other kinds of entrepreneurial venture in this vein. This article aims to understand these motivations by using insights from 50 semi-structured interviews conducted with traders of used cars imported in Romania, a mass phe-nomenon in the Central and Eastern European area and beyond. An important result of this research is that entrepreneurs have to consider a multitude of factors in multiple locations when entering the used-car business. The article also suggests that entrepreneurial motivations among used-car traders are not fixed but, rather, can and do change over time.

The topic of intra-European youth mobility has been under investigation for some time. This contribution discusses a particular youth migration, that of the children of immigrants who leave Italy to move to Northern Europe. What are the motivations behind this de facto migration? How much do discrimination processes count in the decision to move abroad and under what conditions and for what reasons do people leave Italy? This paper – based on my extensive qualitative research on young people of foreign origin, born and/or raised in Italy – discusses the opportunities and limits of these young people’s coping strategies in the face of difficulties in inclusion and entry into the labour market. It does this based on the broader research project, by taking into account the mobility ideas, drivers and relationships between mobile youth and their (ethnic or not) social networks.

This article addresses issues of mobility and place-making among CEE-born young people who migrated from Poland and Romania to Sweden as children (up to the age of 18). Previous research on intra-EU mobility in other destinations posits this group as 1.5-generation migrants who, due to their mobility at a formative age, experience duality and in-betweenness – with specific effects on their social and familial lives. Inspired by this research, our article examines how mobility to Sweden at a young age (re)shapes young peoples’ connection to and meaning-making of places post-migration. Drawing on two-step qualitative interviews with 18 adolescents and young adults from Poland and Romania, as well as on drawings and photographs as part of the visual materials produced by the participants, the article makes two contributions. First, it integrates the scholarship on children and youth mobility, translocalism and place-making but also deepens these conceptualisations by underlining the role of memories and feelings in young people’s place-making processes. Second, the article suggests that visual methodology is a valuable tool with which to capture the embodied and the material practices of translocal place-making over time. Our findings reveal that most of these young people continue to strongly associate with places from their childhood and country of origin. For some, these places symbolise ongoing transnational practices of visits and daily communication while, for others, these are imaginary places of safety and a right place to be. The findings also highlight the importance of memories and feelings in creating transnational connectivity between the countries of origin and Sweden, as well as in developing coping strategies against the social exclusion and misrecognition which some young people may experience in their new living spaces.

Dynamic changes and the increasing diversity of migrant societies support small-scale enclave businesses in Poland. Female migrants from Belarus and Ukraine appear to have found their niche in the beauty and cosmetology sector. Nevertheless, their entrepreneurship goes beyond the enclave market. Specialists provide services to migrant communities and simultaneously target Polish clients to ensure the success of their ventures. This article presents the results of qualitative research based on 13 in-depth interviews with Ukrainian and Belarusian beauty specialists. I focus on these businesswomen’s narratives about their entrepreneurial trajectories. My aim is to explore how they use and extend their social relationships in order to acquire entrepreneurial agency. Entrepreneurship can be understood as a socially embedded practice. I apply an intersectionality approach to investigate the complexity of socially constructed identities and the dimensions of individual entrepreneurial agency. Incorporating a mixed embeddedness approach, I examine the impact of structural factors on entrepreneurial activity and the importance of social networks for women’s self-realisation as independent beauty specialists.

Qualitative migration researchers today often use one or more of three concepts – mobility, transnationalism and integration – to make sense of the complexities of contemporary migrants’ lives. Collectively, researchers identify these as the three fundamental characteristics of migranthood. Being a migrant is about, for example, planning return visits, maintaining (or not maintaining) relations with people in the sending country or being preoccupied with learning to speak the receiving-society majority language. Qualitative interviewing suggests that each migrant is uniquely situated along various mobility, transnational and integration continuums. Migrants have many social identities as well as migranthood and the existence of these other, intersecting, social identities (such as social class, lifestage and gender) helps to determine their location on the continuums: for example, how often they are mobile and how much they can be mobile. The article draws on interviews in Poland with Ukrainians and Polish return migrants to show how (former) migrants conceptualise shared Ukrainian-Polish migranthood along these three continuums.

This article contributes to the growing debate on reintegration and the positioning of returnees in their home societies. Increasingly, studies focus on returnees’ agency in reintegration processes, their practices of mobility in return and their use of social capital and financial and social remittances acquired abroad. Much less analysed is how ethnicity influences such processes of return and experiences of reintegration. In this paper we examine how returnees belonging to different ethnic groups – Germans, Romanians and Roma – reintegrate in a Romanian multi-ethnic context with marked ethnic inequality and lasting segregation. Fieldwork was carried out in a town that has undergone massive changes in the past 30 years due to the combined effects of foreign direct investment and international migration. Economically, the town changed from a poor and decaying context, to one that was poor but developing and finally to one experiencing strong development. Using a modes-of-integration perspective and analysing returnees’ reintegration and mobilities, we show how return evolved as an ethnicised process in different contexts of reception.

