Women Enrollment at Northwestern College

This project observes the enrollment rate of women at Northwestern College and why it is inconsistent. Data is used from satisfaction surveys of 2020 and 2021 enrollees, with the data being analyzed using R Studio. Types of data observed include type of visits students went on, types of scholarships, and interest in a Christian college atmosphere

Effects of planning on task load, knowledge, and tool preference:A comparison of two tools

Self-regulated learners are expected to plan their own learning. Because planning is a complex task, it is not self-evident that all learners can perform this task successfully. In this study, we examined the effects of two planning support tools on the quality of created plans, planning behavior, task load, and acquired knowledge. Sixty-five participants each worked with two versions of a planning tool. In one version, learning plans were actively constructed by the learners themselves; the other version provided learners with an adaptable computer-generated plan. The results indicated that the quality of learner-created plans was lower than computer-generated plans. Furthermore, participants reported a higher task load when they constructed the plans by themselves. However, participants gained more structural knowledge about the learning domain when they actively created plans. There was not an apparent preference for one of the tools if participants were to create a plan for someone else. However, if they were to use the plan for their own learning, participants preferred to actively create their own plans

Out of Pocket Pay at Northwestern College

In this research project, we observe several factors that affect how much families pay out of pocket for their students to attend Northwestern College. In addition, we compare this to the amount of institutional aid students expect to receive upon enrollment. We run multiple regression models to see if a student’s first semester major affects how much money they are paying out of pocket, or if this is affected by a type of scholarship they receive. These scholarships include athletic scholarships, music scholarships, theater scholarships, and the Pell Grant. We show that the only grouping of majors to pay a significant amount less out of pocket are those within natural sciences. We also explore reasonings as to why natural science majors are paying less money out of pocket by looking at their academic standing and financial based scholarships. Based on our findings, we believe that natural science majors are more likely to pay less money than other majors due to their academic standings, leading them to receive greater scholarships

Development of fermented sauce-based salads : assessment of safety and stability

Sauce-based delicatessen salads, composed of solid ingredients, such as potatoes, vegetables, fish, meat and an oil-in-water emulsion containing acidulants (acetic and lactic acids) and chemical preservatives (sorbic and benzoic acids) can be subject to microbial and chemical changes and physical deterioration. In this thesis a new method of salad preparation is presented which meets consumer demands for salads without chemical preservatives and with a less sour taste and by which the major microbiological and chemical problems of the present-day salads can be controlled. Conditions for operation and the microbiological and chemical aspects that are relevant for the process have been investigated. It is shown that preparation of salads by the new process, i.e. fermentation in their package with lactic acid bacteria at higher temperatures (≥42°C) in a short time (≤8 hours), followed by cooling to below 7°C, is feasible. Salads produced according to this procedure have a mildly sour taste and are microbially stable for 5-6 weeks at 7°C, i.e. yeasts and other spoilage organisms are inhibited, provided that measures are taken to assure low initial contamination with these microorganisms. Moreover, fermented salads, subjected to light exposure, are protected for lipid photo-oxidation. This protection is apparently due to the oxygen scavenging and reducing effects of the fermentation. The salads could be regarded as safe, as growth of pathogenic microorganisms and production of biogenic amines are inhibited

Histopathologic Diagnosis of Neuroendocrine Neoplasms of Head and Neck, Lung and Gastrointestinal Tract

Neuroendocrine neoplasms are classified as epithelial and non-epithelial based on their origin being from epithelial neuroendocrine progenitor cells or derived from the neural crest. The latter are negative for cytokeratin (hence non-epithelial) and mostly result from neoplastic transformation of paraganglia. Here, we are reviewing the most important histologic and immunophenotypic characteristics of neuroendocrine carcinomas as well as the current WHO classification guidelines. The terminology of neuroendocrine neoplasms is confusing due to various classification systems employed for each internal organ. In the lung and GI tract, for example, “neuroendocrine tumors” comprise carcinomas of different degree of differentiation and histologic grade. While in the lung the term refers strictly to low-grade neuroendocrine carcinomas, in the GI tract it comprises both low- and high-grade neuroendocrine carcinomas. Despite concerted efforts to unify the overall classification of neuroendocrine carcinomas across organs, major differences continue to persist

