21 research outputs found
Genetic and Phenotypic Trends for Growth and Overall Efficiency in Bonsmara Beef Cattle
Animal Breedin
Engineering development and control design of a system for paraplegic tricycling
The aim of this study was the design of a cycle device to be used by patients with Spinal Cord Injury (SCI), using the technique of Functional Electrical Stimulation (FES). A complete literature review of former projects in the areas of Design Engineering, Control Engineering, Physiologic and Psychologic investigations in SCI FES cycling was done. All results achieved so far were summarized. Based on the review, a commercially available tricycle was modified for the demands of SCI people. A 10 Bit shaft encoder was used to feed back information from the tricycle and the cyclist. A software for the stimulation of the muscles in the lower limbs was developed. The Real Time Toolbox of Matlab was used for the data acquisition between the tricycle and the PC. A simple approach was invented to find a good first approximation of the individual stimulation pattern for the Gluteal, Hamstring, and Quadriceps muscle groups. Initial experiments were done. A velocity compensation routine, which was part of the software as well, allowed a healthy subject, stimulated via FES, to increase the pedal frequency to more than 100 rev per minute. A closed loop controller, based on system identification and analytical controller design, was implemented into the software as well. Experiments showed that the controller was able to fix the pedal frequency to a constant value on one hand, but also to solve dynamic tasks on the other hand. This is a significant original contribution, as this type of feedback controller has not previously been applied in FES cycling. The system described in the thesis is currently being used in a pilot study of FES cycling with three paraplegic subjects at the Southern General Hospital in Glasgow
Life Sciences Program Tasks and Bibliography
This document includes information on all peer reviewed projects funded by the Office of Life and Microgravity Sciences and Applications, Life Sciences Division during fiscal year 1995. Additionally, this inaugural edition of the Task Book includes information for FY 1994 programs. This document will be published annually and made available to scientists in the space life sciences field both as a hard copy and as an interactive Internet web pag
Piospheres in semi-arid rangeland: Consequences of spatially constrained plant-herbivore interactions
This thesis explains two aspects of animal spatial foraging behaviour arising as a direct consequence
of animals' need to drink water: the concentration of animal impacts, and the response of animals to
those impacts.
In semi-arid rangelands, the foraging range of free-ranging large mammalian herbivores is constrained
by the distribution of drinking water during the dry season. Animal impacts become concentrated
around these watering sites according to the geometrical relationship between the available foraging
area and the distance from water, and the spatial distribution of animal impacts becomes organised
along a utilisation gradient termed a "piosphere". During the dry season the temporal distribution of
the impacts is determined by the day-to-day foraging behaviour of the animals. The specific
conditions under which these spatial foraging processes determine the piosphere pattern have been
identified in this thesis.
At the core of this investigation are questions about the response of animals to the heterogeneity of
their resources. Aspects of spatial foraging are widely commented on whilst explaining the
consequences of piosphere phenomena for individual animal intake, population dynamics, feeding
strategies and management. Implicated are our notions of optimal foraging, scale in animal response,
and resource matching. This thesis addressed each of these. In the specific context of piospheres, the
role of energy balance in optimal foraging was also tested.
Field experiments for this thesis showed a relationship between goat browsing activity and measures
of spatial impact. As a preliminary step to investigating animal response to resource heterogeneity, the
spatial pattern of foraging behaviour/impacts was described using spatial statistics. Browsing activity
varied daily revealing animal assessment of the spatial heterogeneity of their resources and an
energetic basis for foraging decisions. This foraging behaviour was shown to be determined by
individual plants rather than at larger scales of plant aggregation. A further experiment investigated
the claim that defoliation has limited impact on browser intake rate, suggesting that piospheres may
have few consequences for browser intake. This experiment identified a constraining influence of
browse characteristics at the small scale on goat foraging by relating animal intake rate to plant bite
size and distribution.
Computer simulation experiments for this thesis supported these empirical findings by showing that
the distribution of spatial impacts was sensitive to the marginal value of forage resources, and
identified plant bite size and distribution as the causal factors in limiting animal intake rate in the
presence of a piosphere. As a further description of spatial pattern, piospheres were characterised by
applying a contemporary ecological theory that ranks resource patches into a spatial hierarchy.
