Proposal and validation of new indexes to evaluate maize silage fermentative quality in lab-scale ensiling conditions through the use of a receiver operating characteristic analysis

In the context of dairy cow feeding, it is increasingly important to know the quality of the maize silage used in the ration and therefore, it appears to be crucial optimizing the techniques necessary to assess it. The aim of this study was to evaluate whether some reference indexes, like the Flieg-Zimmer's (FZS), the German agricultural society's (DLG) and Vanbelle's scores, could properly estimate the quality of fermentations of maize silage made in a lab-scale ensiling system, and to calculate and validate new quality indexes suitable for lab-scale fermentations. The experimental dataset was obtained by analysing through near-infrared spectroscopy 522 samples of whole maize crop ensiled immediately after the harvest, using the vacuum-packing technique. The six (I1 \u2013 I6) new indexes were calculated on the basis of chemical and physical parameters as: pH, organic acids, ethanol, etc. All the indexes were tested for normality with the Shapiro\u2013Wilk test. In order to define the accuracy with which the new indexes ranked the maize silage on the basis of its fermentation quality, a receiver operating characteristic (ROC) analysis was performed, using the FZS as gold standard test and dichotomizing the FZS in two levels according to a cut-off (FZS 360 g/kg) dry matter (DM). In the lab-scale silages the new indexes were normally distributed, whereas the reference indexes were not. The new indexes showed values of AUC ranging between 0.76 and 0.89, with the I5 index showing the best combination of sensitivity (0.87) and specificity (0.77) in discriminating between good and poor quality silage. The cut-off of the new indexes ranged between 45.0 and 57.4 points. The lab-scale silages were all excellent, no matter the category of DM. However, while FZS and DLG did not differ among the 3 categories, I1 \u2013 I6 were significantly higher in silages with low DM (P < 0.001). Silages with low DM had the highest concentrations of lactic acid (56.4 g/kg DM, P < 0.001), ammonia (61.4 g/kg DM, P < 0.001) and butyric acid (0.62 g/kg DM, P < 0.001) as well. Data confirmed that the new proposed indexes are promising in describing the fermentation quality of maize silage in lab-scale conditions

A retrospective multicentre study on dalbavancin effectiveness and cost-evaluation in sternotomic wound infection treatment: DALBA SWIT Study

To evaluate the cost-effectiveness of dalbavancin compared with standard of care (SoC) treatment as daptomycin or teicoplanin in patients with sternal wound infections (SWI)

Research and Development for Near Detector Systems Towards Long Term Evolution of Ultra-precise Long-baseline Neutrino Experiments

With the discovery of non-zero value of $\theta_{13}$ mixing angle, the next generation of long-baseline neutrino (LBN) experiments offers the possibility of obtaining statistically significant samples of muon and electron neutrinos and anti-neutrinos with large oscillation effects. In this document we intend to highlight the importance of Near Detector facilities in LBN experiments to both constrain the systematic uncertainties affecting oscillation analyses but also to perform, thanks to their close location, measurements of broad benefit for LBN physics goals. A strong European contribution to these efforts is possible

Electron identification and reconstruction with the OPERA ECC bricks and search for muon neutrino to electron neutrino oscillations

The procedure for event location in OPERA ECC has been optimazed for penetrating particles while is less efficient for electrons. For this reason new procedure has been defined in order to recover event with an electromagnetic shower in its final state not located with the standard one. The new procedure include the standard procedure during which several electromagnetic shower hint has been defined by means of the available data. In case the event is not located, the presence of an electromagnetic shower hint trigger a dedicated procedure. The old and new location procedure has been then simulated in order to obtain the standard location efficiency and the possible gain due to the new one for the events with electromagnetic shower. Finally a Data-MC comparison has been performed for the 2008 and 2009 runs for what concern the NC in order to validate the Monte Carlo. Then the expected electron neutrino interactions for the 2008 and 2009 runs has been evaluated and compared with the available data

Dataclient: a simple interface for scientific data transfers hiding x.509 complexities

Since the current data infrastructure of the HEP experiments is based on GridFTP, most computing centres have adapted and based their own access to the data on the X.509. This is an issue for smaller experiments that do not have the resources to train their researchers in the complexities of X.509 certificates and that would prefer an approach based on username/password. On the other hand, asking computing centres to support different access strategies is not so straightforward, as this would require a significant investment of effort and manpower. At CNAF-INFN Tier1 we tackled this problem by creating a layer on top of the gridftp client/server, that completely hides the X.509 infrastructure under an authentication/authorization process based on the Kerberos realm of our centre, and therefore based on username/password. We called this Dataclient. In this article we will describe both the principles that drove its design and its general architecture, together with the measures undertaken to simplify the user experience and maintenance burden

Dataclient: a simple interface for scientific data transfers hiding x.509 complexities

Since the current data infrastructure of the HEP experiments is based on GridFTP, most computing centres have adapted and based their own access to the data on the X.509. This is an issue for smaller experiments that do not have the resources to train their researchers in the complexities of X.509 certificates and that would prefer an approach based on username/password. On the other hand, asking computing centres to support different access strategies is not so straightforward, as this would require a significant investment of effort and manpower. At CNAF-INFN Tier1 we tackled this problem by creating a layer on top of the gridftp client/server, that completely hides the X.509 infrastructure under an authentication/authorization process based on the Kerberos realm of our centre, and therefore based on username/password. We called this Dataclient. In this article we will describe both the principles that drove its design and its general architecture, together with the measures undertaken to simplify the user experience and maintenance burden

Dataclient: a simple interface for scientific data transfers hiding x.509 complexities

Since the current data infrastructure of the HEP experiments is based on GridFTP, most computing centres have adapted and based their own access to the data on the X.509. This is an issue for smaller experiments that do not have the resources to train their researchers in the complexities of X.509 certificates and that would prefer an approach based on username/password. On the other hand, asking computing centres to support different access strategies is not so straightforward, as this would require a significant investment of effort and manpower. At CNAF-INFN Tier1 we tackled this problem by creating a layer on top of the gridftp client/server, that completely hides the X.509 infrastructure under an authentication/authorization process based on the Kerberos realm of our centre, and therefore based on username/password. We called this Dataclient. In this article we will describe both the principles that drove its design and its general architecture, together with the measures undertaken to simplify the user experience and maintenance burden.</jats:p