No positive effect of rhdnase on the pulmonary colonization in children with cystic fibrosis

Background. Long-term clinical trials have shown that daily treatment with recombinant human deoxyribonuclease (rhDNAse) in patients with mild to moderate cystic fibrosis (CF) improves lung function and decreases the number of respiratory exacerbations. The aim of this study was to analyze the effect of rhDNAse on the bacterial colonization of the airways in children with CF. Methods. This was a retrospective cohort study. From the database of the CF Center Utrecht, we selected two groups, an rhDNAse group (daily 2.5 mg rhDNAse) and a control group (no rhDNAse). Primary outcome parameter was the difference in change in bacterial colonization between the treatment and control group during 1.5-year. Secondary outcome parameters were changes in lung function (FEV1) and pulmonary exacerbations. Results. Children treated with rhDNAse showed no significant changes in bacterial colonization during the treatment period, apart from an increase of P. aeruginosa positive cultures, both compared to baseline (53.1% versus 25%, p<0.05) and control group (no change during study period, 37% versus 37%). The change in FEV1 after one year of treatment was +4.0% in the treatment group versus -0.3% in the control group (p=0.22). There were no significant changes in number of pulmonary exacerbations. Conclusions. This study showed no significant beneficial decrease in bacterial airway colonization during 1.5-year of treatment with rhDNAse. The positive effects of rhDNAse on the lung function can therefore not be explained by a change in airway colonization

Forecasting chronic mastitis using automatic milking system sensor data and gradient-boosting classifiers

Although most of the losses due to mastitis per case in dairy production are estimated to be caused by clinical cases, subclinical cases, especially chronic, can also be problematic due to milk production losses and the risk of transmission of pathogens. Knowing which subclinical mastitis cases will become chronic at an early stage would be helpful in intervening in these cases. Automatic milking systems (AMS) can collect data on mastitis indicators such as conductivity, Somatic cell count (SCC), and blood in the milk for each milking. The aim of this study was to develop a sensor-based prediction model using SCC, conductivity, blood in the milk, parity, milk diversion, time interval between milkings, milk yield and DIM that forecasts the chronicity in subclinical mastitis cases after an initial increase in SCC. We used sensor data from 14 European and North American dairy farms (with herd sizes of lactating cows ranging from 55 to 638 cows and herd mean parities between 2.00 and 3.19) with an AMS and an online cell counter, measuring SCC. Typically, a threshold of 200,000 SCC/ml has been used to distin- guish cows with subclinical mastitis from healthy cows. We used gradient-boosting trees and sensor data to forecast whether the SCC would decrease structurally below 200,000 SCC/ml in 50 days after the day at which the prediction was performed. Data from 30 and 15 days prior to the day where the forecast was made, was used. The model was trained on data from seven randomly selected dairy farms from the dataset and the data of the remaining seven dairy farms were used to estimate the predictive performance. These results were compared with two approaches that simulate how farmers would diagnose chronic mastitis with a simple prediction rule based on close-to-daily SCC (frequent sampling approach), and on less frequent monthly SCC (monthly sampling approach). We used accuracy, Matthew’s correlation coefficient (MCC), and Area under the Curve (AUC) as metrics to assess the forecasting performance of the chronic mastitis prediction model. On average, the forecast model, using 30 days of sensor data prior to the day of prediction, outperformed the approaches according to the accuracy (chronic mastitis prediction model: 0.888, frequent sampling approach: 0.848, and monthly sampling approach: 0.865), MCC (chronic mastitis prediction model: 0.712, frequent sampling approach: 0.630, and monthly sampling approach: 0.552), and AUC metrics (chronic mastitis prediction model: 0.964 and frequent sampling approach: 0.941) metrics. The results also indicate that shortening the input requirement from 30 days of prior sensor data to 15 days has a limited effect on the performance of the model. Overall, this study shows that it is possible with a high accuracy to predict the future chronic mastitis status using past sensor data and machine learning models

