Clinical Use of Fetal Gastrointestinal Motility to Predict Parturition in the Bitch

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Review of Cosmic Ray experiments with underground detectors

The most important underground detectors addressing Cosmic Ray physics are described, with a special emphasis on the description of the used technology.Comment: Invited talk at 6th International Conference on advanced Technology and Particle Physics, Villa Olmo, Como, Italy, October 5-9, 1998, To be published in Nucl. Phys. B, Proc. Supp

Adaptive equalizers and the DFE

L’argomento principale che viene affrontato nella tesina è quello dell’equalizzatore DFE; ne viene spiegata la struttura e la funzionalità. In particolar modo viene affrontato il problema del calcolo dei coefficienti dei filtri che lo compongono. Questi infati possono essere calcolati tramite metodo direto che però richiede l’inversione della matrice delle autocorrelazioni R e questo richiede una complessità di realizzazione elevata. Per semplificare questa complessità si introduce la fattorizzazione di Cholesky della matrice R che abbassa di grado la complessitàope

New Study of Altitude and Butterfly Diversity Evaluation of butterfly diversity in La Hesperia and influence of altitude on diversity

Due to the increasing effects of climate change, studies focusing on bioindicator species are becoming more necessary than ever. Additionally, knowledge about global biodiversity can be very useful to conservation organizations because it helps them determine what areas need to be conserved the most .Butterflies are useful as bioindicators due to their complex life cycles, importance in the food chain, and sensitivity to environmental changes. This project focused on studying the overall biodiversity of butterflies in the La Hesperia reserve. In addition, this study aimed to determine how butterfly diversity varies at different altitudes. To do this, the reserve was broken up into three altitudinal zones (Low, Mid, and Hi), and 5 bait traps and 6 transects were conducted in each zone to assess the diversity present there. The project resulted in the identification of 113 different butterfly species in the reserve. Data from the three zones were also compared, and it was determined the Low Zone was the most diverse based on its species richness, abundance, endemism, and overall biodiversity index, whereas the Hi Zone was the least diverse. The data from this project were also compared to a study conducted in 1985 by Xavier Silva to determine how diversity has changed in the reserve. This project found 19 more species than the 1985 study, but many of the species present in the 1985 study were not present in this 2014 one, and vice versa. These differences could be due to a variety of factors, such as regrowth of vegetation in the reserve, global warming, and changes in taxonomical classifications. The information gathered in this research project can be used to increase awareness of the butterfly diversity in the reserve, as well as provide a foundation for future studies that can be conducted in the reserve and compared with this one to determine how changes in the environment have affected butterfly diversity in the reserve

Coastal Marine Debris in Alaska: Problems with Plastics, Pollution, & Policy

Plastics pollute people and the planet throughout their lifecycle, from intensive extraction of raw materials to chemical leaching during their use to entangling animals in discarded plastic products. Plastic waste is especially troublesome in Alaska, where the state\u27s extensive shoreline and coastal communities are disproportionately inundated with plastic marine debris. Current policies internationally, in the United States, and in Alaska have not done enough to prevent plastic waste from ending up on Alaska\u27s coasts, to hold plastic producers accountable for that waste, or to provide Alaskan communities the support needed to remove the waste themselves. This Note offers several proposals to address the rising tide of plastic pollution, including a system for holding plastic producers accountable for plastic throughout its life cycle, changes to grant programs that fund marine debris cleanups, and other improvements to existing international, federal, and state plastic policies

Nutrient recovery from wastewater by adsorption on Magnesium/Potassium-zeolites in adsorption-ultrafiltration hybrid systems