Migrants’ property ownership in their countries of origin is often understood through the prism of return: both intended and actual return mobilities. Applying a transnational optic, this article unpacks the relationships between migrants’ property ownership ‘back home’ and their reflections on future moves and stays, not limited to possible return. We draw on 80 semi-structured interviews conducted in 2020 with Polish and Romanian migrants living in Barcelona and Oslo. They left their homeland, sometimes following domestic migration or international migration to other countries, before arriving in Spain and Norway. Based on these case studies of East–West migration within Europe, we contribute to work recognising the ongoing complex and diversified nature of mobilities in Europe. First, we detail what migrants’ property ownership looks like in practice – forms of ownership, types of property, location. Second, we focus on how owning property in Poland or Romania intersects with migrants’ considerations about moving or staying in the future, beyond return. Considerations about future (im)mobility shed light on transnational relationships, as these evolve over time and across space. Furthermore, we find that transnational property ownership in their countries of origin reveals much about migrants’ relations with people and places ‘back home’ and reflects the known non-linearity of migration stories. Overall, however, transnational property ownership is a poor predictor of both return plans and intentions.

With the improvement of people’s living standards and rapid economic development, the incidence of diabetes mellitus (DM) is increasing in most parts of the world. DM presents an important potential threat to human health. In the present study, a model of diabetes in female mice was established, and fasting blood glucose was detected at week 4, after which the biochemical profiles were evaluated by histopathological analysis. The success rate of modeling in the normal control (NC) group and the low/ middle/high-dose streptozotocin (STZ) group were 0, 0, 25% and 60%, respectively. In the middle-dose and high-dose STZ groups, the liver index was increased significantly compared with the NC group (p<0.05). The blood biochemical indicators of total cholesterol and low density lipoprotein cholesterol in three STZ injection groups were as follows: alanine aminotransferase and aspartate transaminase in middle- and high-dose STZ groups, high-density lipoprotein cholesterol and serum creatinine in the high-dose STZ group, and blood urea nitrogen in the middle-dose STZ group were significantly increased (p<0.05). The level of total triglycerides was lower, obviously, in the high-dose STZ group than in the NC group (p<0.05). The mice showed marked steatosis, green-dyed fiber tissue coloring in varying degrees, and the contour of the hepatic lobules basically disappeared in STZ injection groups. The results suggest that to establish a diabetes model for female ICR mice, the optimum dose of STZ is 100 mg/kg.

The aim of this study was to investigate the impact of feed supplements with alfa-amylase and beta-glucanase (Optipartum C+ 200) on ingestive-related behaviour biomarkers registered with real-time sensors: rumination behaviours and reticulorumen parameters (pH and temperature). Cows (n=20) in the treatment group (TG) were fed with Optipartum C+ 200 (Enzymes feed supplement: Alfa-Amylase 57 Units; Beta-Glucanase 107 Units) from 21 days before calving until 30 days after calving with a feeding rate of 200 g/cow/day. Cows (n=22) in the control group (CG) were fed a feed ration without feed supplement. Measurements started from 6 days before calving and continued until 21 days after calving. The following indicators were registered: with the RumiWatch System: Rumination time; Eating time; Drinking time; Rumination chews; Eating chews; Drinking gulps; Bolus; Chews per minute; Chews per bolus. With the SmaXtec system: the temperature, pH of the contents of the cows’ reticulorumens, and cows’ walking activity.
According to our results, feed supplementation with alfa-amylase and beta-glucanase (Optipartum C+ 200) in the TG group resulted in increases in the following parameters: 9% rumination time and eating time, 19% drinking time, 11% rumination chews, 16% eating chews, 13% number of boluses per rumination, 5% chews per minute and 16% chews per bolus. The rumination time showed a strong, positive relation with rumination chews and bolus indicators in both groups (TG and CG) (p<0.001); while the rumination time in both groups of cows showed an opposite direction and was negatively related to eating time and eating chews (p<0.05).
We found a 1.28 % lower reticulorumen pH and a 0.64 % lower reticulorumen temperature in cows fed with the supplement compared with cows in the control group. Cows in TG were 8.80% more active than those in the CG group. For improvement of ingestive-related behaviour we suggest adding a feed supplement with alfa-amylase and beta-glucanase (Optipartum C+ 200).

