Efficacy of afoxolaner plus milbemycin oxime and afoxolaner alone as treatment for sarcoptic mange in naturally infested dogs

Artículo de investigaciónSarcoptic mange is a pruritic, contagious, ectoparasitic skin disease that affects mammals, including the domestic dog. The objective of this study was to evaluate and compare the efficacy of afoxolaner plus milbemycin oxime (NexGard Spectra) and afoxolaner alone (NexGard) as treatments for sarcoptic mange in naturally infested dogs. A total of 142 dogs naturally infested with Sarcoptes scabiei was evaluated. The dogs were diagnosed by microscopic examinations of skin scrapings. The dogs were divided into 2 groups: 96 dogs were treated with a combined dosage of 2.50 to 5.36 mg/kg body weight (BW) of afoxolaner and 0.50 to 1.07 mg/kg BW of milbemycin oxime and 46 dogs were treated with 2.50 mg/kg BW of afoxolaner alone. The presence or absence of pruritus and lesions were evaluated using an analogous scale on days 7, 14, 21, 28, and 56 after receiving the treatment. Data obtained were analyzed by Student’s t-test (P # 0.05). The single oral treatment of afoxolaner plus milbemycin oxime resulted in a significant reduction in pruritus of 87.4% at 28 d after treatment (P # 0.05). Resolution of the lesions after treatment was variable, with a significant decrease (P # 0.05) observed within the first 14 d, although this parameter continued to improve until the end of the study on day 28, when a decrease of 96% was observed. By the end of the study, a single dose of either the afoxolaner alone or the afoxolaner combined with milbemycin oxime was effective in significantly reducing the signs associated with sarcoptic mange during a 56-day evaluation period

Students’ cognitive and metacognitive learning strategies towards hands-on science

Cognitive and metacognitive learning strategies are geared towards giving autonomy to every learner in their studies. Students’ affordances on cognitive and metacognitive learning strategies in their studies are believed to predict their academic success and performances in their learning tasks. This study determined the cognitive and metacognitive learning strategies in science among the 278 education students in the three campuses of a state university in the Philippines as bases in crafting a developmental plan to bolster the science instruction in the university. Using the descriptive-inferential research and employing a questionnaire on the cognitive and metacognitive strategies of education students, the following are known: incomparable affordances of the students along planning and information management practices while comparable affordances were determined on the respondents’ cognitive learning strategies; and incomparable affordances along procedural knowledge while comparable affordances along declarative and conditional knowledge were determined on the respondents’ metacognitive learning strategies. Based on the results, a developmental plan was designed to bolster the science courses in the education programs of the university centering on the inclusion of research camp, research expo, shepherding on research through the niche program, immersion, and hands-on science. It was recommended that the proposed enhanced science program will be implemented in the university system as there is only one science course in their respective programs in the new curricular plot.

Application-level differential checkpointing for HPC applications with dynamic datasets

High-performance computing (HPC) requires resilience techniques such as checkpointing in order to tolerate failures in supercomputers. As the number of nodes and memory in supercomputers keeps on increasing, the size of checkpoint data also increases dramatically, sometimes causing an I/O bottleneck. Differential checkpointing (dCP) aims to minimize the checkpointing overhead by only writing data differences. This is typically implemented at the memory page level, sometimes complemented with hashing algorithms. However, such a technique is unable to cope with dynamic-size datasets. In this work, we present a novel dCP implementation with a new file format that allows fragmentation of protected datasets in order to support dynamic sizes. We identify dirty data blocks using hash algorithms. In order to evaluate the dCP performance, we ported the HPC applications xPic, LULESH 2.0 and Heat2D and analyze them regarding their potential of reducing I/O with dCP and how this data reduction influences the checkpoint performance. In our experiments, we achieve reductions of up to 62% of the checkpoint time.This project has received funding from the European Unions Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013) and the Horizon 2020 (H2020) funding framework under grant agreement no. H2020-FETHPC-754304 (DEEP-EST); and from the European Unions Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the LEGaTO Project (legato- project.eu), grant agreement No 780681.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

Discovering the Ethereum2 P2P network

Achieving the equilibrium between scalability, sustainability, and security while keeping decentralization has prevailed as the target solution for decentralized blockchain applications over the last years. Several approaches have been proposed by multiple blockchain teams to achieve it, Ethereum being among them. Ethereum is on the path of a major protocol improvement called Ethereum 2.0 (Eth2), implementing Sharding and introducing the Proof-of-Stake (PoS). As the change of consensus mechanism is a delicate matter, this improvement will be achieved through different phases, the first of which is the implementation of the Beacon Chain. As Ethereum1, Eth2 relies on a decentralized peer-to-peer (p2p) network for the message distribution. Up to date, we estimate that there are around 5.000 nodes in the Eth2 main net geographically distributed. However, the topology of this one still prevails unknown. In this paper, we present the results obtained from the analysis we performed on the Eth2 p2p network. Describing the topology of the network, as possible hazards that this one implies.This work has been supported by the Ethereum Foundation under Grant FY20-0198.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

Armiarma: Ethereum2 Network Monitoring Tool

Achieving the equilibrium between scalability, sustainability and security has prevailed as the ideal solution for decentralized blockchain applications over the last years. Several approaches have been proposed being Ethereum a solid proposal among them. Ethereum is on the path of a major protocol improvement called Ethereum 2.0 (Eth2), implementing Sharding and introducing the Proof-of-Stake (PoS). As the change of consensus mechanism is a delicate matter, this improvement will be achieved through different phases, the first of which is the implementation of the Beacon Chain. The implementation of the latest has been stated with the recent launch of the Eth2 main net. In this work, we introduce an Eth2 network monitor tool, called Armiarma, used to generate a complete analysis of the p2p network of the Eth2 main net. In this paper, we present some of the results of what this Eth2 network monitor can achieve

Implementación de un modelo de auditoria de proyectos para Ecopetrol S.A.

Este trabajo plantea una alternativa para el seguimiento a los proyectos de inversión de la Vicepresidencia de Transporte de Ecopetrol. El análisis que se plantea se realizó desde la panorámica de la organización, recolectando conceptos de varias dependencias; por tanto el modelo se basa en el conocimiento tácito de las actividades de seguimiento y control de proyectos que ha desarrollado la organización a través de los años. A pesar de que en algunos sectores académicos la facilidad de la aplicación de estos métodos pueda no ser compartida, ante el actual ejercicio no se halló mejor alternativa de aproximación al conocimiento al interior de la empresa. A través de esta propuesta se pretende generar metodologías adecuadas para seguimiento y control de proyectos, que conduzcan a una asignación óptima de los recursos disponibles.Abstract This paper proposes an alternative for monitoring the investment projects of the Vice President of Transportation Ecopetrol. The analysis was performed arises from the view of the organization, collecting concepts of various areas; so the model is based on the tacit knowledge of the activities of monitoring and control of projects that the organization has developed through the years. Through this proposal it is to generate adequate monitoring and project control methods, leading to an optimal allocation of available resourcesMaestrí