Ecosystem dynamics emerge from the interactions between these patches, with piospheres being an
emergent property of a natural plant-herbivore system under specific conditions of constrained
foraging. The generation of a piosphere was shown to be a function of intake constraints and available
foraging area, whilst piosphere extent was shown to be independent of daily energy balance including
expenditure on travel costs. A threshold distance for animal foraging range arising from a
hypothesised conflict between daily energy intake and expenditure was shown not to exist, whereas
evidence for an intermediate distance from water as a focus for accumulated foraging activity was
identified.
Individual animal foraging efficiency in the computer model was shown to be sensitive to the
piosphere, while animal population dynamics were found to be determined in the longer term by dry
season key resources near watering points. Time lags were found to operate in the maintenance of the
gradient, and the density dependent moderation of the animal population. The latter was a direct result
of the inability of animal populations to match the distribution of their resources with the distribution
of their foraging behaviour, because of their daily drinking requirements. The result is that animal
forage intake was compromised by the low density of dry season forage in the vicinity of a water
point.
This thesis also proposes that piospheres exert selection pressures on traits to maximise energy gain
from the spatial heterogeneity of dry season resources, and that these have played a role in the
evolution of large mammalian herbivores
The follow-up of a cohort of anti-hiv seropositive haemophiliacs for up to 15 years from seroconversion
111 men with haemophilia registered at the Royal Free Hospital Haemophilia Centre became infected with HIV between 1979 and 1985 after treatment with infected blood products. These men have been followed for up to 15 years since HIV seroconversion. This thesis presents an epidemiologic follow-up of this cohort of patients. By the end of 1994, 47 men had developed AIDS and 45 had died, Kaplan-Meier progression rates of 56.5[percent] (9570 confidence interval 39.5-73.6) and 46.9[percent] (9570 confidence interval 35.6-582) by 14 years after seroconversion respectively. Prior to the development of AIDS, 82 of the men had developed at least one more minor condition indicative of their HIV infection. Older individuals and those who seroconverted prior to 1981 and from 1983 onwards appear to have a more rapid progression of disease. The CD4 lymphocyte count, which drops throughout infection, is a strong prognostic marker for disease progression. The rate of CD4 decline, the Immunoglobulin A level and the development of p24 antigenaemia all add some additional prognostic information to that provided by the most recent CD4 count alone. In contrast, the CD8 lymphocyte count simply identifies those individuals with the lowest and most rapidly declining CD4 counts. Whilst the beta-2 microglobulin level appears to provide additional prognostic information to the CD4 count at high CD4 levels, it is of less value at lower counts. The development of a bacterial infection prior to AIDS suggests that a patient's condition is likely to deteriorate, irrespective of their immune status. Despite being the best marker of progression, the CD4 count is, unfortunately, measured imperfectly. This has the effect of reducing the apparent relationship with disease progression and may lead to erroneous conclusions about the value of other covariates in a proportional hazards model
NOTIFICATION !!!
All the content of this special edition is retrieved from the conference proceedings published by the European Scientific Institute, ESI. http://eujournal.org/index.php/esj/pages/view/books The European Scientific Journal, ESJ, after approval from the publisher re publishes the papers in a Special edition
NOTIFICATION !!!
All the content of this special edition is retrieved from the conference proceedings published by the European Scientific Institute, ESI. http://eujournal.org/index.php/esj/pages/view/books The European Scientific Journal, ESJ, after approval from the publisher re publishes the papers in a Special edition
NOTIFICATION !!!
All the content of this special edition is retrieved from the conference proceedings published by the European Scientific Institute, ESI. http://eujournal.org/index.php/esj/pages/view/books The European Scientific Journal, ESJ, after approval from the publisher re publishes the papers in a Special edition
NOTIFICATION!!!
The full content of this special edition is retrieved from the conference proceedings published by the European Scientific Institute, ESI. http://eujournal.org/index.php/esj/pages/view/books The European Scientific Journal, ESJ, after approval from the publisher re publishes the papers in a Special edition