Brucellosis is a worldwide zoonosis, that can still be classified as endemic despite its ancient origins which causes economic losses and public health problems. Although effectively controlled by vaccination in animals, there is currently no vaccine for use in humans. Outer Membrane Proteins (OMP) that play an active immunogenic and protective role in the Brucellae family. OMP19 is present in all Brucella species as a surface antigen and is a potent immunogen responsible for Brucellosis intracellular infection. For this reason, the study was aimed to be used safely as a potential recombinant vaccine candidate against all Brucella infections, especially in humans and pregnant animals. This study evaluated a Brucella lipoprotein antigen, i.e. 19 kilodalton (kDa) outer membrane protein (OMP19), which was amplified and cloned into the pETSUMO vector system. The immunogenic power of the purified recombinant OMP19 antigen against brucellosis was compared with that of OMP19 (Raybiotech Inc, USA) in a mouse model and the obtained rOMP19 antigen was found to be similar to the commercially available recombinant protein.

In this study, the effects of isoxsuprine hydrochloride applied 14 and 15 days after insemination in Anatolian Merino Sheep on lamb yield and some blood parameters were investigated. The research was conducted during the breeding season and 54 ewes inseminated on the same day were used. The ewes were assigned to three groups. Group I: For the placebo effect, physiological saline was injected on the 14th day into half of the control group and on the 15th day into the other half after insemination (n=18). Group II: Tocolytic drug was injected on the 14th day after insemination (n=18). Grop III: Tocolytic drug was injected on the 15th day after insemination (n=18). As the tocolytic drug, isoxsuprine hydrochloride (HCl) 3 ml (Utelax, Sanovel, Türki̇ye) was used intramuscularly. The number of pregnant and viviparous ewes, single and multiple birth ewes, lambs per viviparous ewes were determined as reproductive parameters. Blood progesterone, cortisol and calcium concentration were determined. As a result, it was determined that the single application of isoxsuprine hydrochloride (3 ml) in the implantation period did not have a positive or negative effect on reproductive parameters, and did not change the blood progesterone, calcium and cortisol concentration in ewes.

Escherichia coli producing extended-spectrum beta-lactamase (ESBL) are antimicrobial- -resistant Enterobacteriaceae important in the livestock production sector, especially dairy cows because these antimicrobial-resistant bacteria can be transferred to consumers via consumption. If antimicrobials are continually used in dairy farms, this may result in antimicrobial resistance. Therefore, investigation of antimicrobial resistance and finding new alternative methods for inhibiting ESBL-producing E. coli is essential. Hence, the aim of this study was to examine the ability of selected antimicrobials to inhibit E. coli ATCC 25922, control bacteria and ESBL-producing E. coli isolated from dairy farms. We also investigated the capacity of polyphenol extract from 10 varieties of medicinal plants to inhibit ESBL-producing E. coli using a broth microdilution method. It was found that control bacteria were susceptible to all antimicrobial agents, i.e., ampicillin, cefotaxime, ciprofloxacin, chloramphenicol, gentamycin, imipenem, nalidixic acid, tetracycline, and sulfamethoxazole/ trimethoprim. However, ESBL-producing E. coli exhibited both susceptibility and resistance to selected antimicrobials. The polyphenol extracted from Psidium guajava Linn at the lowest concentration was 4.5 mg/mL, which could inhibit control bacteria, but at the same concentration could not inhibit ESBL-producing E. coli. These phenomena indicated that ESBL-producing E. coli had both susceptibility and resistance to antimicrobials. Polyphenol, which could inhibit non-resistant E. coli, could not inhibit ESBL-producing E. coli.

The fairy shrimp is a freshwater crustacean found in both temporary and permanent freshwaters. In Thailand, fairy shrimp are farmed as live food for ornamental fish. This study aimed to investigate the bacterial compositions in two fairy shrimp species, Branchinella thailandensis and Streptocephalus sirindhornae. Both species were cultured, and total DNA was extracted. The V3-V4 region of the 16S rRNA gene was amplified and sequenced using Illumina Miseq. All data were analyzed by Illumina 16S Metagenomics (version 1.0.1) workflow in Base Space- Illumina. Each read was blasted against the Illumina-curated version of the Greengenes database to determine the operational taxonomic units (OTUs) corresponding to the 16S rRNA gene sequence. The results showed that the Shanon-Weiner diversity index of bacterial compositions in B. thailandensis and S. sirindhornae were 2.135 and 3.122, respectively. The evenness and genus-level richness of the bacterial composition in B. thailandensis were 0.364 and 354 genera, respectively. The dominant bacterium found in B. thailandensis was Nevskia. In S. sirindhornae, the evenness and genus-level richness of the bacterial composition were 0.521 and 400 genera, respectively. Azohydromonas was the dominant bacterium. Our results showed that the compositions and proportions of bacterial communities were specific to each species of fairy shrimp. This study will be useful for further experiments in aquaculture and ecological studies related to symbiotic interaction.