Diagnostic properties of milk diversion and farmer-reported mastitis to indicate clinical mastitis status in dairy cows using Bayesian latent class analysis

The development of digital farming gives bovine mastitis research and management tools access to large datasets. However, the quality of registered data on clinical mastitis cases or treatments may be inadequate (e.g. due to missing records). In automatic milking systems, the decision to divert milk from the bulk milk tank during milking is registered (i.e. milk diversion indicator) for every milking and could potentially indicate a clinical mastitis case. This study accordingly estimated the diagnostic performance of a milk diversion indicator in relation to farmer-recorded clinical mastitis cases in the absence of a “gold standard”. Data on milk diversion and farmer-reported clinical mastitis from 3,443 lactations in 13 herds were analyzed. Each cow lactation was split into 30-DIM periods in which it was registered whether milk was diverted and whether clinical mastitis was reported. One 30-DIM period was randomly sampled for each lactation and this was the unit of analysis, this procedure was repeated 300 times, resulting in 300 datasets to create autocorrelation-robust results during analysis. We used Bayesian latent class analysis to assess the diagnostic properties of milk diversion and farmer-reported clinical status. We analyzed different episode lengths of milk diversion of 1 or more milk diversion days until 10 or more milk diversion days for two scenarios: farmers with poor-quality (51% sensitivity, 99% specificity) and high-quality (90% sensitivity, 99% specificity) mastitis registrations. The analysis was done for all 300 datasets. The results showed that for the scenario where the quality of clinical mastitis reporting was high, the sensitivity was similar for milk-diversion threshold durations of 1–4 days (0.843 to 0.793 versus 0.893). Specificity increased when the number of days of milk diversion increased and was ≥98% at a milk-diversion threshold durations of 8 or more consecutive milk diversion days. In the scenario where the quality of clinical mastitis reporting was low, the sensitivity of milk diversion and reported clinical mastitis cases was similar at milk-diversion threshold durations of 1–7 days (0.687 to 0.448 versus 0.503 to 0.504) while specificity exceeded the 98% at milk-diversion threshold durations of 7 or more consecutive milk diversion days. In both scenarios, a milk diversion threshold duration of 4–7 days achieved the most desirable combined sensitivity and specificity. This study concluded that milk diversion can be a valid alternative to farmer-reported clinical mastitis as it performs similarly in indicating actual clinical mastitis

Heat shock protein expression analysis in canine osteosarcoma reveals HSP60 as a potentially relevant therapeutic target

Heat shock proteins (HSP) are highly conserved across eukaryotic and prokaryotic species. These proteins play a role in response to cellular stressors, protecting cells from damage and facilitating recovery. In tumor cells, HSPs can have cytoprotective effects and interfere with apoptotic cascades. This study was performed to assess the prognostic and predictive values of the gene expression of HSP family members in canine osteosarcoma (OS) and their potential for targeted therapy. Gene expressions for HSP were assessed using quantitative PCR (qPCR) on 58 snap-frozen primary canine OS tumors and related to clinic-pathological parameters. A significant increased expression of HSP60 was found in relation to shorter overall survival and an osteoblastic phenotype. Therefore, the function of HSP60 was investigated in more detail. Immunohistochemical analysis revealed heterogeneous staining for HSP60 in tumors. The highest immunoreactivity was found in tumors of short surviving dogs. Next HSP expression was shown in a variety of canine and human OS cell lines by qPCR and Western blot. In two highly metastatic cell lines HSP60 expression was silenced using siRNA resulting in decreased cell proliferation and induction of apoptosis in both cell lines. It is concluded that overexpression of HSP60 is associated with a poor prognosis of OS and should be evaluated as a new target for therapy