HOG PRICES RECEIVED AND THE VALUE OF INFORMATION: A LOGIT ANALYSIS

The study discussed in this paper integrates the economics of information, production theory, and the theory of human capital to determine the optimum amount of price information collected by profit maximizing hog producers.Livestock Production/Industries,

Prosper: image and robot-guided prostate brachytherapy

Brachytherapy for localized prostate cancer consists in destroying cancer by introducing iodine radioactive seeds into the gland through hollow needles. The planning of the position of the seeds and their introduction into the prostate is based on intra-operative ultrasound (US) imaging. We propose to optimize the global quality of the procedure by: i) using 3D US; ii) enhancing US data with MRI registration; iii) using a specially designed needle-insertion robot, connected to the imaging data. The imaging methods have been successfully tested on patient data while the robot accuracy has been evaluated on a realistic deformable phantom

Damaged Compressor Stator Parts Resulting From Operation In Deep Choke

Case Stud

Production of a Functional Catalytic Antibody ScFv-NusA Fusion Protein in Bacterial Cytoplasm

Functional expression of catalytic antibodies in the cytoplasm of E. coli is potentially of great interest in searching for new catalysts by genetic selection. Herein, a catalytic antibody single chain Fv (ScFv) 14D9, which catalyzes a highly enantioselective protonation, was expressed as a NusA fusion protein under the T7 promoter. A functional disulfide-containing ScFv fusion protein was obtained in the oxidizing environment of bacterial cytoplasm. The 14D9 ScFv could not be overexpressed alone without NusA fusion. The highly soluble NusA protein most likely retards aggregate formation of ScFv and indirectly supports correct folding and disulfide bridge formation in the fusion construct ScFv-NusA. The ScFv-NusA fusion product shows highly enantioselective, specific, hapten inhibited catalytic activity comparable to its parent monoclonal antibody, 14D9. The NusA fusion method might be generally helpful for functional antibody expression in vivo and for the new development of biocatalysts by genetic selectio

An efficient one-step site-directed and site-saturation mutagenesis protocol

We have developed a new primer design method based on the QuickChange™ site-directed mutagenesis protocol, which significantly improves the PCR amplification efficiency. This design method minimizes primer dimerization and ensures the priority of primer-template annealing over primer self-pairing during the PCR. Several different multiple mutations (up to 7 bases) were successfully performed with this partial overlapping primer design in a variety of vectors ranging from 4 to 12 kb in length. In comparison, all attempts failed when using complete-overlapping primer pairs as recommended in the standard QuickChange™ protocol. Our protocol was further extended to site-saturation mutagenesis by introducing randomized codons. Our data indicated no specific sequence selection during library construction, with the randomized positions resulting in average occurrence of each base in each position. This method should be useful to facilitate the preparation of high-quality site saturation librarie

Local Shielding Gas Supply in Remote Laser Beam Welding

The use of shielding gases in laser beam welding is of particular interest for materials interacting with ambient oxygen, e.g., copper, titanium or high-alloy steels. These materials are often processed by remote laser beam welding where short welds (e.g., up to 40 mm seam length) are commonly used. Such setups prevent gas nozzles from being carried along on the optics due to the scanner application and a small area needs to be served locally with inert gas. The article provides systematic investigations into the interaction of laser beam processes and parameters of inert gas supply based on a modular flat jet nozzle. Based on the characterization of the developed nozzle by means of high-speed Schlieren imaging and constant temperature anemometry, investigations with heat conduction welding and deep penetration welding were performed. Bead-on-plate welds were carried out on stainless steel AISI 304 for this purpose using a disc laser and a remote welding system. Argon was used as shielding gas. The interaction between Reynolds number, geometrical parameters and welding/flow direction was considered. The findings were proved by transferring the results to a complex weld seam geometry (C-shape)