Recognition of conspecific odours by laboratory rats (Rattus norvegicus) does not show context specificity.

Recognition of conspecific odours by laboratory rats (Rattus norvegicus) does not show context specificity

AN ECONOMETRIC MODEL OF FARMERS' DEMAND FOR COMMODITY CREDIT CORPORATION LOANS

Agricultural Finance,

Pakkausmenetelmät hajautetussa aikasarjatietokannassa

Rise of microservices and distributed applications in containerized deployments are putting increasing amount of burden to the monitoring systems. They push the storage requirements to provide suitable performance for large queries. In this paper we present the changes we made to our distributed time series database, Hawkular-Metrics, and how it stores data more effectively in the Cassandra. We show that using our methods provides significant space savings ranging from 50 to 90% reduction in storage usage, while reducing the query speeds by over 90\% compared to the nominal approach when using Cassandra. We also provide our unique algorithm modified from Gorilla compression algorithm that we use in our solution, which provides almost three times the throughput in compression with equal compression ratio.Hajautettujen järjestelmien yleistyminen on aiheuttanut valvontajärjestelmissä tiedon määrän kasvua, sillä aikasarjojen määrä on kasvanut ja niihin talletetaan useammin tietoa. Tämä on aiheuttanut kasvavaa kuormitusta levyjärjestelmille, joilla on ongelmia palvella kasvavia kyselyitä Tässä paperissa esittelemme muutoksia hajautettuun aikasarjatietokantaamme, Hawkular-Metricsiin, käyttäen hyödyksi tehokkaampaa tiedon pakkausta ja järjestelyä kun tietoa talletetaan Cassandraan. Nopeutimme kyselyjä lähes kymmenkertaisesti ja samalla pienensimme levytilavaatimuksia aineistosta riippuen 50-95%. Esittelemme myös muutoksemme Gorilla pakkausalgoritmiin, jota hyödynnämme tulosten saavuttamiseksi. Muutoksemme nopeuttavat pakkaamista melkein kolminkertaiseksi alkuperäiseen algoritmiin nähden ilman pakkaustehon laskua

The influence of pre-experimental experience on social discrimination in rats (Rattus norvegicus)

The authors used laboratory rats (Rattus norvegicus) of known relatedness and contrasting familiarity to assess the potential effect of preexperimental social experience on subsequent social recognition. The authors used the habituation-discrimination technique, which assumes that multiple exposures to a social stimulus (e.g., soiled bedding) ensure a subject discriminates between the habituation stimulus and a novel stimulus when both are introduced simultaneously. The authors observed a strong discrimination if the subjects had different amounts of preexperimental experience with the donors of the 2 stimuli but a weak discrimination if the subjects had either equal amounts of preexperimental experience or no experience with the stimuli. Preexperimental social experience does, therefore, appear to influence decision making in subsequent social discriminations. Implications for recognition and memory research are discussed

Targeting Net Zero Energy at Marine Corps Air Station Miramar: Assessment and Recommendations

In 2008, the Department of Defense (DoD) and Department of Energy (DOE) defined a joint initiative to address military energy use by identifying specific actions to reduce energy demand and increase use of renewable energy on DoD installations. A Task Force comprised of representatives from the Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD), the four military Services, DOE’s Federal Energy Management Program (FEMP), and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) was established. In light of DoD priorities, early attention was given to the possibility of net zero energy military installations (NZEI), that is, installations that would meet their energy needs with local renewable resources. Marine Corps Air Station (MCAS) The Task Force selected Miramar to be the prototype installation for net zero energy assessment and planning. This selection was based on Miramar’s strong history of energy advocacy and extensive track record of successful energy projects

University Of New England Center For Excellence In Neuroscience K-12 Outreach Program

Research poster describing UNE\u27s Center for Excellence in the Neurosciences (CEN) K-12 outreach program. Founded in 2009 with three main areas of focus—research, scholarship and community outreach—CEN includes over 40 faculty members affiliated with neuroscience research and/or education. The Neuroscience Outreach Program was established in 2009 with the goal of bringing fun, interactive neuroscience lessons to schools to engage students in learning about neuroscience. UNE undergraduate and professional students present the lessons in classrooms with support from UNE faculty and staff.https://dune.une.edu/cen_poster/1000/thumbnail.jp

A spatial judgement task to determine background emotional state in laboratory rats (Rattus norvegicus)

Humans experiencing different background emotional states display contrasting cognitive (e.g. judgement) biases when responding to ambiguous stimuli. We have proposed that such biases may be used as indicators of animal emotional state. Here, we use a spatial judgement task, in which animals are trained to expect food in one location and not another, to determine whether rats in relatively positive or negative emotional states respond differently to ambiguous stimuli of intermediate spatial location. We housed 24 rats with environmental enrichment for seven weeks. Enrichment was removed for half the animals prior to the start of training (‘U’: unenriched) to induce a relatively negative emotional state, whilst being left in place for the remaining rats (‘E’: enriched). After six training days, the rats successfully discriminated between the rewarded and unrewarded locations in terms of an increased latency to arrive at the unrewarded location, with no housing treatment difference. The subjects then received three days of testing in which three ambiguous ‘probe’ locations, intermediate between the rewarded and unrewarded locations, were introduced. There was no difference between the treatments in the rats’ judgement of two out of the three probe locations, the exception being when the ambiguous probe was positioned closest to the unrewarded location. This result suggests that rats housed without enrichment, and in an assumed relatively negative emotional state, respond differently to an ambiguous stimulus compared to rats housed with enrichment, providing evidence that cognitive biases may be used to assess animal emotional state in a spatial judgement task

Image-derived input functions from dynamic O-15-water PET scans using penalised reconstruction

BACKGROUND: Quantitative positron emission tomography (PET) scans of the brain typically require arterial blood sampling but this is complicated and logistically challenging. One solution to remove the need for arterial blood sampling is the use of image-derived input functions (IDIFs). Obtaining accurate IDIFs, however, has proved to be challenging, mainly due to the limited resolution of PET. Here, we employ penalised reconstruction alongside iterative thresholding methods and simple partial volume correction methods to produce IDIFs from a single PET scan, and subsequently, compare these to blood-sampled input curves (BSIFs) as ground truth. Retrospectively we used data from sixteen subjects with two dynamic 15O-labelled water PET scans and continuous arterial blood sampling: one baseline scan and another post-administration of acetazolamide. RESULTS: IDIFs and BSIFs agreed well in terms of the area under the curve of input curves when comparing peaks, tails and peak-to-tail ratios with R2 values of 0.95, 0.70 and 0.76, respectively. Grey matter cerebral blood flow (CBF) values showed good agreement with an average difference between the BSIF and IDIF CBF values of 2% ± and a coefficient of variation (CoV) of 7.3%. CONCLUSION: Our results show promising results that a robust IDIF can be produced for dynamic 15O–water PET scans using only the dynamic PET scan images with no need for a corresponding MRI or complex analytical techniques and thereby making routine clinical use of quantitative CBF measurements with 15O–water feasible

Short-term social memory in the laboratory rat: its susceptibility to disturbance.

Short-term social memory in the laboratory rat: its susceptibility to disturbance