This study was carried out to determine the time-dependent changes in the ultrasonographic image of the ovary with computer-assisted analysis programs at certain intervals after ovulation and to determine whether computer-assisted analysis programs and ovulation programs can be managed in cases where the ovulation time is unknown. The study included 40 purebred Arab mares. The study was subdivided into 4 different time periods of 6 (Group 1), 12 (Group 2), 18 (Group 3) and 24 (Group 4) hours following ovulation. In addition, after ovulation and ultrasonographic examination, natural insemination was performed at 6, 12, 18 and 24 hours, and pregnancy examination and follow-up were performed at 15-30-45 days. In the echotexture analysis, mean grayness value (MGV) and contrast (CON) measurements were at different levels according to the time groups (p<0.001). Homogeneity (HOM) measurements were at different levels according to the time groups (p<0.001). A very strong, significant negative correlation was determined between MGV and pregnancy rates (r=-0.91, p=0.01, p<0.05). No significant relationship was observed between HOM values and pregnancy rates (r=0.19, p=0.23, p>0.05). A very strong, significant negative correlation was determined between CON and pregnancy rates (r=-0.92, p=0.01, p<0.05). It was concluded that the use of ultrasonographic echotexture in mares after ovulation provided very important information. In cases where the time of ovulation was not known, by looking at the values of echotexture parameters, it was seen that the highest pregnancy rates were at the 6th hour and the lowest pregnancy rates were at the 24th hour. As the echotexture parameters MGV and CON increased, it was determined that pregnancy rates decreased, but there was no relationship between them and the HOM value.

The aim of this study was to evaluate the efficacy of electroacupuncture in acute and chronic phases of radial and ulnar nerve injuries in histopathological, immunohistochemical and biochemical aspects. In the study, the rabbits were divided into four groups namely acute nerve injury (ANI) group, chronic nerve injury (CNI) group, positive control (PC) group and negative control (NC) group. In the ANI, CNI and PC groups, damage was created on the nervus radialis and nervus ulnaris by applying pressure for 60 seconds using a hemostatic forceps under anesthesia. No damage was created in the NC group. Fifteen sessions of electroacupuncture were applied to the rabbits in the ANI, CNI, and NC groups every other day using LI-4 (Large Intestine Meridian-4, He Gu), LI-10 (Large Intestine Meridian-10, Shou San Li), LR-3 (Liver Meridian-3, Tai Chong), and ST-36 (Stomach Meridian-36, Zusanli) electroacupuncture points. Electroacupuncture was not applied to the rabbits in the PC group. Decapitation was performed under general anesthesia at the end of electroacupuncture applications. After the euthanasia procedure, the samples obtained were evaluated for histopathological, immunohistochemical and biochemical parameters. In conclusion, degenerative foci in the treatment groups were found to be fewer than in the PC group whereas NGF and S-100 immunoreactivity were higher in the treatment groups than in the PC group. Whereas no statistically significant difference was observed between the treatment groups and the NC group in terms of oxidative stress factors, there was a statistically significant difference between the treatment groups and the PC group. In light of all these data, we have concluded that electroacupuncture is an effective treatment method for peripheral nerve injuries.

The present study investigated the distribution and chemical properties of nerve cell bodies within the trunk of the vagus nerve in juvenile female pigs (n=4) using double-labelling immunofluorescence. The neurons appeared mostly as single cells or formed streaks of cells or small ganglia. Many of the perikarya were cholinergic (VAChT-positive; VAChT+) or adrenergic (DβH+) in nature and no SP+ or CGRP+ neurons were encountered. There were no distinct left-right differences regarding the number and chemical coding of the neuronal somata, however, these characteristics significantly varied between particular nerve segments investigated. The vagosympathetic trunks, and thoracic and abdominal segments of the vagus nerve contained on average (the numerical values represent the means for both the left and right corresponding nerve segments) 142, 236, and 111 PGP 9.5-positive neurons, respectively. Proportions of cholinergic and adrenergic neurons were as follows: 0% and 100%, 54.2% and 33.2%, and 52.8% and 35.4%, respectively. Relatively many neurons in the thoracic and abdominal segments stained also for NOS (39.2% and 39.9%, respectively). It remains to be determined whether the porcine intravagal neurons represent a developmental relic, or whether they have any specific functional significance.

