Simplified Slaughter Hog Pricing Model

Agricultural Economic

From early markers to neuro-developmental mechanisms of autism

A fast growing field, the study of infants at risk because of having an older sibling with autism (i.e. infant sibs) aims to identify the earliest signs of this disorder, which would allow for earlier diagnosis and intervention. More importantly, we argue, these studies offer the opportunity to validate existing neuro-developmental models of autism against experimental evidence. Although autism is mainly seen as a disorder of social interaction and communication, emerging early markers do not exclusively reflect impairments of the “social brain”. Evidence for atypical development of sensory and attentional systems highlight the need to move away from localized deficits to models suggesting brain-wide involvement in autism pathology. We discuss the implications infant sibs findings have for future work into the biology of autism and the development of interventions

Remaking the self in John Dunton’s The Life and Errors of John Dunton (1705)

© 2018, © 2018 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. John Dunton (1659–1732) is a bookseller and writer best known today as a tireless self-promoter whose I-centred and experimental work contributed to the development of the novel and autobiography in the eighteenth century. This article is the first full-length study of his own autobiographical record, The Life and Errors of John Dunton (1705). Dunton the showman is in plentiful evidence in this text, but he also presents another, more sober and serious-minded version of the self by following accounts of earlier stages of his life with their reformed versions. His coupling of religious-led self-examination with a commitment to literary novelty makes The Life a most unusual form of spiritual autobiography in its early stages. Yet The Life is a composite text in an even more obvious sense than this. For around half-way through the text Dunton abandons his close focus on the self for hundreds of cursory character sketches of his contemporaries, and in doing so swaps spiritual considerations for indirect comments on his own social activities and commercial concerns. This article studies these two main, ostensibly opposed, sections of The Life–its autobiographical and biographical material–and suggests points of contact between them

The evolving SARS-CoV-2 epidemic in Africa: Insights from rapidly expanding genomic surveillance

INTRODUCTION Investment in Africa over the past year with regard to severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) sequencing has led to a massive increase in the number of sequences, which, to date, exceeds 100,000 sequences generated to track the pandemic on the continent. These sequences have profoundly affected how public health officials in Africa have navigated the COVID-19 pandemic. RATIONALE We demonstrate how the first 100,000 SARS-CoV-2 sequences from Africa have helped monitor the epidemic on the continent, how genomic surveillance expanded over the course of the pandemic, and how we adapted our sequencing methods to deal with an evolving virus. Finally, we also examine how viral lineages have spread across the continent in a phylogeographic framework to gain insights into the underlying temporal and spatial transmission dynamics for several variants of concern (VOCs). RESULTS Our results indicate that the number of countries in Africa that can sequence the virus within their own borders is growing and that this is coupled with a shorter turnaround time from the time of sampling to sequence submission. Ongoing evolution necessitated the continual updating of primer sets, and, as a result, eight primer sets were designed in tandem with viral evolution and used to ensure effective sequencing of the virus. The pandemic unfolded through multiple waves of infection that were each driven by distinct genetic lineages, with B.1-like ancestral strains associated with the first pandemic wave of infections in 2020. Successive waves on the continent were fueled by different VOCs, with Alpha and Beta cocirculating in distinct spatial patterns during the second wave and Delta and Omicron affecting the whole continent during the third and fourth waves, respectively. Phylogeographic reconstruction points toward distinct differences in viral importation and exportation patterns associated with the Alpha, Beta, Delta, and Omicron variants and subvariants, when considering both Africa versus the rest of the world and viral dissemination within the continent. Our epidemiological and phylogenetic inferences therefore underscore the heterogeneous nature of the pandemic on the continent and highlight key insights and challenges, for instance, recognizing the limitations of low testing proportions. We also highlight the early warning capacity that genomic surveillance in Africa has had for the rest of the world with the detection of new lineages and variants, the most recent being the characterization of various Omicron subvariants. CONCLUSION Sustained investment for diagnostics and genomic surveillance in Africa is needed as the virus continues to evolve. This is important not only to help combat SARS-CoV-2 on the continent but also because it can be used as a platform to help address the many emerging and reemerging infectious disease threats in Africa. In particular, capacity building for local sequencing within countries or within the continent should be prioritized because this is generally associated with shorter turnaround times, providing the most benefit to local public health authorities tasked with pandemic response and mitigation and allowing for the fastest reaction to localized outbreaks. These investments are crucial for pandemic preparedness and response and will serve the health of the continent well into the 21st century