A zeolitic material synthesized from coal fly ash (Na-Ze) was modified to magnesium (Mg-Ze) and magnesium-potassium (Mg/K-Ze) forms for being used as a sorbent material to enhance simultaneous removal of ammonium and phosphate from wastewater effluents. Loaded zeolites can be used afterwards as slow-release fertilizers or in soil quality improving actions. A series of batch experiments were carried out in order to determine the sorption capacity and kinetic performance of zeolites. Once these results were obtained a new set of experiments were performed with the objective of setting up a hybrid ultrafiltration-adsorption pilot plant using zeolite as a sorbent material in a more realistic conditions of wastewater treatment plant. Equilibrium, kinetic, and zeolite dose studies were carried out through batch experiments in NH4+/PO43- binary systems. All equilibrium experimental data were fitted by Langmuir isotherm model, and maximum sorption capacities of ammonium and phosphate were determined for both zeolites. qm of Mg-Ze was reported to be 30.90 mg·g-1 and 12.41 mg·g-1 for ammonium and phosphate, respectively, while results for Mg/K-Ze were 27.79 mg·g-1 and 57.87 mg·g-1. Kinetics was overall reported to be very swift, reaching the equilibrium of ammonium sorption in less than 2 minutes. For the phosphate, sorption was slower and long-termed. The optimum zeolite dose for nutrient removal was determined to be 2 g/dm3. Finally, after a successful experiment at the UF-adsorption pilot plant, global mass removal efficiency of ammonium and phosphate from a simulated wastewater sample was reported to be 60% and 90%, respectively

Building And Managing Political Consensus Through The Internet: A Projectual Model

This paper focuses on the digital applications in political communication and for building consensus, assuming that we need to overcome the idea of the Internet as a simple means of mass communication, and instead analyse it as a social medium for acquiring, activating, and involving people in a specific political idea or movement. The social developments under way in Internet networks are leading to an integration between reality and virtual reality, thus making the Internet an increasingly faithful representation of the real world and of different subjects’ social networks. This makes Internet a great opportunity for building consensus. On the base of these considerations, we are going to elaborate a model for political communication on the Internet, which is integrated in the political marketing flow and articulated in three phases: acquisition, activation and defense. This model is based on the significant case study of Barack Obama and on the innovative approach in using website by Ségolène Royal

Non-canonical proteolytic activation of human prothrombin by subtilisin from Bacillus subtilis may shift the procoagulant\ue2\u80\u93anticoagulant equilibrium toward thrombosis

Blood coagulation is a finely regulated physiological process culminating with the factor Xa (FXa)-mediated conversion of the prothrombin (ProT) zymogen to active -thrombin (T). In the prothrombinase complex on the platelet surface, FXa cleaves ProT at Arg-271, generating the inactive precursor pre-thrombin-2 (Pre2), which is further attacked at Arg-320 \u2013Ile-321 to yield mature T. Whereas the mechanism of physiological ProT activation has been elucidated in great detail, little is known about the role of bacterial proteases, possibly released in the bloodstream during infection, in inducing blood coagulation by direct proteolytic ProT activation. This knowledge gap is particularly concerning, as bacterial infections are frequently complicated by severe coagulopathies. Here, we show that addition of subtilisin (50 nM to 2 M), a serine protease secreted by the non-pathogenic bacterium Bacillus subtilis, induces plasma clotting by proteolytically converting ProT into active Pre2, a nicked Pre2 derivative with a single cleaved Ala-470 \u2013Asn-471 bond. Notably, we found that this non-canonical cleavage at Ala-470 \u2013Asn-471 is instrumental for the onset of catalysis in Pre2, which was, however, reduced about 100 \u2013200-fold compared with T. Of note, Pre2 could generate fibrin clots from fibrinogen, either in solution or in blood plasma, and could aggregate human platelets, either isolated or in whole blood. Our findings demonstrate that alternative cleavage of ProT by proteases, even by those secreted by non-virulent bacteria such as B. subtilis, can shift the delicate procoagulant\u2013anticoagulant equilibrium toward thrombosis

Visualization of DNA G-quadruplexes in herpes simplex virus 1-infected cells

We have previously shown that clusters of guanine quadruplex (G4) structures can form in the human herpes simplex-1 (HSV-1) genome. Here we used immunofluorescence and immune-electron microscopy with a G4-specific monoclonal antibody to visualize G4 structures in HSV-1 infected cells. We found that G4 formation and localization within the cells was virus cycle dependent: viral G4s peaked at the time of viral DNA replication in the cell nucleus, moved to the nuclear membrane at the time of virus nuclear egress and were later found in HSV-1 immature virions released from the cell nucleus. Colocalization of G4s with ICP8, a viral DNA processing protein, was observed in viral replication compartments. G4s were lost upon treatment with DNAse and inhibitors of HSV-1 DNA replication. The notable increase in G4s upon HSV-1 infection suggests a key role of these structures in the HSV-1 biology and indicates new targets to control both the lytic and latent infection