The aim of this study was to compare the effect of controlled-release monensin on the automatic registered body condition score (BCS), and biomarkers registered using a fully automated inline analyzer, such as milk β-hydroxybutyrate (BHB), milk yield (MY) and milk lactate dehydrogenase (LDH).
Two experimental groups were formed: (1) monensin group (GK) supplemented with monensin (a monensin controlled release capsule (MCRC) of 32.4 g, n = 42) and (2) control group (GO) (capsule containing no monensin, n = 42). Treatment began 21 days before calving, and the experiment was finished one month after calving. In order to gather data about MY, BHB, and LDH, Herd Navigator a real-time analyzer (Lattec I/S, Hillerød, Denmark) was used together with a DeLaval milking robot (DeLaval Inc., Tumba, Sweden). BCS was measured using 3D BCS cameras (DeLaval, DeLaval International AB). All data were registered at one, 15 and 30 days after calving. The statistical analysis was performed using SPSS 26.0 (SPSS Inc., Chicago, USA) package. It was concluded that in the group of cows with monensin supplement (a monensin controlled release capsule of 32.4 g,), the body condition score was statistically significantly higher at the 15th (+0.24, p=0.003) and 30th (+0.52, p<0.001) days after calving, the productivity of cows in this group increased by 10.25% from the 1st to the 15th day and by 22.49% from the beginning of the experiment to the 30th day (p<0.001), lactate dehydrogenase activities at the 15th and 30th days after calving in this group were lower (p<0.001), and also in this group, the number of cows with a value of β-hydroxybutyrate of 0.06 mmol/L decreased from the beginning of the experiment to 30 days after calving by 4.70% (from 19.00% to 14.30%) compared with the control group.

Theileriosis is a hemoparasitic disease that affects a wide range of different animal species and is caused by various species of Theileria. This study aimed to determine the molecular epidemiology of Theileria annulata through microscopy and PCR, in crossbred cattle in some districts of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan. For this study, a total of 384 blood samples were collected from cattle in the Peshawar (n=120), Charsadda (n=94), Nowshera (n=84), and Swabi (n=86) districts. Microscopy and PCR were used to determine the overall prevalence of theileriosis, which was found to be 15.8 and 22.6%, respectively. Theileria annulata was detected in blood samples through PCR in the study area, and the target gene i.e., Tams 1, of positive samples was sequenced. The sequences in the current study revealed high sequence homology (ranging from 96 to 100%) with Tams 1 sequences of neighboring countries present in the NCBI database. Season, breed, age, and sex were found to be important risk factors among the several risk factors examined, whereas, among different clinical manifestations, lymphadenopathy showed a strong association with theileriosis. According to Cohen’s kappa and ROC analysis, microscopy was proven to be a fair diagnostic test for detecting theileriosis in cattle, and may be used in combination with molecular techniques for screening a large number of animals.

Avian encephalomyelitis (AE) is a viral disease of poultry. Although the disease has a milder clinical course in turkeys than in chickens, reproductive flocks of turkeys are vaccinated against AE. Commercial AE ELISA kits are specifically designed for chickens, which makes it difficult to implement these tests in serological monitoring of turkey flocks. The aim of the study was to compare the AE serological results provided by two ELISA kits from different producers when testing an AE-vaccinated flock of turkey hens and their progeny. We detected differences in the sensitivity of the ELISAs for testing specific anti-AE antibody levels in turkey serum samples.

Goose astrovirus (GoAstV) is a novel avastrovirus that typically causes gosling gout and results in 2 to 20% mortality. GoAstV capsid protein is the sole structural protein, which is responsible for viral attachment, assembly, maturation as well as eliciting host antibodies. However, the epitopes within capsid protein have not been well studied. In this study, a monoclonal antibody, named 1D7, was generated against GoAstV capsid protein by hybridoma technology. Western blot results showed that this MAb could react with recombinant capsid protein expressed in E. coli. Also, it recognized the precursor of capsid protein, VP90 and VP70, in GoAstV-infected cells. Besides, excellent specificity of MAb 1D7 was further demonstrated in indirect immunofluorescence assay and immunohistochemical analysis. Epitope mapping results revealed that MAb 1D7 recognized the epitope ³³QKVY ³⁶ within Cap protein. Sequence alignment indicated that ³³QKVY ³⁶ is a conserved epitope among the isolates of goose astrovirus type 2 (GoAstV-2), suggesting the potential for its use in GoAstV-2 specific diagnostic assay. These findings may provide some insight into a function of the GoAstV capsid protein and further contribute to the development of diagnostic methods for GoAstV infection.