The Text Estranged: Topographies of Irony in Chaucer and Milton

Linda Hutcheon begins her study 'Irony's Edge' by explaining that "What this book tries to do ... is to figure out how and why irony comes about (or doesn't)". She asks an interesting question: "why should anyone want to use this strange mode of discourse where you say something you don't actually mean and expect people to understand not only what you do actually mean but also your attitude towards it?" (Hutcheon, 2) Yet it may be that irony is not a "strange mode of discourse" at all but a normal and even endemic feature of all discourse. "Verbal irony" occurs as a familiar phenomenon not only in Plato's Socrates but in everyday behaviour: we all know speakers (and may be such individuals ourselves) who characteristically communicate ironically - and although we may be perfectly convinced of our ability to recognize our own irony, we may be equally convinced, as teachers or scholars. that what we recognize is not something that really exists at all except in our own claim that it does, validated - if we are fortunately understood - by the appropriate decryptions of our listeners. From the word's first appearance in Aristophanes and Plato to its analysis by the most recent commentators, 'eironeia' has demonstrated its stubborn presence as a 'characteristic' feature of human speech and writing: just as the Greek word for an actor is "hypocrite", a dissembler, so the verb "to speak, say or tell" is 'eiro' and an 'eiron' or speaker, a dissembler, as though in some profound way speech acts themselves are essentially dissembling or ironical. Questions of ethics and of value thus inevitably attach themselves to ironical statement or rhetoric. Dissimulation, deceit, pretty fictions, cunning duplicity, derisive teasing, taunting sneers, strategic understatement, or outright lies - or, conversely, unspoken or unspeakable truths - are thought of as being imparted by ironic rhetoric, and even intrinsic to language itself

The Case of the Rouged Corpse: Shakespeare, Malone, and the Modern Subject

This report, or meditation, reflects on some highly selective features of the ongoing debate about the materiality of Shakespeare's texts (and by extension of any text), and the new challenges thrown down, often in a spirit of revolutionary fervor, to contest what had been thought of as received notions of scholarship, editorial practice, and even the pursuit of literary study itself.Over the last few years a series of articles (many of them in the journal 'Textual Practice) have debated the protocols, value, and implications of idealistic versus materialistic approaches to the play texts (and indeed the sonnets) that stemmed from Margreta de Grazia's 'Shakespeare Verbatim: The Reproduction of Authenticity and the 1790 Apparatus' (1991) and from de Grazia and Peter Stallybrass's later article "The Materiality of the Shakespearean Text," which appeared in 'Shakespeare Quarterly' in 1993.The whole question of editorial practice has become a topic of intense theoretical discussion - not only regarding editorial practice in relation to the texts of Shakespeare but also regarding early modern literature at large and, by a logical extension, editorial intervention in all texts

The hyperfine structure of mercury extracted from neutron irradiated gold

The hyperfine structure of mercury extracted from neutron irradiated gold has been investigated with the aid of a Fabry-Perot etalon. The theory and design of the interferometer are discussed in detail. The wavelengths of sixteen lines in the spectrum of Hg¹⁹⁸, and the hyperfine structure of many lines in the spectrum of Hg¹⁹⁹ have been evaluated and compared with former determinations, The ratio of Hg¹⁹⁹ to Hg¹⁹⁸ produced during the neutron bombardment of gold has been determined from intensity measurements of the hyperfine structure patterns. The result yields a value of (1.78± 0.10) X 10⁴ barns for the neutron capture cross section of Au¹⁹⁸ .Science, Faculty ofPhysics and Astronomy, Department ofGraduat